“Art cold?” she read. “I am cold myself.”

Ms. Bruun, a 28-year-old with downy white skin and a blond braid hanging from under a black wool hat, had embarked with her bearded partner, Matt Walley, 31, on the mission of reading all of Shakespeare’s plays in front of the dog run on the west side of Union Square. Against a backdrop of barks and growls and the distant, impassioned calls for the President’s impeachment, the two actors have been slogging through one play every day, since Oct. 26, despite the at times plunging temperatures.

At noon on Saturday, they had begun soldiering through a three-and-a-half-hour performance of King Lear, the 8th longest play in the canon. They used a bare minimum of props: peacock feathers for swords, a yellow kazoo for a trumpet and a clown’s horn that they honked when money fell into their cardboard donation box. Sucking on cough drops, sipping tea and nibbling chocolate bars, they bravely battled the fitful elements.

“Blow, winds and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!,” cried Ms. Bruun, adding later, “It’s absolutely freezing.”

While Lear had it rough on the heath, the two actors had their fair share of setbacks and madness to contend with in the park. Around the time that Mr. Walley exclaimed, “This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen,” an actual madwoman ran up to them and screamed, “Give me one line of Shakespeare, accurate!”

Ms. Bruun shrugged, “Yeah, we get that all the time.”

A few scenes later, a man in a North Face coat carrying plastic bags full of pumpkins shouted in their faces, “I don’t understand a word you are saying!” Another guy, in soiled sweatpants, stood a few feet away examining the broken headphones he was using as earmuffs. Behind him, a man with old newspapers in his arms and a deranged gleam in his eye hissed, “Silly hat,” at their costumes. During the quiet monologues of Lear’s Act II, a guy serving a community service sentence noisily emptied garbage cans. Act III fell victim to a kid bouncing on a pogo stick.

Even when the actors were spared the heckling of critics, they still had the critters to worry about. During a Wednesday evening performance of Hamlet — which according to Ms. Bruun, “was so fucking long, we ended it in the subway, I was just too cold” — the fair Dane saw something sinister scurrying in the grass.

“I thought it was a rat,” she said. “I moved very quickly away. If I think they are around, I just stand on the fence and pretend I’m a king or something.”

On Saturday afternoon, the armies of dogs in sweaters had their turn. As King Lear suffered betrayal at his daughters’ hands, terriers and bulldogs in suede or hand-knit coats chased each other in the dog run. As Ms. Bruun pulled her hat over her eyes to affect the blinded Earl of Gloucester, two basset hounds copulated to their breeder’s applause.

After all that, the actors announced that they were taking a well-deserved intermission, so Mr. Walley could use the bathrooms in Virgin Records or Staples and look for something hot for them to drink.

During the break, Ms. Bruun, whose accent slips from British to the American one she picked up during her time reading Shakespeare in the warmer environs of Tucson, Arizona, explained that, while “about 70 percent” of passersby completely ignored them, they had established a small fan base and took in an average of nearly 30 dollars a performance.

On Thursday, during a reading of Macbeth, a police officer interrupted to offer a few lines of the rousing “We few, we happy few” speech from Henry V, while on another morning a homeless woman recited from The Merchant of Venice. Others, Ms. Bruun said, think they know some verses, but really just make them up.

“I caught something once about oceans,” she said, bewildered.

Then the cold wind blew again and Mr. Walley returned, scowling.

“I went to like three places,” he said. “There was nothing hot. Everything is cold. And unless I go to Starbucks...” It was clear that was no longer an option, because Mr. Walley quit his day job there on Thursday to concentrate more on auditions and Shakespeare. “This is the skill I have,” he explained.

Somewhat dejected and munching on graham crackers, the thespians got back into character. At roughly 3:30 pm, Lear was finally dying with grief over his faithful daughter’s body.

“I kill’d the slave that was a-hanging thee,” read Mr. Walley.

“And I just killed another beer!” answered a red-faced man who was circling the park with his zipper open.

—Jason Horowitz

George and Hilly

Our seventh session of couple’s therapy got off to a slow start.

GEORGE: You want me to go?

DR. SELMAN: Whatever you like.

GEORGE: On the walk over I passed a group of about forty joggers, clapping and laughing, and I felt nauseated. There’s something about group activities..I went from that, to thinking about how I wanted to be a pro basketball player in 7th grade, I remember the coach showed me this picture of this guy from the Houston Rockets and said, `George you could be that guy, but you know what you gotta do? You gotta sweat your balls off.’ That made me lose interest in the whole idea. So I went from that to thinking about marriage and weddings.

HILLY: I was not actually a real team player, either, when I was growing up. And if I was playing any sports and I lost, I would tell the other people that I hated them....Just as long as we’re talking about weddings: I think every girl has some kind of a fantasy about the day she gets married — well, mine has always been to not have a big to-do. It’s too much of a show.

GEORGE: Yes, I hate them and I refuse to go to them. And when I get an invitation, not only do I not feel joy for the couple, I resent getting the invitations. That’s nice to hear you feel the same way Hilly.

HILLY: My fantasy wedding would be to go somewhere—like me and whoever it is that I’m marrying — and then max, five people. Including the people who clean up afterwards. Me, the person I’m marrying, the person performing the ceremony. I told my parents, too, because it’s something you have to talk about as a girl growing up. I said they didn’t have to worry about the cost of anything except the only thing I’d require is a very beautiful Valentino dress. Not a wedding dress, just a beautiful dress that I can wear again. And maybe if I were able to have a small cocktail reception, just celebrate the occasion with a few close friends and family members.

DR. SELMAN: So you both agree on small weddings?

GEORGE: Or the toasts. Those toasts are often...pukeworthy. The other awful image I have is when the bride and the groom have to go out and do their little spin on the dance floor and everyone’s watching and going, `Oh what a beautiful wedding.’

HILLY: Not if you have a party with no dancing allowed.

GEORGE: And the bride—they have their little serious moment together and he gives her that reassuring look: “Oh I got everything under control dear, this time tomorrow we’ll be in Mexico.”

DR. SELMAN: So you guys have been talking about marriage?

GEORGE: No.

HILLY: I told him I wanted a ring.

GEORGE [standing, moving toward refrigerator]: She wants an engagement ring. Can I go get a Diet Sunkist?

