The Knicks won a home game they sure needed to win on Wednesday night at the Garden, and it frankly didn’t matter who it was against. The Clippers, even leaving town with a 13-23 record, were hot coming into New York. The Knicks were not, having lost four in a row, the last one seeing them get dog-walked by the Pistons in Detroit.
This one was close for most of the night, for sure, too close from a New York state of mind. At the end of the third quarter the Knicks were still behind by a basket at 87-85. From there, though, they set out to stop their losing streak and stopping the losing basketball they’d been playing, and began the business of winning the game before they set out on a 4-game West Coast trip.
They won the game over those next few minutes, did that without Jalen Brunson, did that because their defense forced the Clippers into a bunch of bad shots from the outside; did that because the ball moved and because a lot of the good things happening for the Knicks at the other end revolved around Karl-Anthony Towns. You know the deal with Towns by now. When things do go off the rails with him, and he throws in a stinker like he did in Detroit on Monday, he frequently gets blamed for everything except congestion pricing.
But over the stretch that really did win this game for the Knicks, a 16-7 stretch, we clearly saw that if the Knicks are going to be what New York wants them to be across the rest of the season and what the owner — Jimmy Dolan, Mr. Basketball — has challenged them to be, it’s not merely enough for him to be their big guy. They need to treat him like one.
“The biggest adjustment [with Mike Brown’s system] is for me,” Towns said after the Knicks lost by 31 to the Pistons and contributed just one basket.
Maybe, and more likely, it’s Brown’s job to adjust the adjustment for someone — Towns — who has to be one of his stars if this team is going to make it back to the Eastern Conference finals, and beyond. It’s Brunson’s job, too.
Of course we know how much Brunson means to the Knicks, seen how things have changed since he got here from Dallas, we know about all the big shots he’s made and how fearless he is in the clutch and what a beloved figure he has become at the Garden. But he’s a point guard. And as much as he has had the run of the place under Tom Thibodeau and now under Brown, he needs to get the ball to Towns, and get it to him in the paint as much as he can the rest of the way. Be the coach’s son who looks like a coach on the floor.
When the Knicks were going good, and they were going really good before they blew that big lead against the Spurs in San Antonio, Brunson was moving the ball more than he had a year ago. The Knicks did look like a real, live, 5-man band. Then the ball stopped moving, and they stopped playing any real defense, and got briefly passed by the Celtics.
They found themselves, though, for a handful of minutes against the Clippers. Towns set a terrific screen and Jordan Clarkson drove to the basket for a 3-point play. The Knicks were back ahead, 88-87. Tyler Kolek and Towns ran a pick-and-roll, Towns got to the basket, scored, got fouled. The Knicks were up five. Another offensive rebound for Towns, a put-back, a foul, a free throw. It was 95-88. Before this game the Knicks were 11-3 in games that had seen them score 50 or more points in the paint. They would get to 48 against the Clippers. Close enough.
By the time Towns got one more offensive rebound and the two made free throws that came because of a strong put-back attempt, the Knicks were ahead, 101-92, and the Clippers were as good as on the team bus.
Brunson led the Knick scorers with 26 points, and even had seven assists after getting none in Detroit. All five Knicks starters were in double figures. Jordan Clarkson got there himself off the bench. The Marquette kid Kolek — more and more of a keeper, a wonderful old expression used by an old Marquette coach named Al McGuire — had five assists in 14 minutes.
With all that, Towns was the best player on the court for the Knicks. He didn’t get to a triple double. It just looked and felt like one. He finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds and seven assists. Less than his average with points, but as much as the Knicks could have wanted from him on this night, and as much as Towns could have wanted from himself after the way he’d played against the Pistons. There needs to be a way going forward for him and Brunson to both be great in the same game, something that doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
In this way, Towns is like one of those star receivers in pro football who can’t do anything unless the quarterback throws them the ball.
“One of our standards is, ‘Hey, let’s stay connected,’” Brown said when it was over. “It’s up to me and KAT and Jalen to keep the group uplifted and connected.”
Uplifted and connected is swell. KAT can definitely help with that. But Brown and Brunson have to keep finding ways to throw KAT the damn ball. The Knicks need to make their 3’s, everybody does in the modern game, sure. But those numbers about points in the paint don’t lie any more than ball does. Something else that was no lie? The way KAT looked even when Brunson was getting a rest on Wednesday and the Knicks were winning a game that felt, because of the circumstances, bigger than the NBA Cup.
