GaryMrMets
01-15-2006, 05:27 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/col/story/382790p-324992c.html
Now the Garden of Eden
http://www.nydailynews.com/images/editors/headers_shootinglip.gif
http://www.nydailynews.com/images/columnists/lupica_m.jpg
The Garden had a week.
It was more than the night for Mark Messier, as fine an occasion, a big-city night, as that was. It was more than the past, which is all they've had on 33rd Street for years.
This week was Stephon Marbury, not so long after being booed by his own fans, playing the kind of ball at the Garden, hearing the kinds of cheers, he always imagined for himself in that place. It was Jaromir Jagr continuing to score goals as the Rangers keep winning. For the first time in a long time, you felt good about both teams at once.
For one week, it was all good.
After beating LeBron on the road Tuesday night, the Knicks came home the very next night and beat the Dallas Mavericks, one of the best records in the league, in overtime. On Friday night, with Messier in the house, they made it 6-0 in '06 with that win over the Hawks, the 1,000th victory of Larry Brown's NBA career. At the end of that one, they chanted Brown's name in the Garden for the first time.
Messier heard his own name chanted plenty once he got to town, heard it all the way through his career with the Rangers and even when he was with the Vancouver Canucks. Then when he was back with the Rangers. Then as loud as ever on Thursday night, when they chanted "Mess-I-er" and "Let's Go Rangers" all through the ceremonies of the evening. The way the Garden sounded on Thursday night? Mark Messier has heard it before.
Not Larry Brown. He said the other night that there have been plenty of times this season when he wondered where the Knicks would get even one game. Now they have won six in a row, and at least look like a knocked-down fighter getting to one knee.
The Knicks are hardly in the clear, the Knicks still have flaws, the Knicks put themselves into a dark hole with a 7-21 start. But this week especially, there was finally hope in the place again, which is where Brown came in last summer.
And the Knicks aren't the best team in the place right now. Not even close. Tom Renney's Rangers - and what else can you call them? - are the surprise team of the NHL this season. As bad as things have been for the Knicks since the last time they had a real chance in the playoffs, with Jeff Van Gundy coaching them in the spring of '01, things have been far worse for the Rangers. Even when Messier was still playing, they had become as much of a joke franchise as there is in pro sports.
For years after Messier and Mike Richter and the rest of them won the Stanley Cup, the Rangers spent like the Yankees of their sport and finally went seven years without making the playoffs. It has only been the darkest time in the history of the franchise, like some sort of speed-dial misery to put with the 54 years the franchise waited for a Stanley Cup until Messier came to town.
The other night I asked Jaromir Jagr, the star of Renney's team, what he thought about the Rangers in the old days and he said, "The team that always lost in the playoffs and had people singing '1940' to them."
A few hours later, Jagr scored in overtime and his team won again. When Messier's night was scheduled, it was supposed to be one night this year at the Garden when things were the way they used to be. It was all that. Except the Garden didn't need the night as much as it thought, because the Rangers are better than they were supposed to be right now and so is the place.
The next night Marbury played another efficient game on offense. The Knicks won their sixth. Marbury got with Messier after it was over. More than the two coaches at the Garden, more than any player, he is the most fascinating figure right now, and not just because of the headlines he and Larry Brown have made so far.
He is a fascinating case because when he came here two years ago, he was the one who created such early excitement and such early speed as the Knicks started to win some games. He was Starbury of Lincoln High! He would be the face of the Knicks' rebirth, at least on the court. By the start of this season, he was the face of losing as dreary as we had before he got here.
Now he is hot. The Knicks are hot. "He's playing like a point guard," Larry Brown says. Meaning: Like the kind of point guard I want here. Who knows if it lasts? All we know is that the Knicks won three more this week. The Rangers have been winning all year.
Some week at the Garden. The people in charge get clobbered all the time, and had to wonder if there'd ever be a week like this, when the cheers for Messier weren't the only cheers.
The Garden, when it is what it is supposed to be, a main plaza of the city, carries us from football to baseball. Maybe it can again.
* * *
Jets fans have fallen in love with somebody they know hardly anything about - Eric Mangini - the way people fall in love through online dating services.
My friend David Israel, who wrote columns for the Washington Star and the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Herald-Examiner, still has the best line about the Texas Western-Kentucky championship game, one of the best sportswriting lines ever.
Israel called it "the Brown vs. Board of Education of college basketball."
That is exactly what it was.
I didn't know that Don Haskins' team was changing the world when I stayed up late to watch the game.
