Moral Victory?

Should more positives or negatives be taken from Friday's loss in Oklahoma City? As usual, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Good morning. The Knicks are back at it tonight in Chicago, where Derrick Rose will be honored at the game. No injury report for New York yet, but for the Bulls, Ayo Dosunmu is out while Torrey Craig is doubtful. Chicago is coming off a loss to the Wizards and is 15-19 on the season, in 10th place in the East.

Game 35: OKC 117, Knicks 107

More than any game this season, Friday night’s streak-busting loss to the Oklahoma City gave us much to consider.

(Before we get to serious basketball matters, now that the Knicks have tried and failed to get a 10th consecutive victory for the fourth time in the Thibs era, I couldn’t help but think back to the 2003 Amex commercial featuring Phil Jackson playing scratch off lotto. Jackson, who at this point had three three-peats on his Hall-of-Fame resume, wins the first three scratch-offs but loses the last one. “Fourth one’s tough” says the kid at the cash register. You got that right.)

Anyway, the Knicks…

If one was so inclined, I think you could come away from Friday’s game feeling more encouraged about New York’s long term prospects than after any game this season, and dare I say, in any game in over 30 years.

That may seem hyperbolic, but speaking for myself, the ‘93-94 season was the last time I watched a team that was not only capable of winning it all, but went out and repeatedly played to that high level against elite competition.

Fast forward to ‘24-25, and while these Knicks have certainly engendered much belief and hope through their 24-10 start, they hadn’t yet looked like an elite two-way team against elite competition - in part because they haven’t played against much elite competition, and both of the great teams they played were within the first three games of the season - but still, until it comes against the best, fans will always be left wondering.

Well, we don’t have to wonder anymore.

In what was as high a quality regular season game as you’ll ever see, the Knicks went toe to toe with the best and had a lead through 44 minutes of action. They achieved that advantage thanks primarily to a stretch of basketball from about the 8:30 mark of the second quarter to the end of the third quarter that was as good a 20 minutes as I can remember seeing against a team of this caliber. They were pretty close to flawless on both sides of the court, with a totally in sync offense and a defense that supported the larger vision of three elite wings holding the fort while KAT and JB did enough to keep everyone honest. The team that went out and did that can absolutely win an NBA title, which I don’t think I’ve been able to say in a very, very long time.

Why was this stretch so impressive (and in turn, why was this loss so frustrating)? As I attempted to elucidate yesterday and as others have written on extensively, the Thunder may have the best NBA defense we’ve seen in at least the last three-plus decades. Their offense is pretty darn good too - 7th best in the league - but even amidst their own scintillating start, it hasn’t risen to unguardable levels nearly as often as teams like the Cavs, Celtics, and our beloved Knicks.

When OKC’s offense is devastating, it’s usually because they’re forcing turnovers at a clip not seen this century. That didn’t happen here. The Knicks did the exact thing I said they they needed to yesterday by committing the third fewest turnovers of any team against the Thunder defense this season. Instead of turning the ball over, they largely generated great looks.

As luck would have it, New York’s shooting slump continued, and they hit just 28.1 percent of their shots from behind the arc. The Thunder, on the other hand? Sure enough, after 33 games in which OKC hit more than 41 percent of their threes only one (1) time when they hit 45 percent against the Kings, they went out last night and nailed 52 percent of their looks from behind the arc.

Sometimes it’s your night, and sometimes the night belongs to Andrew Wiggins.

But of course that’s not the whole story, and for as rosy a picture as I just painted, you can come away from this loss feeling pretty crummy if you so choose.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty.