BIG MAN IN BIG PAIN: Tyson Chandler joined Carmelo Anthony on the Knicks injury report after bruising his knee Wednesday night in Denver. (NBAE/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES — They should know better by now, know better than anyone, in fact, how fragile a basketball season can be. And that doesn’t even account for the various ligaments, cartilages and joints presently afflicted in the M*A*S*H triage unit that also goes by the pseudonym “New York Knickerbockers Basketball Club.”
No, the Knicks have been a case study in the delicate nature of the brutal 5 1/2-month gauntlet of the schedule. Hard as it is to believe, the core of the team that went 18-5 — lest we forget, roundly and resoundingly feted and toasted for bringing old-school basketball values back to The City Game — still exists. That means the soul of the club that inspired more good vibes and good feelings than the Knicks had known in years still abounds.
They just need to rediscover it.
And the best way to do that is to get whole again, or as close to whole as is possible between now and April 22, when the Knicks’ true marking period begins. If that means the Knicks can’t fight back for the East’s No. 2 seed, if it means they can’t stave off the Nets or the Celtics in the Atlantic — hell, if it means tumbling all the way to No. 6 — then that’s the cost of doing business.
The cost of getting whole.
Or as close to whole as the law allows.
So if that means being cautious with Tyson Chandler and Carmelo Anthony, even to the point that it all but guarantees an 0-5 bloodletting of a Western swing, so be it. If it means limiting their minutes when they do return, occasionally giving them nights off that might cost another game or two along the way, it’s a worthy trade-off.
It goes against what we are supposed to believe about pro sports, that every game is important, that the long season is sacrosanct. It certainly goes against everything Mike Woodson holds dear. But it’s absolutely what the Knicks must do now, the course they must embrace.
They may need to destroy the season in order to save it.
“I don’t accept any losses, “Woodson said Thursday night in Portland, after the Knicks fell to 0-3 on this road trip from hell, the first game all year they played without their Big Three With Busted Knee, Amar’e Stoudemire, Anthony and Chandler.
“I’m very competitive and I want these guys to be. It’s not OK to lose.”
It’s what he has to say, how he has to feel, certainly the outlook he must present as the Knicks’ official public stance. Even lottery teams fully in the tank know better than to announce “We are in the tank!” for the record. The Knicks need to try to win as many games as possible. But they need to be reasonable about it.
And that means extra time, not less, to restore their biggest weapons. It means taking a practical approach to the balance of the season, a realistic one. Look, the Knicks were always going to be judged by what they did in the playoffs this year, no matter how many games they won during the regular season.
That applied when they were on pace for 60 wins and it applies now, as the odds of them reaching 50 dim ever darker. So what difference does it make if they win 48 or 45 if the lineup left standing in the pursuit of every win resembles the one we saw in Rip City Thursday night, the one we’ll likely see at Staples Center tomorrow when the Knicks play the Clippers?
The facts are these: No matter how deep the free fall appears now, the Knicks have all but clinched a playoff spot, almost certainly a top-six seed. There is still, bare minimum, no reason why they shouldn’t win one series and, depending on how it shakes out, two. So as far as that goes, the prime goal remains the same. So does Woodson’s job.
It just also entails something he’s not altogether comfortable with: telling players, his best players, they need to sit, need to recuperate, need to get better. The pieces are slightly different — Kenyon Martin for Rasheed Wallace, James White for Ronnie Brewer — but the core is generally intact from the team that started the season with such flourish. It can be there for the end, too, that team is still lurking somewhere. But the Knicks have to be whole. They have six weeks to get there. Starting tomorrow.