PLAYOFFS!

Breathe it in....We Back.

Good morning!

Allow me a moment to reflect on yesterday’s achievement - New York securing a playoff berth with their home victory over the tanking, undermanned Wizards - before we move on to the rest of the newsletter.

I’ve been a Knicks fan for three decades, and while that experience was filled with meaningful spring basketball for nearly the entire first decade of my fandom, things have not been as pleasant over most of the ensuing 22 years. In one 19-season span, New York made the postseason just four times. In three of those four seasons, they won either no playoff games or suffered a gentleman’s sweep. It was not, as the kids say, a lit time to be a Knicks fan.

It appears that those days are in the past. With their second playoff appearance in three years, both the present and future are bright. We’ll see what transpires over the next few weeks, to say nothing of what moves the summer might bring, but for today at least, let’s appreciate something that recent history suggests we should not take for granted.

The New York Knickerbockers are going to the NBA playoffs.

What a time to be alive.

Game Recap: Knicks 118, Wizards 109

⌚️30 Seconds or Less: New York’s season has been defined by its big wins, but there have also been a fair number of letdowns after some of those victories, and this one started off in that manner. The Knicks gave up 61 point in the first half to a Wizards team missing its three leading scorers, allowing Washington to shoot 55 percent overall and 50 percent from deep, and Corey Kispert to go off for 20 in the first two quarters. Thankfully the better team got serious after halftime. New York outscored the Wiz 61-33 to go up 20 before allowing 15 meaningless points in the final two and a half minutes.

The Knicks are officially back in the playoffs.

📈 Standings Check-In: With the win yesterday, the Knicks not only clinched a playoff spot, but are now one win or one Nets loss away from clinching the 5th seed. Brooklyn plays at home tomorrow night against the Timberwolves, who just blew a home game against OAKAAK Kevin Knox and the tanking Trail Blazers. After that, the Nets head to Detroit and then finish up with home games against the Magic and Sixers.

The Knicks, meanwhile, head to Indiana on Wednesday, then to New Orleans on Friday, and then finish up at home against Indy again. The Pacers have all but shut down Tyrese Haliburton, but they’ve been competitive against good teams of late, leading in the fourth last night on the road in Cleveland two days after defeating OKC at home. Speaking of Cleveland, New York is technically still alive for the 4th seed, but they’d need to win out and have the Cavs lose out, and Cleveland finishes with two games in Orlando and a season finale at home against the Hornets. Don’t hold your breath.

🤕 Personal Injury Report presented by Weiss & Rosenbloom: The Knicks have suddenly turned into the walking wounded. In addition to Julius Randle being out, RJ Barrett missed yesterday’s game with an illness, while Josh Hart briefly exited after turning his ankle in the second half. Thankfully, Hart got re-taped and returned to the bench. Afterwards, he said he’s fine.

Moving forward, Tom Thibodeau said he isn’t going to rest players until their playoff seed is locked up, although “if someone is nicked up, they won't play” (h/t Stefan Bondy). Their seed could be wrapped up by Wednesday, depending on what happens in Brooklyn tomorrow, so that will certainly bear watching.

💫 Stars of the Weekend 💫

I’ve stuck to the book long enough, but the Knicks are in the playoffs, so fuck it…I’m going rogue.

Instead of the traditional format for Monday newsletters after two-game weekends, I’m taking all 12 stars and splitting them up as I see fit. I’m also going in reverse order because I already sung the praises of our top recipient on Saturday and I have an entire newsletter dedicated to our second recipient coming later this week.

From the top…

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: Here’s my ode to Jalen (and thank you note to the bumbling, fumbling Dallas Mavericks) from over the weekend ICYMI. Yesterday, Brunson added to his insanely strong first season in New York with 27 points, eight assists, three steals and two more charges drawn.

As usual, they needed his effort. This one may have turned into a laugher eventually, but they needed to flip the game in the third quarter first. In that third period, Brunson was perfect from the field, scoring 11 and dishing three dimes. He’s been everything this team needed and then some.

⭐️ ⭐️ Isaiah Hartenstein: Got a longer piece on I-Hart coming within the next day or two, but the Cleveland game may have been his best outing of the season, and he wasn’t too shabby yesterday either, finishing with eight points, nine boards, two assists, two steals and a block.

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: He’s been overshadowed for a bit now because Hartenstein has been so freaking good, but in both games over the weekend, Robinson was excellent.

