Is It A Rivalry Yet?
New Yorkers have been on a seemingly never-ending journey toward basketball relevance.
Unfortunately, the Nets and Knicks’ perpetual rebuilding has grown tiresome, both teams failed to bring LeBron James to the Big Apple this summer and fans continue to ask the same questions:
When will these teams matter again? Who can undo the damage of the last five years? Will the Knicks and Nets ever have a real rivalry?
Answers have been few and far between, but both Nets coach Avery Johnson and Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni agreed on one thing: This still isn’t a rivalry.
"You don’t really get a rivalry until you’re in the playoffs," D’Antoni said before the Knicks’ 111-100 win over the Nets at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. "It doesn’t work in the regular season when you’re, ‘Oh boy, we knocked them out of ninth place.’ That doesn’t work. And I’m sure the goal for Avery is to get his team back up on top. That’s our goal."
"I’ve been saying it all along," Johnson agreed. "I said it this morning. I kind of laugh at that. I’ve been in rivalries before. Maybe if these two teams become perennial playoff contenders, and meet up in the playoffs, then somebody goes home with the agony of defeat, and somebody with the thrill of victory."
But while the rivalry on the court has been thoroughly disappointing, the front offices are competing with each other at a high level.
New Jersey put an enormous billboard of majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov and minority owner Jay-Z outside of Madison Square Garden this summer. The Knicks responded by dropping Amar’e Stoudemire’s likeness near the Barclays Center construction site—the Nets’ future home.
Things got heated this week when the Knicks released a radio spot that said: "Hey Nets. You can walk like us, you can talk like us, but you ain’t never gonna be like us."
Prokhorov responded in a team release. "I don’t think we want to be like the Knicks. I think we’d more like to resemble the Lakers."
But as the front offices continue to take jabs at each other, Johnson readily admits the Nets are still trailing the Knicks in the quest for relevance.
"We’re in a little bit more of a rebuilding mode than they are," Johnson said. "They’re a couple of years ahead of us in terms of their program. So, I think you have to give it a little time before it becomes a rivalry."
Tuesday night exemplified Johnson’s sentiment.
The MSG crowd was reserved as the Nets took a 58-55 halftime lead, but New York outscored New Jersey 35-15 in the third quarter and it quickly became apparent that this is still a Knicks town.
"It was great," Stoudemire said afterward. "The crowd was definitely very pleased with the way we played tonight. So, again, our crowd showed how much enthusiasm is gonna help with us. We’re gonna play even harder out there on the basketball court. And we really started to get the chemistry down. We really figured it out."
{AUTHOR_BOX}The Nets and Knicks are still struggling to put a rivalry together, but Stoudemire may have met his match with New Jersey center Brook Lopez, who scored 21 of his 36 points in the first half.
"I just felt like in the first half I couldn’t play aggressive," Stoudemire said. "I picked up the quick foul early, so I couldn’t play as aggressive in the first half. And in the second half I was able to play a little bit better defense out there."
Stoudemire responded with 12 of his 35 points in the third quarter and spent much of the fourth quarter locked in a duel with the younger Lopez.
"He played great," Stoudemire said. "Once he got the ball low in the post, he’s hard to stop."
New York did reach one milestone in its quest for relevance. With the Tuesday’s win, the Knicks (10-9) are now over .500 at the end of November for the first time since the 2004-2005 season.
"It just shows that we’re going in the right direction," Knicks guard Raymond Felton said. "We continue to stay positive and go in the right direction. We just need to remember that it’s a long season. Just because we’re 10-9 doesn’t mean much. We still have a lot of games to play and a long way to go this season."
Of course, most New Yorkers could have told him that.
Injury note: Devin Harris will have an MRI on Wednesday to determine the extent of his left knee injury. Harris was helped off the floor midway through the third and Johnson said the team is hopeful that he has a strain and not a tear.
"Devin is a guy that we rely on heavily," Johnson said. "In a sense, it would be kind of like if they (the Knicks) lose Stoudemire. On a lot of nights Devin has been one of our top two players. It was tough to overcome it."
The Nets (6-12) will host Oklahoma City on Wednesday night.
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