The Knicks Fix

On this Halloween,as I'm about to fly to Memphis on the eve of the Knicks season, I wonder if their record (0-0) now will be the best we see all year. By the next holiday, Thanksgiving, this team could be deep in a hole. Seven of the first 13 games of the season, right up until Nov. 22 at Minnesota, are on the road. But the bigger issue is that some of the opponents are a tough matchup for the Knicks, from two games against the San Antonio Spurs in the second week of the season, to two games against the Houston Rockets (who is going to guard McGrady and Yao?), and games against the Cleveland Cavaliers (LeBron) and Miami Heat (everyone).

Tell me where you pencil in the W’s.

My guess is they head into the Minnesota game 4-8 at best. That might even be an optimistic outlook.

Look, I don’t want to bury the Knicks before the ball is even tipped-off in Memphis tomorrow night because I know nothing kills a fan’s anticipation for a new season like negativity. But until Jared Jeffries comes back from his injury and shows he can be the defensive stopper that Isiah Thomas says he is, I figure this team will be involved in some wild final scores and, most likely, on the losing end of most of them. I wonder if they can get the Spurs and Rockets into a running game so they aren’t dominated by the half-court grinder. I wonder if they can eliminate Shaq by making him run. D-Wade, however, might torch them anyway.

All I can say to the die-hards is take it one at a time and hope the Knicks win the games they are supposed to win. Opening night, with Pau Gasol out with an injury, the Knicks catch a break against the Grizzlies, but it's still no gimme. However they should win Friday in Atlanta, which means they could come home 2-0 for the Garden opener on Saturday against the Indiana Pacers.

That’s about all the Kool-Aid I can pour out right now.

I’ll check back in before the game tomorrow and give up some stuff from the shootaround and any lineup information. Right now, it’s pretty clear the starters will be Marbury and Francis at guard, Richardson and Frye at forward and Eddy Curry at center. Key subs will be Crawford and Lee with newcomer Kelvin Cato in to give Curry a breather.

Oh, I almost forgot. My lyric of the day. I always listen to Public Enemy when I fly.

In this corner with the 98
Subject of suckers - object of hate
Who's the one some think is great
I'm that one - son of a gun
Drivin' by - wavin' my fist
Makin' 'em mad when I'm goin' like this
Top gun - never on the run
They know not to come cause they all get some
Goin' quicker in the speedin' lane
Jealous can't do it and it's causin' them pain . . .

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
and speak my point of view
But it's not sane, It's not sane

My last free weekend before the season starts and it’s pouring out. Only seven months of weekend games and traveling until my next free weekend, so I’m feeling melancholy. It’s times like these 90s grunge dominates my playlist. Not that Blind Melon would be mistaken as grunge, but they are a 90s band. And too much Alice in Chains might put me over the edge.

Bury me softly in this womb
I give this part of me for you
Sand rains down and here I sit
Holding rare flowers
In a tomb...in bloom

I’m sure my mood will continue to upset my friend who emailed in after the last blog to label me as “a disgruntled Tribune employee.” I didn’t realize it was so obvious. Perhaps one day they won’t refer to it as “going Postal” but instead “going Tribune.”

I think I’ll copyright that.

Speaking of which, the Knicks “went Tribune” on the Nets, at least by playing them physical in the preseason finale on Friday night. The Nets still destroyed them on the scoreboard, but I was amused by Isiah Thomas’ tactic to provoke the sleeping giant. The Nets are a talented veteran team that mostly lays out on a lounge chair and takes in the sun during the preseason. Then the Knicks came along and for no reason flipped them into the pool.

It reminded me of those hilarious "Messin' with Sasquatch" commercials for Jack Links beef jerky. Sure, the guys pull a fast and funny one on the unsuspecting Sasquatch, but the beast gets them in the end.

(A sidenote to all of this: There is a misguided notion that somehow the Knicks are healthy again because Eddy Curry stepped in a shoved Clifford Robinson after a hard foul by Quentin Richardson on Nenad Krstic. Throughout the game I was singing Queen Latifah’s “U.N.I.T.Y.” to my colleague Ken Berger.

Gotta love the Queen when she growls, Who you callin’ a b----?)

I have to admit though I liked what Isiah was trying to do in provoking the Nets. He’s creating interest where, for a few years now, there has been none. In the end it doesn’t matter if they get spanked like they did against the Nets on Friday night. But if he can get this team to show a little heart, at least it gives fans something to feel good about coming off last season.

And now for something completely different:

Channing Frye needs to take a seat. From what I’ve seen in the preseason, I’m still trying to figure out exactly how he fits in Thomas’ system, especially if he is going to continually pick up more fouls than rebounds and pose little threat on the post. David Lee seems to do more of the proverbial little things – move to get open, set good screens, attack the glass, pass and defend – and its on that merit alone he might be better suited for the starting five.

It also might be better for Frye to come off the bench because he could be in there with Kelvin Cato, who is not known for his offense, instead of Curry, who is a post-up scorer. Frye could become the low-post option when Curry comes out of the game and perhaps the Knicks could switch up the offense do more pick-and-pop stuff with him and Jamal Crawford.

