MILWAUKEE — OK. We can start with the good news, and this won’t take long. There is Tyson Chandler, likely due back Wednesday night when the Knicks play the Bucks at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
Banging knees with Kemba Walker in the season’s fourth game has turned into quite a career move for Chandler. You may recall that by the time last season ended, Chandler was an all-encompassing target, scapegoated for being outplayed by Roy Hibbert, for sneaking into an offensive tortoise shell, for dragging the Knicks down into the rabbit hole, for construction on the GW Bridge.
You didn’t hear much of that in the six weeks he was gone. You heard about how sorely the Knicks missed his defense. You saw countless rebounds hit the floor once, sometimes twice, before being snatched away by enemy hands. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. And, yes: The Knicks are better off with him in their lineup instead of a training room.
So there is that.
And other than that …
Well, there is this: The Knicks enter Wednesday night’s game with a 7-17 record through 24 games, the third-worst mark in the Eastern Conference, with only the Bucks and the Sixers sporting worse records. Even in a dilapidated conference, that’s pushing the envelope a little to the extreme.
But the Knicks have recovered from holes like this before. Twice. Twice in their history the Knicks have fallen 10 or more games under .500 and recovered to make the playoffs. In 1982-83, they were as bad as 14-26 on Jan. 21 and recovered to win 30 of their final 42 games — helped along by the return of Bernard King from an injury that kept him out a month.
And in 1987-88, Rick Pitino’s first year, the Knicks dipped as far south as 14-28 on Jan. 30 before roaring back on the strength of a 13-game winning streak at Madison Square Garden, finishing 38-44, and starting a stretch of 14 straight playoff seasons. So, yes, the Knicks have been here before and survived to tell about it. Twice. (And since this is the good-news portion of this column, we will quietly acknowledge the other 21 seasons when they fell 10 games under .500 on the way to 15, 20, 30 games under .500)
And then there’s the other stuff.
And it’s the other stuff that threatens to swallow the season now, in these next few days, to kneecap the Knicks before they ever see the new year. Amar’s Stoudemire is out “for a while,” and around the Knicks “for a while” can mean a few days, it can mean a few weeks, it can mean St. Patrick’s Day.
Not long ago, losing Stoudemire might have barely registered a blip, but that was when he was playing like a guy who wouldn’t have gotten a callback during auditions for “The White Shadow.” Lately he’d been showing signs of the old STAT, before being felled by signs of the new STAT — knees that simply will not allow, will probably never again allow — him to perform for an extended time at an especially high level.
And that might be the most debilitating part of what’s befallen the Knicks. It isn’t just injury or general hardship; it’s whenever something or someone provides a sparkle of hope, even a glimmer of it, it’s snuffed out where it sits, immediately.
Amar’e is a feel good story? Not now he isn’t.
Pablo Prigioni might be exactly the tonic the Knicks need to play point guard in Raymond Felton’s absence because of his hustle and his clever playmaking? Not with a busted-up toe he isn’t, not anymore.
Mike Woodson is exactly the kind of calm, steady hand a team in turmoil can rely on to bridge difficult times? Not when he froze like a singer forgetting the lyrics at the most important moment of Monday night’s loss to the Wizards.
The Knicks throttle the Nets, clobber the Magic, have a string of winnable games stacked up through Christmas, a chance to take a bite out of that blightful record? Au contraire, savoir faire. Since that breakthrough, the Knicks are 2-4, flush in the reality that every game they play at this point is a “winnable game” … for the other team.
They can wallow in all of this. They can descend to a place where irrelevance rules; even in the East you can’t lose that many games and live to tell. Or they can stop talking about how much character they think is on the team, and how much they believe in the coach, and each other, and not bemoan this perfect storm of bad luck.
And create their own narrative, a different agenda. That’s still possible. But they’d better be snappy about it.