NBA

Knicks losses no laughing matter for Stoudemire

SAN ANTONIO – All around him, his teammates were doing what professional athletes always do in the immediate aftermath of a loss: they were letting it go. Quickly. They were grabbing slices of pizza. They were returning text messages left during the game. They were peeling off ice packs.

They were laughing, too; a pro dressing room will never be confused with the losing side of a high school football playoff game. One of his teammates approached Amar’e Stoudemire now, whispered something in his ear, laughed louder than seemed appropriate.

Stoudemire, ever the good teammate, laughed along softly, waited for his teammate to disappear into the shower area. Then lost the smile quickly and completely.

“This is a serious time for us,” he would say a few minutes later, nodding his head solemnly, sitting in front of his stall. “We need to get this together and start winning games. But that’s a lot easier said than done.”

The Spurs had toyed with the Knicks most of the night, jumped them early and buried them late, booted them out of Texas with a three-game losing streak and a sound 118-105 thumping. At his locker, people offered Stoudemire – 18 points and 11 rebounds on the night – opportunities to make excuses for his team: no Tyson Chandler, no Jarred Jeffries, a brutal back-to-back, a tough team, a tough gym.

“No,” he said quietly. “You look at the way that team plays, that’s the way we should be able to play. This is the deepest team I’ve ever played on, we have talent that’s off the charts, everyone can play. That team …”

He nodded absently, in the general direction of where the Spurs were getting dressed.

“That team knows how to win.”

This is killing Stoudemire. You can see that. You can hear it. Every day seems to be a new referendum on something or other around the Knicks: the staying power of Linsanity, the wisdom of the coach, the ever-changing opinions and approval ratings swirling around the other cornerstone player. And every game Stoudemire leaves himself on the floor.

That doesn’t always translate. Numbers don’t lie. He isn’t near as effective as he was last year, his numbers are down across the board, he lacks the explosion he had last year, gets his shot blocked too often. All of that true. All of that worrisome, legitimately so. Nobody ever accuses Stoudemire of less than full effort, though. Certainly not to his face.

“I want to win,” he said, “worse than anything.”

The Knicks aren’t winning now. They aren’t terribly interesting now. A week after popping off about championship aspirations, still talking bravely of climbing the Eastern Conference playoff ladder, the Knicks’ priority suddenly is to firm its grip on the last available slot. They’re two games ahead of Cleveland, three ahead of Milwaukee, which is where they were headed.

Yes. This is killing Stoudemire, the one who said “yes” to the Knicks when so many others said “no,” who wanted to be a Knick when it became cool to be a Knick again. You can tell so many of his teammates respect him, revere him, because they know how much all of this means to him, matters to him.

“Hey, BD,” he yelled. “You got any lotion?”

“If I did, it’d be yours,” Baron Davis said.

“Landry?”

“Naw, kid,” Landry Fields said. “Sorry.”

Do they all share his darkness right now, his disappointment, his frustration? Most of them seem to, because even if he’s had had to concede most of his on-the-floor leadership responsibilities, to Lin and to Anthony and even, as Lin’s primary pick-and-roll foxhole guy, to Chandler, there is no escaping who carries the hearts and minds in this room.

“We know we’re better than this,” Stoudemire said.

The laughter had ceased, the idle chatter softened. There was a bus to catch, and a plane, another game ahead, another city, another chance for the Knicks to prove that New York wasn’t duped into handing its heart back to them a few weeks ago. A Knicks official finally found him some lotion in a hotel-sized vial.

“Let’s go,” he said, and he was gone, out the door, to the bus, a winning player badly in need of a winning streak.