New York Tabloids Taking Target Practice On Knicks

Start spreading the news: Heaven help the team that disappoints the New York tabloids, now lining up the Knicks in their bombsights.

Since the five Knick starters are from four teams and, because of injuries, have been together for three games, this is even fast for the tabloids, but they’re the reason that if you make it there, you can make it anywhere. Editors at one joked about doing an analysis of what had gone wrong after the loss to the Lakers--in the third game.

Last week the Knicks lost three in a row, including a rout by the Seattle SuperSonics that had Madison Square Garden fans booing thunderously in the third quarter and deserting en masse in the fourth, and the scribes going for the Knicks’ throats.

“Playing like expensive flops, like the Jets,” wrote the Daily News’ Mike Lupica.

“Van Gundy’s Honeymoon Lasts as Long as Pamela Anderson’s Marriage,” said the Post headline on Peter Vecsey’s column.

The same tabloids were giddy with excitement when Madison Square Garden boss Dave Checketts and Knick President Ernie Grunfeld went for broke, trading for Larry Johnson, giving themselves the cap room and the glow to sign Allan Houston and Chris Childs, rearming their tired team and, if you looked at it just right, offering fans hope with their $1,000 courtside seats.

The Knicks can’t complain of being over-hyped, since they started it. Introducing the new players, Grunfeld compared the acquisitions to getting Patrick Ewing in the first lottery, setting the franchise up for the inevitable.

It was an old Knick, Pat Riley, who charged after leaving that everything in the team’s recent history has to be understood in light of Checketts’ attempt to secure his position with the new corporate owners, ITT and Cablevision.

A wealthy franchise like the Lakers likes to think of itself as a $250-million property. MSG, with its prime Manhattan location and cable network, went for $1 billion--$200 million too much, financial analysts claimed--obliging the new owners to squeeze the last dollar out of the operation and Checketts to prove he could get it for them, raising prices and flogging sales while trying to rebuild on the fly.

The imaginative Checketts did a remarkable job, but it came at a price: He has little choice but to re-sign Ewing, 34, and he will be capped for the rest of the century and perhaps the rest of Johnson’s guaranteed-till-2004 career.

Another old Knick, Don Nelson, said it was time for Ewing to step back, but Ewing didn’t listen to anything he said, which is why Nellie is on Maui today. Now an old Ewing ally, Coach Jeff Van Gundy, must persuade his center to give up shots--in a contract season--lest Johnson and Houston wither as did Charles Smith, who arrived with a 19-point average and left four years later, a shell of himself.

Last week, Grunfeld was vowing not to “set off any alarms” so early. “We won’t know what we really have till game 30 or 40,” he said.

In other words, they’ve got until February to take off, or it will officially be time to panic.

The tabloids, which won’t wait that long, are already at their fail-safe points.

“We’re not on Defcon Five,” says a New York writer, “yet.”

BICKERSTAFF GETS THE DENVER BOOT

It’s difficult to figure out what the Nuggets’ master plan is, or if there is one.

General Manager-Coach Bernie Bickerstaff, who built what looked like a rising power, started accumulating old guys, possibly because he was tired of trying to get through to the kids.

Charlie Lyons, the team’s chief executive officer, let him do it--possibly because he’s so intent on selling the team and he isn’t paying attention in the interim.

Less than three years after they KO’d the SuperSonics in the first round of the playoffs and took Utah to seven games in the second while Bronco quarterback John Elway did pregame intros, shouting “Are you ready to Mutombo?” they have gone from the House of Mutombo to an old age home with Ricky Pierce, 37; Dale Ellis, 36; LaSalle Thompson, 33; Mark Jackson, 32; Sarunas Marciulionis, 32; Tom Hammonds, 31, and Ervin Johnson, 30.

Attendance has dropped 3,000 a game and it might have been worse but for the NHL champion Avalanche, the Nuggets’ corporate brother and the city’s new darling, moving people up on its waiting list for buying Nugget tickets.

Not that everyone is going for it.

“I’m not going to pay to watch a crummy basketball team,” Jason Peters, a 24-year-old mechanic on the Avalanche list, told the Denver Post before the season.

With the Nuggets even crummier, Lyons forced Bickerstaff to choose between jobs. Bickerstaff fled upstairs--he had only returned to coaching at Lyons’ insistence after Dan Issel split--installing assistant Dick Motta, 65, in his place, with a contract extending through 1997-98.

Dikembe Mutombo is in Atlanta. LaPhonso Ellis, the other star of the ’94 team, has another knee injury and a contract that runs out in 1998. Antonio McDyess’ contract is up then too.

“We’re putting [Motta] in a very difficult situation,” said Bickerstaff, in a moment of candor. “I think he’s as excited as you can be, going into a difficult situation.”

That’s not very excited, but Motta never thought he would get another chance and, as he noted cheerily, “I don’t need a damn job.”

In today’s NBA, where more players are free agents, there’s a thin line between being a power and a colony. The Nuggets, no longer young, no longer rising, are so far over it, they can barely see it when they look back.

NAMES AND NUMBERS

Big D, as in Dud: Here’s how bad the Dallas Mavericks are going--they got taken in a trade by M.L. Carr. The Celtics get the Mavericks’ top draft choice next spring in the Eric Montross deal and it looks like a lottery pick. When Dallas lost at the FleetCenter last week, a fan held up a banner: “No matter who loses, we win.”

Over-jayed: The three Js--Jamal Mashburn, who averaged only nine points and shot 35% before suffering a broken cheekbone, Jim Jackson and Jason Kidd--have played together in 76 of a possible 177 games, making it harder for the Mavericks to determine if they have to make changes. “Yeah, it does,” Coach Jim Cleamons said. “But this is the hand fate has dealt us. We can’t cry about it. You just go on. I can’t get discouraged. They can’t get discouraged.” Translation: He hopes the biggest underachievers in basketball don’t get any more discouraged than they already were.

Kidd is considered the keeper, even thrashing around as he is. Mashburn’s contract has five years and $25 million left. Jackson’s contract is up in 1998, making it hard to move him, though he still has admirers, such as Detroit personnel director Rick Sund, who drafted him as a Maverick and thinks he’s a good guy in a bad situation.

Every week it’s a different Dennis Rodman. Two weeks ago, he said he was happier than he had ever been. Last week he let Karl Malone pile up 36 points in the Bulls’ first loss, staying inside and letting him shoot jump shots, later professing his lack of interest. “It was like I wasn’t really out there ready to be playing,” Rodman said. “Karl Malone could have gotten 100 points and it wouldn’t have mattered to me.” . . . Teammates await developments with interest, if not sympathy. “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Scottie Pippen said. “He should have thought about that before he signed his deal. He’s disinterested now and we haven’t even gotten through the first month.”

Every year we make one book recommendation and it’s always the same book, the latest edition of Rick Barry’s “Pro Basketball Bible,” a guide for hard-core fans who want to know the real deal. Barry and co-author Jordan Cohn aren’t mean, but they are to the point as in reports on Jackson (“Likes to point finger--he doesn’t accept blame. What we see is a guy who puts Jimmy first, second and last.”) and Alonzo Mourning (“What’s the ultimate compliment--and litmus test--about great players? They don’t let their teams lose. In his four years, Mourning’s teams have won a total of five playoff games.”)

The Celtics also toppled a vastly superior--on paper, anyway--Laker force, but it wasn’t a completely triumphant week. Pervis Ellison, the closest thing they had to an NBA center with Alton Lister out, dropped a table on his already injured big toe while helping a friend move. Said Carr, misplacing his trademark enthusiasm, “Obviously, I would have rather he called Allied or someone else.”