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On Site Lack of fire finally caught up to the Knicks
Posted: Saturday June 03, 2000 01:20 AM
By Marty Burns, Sports Illustrated NEW YORK -- In retrospect, the Knicks should have seen it coming. Long before Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals tipped off Friday night, there was an omen they were going to lose to the Pacers. No, not Patrick Ewing's guarantee of victory. The foretelling moment occurred about an hour before tipoff, when Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy walked into his team's locker room to write some last-minute instructions on the white board and noticed Latrell Sprewell's No. 8 jersey still hanging in the locker stall. Realizing his star player still hadn't arrived for the game, Van Gundy couldn't help but shake his head slightly. It's one thing to be a little tardy -- Sprewell often shows up a bit later than the 90 minutes normally required of New York players -- but before the biggest game of the season? In itself, Sprewell's late arrival had nothing to do with the Knicks' 93- 80 defeat. Sprewell performed superbly, scoring 32 points while keeping Indiana's Jalen Rose (11 points) in check. In a larger context, however, it underscored just how blasé the Knicks had become about putting themselves in do-or-die situations. Lose to the Clippers in November? No big deal. Win in the playoffs without home-court advantage? Piece of cake. Steal Game 7 in Miami? We can do it. New York went to the well so many times the past two years, it was due to find the bucket empty. "Maybe we thought that since we'd done it before we could do it again," Knicks guard Allan Houston admitted. Never the most talented team, the Knicks have thrived the past two seasons by playing gritty defense, hustling for loose balls and making big shots. On Friday their edge just wasn't there. It wasn't there to keep Dale Davis from looking like Karl Malone for much of the first half. It wasn't there to give a jolt of life to the somnabulent Kurt Thomas. It wasn't there to prod Chris Childs to stay just a bit closer to Reggie Miller on one of his dagger 3s. To be sure, fatigue and injuries also played a part in New York's demise. After a grueling seven-game series with the Heat it would have been hard for them to bounce back. "The Miami series took a lot out of this team," Sprewell said. "To go seven games with those guys was exhausting. It took us two games to switch gears, so to speak." Gee, that should make the folks in South Beach feel better. The Knicks, meanwhile, should be feeling pretty bad right now. They can spend the entire offseason wondering if things might have been different had they taken care of business earlier. "We have to learn to play more consistent," Houston said. "We had some losses this year there's no way we should have had. Maybe next year we'll know how important it is to have home-court advantage." As Houston knows, such an attitude adjustment will have to come from within. Barring a trade for Sonics point guard Gary Payton -- a deal that would no doubt cost them Houston or Sprewell -- New York will probably return next season with much the same cast of characters. It will be a cast with Ewing clogging the middle, Houston stroking it from the perimeter and Sprewell driving hard to the basket -- if not to the arena. It will be a cast that plays hard for its rumpled blue-collar coach, a cast that plays with teamwork and endures controversy. It will be a cast with heart -- but perhaps not the good sense to make it easy on themselves.
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