GARDEN PARTIES: With two games in the next week against the Celtics — including tonight in Boston — J.R. Smith (right) and the Knicks might be getting a preview of an unwanted first-round playoff series against Paul Pierce (left) and the pesky Celts. (Getty Images)
BOSTON — We all have been in relationships like this, right? When times are good — man, are they ever good. The laughs flow, the good times roll … it’s not unlike that relentless, ubiquitous Bud Light commercial you’ve seen since the start of the NCAA tournament, a first date you know is speeding toward a second.
But when times are bad … well, it can make you feel worse than those Allstate ads starring the guy from “Oz”: beaten up, bloodied, broken down.
The Knicks and their fiercest devotees have had that relationship for most of the season’s first 4 1/2 months. When the Knicks are playing well — and forget for a moment the quality of their opponents the last four games, they have played as well as they have in weeks — it doesn’t take a lot to unleash the fans’ optimism, their swagger, even their imagination.
And that’s funny.
Because when the Knicks are playing lousy — such as the four games immediately preceding the last four, and for troublingly long stretches of the New Year — you tend to have a lot of people who wonder if the Knicks ever are going to win another game. They are that kind of team, easy to fall in love with, easier to fall out of love with, inspiring the kinds of mood swings that remind you of … well, love. And hate. And the slim boundary separating the two.
Which brings us to tonight, to this week, to a fresh chapter of this unfailingly interesting season. The Knicks play the Celtics tonight, and they meet again Sunday at Madison Square Garden, and both teams are missing substantial pieces: no Rajon Rondo, no Kevin Garnett, no Amar’e Stoudemire, probably no Tyson Chandler.
Yet, there remains an intrigue attached to the Celtics for a simple reason: There are Knicks fans by the thousands, maybe by the millions, who looked at the standings yesterday morning and saw the following facts: the Knicks resting in second place by percentage points in the Eastern Conference; the Celtics solidly in seventh.
And that’s terrifying. The Celtics aren’t whole, won’t be whole, aren’t what they have been in past years, aren’t what they will be in the next few years. But they wear those jerseys. They have those banners. Even wounded, they lurk in the memories and the stomachs of Knicks fans who have no trouble admitting they would prefer to have no part of the Cs when the playoffs begin.
The Knicks, of course, would never invite similar words to whatever misgivings they might have. But they do know who they are playing this week.
“The way it looks, there’s a possibility we could play [the Celtics] in the first round,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. “That’s a team that you can’t take lightly. They’re playoff-driven. They won a title and they know what it’s like to be deep into the playoffs. So we’ll have our hands full if that’s the team that we have to play.”
The home-and-home tonight and Sunday won’t solve much, though two wins could all but eliminate the Celtics as a threat in the Atlantic Division. More to the point, it probably wouldn’t be a terrible thing for the Knicks’ muscle memory — and, yes for their psyche — to beat a team with “CELTICS” on their chests.
After all, it was against Boston that Carmelo Anthony had his public meltdown in January. Now, was that exclusively a product of one taunting Celtic — Garnett? Or were Melo’s nerves already a little frayed because there will always be a little extra on the line when the Celtics are sharing the floor with him?
It’s impossible to say. And impossible not to ponder.
“They’re going to always be a threat,” Woodson said yesterday.
He’s right. Ray Allen is gone. Rondo and Garnett are wearing civvies. The Celtics are reeling, losers of four in a row, and sometimes look as if they might not ever win again. But if there’s a team that knows how schizophrenic a season can be … well, the Knicks know all about that. They want us to believe they have turned a corner. Dismissing the Celtics — and the attendant goblins that accompany them — would provide a splendid bit of testimony.