Not to rain on the post-Patrick Ewing parade, but the Knicks still haven’t beaten anyone of note during their 4-0 record with Ewing in the lineup. None of the four victories with Ewing had come against clubs above .500.
And to enlarge this picture, of the Knicks’ 15 victories this season, only three have been achieved against clubs with a winning record (Milwaukee twice and Cleveland).
In fact, the Knicks’ 15 victories have come against opponents with a combined record of 76 games below .500. A partial list of the dregs include: Chicago (2-17), Golden State twice (5-17), Dallas twice (8-16), Houston (7-17) and the Nets (6-17).
Yet the 15-9 Knicks are riding their longest winning streak — five games — since the 1996-97 season, prompting Ewing to say Thursday night following the victory in Dallas: “The sky’s the limit.”
One more league pushover comes to town today when the 7-17 Wizards meet the surging Knicks in a Garden matinee. After today’s gimme, some legitimate tests start filing in. The Knicks will host Central Division stalwarts Charlotte Monday and Toronto Wednesday and they head to Indiana next Saturday for a Christmas night Eastern Conference Finals rematch.
While Marcus Camby called Patrick the club’s “good-luck charm,” Camby also acknowledged: “It was good to get those two wins in Texas but we don’t need to let up now. We have some tough ballgames coming up next week with Charlotte and Toronto coming in and Christmas at Indiana. It’s good to win the ballgames you’re supposed to win and then we have to sneak up on the top teams coming in next week.”
Unlike last season’s rocky regular season, the Knicks, who have won seven of eight, are beating the clubs they are supposed to. When told of Ewing’s “sky’s the limit” remark, Allan Houston said, “I hate it because any time I say something like that we take a step back. But I do feel good about the fact we’re healthy. We have to make sure we take advantage of it.”
The only thing Van Gundy can pick on now is proper use of the word “surging.” Before the Knicks extended their winning streak to five against Dallas Thursday, Van Gundy took issue when a reporter referred to the Knicks as surging.
“It’s sad when you win four in a row and you call it surging,” Van Gundy said. “Surging is eight, nine wins a row for a good team. It’s unfortunate sometimes our mindsets is that surging is four in a row.”
With a full complement of players, Van Gundy allows that his club is creating defensive headaches for the opposition, as their back-to-back 100-point performances in Houston and Dallas suggest. The scary part of is, Larry Johnson can suffer through a 1-for-10 shooting night, Latrell Sprewell and Patrick Ewing can be average offensively and the Knicks can still beat lesser-than-the-elite competition on the road, as they did vs. the Mavs.
Camby (17 points, 12 rebounds, five blocks) and Houston (31 points) carried the Knicks Thursday night.
“We are deep,” said Ewing, who played just 24 minutes vs. Dallas.
“We can score enough to create mismatches ourselves,” Van Gundy said. ” Teams used to be able to mismatch us but we couldn’t mismatch them.”
“We are playing unselfish basketball,” Sprewell added. “We have a lot of guys who can score. So if we move the ball and play together we should be able to give teams a difficult time. As the season goes on, I think we are just going to get better. So the main thing is for us to get healthy. We have everybody back now and if we can keep everybody healthy we will be fine.”