The Knicks’ preseason ended in horrifically last night.
Jared Jeffries sprained his left knee and likely will miss at least three weeks. They got slaughtered by the Nets, 102-86, and booed by the Garden crowd. And, lastly, Isiah Thomas got nailed by harsh remarks from the Rutgers women’s basketball coach, who called the Knicks coach/ president’s deposition during his sexual-harassment trial “disgusting.”
Jeffries was helped off the court by fellow casualty Renaldo Balkman in the first quarter, and taken to a nearby hospital for an MRI exam that showed a sprained anterior cruciate ligament – the same ligament that underwent surgery in 2002.
Jeffries returned to the arena at 11 p.m. on crutches. The Knicks announced Jeffries will remain on crutches for the weekend and be re-evaluated in two weeks, continuing a Knicks career that has been cursed. The best-case scenario is that he may miss a week of games.
Meanwhile, Thomas was under attack again yesterday. Booed during pregame introductions, Thomas didn’t know about coach C. Vivian Stringer’s remarks until after the loss.
Thomas was ticked when he learned of the verbal attack and said she was speaking out of “ignorance.”
Stringer was referring to Thomas’ deposition, in which he said it wasn’t as bad for a black man to call a black women a “bitch” than it would be for a white man.
“It’s disgusting,” Stringer said. “You know, I turned the doggone set off. I thought, has he lost his mind. I take tremendous offense to that.”
So did Thomas when he heard Stringer’s barbs. Thomas told reporters in Charleston that he feels his deposition was “spliced.”
Thomas contends he said it was wrong, period, but worse for a white man to make the comment because of its racial overtones.
“If she would like to hear the facts and not the innuendoes and the edited portion of what I supposedly said, I’m not hard to find,” an annoyed Thomas said. “It’s easy to get what I said. So don’t speak from ignorance. Get the facts what I said and not the portion that was taken out of context.”
Ironically, Jeffries was starting at small forward so Thomas could rest Quentin Richardson, who had a mild ankle sprain. Thomas didn’t want to risk further injury with the opener Friday in Cleveland. Of course, Jeffries went down.
“I look at is as a blessing,” Jeffries said of the in jury. “If you have to miss one or two games as op posed to miss ing a whole season, I really feel blessed that I didn’t do something seri ous. I felt like my knee shifted.”
Thomas, who had talked about getting to the regular season healthy and was about to take Jeffries out of the game, must feel cursed.
“I had a sub at the table for him,” Thomas said.
Jeffries injured himself 5:08 into the game as he ran back on defense to intercept a pass at half court, He bumped knees with Richards Jefferson as he landed.
On Wednesday, Thomas was waxing eloquent about Jeffries, saying the big difference this season was he didn’t get injured in preseason. He missed the first 22 games with a fractured left wrist, returning Dec. 11, turning his first season as their high-priced free agent into a unmitigated disaster.
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Stephon Marbury and Jamal Crawford combined to shoot 4 of 19.