Right Now, The Little Things Matter A Lot

“Only of those guys take mercy on me,” the Knicks President and Head Coach responds upon hearing of Marbury’s comments. “Only if they play at half speed.”

Yes, the mood was utterly upbeat -- but also mixed in with an almost defiant aura of determination and commitment -- around the Madison Square Garden Training Center at practice. To a man, the team feels it is right on the verge of something much better. But, if reactivating Thomas, one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players, is not that elusive X-factor, how to get from here to there?

There’ no simple solution -- the theories practically outnumber the players.

“We do so many things right,” second-year forward Channing Frye shakes his head. “We’re there all four quarters. Then, at the end of the game, two or three loose balls, two or three missed rebounds…it’s just execution. Isiah and the coaching staff are putting us in situations where we can be successful. We just have to go grab it.”

“It comes down to maturity as a team,” said last night’s hero Nate Robinson. “We keep on falling behind and it’s kind of hard playing catch up the whole game. That’s what we’re working on now, preparing ourselves to get better early in the game.”

“We need better focus and concentration when things get tough,” said David Lee. “It’s okay for teams to put up 4-6 point runs on you. That happens. That’s just the NBA, and you can respond. But we have to clamp down mentally and avoid the 12-15 point runs that get you into situations where you fight back and still fall short.”

“On our team, everybody can score,” chimed in Robinson. “It’s about stopping the other team, stopping the other guy. And it’s about making that mindset a team wide thing.”

“We’ve got to come out with more force at the beginning of the game,” center Eddy Curry agreed. “We can’t wait until we get kicked in the face to try to fight back. We get in that first initial punch and the game will be different. Coach keeps pushing us in that direction.”

“I think the pieces are all in place,’’ said Jared Jeffries, the injured small forward-defensive specialist who’s been watching avidly from the sidelines. “Am I the missing element? Well, I can’t say that -- but I hope to be a part of it. Once I’m coming back, once Jerome (James) is coming back, with the guys we have…It’s just small mistakes. You need to get a couple of wins to get used to winning. We take losing so personal. You want to be a part of something. We have a chance here to be a part of something great. We just got to get a couple of chips to fall the right way.”

“You’ve got to realize, whenever you have a new system, new players, it takes time,” added Jeffries. “We have the guys here to win, no doubt. But you are putting together a lot of pieces to a puzzle… These are all things the teams we’ve played against so far this year -- they’ve been together 3-4-5 years -- already have down pat.”

“It’s the small things,” said Thomas. “It’s the loose balls, it’s the block-out, it’s the turnover… When you’re this close, that’s the extra we’ve got to give. And that’s the extra we’ve got to get.”

“Isiah’s trying to convince us that we’re better than what we’re putting out,” said Marbury. “And he’s right, we are. Much better. But we have to go out there and play for 48 minutes. Put together a whole game. At this point we haven’t done that yet. We have lapses.”

‘’We are playing in spurts,” Marbury averred. “There are periods every game where we’re not rotating on defense, not rebounding, not doing whatever. We haven’t yet played the complete game. And that’s what it’s going to take.”

Of his own play, “It’s an adjustment,” Marbury said. “I know what I’m capable of doing on the basketball court but I’ve been trying to get our young guys, Eddy Curry and Channing Frye, going because that’s what this team is going to need in the long run. I’ve had lanes to drive but I’ve been kicking it out for the jump shot. It’s different from last season, though. I’m doing what I’m doing by choice. I’m playing this way because I want something at the end. I’m comfortable trying to win.”

Still, how to find the optimum balance between scoring and dishing, between discriminating distribution and all-out aggression? It’s tough -- or is it? “We just need him to be Stephon Marbury,” said Robinson. “The player everybody knows, we all know, he can be.”

“In time, it’s going to happen,” said Marbury. “I know that, so I’m patient. And when it happens it’s going to be something. And when it happens it’s not going to happen for a week. It’s going to happen for the long haul. It’s going to happen for some months.”

“Right now, it may seem dark. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel.”