Mitch dominated the glass in Cleveland, securing 14 boards in just 22 minutes, including nine on the offensive glass - the third time this season he’s grabbed as many. He also chipped in 10 points, two blocks and two steals. Just as importantly, he showed that he can be a serviceable release valve when the Cavs trap New York’s ball-handlers, as Ben Ritholtz shows here.

Mitch continued with his passing fancy yesterday, equalling a season high with four assists. Throw in eight points, 11 more boards, two more steals and a block, and it was a meaningful stat-stuffing weekend for Mitchell Robinson.

(By the way, each New York starter had at least four assists last night as the team got 31 total dimes, equalling their second highest total of the season. The ball moved so freely, it was almost unsettling. Hopefully both Julius and RJ were watching closely.)

⭐️ Obi Toppin: Last season, it took Obi Toppin until Game 78 to top 20 points in one outing. This season, it took him until Game 79. Hopefully next season, he can reach that total before the leaves start to turn, and not have to wait until the flowers are in bloom.

Obi finished with 21 points, four assists, two steals and a block. Perhaps most importantly, it was his most complete offensive outing of the season - one that included both 3-point shooting (3-of-8 from deep, now shooting 39.5 percent from long range over his last 10 games) and the off-ball movement / live wire stuff that makes him so unique.

(About the following play, Obi said that it still counts as a dunk even though the ball rattled around the rim for a bit at first. He also wanted everyone to know that it was over Taj Gibson, or “O.G.” as Toppin calls him)

For as long as Julius Randle is out, Obi Toppin is going to play a pivotal role for this team. His defense and rebounding will be a bellwether whenever he’s out there, as those are the things that will make Thibs comfortable in extending him for longer periods of time. That was certainly the case yesterday with no RJ Barrett, as Toppin played the entire second half, along with…

⭐️ Quentin Grimes: Q’s last six games after putting up 27 yesterday: 20.8 points on 52.4 percent shooting overall and 50 percent shooting from deep (on 9.7 attempts!!!!), 4.8 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 1.2 steals, all while credibly covering the best opposing guard or wing whenever he’s on the court.

Say hello to a starting NBA wing on pretty much any team in the league.

Are we seeing him make a leap? Perhaps, although everything he’s doing, we’ve seen him do before. This has been a matter of opportunity and consistency, and it sure is funny how a player can seem a lot more consistent with increased opportunity.

He adds so much to the table without taking much of anything off of it, but the threat of his deep ball is most important. Being able to take and make shots like this is just massive when an opponent decides they’re not going to let Brunson or Randle beat them and the Knicks are in the midst of a run:

More than a third of the NBA has multiple rotation players hitting at least 38 percent from downtown while averaging over five 3-point attempts per game, but the Knicks have just one: Grimes. For that reason, he’s an indispensable part of their game plan, and will factor in heavily in the weeks ahead.

⭐️ Josh Hart: Speaking of Grimes, if you’re not on Twitter, you may have missed a Basketball Index graphic from late last week that gave him some hefty praise. The graphic plotted all rotation guards and wings in terms of individual matchup difficulty and effectiveness in those matchups. Quentin, who seemingly gets the toughest assignment every night, has the highest matchup difficulty rating in the entire league. Even better given said difficulty, he grades out as an above average defender.

Now for the best news: Q is in his second year and won’t even start his 82nd game until next season. With improved technique and more reps, there’s a world where he becomes a regular All-Defense candidate - a fact the Knicks were surely cognizant of when they tried hard to keep him out of the Donovan Mitchell trade talks last summer.

But in the here and now, Grimes is still a young player, and when he’s matched up against the very best perimeter threats in the league, his inexperience can sometimes show. That was the case on Friday night, when New York’s second year guard was tasked with slowing down the man he might have been traded for.

To be clear, much of Mitchell’s offensive explosion wasn’t on Grimes. Cleveland did an excellent job of getting Jalen Brunson involved in the action (much like the Knicks did with Donovan at the other end, as Benjy Ritholtz brilliantly shows in a can’t-miss game thread), hunting that mismatch and exploiting it to its fullest. But part of countering Mitchell’s brilliance is making his life a living hell before, during and after he gets the ball, and there is no Knick better suited to do that right now than Josh Hart.

