Seattleites caught in middle of N.Y. anger
NEW YORK - Booing begins before the national anthem. Basketball fans in New York are angry, and they can’t wait to express themselves.
They’re mad at the Knicks’ expanding losing streak. They’re hung over from the summer in court, where the team and its coach, Isiah Thomas, were involved in a sordid sexual harassment suit.
They’re tired of a team that seems to be in perpetual rebuild mode. Tired of backcourts that don’t share the ball. And they’re done with one of their own, guard Stephon Marbury, who went AWOL for a road game in Phoenix recently.
They’re tired of all the losing.
So Tuesday night, the Knicks’ first game home after an 0-4 road trip, the sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden is in no mood to warmly welcome back the home team.
They boo Thomas.
They boo Coney Island legend Marbury during player introductions, and the booing continues every time the point guard touches the ball.
They boo every one of the Knicks’ 29 turnovers. And finally, as Golden State stretches its lead to 105-78, the chants begin.
“Fire I-si-ah.” “Fire I-si-ah.”
These days the Knicks are big news in New York.
Bad news.
They’ve lost eight games in a row, the last three by a combined 70 points. They’ve turned an embarrassing summer into an even more embarrassing fall.
The city has turned on this team. Thomas’ days are numbered. And for a couple of transplanted Seattleites, former Rainier Beach stars Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson, the disappointment is growing.
Crawford is the Knicks’ captain and wears No. 11 in part to honor Thomas, who was one of Crawford’s boyhood idols. Of course he hears all the boos. Of course he hears the home fans’ cries for the end of the Thomas era.
“Of course you take it personal,” said Crawford, who has started all 11 Knicks games and is scoring 17.8 points a game. “But Isiah’s not the one who’s out there playing. It’s not on him. He can’t put on a uniform anymore. That’s why I’m here.”
Knicks fans are tired of the losing. This is the franchise of Willis Reed and Walt Frazier. Patrick Ewing and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe. Bill Bradley won here.
Even Latrell Sprewell won in New York.
But the team has made the playoffs only once in the past six years and hasn’t won a playoff series since 2000.
Sooner, rather than later, either Thomas or Marbury will be gone. Judging by Marbury’s contract - $42 million through 2008-09 - it probably will be Thomas.
“Something bad already has happened this year,” Crawford said. “Twenty-thousand people in this building are saying, ‘Fire the coach.’ That’s tough. But it comes with the losses.
“Me being the captain of this team, it’s very, very frustrating because we really are working hard in practice to correct things and we’re still coming up with the same results. Sure we hear the crowd, but we can’t worry about things we can’t control. The crowd’s going to do their thing.”
This isn’t Seattle anymore.
“These fans expect us to be a contender and expect us to play well, and when we don’t they let us hear about it,” Crawford said. “We expect to win. I think one through 15, we’re as talented as any team in the league. We’re deeper than any team in the league. We’ve just got to put it together.”
The Knicks needed a quick start this season to help fans recover from the ugliness of last summer, when the trial regularly made back-page headlines.
“This can’t go on forever,” Robinson said.
Robinson, who didn’t get off the bench in the second half of the defeat Tuesday until seven minutes were left and New York trailed by 17, is taking a Sinatra-style philosophical approach to the Knicks’ knack for bad news.
“That’s life,” he said. “Sure, everything this team’s been through affects you. Everything you go through in life affects you, whether we like it or not. Everybody has problems in their life. There’s a lot of different things that come up in life that bite you on the butt.
“We’re grown men. Everybody on this team’s gone through a lot in their lives. Some guys have grown up in bad neighborhoods. But you’ve got to take the good with the bad. You’ve got to go on. We see the other teams having fun, and that’s what we want. We want to be that other team slapping hands and having a great time.”
A storm front has stalled over Madison Square Garden. It’s raining boos inside. And even grown men get hurt when it pours this hard.
Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists