So the sky didn’t fall on Madison Square Garden Thursday evening, and cooler heads prevailed. The Knicks weren’t able to pull off a heist, and neither were they snookered into a bad trade. There will be no charts and graphs recalling Bill Russell for Easy Ed Macauley, or Joe Barry Carroll for Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale.
Danny Ainge, Red Auerbach’s spiritual descendant, left the Knicks alone.
So now Knicks fans will turn their lonely eyes toward Frank Ntilikina, the Belgian-born French league point guard who probably will become their best defender on the day he shows up — though that’s not exactly a high bar — and is very much a cornerstone of who and what the Knicks hope to be in the next few years.