Better Late Than Never

I have a good feeling about the coming season. It's hard to know how the team will shake out before opening day but I fully expect the Knicks to make the playoffs and have a surprisingly strong year.

The talent is here and has been. At training camp there was an epiphany, though that's not the correct word, that not much had changed. There were a few new faces but the bottom line is that the eclectic set of talent Zeke had accumulated for the past four years is back and they can choose to win or to lose together.

The decision to keep Marbury around surprises me but at the same time makes some sense. If the Knicks have to pay him anyway they may as well get their money's worth. I'm not sure I buy the argument that Marbury's presence in the locker room is all that detrimental. For what it is worth these athletes are supposed to be professionals. In the world of sports that rarely translates into the expectation that they are mature, reasonable intellects.

As fans we've been burned so often by this group that believing in them one more time is both difficult and trite. Even those of us who believe they can win will be dismissed as hopeless optimists for expressing the sentiment. Yet, I think there is a winning team in this bunch. I have the same feeling about these Knicks that I had during the seventies after the Yankees had one losing season after another.

There are some misfits here but if Marbury, Jerome James, Randolph, and Richardson decide to play ball this could become a very interesting year. The Knicks are an unintentionally deep team mostly because their contract to winning record ratio has made too many of them immovable in trades.

Yet, it is precisely teams that have a degree of continuity that win in the NBA.

Put me down for 41 - 45 wins this year.

My guess is that Grunfeld, Roberson, and AH get cut. In February a trade will be made to make room for AH to rejoin the team as a player and to participate in the Knicks first playoff series since dinosaurs roamed the earth.