[HILLY laughs].

DR. SELMAN: Good time to take a beverage break.

[GEORGE returns.]

DR. SELMAN: A wedding ring. You know at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, I think for about 1500 dollars you can order a martini that comes equipped with a one carat engagement ring.

HILLY: Well, I told him he doesn’t even have to spend any money! He can get in from his grandmother Gimma. Or his mother. And if he wants to spend the money, then it’s probably going to be a long time, because I have pretty high taste when it comes to that.

GEORGE: Yeah I think I said-

HILLY: You said, “No.”

GEORGE: I don’t think I was crying, but I may have been inwardly. I said that I can’t even take care of myself, have trouble paying the rent, paying Dr. Selman.

DR. SELMAN: She asked you to marry her?

GEORGE: She said she wanted an engagement ring. I don’t know how these things work. Then she said no one will have to know, and it won’t really count. I think she’s going to honor what I said the second night I met her, three and half years ago—that I don’t want to get married until I’m 40. I felt a little pressured.

DR. SELMAN: When was this?

GEORGE: A couple days ago. Then we had a nice conversation and she cooled it down a little. I know all these things are cliches, all these things guys say—I don’t want to be tied down, etcetera. But I think we should think one day, one week, one month at a time. Basically let me get myself under control—stable. Not rush into things. Because this is in your interest, too. [To DR. SELMAN] Let me ask you: do you think it would be a good idea for the two of us to go to Las Vegas and get married-

HILLY: I don’t want to get married.

GEORGE [to DR SELMAN}: What do you think about the next few months: Would that be a good idea for us to get married, at our current juncture?

HILLY: I think it’s good for us to plan for something. It’s a good way to think, maybe if we were planning on doing this in three, five, six years, we have this much time to get our acts together, to make it something that will work out. And if we can’t do it, and we have to call it off, that’s fine.

GEORGE: I asked Dr. Selman.

DR. SELMAN: What difference does it make what I think?

GEORGE: We’ve been here seven or eight times and now it’s time for interpretations. Do you think it’s a good idea in the next year?

DR. SELMAN: To get engaged, or get married?

GEORGE: Well people get engaged and then they usually get married a year later right?

HILLY: Some people are engaged for years.

DR. SELMAN: Well, what was the point in coming here?

GEORGE: I think the point in coming here is we’ve been going out and want to improve the relationship, find out more about each other-

DR. SELMAN: But it seems like there are three things that could occur. One, you could get engaged and at some point get married or not get married. Two, you could break up. Three, you could maintain the status quo.

GEORGE: No, let’s just say...don’t some people stay together for...don’t people have kids and not get married? Or is that just Hollywood?

DR. SELMAN: I don’t get your point.

GEORGE: Don’t people live together, not get married, have kids and stuff?

DR. SELMAN: There’s no law about that. Would you do that?

HILLY: No.

DR. SELMAN: Not an option?

HILLY: Nope.

DR. SELMAN: I didn’t think it would be an option.

HILLY: I might possibly consider living with someone if I were engaged. But engagements can be called off very easily and you don’t need a lawyer. You just say buh-bye. Take the ring off and that’s it.

GEORGE: I already got you a ring.

[HILLY claps her hands, looks happy]

DR. SELMAN: Got her a ring?

HILLY: Oh...this ring?

GEORGE: Yeah.

HILLY: Well he got me this ring last year, but it didn’t even work. I had to come up with the idea, I had to pick it out. Didn’t I even have to go pick it up?

DR. SELMAN: It’s on the wrong hand.

HILLY: That’s because it’s a promise ring. A pre-engagement ring.

GEORGE: Oh, I’m really sorry; you thought when I just said, `I got you a ring,’ that I got you an engagement ring?

HILLY: Uh-huh.

GEORGE: Hilly, I can’t-

HILLY: I thought from your mom or something.

GEORGE [to DR. SELMAN] What do you think about an engagement ring?

DR. SELMAN: Well, I think if you want to get engaged it’s probably a good thing to get. Let me ask you something: If I said one way or another, is that going to actually influence you?

GEORGE: No, but I’m just really curious. We know I have to cut back on the drinking, be on these anti-depressant drugs. Though these drugs are making me think of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, like I’m about to get a lobotomy or something. It’s totally ridiculous, I know. Tons of people take anti-depressants and I can just try them for a couple weeks.

DR. SELMAN: Whether or not you decide to get engaged, it really is a separate issue as to whether or not you work on these other issues for yourself. Personally, she just asked you to get engaged when you’re like this. So let’s say you take medication or you stop drinking and you become a nicer guy—maybe she won’t like you so much anymore.

GEORGE: Can you say that again, rephrase that?

DR. SELMAN: A few moments ago you likened yourself to Alex in A Clockwork Orange who was a psychopathic murderer.

GEORGE: Can I just clear—

DR. SELMAN: Now if you theoretically changed that, maybe Hilly wouldn’t like you so much. She knows how you are now, and she asked you to get married or get engaged a few nights ago.

GEORGE: Can I just—

HILLY: George thinks that it’s possible that if we spent more time together, maybe lived together, then maybe it would help curb some of his behavior. At which point I said, “Well, you know, I could see how that would probably work, but I can’t live with anyone unless I’m married.”

DR. SELMAN: Your relationship works the way it is, such as it is. If you start making behavioral changes in each other, it’s all up for grabs.

HILLY: He keeps on doing things he doesn’t tell me about. He goes out late and he does this stuff. He thinks that if he has to report to me, maybe he won’t be able to get away with that. And it’ll be better for him in the long run.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you put up with it, though?

HILLY: I don’t know sometimes. I mean, because I love him. But sometimes it literally drives me to drink.

GEORGE: I’d like to clear something up. I wasn’t comparing myself to Alex in A Clockwork Orange. I don’t think he killed anyone. I’m making a comparison between whatever they did with him, that drastic action, that brainwashing therapy, and taking these anti-depressants. I realize that’s kind of a stretch.

DR. SELMAN: He killed the woman who was the sculptor.

GEORGE: Oh, he hits her over the head with the penis sculpture, that’s right.

DR. SELMAN: My point is that Hilly loves you the way you are. And if you choose to change yourself, maybe she wouldn’t love you so much.

