THE season is flying by more quickly than Chris Childs is to question a call, Chris Dudley is to lose his temper, even faster than Latrell Sprewell can shoot the ball.
So much overpriced talent. So few practice days to make Charlie Ward into Bob Cousy during a lockout season when the Knicks continue to fumble for the key.
In the ultimate team game, this was not a good year to make major changes, it would seem. There is a lot of evidence of that.
Utah, a state founded by John Stockton and Karl Malone, leads the Midwest. Miami, basically standing Pat, is playing at a .645 pace. Portland, a year older and wiser, a little better with Jim Jackson and Greg Anthony, has the best record in the league. The Pacers, five points shy of dethroning the Bulls, proved smart not to try to do addition in a year Chicago finally did its subtraction.
Teams who are already built build in an excuse for the 1998-99 Knicks. At 18-15 before last night, they are Clark Kents looking for a phone booth, from which they emerge as Clark Kent. They have become practiced at needing practice. But if coming into this season with a set team means so much, then how do you explain the Magic coming to The Garden last night with a 25-10 record?
Chuck Daly’s team has added a new starting center, Ike Austin, added two impressive rookies, Matt Harping and Michael Doleac into the rotation, and still led the Atlantic Division.
“We had eight new acquisitions,” said Penny Hardaway. “We re-signed Darryl Armstrong and Derrick Strong, Ike Austin, Gerald and Dominique Wilkens, then the draft choices, Matt and Mike.
“In all honesty, we’re doing this by just checking all egos at the door, coming out every night and playing hard, no matter who gets the shots.
“I look at it like this. Everybody can play defense. That’s how you win games. You stop teams on defense, then you can get out and run and get easy baskets. We have shot poorly in 50 percent of our games and still won because we try to play well defensively.”
The Knicks, statistically, are the fourth-best defensive team in the league, but statistics have been damn lies when the team goes up against the better ones in the league, like Sunday in Indianapolis.
Hardaway has noticed. “[Charles] Oakley was a bruiser,” said Hardaway. “I know they keep hearing everybody say that, but it was true. He would get you for no reason, make you think about the next time you went in there.
“They don’t have that type of team now. They have a finesse team. Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby are finesse players.
“It’s almost like Sprewell can’t be himself and the team is saying, ‘Hey, slow down.’ He’s a West Coast player, he’s been out there his whole career and that’s a big jump. You saw that when they went out on the West Coast and Latrell was doing his thing and everybody was saying ‘Whoa, hold up.’
“He’s just getting the ball himself off the backboard and pushing it because that’s the way he wants to play and it’s tough. I mean, he can score a lot of points and quickly when he’s really going. But he’s not on the same page with the team and it looks bad.”
Some nights it looks worse than others. Most nights, it certainly doesn’t look good enough to get the Knicks anywhere close to the conference championship that Dave Checketts has set as a goal.
The Knicks didn’t make too many changes with a team that lost in the second round for the fourth straight spring. They just acquired some guys who need changes of attitude, are round pegs being jammed into round holes. It’s all about the fit, which in the case of the Magic looks sleeker, more dapper than a Chuck Daly suit.
“The two rookies, even with a short season and no summer league, learned the rules,” said Daly. “They are really good students, good kids and we haven’t been afraid to play them as a result.”
You can make that argument on Daly’s track record that this is all coaching, but that would be choosing to overlook the fact that without his best player, Jeff Van Gundy got the his team into the playoffs last year, while Daly, without Hardaway, did not.
In this league, it’s all about finding the right players, not finding practice time.