He's back, and he's ne'er forgotten: http://www.nypost.com/sports/knicks/44614.htm January 8, 2004 -- AUBURN HILLS - Everyman returns from exile tonight, and he walks in the door as a footnote, an afterthought, a sidebar. Jeff Van Gundy wouldn't have it any other way, of course. Maybe back when the schedule was drawn up, when this seemed certain to be his unofficial "night" at Madison Square Garden, a chance for the same fans who once filled the place chanting his name to shower him with one last echo of thanks, he might have felt differently. No more. It won't happen that way now, and Van Gundy knows it. Isiah Thomas' hiring took a lot of the anticipatory starch out of Latrell Sprewell's homecoming 16 days ago, and now Thomas' first blockbuster deal will do the same thing to Van Gundy's. The distraction ruined Sprewell's Christmas. It made Van Gundy's year. "Nobody's going to be thinking about Jeff Van Gundy," the subject of that third-person observation said late yesterday morning, a few hours before his new team, the Rockets, were beaten, 85-66, by the Pistons at The Palace, the warm-up act for what promises to be an emotional ringer tonight. "Nor should they. They got Stephon Marbury. That's a big-time acquisition." Van Gundy isn't likely to engage in any of the theatrics that accompanied past Garden homecomings, anyway. Pat Riley came back to boos his first night back in '95, then waved his arms to encourage more. Patrick Ewing choked back tears, wearing the odd color scheme of the Seattle SuperSonics, and Clyde Frazier did, too, the night he came in wearing a burgundy-and-gold Cavaliers uniform. All Sprewell wanted to do was pull a Carlesimo on James Dolan when he came back. Van Gundy won't do any of that when he reports to work tonight, the first game he'll coach at the Garden since Dec. 3, 2001. The Knicks rallied from 17 down in the third quarter that night, eked out an 89-86 win over - yes, life certainly does have a sense of humor sometimes - the Houston Rockets. He was miserable that night, of course, griping about how the Knicks "have lost our way . . . you can tell. Many times, we're not as passionate as we should be. A bit lifeless." Lifeless? He should have seen the corpse he left behind. "That's about to change, with Marbury," Van Gundy said, still far more comfortable talking about the other guy who will share the bill tonight. "I believe he gives them as good a chance as anybody to win the East." Throughout the 13 season Van Gundy worked in the employ of Madison Square Garden, he heard endlessly about the Knicks' fabled glory days. He grew to understand how instrumental the great Red Holzman was in making those glories real. And this may be the funniest turn of all: given how dreadful the product has been inside the Garden in the 761 days since he walked away from a 10-9 team, suddenly the people recall Van Gundy's teams with a similar wistfulness. And the people recall this self-proclaimed "no-name" with the same regard as the pillars, the Ewings and the Oakleys, the Starks, Sprewells and LJs. "Go figure," Van Gundy said. Before tonight, there were only two other ventures back to the Garden, last winter, when he'd taken the old familiar route first to take in a Manhattan-Yale college game, later to take part in the ceremony retiring Ewing's number. Everyman remembered every little thing about the trip before one of his players, Kelvin Cato, began chirping about the media hog coach. In an instant the smile was gone, and the chat was over. Business was at hand. The Pistons and the Knicks, just another back-to-back, just another road trip, just another season. Everyman seemed to like it that way.
Seems to be a common denominator in the teams he coaches. I guess everyone that ends up hating him ends up just going through the paces without any emotion....
