Knicks' Crawford Likely Out for the Season

By HOWARD BECK

GREENBURGH, N.Y., Feb. 27 — The Knicks’ quest for a playoff berth was dealt a major blow this morning when Jamal Crawford was found to have a stress fracture in his right ankle.

Crawford will almost certainly need surgery, which will wipe out the rest of the regular season for him. There is a chance he could return for the playoffs, if the Knicks win a berth. But that goal, which seemed realistic in recent weeks, suddenly looks like a long shot.

Crawford is the Knicks’ second leading scorer, averaging 17.9 points a game, and he is by far the team’s best clutch shooter. Indeed, an hour before undergoing X-rays on Monday night, Crawford drained a 3-pointer to clinch a 99-93 victory over the Miami Heat.

Crawford said he had been dealing with pain in his right ankle for a couple of weeks, but that it was not considered serious. He did not miss any games, and he made no mention of the injury in the wake of Monday’s victory.

Coach Isiah Thomas got the news of the diagnosis late Monday night, when the team’s director of player care, Dr. Lisa Callahan, called him from Madison Square Garden after reading the X-rays. A CT scan and a magnetic resonance imaging exam performed this morning confirmed the diagnosis.

“These are challenging times, and these are pressure times,â€

Now if only Eddie Curry would go back to being uninterested in basketball...

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Anyway the Knicks find to get the Bulls more lottery balls is fine with me.

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The Knicks will continue to hang around in that division. It's horrible, and no team seems capable of putting together any kind of winning streak. Hopefully, they will fade away, and collapse in the last 1/3 of the season, but I don't think they are, even without Crawford, much worse than the other teams out East.

Looks like the end of the road for Isiah.

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This injury probably helps the Knicks more than it hurts them. One less ball-hog on the court.

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