If Starks Stays This Cold, Knicks May as Well Bag It

Spill on Aisle 6, John Starks.

It’s you.

The former supermarket box person, still greeted at some road games by fans holding up brown bags, put the eggs on the bottom Wednesday night. He made three of 18 shots, including two of eight from behind the three-point line, as the flag bearer of the four-man New York backcourt that went a combined 10 for 41. He had three assists and four turnovers. He gave Vernon Maxwell about 10 open shots, the Rocket shooting guard figured, though Maxwell missed 12 of his 16 tries.

Game 1 of the NBA finals was a night off in general for decent basketball, but Starks was off, period. No shot was more symbolic than his three-point attempt with 1:40 left, after the Knicks had used a 13-4 rally to close within 79-76. It was an airball, which allowed the Rockets to regain the momentum and hold on for an 85-78 victory.

“I felt I could have played a much better game, both offensively and defensively,” Starks said Thursday before practice at the Summit, site of Game 2 tonight. “As a player, you can’t accept those types of games if you’re going to be out here in those types of situations.”

This situation was supposed to be a culminating moment of sorts for Starks, who had lived the playoff anguish with the other Knicks, but had also endured so much more.

No other Knick (and few in the NBA) had taken his career path, which included four colleges in four years and stints in the Continental Basketball Assn. and something called the World Basketball League before his success as an All-Star guard. He has even come back from March arthroscopic surgery for torn cartilage in his right knee, far enough back to counter Indiana’s Reggie Miller for at least one night when he scored 26 points with New York facing elimination in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Starks says the knee is fine. Teammates and his coach, Pat Riley, say it isn’t. In the meantime, perhaps unable to get the same leg push behind his jumpers, he is a streak shooter who keeps heading in the wrong direction in the playoffs, having gone 36.8% against the Bulls and 39.2% versus the Pacers. Then this.

He was so frustrated after Game 1 that a public relations assistant pulled sentry duty in front of him and told reporters there would be no comment from anyone in this locker stall. Starks, to use his day-after description, was too hot to talk. He was frustrated at a missed opportunity for a victory, but mostly he was hot about being so cold.

“I know that I have to start knocking down my shots,” he said. “These are shots that they are going to give us, and we all have to step up.”

Said Riley: “John is still coming back. He had one truly great game in the playoffs, Game 6 against Indiana, and he had a couple of great moments in some other games. But there has been inconsistency to his game, and I think a lot of it is (because) he’s continually trying to come back and gain everything he lost with the injury. But I expect him to be in a better frame of mind tomorrow.”

The Knicks need him to be, mainly because they can’t count on any other guard. On a team where the two biggest threats from the perimeter, when Starks disappears, are center Patrick Ewing and power forward Charles Oakley, his success is not a luxury but a necessity. So when he heads into tonight’s Game 2 shooting only 36.8% in the playoffs, below his 42% for the regular season and only slightly better than Maxwell’s percentage on three-pointers in the postseason, the problem becomes much bigger than a shooting slump.

The defenders seize on this opportunity, play off the guards and collapse inside to focus on Ewing and Oakley. At that point, the notion of a Knick offense is reduced to a rumor, certain to result in doom unless Starks, Derek Harper (three for 10 in Game 1), Greg Anthony (three for seven) and Hubert Davis (one for six) can keep the Rockets honest by hitting from the outside.

History proves it. In the two regular-season games, both Rocket victories, Starks shot 40.5%, Davis 42.9%, Anthony 33.3% and Harper, in his one game after being traded, 37.5%. The Knicks scored 85 and 73 points, then got 78 Wednesday.

“We missed 22 consecutive shots in Game 1 in New York,” Riley said of the regular season. “We had a drought down here in the second game. We had a miserable drought (Wednesday). Now, their defense has something to do with it, but we go through some horrendous shooting spells, when they’re doubling and taking away our paint game.

“You’re a professional player that gets paid a lot of money, you make those shots. You make them. You make your free throws. . . . We were two for 27 (in one stretch) with 20 dead-open shots. You either make them or you miss, so going out here (in practice) and working on shooting for an hour ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference. You either make them or you don’t.”