Eye of the Beholder

What are we to make of the Knicks these days? Here's five recent topics of interest and the arguments for both sides of each.

Good morning! The Knicks have a second consecutive day off today, with the Mavs coming to town tomorrow. Dallas may have Anthony Davis back for the matchup, with Marc Stein reporting that AD is targeting either tomorrow or Thursday at Orlando for his comeback. For the Knicks, Jalen Brunson is doing controlled court work, so there’s that. Let’s talk about Saturday night.

Game 70: Knicks 122, Wizards 103

• Deuce McBride missed the game with a groin issue, giving Cam Payne the start.

• New York was lucky they were playing the Wizards out of the gate, with some poor play all around in the first quarter.

• Behind Tyler Kolek’s dishing and Mikal Bridges’ swishing, the Knicks took command before halftime.

• A 33-point third quarter lead dwindled to four early in the fourth as Washington got hot from deep and New York went cold (and got lackadaisical).

• In part thanks to the Wiz pulling the engines behind the comeback, the Knicks regained control late and won going away.

It’s late March. St. Patty’s Day is past, the NCAA Tournament is in full swing, and the heavy winter coats can begin to navigate their way into the downstairs closet.

And where the NBA schedule is concerned, it’s Silly Season.

What is NBA Silly Season? It’s the time of year where nobody knows what to make of anything. The mighty Cavs just lost four in a row before beating the hapless Jazz. The Nuggets, Lakers and Grizzlies - three teams fighting for spots three through five in the West - were a combined 15-15 in their last 30 games heading into play on Sunday, with the Bulls blowing out LA in LeBron’s return on Saturday night. The Pacers barely escaped the Mavs and Nets (twice) in their last three. The Heat, guided by the best coach in the NBA, just lost 10 straight, with one tragic second half collapse after another. Houston’s nine-game winning streak ended last night at the hands of the Jokic-less Nugs. And the fightin’ Washington Wizards notched consecutive wins in Detroit and Denver (with Jokic!) just one week ago.

What does it all mean? That once we hit the 70-game mark, the NBA season turns into a magic eye poster: the harder you look, the more confused you’ll get.

Which brings us to our beloved Knicks.

In broad strokes, this is a very good basketball team that is worth paying attention to once the playoffs begin. They have the fifth best record in the NBA with the seventh best net rating - sixth according to Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time. They have two likely All-NBA honorees, one of whom should be fully healthy for the postseason and another who is hitting a stride of sorts in the absence of his running mate. They are on track to have their first back-to-back 50-win seasons in 30 years.

Maybe we should leave it at that.

Or maybe we should spend way too much time lamenting the fact that if Cam Payne doesn’t hit this shot…

…the sky would be falling so fast and with such force that we’d all be scrambling to find the nearest bomb shelter.

Thankfully, Cam Payne’s Sam Cassell-sized cajones paid off, and New York flipped momentum just in time to avoid disaster.

We are left with a Knicks team that is as much a Rorschach test as any in recent memory. Compared to last year’s edition - the ultimate known quantity due to injuries that left little wiggle room for interpretation - this version is likely to make you forget to put your shirt back on before exiting the bathroom.

Saturday’s win over Washington was a perfect example of this concept. Let’s go through five potential truths that have emerged over the last few weeks, and whether the counterpoints to each have any merit.

1. The Knicks are nothing without Jalen Brunson

I don’t think this is particularly controversial, at least relative to any other team and star player in the NBA.

Without Brunson this week, the Knicks lost back to back games in dispiriting fashion to bottom-feeders before allowing the league-worst Wizards to shave 29 points off New York’s second half lead. In each instance, much like in crunch time against the Clippers and Warriors, the Knicks felt like a team of rowers without anyone to guide their movements. Off the court, we’ve seen more drama in two and a half weeks than we had all season, between Mikal Bridges’ comments to the press, Josh Hart’s sideline blowup, and most recently, Hart questioning his team’s mental toughness.

And yet, in nine games without Brunson this season, New York has a winning record with a plus-41 scoring margin over those five wins and four losses. Compare that to Denver, who is 4-5 with a negative-29 scoring margin without their MVP.

Even if the Knicks’ net rating has dipped from a plus-4.2 to a plus-2.8 amidst an easy schedule since Brunson went down, given how they played like a bottom-10 team whenever he sat last season, there’s at least an argument that the current team has aptly dealt with his absence.

Hopefully they won’t have to navigate without their guiding light much longer. Given that Jalen is out of the boot and doing controlled court work, one imagines he’ll be back by Saturday, April 5 at the latest. There’s only six games between now and then. Go 3-3, and no one should be complaining.

2. Tyler Kolek is the Second Coming

As someone who recently mocked the notion that Kolek was worth a tenth of the attention he was getting, even I’ll admit that the soon-to-be-24-year-old impressed on Saturday.

His greatest contribution? Getting Mikal Bridges going for his highest scoring quarter of the season. The last five of Kolak’s seven second quarter assists all went to Bridges, including this perfectly timed dime through two defenders into Mikal’s sweet spot:

(Fun fact: Bridges seven highest scoring quarters of the season have come in seven different games, all of which the Knicks have won. This was also the 12th time Mikal scored more than 25 points in a game with New York, with the only loss among those coming to the Pistons by five points in mid-January. As Bridges goes, so go the Knicks, which begs interesting questions concerning Mikal’s usage come playoff time. But we’ll save that convo for a later time…)

It looked for a little while like Kolek was going to make a run at Mark Jackson’s Knick rookie-record of 18 assists in a game, especially with the outcome careening towards extended garbage time.

