Now that probably sounds too grumpy, and it *was* great to see David Lee playing so hard and making his case for an all-star selection on Friday night, to see Wilson Chandler step out of his six game funk with a great effort,  to see Jordan Hill hold his own against the Laker frontline, and to see the Knicks execute well for the better part of three quarters against a vastly superior team. The buzz at the Garden over Clinton's halftime appearance on behalf of Haiti, and all the resulting photo-ops with various Knick and Laker players and coaches, was great theater for an important cause. I can admit to an especially warm feeling when the usual sizeable contingent of Laker fans at MSG started the MVP chants for Kobe in the second half, and were met with very loud boos. Go New York Go!

Tie it all together with a pretty bow, courtesy of a flattering New York Times piece on the blossoming of hope in New York for the Knicks, and the encouraging sales of tickets in a recession, and how could you not feel good about the home team, no matter how shaky the team has looked lately? I'm an optimist, and I do like and support the long term plan. And the culture has changed for the better, and the team has played hard since its early season troubles and had success.

But I've maintained my distance from the unbridled optimism some of my fellow fans have in analyzing schedules and tracking all the playoff contenders in the East, living and dying with every Bull and Bobcat and Buck and Sixer win and loss, and hoping for a pox to fall on all of them.  That's because the Knicks still haven't convinced me that they're truly gained separation in the race among flawed Eastern Conference teams, and staked a credible and sustainable path toward the eighth seed. As injured and messed up as the Sixers, Pistons, Pacers and Wizards have been, these teams have enough talent to overtake the Knicks in the standings with a modest surge...and suddenly you're one of the worst half-dozen teams in the league.

That's not my cynicism coming out, or an indictment of the coaching staff. I've been witness all season to hypercritical Knick fans not giving the coach or GM a chance, who tend to bring up past narratives of failure and dysfunction and shoehorn this year's struggles too easily into those cookie-cutter narratives. Not to mention fans of other teams who don't bother to track the positives and jump on any public sign of weakness or failure to conjure up their own facile narratives and punchlines  ("OMG the Knicks, again, who else?" "Why would Player X ever come to NY?!")

I'm not with the cynics or the haters, not even close. I believe things will be better, are better, and will continue to get better for this franchise. My concerns are short term. Let's put aside the playoff chase for a moment. Can this Knicks team not only continue to show improvement, but stay relevant, and not just be a cursory speed bump for other teams with playoff aspirations with a full half season of games left? Because that's what has me spooked about the plummeting quality of play for most of the last eight games. 

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Which brings us to the bottom dropping out on Sunday afternoon against Dallas, so quickly after that Laker loss. Yes, it's only one game. And I suspect many Knick fans expected losses in both these games, even with two of Dallas' starters absent, given the Mavericks' impressive depth. And when a loss is this bad, numbers and analysis and probing for causes seem beside the point. The Knicks just failed to show up, and ran into a very hot team bothered by its own abysmal effort against the 76ers two nights before.

But the record setting nature of this loss at home, and how total the surrender was, was an unpleasant reminder of the two worst losses last year that nuked the season for good: back to back 26 and 27 point losses (also at home!) to the Nets (without Devin Harris) and to the Kings (who hadn't beaten any East team before the Knicks, and then proceeded to lose 11 of their next 13 games). Mike D'Antoni's quote after the Kings loss: 

That 10 month old quote travels well to describe what happened against the Mavs, and adequately describes the root of every significant Knick struggle in their most poorly played games the last two seasons. The Knicks have made some strides on defense this season, but even when they play well, they rarely overwhelm opponents. They can't survive mediocre to poor shooting or even slight jumps in their turnovers (as has been the case the last two weeks), and they don't rebound well enough or get to the free throw line enough most games to enable themselves to grind out the occasional off-night.

One of the few things they've done well this season -- defend the 3 point line, where they've been 2nd to the Lakers in effective FG% allowed on 3 pointers -- has taken a nasty nose dive recently. Leave out the two games against Detroit (the 2nd worst 3 point shooting team in the league), and in their last 3 games against the Mavs, Lakers and Raptors, the Knicks have given up 36 made 3 pointers in 67 attempts, a mind boggling 80.6 eFG% (league average is 52.5 eFG%).

When you look at this unholy trinity of poorer shooting, more turnovers, and poorer 3 point defense, it's not a surprise teams are running up bigger leads and getting the Knicks on their heels much more in recent games. And if that wasn't fun enough, health issues with Harrington and Robinson -- two of the best offensive players on the team -- have crippled the offense even more.

There's still a good 39 games left in the season, plenty of time to get out of this tailspin. And last year's twin 20+ point beatings came late in the season, when the Knicks were already looking like an extreme long shot for the playoffs. But the team never recovered any sense of real competitiveness or swagger after those debacles: subsequent "good" games involved coming back from huge deficits to make a game briefly competitive in the 4th quarter (sound familiar?), and there were many bad games before the season mercifully ended. 

To avoid a similar descent into the netherzone this season, the coaches have to get the players to remember that they're capable of making stops, that they had a sustained stretch of good defense (albeit against weaker opponents) in December, and that they can't allow offensive struggles (or the occasional outstanding play by the opponent on offense) to dictate their defensive effort. The Dallas game showed the Knicks that even players at the end of their bench can destroy them if they don't have that fundamental commitment to being competitive on both ends of the floor.

It should be a good thing that the Timberwolves are the next opponent on Tuesday night. Such is the state of this Knicks team, though, that a game against the Wolves is far from a sure thing. The Knicks can start their recovery and re-stake their claim to relevancy by giving their fans the confidence they can easily win games like this. Expect a very bumpy ride, though, recovering from the scars of the Maverick beatdown.