New York doesn’t want just winning or losing. It wants interesting winning or losing. You had especially better be interesting when you’re losing.

The way Thomas has worked his anti-magic, the Knicks can’t be counted on to be big winners anytime soon. If Madison Square Garden is going to rock with sellout crowds every night again, it’s going to be because fans come with the giddy expectation of what crazy thing might happen next.

Will the Knicks win? Will Randolph punch a teammate? Will Marbury refuse to pass? Will Crawford launch 3-pointers every time he touches the ball? But the juice comes from Artest. Will he rush the crowd? Will he punch something animate or inanimate? Will he commit some crazy foul? Will he come with mismatched shoes (like he did at the 2004 All-Star game so he could show off his feet to shoe companies)? Will his head spin around and explode? Will he rap?

Then there is all the stuff that gets your team on the back pages of New York tabloids. Will Artest decide he wants to be traded somewhere else again? (Warning: he told The Indianapolis Star recently he’s sorry he ever asked out of Indiana, and he’d like to come back.) Will he starve his dogs again? Will he threaten to quit to run his record label again? What crazy thing will Ron Artest think of next?

Isiah Thomas, based on his relationship coaching Artest in Indiana (where in 2002-03 he held Artest to only eight incidents, 12 games suspended and an additional $65,000 in fines), might think he can save Artest. Or based on his Bad Boy Pistons days, he figures the likes of Artest and Randolph will create a team so crazy, everyone else will back away slowly to defeat rather than see what they’ll do next.

If the Knicks are to be good, even for the Eastern Conference, both scenarios would have to come true. But if they don’t, at least New York Knicks fans will be entertained on the way down.

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