Winning isn’t the only thing these Knicks have brought back to the Garden. There’s toughness, too. The two go hand in hand.
The Knicks won a game yesterday they never would have won during the Lost Decade, a 98-92 victory over the Pacers. It was a game they had to have considering the raging Spurs come to town tomorrow night.
The Knicks won though Danilo Gallinari went down with a left knee sprain and on a day they missed 11 free throws. Amar’e Stoudemire, as he has done so many times, took over down the stretch, scoring on a floater, a drive and a 19-footer that helped turn a 90-90 tie into a winning advantage over the final three minutes.
Toughness is really what this win was all about.
Stoudemire scored nine points in the fourth quarter, adding to his NBA-leading total of 7.3 points per game in the fourth. Ronny Turiaf came off the bench for season-highs in rebounds (10) and blocked shots (six).
Afterward, coach Mike D’Antoni said, “I thought we did a good job when it was time to win the game.”
To really understand what the Knicks and D’Antoni are trying to do, listen to what D’Antoni’s wife, Laurel, had to say. Sometimes coaches are too wrapped up in the daily grind to really explain what is happening with their team. Laurel hears about the game from Mike all the time, and from his dad, Lewis, a legendary high school coach who lives with the family. She has seen this team develop with her own eyes as well and watched yesterday’s victory intently.
“I think, for him, the most important thing,” Laurel said of her husband, “is to bring something that the New Yorkers are going to fall in love with because he’s the guy who falls in love with his team. The team is like his kids. He loves these guys. [Team president] Donnie Walsh did an incredible job recruiting. They want to make sure they go slow and easy and they raise these kids right.”
That’s why yesterday’s victory was another important learning step along the way. Laurel D’Antoni noted, “For me, it’s a parenting issue.”
I asked her how many children she has and she smiled and said, “A 97-year-old, a 59-year-old and a 16-year-old.”
Lewis just turned 97. He just published a book called “The Coach’s Coach.”
The coach knows you have to have talent, but you also have to have players who care about one another. When Gallinari went down with 6:14 left in the game and the Knicks down by one, you could just see Stoudemire take the team on his back, and the Garden crowd responded with resounding chants of “MVP.”
This Knicks team may not always play well, but these players lay it on the line and that is half the battle in this city.
“That’s the idea; to create a team that people will fall in love with,” Laurel D’Antoni explained. “Not just a fling, we want true love. We want something that is good for New York. The first two years were painful.
“Donnie Walsh said it was going to be painful, we didn’t believe that.”
D’Antoni had such belief in himself as a coach that he thought “he was going to make it better,” Laurel said.
Only players can make it better; that is always the answer. They have to perform. They have to care about one another. They have to play with toughness. They have to play smart.
The Knicks are still one superstar short, but they are on their way to respectability and beyond. It’s a process. In the locker room, Stoudemire explained, “This was definitely huge. Indiana is right behind us, so it was important for us to get this win.”
The first step is to care more about winning than the other team. The Knicks have shown that ability this season, and that’s why fans once again care about this team.
Despite everything, the Knicks’ New Year got off to a pretty good start yesterday.