DALLAS — No Anthony Davis, no Kyrie Irving, no Cooper Flagg.
Knicks by 80.
That’s how a traditional basketball fan might have viewed Wednesday’s late-night matchup: a loaded, veteran Knicks team with championship aspirations facing the four-win Dallas Mavericks — a franchise currently operating somewhere between a rebuild, an identity crisis and a crime scene.
Yes, those Mavericks.
The same Mavericks who:
- Let Jalen Brunson walk in 2022 (New York thanks you for your service),
- Talked themselves into trading Luka Dončić to the Lakers (Los Angeles thanks you for your service),
- And fired general manager Nico Harrison only after he lit every asset on fire.
Those hopeless, some say cursed, Mavericks gave the Knicks all they could handle. And in a hideous, grind-it-out performance at the American Airlines Center, the Knicks — somehow, someway — kept their bread from hitting the floor in a 113-111 victory.
It be like that sometimes.
Sometimes the cookie slips through the gaps in your fingers, and it’s on your reflexes to salvage whatever you can before it crumbles. The Knicks won’t discriminate between ugly wins and beautiful ones — not if the process is trending upward on both ends.
“You have to win in different ways, and if we lost the game, I’ll tell you — it sounds crazy — but I thought we competed,” head coach Mike Brown said after the Knicks’ first road win in five tries this season. “I thought we tried to play the game the right way tonight, and when you do those things, then the confidence starts to build, and you can start stacking wins on the road because you’re about the right stuff.
“And tonight, we were about the right stuff even though the shots didn’t go in.”
‘ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN’
Perhaps Brunson knows this feeling best.
The feeling of needing just one opportunity to prove you can carry an offense — or at least flash enough to convince a franchise that, in the right situation, you can be the guy.
In Dallas, injuries to Davis and Irving have opened a vacuum for someone to seize control. Flagg, the No. 1 pick, has the highest priority. After that, the Mavericks are searching up and down the roster for a co-star who could fit alongside the franchise Flaggpole if the front office leans into a youth movement.
So yes, in theory, a nearly full-strength Knicks team should have run a depleted Mavericks squad into the ground. But basketball isn’t played in theory. It’s played on the court, where hungry teams — even undermanned ones — can make their own reality.
“It’s the NBA. A lot of guys are really gifted and talented. A lot of the NBA is confidence,” Brunson said. “So when you get opportunity and confidence mixed together, you can have a hell of game, a hell of a season. You can have a hell of a career. A lot of guys have the confidence. You just need the opportunity.”
Opportunity found Dallas. They made seven threes in the first quarter alone.
Who needs Irving when D’Angelo Russell drops 23 points, seven assists and five rebounds off the bench? Naji Marshall averaging 31 off the bench in his last two games against the Knicks made his 23 feel like a down night.
Sure, a healthy Irving, Davis, Flagg, Dante Exum and Caleb Martin would give Dallas more firepower. But this is the NBA, where overnight stars are born because someone else sits.
“Everybody’s good. Miami’s missing Bam [Adebayo] and Tyler Herro and they’re finding ways to win games. I know we were missing Jalen, OG [Anunoby], two of our quote-unquote All-Stars against Miami at home, and we found a way to win. Anything can happen on any given night in this league,” said Brown. “And you’ve gotta respect everybody, and however you can get a win, you go get that win and you feel good about it and you keep trying to get a little bit better.
“So I don’t care what spread is or what the thoughts should be on the spread. We competed, we tried to play the right way and we got a dub.”
‘GOTTA KEEP TAKING THEM’
As for how the Knicks played the right way while barely surviving against a short-handed team?
Easy: they stuck to their identity.
The Knicks are a three-point shooting team. When the shots fall, they can score 150 without breaking a sweat. When they don’t, you get brickfests on the road — and Wednesday started as another one. The Knicks missed 19 of their first 22 threes. They shot 9-for-36 in Miami the night before. And they entered the game as a 40% shooting team at home and a sub-31% shooting team everywhere else.
“I thought we had some tremendous looks in the first half that could have opened up the game for us,” Brown said. “We’ve gotta keep taking them.”
And they did.
The Knicks hit nine of their final 20 from three. They didn’t abandon the offense — they trusted it.
No sequence captured that trust better than Landry Shamet’s corner three to put New York up one with just over a minute left.
Brunson forced a live-ball turnover, sprinted to the corner, got the ball back, attacked Max Christie’s closeout, drew defenders and kicked it to Shamet, who had relocated to the same corner Brunson just left. Instead of forcing a contested floater or baiting free throws, Brunson made the right read.
Two feet in the paint. Find the open man. Live with the results.
“The one thing that won us the game was paint-touch sprays,” Brown said. “Jalen had a big one in transition. He touched the paint, he played off two, we spaced the floor the right way, he kicked that ball, he trusted his teammate… and Landry shot a wide-open corner 3 and made it.
“So the paint touch spray — something we preached about playing against this team — worked out well for us to help us create, get a lead and keep the lead down the stretch.”
‘AN UGLY GAME’
It was ugly. But it was a road win — the Knicks’ first of the season — on a night where their shots didn’t fall, their rhythm never arrived and Dallas refused to roll over.
“I think the biggest takeaway is we don’t even want to be in that position,” Shamet said. “There are so many things we could look at and point to… where it wouldn’t have to come down to us missing five out of six [free throws] and all the chaos down the stretch.”
But it’s a step. A necessary one.
Even if Davis, Irving and Flagg were out for the Mavericks, and the Knicks were expected to win by double digits
“We’re extremely encouraged,” Hart said. “It was an ugly game. We didn’t play the best. We didn’t shoot the best. But we were able to tough it out and find a way to win.”