GEORGE: Why, cause some girls like `bad boys’? Hilly used to be in love with Tommy Lee and Bon Jovi. Am I a bad boy?

HILLY: Noooo.

DR. SELMAN: What is it you love about George?

HILLY: Everything except his dishonesty.

Silence.

HILLY: Your talent, your wit, you’re so handsome, you’re sweet and kind and generous. Funny.

GEORGE: I’ve never heard that from anyone else but thanks, that’s really sweet. Yeah, she’s really amazing. Um, yeah.

HILLY: Everything except for your dishonesty and some of your friends. Your bimbo friends.

GEORGE: I kind of like hanging out with women friends. I don’t think you like me even being friends with women.

HILLY: Well not with drunken Mata Hari sluts that are going to throw themselves on you.

DR. SELMAN: So do we agree that whether or not you should get engaged is separate as to whether or not you should make those changes with yourself?

GEORGE: In other words getting engaged is not going to solve anything?

DR. SELMAN: She’ll take you either way. Is that true?

HILLY: Nuh-uh. I won’t take him forever without a ring.

DR. SELMAN: That’s not what I meant. I meant that you would take him if he continues being the way he is, depressed and drinking too much-

HILLY: No. Depression is one thing. It’s the dishonest behavior that I can’t-

DR. SELMAN: What dishonest behavior are you referring to?

HILLY: Just like staying out really late and not telling me.

GEORGE: One thing I’ve been thinking about is...Hilly how old are you now? When women get to be 31 or so, they start to think about kids right? After 35 or 38 or so, it’s more difficult?

HILLY: No I’m not thinking about kids. I want a ring. I want to be engaged. I want a dog, a Scotty dog and a ring.

DR. SELMAN: How long are you going to put up with this?

HILLY: I don’t know.

GEORGE: Do you feel like you’ve invested a lot of time and emotions into me and our relationship and you’re not getting enough dividends, it’s not bearing fruit?

HILLY: It’s more like...I don’t know if security is the right word. It’s more like I’d like for you to, I guess, return to me what I feel the emotion is I give to you.

GEORGE: And you also don’t want to end up like...

HILLY: A spinster? I don’t think I have a lot to worry about quite honestly. [laughing]

GEORGE: I agree.

HILLY: I mean if we break up or something I’m sure I won’t have any trouble getting a date.

GEORGE: I know.

DR. SELMAN: If you get engaged — let’s say theoretically George says, “Okay let’s do it.” You said before that you would like for him to be able to return to you the kind of emotional feelings you give to him. Now what if he’s not able to do that? What if he’s able to say “Okay, let’s get engaged and here’s the ring.” But the rest of it doesn’t come?

HILLY: I don’t know, I think you cross that bridge when you come to it.

DR. SELMAN: Well you may be at that bridge.

[to be continued]

—George Gurley

Prior Articles:

George and Hilly published 10/24/05
George and Hilly published 10/17/05
George and Hilly published 10/10/05
George and Hilly published 10/03/05
George ’n’ Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05
But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05
But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05
Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

Mr. Jackson stared across the gym parking lot with his familiar look of practiced stoicism. "The Knicks, " he said firmly.

But of course. The previous night, Mr. Jackson's new club had been routed by the miserable New Jersey Nets at Madison Square Garden in an ugly display of laziness and ineptitude. The Nets' Johnny Newman, an aging N.B.A. gypsy, torched the timid New York defense for 26 points. The Knicks' leading scorer, Allan Houston, missed an almost comical 18 of 22 shots. The night was capped when net rookie Soumaila Samake grabbed a missed free throw and laid it back in, unmolested. Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy looked as if he'd witnessed a plane crash.

But it was a typical night in a frustrating season for an erratic 2000-1 Knicks team, which begins its playoff campaign on Sunday, April 22. Retooled and relaunched sans longtime center Patrick Ewing, these Knicks have tormented New York fans, rising to vanquish mighty rivals only to fall apart against J.V.-quality squads like the Nets. "Our approach obviously doesn't work," head coach Jeff Van Gundy complained the day after the Nets debacle. "How we go about our business does not work."

Mark Jackson, of course, had been brought aboard to improve business. The Knicks' February trade with Toronto for the aging, trick-passing point guard was a calculated effort to repair an unimpressive season. The hope was that a crafty veteran like Mr. Jackson could rekindle the stale club's fire, reengage disenchanted fans–and throw some wicked-cool no-look passes along the way.

There was a compelling local storyline, too. Mr. Jackson was a hometown product, a former St. John's star who had broken in with the Knicks in 1987, won the N.B.A.'s Rookie of the Year award, and captured the city's heart, only to be cruelly traded away in 1992 (to the L.A. Clippers, for, of all people, the infamously flaccid Charles Smith). He had flipped around with three more clubs, most notably the rival Indiana Pacers, but now had returned as a wizened veteran to try to lead his hometown club to their first championship since 1973.

But to date, the experiment hasn't worked. Like some amorphous blob, this Knicks team has absorbed Mark Jackson into its uninspired world of lethargy and blandness. After nearly a half season in New York, Mr. Jackson looks like just another bored N.B.A. nomad who plays as if he's not sleeping well. Far from being a savior, Mr. Jackson looks like another part of the problem.

As a result, the Knicks–also plagued by injuries–are stumbling into the playoffs, destined, it seems, to be obliterated. To the south lies a resurgent Miami Heat club rejoined by its All-Star center, Alonzo Mourning, who had been presumed out for the year with a kidney ailment. Closer by are the mighty Philadelphia 76ers, with Allen Iverson's answers and Dikembe Mutombo's rejections. There are also improving clubs like the Milwaukee Bucks. Should the Knicks somehow make it to the finals, they will face one of a long list of superior Western Conference clubs.

But first, as Mr. Jackson noted, the Knicks must face the Knicks, a team whose roster is talented but defective. Take your pick. There's Mr. Houston, he of the gorgeous, preternatural jump shot, who still reverts to an underconfident 13-year-old at crunch time. Then there's Latrell Sprewell, a dervish of energy and speed, who lately forsakes his prodigious slashing and dunking talents for sloppy jump shots. There's Larry Johnson, who plays with determination and a decimated lower back, and Glen Rice, a pure shooter with a gimp foot who has specialized in missing open three-pointers. There's Marcus Camby, a dynamic young leaper with the durability of tin foil.

