Playing to Win

The New York Knickerbockers are the second seed in the Eastern Conference. And they're ready for anything.

Good morning, and thank you everyone for not minding the later-than-usual Monday morning edition. We’ll be back on the usual 5am schedule tomorrow.

Game 82: Knicks 120, Bulls 119 (OT)

In a New York minute…

Leave it to the longtime rivals to play one of the most competitive games of the season on its final day.

This was a nail-bitter almost from the opening tip. Neither team ever led by more than eight points. There were a dozen ties and 15 lead changes, including eight in the final five minutes of regulation alone. New York led for 24:34 to Chicago’s 21:44, but the Bulls had the advantage for over 10 minutes between the late third and most of the fourth. It was a game that would have made Michael and Patrick proud.

Alas, the Knicks did what they have done so many times this season and made just enough plays down the stretch despite this being far from their cleanest effort. Brunson’s 11-footer tied the score with 1:01 to go in regulation, and after a frantic final minute, the OT scoring began with an Alex Caruso triple. From there though, New York scored seven straight points and never relinquished the lead.

When a DeMar DeRozan jumper clanked off the iron as time expired, the Knicks had their 50th win of the season.

One Thing: Playing to Win

Entering play on Sunday afternoon, three teams had an opportunity to grab the second spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs: the Bucks, the Cavs, and the Knicks.

In most years, the two seed is something that any team in their right mind would covet. Rarely are there more than a handful of dangerous teams in a single conference.

This reality has historically played itself out in the playoff results.

Since the NBA expanded the playoff field to 16 teams 40 years ago, there have been 160 seventh and eighth seeds in their respective conferences. Of those, only a dozen have advanced past the first round.

As with any NBA truism though, there are exceptions. We saw two such rarities play out in grand fashion last season, when eighth seeded Miami moved on to the championship round while the seventh seeded Lakers advanced twice before losing to the eventual World Champion Nuggets.

And of course, we all remember the greatest playoff underdog in NBA history upsetting the Heat in round one 25 years ago before taking their improbable magic act all the way to the Finals.

Now, this season, a similar solar eclipse-level event may be taking place once again. With the reigning MVP (and would-be MVP, had it not been for injury) returning to the court on April 2, the Philadelphia 76ers just ended their season with eight consecutive victories and as much momentum as any team in the league. They are a formidable adversary who can and should frighten most teams, especially with Embiid entering the postseason as rested as he has ever been. En route to a top-three seed themselves before Embiid was injured, they don’t remotely resemble a “normal” bottom-two playoff team.

Nor, for that matter, do the Heat, who have represented the Eastern conference in two of the last four NBA Finals, and were Jimmy Butler triple away from making it to a third.

The Bucks weren’t able to draw Philly in the first round, regardless of Sunday’s result, but drawing Miami was very much still in play. After being defeated by the Heat in two of the last four postseasons, one wonders how much that possibility weighed on Milwaukee as they allowed a four-point game in the middle of the third quarter turn into a 25-point laugher. The participation medal is already in the mail.

Also sent out for delivery was Cleveland’s “thanks for playing” trophy, as they went to the greatest of lengths to ensure a loss to the cellar-dwelling Hornets (who themselves were trying to lose to improve their lottery odds) by playing the likes of Damian Jones and Pete Nance the entire fourth quarter. Pete Nance could walk into your living room right now and you wouldn’t know him. I could be Pete Nance¹.

Those teams played to lose, as is their right. Teams have been rewarded for late season chicanery in the past, and if one of the Cavs or Bucks finds themselves in the conference finals, perhaps their bet will look wise.

Regardless of whether it does or doesn’t, theirs is a wager steeped in cowardice.

That is a foreign concept around these parts.

By the time the Bulls and Knicks began overtime on Sunday afternoon, every other game in the Eastern Conference was over or decided. New York knew that if they lost, they’d be the third seed in the East, which would have assured them of a matchup with the Indiana Pacers in round one.

The Pacers are damn good, and a bear to defend at that. Finishing with the second best offense in NBA history following the 157-piece they put on Atlanta Sunday, Indy is not a team that should be taken lightly.

But they are also highly flawed, with a 24th ranked defense that tops out as a “barely respectable” and a star guard who hasn’t quite looked like himself in months. In short, they are not the Sixers, who were third in the NBA in net rating when Joel Embiid went down in late January, and who have again boasted the a top-three net rating since Embiid returned.

The Knicks may not face the big guy next Saturday, not if the Sixers lose at home to the Heat in the play-in game, which will take place on Wednesday night in Philadelphia. Should that transpire, a whole other set of demons will rise from the grave - not as intimidating as the reigning MVP, but no less formidable.

New York could have avoided all of it, simply by treating Sunday’s overtime period like a preseason game.

Alternatively, they could have rested all of their rotation players from the opening tip, which (for all they knew at the time) might have meant a first round date with the Magic, who are both youthful and offensively challenged. Like Indy, Orlando is to be respected, but perhaps not feared.

That would have been the easiest path to a series win, and with it, the ability to call this season a success, especially considering the injury to Julius Randle and all of the other maladies that have befallen this group.

And yet, they wanted none of it.

In the NBA, you can’t have a partially winning culture any more than you can be partially pregnant. You’re either all the way in, or all the way out.

In battling back from an eight-point deficit with under 10 minutes to go, the Knicks told you who they were and what they were all about. Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat, ‘86 Bears or ‘27 Yankees…whoever awaited them at the end of the tunnel would have to deal with them, not the other way around.

