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| James Dolan emerged from the closed hallway outside the Knicks' locker room with a basketball tucked under his right arm. Taking his ball and going home? If only it were that easy. The troubles with his franchise are less about the ball, according to Isiah Thomas, and more about the players Thomas has put together. That was the epiphany after yet another embarrassing night at the Garden, a 119-92 loss to the Pacers. Dolan was in his courtside seat, next to Garden president Steve Mills, and saw a collapse that not even Thomas could explain in their brief postgame meeting. But he tried to explain it to the media. "There are a lot of things that can be said about me and teams that I've coached and the way I played, but I've never been accused of not having heart or competing," Thomas said. "Tonight was very discouraging to me because we didn't collectively play with heart and compete like I know I did." In a quiet locker room, the Knicks looked more frustrated than furious in a rout where they were outscored 55-28 in the final 17:51 after tying it at 64 on two David Lee free throws. There were no answers for Mike Dunleavy, who ripped them for a career-high 36 points, 22 in the third quarter. There was no response when the Pacers opened the fourth with a 14-8 run to break the game open. It was capped by a dunk by Troy Murphy, who did a pull-up on the rim with 7:24 left to make it a 98-80 Indiana lead. They showed no pride, no heart, as suggested by Thomas, who is starting to break free of his usual method of never publicly criticizing his players. "I think we do," Eddy Curry said in response to Thomas' comments. "Sometimes the effort's not there during moments of the game, but we definitely have pride and heart." What else explains this 7-17 team's maddening troubles? A simplistic offense that defenses easily pick apart? Or is it that when the ball is in the hands of the top two options, Curry and Zach Randolph, a little bit of pressure turns into a lot of turnovers? The frontcourt tandem had 12 of the team's 19 turnovers. Randolph did have 26 points and nine rebounds. Curry had 16 points and two rebounds. Stephon Marbury, in his first game after taking a week off to grieve his father's death, had 16 points off the bench. Jermaine O'Neal had 22 points and Jamaal Tinsley had 12 assists for Indiana (13-12), whose players before the game were told by a reporter that Curry had guaranteed a win yesterday morning. It was a bogus report - the unidentified reporter apparently overheard a beat writer making a joke and ran with it, all the way to the Pacers' locker room. "I was surprised, considering they've had a tough stretch," O'Neal said. "We didn't play like we did because of his guarantee, but we all thought it was strange. Maybe he thought they needed that kind of spark." Last season, it seemed the players were sparked by Thomas and rallied around him. This was before Dolan gave him a contract extension and the players were still glad to be rid of the Larry Brown disaster. "The one thing we prided ourselves on last year was, you know, we didn't always play well, but I thought as a team we had heart and we had courage and we competed," Thomas said. "I'm not getting that out of this group right now." So are the players no longer rallying around their coach as they did last season, when his future was in doubt? "I don't know about that, about us rallying or not rallying this year," Quentin Richardson said. "I don't know." Dolan has maintained his defiant stance in support of Thomas, so with the team slipping fast into oblivion before the New Year, the only other option to find the heart that is apparently missing is for personnel changes. Thomas acknowledged it for the first time this season. "Clearly we have to do some things different," he said, "so yeah, everything's up in the air." |
| QUOTE (Venom @ Dec 19 2007, 12:50 AM) |
| The Knicks are a joke. |