The real run for the Knicks, with a team better and deeper than last year’s team, begins on Thursday night, at the Garden, biggest game of the year so far, against the Pistons. The Knicks will be getting a softer target than they have gotten so far this season with the Pistons, as they will be without Jalen Duren, serving the second game of a two-game suspension. That still won’t take any of the fight out of these Pistons, who have looked hungrier than the Knicks so far this season, and spoiling for a fight with them.
To use an expression Jimmy Connors once used about the young Rafael Nadal, the Pistons have played as if they’re broke. You want to know how angry they still are that the Knicks survived that bare-knuckle, back-alley first-round series last spring? Just watch the way they’re getting after it, at both ends of the floor, just about every night. They have played the whole season so far as if they have a score to settle, and not just against the Knicks. But especially against the Knicks.
It’s not just a shot at them that the Knicks get when the second half of the season officially begins. All of this is the best shot the Knicks have had to win a championship since the ’90s Knicks — a bare-knuckle, back-alley team themselves, under both Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy — went to two NBA Finals, and gave Basketball New York it’s best run since the glory years of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Really, this is what the Knicks need to do the rest of the way, with the roster Leon Rose — the most creative front office figure in New York right now — has masterfully assembled:
They need to stop acting like the attention-deficit Knicks as often as they do. The Knicks need to play hardball the rest of the way and not the kind of funny ball we have witnessed since the start of the year, and that even includes the eight-game winning streak that ended with that loss to the Pacers the other night, a team having nothing more than a gap year without Tyrese Haliburton. If the Knicks can’t sustain enough junkyard-dog play, if they continue to act as if playing hardball defense is still only a parttime job with them, then the Pistons are going to get them in the playoffs this time around, or the Celtics are, with or without Jayson Tatum. And a championship-or-bust team will land on the bust part once the money is on the table, the way they went bust in the Eastern Conference against the Pacers and got their coach good and fired.
You know what the Knicks really need to do, from up and down a roster as deep as there is in the league, is play the rest of the way — and every night — the way the new guy, Jose Alvarado plays. Alvarado plays as if he’s broke, too, and is one of the best attack-point defenders the Knicks have had since Iman Shumpert played on a 54-win Knicks team back in the 2012-13 season, when they were Atlantic Division champs. Before that Knicks team bust against the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semis.
Here was Josh Hart, who gets after it pretty good himself, said after the Pacers loss:
“Down the stretch, [it was] lack of execution. We gotta make sure at the end of the game, fourth quarter overtime is a little bit different. You can’t just run fast, but you got to be able to slow it down and execute, and call plays and get guys in good situations, and areas to be successful. I feel like that’s what we’re kind of lacking.”
Hart is so often the voice of the Knicks, along with being the voice of reason. You better believe they need him to stay healthy the rest of the way as much as they need do OG Anunoby, in a season in which Knick fans are hoping he doesn’t once again turn into Day-to-Day Anunoby.
We know what the Knicks look like so far, both at their best and their worst. But at their best, we have absolutely seen how deep and important the bench is, and how Mike Brown has been able to turn it into such a valuable weapon. Now the bench has gotten even deeper over the past couple of weeks with the acquisition of Alvarado — a Christ the King kid who plays like tough New York City point guards are supposed to play — and with ex-Spur Jeremy Sochan. Sochan, with whatever minutes he’s going to get, will make the Knicks’ team defense better the way Alvarado has.
Of course they will help cover up the weaknesses on defense with the team’s two best players: Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns. You have to look at the Lakers to find another playoff team whose best players are consistent defensive liabilities the way Brunson and Towns are, even while Brunson is putting another 40 on the other team the way he did against the Pacers on Tuesday night.
Brunson, a prince, isn’t the only great player in the league who struggles on the defensive end. But he’s the Knicks’ great player, and one who has helped raise the bar for them. So many times he can save them making the kind of shot he made to beat the Pistons in the playoffs. That kind of shot, particular the one that would have put the Knicks ahead in regulation with 10 seconds left, didn’t fall against the Pacers.
This time Brunson couldn’t save them after a night of all those blow-by drives from the Pacers and wide-open 3-pointers. So this became another almost inexplicable funny-ball performance against one of the worst teams in the sport this season.
So here they are, set up to make their run: A game in the loss column behind the Celtics, even though the Celtics still don’t have Jayson Tatum after losing him to that Achilles injury against the Knicks in the playoffs. Just a game in the loss column ahead of the Cavs, who picked up James Harden (for better or for worse) at the trade deadline. And six games behind the Pistons, who clearly know how to hold a grudge.
The Knicks are absolutely no-doubt deeper than they were a year ago. Starting after the All-Star Break, we are going to have to find out if that translates into them being better. Last time they didn’t go as far as the owner thought they should, he broke up with his coach. If they don’t go as far as he expects them to this time, who’s to say he doesn’t tell Mr. Rose to break up the Knicks?
YANKS KEEP RUNNING IT BACK, AX THE PARADE PROFANITY & WOODY DOESN’T WANT TO BE GRADED …
If the Yankees don’t win it all this time, it will also be the 9th straight season the Yankees of Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone have managed — and general-managed — not to make it back to the Canyon of Heroes.
The management team of Andrew Friedman and Dave Roberts in Los Angeles has won three in that same time period.
And if you happen to hear even Yankee fans complaining about the way the Dodgers spend, please remember the way their team has spent like Dubai over the past quarter-century and won just one World Series.
If you think about it, though, Yankees are doing with their baseball team what Hal Steinbrenner always does with his management team:
Running it back.
I was rooting for Lindsey Vonn the way we all were.
And it wasn’t her torn ACL that put her on the ground, and into surgery, it was one of her poles catching that gate.
It doesn’t change the fact that she was an accident waiting to happen.
It may not happen next week, or next month, or maybe even this year, but Steve Tisch is through as a part-owner of the New York football Giants.
And it is fair to think that the Koch family ending up with his share isn’t a question of if, it’s a question of when.
So, wait: The world didn’t stop spinning on its axis because Bad Bunny did the halftime show at the Super Bowl?
And while we’re on the subject of the big game:
When did it become OK for players to step up to open mics after victory parades and shout out more profanity than there was in “The Wolf of Wall Street?”
You know what does not get old around here in college basketball?
UConn vs. St. John’s.
Yeah, if I were Woody Johnson, I wouldn’t want report cards from the NFLPA or anybody else.
On anything football-related.
Did I actually hear the question posed on ESPN the other day about whether or not the Seahawks might become a dynasty?
Because I’m pretty sure I did.
Cam Schlittler’s ceiling appears to be quite high, for sure.
But so are the expectations for a kid who made 14 starts last season and pitched 73 regular-season innings.
That controversy about the judges’ scoring in Ice Dancing in the Olympics is just another example of why I strongly believe that sport will never replace baseball as the national pastime.
Sometimes I think that Trinidad Chambliss, the Ole Miss quarterback who just got another year of eligibility, started college the same year I did
