So now we know: it can take as little as a week, Monday to Monday, to crush the promise of a hot streak and send a team hurtling sideways again. Last Monday the Knicks eked past the Suns, upping their winning streak to five, somehow sneaking into the No. 7 slot in the East.
Tuesday morning they’d wake with four-fifths of that streak wiped out, with the 103-80 loss to the Nets echoing in their minds as the boos and catcalls and derisive chants of “Broooooook-lynnnnn” that chased them off the Madison Square Garden floor thump in their ears.
One week. Monday to Monday.
Hope to humiliation.
“I don’t want to believe that,” Carmelo Anthony said, when he was asked point-blank if the winning streak was the aberration, if the four-games-and-counting losing streak they’ll bring to Wednesday’s game against the Sixers isn’t what we should identify as the Real Knicks, especially as they hurtle into the second half of the season at 15-26.
“I don’t want to accept that,” Anthony said. “I won’t accept that.”
That’s fine to say, and it’s even better if he actually believes it. But the truth is the Knicks have reached the most depressing point of a most depressing season because it isn’t only about losing anymore, about the wildly inconsistent offense and the inexcusable defense that too often defines these nightly adventures.
Because now, this is a team that is inching toward outright, open rebellion. A couple of nights ago it was Anthony talking about the lack of adjustments the Knicks make. This time it was the Knicks’ other veteran spokesman, Tyson Chandler, who decided that the time is long passed for subtlety and tact.
“They out-schemed us,” Chandler said.
And really, how can it get any lower than that? Forget that those words — “they out-schemed us” — are the equivalent of spitting in coach Mike Woodson’s eye. Forget that Tiki Barber still enjoys the wrath of many Giants fans eight years after saying essentially the same thing about his own coach, Tom Coughlin. Forget that by being out-schemed by the Nets, it specifically means being out-schemed by Jason Kidd, who not long ago was being fitted for shoes comfortable enough to make it to the end of the gangplank.
Forget all of that. This is the worst part:
Chandler is right. Same as Anthony was right. And while it may bother your old-school soul to see such revolt among the rank-and-file, it is impossible to escape the reality the Knicks are slow to adjust, and they do look painfully out-schemed, especially on defense, when their constant switching and ill-fated doubling leave a relentless string of wide-open shooters whose mere openness now causes the Garden to groan, and loudly, before they ever even set themselves to shoot.
Which, invariably, they have all day to do.
“I don’t like to switch,” Chandler said, since, hell, once you’ve put your money on the table you might as well put all of it there. “Switching is always the last resort.”
And here’s where depressing turns downright distressing: Unlike two years ago, when the misery and the murmurs finally drove Mike D’Antoni away, even if what the Knicks’ bookend mouthpieces are trying to do is engineer a passive-aggressive mutiny, it isn’t likely to work.
For one thing, James Dolan has made it perfectly clear — twice — that he doesn’t want to fire Woodson, both declarations arriving at times when the Knicks had arrived in dark spaces similar to where they find themselves now. And Dolan is presently alighted in Los Angeles, where his new toy, the Fabulous Forum, reopened this week.
Plus, there remains the question of who would replace Woodson that would be an upgrade. Woodson has no Woodson on his staff, no ready-made replacement, no quick fix. If the Knicks are fixing to implode, it’s become abundantly clear it will likely happen with Woodson at the controls.
Adjusting or not.
Scheming or not.
“I don’t know how to deal with a situation like this,” Anthony said. “This is a first for me.”
The point guard has been awful, Ray Felton offering daily reminders why he’s as popular in Oregon as Curt Schilling is in Rhode Island. Chandler went 27 minutes before attempting his first field goal. How bad is it? J.R. Smith was a resounding positive. And now the coach has gotten another vote of no-confidence from one of his kitchen cabinet.
That’s what you call one hell of a bad week.