All The Way
“You’re doing it for your teammates, you’re doing it for the team, you’re doing it for the fans, and you’re doing it for yourself.” – Willis Reed
These quotes are, mostly, coachspeak garbage, but they do express and compress what the New York Knicks franchise believes about itself, coming from two prominent Knicks. Madison Square Garden is the world’s most famous arena by name and by motto – who knows if it actually is, but – opting into playing there, under the theatre lighting, ends up a challenge. Make it, break it; bag it, tag it: if you can make it there, you know the rest.
Everybody loves the New York Knicks. Specifically, those Knicks. You know the ones: Clyde Frazier, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley and the rest. Jerry Lucas doesn’t arrive to a team without a cause; nor does Earl Monroe[1]. The 1970 championship is the one people remember, but the 1973 crown is the one that got people moving.
Assembling a handful of the greatest basketball players ever, and helping the ancillary players work themselves out, invokes the teams you like because the teams you like invoke them: the 2004 Detroit Pistons; the 2014 San Antonio Spurs, when Kawhi Leonard was coming into his own; the pre-Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors of 2015-’16.
Great teams tend to invoke comparisons to the championship Knicks teams of 1970 and ’73; The Knicks themselves, for a long time, have not. Patrick Ewing, Bernard King, Charlie Ward, Michael Sweetney, a just-uncovered LeBron 2010 free agency recruitment video, the Juice-sponsored Finals sidebar in 1994, Michael Jordan generally existing, and all of the hullabaloo that became the Knicks thereafter spoke truths becoming of a New York (and New York media)-based heliocentric system.
A week ago, the Knicks faced a home stretch of games that would determine their playoff path[2]: with four left, there were two against Chicago, caught up in their own identity crisis, as well as one each against the also-ran Brooklyn Nets and a Boston Celtics team that had nothing left to play for. That Celtics team, the 64-18 toast of the league, is what everyone else is trying to avoid for as long as they possibly can.
At this point, you know how Tom Thibodeau operates: win-win-win, no matter what. When Giannis Antetokounmpo went down, the second seed in the East suddenly seemed wide open. All the Milwaukee Bucks had to do was lose, and all New York had to do was win.
Tuning into a Knicks-Bulls game courtesy a not-altogether-legal stream in the midst of Delaware traffic last Sunday afternoon, I watched the Knicks chase and catch, and lose and catch, and chase and overtake a Chicago team that did not want to lie down – in hindsight of Friday night’s play-in nightmare against the Miami Heat, this now seems uncharacteristic. Just outside of the Joyce Kilmer rest stop, the Knicks claimed victory and, with it, the 2-seed. All was weirdly, formally right with the world.
The Knicks haven’t been worth this in a long enough while that Linsanity and a playoff game home defeat of the LeBron-era Miami Heat soliciting balloons are two swords stuck in stones that Knicks fans straddle for dear life. It wasn’t dark enough yet, but it was getting there.
This? This is: All-Star (certain all-NBA/MVP vote-getter/hero to most) Jalen Brunson leads the way, and this is the time to get on board. Josh Hart, offensive rebounding prince and the one who can actively push the offense, facilitating everything else. Donte DiVincenzo lined up next to Steve Novak and JR Smith among the greatest three-point shooters in Knicks history. It all lines up at the elbow.
Following a battle that leaves Jimmy Butler in tenuous conditions, the Philadelphia 76ers earned the 7-seed and an accompanying series against these Knicks. New York went 3-1 against the Sixers in the regular season; Knicks fans broadly did not want this, but if Joel Embiid stands on two legs for this series, he had better show up in full MVP leathers for the rest of the playoffs.
Otherwise, the Knicks have a chance (the 2-seed is not favored by Las Vegas, by the way, which makes for only the second time since 1988. This is the last time gambling will be discussed in this specific space until and unless [REDACTED]).
Brunson’s uncanny way of manipulating everything and everyone around him, including his own teammates, is why the Knicks are here. This is a team that lacks an actual, literal all-NBA player in Julius Randle, and it doesn’t figure to matter until at least the conference finals.
Isaiah Hartenstein and the recently-returned Mitchell Robinson are going to put in their time against Embiid; pick and roll chemistry runs deep. Robinson has been among the best rim protectors in the league since he arrived, and plenty enough of that has rubbed off on Hartenstein to make that a matchup worth watching. Foul trouble is the specter of this series, so long as Embiid is healthy-ish.
I can’t wait to be proven wrong with a four-game sweep reflecting the one against the then-New Jersey Nets in 2004, but these Knicks are the team to watch, wherever and whenever you can. The calculated uncertainty of Jalen Brunson is the active player gambit of the Eastern Conference: he confuses everybody on purpose, sometimes for his own delight. Somewhere, anywhere but here, Garrincha smiles.
Joel Embiid is the defending MVP, a team unto himself on both ends when fully healthy. The thing is: he’s never fully healthy, but 85% of him is good enough to beat 90% of NBA teams. I’m not sure where the Knicks stand in that regard.
Brunson is an entirely opposite force from Embiid; the Sixers will target him and chase him in ways that many film guys have longed to yell about on podcasts. Brunson will confuse all of them anyway. Embiid will too. How they go about this, in their respective corners, will determine this series.
BUT! Josh Hart and Tobias Harris are the ancillary keys here, respectively (as is, out of nowhere, Nic Batum?); OG Anunoby has That Dog in him, and he is going to need all of that bark. Paul Reed pledged on behalf of a matchup with these Knicks, saying they were the easier matchup. If that is the case, though, it likely will not have much to do with Paul Reed himself.
Tom Thibodeau has instilled a team-wide culture that did not seem entirely likely when he arrived in 2020. Coming off an ill-fated gig with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Thibs was a coach without a cause. Not for nothing, several years and many public embarrassments after the fact, the Timberwolves had the best defense in the NBA this season. Trading for Rudy Gobert was not a nuclear failure, as it turns out; Anthony Edwards ignoring Kobe’s interpolations and going straight to the source also helps.
Somehow the New York Knicks have split the difference between “ugly to watch” and “plays great defense.” On the other end of the floor, the Knicks are marvelous: Brunson’s rim running demands your attention because you have no idea where the ball is going once he gets within eight feet of the basket.
I have no idea where New York will end up, and I maintain a lot of faith in this edition of the Boston Celtics – if they’re going to put it together, there is no better place than here, no better time than now. Even so, playing through the schedule and nabbing the 2-seed is an ignition point. Of course it’s annoying when large market fans dial in, which is as much a tribute to sample size as it is to empathetic capacity. That in mind, though: go New York, go New York, GO.
[1] The Pearl, and/or Black Jesus. He could do it all.
[2] Win out, or else—!
Tuesdays With Horry 