Vandeweghe Looking to Be Real Weapon in the Playoffs

For the longest time this season and the business end of last season, the most uncomfortable expression on any man in basketball belonged to the New York Knicks’ Kiki Vandeweghe. He was like a Sesame Street picture riddle asking: Which of these faces doesn’t belong?

When he was in street clothes, he stood outside the huddle with his hands clasped in front of him and looked as if he was trying to look involved. When he was in uniform and playing almost not at all, he looked as if he was trying to look involved.

“I’m sorry if I gave that impression,” Vandeweghe said Tuesday. “It was a frustrating time; I tried to maintain a positive attitude.”

Teammates did not look to him often. He was an outsider, which is a bad thing to be in a combat platoon or on a team going into the playoffs. It was only of slight significance that he had been high scorer for the Denver Nuggets and for the Portland Trail Blazers. Once he was second in the league in scoring. For six successive seasons he averaged better than 20 points a game in the playoffs -- 26.8 and 28 in two of them.

But he was 30 years old, had missed three-quarters of the season with a back injury. The Knicks were young and full of themselves. Some players publicly maintain that there was no resentment of Vandeweghe last season, no conscious decision not to get him the ball, while others privately conceded that players resented surrendering playing time to somebody whose time had passed.

“It was a tough situation for me and a tough situation for them,” he said generously. “They had their pattern. I came and tried my best to fit in,” he said. “I tried to do a lot of things as best I could. You come in and play the best you can and don’t say anything.”

Rick Pitino told Vandeweghe that he would play a little, and if the others weren’t playing well, he’d play more. So whenever he played, it was a slap at somebody else.

This year, when the others played 82 games, he missed the first 60 of them. When he came to camp with his back apparently healed, he hurt his foot. “At least, I’ve been around,” he said. This time they need him; they have betrayed their flaws. The Knicks are counting on him to get them out of the embarrassment of being eliminated in the first round, and of enabling them to show continued progress, which this season has been illusory at best.

It was 10 years ago that Dr. Ernest Vandeweghe brought his son to town for the National Basketball Association draft and told him some of the lore and lure of the Knickerbockers. The father told of going from his home in Oceanside to the old Garden and of the magic in the building. The father told of how he would listen to the games on radio on those occasions he couldn’t play for the Knicks because he had to learn to be a doctor.

Kiki Vandeweghe spent several summers at the ancestral home in Oceanside. He was born three years after his father retired from the NBA but he heard the stories, listened to the advice. He wanted to play for the Los Angeles Lakers, which was home and was impossible because they’d just won the championship, or for the Knicks.

“We wanted him,” said Dick McGuire, then and now the chief scout. “We were going to take him. He had that great first step and he could finish the play. He could hit the outside shot.” A 6-foot-8 man who could move and shoot from the outside -- very interesting.

“‘When I went to UCLA, I wanted to play on the best team and in the best city,” Vandeweghe said. “When I came out of college, if I couldn’t play in Los Angeles, I wanted to play in New York.”

The Knicks, who had finished in the middle, drafted in the middle. They had the 12th pick. Dallas made Kiki Vandeweghe the 11th man selected. And so the Knicks got Mike Woodson of Indiana.

Now after a fulfilling career in the league, after a whole training camp and exhibition games and 82 regular-season games, Vandeweghe will start Wednesday night in Boston, along with Maurice Cheeks and Charles Oakley. Vandeweghe and Cheeks have been starting since March 30, after Oakley was hurt. They have not started together before.

The plan has taken a detour. The Knicks need what Vandeweghe might give them. The irony is that now -- after all those games, a back injury last season and a foot injury this season -- he may not have enough left.

“It’s not like when I was in the playoffs before,” he said. “I was coming in as a guy they had to stop. I was the leading scorer of my team; my team was counting on me a lot more heavily. This team lives and dies with Patrick.”

That’s a comfortable disclaimer. He isn’t expected to do that for them, especially when he still isn’t in 100-percent playing condition, but he must be a real weapon -- an alternate weapon -- or it is almost irrelevant what Ewing does. Nobody does it alone in the playoffs.

And if Vandeweghe can do it in these playoffs, then he’s a step up for next season. If he can’t, then Al Bianchi’s reconstruction has lost a piece he was counting on.

They need two people who can shoot to pull the defense out and away from Ewing. “People the defense has to respect,” Vandeweghe said. “If I can do that, pull them out, get the ball in to Patrick and he kicks it out to the open man ...

“I move without the ball; I don’t really need the ball. Patrick can have it every time down low. If the game is one-on-one with him down low, we’ll win a lot of games.”

Vandeweghe has worn off a lot of miles on the court. He says that his back is sound now, and not only because the foot injury kept him from testing his back.