Tonight’s as good as it gets for December basketball
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The truth is the NBA season is nothing more than an 82-game exhibition for its painfully-long playoff tournament that begins in April and ends right around your first summertime cookout in June.
As is this case with any sport outside of professional football – a world in which every game is critical because there simply aren’t enough of them – there are some exceptions to the NBA rule, and tonight promises to be one of those rare nights in which the action between the lines might have an impact on what happens further down the road.
Tonight on ESPN, the New York Knicks host the Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden in what will be the Knicks’ first real test of the season as they look to extend their eight-game winning streak. For the Celtics, it’s their second look at a team they already beat in October, but one that is playing significantly better than it was two months ago while simultaneously breathing down their necks in the Atlantic Division.
Entering tonight, the resurgent Knicks trail Boston by just four games despite the fact the Celtics have won 10 in a row and own the league’s second-best record behind San Antonio. Since starting the season 3-8, New York has won 13 of its last 14 games – mostly against inferior competition. The Knicks have only beaten two teams with winning records (Denver and New Orleans) during this recent stretch, but if you’ve been a fan long enough, you know better than to frown upon any victories at this stage of the game. The fact they have the credentials to refer to anybody as a bottom-feeder this year shows how far they’ve come during the James Dolan era.
The Knicks haven’t had a winning record since the 2000-01 season, and they’ve been comically bad during their fall from grace, beginning with the retirement of Patrick Ewing and continuing with Dolan’s subsequent hire of Isiah Thomas as team president in 2003. After four consecutive seasons of finishing at least fourth or fifth in their division – including two seasons in which Thomas coached the team himself – the Knicks laid the foundation for their recent turnaround in 2008 when they assigned Donnie Walsh to replace Thomas as team president. One of Walsh's first moves was hiring Mike D'Antoni to coach the team. Once the Knicks finally had the financial freedom to dip into the free-agent talent pool, they made a big splash in July by signing former Phoenix forward Amar’e Stoudemire to a five-year deal with $99.7 million, which helped ease the sting from not being able to land megastars LeBron James, Chris Bosh or Dywane Wade.
Stoudemire has made an immediate impact. He already set a new franchise record by scoring 30 or more points in eight consecutive games – a streak he’ll put on the line tonight against Boston – and is currently third in the league in points per game (26.2) behind Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant of the Lakers, putting him in serious contention for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award.
The biggest concern the Knicks had when they acquired Stoudemire was whether or not he’d be as good in New York without former Suns’ point guard Steve Nash, but the front office solved that problem by acquiring former Bobcat Raymond Felton – a first-round draft pick in 2005 who never lived up to expectations in Charlotte. Felton has found a new home in New York in D’Antoni’s up-tempo offense, averaging 18.4 points per game and 8.7 assists, and has developed into the Knicks’ best point guard since John Starks in his prime (we’re talking mid-‘90s Starks). And while Blake Griffin of the Clippers has all but wrapped up the Rookie of the Year award, second-round pick Landry Fields of the Knicks might finish a close second. Fields is averaging 10.6 points per game and 7.6 rebounds – the second-highest total on the team behind Stoudemire.
The Knicks have proven they’ve got the horses to make a legitimate playoff run for the first time in years, but no one will take them seriously until they beat a real contender. Tonight’s their night. The Celtics have talked tough this week, laughing at the idea that there’s a rivalry between them and the Knicks. They’re right. The Celtics have been to the NBA Finals in two of the last three seasons. The Knicks haven’t won a playoff game in nine years. That’s not a rivalry – that’s an embarrassment.
And because of this, tonight’s game means far more to New York than it does to the Celtics. We already know what we’re getting with Boston. The "Big 3" of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen is still intact. Rajon Rondo is racking up assists at an eye-popping rate. We know the Celtics will be there in April when the real season begins, and while we’re still not sure if the Knicks are for real yet – we’re still only 25 games into the season – a win tonight would send a message to the rest of the league that they’re in it for the long haul.
There won’t be that many games over the course of the next three and a half months that are worth the price of admission, but this is one you might remember sometime in mid-April if by some chance these two teams meet again.
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