DENVER — It is for times like these when the Knicks’ own archives provide helpful guidance to the crises at hand. Thirty-one years ago, in the midst of an extended downturn in the team’s fortunes, it was Micheal Ray Richardson who provided a forever assessment of a team permanently afflicted by gravity.
“The ship,” Sugar said, “be sinkin’.”
That team, a 33-49 train wreck, was Red Holzman’s farewell as Knicks coach, and you have to figure that as he gazed out at the regular exploits of Campy Russell, Marvin Webster and Sly Williams, he had to wonder if he’d actually coached Clyde, the Captain and Dollar Bill in the same lifetime.
Knicks fans know the feeling, because the more banana peels that keep littering this season, especially this queasy stretch of it, the more they almost feel the need to demand video evidence this team once sat at 18-5, once inspired such hope among the furious and the faithful.
“I’m concerned,” Tyson Chandler said when the Knicks were done absorbing their latest slaughter, a 117-94 calamity at the hands of the Nuggets. “We’ve been in a little bit of a decline. Even in our wins.”
It’s bad. It’s very bad. And it only gets worse night after night, game after game, drubbing after drubbing. Yes, the most haunting image of another lost night Out West was Chandler splattered on the Pepsi Center floor, clutching his left knee, agony creasing his face late in the second quarter of what was already an unwatchable mess of a game.
Yet Woodson said Chandler’s prognosis was surprisingly positive, diagnosed with a contusion. Woodson actually called Chandler “probable” for tonight’s game in Portland. Less good: Carmelo Anthony finally succumbed to his balky knee, leaving his hellacious homecoming early in the third quarter, bound now for a plane back to New York and a draining needle.
Least good: these developments came long after the truest believers had retrieved Sugar Ray’s observation from the index of their memory banks. The Nuggets jumped on them early and pounded them relentlessly. If there were a mercy rule in the NBA, for the second straight night, the Knicks would have qualified.
“It’s something we have to address, and quickly,” Chandler said, “because they were beating us up even before we got hurt.”
The Knicks can now deem this season the Heartbreak of Wounded Knees, now that all three of the Big Three have been betrayed to one extent or another by their wheels. Amar’e Stoudemire is out for the duration, Anthony for the foreseeable future, and while Chandler sounded hopeful, a three-hour flight isn’t exactly the best rehab for an aching leg.
But masochistic fans back home who decided to watch this mess — there is a special corner of heaven waiting for you, by the way — know better. The Nuggets were playing varsity most of the night, the Knicks JV ball, looking like they belonged in a different building, a different association.
They made the Knicks look like a lottery team, outrunning them, outgunning them, driving to the basket, defending ferociously, generally looking like they were playing the game on fresh legs and full tanks. In other words, the diametric opposite of the Knicks.
“It’s time for me to get to the bottom of this,” Anthony said when it was over, and he was referring to the draining of his knee, though it’s the same mission facing the teammates he leaves behind, with three-fifths of this western gauntlet still to come.
Sinking? Well, what’s abundantly clear is the Knicks, who have lived off that 18-5 start for three months now, have used up every ounce of cushion and every inch of good will it engendered. They have now officially been passed by the Pacers for the two seed in the East, probably for good, and the Nets surely have to believe they could erase the three-game loss column deficit at the top of the Atlantic by the start of next week.
The good news? The Knicks’ magic number to clinch a playoff spot is only five. That, at the very least, should be attainable. Even for the S.S. Minnow.