KP fades, Kanter fumes, Knicks blow 23-point lead
King, Queen or Princess – it didn’t matter. LeBron James again ruled the Garden.
Animosity between the Knicks and Cavs ran strong from pregame to postgame Monday night, but somewhere in the middle James buried the Knicks with a virtuoso fourth quarter in Cleveland’s 104-101 comeback victory.
The Knicks (7-6) led by as many as 23 in the third quarter, riding a crowd that rose to the occasion following an early tussle between James, Frank Ntilikina and Enes Kanter.
But Porzingis struggled all night – especially when James locked him down in the fourth quarter — and the Cavs scored 43 points in the final 11 minutes to hijack the moment.
Afterwards, Kanter poured gasoline on the fire of the hostility with James.
“You ain’t coming to my house and playing that water bottle-flip game again,” said Kanter, who traded insults with James before the game. “I don’t care what you call yourself: King, Queen, Princess, we’re gonna fight. Nobody out there is going to punk us.”
The “bottle-flip game” is a reference to James and his Cavs teammates playfully flipping water bottles on the sideline of
their previous appearance at the Garden. It was a disrespectful show at the end of a blowout Cleveland victory.
This time, the Knicks put up a better fight before the fourth-quarter meltdown. They just couldn’t guard the 3-point line, and Porzingis couldn’t crack James’ defense.
The Latvian, wearing a protective sleeve on his shooting arm for the first time to protect his elbow bursitis, missed 14 of his 21 shots and flubbed three critical free throws in the final three minutes. James’ 3-pointer with 1:23 remaining – which gave the Cavs their first advantage since early in the second quarter – was splashed in Porzingis’ face.
“He’s strong in the post. He is who he is,” said Porzingis of James’ defense. “I should have used that better, my length. But it was very physical. He is who he is. I should have been maybe smarter in those situations and make a better play.
“The respect will be earned in the future.”
James finished with 23 points, 12 assists and nine boards. He had eight assists in the fourth quarter, when the Cavs went off for nine 3-pointers – including nine just from Kyle Korver.
“Guys have to learn from it,” Jeff Hornacek said. “We all have to learn from it. We can’t panic. The NBA game nowadays has a lot of threes. The leads can change pretty rapidly sometimes. It doesn’t always happen in the third quarter. It’s a 48-minute game. Kanter rushed to the defense of rookie teammate Frank Ntilikina – first off the court in response to James declaring the Knicks should’ve drafted Dennis Smith Jr. instead, and then in the first quarter Monday when Ntilikina and James engaged in small scuffle. Both Kanter and James picked up technical fouls for face-to-face smack-talk, and the Garden crowd turned up the volume to “Linsanity” levels as the Knicks took their 23-point advantage.
They seemed destined to prove that Ntilikina is already better than Smith Jr. at one thing — beating LeBron.
But then the Knicks collapsed. And royalty emerged. “Well, I’m the king, my wife is the queen and my daughter is the princess,” James said. “So we got all three covered.”