COMMENTARY : Riley Claims Edge for Knicks

Pat Riley says there is an edge to his team. Most of the time it does a job on the other team. Sometimes it is the Knicks themselves who get nicked. They were at it again the other night in Atlanta. John Starks wanted to take a big shot, Patrick Ewing took it instead, Starks yelled at Ewing, Ewing looked like he wanted to slap Starks at midcourt. Some of Ewing’s teammates thought he would go after Starks in the locker room, but he never got the chance. Riley beat him to it.

“Who are you to ever question anybody’s shot selection?” Riley screamed at Starks. Then he asked Starks, in front of the team and at full pitch, if any of his teammates had ever once questioned him about shooting 2-for-18 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

“Did anybody in here ever say a word to you about that?” Riley said.

There had also been some bickering in last week’s Knicks-Hawks game between Starks and Greg Anthony about a bad pass, and whose fault it was. Riley had seen and heard enough, and benched Starks and Anthony for the next night’s game against the 76ers. He has done this kind of thing before to Starks, and Anthony, and Anthony Mason. He suspended Mason at the end of last season because Mason had such a big mouth. This isn’t the Warriors. Riley isn’t Don Nelson. He doesn’t trade unhappy players like Chris Webber. He puts them at the end of the bench and then forgets they’re even in the gym.

“There’s nothing wrong with having an edge on,” Riley said after the Knicks’ morning shoot-around, a few feet from the court at Madison Square Garden. “Sometimes you even have to create one.”

The Knicks are the best show we have had around here in a long time, whether they ever win a championship or not. The Mets of the middle 1980s were the last New York team to give you this kind of color. You are afraid to miss a day, because somebody new could blow his top. That includes the coach. Riley wrote a book called “The Winner Within” but he can act as edgy as any of his players when the winner within can’t get out.

Riley spoke recently about the “self-centered, greed-oriented, defiant attitudes” that have been running rampant in the NBA over the last five years, attitudes he believes “are going to bring this league down.” Later he was asked if taking away playing time is the last real weapon the coach has left.

“It’s playing time or coaching time,” Riley said.

Riley means players get you fired. It won’t happen here. Riley may leave on his own after this season. There is a contract extension on the table worth at least $3 million a year. No other coach or manager in sports is making close to that. But the contract remains unsigned. It means Riley hasn’t decided he wants to stay here. If this is his last season, then it becomes the last act of a basketball drama that sometimes feels like the pulp fiction of the NBA, and makes the Knicks a better show than ever.

Pat Riley says the Knicks have this edge to them. Maybe they just are always on the edge. It is part of their personality, and their flinty charm. Maybe this is their last shot at a title.