A City So Big, One Scapegoat Is Not Enough

New York story, or give us the head of whomever: All life in Gotham may not be tabloid-driven but all sports are, leading to the recent contest to see who would be thrown to the mob first, Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy or General Manager Ernie Grunfeld.

For a while, it looked as if it would be that blue-plate special, the coach--until Patrick Ewing and the veterans lined up behind Van Gundy.

So Grunfeld, who traded Charles Oakley and broke up last season’s great team--which finished seventh in the East--went under the gun.

Everyone had his favorite, although either would have been OK. In New York, the important thing is that the fans get fed on time.

Even the once-detached New York Times weighed in with a hard look at Grunfeld, noting the contracts of such humble players as Chris Dudley (four years, $28 million) and Charlie Ward (five years, $27 million), with Madison Square Garden boss Dave Checketts conceding, “For what we’ve invested, the results have been disappointing.”

The operative word wasn’t “disappointing” but “we.” Checketts and Grunfeld were a team--and a good one--holding back the inevitable each year, patching their fading, hopelessly capped team, even if it took ever-bigger gambles on ever-more-marginal characters, to legitimize ever-increasing ticket prices (now $1,350 for courtside).

The problem was the path Checketts chose in 1995, Pat Riley’s last season, when it began to look as if this nucleus had been as far as it was going to go.

Riley was willing to rebuild, as long as he received the assurance he wouldn’t be made the patsy, in the form of a new contract--at market prices, of course. He had a good idea what the market would bear because the Miami Heat, which ultimately won his hand, was faxing him feelers.

As usual, Madison Square Garden was being juggled from one corporate owner to another, going to Cablevision for a cool $1 billion. Checketts, then Knick president, promised the new owners he could keep the place profitable. Happy to take him at his word, they bumped him up to Garden president.

After that, there was a new dictum: “The Knicks can’t ever afford to rebuild.”

Great. Maybe they could live forever, instead.

They gave Ewing $68 million to go with expectations he couldn’t have met if he was 27 instead of 37. They assumed $84 million worth of debt to Larry Johnson, hoping he wasn’t mostly used up, but he was.

Worried by their advancing age and declining win totals, they traded their unsung MVP, Oakley, 36, for the talented, clue-challenged Marcus Camby, whom Van Gundy promptly sat on the bench.

Finally, they added untamable Latrell Sprewell, who not only couldn’t shoot 40% but terrorized Allan Houston.

The cash cow kept producing--the Knicks’ sellout streak goes back more than six seasons and Riley has been gone five--but the team moldered until it became obvious an underling would have to be sacrificed.

Which underling it was to be inspired great debate, obscuring the fact that it didn’t really matter, because the future was becoming increasingly hopeless.

Gotham being Gotham, it was glamorous as well as meaningless. Noted screenwriter and Knick fan William Goldman (“All the President’s Men,” “Misery,” “The Princess Bride,” “Marathon Man”) wrote a letter to the New York Daily News, demanding the head of Van Gundy--”the basset hound of the NBA”--claiming the press defends him because “he is nice to everybody, tries hard, will lick your hand at the least opportunity and talks to sportswriters.”

(Goldman also savaged the local writers: “[Jay] Greenberg and [Mitch] Lawrence, they come with my morning coffee and they are killing me this year. . . . [The Times’] Mike Wise thinks Charles Oakley likes him. . . . [The Times’] Selena Roberts has style and she is new and she is a woman and for those reasons, I cannot be critical of her. So all I will say is that she is a disgrace.”)

The Knicks offed Grunfeld, instead, but the good news for Goldman is, Van Gundy will be next, as sure as Ewing’s next birthday will make him 37.

And with change-minded Rupert Murdoch--remember Mike Piazza? Remember Dodger Stadium?--increasing his Garden stake to 40%, who knows how long even the able, smooth-as-chinchilla Checketts will last?

With Grunfeld “reassigned” and Ewing hurt, the Knicks actually made a memorable run, rallying from 23 points down at Miami, winning the next night at Charlotte. Irony of ironies, a resurgent Camby tied the Miami game with a late three-point play, then blocked seven shots at Charlotte.

(Is it too late to take Grunfeld back and fire Van Gundy?)

In real life, it was Grunfeld who went. It wasn’t Van Gundy. And squeezing into the No. 8 playoff slot won’t change anything, nor will winning one series, even if meeting the Knicks in the first round is Riley’s worst nightmare.

The Knicks have to rebuild, just like everyone else. They need the Garden to fall in on them first, but it’s rumbling.

FACES AND FIGURES

Of course, from strip-mall-land, they look OK: Coney Island native Stephon Marbury, who dreamed of being a Knick, keeps zinging Ward and Chris Childs, even after they held him to eight points with eight turnovers in a Knick romp over the New Jersey Nets in a recent meeting.

“They’ll never win a championship with those two guys at point guard,” Marbury insisted. “You can put that on the back page if you want to because they’re not the guards that you need to win a championship. It’s just not going to happen. Never, ever, never. Never continuous to eternity, decimal, decimal, decimal. They might not even make the playoffs.”

This looks like still another sign that Marbury regrets joining the Nets, who, of course, will definitely not make the playoffs.

* Here’s a good one: Johnson says he’s upset with his role in New York, isn’t having much fun, etc. The Knicks would love to send him anywhere he’d be happier, but with Johnson averaging 13 points and six rebounds and due $24.4 million the next two seasons, who knows, they may not be able to find a taker.

* Not that things are getting desperate in Seattle but: Gary Payton, fuming after the SuperSonics’ recent 35-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, yelled at his agent, Aaron Goodwin: “You better do something about this [stuff]! I’m tired of this [stuff]! You better do something about this [stuff]!”

Said Goodwin after friends whisked Payton away: “I know deep down he wants to be here [in Seattle]. But he hates losing and he is losing right now. He is being double-teamed everywhere he goes. He is getting no help. Brian [Grant] told him, ‘If you guys beat us, we are not going to let you beat us.’ It was pure frustration, nothing else.”

* The perils of Nick: Denver Nugget insiders said Coach Mike D’Antoni would never bring Nick Van Exel back, but with new owners taking over, D’Antoni is thought to be history--and Van Exel will get a new contract. Said General Manager Dan Issel: “If we’re going to be a playoff contender, we need to have a point guard. You know, you have to cast your lot with people as you go through this world and I’ve cast mine with Nick Van Exel being the point guard of this team. . . . You might scoff at this, but Nick Van Exel is not a bad person.”

We know, we know. We said that for years. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just Nick.

* If there is one thing the lockout proved, it’s that there’s no pressing need for professional basketball before Jan. 1, or a season longer than 60 games. Breaking a management taboo, Riley is advocating just that.

“People would have rest,” he said. “Injuries would be cut down. The commissioner definitely doesn’t want to hear that and I will probably get fined for it. He would say, ‘Pat, would you take a 22-game pay cut?’ ” And how would he respond? “I don’t get paid by the game,” Riley said.

* More proof this short season is already too long: Coach George Karl of the Milwaukee Bucks banned hangers-on from the dressing room, noting, “They want to tell you what you want to hear. That the coach is wrong or Glenn [Robinson] is shooting too much. The weak player can be influenced. I’ve heard that some players hire people to call the talk shows on a regular basis. I’ve heard that certain writers are being paid by players or someone who is in the player’s entourage.”

Yeah, right.