Knicks resurgence will be tested by upcoming schedule

NEW YORK -- You can see the excitement in Mike D'Antoni and you can't blame him for being a little fired up.

After two frustrating seasons of dealing with a temporary roster and waiting for a star to carry his offense, the head coach of the New York Knicks finally has real talent to work with. His patience has paid off and his new team is actually performing better than he expected.

A month ago, New York was in the middle of a six-game losing streak and looking a lot like the Knicks of the previous six seasons, an offensive team that wasn't very good offensively.

But that slide is long forgotten now that they've won 12 of their last 13 games. At 15-9, the Knicks are tied with the Atlanta Hawks for the fifth best record in the East, in position to end the conference's longest playoff drought.

Expectations have risen in the Big Apple, where, for the first time in seven years, New Yorkers can happily divert their attention from baseball and football and enjoy the hoops being played at Madison Square Garden. D'Antoni welcomes the increased profile and the expectations that come with a higher place in the standings.

"I'd rather have it that way than the other way," he said this week. "I like the excitement around the team. I like that people think we can be better and I want them to think that. But not get caught up in it."

Higher expectations have replaced a culture of losing in the Knicks' locker room, where the only reminder of the Isiah Thomas era is Eddy Curry's nameplate. This team has a new attitude and it hasn't just come with the wins.

It started with a simple, four-word proclamation: "The Knicks are back."

Amar'e Stoudemire made that claim when he agreed to sign a five-year contract with New York in early July, even though no other high-profile free agents were ready to join him.

The statement was met with some skepticism at the time. The only Knick of the last several years who would have dared make a proclamation like that was Stephon Marbury. But Marbury's claims of being the best point guard in the NBA and promises of playoff success in New York always proved to be empty.

Right now, Stoudemire looks to be both prophet and shepherd.

Statistically, the Knicks are the second-most improved team in the league (behind only Miami), 7.4 points per 100 possessions better than they were last season. They rank fifth in the league offensively, scoring 108.6 points per 100 possessions.

And Stoudemire has led the way. He took on the burden of being the face of the franchise and has shouldered more than his share of the load on the court, leading the Knicks in scoring, rebounding and blocks. In Friday's win in Washington, he tied a franchise record with his seventh straight 30-point game.

And this stretch of 13 games has been all about the offense, because the Knicks' defense, which is allowing 106.2 points per 100 possessions in the 13 contests, has actually been worse than it was in the team's first 11 (103.9). They've made some timely stops during this stretch, but overall, the Knicks rank 18th in the league defensively.

"We feel like we can play with the best of them," Stoudemire said. "But it's a matter of us getting better defensively. That's the area we've got to continue to improve."

The winning has also come with a caveat. The Knicks have played the weakest schedule in the league and only two of their 15 victories have come over teams with winning records. Their win over the Bulls came more than five weeks ago, and last Friday's win in New Orleans came with David West not in uniform. So for now, D'Antoni understands that pundits must wait until they beat some quality teams before claiming that the Knicks are for real.

"Anytime that you're doing better than what most people think, you're there until you beat somebody," D'Antoni said.

But the Knicks can't be blamed for not beating teams that aren't on their schedule. And they've done a better job than most teams in this league of winning the games they're supposed to. They know their record might be a little inflated and they know they still have a lot of work to do, but they're as anxious to see what they can do against quality teams as anyone else.

Now is when they get that chance. Starting with Sunday's visit from the Denver Nuggets, of the Knicks' next 14 games, only two (Dec. 18 at Cleveland and Jan. 7 at Phoenix) are against teams not above .500. And the combined winning percentage of the 13 opponents (they play Miami twice) in that 4 ½ week stretch is 0.632.

"We'll see if we're good enough," D'Antoni said. "I don't know. I hope we are and I know we're playing well."

Even if the Knicks struggle in this next month, you get the sense that they'll recover and continue to beat the teams they're supposed to, because they've already bounced back from a bad stretch this season.

"There's resilience in this team," D'Antoni said. "And I think Amar'e and Raymond set the tone that, OK, we went down a little bit, now let's come back up."

John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.