Such problems are not new. The Knicks have traditionally been a flawed club, one that compensated for its shortcomings by playing passionate, dogged and sometimes brutish basketball. Though New York has featured many stars, from Bradley to Frazier to King to Ewing, New Yorkers have reveled in the team's image as a bunch of scrappy underdogs battling the N.B.A.'s slicker, more gifted Goliaths (the rest of the country just thought the Knicks were thugs, especially in the 1990's). Fans always identified closely with the team's role players, vagabonds and head cases like Charles Oakley and John Starks, who played with emotion and bravado and were, at least at heart, true New Yorkers.

Today's Knicks, however, play as if they were assembled for a PlayStation video game–technically adept, but cold and emotionless on the court. They occasionally make dazzling plays, but they rarely display the fire of their predecessors, that hell-or-be-damned Starks-ian abandon that at times blew close games but made fans bleed blue and orange. This may be a question of tenure: Only point guard Charlie Ward has called himself a Knick for more than five years. There's also a sense that this is a transitional season, a biding of time until next year, when New York will almost undoubtedly try to land Chris Webber, the Sacramento All-Star and soon-to-be free agent. And it also may be an issue of priorities: Many of the current Knicks are deeply religious, a devotion that Mr. Van Gundy fears is distracting.

Absent an emotional core on the court, today's Knicks suffer from a disconnect with their fans and, by extension, with their city. While it's fun to watch Mr. Sprewell go coast-to-coast or Mr. Camby slam home an offensive rebound, there is something naggingly soulless about this bunch. These days, even dedicated Knicks fans may feel, as Jerry Seinfeld once observed, that they're simply rooting for laundry.

We brought it upon ourselves, of course. For eons, the proud Patrick Ewing was New York's Sisyphus, an epic, often ailing figure laboring furiously, making absurd promises to win titles even when everyone knew hope was lost. Mr. Ewing was great in his prime, but by the end of his Garden run, almost the whole city had turned upon him, believing the slow-footed center was holding his younger, faster teammates back. The day after Mr. Ewing's exile to Seattle was announced (it actually took a second try before the trade became official), the headline in the Post read, "GOOD RIDDANCE."

The Ewing-less Knicks proved themselves to be something less than fury unleashed. Messrs. Sprewell and Houston had co-existed before, but now they were joined in the rotation by Mr. Rice, who had come to the club in the Seattle trade via a side deal with Los Angeles. A struggle for minutes and shots ensued. The team was also weak at point guard and vulnerable in the middle, where the valiant but brittle Mr. Camby struggled to do battle with the league's top behemoths.

Mr. Ewing, no doubt, had outlived his usefulness as a key player. But with his removal, the Knicks lost more than a big body down low. They also lost his stubborn, irreplaceable (if deluded) sense of Manifest Destiny, that all-or-nothing, total-war attitude that he imposed on his team and New York. For 15 years, there was no better sight in the Garden than an animated Mr. Ewing flapping his monstrous arms upward during a close game, demanding more noise.

It was hoped that Mr. Jackson would restore the will to win. A smart, careful and methodical player who spent most of his nine years out of New York with a Pacers team that caused the Knicks nearly as much grief as Michael Jordan's Bulls, Mr. Jackson took winning extremely seriously. Like Mr. Ewing, he was prone to bold predictions and tough talk about his rivals. Almost immediately, Mr. Jackson's arrival brought an air of drama to the Knicks, as he taped a menacing Biblical passage above his locker: "NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST ME SHALL PROSPER."

At times, Mr. Jackson has shown flashes of his old genius and delivered on some of the trade's initial promise. When he distributes crisp zip passes to the team's panoply of jump-shooters, Mr. Jackson can look like a soldier feeding the ammo belts to his machine gunner. As Mr. Houston told me, Mr. Jackson "gets it to you right on time, when you're ready to shoot it. He takes a lot of the thinking out of it. He just makes the game easier."

But more often than not, Mr. Jackson looks like a piano player without a song. In a disorganized Knicks offense, he is often dumping the ball to players calling for it in the post, or passing it around like a hot potato at the top of the three-point circle. Without the intelligent cutters of his past–players who knew how to move without the ball, like Reggie Miller or Chris Mullin– Mr. Jackson appears out of his game, unable to take hold as a leader.

Mr. Jackson has failed even to outshine the pedestrian Mr. Ward, whose job he commandeered upon his arrival in New York. Statistically, Messrs. Jackson and Ward are performing at roughly the same level. But Mr. Wardis younger and quicker and less likely to tire, and has responded to his demotion with extra effort and better shooting. As the regular season comes to a close, Mr. Van Gundy now tends to let Mr. Ward, not Mr. Jackson, run the team in the fourth quarter of tight games.

What's more, it's not even clear that Mr. Jackson has outperformed Chris Childs, the point guard for whom he was traded. Mr. Childs was error-prone and childishly temperamental, a whiner and committer of stupid fouls. Still, he ranks among the best defensive point guards in basketball, and many disciples of the team agree that Mr. Childs hit as many clutch baskets as any other player. (My father, a Knicks season-ticket holder for some 30 years, often insisted–perhaps with some hyperbole, but not humor–that Mr. Childs was secretly the key to the team.)

No one, it should be noted, expected an aging player like Mr. Jackson to come in and dominate, to display Charlie Ward's quickness or to glue himself, as Mr. Childs did, to an offensive hurricane like Mr. Iverson. But less understandable is how Mr. Jackson has also failed to provide the Knicks with the on-court leadership and gusto he showed so often in his career.

Remember, Mr. Jackson was an insufferable opponent. During the Knicks' regular meetings with the Pacers in the mid- and late 1990's, he often bullied smaller Knicks point guards with his plodding but effective post-up move. He was a trash-talker (he once called Walt Frazier a "pimp") and a showboat, goading fans with his absurd chest-and-shoulders "shimmy shake." The Sporting News wrote that Knicks fans' hatred for Mr. Jackson surpassed their hated for Reggie Miller. After stealing the ball from John Starks late in a 1998 playoff game at the Garden, Mr. Jackson paused from dribbling up-court to rub it in with one of those absurd little wiggles, which elicited a lusty chant of "Jackson sucks" from the rafters. (I was there that afternoon, and recall enthusiastically joining in.)