But after Tyler the Creator checked back in with a few minutes to go in the third, Washington rattled off a 16-5 run in under four minutes to cut a 20-point lead to single digits. That obviously wasn’t all on Kolek, but it was a reminder that inserting a more traditional point guard in place of Brunson might not be the ultimate elixir.

Not that he needed to be a savior to warrant more time. Even if Deuce McBride wasn’t reportedly going to miss more games with a groin strain, with how much Landry Shamet’s brief hot streak has gone back into the freezer and with Precious Achiuwa looking like a guy playing for a contract in China, there’s an argument Kolek should stick in the rotation until the end of the season. As for whether that will happen…

3. Thibs is on his last legs

I wrote about Tom Thibodeau a few weeks ago, after the latest dispiriting loss to a top team, and about how hard it was to last as long as he has in one job. Currently the sixth longest tenured head coach in the league, Thibodeau just signed a contract extension last summer. Clearly, as recently as eight months ago, the front office felt he was the right man to lead the organization forward.

As of right now, we have no reason to believe their thinking has changed. For all of the fan gripes this season - overtaxing the starters, not playing young players enough, sticking with underperforming vets and lineups for too long, etc, etc - not a single thing we’ve seen is new. To the contrary, the contents of the complaint box bears a striking resemblance to that of years past. Even the recent potential fraying of the locker room isn’t as bad as in the ‘21-22 campaign, when the season did wind up spiraling out of control.

Through it all, Thibs has persevered, always seeming to pull back on the rope when hanging off the edge of disaster (although one wonders what the response would have been if Saturday’s victory got away from them). Now five wins away from passing Pat Riley as the fourth winningest regular season coach in franchise history, it should not surprise anyone if Thibodeau is back for another go around.

There is one difference from the last four years though, and it’s a big one: the pressure to perform in the playoffs may be higher now than ever before. Maybe the front office views this as something of a gap year, knowing they needed another summer to fill in some key holes on the roster and for the rookies to develop. If that’s the case, perhaps the postseason won’t be as big a deciding factor as we think.

But there’s an air of uncertainty surrounding the first chair on New York’s bench that hasn’t been present in some time. We’ll know the answer soon enough.

4. It’s the threes, stupid

Saturday night’s near debacle was in many ways a microcosm of New York’s last 10 games.

In the first half, their offense looked unstoppable. Yes, Tyler Kolek was a big part of that, but it certainly helped that almost every pass he threw to someone behind the arc resulted in a made basket. In total, the Knicks made 10-of-23 attempts from long range before halftime. The Wizards, meanwhile, went just 2-of-16. Not coincidentally, New York held a 25-point lead.

In the second half though, the Knicks attempted just a dozen triples, making only three. Washington flipped their own script as well, going 9-of-20 from distance and nearly fueling the biggest NBA comeback of the season.

This is sort of how it has gone recently. In their four wins over the last 10 games, New York has made 45 percent of their looks from deep while their opponents have shot just 32.6 percent. In the six losses, they’ve made just 27.1 percent while the teams they’ve faced have nailed 38.2 percent.

There are longer conversations to be had about the quality of the threes the Knicks are generating versus the looks they’re giving up, but for as much as we fret about everything under the sun, sometimes these results just come down to who’s hot on any given night.

5. These games still matter

The logical endpoint of today’s premise.

As Benjy and I discussed on today’s pod, there’s been strikingly low stakes ever since the Knicks got waxed by the Cavs and Celtics in back to back games shortly after the All-Star break. With the tiebreaker in hand over both the Bucks and Pacers, they’ve known that nothing short of a complete collapse would change their seeding.

Maybe a collapse shouldn’t be ruled out, but even if the Knicks went, say, 5-7, down the stretch, Indy would need to go 9-3 to pass them, while the Bucks would have to go 10-2. Absolute worst case, maybe New York falls to fourth, which might not be the worst thing in the world depending on how you view their potential second round opponents.

But this is all besides the point. The Knicks are a team full of veterans who have made deep playoff runs, with every core rotation piece having been at least to the second round multiple times. As the Wizards were giving us all a heart attack on Saturday, one wonders if there’s a switch to be flipped once the games start mattering again.

That’s also a dangerous game to play, especially if you believe there are real off-court issues in the locker room. These last dozen games might mean nothing, or they might mean everything. There’s just no way to know what state they’ll be in once the ball is tipped on April 19 or 20. Starting to play a better brand of ball would vanquish a lot of those questions.

Either way, the most tumultuous successful regular season in franchise history is drawing to a close.

It’s as good a time as any to start getting it together.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ OG Anunoby: Gets it over Bridges because for as spectacular as Mikal’s second quarter was, his second half disappearing act was nearly as detrimental. Anunoby found his 3-point stroke, hitting 4-of-5 from behind the arc and finished with 23 points on 12 shots with typically strong defense. He’s had a rough go from 2-point range since Brunson went down, but hopefully these reps are positive with the playoffs approaching.

⭐️ ⭐️ Tyler Kolek: Sure, why not.

Coming off two straight losses, it was no small task for Kolek to step into the biggest spotlight of his first season with the pressure ratcheted up. The Knicks led by just 10 when he checked in to begin the second despite some truly atrocious play by the opponent. That Kolek took the bull by the horns and helped blow the game open is commensurate with everything we know about him.

One way or another, he’s ready for a bigger role than he’s been given.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Karl Anthony Towns: Another game with top honors for KAT, who went for 31 on 20 shots vs Washington and has averaged 26 points on superb efficiency since JB went down.

Final Thought

Get well soon, JB.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”