Close Losses Are a Sign of Promise ?
 
  Coach Mike D’Antoni said the Knicks were better but need to make a run in their final 33 games.

  Over five exhilarating days at Madison Square Garden, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James left their marks, and Paul Pierce left is shoes. The Knicks were left with three more defeats, while claiming more intangible benefits.
  “You’ve seen us play these guys before and see how we struggled,” said Al Harrington, “and if we went down, we put our heads down and go the other way. But we just kept fighting all the way to the end.”

  For a team with no recent winning tradition, close games against elite teams stand as accomplishments, or at least that was what the Knicks kept telling themselves last week. (Indeed, the team’s official game notes actually showed a W next to the Cleveland loss.)

  The more tangible consolation prize lay in Harrington’s locker: a pair of green, black and white Nikes with Pierce’s No. 34 on the heels and his signature across the toes. Pierce donated them to Harrington for an auction to benefit Harrington’s old high school, St. Patrick’s in Elizabeth, N.J.

  So Knicks (21-28) did not leave town empty-handed or with empty feelings. They held a short practice Saturday morning, then boarded a flight to Portland, where they open a three-game road trip Sunday against the rising Trail Blazers (30-19). After a day off, the Knicks close the trip with back-to-back games against Golden State (16-35) and the Los Angeles Clippers (11-39) before heading into the All-Star break.

  Before last week’s gantlet of title contenders, the Knicks had been on the upswing, having won 6 of 7 games and 8 of their last 11. They went 9-7 in January, their first winning month in two years.

  Now the schedule turns slightly more friendly. The Blazers are young and talented, but they are not on the level of the Lakers, the Cavaliers and the Celtics. The Warriors and the Clippers are having miserable seasons, although the Clippers got a boost last week with the return of Zach Randolph, the former Knick forward.
 

  D’Antoni continues to find encouragement in his young bench, even as he continues to fiddle with the rotation and the fourth-quarter lineup. The rookie Danilo Gallinari, although he struggled against Ray Allen on Friday, has been a net positive in his first three weeks of steady play. Harrington and Nate Robinson seem to have emerged from their midwinter slumps. David Lee keeps racking up double-doubles (13 straight, 38 this season).

  “It’ll be an opportunity to see if we’re as good as we think we are,” Coach Mike D’Antoni said. “I think we’ve gotten better. I think from here on out we have another 32, 33 games, and we’ve got to make a run.”
 
  “We are thinking about April,” Harrington said.  The Knicks will not see the Lakers or the Celtics again. Eighteen of their final 33 games will be played against losing teams. They have just two games left against elite teams (San Antonio next week and Cleveland next month). They have beaten many of the other top teams left on the schedule, including Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Detroit and Utah.  “As frustrating as it is to lose, I think we learned a lot about our team this week and I think we got a lot better this week,” Lee said, before hastening to add, “It will be all for nothing if we can’t in the next couple weeks show our improvement and beat some teams.”