I just knew this:
I wanted to play basketball like Bobby Joe Hill, who that night looked like the quickest guy I'd ever seen in a college basketball game.
If there's a do-over on the NBA draft, is there any doubt that Channing Frye is the first pick?
I don't like all the deals Isiah Thomas has made.
Isiah doesn't like all the deals he's made.
But he sure did draft Frye, Marcus Camby and Tracy McGrady in the same career, which is better than a sharp stick in the eye, right?
Would everybody have cheered Derek Jeter after Game 5 of the Angels series if the first person he blamed was Alex Rodriguez?
What if Jeter had pointed a finger across the clubhouse and said, "I'll tell you one area where we got outplayed. Third base"?
Tiki Barber had a right to think the Giants were outcoached.
He was out of line for saying it the way he did after the game, as frustrated as he was.
Barber is one of the good guys.
He just had the best season on offense a New York football player has ever had.
It's not like he turned into T.O. Barber all of a sudden.
But if he thinks coaching gets you to the next round when you play the way he and his teammates did, you have to go take one more look at the film.
If James Frey, the author of "A Million Little Pieces," made up the part about spending three months in jail then he's making up plenty, because that's just the way it goes once you start making things up.
You could see it on his face the other night, and hear it in the answers he gave to Larry King.
One time he talked about "subjective truth" and then he talked about the "essential truth," and by the end it was an embarrassing, sniveling performance, even if Oprah did come out of the bullpen like Mo Rivera.
The worst part was Frey bringing out his mother for backup.
I loved the suggestion, by the way, that a controversy like this could weaken his sobriety.
It was as if he were telling us, You better believe me, or I might go get high again.
Like a kid threatening to hold his breath.
His new book is called "My Friend Leonard."
Well, maybe it was Leonard.
I'm just going to assume you know not to call the house during "24" tonight.
All of Rob Bartlett's characters on Imus make me laugh, but not one of them makes me laugh more than Blind White Boy Pigs Feet Dupree.
You want to know why the Yankees couldn't address starting pitching in this offseason?
Because they can't.
Because if Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano don't come back big, they're stuck.
I love Herm Edwards getting to Kansas City and refusing to answer questions about the way he left the Jets by saying, "What happens in New York stays in New York."
Boy, you can't imagine how many members of the Gambino crime family wish it worked that way.
Originally published on January 14, 2006
Now the Garden of Eden
http://www.nydailynews.com/images/editors/headers_shootinglip.gif
http://www.nydailynews.com/images/columnists/lupica_m.jpg
The Garden had a week.
It was more than the night for Mark Messier, as fine an occasion, a big-city night, as that was. It was more than the past, which is all they've had on 33rd Street for years.
This week was Stephon Marbury, not so long after being booed by his own fans, playing the kind of ball at the Garden, hearing the kinds of cheers, he always imagined for himself in that place. It was Jaromir Jagr continuing to score goals as the Rangers keep winning. For the first time in a long time, you felt good about both teams at once.
For one week, it was all good.
After beating LeBron on the road Tuesday night, the Knicks came home the very next night and beat the Dallas Mavericks, one of the best records in the league, in overtime. On Friday night, with Messier in the house, they made it 6-0 in '06 with that win over the Hawks, the 1,000th victory of Larry Brown's NBA career. At the end of that one, they chanted Brown's name in the Garden for the first time.
Messier heard his own name chanted plenty once he got to town, heard it all the way through his career with the Rangers and even when he was with the Vancouver Canucks. Then when he was back with the Rangers. Then as loud as ever on Thursday night, when they chanted "Mess-I-er" and "Let's Go Rangers" all through the ceremonies of the evening. The way the Garden sounded on Thursday night? Mark Messier has heard it before.
Not Larry Brown. He said the other night that there have been plenty of times this season when he wondered where the Knicks would get even one game. Now they have won six in a row, and at least look like a knocked-down fighter getting to one knee.
The Knicks are hardly in the clear, the Knicks still have flaws, the Knicks put themselves into a dark hole with a 7-21 start. But this week especially, there was finally hope in the place again, which is where Brown came in last summer.
And the Knicks aren't the best team in the place right now. Not even close. Tom Renney's Rangers - and what else can you call them? - are the surprise team of the NHL this season. As bad as things have been for the Knicks since the last time they had a real chance in the playoffs, with Jeff Van Gundy coaching them in the spring of '01, things have been far worse for the Rangers. Even when Messier was still playing, they had become as much of a joke franchise as there is in pro sports.
