BOSTON — A fuming Mike Woodson said he is upset his players wore all black to Wednesday night's potential close-out game against the Celtics, and the Knicks coach reprimanded his team before yesterday's practice.
Woodson said he didn't realize it until he read about it in yesterday's morning newspapers and said he would have "absolutely'' put a stop to it had he known.
Spurred by Kenyon Martin, the players wore all black outfits as if attending a Celtics funeral. Instead, the Celtics were resurrected in a 92-86 Game 5 Garden victory, sending the series to Boston for Game 6 tonight. One thing for sure: No Knick will dare wear a lot of black tonight.
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"I'm a little upset about that,'' Woodson said. "I've addressed that. We're a new team. A lot of these guys have been in the league, but this team hasn't been assembled that long for the playoffs. Things like that got to be kept outside the game. Just concentrate on playing basketball.''
The stunt turned embarrassing when the Knicks had to walk out of the Garden in their black clothes after absorbing a defeat that's trimmed their series lead to 3-2.
"I didn't know about it until this morning,'' Woodson said. "I'm not going to get into all that. I made reference to the guys, we need to stay out of the papers and just concentrate on playing. That's not important what you wear. It doesn't have anything to do with how you play on the basketball court. I addressed it with our players. The game is played on the floor and that's where it should be played.''
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Tyson Chandler, who won a title with Jason Kidd in Dallas in 2011, confirmed the Mavericks did the black deal for some of their close-out games, including Game 6 in The Finals against Miami.
Chandler said he doesn't regret it. The Knicks, however, showed poor taste in executing the stunt two weeks after the deaths at the Boston Marathon gripped the nation. The Giants also did it when they landed in Phoenix for the 2007 Super Bowl. But the Giants didn't wear black to the actual game when they won the title by beating the Patriots.
"It reminds you of what you're trying to accomplish,'' Chandler said. "You can take anything and motivate. I think they were motivated enough. Their backs [are] against the wall.''
Raymond Felton claimed he didn't know the order to wear all black was about mimicking a funeral.
"Somebody said something about a funeral. I don't play it by stuff like that,'' Felton said. "That was definitely not the conversation. Everybody just said, 'let's wear all black,' so we did it as a team.''
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