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MIAMI — Mike Woodson understands nobody is inclined to feel sorry for him. Iman Shumpert, his best athlete, busted up a knee? Tough. Tyson Chandler, the Knicks’ defensive backbone and emotional foundation, can’t shake the flu? Too bad. Baron Davis’ back looks like one of those soft pretzels you buy on the Boardwalk in July?
That’s life.
“No one cares, no one wants to hear it,” Woodson said yesterday. “This is the big leagues. This is the NBA. You take the hand that’s dealt you and you play it.”
Woodson’s team looked loose and care-free yesterday after practice at AmericanAirlines Arena, unburdened by the 33-point thrashing the Heat had applied on it 24 hours earlier. The Knicks competed in a raucous half-court shooting contest that culminated with Davis, ever the consummate showman, swishing one with a flourish and making sure everyone knew all about it. His back hasn’t had a residual effect on his lip.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s not. If the Knicks recover and shock the league tonight by bringing this Eastern Conference semifinal series back to New York tied, surely one of the storylines you’ll be reading this time tomorrow will be how resilient they are, and how that resilience was embodied by their light-hearted between-games attitude.
But if that happens the bigger story — the more relevant story — will likely be contained elsewhere: on the sideline, in the smart business suit occupied by Woodson, who entered this postseason with an interim title and a front-runner status to the permanent job that was, presumably, his to lose. And still, presumably, is.
But it would help Woodson’s case if he had a better showing tonight, the way his team needs a better showing tonight. This is the pros, not CYO, and you can’t blame the coach all the time when a team gathers technical and bad fouls, the prime goal isn’t to win the Sportsmanship Plaque. But you can blame the coach for a team-wide lack of poise, for when a bad run turns into a bad stretch and then a bad quarter and then a bad half.
You can’t blame Woodson for Carmelo Anthony missing 12 of his 15 shots. But you would like to see him make an adjustment or two to the Heat’s relentless fronting of Anthony, which helped contribute to Melo’s tough day as well as to the Knicks’ gamewide offensive dysfunction. That’s the beauty of a seven-game series, though. Everyone has the opportunity for redemption.
Even the coach.
Especially the coach.
“I’ve got to help him,” Woodson said of Anthony. “I’ve got to help all of them. That’s my job.”
It’s a job he did exceedingly well in the 24 games that closed the season, an 18-6 stretch that took the Knicks from the outside looking into the playoffs to the No. 7 seed, that immediately elevated the team’s level of effort and defense. And Woodson, a confident man, has not been shy about reminding everyone about how different the team looked across the last six weeks than it did across the season’s first 2 1/2 months. And that’s fair.
But it’s also fair to mention that while yesterday the Knicks quietly marked the 11th anniversary of their last playoff win — they enter tonight 0-for-their-last-11, and counting — Woodson is also trying to shake a troubling streak of his own: his last five playoff games as a head coach — four in 2010 with the Hawks against the Magic, plus Saturday — his teams have lost by 43, 14, 30, 14 and 33 points.
That isn’t something you tend to put high on the resume.
“He’ll have us ready,” Amar’e Stoudemire said. “You could tell at practice, this is still a very confident team. We know how tough the task ahead is for us. But he’s confident in us and we’re confident in each other because of that.”
How will that confidence translate? We’ll know soon enough. The job is still his to lose. It would behoove Woodson not to take that description too literally.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com