LOS ANGELES — There is something to be said for this place, let’s be fair. While flakes and flurries were falling in your neighborhood yesterday, undergrads here were plotting whether to take in a baseball game on the other side of the UCLA campus or play a game of Frisbee.
While you wondered how many layers you needed to add before heading out into the chill, the young denizens of Westwood were pondering the exact opposite concern.
“Back in New York, you’re grinding through the cold, the wind, the snow, trying to stay warm all the time,” said Baron Davis, born-and-raised Californian and proud former UCLA Bruin, visiting his former teammates yesterday as they practiced at John Wooden’s old gymnasium. “Here …”
“You’re forever a college sophomore,” someone said.
And Davis’ broad grin gave the answer: You’re exactly right.
So here is where the Knicks tried to find salve and salvation yesterday, returning to the practice floor where Wooden himself once conducted his initial forays into the land of big-time basketball. There is still a blackboard fastened to one of the walls of what is now called the Student Activities Center but was, from 1948 until Pauley Pavilion was built in 1965, Wooden’s classroom.
It was a fine place to seek exile, after the humiliation they absorbed in Oakland, the hammering the Knicks took in Denver, the humbling they were given in Portland. It may well be a temporary illusion, of course, because this afternoon the Knicks will play the Clippers, a team that chased them off the Garden floor a few weeks ago, back when they were happy and peppy and bursting with life.
“Still,” Davis said. “Out here, in the sunshine, everything just feels better, doesn’t it?”
It’s not just the sun. Carmelo Anthony was back with the team after getting a cortisone shot in New York, and while he ducked out early to get more treatment after shooting around for a bit, he was uniformly described by coach and teammates as being in a far better state of mind than when he left in Denver. He probably won’t play today — and shouldn’t — even if Mike Woodson listed him as “probable” (before conceding that in his personal lexicon, “probable” really means “questionable” — file that away for future reference).
Just as important, Tyson Chandler attended practice, though he was in jogging shoes and not basketball sneakers, sans socks, still an observer, likely a few days away from activity (even in Woodson’s injury terminology glossary, “day-to-day” almost certainly means “out.”)
But Chandler sounded like a man who had just steered his car free of an oncoming pile-up. He knows as well as anyone how ominous his knee looked the other night at Denver’s Pepsi Center when he collided with Corey Brewer; he was there, after all.
“I feel fortunate and thankful,” he said. “It was an awkward play. And it took until about a half hour after the play before I realized it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.”
Chandler, like Davis a product of Southern California, regrets that he’ll likely miss one of his two annual homecoming games, but with his concern for his knee minimized, his focus has switched to a more pressing need — getting the Knicks right, both physically and basketball wise. The former is a matter of patience. The latter is a bit more complicated than that.
“When you get hit in the head the way we have the past few games,” he said, “you know there are things that need to be addressed.”
Chandler’s place on a STAT-free front line is chief among those issues. Chandler, after all, was only 2 1/2 games into resuming life in the paint without Amar’e Stoudemire — one win, one loss, one drubbing-in-progress — and that’s not a problem that’s going to fix itself.
Though the Knicks’ chaotic roster has allowed more minutes to Kenyon Martin, Kurt Thomas and Marcus Camby — all three of whom had positive moments against the Blazers Thursday night — the fact is, without Chandler anchoring the inside, the Knicks are as vulnerable as a team can possibly be. All three of the veteran bigs wore down quickly and completely in extended duty in Portland.
“We need him,” Woodson said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
It’s an absence even a smog-free blue sky can’t make you feel much better about. Though it’s a start.