BEAST OF THE LEAST
Stumbling Knicks still in contention in woeful East
How about those Giants? That defense could lead them to the Super Bowl, don’t you think?
Meanwhile, the Knicks are crashing and burning.
Yup, good old Eli Manning has been there before and knows what it takes. And is Odell Beckham Jr. a game-breaker or what?
The Knicks are in 10th place in the East, losers of six straight and trying desperately to right themselves.
There is something to be said for another team in New York grabbing all the attention, and for that, the Knicks may want to thank the Giants. But the Knicks, who Friday visit Milwaukee and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the author of their latest nightmare, know as quickly as team fortunes turned sour, they can just as rapidly reverse themselves.
“For the most part, I thought we’ve put together something we can be proud of,” Carmelo Anthony said Thursday of the 2016-17 Knicks. “Aside from the past week, eight, nine days, I thought we’ve been playing some good basketball. Of course, we’ve had some ups and downs and right now we’re at that downswing.
“I’m not going to take this last week, eight days and that’s going to validate who we are as a team or validate our season,” Anthony said. “We still have 40-some games left to play. We’ve just got to get off this little slide right now and get back to having fun and playing the basketball we were playing earlier.”
And remember one thing above all, even as you watch the Giants battle Green Bay frostbite and Aaron Rodgers.
The Knicks are in the East where a threegame winning streak seemingly can clinch a playoff berth. Yes, the 16-19 Knicks are 10th — but three games separated seven teams, starting with the fourth-place Hornets (20-16) entering Thursday.
“The good thing about the East is we’re all close. We win the next two, we might be in the fifth or the sixth spot. So we still have to be positive. We lost the game at the buzzer,” Brandon Jennings said of the Knicks’ 105-104 defeat Wednesday when their collapse from a 16-point lead culminated with Antetokounmpo sticking a 15foot buzzer-beater for the Bucks win.
“We’re going through what the Wizards went through earlier, what Detroit is going through, so the good thing about our schedule is we have so many games this month,” Jennings said. “We’ve just got to go out and get them.”
Despite an obvious influx of talent including Jennings, Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Courtney Lee through trades and free agency, the Knicks are 16-19 — exactly where they were last season after 35 games. But coach Jeff Hornacek, acknowledging the good, the bad and the ugly, also stressed the unhealthy. For Friday, he again hopes for the return of Kristaps Porzingis (Achilles) who went through Thursday’s light practice.
“We’ve done some good things. We had that one good stretch when we had everybody healthy and playing. We just haven’t found that way to win when some of those guys are out,” Hornacek said. “We’ve had some stinkers. The New Orleans game [without Lee] ... but with Carmelo and KP and Derrick, that was a game we needed to win.
“I’ve said it a couple times, you can’t get panicked. If we were in a division where now all of a sudden you lost six in a row and you’re eight games out of the playoffs, now maybe guys are dropping their heads,” Hornacek said. “But in the East, I think it’s going to be like this all year. There’s a lot of teams like us ... and again, there’s going to be a stretch during the season when we win six in a row.”
So thank the almighty for the East where the Knicks are one game away from 12th, five games away from third.
“We’re pretty much aware of our situation and where we stand,” Anthony said. “I’m not saying we’re watching the standings or anything like that, but we’re aware of where we’re at and where we want to be and what we want to do.”
And if they don’t right matters quickly, go Giants.