Crash Landing

Any positive momentum the Knicks had heading into the NBA's annual midseason tournament? It went by the wayside in 24 short minutes.

Good morning.

PSA: I’m saving my thoughts about yesterday’s news on Mitchell Robinson (Shams said he’ll be out until late January or early February) and Landry Shamet (Thibs said he’s taking contact and getting closer) until tomorrow. For today, let’s focus on the game.

Game 25: Hawks 108, Knicks 100

• The Knicks got embarrassed on their home floor and eliminated from the NBA Cup.

• After finishing the second quarter up seven despite a flawed half, everything that could go wrong did go wrong after halftime.

• A few Knicks had nice numbers (19, 19, 5, 3 & 3 for KAT; 21, 8 & 6 for Josh Hart), but nobody played well.

Sports.

Quite the odd duck, they are.

If you were a fan who had watched every one of the team’s first 24 games but fell asleep after the first half last night, and then someone asked you this morning what you thought of the Knicks performance so far this season, my guess is that you’d have given a fairly measured response.

You would have probably been annoyed by the defensive inconsistency, by the occasional careless play, by a few too many slow starts, and by their collective struggle to find a dependable ethos besides “we score a ton of points.” You might have even had some questions about the long term vision with the current roster. But you’d also have to acknowledge some positives, starting with the fact that they do score a ton of points, they have gotten more consistent over the course of the season, and when fully locked in, they’ve looked the part of genuine title contender.

82 games is a long time. Whether they were slightly ahead of schedule, slightly behind schedule, or roughly on schedule through 24.5 games, one thing was undeniable:

They had a lot of runway left to go before anyone hit the panic button.

Logically speaking, nothing that happened over the final 24 minutes of one game should be enough to overcome an opinion gained through a sample size nearly 50 times as large.

So much for logic.