Blazing a New Trail

Don't look now, but these Knicks are writing their own narrative.

Good morning!

How about those Knicks? They’re rolling, with wins in four of their last five after a nice home win against a pesky Portland team and a Jalen Brunson return on the horizon.

There’s two weeks to go in the regular season with much still at stake, even if a third seed seems increasingly secure by the day. Let’s get into it right now.

Game 74: Knicks 110, Blazers 93

• The roller coaster began with a 15-8 Portland start, followed by a Knicks push that ended with a Mikal Bridges heave to close the first with a 27-25 lead.

• Just when it looked like New York might run away with the game, the Blazers rattled off a 15-0 run in the blink of an eye and led by eight at the break.

• After going down by 14, the Knicks turned up the heat defensively and generated offense off of those giveaways, with OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges taking over the game. Garbage time ensued.

Rock Bottom.

Those were my words just 10 days ago, as the Knicks helplessly watched the bottom-feeding Charlotte Hornets run away with a win as New York offered frighteningly little resistance of any kind.

In response to the loss - their second in two nights against teams playing for ping pong balls - I offered perhaps my harshest assessment of this group yet:

While this year’s roster may be superior to last year’s team on paper, they lack the special sauce that endeared that never-say-die band of brothers into the hearts of millions of Knicks fans around the world. Instead, we’re now left wondering what exactly this team stands for, and whether they have any identity outside of being Jalen Brunson’s supporting cast.

My oh my, what a difference a week and a half can make.

With a fall-from-ahead, come-from behind 31-point second half turnaround, the Knicks secured their fourth victory in five games. It was anything but easy thanks to a Portland team who refuses to go quietly into that good night. They challenged New York’s defenders with screen after relentless screen, resulting in a 58-point first half that felt exclusively built on drives to the hoop. Those drives led to both easy finishes and kick-out threes, neither of which the Knicks seemed capable of stopping. 20 of Portland’s 24 first half field goals came either from inside the restricted area or behind the arc.

After a 10-0 Blazer run early in the third (a product of two makes at the rim and two 3-pointers, naturally), it felt like we were in store for a repeat of the Charlotte debacle, except this time, it would be at home.

Why oh why, I lamented to myself, can’t this team just find some damn consistency.

Turns out, they were just making Clyde wait a bit before he opened his 80th birthday present.

Spurred by OG Anunoby taking it upon himself to terrorize the young Blazers again…

…and again…

…and again…

…New York went on a 56-25 run over the final 20 minutes of the game.

Nine players touched the court over that dominant stretch, and every single one contributed to the win in some way.

Perhaps most encouraging of all is that of those nine, Karl-Anthony Towns was perhaps the least helpful of the bunch (although it was notable that after the Blazers briefly made it interesting by closing the gap to five midway through the fourth, the Knicks scored on nine consecutive possessions to close the game after KAT re-entered the game to juice the spacing). Already missing Jalen Brunson, you’d think that Towns would have to produce a strong individual offensive effort for New York to have a chance. That they won going away with him scoring 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting is a testament to all the other ways this group is clicking at the moment.

Those clicks, for the second consecutive game, emanated from the wings.

The way that Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart are playing, it makes me feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills through the vast majority of this season, when the totality of their collective impact hasn’t come close to meeting the sum of their combined talents, let alone exceeding it.

On Friday against Milwaukee and last night against Portland though, when they personally outscored the Blazers 43-35 in the second half, WingStop very much lived up to their preseason billing.

How about this for a fun stat? Seven times in this game, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart assisted on each other’s field goals. In total, that pairing accounted for 16 of New York’s 27 dimes while OG Anunoby continued to channel his inner LeBron James, circa 2007, driving to the hole like a man possessed. He even wound up on the receiving end of an alley oop from - who else - Josh Hart:

Before Brunson went down with an injury, Anunoby was averaging 5.1 drives per game and attempting 2.1 field goals on those forays into the paint. Since then, he’s averaging nearly nine drives a night which are resulting in nearly five shot attempts per game. This is a fundamentally different player from what we’ve seen over the vast majority of the season.

