Kings 92 Knicks 91
SACRAMENTO – The Knicks continue to find new ways to embarrass themselves.
They blew a nine-point, fourth quarter lead to the Kings last night at the ARCO Arena and dropped a 92-91 decision to a struggling club that had lost seven of nine. The Knicks fell to 3-9 on the road and the losswas their third in the last four games as they dropped to 15-13. The Kings improved to 12-17.
The Knicks lost in familiar fashion when Patrick Ewing was long on an 18-footer with 7.2 seconds to go. Rookie Jason Williams made the key play of the game, stealing the ball from Latrell Sprewell with the score tied at 91 and 11.5 seconds remaining and was immediately fouled by Sprewell.
Williams missed the first free throw but made the second to put the Kings up and away, 92-91.
Allan Houston was benched the entire second and fourth quarters. He was thrown off his game early by the physical play of Tariq Abdul-Wahad and scored only six points on 3-for-8 shooting. In addition, Marcus Camby sprained his left ankle and was limited to seven minutes. Ewing led the Knicks with 23 while Vernon Maxwell scored 19 off the bench.
Williams brought the Kings back as he finished with 13 points. He scored on a three and after a Sprewell miss, was fouled by Charlie Ward and calmly sank both free throws to tie the game at 91 with 59 seconds left. That completed a wipeout of the nine-point, fourth-quarter Knick lead.
The Knicks moved out to an 83-74 fourth-quarter lead behind the shooting of Sprewell and Ward. The Kings closed to within 89-86 on a Vlade Divac three, and Ewing answered with a tip-in off a Ward miss. Williams then nailed a three with 1:23 remaining to bring the Kings within 91-89.
This was Sprewell’s first game back in Northern California, only 90 miles from where he played with the Warriors. He was booed lustily, but came out firing in the first half, sending up 11 shots in 16 minutes. In the half, Ward came out of his funk, scoring 11 points as the Knicks took a 52-51 lead at the break. Williams had five turnovers and only one assist in the half.
Said Sprewell of his rude homecoming: “I don’t care about the boos. That’s the least of my worries.”
Jeff Van Gundy talked about Ward moving into the NBA’s Top 15 of point guards before the season started. Considering the Knicks had just shelled out $26 million to Ward, those expectations were not exactly outrageous.
Eight weeks into the season, though, Ward is producing nowhere near the Top 15 and, in fact, he went into last night’s game against slumping rookie Williams with the worst assist-to-turnover ratio of any pure point guard in the NBA. Ward entered last night’s action with 150 assists and 84 turnovers, one turnover to every 1.8 assists.
Van Gundy, who chooses his words carefully, said of Ward: “I think he hasn’t been shooting the ball well recently and I think he’s been hesitant to shoot. If he misses, it’s up to me to take him out. I thought last year he had the right mixture of being aggressive, particularly on the break, trying to make plays, but not being careless. In that way he needs to get back on top of that.
“I think the decisions haven’t been up to where they were last year and I’m not exactly sure why the turnovers are up, but we need to get that back on track.”
Ward does not like to address the media. So when he was asked about his individual struggles yesterday, as is his habit when he doesn’t like a question, he grunted, “Hmmmm?” The question was repeated. Ward then said, “There are a lot of things you can pinpoint, but you just have to remain focused on what we want to do, compete and play hard. That’s when you build character when things aren’t going as well as things should be going. You can cave in or get stronger. This team is going to get stronger.”
As for working new players into the offense, Ward said, “Like I said, no excuses. Being in New York that’s all you hear. You always want excuses why you’re not playing well or producing. What we have to look at is, we’re 15-12 [now 15-13], that’s not the record we would like to have but it’s something to build on. We’re not in the cellar. We also have goals and aspirations of doing something big so we just have to put it together. Hopefully tonight we’ll start.”
After Monday’s loss to the Hawks, Ward was asked how the team would get out of his slump and he said, “God’s going to favor us because of our faith.”
