WELCOME to the real world, young Mr. Carter. The NBA you knew – the one of milk and honey and delicious dunks – disappeared yesterday at the Garden, replaced by salt and vinegar. Both of which will be poured into the wounds you suffer on your way to the basket.
This is springtime in New York, the land of no dunks, no layups and 7-year-olds sitting courtside screaming, “You [bleep]!”
This is playoff basketball. Learn as much as you can in the short time you have left this playoff season. You will be back and someday you will dominate, but this time, this series, belongs to the experienced Knicks as surely as yesterday’s opening 92-88 victory.
And not just because you missed your first 12 shots and finished 3 for 20, laying a purple Easter egg after averaging 33 points and shooting 60.2 percent against the Knicks in the regular season.
Not just because Air Canada choked up Air Balls, four in all as you shot 15 percent to finish with 16 points. Not just because your team was confused by Jeff Van Gundy’s defensive scheme that included doubling with bigs, and pushing you to the right, two tactics that Toronto coach Butch Carter pointed out he had seen only twice this year, the first game of the season against Boston and Rick Pitino and Tuesday night against the Heat and Pat Riley. Two coaches, by the way, whom Van Gundy worked for during his formative years.
This is all about toughness, a team’s toughness and an individual’s. Latrell Sprewell was literally inside your jersey at one point in the third quarter, pushing you completely across the floor, right elbow wedged in your back under your No. 15. No foul was called.
Although Sprewell hit you with a flagrant foul that could have killed the Knicks in the final 39.9 seconds, he sent a most serious message, thumping you to the ground as if your name were P.J. That is the Knicks’ way and the only way to beat you. Take you down and let the likes of Doug Christie (1-for-5), shrivel into Kerry Kittles nothingness. Christie’s brutal off-balance 15-footer when he could have easily called time to set up a play was the final clinker with the Raptors down, 88-86.
In the end, you put a good face on defeat, perhaps knowing it took Michael Jordan seven playoff seasons to win his first championship. You said you were nervous. Nervous never wins. As a result, your first basket didn’t come until the 10:42 mark of the fourth quarter.
“This was a chance of a lifetime for the Raptors and I just wanted to make this a good one and I just have to learn to settle down and play basketball,” you thoughtfully explained. “I wasn’t my normal self. It’s over with and I’m looking forward to Game 2.”
Not really. It’s not over, it’s only beginning. You and your teammates insist you know how the Knicks are going to attack you now and you are going to handle it better Wednesday night at the Garden.
Said forward Antonio Davis, “We have to free up Vince better. I have to do a better job of setting picks.”
“I’m not worried about Vince Carter,” said Muggsy Bogues, who played a terrific little game. “He’ll be fine.”
Tracy McGrady, a supreme young talent of his own, insisted the Garden was the loudest arena he had ever heard in his life. Guess what? Wednesday night will be louder. This was a weekend crowd, not the party-hard crew.
“We just had to calm ourselves down a little bit,” McGrady said. “We were taking a lot of jump shots.”
That’s what the Knicks make opponents not named Shaq do in the playoffs. And those are contested, too. It worked great last year until Tim Duncan came along.
“Vince is a warrior,” Toronto coach Butch Carter said. “He ain’t going to like playing bad. We’ve come so far but here’s another barrier. That’s the only way to deal with young players.”
Butch added of the Knicks, “They came out in the first quarter like every possession was their last, like they were playing in Game 7. It’s really hard to duplicate that in practice.”
Or in life. You see, that’s why the Knicks were laying low at times in the season. You can’t play with that kind of fury over 82 games, or even 42. Added Butch , “Latrell sent a real good message, he’s a good player.”
“Spree did a good job of being intense,” said Allan Houston. “You just can’t let Vince get easy shots.”
You know that now better than ever. The Knicks are in your head as well as your jersey.
“I knew that was coming,” you said of the flagrant foul. “You gotta play through it. I think they wanted to see how I would react to it, but I have to be a bigger man than that. … This was the first time the Knicks played me real well as a team. They were real intense.”
Get used to it, kid.