As Larry Brown turned left at Woody Allen's seat and accelerated past Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson in the tunnel, one Knick turned to his teammates and announced: "Now we can start playing ball."

Inside the locker room, where confusion and frustration reign, the players are fed up with Brown beating them down privately and publicly, according to several team sources. Following Monday's loss to Atlanta, Brown accused the players of quitting. Two days earlier, he was highly critical of Eddy Curry's performance in a loss to Philadelphia.