Brick by brick, Isiah Thomas, architect of a team nine games under .500 in the fourth season of his reign, constantly tells us how the Knicks will have to be built. Not only Jim Dolan shares that vision now. All of us have watched this team in recent fourth quarters shooting brick after brick.
Jamal Crawford, David Lee and Quentin Richardson are out. Eddy Curry has been subjected to more sagging than even his spirits, all for lack of another threat. Or so the coach would have us believe, never mind that last night the Knicks didn’t mind at all not having those guys at crunch time.
For the first time in five games they won, 97-93, over LeBron James’ Cavs, when Curry made 7 of 7 fourth-quarter free throws, when Channing Frye hit two fourth-quarter jumpers from the wing, when Stephon Marbury put away the game with a 3-pointer that bounced up and down almost as often as his team has all season before it finally dropped through the rim.
“We have to find unconventional ways to win,” Thomas said before the game. “Convert from the foul line, off the offensive glass, and score baskets in transition.”
Failing that, the Knicks can also do what conventionally can still work, like pound the ball to Curry, like having the surviving offensive threats come up big.
Of course, losing three players who each add an important element makes survivability more difficult. But the Knicks are going for eighth place, not first. They still are putting enough on the court to take this to the wire on behalf of a coach who applauds his team’s mindset one minute, complains about injuries the next.
Thomas tells us, in so many words, that he can’t get blood from the stone hands of a Renaldo Balkman or Jared Jeffries, never mentioning that that he assembled a team with one more player of that type than it needs. Double teams or not, it’s also hard to feel Curry is bringing everything he can every night when he scores 25 against Zydrunas Ilgauskas after getting eight against Jamaal Magloire and five against Rasho Nesterovic.
Nate Robinson shot 8 for 17 in the Knicks’ recent win against Toronto, 10 for 14 to keep them in against Portland and had 12 last night. For all his flaws, he is a significant remaining weapon, as is Frye, an eighth pick in a draft who was not exactly selected as a defensive stopper. But before getting 16 last night, Frye had scored five, three, 10 and seven points in the previous four games.
“My opinion is [Frye and Robinson] will have their nights,” said Thomas. “But they are not going to be consistent 18-point scorers this late in the game.”
If Frye were playing over his head to shoot 7 for 13 last night, then he was a bad lottery pick. If Marbury, whose 6 for 15 last night was enough to win a game against a good team, can’t do better that the 6 for 22 he went against Portland, the 2 for 10 he shot against the Mavs, or his 3 for 13 against the Hornets, then never mind the new balance he has brought to his game, he still is underachieving.
Of course, Marbury needs help, like Curry, hardly proving during the 2-7 stretch that led into last night to be the emergent All-Star the Knicks purport him to be, needs help, too. But in these trying times, players capable of stepping up simply must, the only way to convince themselves, and us, that they ultimately will make this team as good as Thomas insists it will be.