MIAMI — The Knicks need to heed and paraphrase the mantra Frank Galvin would repeat to himself in “The Verdict,” in the tense moments of that movie when you almost believed Paul Newman wouldn’t have the happy ending written for him.
“There are no other cases. This is the case,” Galvin, the brilliant, troubled, alcoholic lawyer said to himself, his eyes closed, his fist tapping his head. “There are no other cases. This is the case.”
It wasn’t a perfect case for Galvin. He was fighting James Mason and his fancy white-shoe firm, the overwhelming favorites.
Galvin won anyway. It was Newman. It was Hollywood.
Maybe what the Knicks need is a screenwriter. Or maybe they simply can embrace the possibilities that lay before them starting today, when they renew their longtime rivalry with the Heat and try to channel some of the heat and the heartbreak their forebears brought unto this city years ago.
“We have a keen sense of what we have to do to win this series,” Amar’e Stoudemire said yesterday. “But we also know that our goal is to win 16 more games.”
Are the Knicks an absurd long shot to do that? Of course they are. But the more you look at who the Knicks are as a team right now, and what they may be in the years to come, it makes you wonder if maybe Frank Galvin shouldn’t be giving the pregame pep talk.
There are no other seasons. THIS is the season.
“Enjoy the moment, seize the moment,” interim coach Mike Woodson said, echoing the message he has sent his team. “Because you may not ever get there again.”
For the Knicks that is an especially salient point. The Big Three aren’t going anywhere. Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler — under the weather yesterday with flu-like symptoms — will be the franchise foundation for at least three more years. But beyond that core, it is hard to imagine the Knicks being able to replicate what has become a solid supporting corps.
Forgetting Jeremy Lin for a second — whom the Knicks almost surely will move heaven and earth to resign in the offseason, because of the marketing windfall just uttering his name still brings, even in his injury exile — the Knicks will have some serious realities staring them in the face once this season ends.
It will be impossible to keep both J.R. Smith and Steve Novak, for instance, assuming neither player has an epiphany in the offseason and decides to stay with the Knicks either for the love of the game or the proximity to Broadway and Carnegie Hall and Radio City. In a lot of ways, the Lin-Novak-Smith trifecta was as brilliant a parlay as any NBA executive pulled off this year, and for that alone Glen Grunwald deserves to keep his job.
It may well be a fleeting triumph. It is hard to imagine the Knicks being quite as good at the start of next year as they are at the end of this one. And yes: All this year yielded was a seventh seed and a perilous postseason path. But it also may provide the Knicks with as golden an opportunity as they will ever have to make a serious push.
It would have been nice to finish with a higher seed, have a better regular season, set themselves up with a more comfortable place. But at some point, the Knicks still would have had to beat the Heat (or the Bulls, or the Celtics)four out of seven. They just have to do it earlier.
Can they?
Well, we have seen stretches when the full capabilities of this team have been on display, the second half of the Celtics game last week being the best example. They have one of the NBA’s premier defensive players in Chandler. And in Anthony they have a player who will draw key whistles when the Knicks need them most, and who showed in the last month why he was always considered an elite closer in Denver.
It’s why we can even have this conversation. Will the Knicks beat the Heat? You probably wouldn’t want to go to Vegas with that pick. Can they? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to start chanting to yourself in order to talk yourself into it. There are, after all, no other seasons.
This is the season.