Missing Piece

With OG Anunoby back, the Knicks make sense again.

Good morning! WE ARE SO BACK.

Game 65: Knicks 106, Sixers 79

In a New York minute…

It didn’t take long for the snowball to start rolling downhill. Behind suffocating defense and balanced early scoring, the Knicks got out to a 26-14 lead after one and increased their advantage to 21 after two as Josh Hart nearly had a triple double before halftime. The Sixers made their push early in the third thanks to three New York turnovers, but a quick timeout stemmed the tide, and the Knicks used an 18-2 run to essentially put the game away well before the fourth quarter began.

Three Things

1. OG is back. Lots of storylines from this game that we’ll get to shortly, and all of them are important in their own right.

But every good thing that came out of last night can be traced back to the return of the queen of New York’s chessboard.

If that praise seems a bit lofty for a non-shot creator who has never averaged (and probably will never average) 20 points, feel free to go back and watch this game, and then compare it to basically any other game the Knicks have played since the end of January.

Or, in lieu of looking at the film, just ask Tobias Harris how he’s feeling after a 1-for-6 night that produced a season-low two points.

Anunoby’s presence gave New York exactly what it was missing: an alpha stopper on defense that slotted everyone else into place, and another shooter and ball mover on offense who made their attack exponentially harder to defend.

With OG back, the offense and defense work, unicorns are real, and all is right in the universe.