DONNIE Walsh is still at that cozy, comfortable place in his New York timeline when he is a magnet for the people with the autograph books, the truest of the true believers who have invested themselves fully in his resume, his reputation and his recommendations. Given the transient nature of his team right now, Walsh is as big a star as there is at the Garden.
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“We believe in you, Donnie,” the college-age kid with the Mets jacket covering his blue No. 3 Knicks jersey (“Starks” on the back, not “Marbury”) screeched, holding out his pad and his blue Sharpie. “Keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll be here in 2010!”
“We’re tryin’,” the Knicks president said in that deep baritone voice landscaped by thousands of gymnasiums and cigarettes and scouting missions across the years. “I can promise you that.”
A few seconds later, Walsh was sitting in a courtside seat, fielding a few more questions about his banished point guard, when there flashed the slightest hint of a smile. His eyes were fastened to the Garden floor, watching last night’s visiting team go through warm-up drills.
“How does everyone feel about the Portland Trail Blazers?” he said, a classic diversionary observation, which would have been a throwaway piece of small talk except for what followed next. “They’re an awfully good team. And we’ve all seen how long it takes to build a good team like that, how hard that road can be.”
This is where the Knicks are, what the Knicks season is, already, after only 17 games, despite the 8-9 record they sport after running out of steam against the Blazers last night in a 104-97 loss, despite the fact that they have been wildly entertaining on a lot of nights, despite the fact that whatever mixture of players the Knicks throw out on any given night, they play as hard as the floor-burners at the Y night after night after night.
None of that seems to matter anymore. It is always something else. It is 2010, with even the deep-thinking likes of Plaxico Burress wondering how fans can tolerate two years of emptiness on the way toward the LeBronathon. It is Steph Stuff, the ubiquitous Marbury mess that is now a part of every workday, every thought, every conversation.
One more inquisitor asked one more question, wanted to know if, even at the jump, when it was apparent that Marbury was as much a part of the team’s future as John Gianelli, Walsh ever expected the level of daily discomfort that this lingering story had wrought.
“No,” he said.
But this is what he is now, where his team is. Saturday night the Knicks played one of the most enjoyable games the Garden has ever seen, should have used an old ABA red, white and blue ball the way they roared up and down the court with the Warriors.
It was barely a blip because we have become so addicted to the Garden being a place of drama, devoid of fun, so Marbury’s shadow loiters over every second of the proceedings, and some were still whining about how the Knicks don’t care about 2008 anymore even as they poured in 138 points and had the truest of the true believers on their feet.
“I love how the players who have played have played,” Walsh said, sounding unwittingly poetic. “It’s been remarkable, really.”
But the players playing now are treated as a warm-up act, and every few nights at the Garden we see a team like the Blazers, who drew a lucky ping-pong ball and now have Greg Oden’s foundation alongside Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, the yield of their own wanderings through the NBA wilderness.
“They chose to do it through the draft, and they were smart enough to pick the right players,” Walsh said. “But it takes a long time to do it that way, and you’d better be lucky, too, getting the first pick in the draft. You can’t always rely on that. Sometimes, you have to look at other ways.”
The Knicks have selected the other way, the open secret everybody talks about even as they render a fun, watchable team irrelevant, because the fun, watchable team has the misfortune of playing its games in 2008, and not 2010.