I also believe Frye needs to develop a turn-and-face routine in his post-up if he is going to be a more effective player on the offensive end and a legitimate threat that demands defensive attention. What I mean is Frye should catch the ball on the post and immediately turn and square up to the basket. A lot of post-up guards do this and Frye seems more comfortable facing the basket than he does with his back to it. This way he can see the floor to make passes to cutters and use his length to get off his shot.

Frye looked very uncomfortable trying to pass out of the post-up in the game against the Celtics at Mohegan Sun. The Celtics double-teamed him every time. You could look at that and say the Celtics showed respect for Frye’s post-up game, but I disagree. I think they were showing a lack of respect for his ability to pass out of the double-team. They were exploiting his weakness.

Thomas can’t approach this as a demotion for Frye, who is a promising young player who has clearly struggled in the preseason with foul-trouble and on the offensive glass, where he is almost non-existent. Thomas should make it a promotion for Lee, who has been solid all-around and, at least right now, makes the Knicks a better team when he is on the floor.

But you know us media-types. We’ll make a controversy out of it anyway.

Carlos Mencia speaks some serious, painful truth. The comedian wrote a song based on his silly “Dee-Dee-Dee” catchphrase – which bothers me to a degree because I have a mentally retarded sister. But if you listen first and react second – something people need to exercise more of – you find out that Mencia isn’t referring to mentally-retarded people. He’s referring to people always looking for the easy way out and then wanting sympathy when things don’t go their way.

And the song talks about everything that bothers me about our society. And the Knicks.

It would be a breach of Tribune/Newsday ethical standards for me to post the lyrics here, so I’ll leave it up to you. But the part of the song that speaks the loudest is a back-and-forth refrain that says things like: “This test is too hard! (So they lower the standards)/ I’m not good at sports! (So we give them all trophies)” and so on.

Sound familiar, Knicks fans?

I grew up a fan of this franchise from the Bernard King days, through the entire Patrick Ewing era. It’s sad to me how things have changed for a team that every year is, in my mind, supposed to be one of the elite teams in the NBA, if not the flagship. No one expects a championship every season. But for a franchise of this caliber, of this fiscal clout and in the epicenter of basketball, what the Knicks are today is just unacceptable.

I can’t tell you if they’re going to be better this season. It’s hard to imagine they will be as bad as last year based solely on the fact that Larry Brown isn’t around to upset a number of players who disagreed with him. It’s hard to gauge this team at all because, truth be told, the media isn’t allowed to watch more than the last half-hour of practice, at most. And usually that’s when they’re shooting free throws.

One thing I do know: during my brief and forgettable basketball career, I hated the preseason. Practices were long and exhausting. I don’t get that vibe from the Knicks.

I can’t get a vibe from the preseason games, either. The Knicks have beaten the Sixers twice without having to face Allen Iverson or center Samuel Dalembert. They beat the Nets once without Jason Kidd or Vince Carter on the floor. They beat the Celtics when Sebastien Telfair left the game at the half and Paul Pierce didn’t dress. Then they got spanked by the Celtics when both players were on the court.

Conversely, the Knick backcourt that has everyone curious has played together sparingly in preseason games because one or the other was out of the lineup.

So it’s all a secret. Maybe that’s how Isiah Thomas wants it.

Until I can see it for myself, I can only talk about what I see right now. And that is a desperate effort to keep everything on a high-note and sweep the trouble under the hardwood court.

I know I’m new to this. But I never believed that a losing attitude could be turned around by the kid-gloves treatment. I saw it fail with the Islanders.

Dee-Dee-Dee.

Channing Frye greeted a few beat writers outside the Knick locker room by nodding and saying, “Piranhas.”

And I’m going to take offense to that? This happened just before I shuffled down to the Celtics locker room to stake out Sebastien Telfair and see if he’d make any more comment about his incident from last Monday night in Manhattan.

Piranhas, indeed.

A few random thoughts on a day when I traveled up to Uncasville, Conn. to watch the Knicks get their doors blown off by the Celtics at a beautiful place called Mohegan Sun:

1. Can we bring writing back to sports writing? I wondered this aloud with a fellow sportswriter the other day: what would readers rather have – A story loaded with innocuous quotes that say nothing and inane statistics that reveal little? Or a lengthy, opinionated commentary about the game, the team and all observations in the voice of the writer, the eyes and ears of the reader?

Discuss. Get back to me.

2. Forgettable game for the Knicks. But it was a preseason game and Isiah Thomas clearly had it in his mind to play his bench. When Paul Miller and Milone Clark get on the court in the second quarter, you know the first priority isn’t winning the game. It’s seeing what you got on the bench. Early indication? Not much.

3. With so much extensive gar-bage time, I found myself paying attention to so many other things than the game. Like Neil Patrick Harris, who was sitting court side, and how he clearly has jacked up since his Doogie Howser days. You think that has anything to do with the fact that as an adult he has to deal with idiots mocking him with “Yo Doooogie How-zah,” which he heard last night as many times as the Knicks turned the ball over?

