THE All-Star sideshow is over. This time KryptoNate couldn’t jump over Superman in a single bound.
Not that it was for any lack of effort, naturally. Nate Robinson entered last night’s game after Dwight Howard had rejected three shots in the first 5:02, and brought the Knicks back from a 14-point deficit with 14 second-quarter points.
As coach Mike D’Antoni famously said last week, the good thing about Robinsoin is he can get a shot anytime he wants and the bad thing about Robinson is he can get a shot anytime he wants.
Seconds after being doubled-over from a body blow on a screen at the defensive end, Robinson spun successfully to the basket, grabbed the ball, and earned a delay-of-game warning before soon launching a hurried airball from the corner.
In the end, after exchanging second-half shoves and technicals with Anthony Johnson, he almost rallied the Knicks back from practically game-long double-digit deficits, Robinson’s 32 points beat his 30-point average of the previous six games, but not Howard (24 points 21 rebounds, four blocks) and the 42-15 Magic.
“Nate’s offense is off the charts sometimes and the last three weeks I think he has played about as well as you can play,” D’Antoni said before the 114-109 loss. “You want to correct each mistake and tone him down a little, but it’s a fine line.
“You don’t want to coach him down to where he can’t play.”
If a coach does that, it would suck the joy out of the Garden. It would shackle a player who keeps the Knicks in game after game, and they likely wouldn’t be players for the big prizes of 2010, no matter how much cap room has been created. Should it come down to either Robinson or David Lee this summer to save space for a proposed Robin to accompany the theoretical Batman the following July, the Knicks will have a hard time choosing Lee, a revelation who has recorded 21 consecutive double doubles. That’s how dynamic Robinson has been.
If Eddy Curry, who with the departures of Stephon Marbury and Jerome James has become the last piece of Isiah Thomas’s toxic mess cleared by the Hazmat-suited Donnie Walsh, can lay off the cake, the Knicks may be able to eat theirs, too.
Should the overweight and currently-overburdened center get on the court next season and rediscover his ability and earn the $11.2 million coming to him in 2010-11, the final year of his contract, the Knicks may be able to trade Curry for the space needed for two big signings – and retain Lee and Robinson.
“I will approach it as signing [Lee and Robinson] for their proper values,” Walsh said. “The problem with me talking about this is that when I say ‘we can get them all signed’ you guys say ‘for that to happen, then this is what is going to have to happen.’
“But we will have a lot of room to do what we want.”
The Knicks might be able to do it all. If not, they don’t dare choose between Robinson or Lee in the hopes of signing a star sidekick for LeBron James or Dwyane Wade. Because most teams will have cap room, that wingman may not be coming. And even if he does, he might not be as important as a Lee or Robinson the Knicks could deem unaffordable.