<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Give me a little bit of that Kool-Aid they're drinking at the Garden these days. Just a sip, mind you. Don't want to be accused of writing while impaired. But rest assured, Knicks fans are becoming giddy with success, and if you're not careful, it can be contagious. Last night's solid, 117-115 overtime win over the Mavericks, to run their winning streak to an intoxicating five games, was the kind of game that felt like the end of Prohibition must have felt like 73 years ago. The record is still rather poor (12-21), but so is the division and the conference. Compared with their horrendous start, even a five-game winning streak is modest, but not to be dismissed, since it came at the expense of teams with a combined current record of 97-73. Knicks fans, dare you not dream today? For the first time since Jeff Van Gundy slunk off in depression more than four years ago, it seems as if the fog over 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue might be lifting, just a little. This is still a team, of course, that 10 days ago had lost 10 of 11 games, and anyone, from Larry Brown to Isiah Thomas to Stephon Marbury, seemed a likely candidate for a public beheading. Anything you do once, you can do repeatedly, and clearly, the Knicks are very capable of putting up numbers like that again. But after they played the way they did last night - hitting 30 consecutive free throws, pulling down more offensive rebounds (28) than the Mavericks had defensive boards (27), playing like what Brown wants more than anything for them to play like, a team - another tailspin like the one that ate up most of December seems about as likely as seeing Brown wearing a hockey jersey to work. Which, incidentally, he did at his pregame and postgame news conferences, ostensibly in homage to Mark Messier, whose No. 11 will be retired by the Rangers before tonight's game against the Oilers. Knowing the way Brown operates, his wardrobe choice had less to do with honoring Mess than it did with sending a message to his mess of a team, which seems to respond, however grudgingly, to his less than subtle tactics. Last night, the message was simple and blatant: Play for the team first, yourself second. Just as Messier did in leading the Rangers to the Stanley Cup, their first in 54 years, back in 1994. "The thing that always makes me partial to guys like [Messier], and, well, all hockey players, is all they ever talk about is team," Brown said before the game. "They room together, they eat together, they always talk about what great teammates they have. I think our league spends so much time talking about individual players. It's a problem for me. "I really love our sport, and I think when it's played the right way, it's as good a team game as there is. I wish we'd spend more time focusing on that. I think our game would be better." An hour later, Brown's Knicks went out and played arguably the best game they have played as a team all season. Coincidence?</div> Source