Over the last dozen games, he is one of three Knicks (along with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges) to rank in the top 30 in the league in scoring. They are the only team in the NBA with three players in the top 30 despite the fact that the highest among them - KAT, with a scoring average of 24.4 - is barely inside the top 20.

As Tom Thibodeau is fond of saying, you don’t replace a great player with an individual; it takes a total team effort to make up for the loss of a Jalen Brunson.

The Knicks have done that just about as well as anyone could have expected. Even with those dispiriting back-to-back losses in San Antonio and Charlotte, New York is now 7-5 without the Captain. They’ll have a great chance to make it 8-5 against whatever is left of the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night, and then things get a little tougher, although it sounds like they may have their MVP back for the majority of the closing stretch:

At this point, with the third seed all but wrapped up, the only question left to answer in the regular season is how seamless Brunson’s return will be.

Their recent strong play has set up a fascinating scenario. Right now, the Knicks feel like a mom & pop restaurant that is about to get an angel investment so they can open up several new locations. The opportunity is there to take the existing formula and amplify it to a degree they’re not currently capable of, but it isn’t without risk. Right now, everyone is eating. With Brunson back, there will have to be a redistribution of every aspect of the offense. It’s less about distribution of shots and more about keeping everyone involved. Easier said than done.

In some ways, it feels like the entire season has been leading up to this.

The Knicks are rolling, and their best player is nearing his return.

A perfect third act is right there for the taking.

We’ll see how creative they can get.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: Another impossible choice for the second straight game. Literally every player has a real case for the final star with the possible exception of Towns, and you saw his impact on the close of this game from the stat I cited earlier.

Ultimately I had to go with Mitch, who entered the third quarter with the Knicks trailing by seven and left with them ahead by nine. The Blazers scored just 10 points in his nine minutes, and Robinson’s fingerprints were all over that outcome.

Better yet, Mitch had two (2) assists in that stretch!

Keep it coming, big guy.

(hat tip to Precious’ best minutes in a long time in the first half, some more huge Shamet threes, solid play from both point guards, and Josh Hart once again facilitating the offense beautifully.)

⭐️ ⭐️ Mikal Bridges: Since Brunson went down on March 6, Mikal Bridges is the only player in the NBA who has played in at least seven games (he’s appeared in 12), has averaged at least 17 points (he’s at 22.2 after 28 last night) and is hitting at least 55 percent from the field and at least 37 percent from deep.

For these dozen games, as an offensive force, Bridges has been worth every ounce of the freight New York paid to get him from Brooklyn. When you add in an 18-game stretch from the beginning of December to early January when he was the most efficient player in the NBA, and then another seven-game stretch from mid-to-late January when he was equally proficient, that’s 37 games in which he’s been everything the Knicks could have hoped for.

37, as luck would have it, is exactly half of the 74 games Mikal has played. Would Leon Rose have liked his ROI to be closer to 75 or 80 percent? I’m sure his would have.

But the book on Bridges’ first season in New York isn’t closed quite yet.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ OG Anunoby: Josh Hart said it all:

Hell hath indeed been unleashed.

Simply put, OG Anunoby is playing like the ideal third banana on a team that can win an NBA championship. He is making a real push for his second All-Defense Team selection, ranking eighth in the league with 3.2 deflections a night and making more splash plays per game than almost anyone in the league. Offensively, his proficiency from above-the-break has been a game changer. A few drives per game leave a bit to be desired, but that’s a small price to pay for how much the threat of those drives pressures a defense into making impossible choices.

Even a couple passes like this per game could be massive when facing the league’s elite defenses:

We know OG and Brunson can make beautiful music together. Here’s hoping they can pick up where they left off last season once the Captain is back.

Final Thought

Get well soon, JB.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”