INDIANAPOLIS — This is a maddening, infuriating basketball team, these Knicks, a team that only sometimes plays tough and plays smart and does not understand the kind of commitment, the kind of will the NBA playoffs demand of you.
They are in a hole now against the Pacers because only in Game 2 did they play the way Atlantic Division champions are supposed to play, with heart and pride and passion.
They need to wake up, and they need to wake up now, and stop looking like some hastily assembled intramural team that assuredly makes Willis Reed and Clyde Frazier cringe, and Dave DeBusschere roll over in his grave watching Tyson Chandler and the boys turn Roy Hibbert into Wilt Chamberlain.
It is on Mike Woodson to wake them up and show us how an elite coach can grab his basketball team and shake it before an offseason of regret and recrimination rages all around.
Because the fact of the matter is the Knicks have lost four of their past six playoff games, and right now it is the Pacers who appear to be the younger, looser, hungrier team, while the Knicks, even with their roster of battle-tested veterans, have been alarmingly shrinking from too many occasions.
Woodson’s mandate from the day the Garden ignored Phil Jackson was to win a Game 4 on the road whenever the Knicks found themselves with their backs against the wall, and here it comes tomorrow night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
It appears he is facing the coaching challenge of a lifetime, because his Knicks:
* Play a brand of basketball that too often can be characterized as Dumb and Dumber. Is it too much to ask the players to know and follow the coaching game plan to trap Hibbert?
“We did a great job on Hibbert in Game 2 based on how the game plan was set up,” Woodson said, “and we got away from it somewhat [Saturday] night.”
Amar’e Stoudemire: “Coach Woodson’s a phenomenal teacher, and so for us not to execute that on the court was a little disappointing. … Nothing has changed as far as our coverages and so we should have mastered that by now, but it seems to be that we didn’t quite pass the class [Saturday].”
* Allow the Pacers to dictate a halfcourt game that plays in their favor.
“We have to pick up our pace a little bit and not walk it up as much,” Woodson said. “That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this offensive rut.”
There’s Carmelo Anthony, hounded solo by Paul George, getting only three shots in the fourth quarter of Game 3 — and 16 overall. The pick-and-roll has become the pick-and-roll over.
“If you don’t set a good screen and you don’t use the screen,” Woodson said, “then it becomes a one-on-one game, everybody’s able to stay at home with their own individual matchups.”
* Forget to play with the mental and physical toughness the playoffs demand. Is it asking too much to play 48 minutes?
“We’re not 48-minute completing games to me,” Woodson said.
* Play team defense and rebound only when they feel like it.
“We didn’t give up the 3s based on our rotations in Game 2 and [Saturday] night, we had slippage in that area,” Woodson said.
And 20 Pacers second-chance points?
“That’s just individuals putting bodies on guys and blocking out and securing the ball,” Woodson said. “They wanted it a little bit more [Saturday], and that to me was the difference.”
Damning commentary. And inexcusable.
“It takes five guys to rebound the ball, we’re not getting that done,” Woodson said.
* Can’t put the basketball in the basket.
“I have to keep screaming and pushing, and guys have to recognize that we have to get the ball moved from side to side,” Woodson said.
A team built on 3s attempted just 11 in Game 3, made only three. That’s enough to make J.R. Smith (19-for-his-last-69) sick.
“We desperately need his offense,” Woodson said, “and if I can’t get it, we have to keep mixing and matching trying to find it somewhere.”
Stoudemire? Steve Novak? Chris Copeland? May day, May day.
“At this stage of the game, most playoff teams are pretty set,” Woodson said, “and we’re kind of jumping around a little bit right now, but hey, we’ll figure it out.”
His job is to figure it out. Now.