They look like the Knicks again – resilient, mentally tough, proud, swaggering. The aliens that had invaded their bodies for the first six weeks of the Don Chaney Era, they’re gone. Welcome back, Knicks. It’s been a while.
“I think this team is back to a point with confidence we can win going into that game, as opposed of being unsure what’s going to happen,” said Allan Houston inside the giddy Bradley Center locker room in Milwaukee after the club survived Saturday’s 129-127 double overtime epic.
“It was almost as if we went into the game not really having a lot of confidence or security in our minds. Now we’re at a point we’re mentally tougher. We’re playing with a lot more desire and intensity and we’re playing together. I just think we put in a lot more into the last there games.”
Unrecognizable in the aftermath of Jeff Van Gundy’s stunning resignation, the Knicks have reeled off a three-game winning streak more impressive than anything the team had done this season under Van Gundy. Yes, Van Gundy, in his farewell, beat the Bucks, too, in Milwaukee on Dec. 4 that gave them their fifth win in six games, putting them one game over .500. But four of those victories came against dreadful opponents – two over Atlanta and one over the Bulls and Rockets.
Its current three-game winning streak has come against three quality opponents, Toronto, Phoenix and Milwaukee. It took being called quitters by the whole city and their coach after the worst Garden loss in history – last Monday’s 43-point blowout by the Hornets – to finally wound their pride enough to wake them from their emotionally dead state.
They needed to hit rock bottom, needed, as Latrell Sprewell said, “to scrape the bottom of the barrel” before staging a resurrection after losing eighth straight games – their most futile stretch in 15 years. GM Scott Layden prophetically said after the Martin Luther King Day wipeout that the franchise “has a history of bouncing back.”
“What happened [last Monday], you look at it and say, you really have to step it up now or you fold,” Mark Jackson said. “It’s a testament to what this team is about individually and collectively that we’ve stepped it up since then.
“We have a lot of season left. Where we’re at, it’s been our own doing but we’re not folding the tent. This [streak] is just a great example of what this team is capable of and what we’re about.”
The 17-25 Knicks still have to be considered playoff longshots. They are in 11th place, 4½ games out of the eighth seed, needing to surpass three teams and ward off the raging Heat. But it’s possible Detroit, Washington and Charlotte will fall back, maybe even Boston.
Even though they likely will have no All-Stars, the Knicks have a shot at going into Feb. 8’s All-Star Break with a puncher’s chance at making the playoffs. Chaney’s club has two tough tests ahead: the Sixers at home tomorrow and at Indiana Friday. After that, the Knicks have three Garden games they should win: Miami, the Clippers and Atlanta.
Chaney has survived his worst crisis. The Knicks are still too undersized to be a conference title contender, but there is no reason this core isn’t good enough to make the playoffs in the middling East. It was a lack of confidence and a lack of leadership more than a lack of playoff-caliber talent. They are at full strength now, with Clarence Weatherspoon only getting better.
The Knicks are no longer the shame of the city.
