Knicks invite even more criticism with national TV flop

Jared Jeffries (20), Renaldo Balkman (32) and Nate Robinson sum up the Knicks' night in Boston. AP

MAILBAG Submit a comment or question for Steve. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

These players have quit, one basketball fan said, the disgust in his voice all too obvious.

Yeah, but it can't all be on the players, another man said. Some of this has to be on the coach.

Have we ever seen anything quite this bad, wondered a third.

These weren't just three frustrated fans of the New York Knicks sitting elbow-to-elbow in the upper bowl of Boston's TD Banknorth Garden on Thursday night or perched butt cheek-to-butt cheek atop bar stools somewhere watching the Celtics' 104-59 dismantling of a once-proud Atlantic Division rival. This was Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson, the TNT studio crew, commandeering the audio portion of their cable network's telecast of the blowout game. And they were doing to Knicks coach Isiah Thomas what Gil Grissom and his scalpel rattlers usually do on Thursdays to crime victims on CSI. They were eviscerating and autopsying.

Never mind "must-see TV.'' This was "must-c, as in cringe TV,'' the stuff of train wrecks that you couldn't bear to look at and yet couldn't help but watch, in gory fascination, as the Celtics exposed all of the Knicks' on-court shortcomings in 48 lethal minutes or less. In a rare and maybe unprecedented move, TNT swapped out the courtside repartee of Marv Albert and Reggie Miller (who already were tsk-tsking over New York's dismal showing) for the snarkier, bigger-picture piling-on from the guys in the studio for a lengthy stretch in the second half.

In a nod to the obvious need to spin the game story forward -- and possibly to prevent viewers from clicking away from both the corpse-cutting and the Lakers-Nuggets nightcap portion of the hoops doubleheader -- Barkley, Smith and Johnson were brutally candid in speculating about the professionalism and chemistry of the Knicks' roster, as well as Thomas' job security.

Which, at this point, should be as nonexistent as the first two topics clearly are.

Frankly, by this point, Thomas has earned two or three overdue terminations: One for the manner in which he built the team without regard for things like intangibles and pecking orders, another for the reckless way he threw buyout money at players to leave (tying up the Knicks' salary cap like no other NBA team's) and possibly a third for his off-court management style that resulted in the embarrassing sexual-harassment trial and the franchise's ultimate tabloidization.

Even with some worthy role players in his mix -- David Lee, Renaldo Balkman, Mardy Collins -- Thomas still packs his starting lineup with offensive players who require the ball. He has cultivated a loathe-hate relationship with his most important player, Stephon Marbury, who might not be All-Star caliber anymore but still is supposed to function as the coach's surrogate on the court.

Even Boston's Kevin Garnett, who assiduously avoids criticizing or otherwise riling opposing teams, noted immediately after the laugher that Marbury no longer bears any resemblance to the tandem partner he knew in Minnesota for almost three seasons.

"You don't just come out and quit,'' Garnett told TNT of New York's malaise. "You have to have a reason or someone has to make you quit.''

1 of 2