There have been plenty of reasons in years past to dislike Reggie Miller, to wave off his words, to tune him out. But he happens to be right this time.
“I just don’t see the Knicks making up any games or going on an eight-, nine-game winning streak,” Miller had told The Post Tuesday, when he was asked if he thought the Knicks would make the playoffs this year. Most presciently, he had this to say:
“They’re losing at home, they’re losing to a lot of sub-.500 teams.”
Check. And check. There have been so many lousy nights at Madison Square Garden already this season that it has sometimes been hard to keep track of them all. It’s hard to believe any of them were as bad as this, though, this 106-101 loss to a Kings team playing the second game of a back-to-back after getting thumped in Cleveland Tuesday night.
The Kings are, to put it mildly, awful, the worst of the West, which means the Knicks have now lost to the dregs of both conferences twice in just over a week. Twice Wednesday night the Knicks pulled out to double-digit leads and you could all but see the Kings beg: please, take us out of our misery.
But misery is a uniquely New York specialty this year. So it was the Knicks blew both leads, blew a chance to win at the end of regulation, then looked like they rather would be anywhere else but on the floor during an overtime in which the Kings humiliated them.
One more staggering, stunning night in an endless string of them. Playoffs — heck, let’s quote Jim Mora while we’re at it: “PLAYOFFS?!?!?!”
Please.
The good news is, there’s a chance the Knicks will take care of burying themselves early, and quickly, once they return from this five-day All-Star break. There are 30 games left in the season, 19 of them on the road, and four of them will come in a five-day stretch starting Tuesday, a Dixie dash through Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta and Orlando that should finish them off for good.
And should officially usher in the far more difficult aspect of the Knicks immediate and long-term futures. It seems hard to believe Mike Woodson will ever coach another game at the Garden. Even if he’s waiting for the Knicks in Memphis on Tuesday, you have to believe a 1-3 or 0-4 road trip finally will cause the hammer to fall — and when it does, it will seem an almost merciful blow.
There remains a small segment of Woodson supporters who demand you recuse him of blame, and that has become a patently nonsensical outlook. It’s possible to do both a good and a bad job, especially in a profession as fickle as coaching. As superb as Woodson was for most of the 2012-13 regular season, he has been equally abysmal this year.
Yes, the players are the ones who keep coming up small in games like this one, games in which they allow Jimmer Fredette to slip into his old BYU uniform, games in which they are done in by the Other Isaiah Thomas, games in which Carmelo Anthony looks like he might score 60 early and in which he can’t bribe a bucket late. But the coach oversees all of this. The inability to change these daily assaults on watchable basketball, that’s on his watch.
When the Knicks do finally slip away — maybe as soon as next weekend — that’s when they’re going to have to reveal whether there really is a big-picture plan coming together. Firing the coach is the easy part. Determining what to do with the players — from the marquee players to the spare parts — is something else entirely, especially without the safety net of a lottery pick.
Playoffs?
It almost makes you laugh now, the notion that we’ve waited these first 3 ½ months of the season for the Knicks to coagulate into something resembling a playoff team. And that isn’t just Miller taking delight in the downfall of his ancient rivals. No. It’s worse than that. Because it also happens to be true.