The Knicks Fix

Remember the story of Mark Jackson walking through a Queens neighborhood as a rookie in 1988? It was just before the Knicks were to make their first playoff appearance in four years, Jackson went out to his hometown of St. Albans and played some playground basketball. “I can’t forget where I came from,” Jackson said at the time.

He was, and is, New York. He got it. He understood the importance of that renaissance season for the Knicks and the enormity of that playoff series against the Boston Celtics, who then were still up there with the Lakers as the NBA’s elite. The Knicks went out in four games in that series. They got one win, at MSG, in Game 3. The Garden rocked that night like it hadn’t since the championship years. Those fans had waited a long time for a team they could believe in. More importantly, they waited a long time for a team they could associate with. Patrick Ewing was the unequivocal star of the team, but Jackson, he was one of them.

And, on top of that, the coach was Rick Pitino, a tough kid from Long Island who also knew what the New York crowd was all about.

I'm not saying you have to be from New York to know what the New York crowd is all about. But it helps to at least have an understanding of it.

Fast-forward to the present-day Knicks and the smile on Isiah Thomas’ face when he was in Detroit. The people there loved him. It was a hero’s welcome. His number hangs from the rafters and his name is painted on the court. Many of his records still dominate the Pistons media guide.

He is a Piston. He comes from the West Side of Chicago, but seems to be more at home in Detroit. The people there get him and he gets them.

And, with all due respect to his stature as one of the greatest point guards this game has ever seen, he doesn't get New York. And more and more I'm realizing -- perhaps he is too -- that he is completely out of his element here.

Isiah Thomas knows basketball, let’s make that perfectly clear. His resume clinches his place among the all-time greats.

And I believe the fans that were booing and chanting for his head on Wednesday night at the end of the Wizards 113-102 beat-down at the Garden were too caught up in a mob-mentality to consider that Washington was unconscious from the perimeter. Not too many teams could have overcome a 14 for 20 onslaught from three-point range. But not too many teams would have given up that many open looks from downtown, either.

Plus, it was more entertaining to boo and chant. When all else fails, get someone fired. Especially if it's a guy you know is on borrowed time.

It's even easier when it's someone you consider an outsider, which is what Thomas remains in the eyes of the fans despite three-plus years running the Knicks organization.

To his credit, Isiah has tried to understand the fans. He has tried to relate to them with attempts to equate his rugged upbringing in Chicago to enduring the harsh New York spotlight.

There’s problem No. 1: don’t ever try to equate anything with New York. There’s a reason why Chicago is called the Second City.

Problem No. 2 is his lack of understanding of the New York attitude. He is totally confused as to why the Garden fans seem to be harder on the home team than they are on the visiting team. What he doesn't realize is the Garden fans are equal-opportunity hecklers. But they're also extremely demanding of their time and money. You take the time to commute to the Garden, drop a couple hundred on a game and get home late on a week night, you want to see something more than a passive 2-3 zone and confusion in the offensive set.

Here’s a brief explanation about New York basketball fans: they come to the Garden to see good basketball, no matter which of the two teams is playing it. It is one of the entitlements we feel come with being a New Yorker, along with EZPass and partying with Lindsay Lohan.

If they don’t get it from the home team, they’ll admire the visitor. They'll come to see a classic team like the San Antonio Spurs, or an electrifying team like the Phoenix Suns. For years the Garden was like Michael Jordan’s second home in the NBA, because he always came to perform and he rarely disappointed. Many NBA greats have figured that out and used the Garden as their personal stage. Reggie Miller played the villain on Broadway better than anyone has in Phantom of the Opera. He had the crowd hissing and groaning with every big basket. He made a career in Indiana, but he made a legend at the Garden.

LeBron James has yet to figure out the stage that the Garden offers him. If Kobe Bryant played in the East, he’d own this place like Michael did, for sure. (I had to get that one in...oh, and LeBron's sneakers are ugly, too).

Now if the home team is performing well, then they’re on your side like your best friend in a street fight. Jackson’s Knick team in 1988 couldn’t come close to competing with the Celtics, who seemed to use that series as a warm-up for another run to the NBA Finals. But the Garden fans saw something in that Knicks team that was lacking during those lean years when Bernard King was always injured and Ewing was still very raw. They saw something to believe in and, as a result, they put their voices behind the team even though they knew the Celtics would eventually win.

Jeff Van Gundy never asked the crowd to chant his name. He just put in his work and the Garden crowd took notice and, when there was concern that Van Gundy might be fired, the home crowd used its power and influence to save the job of this fiesty little coach with the stringy comb-over. Why? Because he was one of them.

Like Van Gundy, Pitino, Jackson, Xavier McDaniel, Charles Oakley, John Starks, Latrell Sprewell, Larry Johnson and so on., there was an understanding that if you performed, you’d get cheers. If you failed, you’d get boos. That’s life in New York no matter what you do.

Just ask Bob Dylan. Like Isiah, he’s a legend in his field. But his Broadway attempt, The Times They Are A-Changin’ stunk like the No. 3 train on a steamy summer night.

And the New York crowd let him know it.

Old New York City is a friendly old town,
From Washington Heights to Harlem on down.
There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around,
They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down.
It's hard times in the city,
Livin' down in New York town.

In some other NBA cities, such as Sacramento, the home crowd doesn’t get down on the home team. If the home team is bad, they just heckle the road team even more. That type of homerism doesn’t fly here, man. It just doesn’t. You want to be coddled and get pats on the back? Go to the one-newspaper cities where the lights all turn green at the same time and the restaurants close as 11 p.m. And enjoy life in the oblivion.

You want to be part of something that is bigger than life? Do it in New York. Endure the scrapes of the daily media buzzsaw. Toughen your skin against the cynicism. Ride the wave of emotions that this city can generate until you find yourself energized by it.

No, it’s not for everyone. It really wasn’t for Ewing for all of those years. But ask him if he remembers how he felt standing on top of that scorer’s table in June 1994, with his arms extended as if accepting a hug from a city of millions. Ask him if that healed a lot of wounds from earlier in his career.

Ask him how it feels now to feel the love like he does every time he enters the building. That kind of love doesn’t just materialize when you put on the Knick logo. It doesn’t come because of what you were when you got here, but what you became while you were here.

It’s funny, but one of the crowd’s biggest targets outside of Thomas is Stephon Marbury, who is Brooklyn born and one of the Garden’s own as a kid growing up and attending Knick games. The hating definitely effects him, but you never hear him say a thing about it. He knows that’s New York. “I’d boo, too,” he once told me. “I used to boo.”

So, Isiah, my advice to you is to stop telling the fans what to do. Stop telling the players not to listen to the fans. Instead, make sure they hear them. Make sure the fans reactions motivate you, one way or the other. Make sure you understand exactly what they're feeling and why.

Because, you see, when it gets quiet in the Garden, well, that’s when you’re really in trouble.