For years after Messier and Mike Richter and the rest of them won the Stanley Cup, the Rangers spent like the Yankees of their sport and finally went seven years without making the playoffs. It has only been the darkest time in the history of the franchise, like some sort of speed-dial misery to put with the 54 years the franchise waited for a Stanley Cup until Messier came to town.
The other night I asked Jaromir Jagr, the star of Renney's team, what he thought about the Rangers in the old days and he said, "The team that always lost in the playoffs and had people singing '1940' to them."
A few hours later, Jagr scored in overtime and his team won again. When Messier's night was scheduled, it was supposed to be one night this year at the Garden when things were the way they used to be. It was all that. Except the Garden didn't need the night as much as it thought, because the Rangers are better than they were supposed to be right now and so is the place.
The next night Marbury played another efficient game on offense. The Knicks won their sixth. Marbury got with Messier after it was over. More than the two coaches at the Garden, more than any player, he is the most fascinating figure right now, and not just because of the headlines he and Larry Brown have made so far.
He is a fascinating case because when he came here two years ago, he was the one who created such early excitement and such early speed as the Knicks started to win some games. He was Starbury of Lincoln High! He would be the face of the Knicks' rebirth, at least on the court. By the start of this season, he was the face of losing as dreary as we had before he got here.
Now he is hot. The Knicks are hot. "He's playing like a point guard," Larry Brown says. Meaning: Like the kind of point guard I want here. Who knows if it lasts? All we know is that the Knicks won three more this week. The Rangers have been winning all year.
Some week at the Garden. The people in charge get clobbered all the time, and had to wonder if there'd ever be a week like this, when the cheers for Messier weren't the only cheers.
The Garden, when it is what it is supposed to be, a main plaza of the city, carries us from football to baseball. Maybe it can again.
* * *
Jets fans have fallen in love with somebody they know hardly anything about - Eric Mangini - the way people fall in love through online dating services.
My friend David Israel, who wrote columns for the Washington Star and the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Herald-Examiner, still has the best line about the Texas Western-Kentucky championship game, one of the best sportswriting lines ever.
Israel called it "the Brown vs. Board of Education of college basketball."
That is exactly what it was.
I didn't know that Don Haskins' team was changing the world when I stayed up late to watch the game.
I just knew this:
I wanted to play basketball like Bobby Joe Hill, who that night looked like the quickest guy I'd ever seen in a college basketball game.
If there's a do-over on the NBA draft, is there any doubt that Channing Frye is the first pick?
I don't like all the deals Isiah Thomas has made.
Isiah doesn't like all the deals he's made.
But he sure did draft Frye, Marcus Camby and Tracy McGrady in the same career, which is better than a sharp stick in the eye, right?
Would everybody have cheered Derek Jeter after Game 5 of the Angels series if the first person he blamed was Alex Rodriguez?
What if Jeter had pointed a finger across the clubhouse and said, "I'll tell you one area where we got outplayed. Third base"?
Tiki Barber had a right to think the Giants were outcoached.
He was out of line for saying it the way he did after the game, as frustrated as he was.
Barber is one of the good guys.
He just had the best season on offense a New York football player has ever had.
It's not like he turned into T.O. Barber all of a sudden.
But if he thinks coaching gets you to the next round when you play the way he and his teammates did, you have to go take one more look at the film.
If James Frey, the author of "A Million Little Pieces," made up the part about spending three months in jail then he's making up plenty, because that's just the way it goes once you start making things up.
You could see it on his face the other night, and hear it in the answers he gave to Larry King.
One time he talked about "subjective truth" and then he talked about the "essential truth," and by the end it was an embarrassing, sniveling performance, even if Oprah did come out of the bullpen like Mo Rivera.
The worst part was Frey bringing out his mother for backup.
I loved the suggestion, by the way, that a controversy like this could weaken his sobriety.
It was as if he were telling us, You better believe me, or I might go get high again.
Like a kid threatening to hold his breath.
His new book is called "My Friend Leonard."
Well, maybe it was Leonard.
I'm just going to assume you know not to call the house during "24" tonight.
All of Rob Bartlett's characters on Imus make me laugh, but not one of them makes me laugh more than Blind White Boy Pigs Feet Dupree.
You want to know why the Yankees couldn't address starting pitching in this offseason?
Because they can't.
Because if Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano don't come back big, they're stuck.
I love Herm Edwards getting to Kansas City and refusing to answer questions about the way he left the Jets by saying, "What happens in New York stays in New York."
Boy, you can't imagine how many members of the Gambino crime family wish it worked that way.
Originally published on January 14, 2006