All for One & One for All...

...united we stand, divided we fall.

Good morning, and Happy Sunday. The Knicks won a massive game last night, so I want everyone to enjoy a bonus complementary edition of the KFS Newsletter. If you enjoy this, and would like to become a full subscriber, your patronage would be greatly appreciated.

On a good team, there are no superstars. There are great players who show they are great players by being able to play with others as a team.

The irony in Red Holzman’s words from a half a century ago is that the team he coached wound up being so good that the majority of its players enjoyed the spoils of stardom - even if, as Red said, individual glory wasn’t his preferred path to ultimate success.

Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley, Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas, and now Dick Barnett…these were all “role players” on at least one of the title teams, at least in comparison to Willis and Clyde, and yet all are enshrined in Springfield for their contributions to the game. But even Reed and Frazier, to Holzman’s point, didn’t put up “superstar” numbers, not when you compared them to some of the headliners from that era.

They didn’t need to. For as talented as so many of those players were, it was their collective unselfishness more than any individual skill set that created a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

It is why those teams are still revered to the degree that they are. It is why they won’t be forgotten, with stories that are passed down from generation to generation.

Making their efforts even more special is the fact that no other Knick core has joined them in their immortality. The 90’s Knicks came close, with a grit that embodied the city they played in.

But even Ewing, Oakley, Starks & Co. never quite reached that same level of basketball nirvana. The wait for an heir to the throne of the glory days has thus persisted.

Until, perhaps, right now.

If you had told any Knicks fan before Game 1 that Jalen Brunson was going to have one of his least efficient games of the season while Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey would combine for a fairly efficient 62 points, they’d probably have assumed a loss was in order.

If you had told them that Jalen Brunson was going to be the fourth best point guard in this game, and that the normal Robin to his Batman was only going to score eight points, they’d have been wise to bet the mortgage on the Sixers’ money line.

And if you’d have told them that the Knicks would shoot under 36 percent from 2-point range, they’d probably have doubled down on their wager.

Yet somehow, despite all of that, New York enters Game 2 with a 1-0 advantage.

Why?

Because this team’s greatness is in the mold of Red Holzman’s ideal. They are great because of their ability to play with one another as a team, which means having each other’s backs and picking someone up when they’re down.

All for one, one for all.

It’s not that Brunson didn’t contribute to the win. The box score will show him as tied for the team lead in scoring, with seven assists and seven rebounds to boot.

It’s that when we’ll go back and think about this game later, there will be five Knicks we think of before Brunson when it comes to doling out credit, and none more so than Deuce McBride.

Deuce countered the bright lights of his first postseason as a rotation player by making his first four 3-pointers and logging a plus-37 in his 28 minutes of play. According to Basketball reference, only 14 players in history have recorded a greater on/off differential during a playoff game in which they played 28 or fewer minutes. The difference between McBride’s night and those other 14 is that they all came in blowouts. McBride’s team won by just seven points.

By that metric, he had one of the most significant impacts of any role player in NBA playoff history. Not bad for a guy who was out of the rotation until January.

Hearing Brunson single him out in the on-court postgame interview was the latest sign of how tight knit this group is, and how their selflessness has risen almost to the level of those championship teams of yesteryear.

That phenomenon went beyond just Brunson and his backup. Isaiah Hartenstein, who has been a godsend all season long with the on/off data to back it up, played just 18 minutes in the win.

Was he upset? To the contrary. He was just happy his best friend had himself a moment, one where he again resembled the All-Defense level force and offensive rebounding machine he was at the beginning of the season:

He wasn’t the only one thrilled for New York’s backup center, whose seven offensive rebounds and four blocks loomed as large as any stat from last night:

DiVincenzo, like Brunson and Hartenstein, could have been focused on a tough individual night, but that’s not the character of this squad. They only care about one number, and it’s whether or not they fill the win column after a game.

That sounds trite and an awful lot like coach-speak, but how else can we explain what we’re seeing? How else can we explain Josh Hart continuing to have the courage to shoot threes, even after he was just 1-of-5 over the first three and a half quarters as the Sixers repeatedly rolled out the red carpet whenever he got the ball? You don’t do that without the inherent belief that your entire team has your back.

And on this night, he repaid their trust.

Trust. It is the foundation of every great relationship, whether in sports, business, romance or life. It is a precious and fragile commodity that works like a retirement account: the more you put in, the more you get out.

But NBA teams aren’t build for the long haul, which is why true trust between teammates can be difficult to find. The transient nature of NBA rosters mean guys don’t share the sort of camaraderie you’d find on a mid-major college team, or even professional teams from before free agency changed everything. The championship Knicks believed in each other and played as a team in part because they grew up together. Such opportunities are rare nowadays, if not impossible.

But this team is breaking the mold. Whether it’s the trio of Nova Knicks, or the Leon/Wes/Thibs/Brunson (Sr. & Jr.) “all in the family” dynamic, or the tight knit center duo that has one driving from Houston to Louisiana to attend the baby shower of the other, there is no dividing this group.

Even Bojan Bogdanovic, who was relegated to the outskirts of the rotation at times before he came through with several massive buckets in the Game 1 win, seems to have fit right in. No one is out of place, probably because no one is in it for themselves.

Hart, Mitch, Deuce, Bogey, OG Anunoby (who hit maybe the biggest shot of the game to put New York up 104-97 with 1:28 remaining)…this was their night. That it wasn’t Brunson’s doesn’t go down as a demerit, but a badge of honor.

Thibs always says, “we have enough.” There is never anything more added. Whoever is available, whoever is performing well, that will be enough to get a victory. The standard is the standard.

That is the culture they’ve built.

They will need it to win this series, which is still a long way from being over. Joel Embiid, despite a brief injury scare, figures to remain a force. How close he can get to the world-eating behemoth who dominated the first quarter of Saturday’s game remains to be seen, but any upright version of him is enough to cause concern.

Ditto for Tyrese Maxey, who the Knicks struggled to contain all night long. Considering Kyle Lowry was the only Sixers role player to show up on offense, New York could face more uphill battles before all is said and done.

Just don’t think they won’t be up for the challenge…or that they’ll be a one-man team when they confront it.

Great players may win awards and accolades, but great teams win titles.

The Knicks, thankfully, have both. They also have the best type of superstar - one who cares not for his individual numbers, and would do anything just to get a victory.

In Game 1, that meant giving up the ball to Josh Hart, and letting him hit three of the biggest shots of his professional life.

Which player will come up big next?

Red Holzman would tell you that’s the wrong question to ask.

Who will lift up their teammate next?

To that question, at least with these Knicks, there are no shortage of answers.

TOMORROW: A full game recap and preview of all the potential adjustments each team is looking at for Game 2.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

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