As if 18 wins will get them one.
Around here, you’d think that the Knicks had just reached the Promised Land for the first time since 1973 when they surpassed last season’s win total with their victory on Wednesday in Miami. Boy, have the Knicks gone soft, with some fans going absolutely giddy over the team’s recent success. This just in: New York is still a sub-.500 team.
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Sure, progress is coming. S-l-o-w-l-y. But it was almost bound to happen after Phil Jackson pulled the plug on the season last January and the team ended up free-falling to a franchise-low 17 wins. Re-stocking the roster with solid but not spectacular NBA players was bound to get the Knicks back to 17, but it’s nothing more than a minor milepost on the long road back to respectability.
The key number to remember is 37 — the number of wins the Knicks had during the season that owner James Dolan interrupted to give Jackson a $60 million contract to remake the franchise into a championship contender. We’re still a long way from that point, friends, and also still a good ways away from 37 — or 54, their total in 2012-13, when the Knicks last made the playoffs.
But there are positive signs. Carmelo Anthony is trying to be a more complete player and is less of a me-first, gunner than in the past. In Wednesday’s win at Miami, Anthony totaled 25 points on 12 field goal attempts, and there are signs that he’s trusting his teammates more than ever. In addition, he’s steadily regaining his health, as opposed to last season when he hobbled along on a bum knee long enough to play in the All-Star Game in New York. Derek Fisher seems to be getting a feel for his rotation, including giving playing time to rookie big man Kristaps Porzingis at center with the second unit.
The Knicks didn’t look like they could make it to 37 wins when they turned in a team record-low, eight-point fourth-quarter performance in a Jan. 1 blowout loss in Chicago. That gave them a 4-12 record against teams with winning records. But they’ve won three in a row against those kinds of teams (vs. Atlanta twice and Miami), entering Friday’s game in San Antonio when they’ll try to be the first road team to win in the Spurs’ AT&T Center.
The Knicks’ rise is what we’ve also seen from the rest the East after so many years of being the NBA’s JV conference.
“Has there been an influx of superstars in the Eastern Conference? Probably not," Toronto coach Dwane Casey told Sporting News before his team’s rout of Brooklyn on Wednesday night. “What we’re seeing is the maturation process at work, for some teams. Charlotte has grown up. So has Boston. Orlando’s players are maturing, too. Then you have some teams like Indiana and Miami that have gotten healthy. We’ve added some key pieces to our team. The same is true of New York. They’ve added better players, so they have a better program now because of what they did over the summer."
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Then Casey noted that the East now has more teams with winning records than the West. The Magic is in ninth place in the East with a 19-17 mark, while the West’s last two playoff teams, Houston and Utah, have losing records. Eleven teams in the East are above or within a game of .500. In the West, sixth-place Memphis is just one game over, at 19-18.
“There’s no question that now in the East, if you want to make the playoffs, you can’t have a losing record, like we’ve had the last few seasons," he said. “You better have a winning record because it’s going to be a tight race for the last spots."
If Casey is right, the Knicks will have to do better than the 37 wins that still are the bench-mark for Jackson. Even then, we’re still a long, long way from celebrations around here, let alone holding any parades.
Slam dunks
• GM Billy King is conceding privately what we all know: The Nets aren’t making the playoffs. So it’s time to start breaking up the team. So far, Charlotte has called to try to deal for Bojan Bogdanovic, the team’s top 3-point marksman, Sporting News has learned. If Joe Johnson doesn’t get moved at the deadline, he’s seen as a prime candidate for a buyout.
• The open campaigning between LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony for All-Star Game berths perfectly sums up today’s superstar players. We don’t remember Larry Bird pushing for Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas or Michael Jordan, but then again, Bird never viewed it as a “brotherhood,’’ as these stars do.
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• Atlanta’s lack of intensity has to be alarming for Mike Budenholzer, especially at the defensive end. Here’s what other teams see: DeMarre Carroll’s departure to Toronto over the summer has left the Hawks without the one player who always brought the junkyard-dog mentality, every night. The Raptors are hopeful that Carroll, their ace perimeter defender, is back by early March following knee surgery.
• To all general managers who are busy trying to copy the Warriors’ championship blueprint and play at the same pace: Just remember that Golden State’s players allow them to go uptempo all the time. Not all rosters are equipped to do that. In the case of the Spurs, they’re last in pace and seem to be doing just fine.
• Underachieving Houston and dead-in-the-water Phoenix are seen as prime landing spots for Detroit’s Brandon Jennings, if either team wants to take the chance on dealing for a player who will be an unrestricted free agent in July.