4. I also noticed over-the-top starstruck people who lose all sense of sensibility when they find themselves within shouting distance of the Knicks bench. One dude kept calling Renaldo Balkman’s name, holding his camera phone, hoping he’d smile and pose for a picture. Balkman sent his message loud and clear by draping a towel over his head. The fan grumbled and walked away.

Down by 30 in the third quarter and you’re getting impatient with an NBA rookie because he’s not in the mood for a photo op?

Yeah, it’s the players who are out of touch with the fans.

5. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in an arena that played a lot of hip-hop (it’s not really common in the NHL, in case you were wondering), so I have to adjust. Hey, I love all kinds of music – really – and have plenty of rap in my collection, like Brand Nubian, Black Sheep and A Tribe Called Quest from my college days and more recent stuff like Common and K-OS and Jay-Z (the Numb Encore is, as the kids say, off the chain). But some of this repetitive stuff that sounds like a dude barking while a CD is skipping makes me ill. What happened to the lyrical artistry of Q-Tip, Slick Rick and my all-time favorite, Chuck D?

I’m done like Michael Olowokandi’s NBA career.

My BlackBerry buzzed last night just before midnight. It was my friend, Ben, who sent me a simple message: “Wow.” We exchanged a few small thoughts about the Mets loss to the Cardinals in Game 7 of the NLCS and he concluded it perfectly: “Well, baseball season is officially over.”

Winter sports can begin. I changed beats, if anyone hadn’t noticed. After seven years covering the Islanders and my beloved sport of hockey, my new assignment is the Knicks and my second love, basketball. More on that later. Let’s eulogize the summer season, which has always been a thorn in my sidebar.

In New York, Fox might as well not even bother showing the World Series, which would be fine with me. Let’s get the prime time shows back on. House. Bones. Family Guy. Whatever. I really don’t know much about prime time television. The last time I had my nights free enough to follow anything on prime time, I was watching ER and NYPD Blue. And Seinfeld.

This job doesn’t allow you too much time to watch TV that doesn’t involve a sport. Or Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

They’re funny. My wife, a teacher, doesn’t think it’s funny when I’m laughing out loud at 11:30 on a school night.

Can I get back to my baseball rant now? I don’t know how you people do it. The season is so long. The games are so long and boring (you need a shot clock on the pitcher….let’s speed it up man!). The drama is so drawn out, so slow and deliberate. And you sit there and put yourself through all of that anxiety, the highs and lows, to watch Carlos Beltran keep the bat on his shoulder? Are you kidding me? Not even going down swinging?

How did any Met fan sleep last night?

This is why I can’t stand baseball. When I was six my parents sent me off to a CYO baseball league. I loved the infield and was pretty quick. But the coach put me in left field. Yes, left-out. Do you know how many balls make it to left field in a six-year-old baseball league, where the coaches pitch to the kids?

None.

So I sat down in the grass and started picking dandelions. My dad saw this and took me home. My baseball career over at six. Fifteen years later I was 6’6” and -- wouldn’t you know? – a lefty. I reminded my father often that he cost me millions. He figured the only future I was showing back then was as the groundskeeper.

What does this have to do with basketball? Everything and nothing. You see, this season is sort of a coming home for me. My father yanked me away from hockey when I was 12 because he saw I had a growth spurt and predicted I was going to be tall. He based this theory on the fact that he was 6’8”. He told me hockey isn’t a sport for big men and sent me to a basketball camp. My first day at this camp, I wore a hockey jersey. And so began a futile attempt at using my size to any advantage.

When Eric Lindros, the 6-6 monster winger, was drafted first overall, I told my dad he again cost me millions. When Zdeno Chara, the 6-9 defenseman, became an all-star, I told my dad he would have no say in my son’s athletic career. Ever.

But my dad was quick to remind me: basketball helped pay for college. Touche, Dad.

So with him now in heaven looking down over me, hopefully guiding me (but not when it comes to decisions on my son’s athletic career), here I go back to the hardwood, where he always said I belonged (even when the ice was calling me). I am covering the team I loved as a kid in an arena I often considered a cathedral of my two sporting loves.

Here I am, once again, a hockey guy trying to make it in basketball.

When I first met Stephon Marbury, he was told I used to cover hockey and he asked me if I played hockey. I said I did and still do. He smiled, as if either impressed or amused, and, perhaps patronizingly said he liked hockey. A few weeks later he walked by me slapping my chest and repeating “Hockey! Hockey!”

We are who we are.

One post-script: This is my first blog. I thought it was necessary to explain some things. Next time, I’ll talk more about the Knicks and the NBA (and maybe a little hockey, too).

At least Alan Hahn still can dunk.

At 6-foot, 6-inches, he couldn’t do much else with a basketball, so instead of playing the game he grew up playing, he’s now writing about it.

Alan has followed the Knicks since the days BK was droppin' 50 and the "frozen envelope" landed Patrick Ewing. He reveled through the Roaring ‘90s and agonized over every defeat that fell short of a championship.

After seven seasons covering his first love, hockey, and the New York Islanders, Alan now finds himself back home on the hardwood, where endless summers of basketball camps and countless winter nights in the gym are finally paying off. Or so he hopes.