GREENBURGH, New York, January 29, 2007 -- A new old face on the floor: for the first time since going home to Washington D.C. to rehabilitate his injured knee, Steve Francis was back at the Madison Square Garden Training Center participating in some non-contact practice with the rest of the Knicks. “It feels much better. I should be ready to play in a game in two weeks or so,” he said. “I know it won’t be easy to reintegrate myself into the rotation -- the guys at my position are playing great. But I feel I can help. Especially with free throws.”

Oh yes, those pesky freebies have remained a topic of turmoil after the Knicks missed ten of them in a two-point loss to Milwaukee yesterday. “The thing that’s frustrating for me and for our team, and I take this upon myself, that I can’t find a way to get us to do a better job converting at the foul line,” Coach Isiah Thomas said. “We play good basketball -- it’s always tough to go into somebody else’s building and win. And in the NBA, most games are pretty close. So the free stuff that we get…We work hard to get them. We do the right things to get there -- and then we don’t convert.“

“What’s our record now, 19-27? We could very easily be 27-19. We’ve lost games, some crucial games, because of the foul line, our inability to make free throws.”

What irks Thomas in particular about this is the very free-ness of the whole business. “The other things, such as defense for instance, the opponent has a say in,” said the coach. “But not in what’s given free. It’s easy to say ‘make two more stops’, then the guy shoots a twenty-footer with one second to go with two guys double teaming him. The opponent has something, a lot, to do with that. But they have absolutely nothing to do with you standing at the foul line and making a free throw.”

“I don’t even know if we’re at the NBA average right now,” added the coach. “We’ve got to get better. That’s the only way you’re going to move along and move up the ladder. Now you’ve done all the big things, you’ve tackled all the hurdles and mountains and everything else. Now you’ve got to do the simple things that determine winning and losing.”

A not so simple thing that’ll determine winning or losing tomorrow night will be guarding Kobe Bryant. “There’s really no answer to Kobe,” Thomas shook his head in admiration. “We’ll try to do some things but I’m sure none of them will really work. There are few guys who’ve come along where you can talk about (Michael) Jordan and him in the same breath. He is one of them. And I don’t know if there’s really been anybody else.”

“With Kobe, you can legitimately make that comparison.”

“He is the best two guard in the game, without question,” Jamal Crawford who will likely start out guarding Kobe, agreed. “It’s a unique challenge.”

If possible, Bryant has gotten better this season. “His mental makeup and maturity, definitely,” said Thomas. “He’s improved in leading and understanding his teammates. He appears to be more compassionate rather than a domineering type of person. Which seems to be working with his teammates because they are responding to that type of leadership.”

But the best, or in this case most important, things in life are still free(throws). “We’ve had focus on it since the first day of training camp,” said Thomas. “Whatever I have to do about this, you can darn sure bet it will get done. I really don’t have the answer right now. But it will get done and it’s not going to be some psychological boon, free throw shooting coach, nothing like that. We are going to take care of right here, out on the floor.”

“We pretty much control our own destiny,” said Crawford. “When we had eight guys, we won what, four in a row? Four out of five, something like that. So we feel we’re capable of going on a streak. We know our situation regarding the playoff race. We just have to focus more on little things, whether it’s free throws, a loose ball here and there, we’ve just got to want it.”

“And I think we have a group of guys that do want it. Very much.”