Eventful Knicks season highlights the fickle nature of sports

NEW YORK – In one month and one day and maybe a few hours, the NBA playoffs begin, and in the Eastern Conference the Knicks will travel to Chicago to initiate the amusement.

Or will the Knicks be in Miami, sparking media overkill Armageddon?

Foolish dreams, ridiculous predictions? Well, sure, but life is stuffed with dreamers who are convinced they can win Powerball and fools who remain dead sure their teams aren’t as tragic as the evidence might suggest.

Knickerbocker fans have weathered an especially absurd trip through this abbreviated season. So humor them as they mournfully stare at their Bernard King posters and curse the fickle nature of sports.

It has been quite the hands-in the-air ride, this whirl on the Knicks roller coaster. There was the Jeremy Lin shooting comet, the firing of coach Mike D’Antoni. And then, just as the Knicks were making a push in the Atlantic Division, here comes this: Amare Stoudemire, the heart of the team’s recent renaissance, is sidelined indefinitely with a bulging disc in his lower back.

Like Monty Python’s knight who guards a small bridge, Stoudemire for weeks had been claiming it was just a flesh wound. Muscle tightness, he called it, even as it was obvious his drives to the rim were accompanied by visceral cringes. Finally on Tuesday he met in Miami with the consultant who worked on his troublesome back during the lockout, and while the Knicks cross their fingers and say Stoudemire won’t need season-ending surgery, nobody dares guess whether he’ll be back in time for the postseason.

And now Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks other All Star forward, has again tweaked his groin muscle, and if he misses the next couple of games in this key week, who will fight for the last shot? Anthony put on a gutty performance at the Garden Monday night against Milwaukee, the eight-seed challenger, but as the Knicks clawed back to .500 Melo reinjured his right groin and is listed as questionable for Wednesday’s game against Orlando.

And Lin, the point guard who has slipped back into some kind of normalcy, is nursing a sore right knee. Officially he’s listed as day to day, which wouldn’t sound so grim if Baron Davis, the veteran point, weren’t dealing with a screaming hamstring and struggling to recover from a herniated disc in his back and seemingly breaking down every other second.

And Jared Jeffries, the energetic reserve forward, could pick up at least some of the slack from the absent Stoudemire, except that Jeffries is out for at least two weeks with an inflamed right knee.

And in a word, geez.

Next we’ll hear that a Knick got injured on a trampoline, playing with Joba’s kid, and those who dabble in schadenfreude will have a good laugh.

The Knicks have been rebuilding for this century and a good part of last, so revolving lineups are as common as Walt Frazier’s colorful idioms. The bar has been set so low, this team could grab the No. 8 seed, get swept by either the Bulls or the Heat, and owner James Dolan will still pull something while celebrating his success.

They traded away young talent to grab Anthony, so “wait until next year” hardly applies. But this has been a season stocked with surprises – beginning from the moment Lin burst onto the scene – and now it bears the faint hint of 1999.

That fun house began with a shortened season via a lockout, and there were the splashy trades that brought aboard Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby, and injuries to Patrick Ewing and Sprewell, and supposedly worrisome chemistry issues that really weren’t that worrisome. The Knicks barely squeaked into the playoffs as the eighth seed, played exceptional defense down the stretch, got spark and vigor from role players, beat Miami in the opening round, lost their big guy (Ewing) in the conference finals and still lugged that baggage all the way to Game 5 of the Finals.

Which they lost, but it was still some kind of ride.

So definitely, the playoffs can still loom.

"We can't look back," said Mike Woodson, the interim coach who took over for D’Antoni and has the Knicks playing inspired defense and grinding out victories. "We've got to continue to play and try to win games."

Remove Stoudemire from the equation, because the best-case scenario still has him out for four weeks. He was devastated by the death of his brother earlier this year, and turned to his work to block the pain. But the back muscle he pulled while trying to dunk during warmups before a playoff game last season never cooperated, and now the Knicks season adds another layer of doubt.

Throw in his history of knee problems and Stoudemire’s time in New York hasn’t exactly been a booming success.

Thus the heavy offensive load falls on Anthony, and isn’t that what he’s always craved? It was quite a happy coincidence that his energy and pop returned just as D’Antoni lost his job.

"A situation like this requires me to step my game up a little bit more, take it up a notch. I love moments like this,” Anthony had said, before he came down clutching his groin following a spin move Monday night late in the third quarter.

He had 28 points and took brutal punishment getting to the line, but jumpers are difficult to do when the groin keeps barking. It’s the same injury that caused him to miss seven games in February, but he insisted this one was less severe than his previous ailment. He also said he didn’t notice the loud cries of “Not again” from the Garden crowd as he limped down the court.

"I don't think it's too bad," Anthony said. "I just want to take it day by day, get it re-evaluated and see what happens from there." Don’t we all?