By Any Means Necessary

The Knicks made life far harder than it needed to be, but emerged from Philly with a gritty win.

Good morning! Reminder that I’m planning to hop into the Substack chat for a Q & A today sometime between 10:35 and noon. Hope to catch you there. Also, for anyone who may have missed it, Ian Begley reported on Tuesday that the Knicks hold "solid belief" that Mitchell Robinson will be back around early February, but notes that Jonas Valanciunas is worth keeping an eye on as a potential target. The trade deadline is three weeks from today.

Game 42: Knicks 125, Sixers 119 (OT)

• KAT missed the game after it was announced that he has a bone chip in his thumb, although he is expected to play through the injury and will be back once the swelling it down.

• New York came out of the gate firing, making 53 percent of their threes in the first half to just 13 percent for Philly, helped them to an early 16-point lead.

• The Sixers came roaring back in the third when the Knicks went cold and their defense got soft.

• After holding off multiple Philly charges in the fourth, New York seemingly had the game won, but some poor execution down the stretch led to OT.

• The Knicks dominated the extra period with a big assist from Precious Achiuwa, while Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson were the statistical stars of the night.

Through four and a half years of the Leon Rose/Tom Thibodeau era, “panic” has not been a word oft uttered in connection with the Knicks.

Not that they haven’t had their opportunities, like when things went to hell in year two, or when the first Brunson team started 10-13, or when they became the NBA’s mash unit last season. Through it all, they have remained steady.

I don’t think their steely resolve would have finally crumbled had they lost last night, not with the cushion they’ve build up over the first half of the season and the benefit of the doubt they’d have gotten without Karl-Anthony Towns, who was on the sideline changing outfits like he was hosting the Oscars.

Still, I’d have wondered.

Coming off five losses in seven games, up 16 on a Sixers team decimated by injuries and with no Joel Embiid, that would have been a rough game to lose via second half collapse, let alone the type of catastrophe that was in play when this game went into overtime. At some point, confidence starts to wane, unity starts to fracture, and doubt begins to creep in.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about any of that. Not today at least.

The reason why, somewhat ironically, is that in a situation when a lot of other teams might have panicked, the Knicks showed arguably their greatest resolve of the entire season.