Frank Isola

They're trying to kind of make sure everyone's healthy before we get into the playoffs by not playing guys in the playoffs roll around.

You want your starters to play big minutes and they're not ready to do that.

Well, it was the classic New York media thing where you had...

Some of the media guys were like so-called team check-ins.

You had some guys that were team Ernie Grunfeld, some guys that were team Jeff Van Gundy.

If you're on the beat every day, you're around Jeff, like you're kind of reporting everything that Jeff says.

So Ernie Grunfeld, if you remember, got fired.

late in that season and you know the Knicks finally started playing well because you know they had made the trade for Sprewell who had been suspended the year before it took Marcus Camby a while to get acclimated to playing in New York and to being you know understanding kind of the physicality it takes in the NBA to go far in the playoffs so you know they they started playing well right toward the end

Then as the eighth seed, they got, let's face it, they got lucky in game five from the standpoint of the bounce of the ball.

Alan Houston shot.

First of all, with replay review, they might have said the ball went off of Latrell Sprewell and not off of Terry Porter.

I remember seeing Terry Porter the next year in Syracuse, of all places.

for a preseason game.

And I didn't know Terry Porter from a hole in the wall.

And I walked up to him.

I said, that ball definitely went off your leg.

And he started yelling, like, you know, Bull, you know what?

That did not.

We had like a fun argument about it.

So Houston makes the crazy shot.