The Knicks might be in line for those little mints on their pillows, maybe even a free breakfast.
Anything to avoid the outcomes of their last two noontime games. One time, the Knicks apparently stayed together the night before. One time they didn’t.
Both times, they got annihilated.
So what’s an under-fire head coach to do the third time?
“Well, we’re going to be together. Put it that way,” said coach Mike Woodson, whose Knicks face Memphis at noon Saturday at the Garden.
So maybe institute a bed check?
“I think 10,” Carmelo Anthony said with a smile. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
The Knicks’ two previous early matinee games resulted in low noon disgraces. They lost to the Spurs by 31 points, 120-89, on Nov. 10.
Anthony indicated the Knicks stayed in a hotel the night before a noontime home start against the Celtics on Dec. 8. That worked out real swell. The margin that time was 41 points, 114-73.
Those are just two blips on the dysfunctional radar screen that has been the Knicks’ season. Woodson, after the Boston game, had suggested next time he might have to make sure his guys were reined in the night before.
“Probably next early game I might have to do something a little differently, put them all in a hotel and babysit them,” Woodson said at the time, on ESPN Radio.
On Friday, Woodson bemoaned the Knicks getting off to horrible starts in the noon games — they trailed the Celtics 18-1, for example.
“I don’t know why we’ve gotten off to such bad starts and hadn’t played well. I don’t think it’s anything of guys hanging out. I don’t know why that is,” the embattled Woodson said. “We’re going to do something a little different this time, see if it helps.”
Anthony feels the problem could be above the shoulders.
“I think it’s a mental thing. When you have them early morning games, you start thinking too much. Should you go to sleep early? Should you get this amount of rest?” Anthony said. “Besides it being an early game, I think it’s all mental at that point.”
Well, there’s physical, too. You don’t think your way to a minus-72-point differential in two games. With the recent slew of “What in blazes in going on?” stuff around the Knicks — the no-timeout against Washington on Monday, the need for double OT to beat a terrible Bucks team, the Andrea Bargnani brain lock shot and, of course, an 8-17 record that has fueled so much talk about Woodson’s job security – anything is worth trying. Even a hotel curfew.
“We’ve done that plenty of times where we stayed at a hotel together the night before a game,” Anthony said. “Sometimes it helps, sometimes it works. We’ll see about that (Saturday).”
Of course, the reverse is true. Sometimes it doesn’t work.
“We didn’t do it the San Antonio game. Sometimes it works – early games. Sometimes it don’t. It’s just a matter of us coming out of the gate, establish that early,” Anthony said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with us staying in a hotel or not. That’s what Coach wants to do and we’re going to do it.”
So anything that can prevent results like the last two noontime starts is worth a shot.
“Yeah, we’ve had those troubles and you know, we’re going to all get together tonight and huddle together,” Woodson said with a grin. “I’m not going to let them hang out. We’re going to all get together tonight ourselves as a team.”
More important than how they spend Friday night is what they do Saturday afternoon against the 10-15 Grizzlies.