The current Mark Jackson hasn't shown any of that verve, that willingness to excite and taunt and channel crowd anger. Instead, he appears emotionally detached from his surroundings, unwilling to buy into the comeback story so many New York columnists are eagerly waiting to write. To date, his misplays have been more memorable than his contributions. In the late moments of the Knicks' disturbing 89-82 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday, April 15, Mr. Jackson helped snuff New York's last hopes at a comeback with a sloppy pass that bounced off Mr. Houston's fingertips and out of bounds.

In conversation, Mr. Jackson still recites all the right bromides. ("I hope to finish my career here," he said to me. "This is home.") But more often than not, he sounds like a tired hired gun. When we talk, he professes to barely remember the days of being denounced on the Garden floor. "Really?" he says flatly when I remind him of the most-hated-Pacer designation. "I was just trying to accomplish something, which was winning. We had some great wars, great rivalries, but that's over."

The reality is that Mark Jackson is not a savior, but a journeyman, and while New York is his city, this is not his team. To have expected him to step in and hold up a passionless team, ripped of its emotional leader, was to expect too much. Perhaps once the playoffs begin, Mr. Jackson will rise to the task. But right now, he doesn't look like the missing piece; he's just another mismatched part on a screwball team. Once considered a storybook tale of New York, Mark Jackson and the 2000-1 Knicks seem destined for a drab and unhappy ending.

–Jeff Van Gundy, before the first Knicks-Spurs game

They get you on the relationships. The coach was talking about his relationship with his players. That it didn't matter that he got results from the team, got them into the finals, reporters–"they"–would still torment him over his purportedly strained relationships with Marcus Camby and Latrell Sprewell, the new Knicks stars he refused to start, or even play at all some nights.

They get you on the relationships. It's a larger statement though, isn't it? "If they can't get you on results, they get you on the relationships." It's a truth about life, a truth about love, a truth about the relationship, the sometime romance between the City and the Team. A relationship that flourished in the past, then went dead, suddenly burst into a feverish revival–and now, I'm convinced, is inevitably going to bring us crushing pain, disillusionment and defeat. It's time to ask: Can this relationship be saved before the torment gets to be too much? The series isn't over yet, but already I think it's not too early for Post-Traumatic Knicks Therapy.

They haven't lost yet. As I write this they're only down 2-1, and by winning that game they've just about guaranteed that what we suffer won't be mercifully brief and brutal, but a more prolonged agony extended by an occasional moment of false-hope ecstasy.

Already the conversations have begun, the preparation for the big crash. On the Wednesday night before the first loss to the Spurs, I had dinner with this guy I know who's recently become head of a major publishing imprint. He's happily married, life is good, but there was an undertone of dread, emotional dread, one that emerged halfway through a bottle of merlot when he started talking about "the relationship." The one with the Knicks, and how it's somehow just as bad, maybe worse, than a relationship with a woman who steals your heart, fast-breaks and slam-dunks it.

And then, a couple days later, right before the second loss to the Spurs, I was talking with a public radio talk host before doing his show and he started talking about "the relationship" and its intensity for him, and how it all went back to his relationship to his father who was cold and unloving to him except when it came to the Knicks.

Lover, father. Father, lover. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

And it's time to ask what the relationship counselors ask: What do we really want out of this relationship? Or do we want out of this relationship?

Is this a case of Smart City, Foolish Choices? Are we the City That Loves Too Much? Should we be guided by The Rules? Which of the city-team relationship archetypes do we want this one to follow? Do we want the Knicks to be the New York Yankees, triumphalist assholes? Or do we want them to be the Brooklyn Dodgers, tragic romantics? Do we really want them to win, or do we secretly crave the tragic self-laceration of loss? If it's the latter (as I kind of suspect it is) why do we love teams we know will break our hearts? One might as well ask why we love women, um, I mean relationship partners of whatever gender, who we know will break our hearts, why do we go ahead when we know they'll break our hearts and it will all come to a horrible, painful end that we'll regret ever after because nothing will ever seem as beautiful, exciting and good, but we still can't resist. We're fascinated, even turned on, by the tragic denouement we see heading our way like a speeding bullet train, yet we don't get off the track until it's way too late and we've opened our hearts, exposed our souls and …

Hmmm. I'm beginning to think that Socratic dictum everybody cites–"The unexamined life is not worth living"–is really horribly wrong. The examined life is not worth living, well, is not bearable living at times. Therefore, in matters like this, at moments like this, I often believe the most therapeutic relationship strategy is the time-honored though much disparaged and unfairly underrated one: denial.

As I see it, in working out my denial strategy, we can choose from three possible forms of Knicks relationship denial: There's Denial Strategy Option No. 1: pretending it wasn't important in the first place. This is a strategy I've tried in the past with relationships. And with the Knicks. Back in 1994, for instance, as they were heading toward inevitable defeat in the finals in Houston, I wrote a piece for The Observer, the very first piece I ever published in this paper, in fact, denouncing fanhood, fanship. A kind of farewell to fanhood, goodbye to all that. It was heartfelt at the time, but deeply deluded. I now realize that what was really going on was that it was a way of executing Denial Strategy No. 1: You can't hurt me because I don't care. I'm not going to be a fan–any kind of fan–anymore. I mean, I was right there in the Garden at the Knicks-Bulls Eastern Conference Finals game when the questionable foul call on Scottie Pippen by referee Hue Hollins gave the game to the Knicks in a last-second frenzy and I pretended to be appalled at the injustice of the call rather than revel in the sweetness of the stolen victory.

Denial Strategy No. 1. It's not going to wash, pretending it's not important and never was. It was important, we let it become important that moment in Game 5 of the Miami series when that Allan Houston runner that had no business finding the net bounced off the rim, bounced off the backboard, practically bounced off the butts of the Knick City Dancers (yeah, I know, they were in Miami at the time) before it dropped in. Touched by an angel. When that happens, you can't fight it, you know fate has selected you for some exquisite torment, but you have no choice. You don't enlist, you're drafted. Suddenly everything impossible seems possible and you push out of your mind the darker possibilities unleashed as well. No gain, no pain.

