NOTHING has come easy for the Knicks this year. Why should clinching a playoff berth be any different. Beating the Celtics last night looked like it would be much simpler than it actually was, especially when the Knicks took a 16-0 lead before most ofthe Garden crowd had settled in its seats. Yet, it wasn’t until the final five minutes when the rapid-fire Celtics finally started shooting blanks that the Knicks outscored Boston 14-7 en route to a 95-88 win.
Now David Checketts can rest easy. The Garden will get a post-season payday after all.
“We’ve had our struggles at times,” Jeff Van Gundy would say after Patrick Ewing scored 27 and Allan Houston 21 to get the Knicks into the playoffs for the 12th straight year.
“Our position isn’t exactly what we would have liked. But our No.1 goal was to get in. Even though we’re going to be an underdog, we’ve got a chance and that’s all you can ask for.”
Fittingly, the Knicks didn’t celebrate much after beating the Celtics. No champagne, no overzealous patting of the back. Truth is, reaching the playoffs might fulfill the mandate of “make the playoffs or else” given by Checketts when he reassigned GM Ernie Grunfeld April 21, but it by no means makes this headache of a season any kind of real success.
Nobody should be off the hook just yet: not the players, not Van Gundy, not even Checketts, who should be the last one satisfied with needing 49 games to qualify.
When the season began, even with all the personnel changes, the lack of training camp and the shortened schedule, the Knicks were talking about winning a championship in this first year of Michael Jordan’s second retirement. Meeting the Pacers or the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals was the objective. Playing either in the first round as the eighth seed wasn’t.
From the bosses at Cablevision to the guy holding a cup outside Penn Station, everyone expected more out of these Knicks than a 26-23 record. To settle for a cameo in the “second season” would be an injustice to their $68 million payroll.
The Sixers, who are in the playoffs for the first time in eight years, can be happy with their year. So can the playoff-bound Hawks, Magic, Pistons and Bucks. They all had seasons close to, if not beyond expectations.
Even the Hornets, who won’t make it because the Knicks did, have earned a measure of satisfaction, having won 12 of their last 15 games, just to get into contention. But the Knicks? Not yet.
Making the playoffs is just the first step in salvaging these last three-plus months of chaos where Van Gundy admitted yesterday, “I haven’t always been proud of the way we’ve played this year.”
Sure, they’re in. But now they must prove they are dangerous and not a doormat.
“It’s a clean slate,” said Ewing, who showed there is still some fight in his sore legs. “We’ve just got to get in there and make some noise.”
You might be able to feel better about the Knicks if it weren’t for the fact that many of their problems this year have been of their own doing. There have been so many different agendas it was sometimes hard to tell everyone was working for the same team, much less on the same page.
From the Charles Oakley trade, to Van Gundy’s unwillingness to play Marcus Camby early in the year, to both coach and player harboring on Latrell Sprewell’s role as the sixth man, to Charlie Ward’s stance that women shouldn’t be allowed in the locker room, to Ewing’s heath; to Grunfeld’s reassignment, to Larry Johnson allegedly exposing himself in the locker room, the Knicks have been more of a soap opera than the proud organization it regards itself to be. Now they have a chance to redeem themselves and make good on all those preseason expectations.
Blaming the Knicks’ mediocrity on the lack of an All-Star point guard or the departures of Oakley and John Starks, is a narrow-minded escape. Last I checked, Starks wasn’t exactly burning it up in Golden State, shooting a 37.3 percent from the field, and Oakley has been less productive with the Raptors (6.8 points per game) than he was with the Knicks, which belies the theory that a player’s numbers are abnormally high on a bad team. Charlie Ward has 10 assists last night. Chris Childs zero turnovers.
I admit I haven’t done a scientific study, but one would think any GM in the league would be hard-pressed to refuse the chance to have Houston, Sprewell, Ewing, Johnson and Camby on his roster. Yet, somehow the Knicks, with those players, have managed to be offensively inefficient for much of this season. That’s what happens when there’s division and distractions.
Accountability has been a problem all year. It was Ernie’s fault for trading Oakley, Jeff’s fault for not playing Camby; Spree’s fault for shooting too much; Allan’s fault for not being aggressive; Patrick fault for being old; Checketts’ fault for not paying close enough attention; and the league’s fault for having a lockout. But now the Knicks are in, and they’ll have no one to blame but themselves, if things don’t turn out well.