Is this a promise?

Mike D’Antoni, Knicks coach, is not happy about the manner in which the Knicks’ season is coming to a close. After coaching a perrenial playoff contender in Phoenix for several years, he was forced to watch an underachieving group of mediocre playoffs fail to get to the playoffs — the fifth year in a row that the Knicks are forced to watch the festivities from home while on an early vacation.

D’Antoni’s team so far has managed 30 wins with five to go, an improvement to be sure, but still a rather sorry excuse for professional basketball.

Not that much more should have been expected. Donnie Walsh made several early-season trades that altered the look of the squad, sending two of their better players away for expiring contracts in an attempt to create cap room for a run at what promises to be the best free agent class in the league’s history in the summer of 2010. That class could include LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade — a fearsome group.

That said, the team still has to find some competent ballplayers to keep the fans from revolting. The problem is that aside from David Lee and Wilson Chandler, there’s no one worth keeping around. And Lee is probably their most tradeable commodity.

That’s why D’Antoni is threatening a housecleaning.

“I would think we won 29 games [before last night], I don’t envision anyone anywhere,” D’Antoni said. “We’re going to try to get better everywhere. Having said that, there’s no reason he couldn’t be. Anytime you win 29 games and don’t make the playoffs, everything is open for discussion, everything is thrown against the wall.”

And everyone is on the chopping blcok.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Toy company ignores the storyline

We are constantly bombarded with the argument that New Jersey has created an awful business climate that drives companies elsewhere — but then we get news, from NJBIZ.com, that the educational toy company Melissa & Doug, is relocating to South Brunswick from Connecticut.

Melissa & Doug was “looking for a location that was best suited to cover everywhere from Florida to Maine,” said NAI James E. Hanson Senior Vice President Kenneth Lundberg, who along with Joel Hausman, of Fairfield, Conn.-based Colonial Realty, represented the company in the deal. “New Jersey is what appeared on their radar screen.”

Central New Jersey is more centrally located for distribution than Connecticut, being roughly equidistant to Philadelphia and New York and Boston and Washington, D.C., he said. “In a single truck-driving day, by locating in central New Jersey, you probably double the number of population you can reach in one day” compared to Connecticut, Lundberg said.

Apparently, taxes and environmental regulations — the two most-frequently cited reasons that the business community and its apologists offer — are not the only factors businesses consider.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Doggie diary: The story of Rosie and Sophie Almost a Garp moment

We took the puppies for a nice long walk last night, heading over to my brother and sister-in-law’s so my niece and nephews could see the dogs before they left for Iowa for the week. Aside from the wind and the rain that arrived as we did at their house, the walk was uneventful, though I almost had what I’ll call a Garp moment.

I don’t know if anyone remembers the scene from the 1982 movie with Robin Williams, “The World According to Garp,” in which Williams as Garp goes off on a pickup truck that has been terrorizing the neighborhood by speeding through the quiet suburban streets. But that is how I’ve been feeling lately as we’ve been getting out with the dogs. The number of speeding cars, vans and SUVs — and, no, it’s not just teenage drivers — barrelling around this neighborhood, on Kendall, New, Kingsley and even some of the side streets, is mind-boggling. I said to Annie the other night that I think they drive faster on Kendall than they do on New.

Last night, as we walked, I flashed to the scene in the movie. Garp has reached the boiling point as the same driver of the same red pickup flies through his neighborhood. He takes a baseball bat and chases him and blasts the truck.

Needless to say, I’m not vindictive or violent and I’m the law-abiding sort, so I let the moment pass. But I can see how that kind of overreaction could feel real satisfying.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.