During the last excruciating decade of Knicks basketball, other teams were running layup lines on us, and us fans were watching saying, "The 90's Knicks would never have let that happen." That's the thing. The 90's Knicks never won a championship, but they always had their pride and their dignity. The Knicks of Isiah and Layden lost in a different way, in an embarrassing way. Basically, for the last decade we were soft. Certain guys (David Lee) may have shown flashes of toughness sometimes, but overall, we were soft (and I mean that physically and mentally).

Well, take a look at our roster now...

Amar'e- A monster in the paint. An intimidator. People get out of his way. No one's gotten out of Knickerbocker's path to the hoop for years!

A. Randolph- Hustler. Scrappy. Screams and glares at people. Loses his head sometimes, but that's okay, so did Starks. He might get pushed around since he's skinny, but he's got enough fight in him to push back.

Turiaf- Tries to block EVERYTHING! This guy was jumping when they shot off Sputnik. Also likes to scream in people's faces. Not the most talented, but extremely competitive. Will not get pushed around.

Azubuike- (Man, I love typing that name) This guy clawed his way into the NBA through the D-League. Not exactly the easy way to do things. GSOM posters have talked a lot about his toughness and courage. Nothing was handed to him in this league, so you know that he's playing with something to prove every night.

Bully Walker- You already know. Just check the nickname we gave him. I'm predicting he dunks on LeQueen this year.

Chandler- Keeps his mouth shut and speaks with his game. You know about him too.

Gallo- He doesn't always posterize people and scream in their face, but he's got some huge brass balls. He's from Europe, but you can't tell from the way he plays the game. Go ask Roy Hibbert if he's soft.

DWTDD- Tough, scrappy, loves defense, not afraid to pull the trigger. Plus his swagger is almost tangible.

Felton- As I'm writing this, I'm hearing that he's agreed to join the Knicks in principle. He's another scrappy guy who plays hard-nosed defense. He's the former floor general for one of the league's scrappiest teams. He survived the Demon Coach, so you know he's got toughness.

It's too early to talk about our new draft picks yet (Fields, Rautins, and Jordan), but they're not going to play a whole lot this year so it doesn't matter too much (although I hear that Rautins kid has buckets of swagger ).

Eddy Curry- I'm pretty sure he's never taking the floor for us again.

Yeah... YEAH! How bout that? Our roster is TOUGH! For the first time in years! I'm not saying we're going to win every night and steamroll into the playoffs. We're very young, and we'll have a lot of learning to do, and learning is usually associated with losing. I'm just saying, that we ain't never gonna  lose games the way we've lost them for the last decade. No more getting embarrassed. No more going through the motions while the other team blows us out.

I don't know how many games we'll win, or what playoff seed we'll get (I am predicting playoffs though). But I look at this roster, and I'm rejoicing, because this team is "TOUGH" and we are going to compete.