Knicks Insider

Perhaps the most telling interview of all that the Knicks’ Big 2.5 have done since the trade was a sit-down with former Georgetown coach John Thompson for NBAtv’s “True NBA.” Leave it to the straight-shooting Thompson to get down to business in a hurry.

“Whose team is this?”

The three All-Stars grinned politely and remained silent for a moment. Then Amar’e Stoudemire tried to be diplomatic by offering the Hall of Fame coach a cliché.

“I’m sure in your coaching days, you said it best: ‘There’s no I in team’ and you can’t win with one individual player,” Stoudemire said.

Thompson wasn’t having any of that.

“No, I said it another way,” he immediately shot back.

“What was that?” Amar’e replied.

Growled Thompson, “It’s my damn team.”

History lesson

Haven’t we seen this before? As the Knicks stumble down the stretch, it’s impossible not to recall the lockout-shortened 1999 season, in which new faces — Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby — were struggling to fit in and a talented Knicks team was in danger of missing the playoffs after losing four straight.

The Knicks clinched a playoff berth with a win over the Celtics in the second-to-last game of that season. The Knicks needed six wins in their final eight games just to snag the eighth and final berth in the East.

“We only played 50 games and people don’t realize that there were a lot of new faces on the team,” Kurt Thomas told author Dennis D’Agostino in the wonderful “Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks.”

“Myself, Marcus, Sprewell. It took time for all of us to jell together. That year was up and down, up and down. We’d win a few games, we’d lose a few games. For some reason, we couldn’t place our finger on what was going on.

“But then, right before the end of the season, when we were fighting for the eighth playoff spot, we finally started getting it together and played great basketball. And that just comes from the veterans on the team: Patrick Ewing, Chris Dudley, Larry Johnson and all the veterans. They just kept us all together and we played inspired basketball.”

Sprewell offered a Yogi-ism when recalling that playoff push that led to an NBA Finals finish:

“Once we got in, anything could happen. And that’s exactly what happened.”

LeBron’s empathy

Perhaps the Knicks and Heat will meet in the first round just so they can commiserate about the difficulties of bringing together stars on otherwise incomplete rosters. The Heat seems to have figured it out just in time for the playoffs, and as the Knicks hit their own tailspin recently, LeBron James looked on with empathy for Carmelo Anthony.

“I know exactly what he’s going through right now,” James told ESPN.com last week. “I understand exactly what he’s been saying. Do the people, the fans and the media in New York want to hear that? I don’t think so. But I know exactly what it means.

“And it’s going to take time,” James continued. “Everybody knows we were 9-8 . We had to figure things out. And we’re still figuring things out. Once they figure it out, it’ll be fine. It’s not going to be a bed of roses.”

Minor injury, major pain

Shawne Williams had an understated importance in the Knicks’ offense when he emerged as one of the NBA’s top three-point shooters this season. But after the trade sent away two other long-range threats in Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler, Williams became even more critical because he was one of the few left who could help draw defenses away from the middle.

But last Sunday in Milwaukee, Williams tore a tendon in his ring finger on his right (shooting) hand, which he quietly revealed Monday. He can play through it, but can he shoot through it?

Williams led the NBA in three-point shooting percentage for most of the first half of the season but fell to ninth (42.7 percent) going into the weekend.

With a heavy bandage on the finger, Williams has shot 5-for-24, going 2-for-8 in Saturday night’s game in Charlotte. More alarming is the fact that he has shot 1-for-13 on three-point attempts since the injury.

Tweet of the week

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Around the NBA

The Knicks aren’t the only Eastern Conference team sputtering into the postseason. The Celtics lost six of 10 and fell two games behind the Bulls for the top seed in the East. It has coach Doc Rivers calling on his core players to step up and get the team back on course.

But at least one of those players, Kevin Garnett, wasn’t happy with how Rivers called out the team at halftime of Boston’s win over the Knicks on Monday. Rivers told his players they were playing soft against the Knicks, who had a 13-point halftime lead.

“That really wasn’t cool at all,” Garnett told radio station WEEI in Boston last week, “but Doc has a way of motivating us in more than one way. He knows how to push buttons and get guys to respond . . . But I don’t think there was a guy in the locker room that was feeling that. We told him after the game, ‘Don’t ever say nothing like that ever again.’ ”

The Knicks’ skid may be the only reason the Atlanta Hawks will hang on to the fifth seed, because Larry Drew’s squad has done all it could to give it up with eight losses in 11 games entering Saturday’s victory over the Nets. We may not only see a quick exit by the Hawks, but once they’re done, it could be a quick exit for Drew, who was promoted last summer to replace Mike Woodson . . . News that forward David West suffered a season-ending ACL tear in his left knee hit the Hornets hard. They went into the weekend holding the seventh seed in the West, a half-game behind Portland for sixth. Without West, their leading scorer at 18.9 points per game, their hopes for a first-round upset are minimal. West has an opt-out this summer, but at 31, he may be inclined to play out his deal and look toward 2012 . . . Is there an easier award to pick this season than Coach of the Year? Without question it's Doug Collins, who quickly turned around a season headed nowhere at 3-13 and has the 76ers not only headed for a playoff berth but on one of the best rolls in the NBA, with 20 wins in their last 30 games going into the weekend. And you know what? Maybe the Knicks won’t catch Atlanta, but the 76ers — three games back going into the weekend — have a shot at it.