But it's not going to work this time, and we've got to shift to Denial Strategy Option No. 2: From pretending it wasn't important to pretending it never happened, or more precisely (to distinguish it from Denial Strategy No. 3) pretending it hasn't happened yet.

It's a strategy I'm basing on a peculiar sports-watching practice engaged in by a friend who's an exec at a major sports magazine. A strategy he's evolved to deal with saving his marriage and serving his sports jones. To deal with the Sunday evening conflict when major Jets and Knicks games coincided with the Sunday evening drive he and his wife would make back from their year-round place on the East End.

He had two choices: He could listen to the games on the radio in real time, a real but attenuated experience for him, which would also mean a painfully unpleasant experience for his non-sports-fanatic wife, who would have to put up with his dashboard-pounding frenzy in the kind of proximity their West Side apartment didn't enforce on her.

So he devised this mind game: He set his VCR in Manhattan to tape the game and then he'd pretend that it hadn't begun till he got back to Manhattan, when (although the game was over in real time) he'd begin to watch it as if it were real time. In his bubble of displaced not-quite-real time, while everyone in the city around him knew what happened, he would experience it as if it had just begun for him.

Of course this required the complicity and cooperation of spouse and friends who might happen to call. It's tricky when the outside world threatens to infiltrate the time-bubble with its unwanted knowledge of the results. Like for instance when I'd call knowing whether the Jets or the Knicks had won, and his wife would answer the phone and tell me the bubble was in effect and I would have to decide whether to indicate explicitly or implicitly (by tone of voice) to her the forbidden knowledge that would then place on her the burden of not indicating to him, encapsulated in the bubble, the real-time results. When I'd talk to him directly, it would be a little weird but interesting speaking with someone who occupied a kind of bubble time zone different from mine. A different life zone, in a way. Sometimes, particularly right after a defeat he had not yet experienced, but I had, I would find myself envying his blissful ignorance. He was not yet suffering the way I was suffering.

So this has given me an idea. My Denial Strategy No. 2: Temporal Metaphysical Denial. If at those moments he had not suffered the way I suffered, if suffering can be postponed for three and a half hours, why not three and a half years? Why not a lifetime? Is it ever necessary to know? Hard to avoid knowing, yes, but necessary to know? No! Not if people cooperate in maintaining the Grand Denial.

My current plan then is to stop watching once the Spurs reach three wins. That way there's no danger I'll see the fourth and final game. The handwriting might be on the wall, but it will not be etched into my heart. So I would just like to ask everybody I know, right now, if they could please just avoid referring to the final game or the outcome of the Knicks-Spurs series. It just will not be a fact of history for me.

I don't know if you remember that scene in Albert Brooks' Lost in America. The one in the aftermath of the Las Vegas disaster where the wonderful Julie Hagerty, who plays his wife (and who looks exactly like an ex-girlfriend of mine who's now married to a ski instructor, and who always hated it if I mentioned the Julie Hagerty resemblance, which may be why she chose the ski instructor, but I'm still in denial about that, too), has lost their "nest egg"–the life savings they thought would buy them freedom from yuppie careerism–loses it at roulette when she goes charmingly crazy in a casino. Anyway, Albert Brooks is trying to find a way to live with the devastating consequences to all their plans from the loss of the nest egg and he pleads with her never to even say the phrase "nest egg" anymore. In fact, to please refrain from using "egg" or "nest" alone, either. When she's out in the woods and sees a bird's nest, he tells her she should just call it "that thing in the trees with the twigs."

So if I could prevail upon everyone I know or come in contact with from now on, please, my denial strategy requires that you don't even use the word Knicks around me. Just call them "that thing in the Garden with the hoops."

My hope is that I won't be alone, that there will be a substantial number of fellow Knicks fans who will want to adopt this time bubble strategy. This will make it much easier for all of us to stay in denial together. We just won't hang out with Those Who Know. My suggestion to the city: the equivalent of special handicapped parking zones for those of us undergoing Post-Traumatic Knicks Therapy, who are living in the time bubble of denial.

O.K., it sounds impractical. It's not, well, rigorous in the details. There is the possibility of leaks in the time bubble. Think of it as a metaphor, if you like.

So perhaps we should move on to the far more philosophically rigorous Post-Traumatic Knicks Therapy Strategy No. 3: Total Ontological Denial, sometimes known as the Jorge Luis Borges/ Pam's-Dream-on-Dallas Strategy.

I just happened (thanks to Paul Slovak at Viking) to have come into possession of the galleys of the forthcoming volume of Borges essays, conjectures and speculations in Selected Non-fictions, to be published in August. And it just happens to reprint three of my favorite of his metaphysical speculations in his recurrent crusade to prove that time itself is a fiction. "The Creation and P.H. Gosse," "The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise" and "The New Refutation of Time."

In an essay in these pages a couple of years ago [Sept. 9, 1996], I speculated about the origins in his encroaching blindness of Borges' preoccupation with the refutation of continuous time: his apparent need to believe that time is an infinite series of momentary disconnected snapshots of universes that create the illusion of flow: that only the infinitesimal instant we're in is real, all other instants are (to us, in this one), fictions of a past and future.

I could go into it more fully, but I want to get to the practical consequences of these speculations for those in need of Post-Traumatic Knicks Therapy. In "The Creation and P.H. Gosse," Borges flirts with the unlikely but technically irrefutable proposition that the universe might have been created just a couple of minutes ago. Anti-Darwinist theologian Gosse raised the possibility that when God created Adam and the Garden, he could easily have implanted extinct fossils in the newly created rocks to test us–to tempt us into believing the wicked fiction of an evolutionary past. If you can believe that, if you can conceive that, you could entertain the idea that we all happen to have been created a moment ago with a false memory, a fiction of our past existence implanted in our newly created brains like a fossil.

Unlikely but impossible to disprove.

So here's the payoff, the practical consequence for Knicks fans: a pre-emptive ontological defense against the shattering impact of a Knicks loss looming in the night ahead like the berg that iced the Titanic: It didn't really happen. It only seemed to happen. It seemed to happen in an illusory past that is itself a fiction implanted in us, a past in which the Spurs win a fourth game, a past which I–thank God–never had to suffer through in reality, because I have chosen to believe (and you can't prove me wrong) that time, real time, only began after the illusory Knicks loss.

