LOS ANGELES — There are a lot of ways to measure the mess and the murkiness in which the Knicks find themselves. They’ve lost four games in a row after yesterday’s 93-80 loss to the Clippers, and are a game away from taking a collar on this five-game Western Trek.
They are banged up. They are short-handed. They are missing $53 million worth of talent in Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler. If you took one game right now out of context — yesterday’s game, for instance — and you asked someone, “Does this better resemble a first-place team (which they still are, though barely) or a lottery team?” is there anyone who would vote A)?
They reached the point where a sympathetic man with a microphone sounded like he was trying to make them all feel better by asking yesterday: “Are you proud of how hard you guys played?”
And one of the respondents gives you as accurate — and telling — a measurement as you will find trying to assess where the Knicks are, both feet covered in quicksand that feels like it could grow north at any point: ankles, shins, knees, thighs.
“There are no moral victories,” J.R. Smith said, stone faced, solemn, sitting on a stool inside Staples Center. “There are no positives.”
Smith’s postgame persona has often mirrored the quirky act he carries onto the court. Especially last year, even the most devastating losses usually contained a postgame soundtrack: Smith quickly getting over his disappointment, laughing, carefree, thoroughly unburdened by the kind of angst that consumes a fan during a losing streak.
That isn’t uncommon, by the way. One of the main reasons a professional athlete is different than you is precisely because he can brush games off more readily, more easily. You don’t want to hear that, want to believe that every crushing loss evokes tears and sobs and heaves. Or at least a restless sleep.
Still, few have ever embraced the professional’s cool detachment quite as proficiently as Smith. And yet: There he was, looking positively morose. Yes, part of that was the fact that he is nursing about 15 different injuries. Part of that might have been a tough day at the office, 4-for-20 shooting, a -19 plus-minus rating.
But it went beyond that. This is a flummoxed, frustrated basketball player.
“We keep playing like this,” Smith said, “and it’s going to be an early exit from the playoffs.”
It speaks to a problem that manifests on several levels for the Knicks right now. This is a four-game losing streak that feels like a 10-game losing streak because it is hard right now, very hard, to remember a time when the Knicks played well — even if the last game before this trip, a 113-84 throttling of the same Jazz they face tonight, qualifies, and that was only nine days ago.
In a lot of ways, it is the same problem surrounding Anthony right now, as the chorus of backlash against him grows even as he tries to recuperate from his freshly drained right knee. Forget whether you care for the way Melo conducts himself; we’ve now reached a bizarro world where the 40 or so games he played in good health — and with excellence — are difficult to conjure.
Why? Same reason as the team’s unrelenting malaise: It’s becoming harder and harder for some to summon the version of Anthony for whom so many of the same people were chanting “MVP!” about 15 minutes ago. His two games on this trip he was profoundly diminished. Fresh in our minds is the sad sight of him tripping over his own feet in Cleveland. There was a wonderful half two weeks ago against Miami, stretches of prominence in other games.
But, really, the last time Carmelo Anthony had the kind of game that speaks for itself and defends him against the bloodhounds, it was against these very same Clippers — 42 points in 43 minutes, eight rebounds, the Garden eating out of his hands — and that was on Feb. 10. That was 35 days ago.
So yes: Right now the Knicks aren’t just playing like a lottery team, they are feeling like one. They’ve forgotten what it was like to be 6-0 and 18-5 or even 38-22, which is what they were just a week ago this morning. Before they convince anyone else they can recover from this, they’ll have to start with a more persistent skeptic. The mirror.