Tag: Glen Rice

Another Lost Year.

“‘We weren’t too good the last two years,’ D’Antoni said. ‘Obviously we’ll try to get better at it this summer. We’ll try to shore up some defensive stuff.'” Ladies and gentlemen, your 29-53 New York Knickerbockers. (When it’s mid-April, and the best news going is next year’s salary cap number, that’s not a good sign for your basketball club.)

So, yeah, for the ninth year in a row — going back to their original sin of trading Ewing for crap (Luc Longley, Glen Rice), which soon multiplied into more crap (Howard Eisley, Shandon Anderson) — the Knicks have stunk up the joint. The T-Mac Hail Mary failed (although nowhere near as badly as the sad, lingering saga of Eddy Curry), and our one decent player — David Lee — is resigned to improving his game elsewhere.

So, yeah, not much joy in Mudville. We’re going on almost a full decade of embarrassing basketball at this point. Still, there’s always next year, and the promise of a King…

So Long, Big Fella.

The Knicks honor their 15-year man in the pivot as Patrick Ewing’s 33 is retired tonight at the Garden. Despite the diatribes by Jordan-jocking naysayers like David Halberstam, Ewing was truly one of the greats, along with Hakeem the best center of his generation. If Johnny Starks hadn’t stunk up Game 7 in ’94 or if David Stern hadn’t gotten suspension-happy in ’97 after PJ Brown (of the Heat) attacked Charlie Ward, we wouldn’t even be hearing all this no-title nonsense every time Pat’s name comes up. Ah well…I just wish Ewing could’ve finished his career in NY. However bad he looked in those last two seasons in Seattle and Orlando, he could’ve brought more to the Garden every night than Glen Rice and Luc Longley ever did…and we wouldn’t be saddled now with overpaid, underachieving players like Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. At any rate, so long, big fella. It’s your night. Update: Thanks to some triple-double heroics by Spree, the Knicks won in double OT on Ewing’s night. Other than the somewhat tacky gift of a 2003 Humvee, a nice night all around.