The loss will be just a memory, but not a real memory. I mean, if there can be a recovered memory phenomenon, why can't there be a re-covered memory phenomenon?

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Hamlet said that. "So it's all been a bad dream, Bobby." Pam said that. On Dallas when Bobby emerged from the shower that morning and the entire previous season culminating with Bobby's assassination turned out to be Pam's bad dream. I like the idea that what Dallas was doing in that bad dream ploy was trying to find a way for us to exorcise the Kennedy assassination (Bobby being a Kennedy name and a Kennedyesque character) as a bad dream, a bad dream that, after all, happened in Dallas. And now Dallas (the show) was offering America a denial strategy. A denial strategy, which, I believe, can be applied to the Knicks. In my reality, the Knicks never really lose, and J.F.K. never died. It was all a bad dream. I know the difference between reality and a dream, and I know which I prefer. Denial: Don't knock it, it can be a beautiful, therapeutic thing.

When asked why it is so important that the Knicks win, since at the end of the game or even the season nothing in life is affected one way or the other, I can only answer that basketball or baseball or any sport is as dearly important as life itself. After all, why is it such a big deal to work and love and strive and have children and then die and decompose into eternal nothingness? (By now, the person who asked me why the Knicks winning is important is sorry.)

To me, it's clear that the playoffs or 61 home runs, a no-hitter, the Preakness, the Jets, or human existence can all be much ado about nothing, or they can all have a totally satisfying, thrilling-to-the-marrow quality. In short, putting the ball into the hoop is of immense significance to me by personal choice and my life is more fun because of it. Not that I ever thought of becoming a basketball player. My height was insufficient for a serious career, although to this day, if I play in a game with kids 8 years and under, I am a tremendously effective shot blocker.

Now, a favorite crackpot notion of mine is the following: I think the Knicks never regained their past championship form because they sinned by trading Walt Frazier to Cleveland. I can't prove this, but those who have read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner know what the shooting of that bird did. Not that Frazier was an Albatross. Quite the contrary. He was, in my opinion, the greatest of all Knickerbocker players, and he was for a time not only the soul of the team but one of the spirits of this city.

I recall him after a routine night of superb basketball, tooling around in his chauffeured Rolls, dressed, to put it mildly, like an extrovert and lighting up the various night spots of Manhattan like he had just lit up the Garden. Clyde came up with the Knicks and was a major (I think the major) cog in the peerless machine that took two championships. It should have entitled him to tenure in New York forever. Dealing him to the Cavaliers upset some balance in the cosmic order, and the fruit of this curse could be felt from the days of Spencer Haywood, through Bob McAdoo, Michael Ray Richardson, Lonnie Shelton, the Bulls, the Rockets, Rick Pitino, Hubie Brown, Mike Fratello, last year's brawl in Miami, many heartbreaking late baskets by Reggie, by Michael, even by Sam Cassell.

Now once again the curse has made itself felt, and the loss to this year's Indiana Pacers, a team we could have beaten with a healthy Ewing, was particularly ironic since Patrick's courageous return did not help but hurt. Another very personal feeling of mine, while we're on the subject of great Knicks, and they don't come any greater than Frazier and Ewing, is that while Michael Jordan is the finest athlete to toil at his sport and is a quantum leap above almost all other personnel in the history of the N.B.A., Earl Monroe was, for me, more exciting to watch shoot. I'm not saying here that I'd choose Earl over Michael to build a franchise around, but no player was ever as amazing to see in action as the Pearl.

In Spike Lee's newest and best film, he pays appropriate homage to Monroe above all others, and Spike is someone, unlike myself, who truly knows what he is talking about when it comes to this game. (The only deep information I get on basketball comes from watching Peter Vecsey on television because he seems to have a genuine understanding of the sport, and I parrot his insights at parties, often pretending they are my own.) Earl Monroe was such a theatrical talent. There was something so dangerous, so charismatic about how he would pour in 40 points against helpless opposition, and one sportswriter wrote, "His misses are more exciting than most players' baskets."

This leads me to ponder the question of Allan Houston, also a terrific shooter. If the Knicks are to be a force in the coming years, his deadly shooting eye will be a major reason. So why is it more fun to watch Tim Hardaway score 30 than Houston? Are Houston's picture-perfect jump shots and lunging drives any less an achievement? But why was it always more fun to watch Isiah Thomas drop 30 than that great old pro Joe Dumars? Is it because Thomas and Hardaway project danger and Dumars and Houston reliability? I suppose star quality is unmeasurable and what makes one dancer merely great and allows another to be Fred Astaire can only be felt and never understood.

Incidentally, I should mention here that I'm totally prejudiced toward a guard- oriented or small forward-oriented game. I've never enjoyed center-focused basketball, and watching Wilt Chamberlain, great as he was, or David Robinson or Shaquille O'Neal get the ball down low and put in is not my idea of a thrill. That's why, when Patrick Ewing got hurt, the Knicks became a much weaker but much more exciting team. There's no question Ewing is the franchise player and one of the greats in all the years of this sport. Can you imagine if he had been properly staffed over the past decade? Picture the Knicks without him. They would have languished near the bottom.

Now conjure up an image of Patrick over the past decade on the Bulls. With a center like Ewing, given their team, Chicago would have gone undefeated. Ewing would be my all-time Knick center on a team comprised of himself, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere and Bernard King. Some might lobby for Willis Reed and while I'd want him on my team, I wouldn't start him. Yet as soon as Ewing was lost to injury the games became thrilling, often being decided by a point or two in the final seconds. The guards ran the club, the guards and Larry Johnson, a forward of incredible agility (and fragility) with super moves that make him, like Hakeem Olajuwon, an unusually exciting low post player. (Olajuwon is the one center who has been some fun for me to watch perform over the years.)

In Ewing's absence it became clear also about the role of John Starks, who is another veteran of special impact. When Starks first joined the Knicks, he was an out-of-control, sullen and pugnacious player, always spoiling for a fight. Over the years, he was forced to pay his dues. For a while, he was yanked from the starting five, he was seated at times during the final crucial minutes of big games and criticized for taking wild shots, for missing baskets and foul shots and worse, firing up blanks in the closing minutes of playoffs. Starks bore the humiliations with grace and remained loyal and dedicated to the team, wanting only to contribute positively. He has ripened into the heart and soul of the Knicks. Moving him to the sixth-man position has been an inspiration, as he is a player who makes the most of dramatic entrances. He has become a leader who never quits and a galvanizing force who turns on the team and the fans.

