ATLANTA – Dave Checketts has repeatedly said he is out of the prediction business, but the Garden Guru made it clear yesterday that he believes his Knicks, who are in the eighth and final playoff spot, can be a force if Patrick Ewing returns to the fray somewhat healthy.
While discussing Ewing’s tender condition – Ewing missed his third straight game last night against the Hawks, a 76-73 Knick loss, – Checketts noted, “I’m not giving up on this season by any stretch, but Patrick needs a good offseason where he is not sitting at the bargaining table and where he doesn’t have that load on his mind. He needs a good off-season of conditioning to get ready to play, but having said all of that, I still believe that if we can get him 80 or 90 percent of what he is capable of doing and get a good playoff position, there isn’t anybody that we can’t beat.”
Getting Ewing to that 80 or 90 percent will be difficult.
Ewing rested his aching left Achilles again and has now missed 11 games this season. Checketts is so concerned about Ewing’s condition that he threw out the prospect to Jeff Van Gundy of shutting Ewing down for the rest of the regular season so he could be ready for the playoffs.
“It was a discussion that I initiated with Jeff,” Checketts said.
Van Gundy wants Ewing to play, though, and he told Checketts so.
“In his view and in Patrick’s view, if he can help us, if that one extra game or two extra games he [plays] can make a difference, then that might mean a different playoff seeding then I think we’ve got to have it,” Checketts said. “We’ll take him when we can get him and hope he can help us.”
Ewing could not go last night in a pivotal game against Dikembe Mutombo even though he had rested for four days. Prior to that he played 33 minutes against Charlotte last Friday and had three complete days of rest before that game. Entering tonight’s game against the Sixers at the Garden, Ewing will have played one game in nine days and yet the Knicks continue to build their life around him.
“You can probably conclude,” Van Gundy said, “that it’s not getting any better.”
Checketts said the Knicks are focused for this final week.
“The mindset for the team is to make the playoffs and to get the best possible position for the playoffs and to put all distractions aside,” he said.
