Knicks feel close to ‘great run’ with Burks leading way at PG Minny Skirt
Durant, Harden and Nets grind out ugly win vs. Timberwolves
Alec Burks quietly stated Friday that he doesn’t believe his role has “really changed” since he was anointed earlier this week as the Knicks’ starting point guard, ahead of Kemba Walker.
But Burks, an 11-year NBA veteran, logged a career-high 43 minutes in Thursday’s loss to the Bulls, and he has led the team in playing time with at least 39 minutes in each of his three starts since Walker first was “rested” on the second night of back-to-back games last weekend.
Burks previously had averaged 21.4 minutes over his first 19 appearances this season, all off the bench.
“I don’t think everything [has] changed. I played with everybody throughout practice and training camp, so I don’t think it really changed too much,” Burks said after practice Friday in Tarrytown.
“We’re all just trying to find ways to help us win, so I don’t think it really changed at all.
“It’s basketball at the end of the day. Never get too high. Never get too low. I think that’s how I live life, not just on the basketball court, but off of it.”
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau installed the 6-foot-6 Burks as the starter largely because of his size and length at the defensive end, sending the 6-foot Walker out of the rotation entirely.
Burks has netted 21.3 points per game over his three starts, but ahead of Saturday’s game against the Nuggets, the Knicks have lost their past two contests — close losses to the Nets and Bulls — to slide to the .500 mark (11-11) for the first time this season.
“It’s just plays here and there,” Burks said. “The other game against the Nets, one last play at the end, it could’ve been either way.
You put the call in the refs’ hands. And [Thursday] night, just people made great plays at the end. We’re getting there. We’re so close. It’ll happen for us. It’ll turn.”
Julius Randle similarly said following the loss Thursday to Chicago that he believes the Knicks are one hot stretch away from making a move in the tight Eastern
Conference standings.
Still, they have dropped 10 of their past 16 games following a 5-1 start, and they committed 18 turnovers — including seven by Randle to tie a season high — against the Bulls.
The game Thursday also featured an early ejection for veteran forward Taj Gibson and a brief on-court verbal spat between Randle and Evan Fournier just before halftime.
“We’ll find it. We’ve just got to understand we’ve got to lock up defensively,” Randle said. “We’ve got to get guys healthy, full strength out there. We’ll be fine.
It’s 22 games in, a great run can put us at the top of the East within two weeks, so it’s like just keep plugging. But understand we’ve got to have a sense of urgency, too.”
According to Thibodeau, starting wing RJ Barrett has been upgraded to probable against the Nuggets after missing the past 1 ½ games with a non-COVID illness.
Despite the lineup absences, the 31-year-old Walker hasn’t gotten off the bench in the past two games. Rookie Quentin Grimes and even Kevin Knox saw limited minutes Thursday against the Bulls.
“He’s done a good job. He’s a pro’s pro,” Thibodeau said of Walker. “He’s in there. He’s a great teammate. He’s been great in practice. So, that’s what you expect.
“We had a great win [Sunday] in Atlanta. We had a hard-fought game in Brooklyn, then a hardfought game [Thursday] night. And so, if we can lock in and continue to improve on both sides — sometimes, when guys are out, too, you get a chance to take a look at some other people and so you’re learning more and that’s good, too. So sometimes, you could find things that maybe you weren’t looking at before.”
This was no work of art. More like hard, hard work.
The Nets, however, will take it and move on. They will take their ugly 110-105 come-from-behind victory over the shorthanded Timberwolves before a sellout crowd of 17,732 on Friday night at Barclays Center, put it in the win column and move on to face the Bulls.
“Yeah, obviously it wasn’t a masterpiece,” coach Steve Nash admitted. “They mucked off some of our non-shooters and junked up the game and did a really good job of it. We struggled to get off the ball quickly, make quick decisions and it fed into their game plan. But in the end it was a very easy game to lose the way it was going, and we found a way to win.”
The Nets could easily have lost. They were down 97-93 after the Timberwolves’ Naz Reid hit a driving reverse layup with 7:24 to play.
Minnesota was still up, 101-99, after Anthony Edwards, who finished with 19 points, hit a layup with 5:26 left. But then the Nets gave the Timberwolves a taste of their own defensive medicine, forcing seven straight misses.
“Defensively, we just got more physical,” James Harden said. “Even though we got to the bonus pretty early, four fouls pretty early, that didn’t [hurt] our physicality. We just continued that, we rebounded the basketball.
“We didn’t turn the ball over in the fourth quarter. I think I did one or two times but other than that, we just tried to get a good shot every single time and defensively get our half-court defense set and make them score over us.”
The Nets did all that when they had to.
A 6-0 run, capped by a James Johnson bucket for a 105-101 lead
with 3:35 left, wasn’t overly impressive. But in a slogfest like this — with 56 fouls and no flow whatsoever — that was enough for the Nets to win.
Or more to the point, it was enough to survive. The Nets admitted there wasn’t much to take from this one.
“Uh, nothing,” Harden said. “Honestly, they play just a crazy scramble, double-team, tripleteam defense. Ugly, but we’ll take the win. There’ll be a lot of those games during the year where it’s not pretty, it’s not ideal, but you’ll take it.”
Kevin Durant poured in a game-high 30 points, while Patty Mills added 23 points and
Harden had 20 points, with nine assists and seven rebounds.
The Nets shot just 6-for-23 from 3-point range against Minnesota, which went from switching to drop, double-teams to zones. But with Karl-Anthony Towns out for Minnesota with a balky back, the Nets kept attacking the rim. They went 32-for-41 from the free-throw line and rallied late.
“Yeah, we switched some stuff. We just fought through the screens, we helped in the paint when they drove,” Durant said. “As the game went on, we started to understand where help was coming from, how we needed to force guys.
“[Minnesota] played more free without their best player. Those shots were falling in the first quarter. After that you start to see there were inconsistent with their shots. We weathered the storm and were able to get a solid win and I look forward to [Saturday].”
Saturday will bring a showdown with the Bulls, who trail the Nets by 1 ½ games in the Eastern Conference, but drilled them in Chicago on Nov. 8. Durant is slated to play the back-toback.
“[Saturday] is going to be a big test for us,” Harden said. “In Chicago, we played three quarters really good, and then fourth
quarter we just had a meltdown. So it’s going to be an opportunity to beat a team that’s been playing very good basketball and it’s going to give us that confidence.”
A Mills 3-pointer put the Nets ahead 84-77 late in the third quarter, but they gave up an extended 18-7 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters.
Former Net D’Angelo Russell, who had 21 points and 11 assists, hit a pull-up jumper to give Minnesota the lead to open the fourth, and his driving floater padded it to 95-91 with 9:33 to play.
It was 97-93 when the Nets’ defense sparked a 12-4 run that won the game.