FOUR more games re main on the Knicks’ regulation schedule. Camp Cablevision is advising season ticket holders there’s still time to pay their playoff invoice, and, no doubt, brace for next year’s price increase.
Naturally, the “significant progress” the team has made – in James Dolan’s opinion – will convert into a significant ticket boost. Maybe Dolan’s definition meant not getting to garbage time until Game 79. Bonus points for those astute among you who had Friday the 13th as the date the Knicks would be eliminated officially from postseason consideration.
Four more games also means there’s plenty of time left for coach/president Isiah Thomas to justify Dolan’s leap of faith in him 15 games ago before his team tumbled in a dozen with a manuscript of excuses for each: injuries; too many players and not enough playing time; a referee/NBA conspiracy against Stephon Marbury; too many missed free throws by a team among the league leaders in attempts; inexperience; lack of leadership; Larry Brown hangover; a law against marketing affordable hand guns.
What’s more, four games give Thomas’ principal para-professionals ample opportunity to underachieve and overreact. Based on impure past performances, we’re focusing on Steve Francis, Nate Robinson and Jerome James, who are working hard on next year’s suspensions/buyouts.
By all means, this does not preclude any aspiring Knick from looking like a fool, disgracing the franchise, causing a commotion, or executing a disservice against others. Given four more games with loose reins that come equipped, nonetheless, with a bench-operated directional, and an immediate boss who beams when his boys mirror his confrontational image, a moronic, high-voltage incident is liable to break out at any time
Most likely, it’ll occur when the Knicks are getting wasted at the end of game. That’s when they’re most competitive. See the Melee at the Mecca when Thomas orchestrated a fight with the Nuggets and Tuesday’s war of words in Chicago that carried from the court to the corridor outside the locker room. To avoid such ugliness in the future, the NBA should consider instituting a “mercy rule” to halt Knicks proceedings any time they fall behind by 25 in the fourth quarter.
Yes, Thomas acted as a peacemaker. Still, it was transparent how proud he was of Francis, Robinson and James getting into the face of Tyrus Thomas and other Bulls for supposedly rolling up a 29-point result (when, in fact, it was all about reaching triple figures and compensating each customer with a burger) in a game that was decided in the first quarter. Why was he unable to suppress a slight grin during an interview regarding their conduct? Thomas habitually tries to pawn off poisonous behavior as passion.
Author’s aside: This practice of rewarding fans with free fatty food if a team reaches a certain point total should have been dropped any number of years ago. The home team is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t, choosing either cheesing off its clientele or upchucking any semblance of sportsmanship.
That said, as yet another pathetic Knicks season winds down, there is little to root for and much to root against: A bunch of losers with a losing record, who perform wretchedly and then take umbrage at the Bulls for playing to the crowd’s hunger pain for a free Big Mac.
“Oh, is that what it was about,” Robinson said afterward. “I didn’t know that.”
It’s like Sports Illustrated’s Peter Carry once wrote about ABA macho forward Wendell Ladner: “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear’ and a lot of other words, too.”
Four games remain for Incrimi-Nate to confirm how much more he doesn’t know, nor will ever get. For his final carnival act as a Knicks leading instigator and stagnator, look for him emerge just before tip-off from a clown car.
Four games is enough time for Francis to return to Houston and sufficiently rehab if he wants be fresh when those summer tournaments begin in earnest.
James, on the other hand, does not need nearly that much time to eat himself back on the physically unable to leave the dinner table list. To this day, he worked up his biggest sweat as a Knick the day he picked up a pen and signed his bloated contract.