MIAMI – Tim Hardaway said six words yesterday that the Knicks thought he would say all along and Heat fans prayed he’d say all along.
“I will be playing on Sunday.”
So there. The Knicks were right. All week, they insisted Hardaway would play while in Miami, barrage balloons of “we’ll have to wait and see” went up on a daily basis. Just in case, folks here made Hardaway’s second, Anthony Carter, a celebrity.
But after what he called a “breakthrough” at a Thursday scrimmage and a tough Pat Riley practice yesterday, Hardaway pronounced himself fit for “30 to 40 minutes” of playing time in Game 1 tomorrow. The only question – if you believe it – is whether or not he’ll start, which everyone says “is up to coach.” Riley says, “I don’t know yet.” And he didn’t even go wink-wink when he said it.
“It feels good. Today was a good, good practice for me. We did a lot of running, a lot of defensive drills and the foot felt good,” said Hardaway, who missed the entire first round series against Detroit nursing the sprained left foot, which also is peppered by a dose of plantar fasciaitis.
Teammates watched Hardaway approvingly. Alonzo Mourning, asked what he saw, said simply, “The same thing I’ve been seeing for years, the same Tim Hardaway.” To a man, they claimed he looked good and even in the latter stages of the workout, there was no hint of a limp or of Hardaway favoring the achy foot.
On a scale of 1-to-10, Hardaway rated his health at “probably seven and a half to eight” because “there’s some pain there on certain things I do but I can sustain that pain, I felt comfortable about playing with this type of pain.”
Hardaway was “limited on defense, pushing off a bit when I cut my man off changing directions” during the scrimmage but encouraged by “surprisingly” good conditioning. He acknowledges, though, that if this were the regular season, he’d remain a cheerleader in street clothes. But these are the playoffs, by gum, and these are the playoffs against the hated Knicks, by more gum, so there really is no question. And figure that Riley expected no less. The two are cut from the same cloth.
“Tim will do anything to help the team win,” Riley assessed. “He really wants to contribute but I think he’ll do whatever it takes to help us win whether, it’s 15 or 30 [minutes] and whatever he can tolerate also.
Hardaway claimed that earlier this week, he honestly felt he would be a no-show for active duty tomorrow. The pain from the sprain and the plantar fasciaitis was too much.
“I was very doubtful at the beginning of the week,” said Hardaway, who missed a total of 30 regular season games with an assortment of ails, including a jammed right knee early that kept him out of 26 games. “But I kind of knew during the course of the week if I just played and tried to get over the pain and tried to get it stronger and stronger, that I’d be able to go. It proved me right. It just keeps getting stronger and it feels good.”