Are Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd okay?

Buried somewhat under the excitement/terror of last night's win were some troublesome signs of discomfort from Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd. Namely: Kidd retreated to the bowels of the Garden for back treatment after just five minutes of play and Chandler apparently aggravated a recurring neck issue and appeared barely able to turn his head by the final buzzer. Alan Hahn has updates on Kidd:

"He's fine," Woodson said. "I just decided to rest him."

Kidd had been dealing with back spasms before the weekend, but declared himself fit to play. But in neither game did he appear comfortable and on the bench he kept a heat pack on his lower back.

...

"I've beaten Jason Kidd up," Woodson said. "Jason is a bigger part of things than you can even imagine. This is a marathon, it's not -- one game ain't gonna determine anything.

"I'm going to need him for the long haul and I think he knows that. If he doesn't, I'm going to tell him."

(1. Don't beat Jason up. That's mean! 2. He was gonna say "it's not a sprint', but stopped. Why? What's he hiding from us!?)

Like I said last night, if Woodson had been planning to rest Kidd from the outset, he wouldn't have, ya know, started him in the second of a back-to-back. There must have been some sort of back flare-up motivating the decision. I guess I believe that Kidd's mostly fine and just needs to be handled with extra care, though we've seen "back spasms" turn pretty ugly in the past. In any event, two days of rest before the next game should help. The same goes for Chandler, whose neck thing also needs to be monitored:

Chandler was flexing his neck throughout the fourth quarter and grimacing in pain. He had a similar issue a few weeks ago in Indiana and he said it flared up on him after a "kind of whip-lash" earlier in the game against Atlanta.

"It kept getting worse throughout the course of the game," Chandler said.

He put heat packs on it during timeouts and gutted through the finish of the game. The Knicks have two days between games, so we'll see if it lingers enough to cause him to miss any time.

So, new things to watch out for: Tyson's neck, Jason's back. And this is where I withhold my Khia jokes.