As far as the other Knicks guards go, I think both Charlie Ward and Chris Childs have certain fine individual skills and could learn from one another. If a science-fiction machine were available to combine both these guards into a single player, New York would have its great point guard. Childs fell into disfavor this season when he missed a single end-game shot. Ironically, the game before, he had the winning final shot, but after he missed an open jumper the next night as the clock wound down, he could do no right with the fans ever again. His flaws, which he has and which I believe are correctable, were held up to constant disgruntled scrutiny and ridicule.

Years ago, Mark Jackson suffered the fans' ire, too, and was relentlessly booed by the home attendance each time he entered a game. His trade proved to be the Knicks' loss, and he went on to play fine basketball in other cities and most recently to haunt us in the Pacers series. Jackson was the finest point guard the Knicks had since Walt Frazier, and they've had none close since his departure. It was a mistake to let him go but not to trade Rod Strickland, who is more explosive than Jackson but not as grounded. I never bought the story that Jackson was let go because of his feet-that he was too slow. He had become unpopular. His slow feet have not kept him from leading the Pacers to the Eastern Conference Finals.

And finally, what can one say about Charles Oakley? Or can one say enough? Oakley has been a consistently tremendous ballplayer for New York who contributes mightily night after night, season after season, and actually gets better with age. Of course I'd hate to wake up in the middle of the night and find him hovering over my bed with that look on his face, but on the court he's worth every cent they pay him.

I also admire the Knicks' coach, although I, like Larry Bird (one of the many ways we're similar), am a firm believer in the limits of coaching. It has been said that a good coach is someone who, if you give him a good team, will not screw up with it. I've always felt, if Jeff Van Gundy had coached the Bulls over the past decade and Phil Jackson guided the Knicks, that for the most part the record books would stand pretty much the way they are written today. The truth is, I always believed that I could have coached the Lakers in the years of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy and if not me then certainly my mother.

Having given you a number of my emotional feelings about the Knicks, a team I love, let me give you a few of my less socially acceptable notions.

First-I happen to like Reggie Miller. I liked it when he hit the three-pointer that tied the game with the Knicks. It set the stage with a drama that Reggie, who deserves to be a Knick and play in New York, seems to possess. The only thing that went wrong in my fantasy scenario was that the Knicks did not utilize the five-plus seconds they had left to win the game and make the afternoon a thrilling one for New York. If, as Reggie claims, he saw in the eyes of the home team that the heart went out of New York in the overtime, then that is unforgivable. The Knicks had the Pacers in a tie at the end of regulation at friendly Madison Square Garden. It's a situation wherein they should dismantle their opponents.

Another unpopular archvillain I always liked to watch, and wished in years past was on the Knicks, was Bill Laimbeer. Constantly accused of being a dirty player, he would have been a huge plus for New York despite all the derision he got when he competed against us. I feel that way about Dennis Rodman, too. The fans in Chicago love him and we would, too, if he paraded his psychotic vaudeville here.

And what about Marv Albert? I'd like to see him back doing the New York broadcast. I miss that voice, full of city street urgency. He made the games exciting to listen to, and to deny him his place as the voice of the Knicks is unworthy of those who are empowered to hire. (Not to get off the subject of basketball, but I'm a firm believer that a Baseball Hall of Fame that excludes Pete Rose embarrasses itself.)

And what is all this postgame praying? Those new fashionable prayer huddles-what goes on? They can't be thanking God for winning, because how do the teams with the losing records explain things? ("The Lord loves our team-He sabotages us so we can get a high draft pick.") The players also cannot be thanking God for keeping them from injury, because they're injured all the time. My theory is they're thanking God for the huge increases in salaries over the past few years. Only a very benevolent Supernatural Being could be responsible for some of those numbers certain players earn.

My favorite player in the league is Charles Barkley. Not only has he been thrilling over the years, but his performances have been original and funny. I find his attitude of wanting a championship ring, but not letting it be a life-threatening event should he fail to obtain one, quite refreshing. He, like Dennis Rodman (although he brings it off with much more flair and aplomb), does not give an inch to the sanctimony that permeates professional sports.

Incidentally, lest the reader not think I'm totally blasphemous in my tastes and feeling, I should point out that I experienced a true religious epiphany watching the All-Star Game this year when the "torch" was passed from Michael to Kobe Bryant. For a minute, I thought I saw angels at Madison Square Garden. My feeling about Kobe is that he is a knockout talent and they should encourage him to play a complete game with assists, rebounds and defense and not use him to come in and make circus shots. But the concept of passing a torch I did find a hoot, no matter how many times the television announcers used the phrase; it's a concept alien to basketball, which is a team sport, and Michael Jordan has not created a holy order like the papacy, where there is a line of accession. (If the smoke is light gray, the new Pope is Kobe; if it's dark gray, Grant Hill's been chosen.)

Finally, I would not like to end this little rumination without an interview that I dedicate to an old favorite writer of mine, Frank Sullivan, whose appreciation of clichés would have hit a new high had he lived long enough to hear one of today's basketball players.

Interview between Frank Sullivan's cliché expert and an N.B.A. star:

Int: In the upcoming playoff game, where will your team be staying?

Star: We're going to try and stay within ourselves.

Int: But you'll be trying to take your game where?

Star: To another level.

Int: By having your point guard do what?

Star: By raising his game a notch.

Int: And where do you plan on finding the game?

Star: I'm going to just let the game come to me.

Int: By hitting who?

Star: The open man.

Int: And staying-

Star: Focused.

Int: And what kind of minutes will your bench give you?

Star: Quality minutes.

Int: And how would you characterize your aging superstar?

Star: Oh, he's a warrior.

Int: So why didn't you win yesterday?

Star: We didn't take care of business.

Int: What didn't you get done?

Star: We didn't get the job done.

Int: Rather than being voted M.V.P., what would you rather have?

Star: A ring.

(With this, the referee, who has been listening to this drivel, awards a double technical and the show is over.)