Empty the Bench

Nate Robinson Photo Credit: Icon SMI

Something special happened Monday afternoon at The Garden late in the fourth quarter–a “big fish story,” if you will, the kind when wary listeners shake their head in doubt upon hearing its dubious details and far-fetched claims. But this outlandish tale of athletic heroics sincerely happened, my friends, and I have the boxscore as indisputable proof. With the game’s outcome already well at hand in favor of the visiting Celtics, and after many of the hometown patrons had already filed out having sufficiently voiced their loving affection in a thunderstorm of boos for Isiah Thomas and his underachieving bunch of oafs, a rare moment of clarity amidst these murky Knick waters revealed itself.

In a flash of graceful athleticism, with his long, flabby arms held high above his head, New York’s finest $6 Million Dollar Man, the 7-1 Jerome James, pulled down his second rebound of the game, doubling his total for the season in the meer blink of an eye. When a highly trained athlete like James achieves such a benchmark, one should never let it go unrecognized. I rose from my seat, a $8.25 plastic-cupped Guinness at my feet on the sticky Garden floor, and saluted this magnificent showman with a thunderous clapping of the hands and a hearty “There you go, Jerome! There you go!” Surely, this was a teaser of bigger and better things to come from the hard-working James. Maybe, just maybe, after three years we’ll finally see him record a game of 9+ rebounds, a feat the big man has yet to attain in New York. And even if it doesn’t happen this season, there’s always the next two, when the distinguished Office of Dolan & Thomas will pay this man, a man who’s averaged 2.3 points, 1.7 rebounds, and 0.3 blocks/per in 87 games as a member of the proud New York Knickerbockers, another $12.8 million. I can barely stand the excitement.

Weighing in 100 pounds lighter, measuring well over a foot-and-a-half shorter, and getting paid over $4.5 million less, James’ teammate, Nate Robinson, made a similarly strong impression, though of course the impact of 2 rebounds in less than 2 minutes is a hard one to best. With Starbury now firmly out of the Knicks’ backcourt picture, if not the team’s bloated payroll, the league’s most diminutive power-dunker has seen an increase in minutes despite his coach’s insistence on keeping him out of the starting lineup. After all, very few can beat out the venerable Fred Jones, whose wow factor was on par with James’ Monday afternoon after he put up a convincing 2 points, 4 assists, and 2 turnovers in 31 minutes of action.

Robinson doesn’t seem like the most even-keeled of fellows, and he’s probably incapable of playing a leading role in this team’s inevitable renaissance, but boy do the fans love him, and boy does he at least hustle. That’s more than can be said about most of the players donning orange, white, and blue in New York these days, and given the state of this team, those two truths alone should be enough for him to hear his name announced alongside such Knick greats as Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph as a starter. Little Nate has now scored double digits in 16 of the last 17 games, and gave us the Highlight of the Night last Friday with an awesome putback dunk against the Miami Heat. Nate, you’re one of the lone bright spots for this once-proud franchise, and though your coach doesn’t think you’re the Knicks’ point guard of the future, we at ETB urge you to ignore him and, to invoke Rod Marinelli, head coach of the similarly proud NFL Detroit Lions, to keep “pounding the rock.”