ATLANTA – They will honor The Coach at the Garden tonight where the Knicks return from a successful road trip and try to gain momentum for their playoff chase. Red Holzman, the coach and the man, will be celebrated, not just for his record 613 wins and two NBA championships as the Knicks coach, but also for a legacy of teamwork, discipline and unselfishness for his which his teams were known.
“He set the standard for how team basketball should be played by the Knicks,” Jeff Van Gundy said last night, a few hours before his Knicks played the Hawks at the Georgia Dome.
Van Gundy and Holzman weren’t close, but there were times when the Hall of Fame coach would call to lend more of a sympathetic shoulder than sage advice. The call would usually come when things were going bad and the heat was on. Coaches know what coaches are going through.
“It wasn’t so much what he said, but that he would take the time to call is what made you feel better,” Van Gundy said. “You know he went through the same type of things even with his good teams. Red was a good man.”
Van Gundy could use one of those calls right about now. Holzman, 78, died on Nov. 13 of leukemia. His family will be sitting in the front row tonight and Holzman will be honored at halftime with a video presentation of his career along with words from Walt Frazier and a host of other former Knicks who will be in attendance. The Knicks Kids Foundation will now be renamed the Red Holzman Knicks Kids Foundation.
“It’s going to be happy and sad,” Frazier said. “It will bring back a lot of memories of all the good times, and it’ll bring back the pain that he’s no longer here.”
Remembering a piece of their past can’t hurt the current Knicks. Perhaps it will reinforce what will be needed if this season is to be salvaged. Defense and teamwork might sound like cliches, but they worked for Holzman in the ’70s and they will work for Van Gundy and the Knicks now. The players might be getting better, but the basics for winning haven’t changed. The Knicks rediscovered that on this road trip.
The ’99 Knicks have played a lot like Holzman’s Knicks this last week. In winning three straight games entering last night, they had outscored their opponents 94.3 to 89.6. From Chris Dudley and Kurt Thomas staying active in the post, to the guards who have stepped up their play out front, the desperate Knicks have finally brought a sense of urgency to their defense. Consequently, they beat the Heat Sunday afternoon in Miami and led from start to finish against the Hornets Monday in Charlotte. Now they return to New York feeling better about themselves, regardless of how things turned out in Atlanta.
“We’ve turned it up defensively,” Garden president and Knick GM Dave Checketts said yesterday. “The first half against Charlotte was the best defensively we played in such a long time.”
The dogfight for a playoff berth isn’t over. After playing the Hawks at the Georgia Dome, four games remain, including tonight’s date with the Sixers. But if the Knicks continue to play as they did at Miami and at Charlotte, then they’ll not only get into the playoffs, but as Checketts said maybe “make some noise” once there.
Holzman liked to talk to his players one-on-one when things got tough. “He wanted to figure out the problem and find a solution,” Frazier said. That’s what Checketts is attempting to do this week, while traveling with the team for first time since 1995. Since he reassigned former GM Ernie Grunfeld last week, Checketts has positioned himself as the man in charge even while Van Gundy is still the coach. So far, Checketts has to like what he has seen and perhaps question why this effort hasn’t been here all season.
The Knicks, with Patrick Ewing sidelined with a bad Achilles, played good team ball on both ends of the court. They have rediscovered how to play physical defense and move the ball to the open man. That’s how Holzman’s teams played. That’s how he won titles in ’70 and ’73 and enjoyed enough good times to obscure the bad.
You hope all this teamwork and great defense doesn’t end when Ewing returns – whenever that is. It shouldn’t. There is no reason Allan Houston can’t be just as aggressive when Ewing is playing as when the big man is in a suit.
Holzman’s players made each other better, buying into the coach’s team conception. These Knicks finally got a good taste of it on this road trip. They could honor Holzman best by playing that way for the rest of the year.