Hart isn’t a perfect point-of-attack defender by any means. He’s best served as someone who can wreck havoc in the surrounding airspace of the ball-handler - a shark who knows how, when and where to attack when he smells blood in the water. Even in the Cavs game, on his first possession guarding Mitchell in the second quarter, a crossover faked Hart out of his shoes. Donovan bricked the long two that followed, but got Hart shortly thereafter on a nasty step-back three.

The same thing happened on their first matchup of the second half as well, which came after a switch:

Needless to say, the degree of difficulty on this shot, as with most of Mitchell’s attempts, is incredibly high.

That’s why, like with any great player, the goal isn’t to stop him. Ideally, you slow him down, but more than anything, you must make him feel you. Doing that will take its toll over the course of a half, a game, and perhaps with these two teams, a series.

Even in the first half, after a few possessions with Hart guarding him, Mitchell showed signs of frustration when he pushed off and got called for an offensive foul, sending him to the bench. It was a precursor to what was to come later on:

The Knicks didn’t end up securing this loose ball, but that’s not really the point.

Think about being in Mitchell’s shoes here. Every shot you take already requires supreme balance and concentration. And you have to take those shots at a fairly high frequency to keep defenses honest, to say nothing of the fact that they’re efficient offense for your team according to the numbers. All of this is enough of a pain in the ass to begin with, and now here comes this irritant who won’t even let you catch the ball cleanly.

The same thing happened on the very next possession, when Hart nearly stole the ball and succeeded in sending it into the backcourt. As a result, Mitchell only has 10 seconds on the clock when he crosses halfcourt:

Without much time to work with and Hart doing a good job of walling off the initial penetration, Mitchell has to give it up.

Normally, that’s not a bad thing, as his backcourt teammate has All-Star credentials all to his own. But here, fellow pitbull Deuce McBride is waiting for Darius Garland. Garland puts the moves on, but guess who’s waiting with the perfectly timed & placed help? Josh Hart, who does a nice job recovering back to Mitchell for the contest as the shot clock winds down. On the next possession, perhaps feeling some attrition, Mitchell decides he’s had enough of the smoke for the moment:

Again, Deuce is there to pick up the slack.

Speaking of McBride, who was excellent in his 10 minutes on Friday and has largely been everything the Knicks have needed whenever he’s seen time since the Hart trade…

Over the weekend, Ian Begley reported that “before the Randle injury, the playoff rotation wasn’t set in stone in the eyes of the coaching staff,” and that “the staff was still evaluating players -- both in and out of the current rotation -- to determine the best group for the postseason.”

I’m going to go out on a very short limb here and guess that McBride is the guy Begley is referring to someone currently on the outside of the rotation that may find his way back in. People have spoken about the need for more Obi against a giant Cavs team (that, granted, was without Jarrett Allen on Friday), and for as long as Randle is out, he’ll surely continue to start. His effort vs the Wizards was also extremely encouraging.

But there is no world where putting Deuce on the court equates to going small. Watch him here, as he tips away a potential offensive rebound from the 6'11" Evan Mobley:

Cleveland also won’t have both Mobley and Allen on the floor during the minutes that McBride would be playing, because they’ll come during the middle of each half when one of the two bigs will be sitting.

More to the point, as we saw when New York went to a nine-man rotation before the Hart trade, McBride helps to establish an identity of defense and toughness that is hard to replicate. His individual on court 104.4 defensive rating in 709 minutes is still by far the lowest on the team. In 486 minutes with IQ, it’s 102.5, while in just 109 minutes Hart, it’s an obscene 99.6¹. It’s no coincidence that New York’s 12-0 run to get some much needed breathing room in Cleveland came with those three on the court together. In a series where making the Mitchell / Garland combo uncomfortable may be the single most important box to check, it’s easy to see the coaching staff wondering what McBride can bring.

Which brings us right back to Josh Hart, who gave us a glimpse into what might happen if the Knicks do decide to go small against the mammoth Cavs:

Evan Mobley is probably going to make a lot of All-Star teams before all is said and done, but right now, Hart outweighs him, and thus is not going to cede ground. As long as Hart can keep Mobley far enough from the hoop, that’s not going to be the matchup advantage the Cavs might hope for. And that’s because regardless of whether he’s guarding the 6'1" Mitchell or someone 10 inches taller, it is impossible not to feel Hart’s presence when he’s out there. Perhaps more than anyone, he could be the key to New York’s playoff success.

If Friday night was any indication, that’s not a bad thing at all.

🏀

That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter

1. All those numbers are from before last night.