That’s the mentality that allows you to fight back from eight separate deficits in the final five minutes of regulation and overtime and emerge with a victory. It is the sort of quiet confidence that only comes with incredible preparation, which itself can only happen with rigid organizational standards.

Come here if you want to play to win, or don’t both coming at all.

Don’t have your best? For other teams, it’s an excuse. For the Knicks, it’s an opportunity - an opportunity to show how they can beat you in a variety of ways, but always led by equal parts toughness & perseverance that no other NBA team can replicate.

What did that get them?

50 wins.

Five. zero.

Before this season, New York had only one campaign since the turn of the century in which they reached that total. Only the Hornets and Wizards have had fewer in that time span.

Similarly, the Knicks grabbed a top-two seed for only the second time in the last thirty seasons. The last time they did it, Jalen Brunson was in high school. The time before that, only two players on the current roster had been born: Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks.

But here they are, not only because they were fearless on the final day of the regular season, but because they haven’t known the meaning of fear since Brunson arrived. His arrival changed everything. The impossible became possible, the improbable became likely, and the old norms became a distant memory.

With Brunson in uniform, the Knicks always have a chance, and opposing teams always have a headache. That was the case on Sunday, when the former second rounder-turner-MVP candidate scored or assisted on 21 of his team’s final 27 points.

He is why they do not fear Philadelphia or Miami, and why they won’t fear anyone else if they’re able to advance. Respect? Absolutely. But fear? Never.

We’ll see where it gets them. For right now, sit back and enjoy having a team we can all be proud of after so many years of the exact opposite. Losing was the standard here for longer than you would think possible in a major market. Those times are a distant memory now.

These Knicks play with one goal and only one goal in mind.

With Sunday afternoon as the latest example, they usually get what they want.

Play of the Day

Now that I’ve waxed poetic about a team that will always have a special place in our hearts, please forgive me for pointing out that yesterday was not their cleanest game.

New York committed 21 turnovers, which tied for their second-highest total of the season. Four of the five starters had at least three giveaways, with I-Hart and Precious chipping in two apiece. Four TO’s came in the final six minutes of play, all of which carries serious disaster potential.

The last one of those occurred when Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart couldn’t connect on an out-of-timeout inbounds play with 13.1 seconds remaining in overtime, giving the Bulls one last chance to win the game after being down by four with under a minute remaining.

They got the ball to DeRozan and got the switch they wanted, leaving Precious Achiuwa as his primary defender. With Isaiah Hartenstein lending a perfectly timed helping hand, they made life as difficult as possible for DeMar on the final look:

It shouldn’t have come down to this, but it was good preparation for the postseason, if nothing else.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Precious Achiuwa: It’s incredibly fitting that on the final Sunday, the Knicks won a game because an unheralded role player stepped into a bigger role than expected and delivered. That is perhaps the singular defining concept of New York’s season.

Yesterday, the baton was passed to Precious Achiuwa, who went from trade afterthought to 40-minute-a-night stalwart to out of the rotation entirely, all since January 1.

He was ready to step back into the spotlight yesterday, with Isaiah Hartenstein reaching his (roughly) 30-minute limit and Mitchell Robinson out after halftime in a move that Tom Thibodeau could only describe as “probably precautionary.”

As a result, Achiuwa played 15 minutes at center that included nearly the entire overtime, during which he had two buckets, one massive block of DeMar DeRozan, and of course, the final defensive stand.

With Robinson still rounding into form, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if we hear from Achiuwa again this season.

⭐️ ⭐️ Donte DiVincenzo: Steph Curry. James Harden. Klay Thompson. Paul George. Luka Doncic. Buddy Hield.

That’s the list of players who have made more 3-point field goals in a single NBA season than Donte DiVincenzo did this year.

He may have saved his biggest for last. His 283rd and final triple came with 3:13 left in overtime and his team down by one. They never trailed again.

But the threes aren’t the only thing that has endeared Donte in the hearts of Knicks fans. If that were the case, Evan Fournier would be a living legend.

DiVincenzo is so much more, and was so much more on Sunday, grabbing key offensive and defensive rebounds down the stretch of regulation, plus making a go-ahead floater with two minutes to go.

That he did it while sitting for a total of 30 seconds in a game that the Knicks arguably shouldn’t have wanted to win says everything you need to know about their culture.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: Over the final month of the NBA’s regular season, from March 14 to April 14, Jalen Brunson scored 596 points.

That total was 159 more than the next closest player - Devin Booker with 437.

The gap between Brunson and Booker was equal to the gap between Booker and bam Adebayo, who ranked 42nd with 277 total points in that same time span. Meanwhile, his 126 assists were second only to Dejounte Murray and Tyrese Haliburton.

By any metric, there has not been a better offensive player in the sport to close the season.

After another 40-spot on Sunday that contained massive play after massive play, the only guesswork left is whether Brunson finishes 4th or 5th in MVP voting. 1st Team All-NBA should be locked up. The last time a Knick checked both of those boxes in the same season was Patrick Ewing in 1990.

Brunson now, like Ewing then, is 27 years old. What he is doing feels momentous, like lightning in a bottle that must be cherished before it vanishes.

But what if…what if…this is just the beginning?

What if, like Ewing then, we still have another decade of greatness in store?

Everything the mind can imagine, Jalen Brunson seems capable of making possible.

That is greatness at its finest.

Standings Check In

Your Final Eastern Conference standings, from top to bottom…

…as well as the play-in schedule, with the final two spots to be decided on Thursday and Friday:

Up Next…

The Knicks will start the postseason at home on Saturday against either Miami or Philly, tip-off time TBD.

Final Thought

What an ending.

What a season.

What a team.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. I am not Pete Nance.