The lead to the Knicks website yesterday contained a bold headline, “Welcome to Knicks University,” and a photo of retired great John Starks and a link to check out his shooting tips.
Carmelo Anthony? Amar’e Stoudemire? Chauncey Billups? Nowhere to be found on the site. In the new NBA world, the Knicks no longer have three All-Stars to promote and build around. Or provide tips.
On the first day of the NBA lockout, the league fired another salvo, ordering teams to remove all online photos and videos of their current players.
“Next thing you’ll know, they will forbid the fans from mentioning the players’ names,” said agent Happy Walters, who represents three Knicks –Stoudemire, Shawne Williams and first-round draft pick Iman Shumpert.
The move hardly fit with the “amiable” tone Players Association executive director Billy Hunter Jr. spoke of following Thursday’s final negotiation session.
“We don’t think it is appropriate to be using video and photography of our current players at this time,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said.
Knicks guard Roger Mason, a member of the negotiating committee, said he was not debriefed about the maneuver.
“I woke up and checked out Knicks.com and saw ZERO pics of our team and whole different layout,” Mason wrote on Twitter. “NBA.com the same. This lockout is LAME.”
Starks, who is the team’s alumni director, last played for the club in 1998 — the year of the previous lockout. It was also impossible to access any of the player profiles on NBA.com.
The NBA is clinging to its past during this labor unrest to the point of potentially creating a conflict between the current players and the old-timers. Commissioner David Stern said Thursday members of the “NBA Legends” group will go to Africa in July for the annual “Basketball without Borders” event instead of the current players. Ronny Turiaf and Danilo Gallinari represented the Knicks last summer.
In recent weeks, the Knicks have promoted their summer kids basketball camps in Pleasantville, Manhattan and East Hampton by naming alumni such as Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe and Willis Reed as possible guests. Usually Knicks players appear at the camps.
Several players joked about the NBA’s tactic of wiping the photos clean from the websites.
“Since player photos’ve been taken off team websites, I’m having a garage sale of all of my Suns gear at Canal and Broadway,” tweeted Phoenix point guard Steve Nash, who lives in SoHo during the offseason. “Cheap.”
As it is, the lockout creates a great disturbance to player development. Coach Mike D’Antoni and interim president Glen Grunwald cannot talk to the players or their agents. Team members face a $1 million fine for talking to the media about any lockout-related matters, The Post has learned.
Yesterday, the Garden closed its offices, but that was more due to the July 4 weekend than the lockout’s onset.
Knicks players are allowed to talk to the team’s director of medical care, Lisa Callahan, and they are barred from the practice facility and arenas.
Backup point guard Toney Douglas, who had major shoulder surgery after the season, was rehabbing at the team’s Westchester facility. The Post reported Anthony, who is barred from playing basketball, was rehabbing his elbow bursitis at the facility, too. Sources said the Players Association was setting up facilities around the country for players to use to train and rehab.
Stoudemire recently said he was going to arrange workouts in Los Angeles with some teammates.
After the Knicks drafted Shumpert and Josh Harrellson nine days ago, D’Antoni lamented not being able to work with them after June 30. He added it also hurt youngsters Douglas and Landry Fields. Center Jerome Jordan, a 2010 second-round pick who spent last season in Serbia, also falls into that category.
The Las Vegas Summer League for rookies and second-year players was cancelled last week. Shumpert, Harrellson, Fields, Jordan and Andy Rautins would have played.
Rautins, a rookie last season, tweeted yesterday, “Locked out. Seems like everybody loses.. Nothing worse than not being able to hoop.. Hopefully it can be resolved sooner than later!”
There was no start of free agency yesterday, just the start of a bitter labor war.
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Billups, referring to a potential condensed schedule featuring stretches of three games in three nights, as occurred during the lockout season of 1999, was quoted as saying, “I was a younger player then, and it was tough. I can’t imagine now.”