GREAT EIGHT FOR KNICKS!
Bury Hawks in OT to keep streak rolling
After he bulldozed, sidestepped, and stepped-back his way to 40 points, Julius Randle had four words to say.
“New York, we here!” he said in his walk-off interview
“Here” is subjective. It’s also accurate.
The Knicks are ahead of schedule. They haven’t arrived yet, but they’re further along the track than expected when the season started.
That track probably never included a stop at the Eastern Conference’s No. 4 seed, but the Knicks will gladly take the detour. Their 10-point win over the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday moved them to their highest spot in the standings since Carmelo Anthony led the Knicks to the No. 2 seed in 2013.
“I think we’ve exceeded everybody else’s expectations, but we know what we can do,” said RJ Barrett. “We know who we are, and we’re showing it every night, and we’re gonna continue to do that, continue to stay together, and that’s all that’s important.”
The Knicks are now winners of eight straight games, and they had to earn it the hard way in a 137-127 overtime win over the Hawks, a physical matchup that bore injuries to both sides and needed an extra five minutes to settle. Bodies flung left and right. Taj Gibson suffered a lacerated eye, Nerlens Noel took an elbow to the face and suffered a lacerated lip, not to mention Hawks All-Star guard Trae Young, who left the game in the third quarter with an ankle injury.
You never want to see a player leave a game due to injury, but with Young up to 20 points, 14 assists and four steals, the Knicks did not question the break they had gotten.
The Knicks trailed as many as 11 before his injury, then roared back, forced OT, and built a 10-point lead in the extra period. If the playoffs started today, the Knicks would have home-court advantage.
The playoffs, however, don’t start today. The Knicks have 12 more games on the schedule, and six of them are on the road, in a row, out West, including four teams that consider themselves championship contenders: the Lakers, Clippers, Nuggets and Suns.
“You take everything step-by-step. There’s a lot of physical teams in the league, and there’s a lot of talented teams,” said Thibodeau postgame. “So I think as you head down the stretch here, you want to be playing your best. We try to challenge all our players mentally every day so you’re building the right habits.”
There’s a blurred line between the top four teams in any given conference, and the bottom four teams in the playoff picture. On Wednesday night, that line was Young, the star guard whose injury sent the Hawks spiraling.
The Knicks have come a long way, after all, they wouldn’t have been able to close out such a game last season. Call it the Tom Thibodeau effect, and New York’s head coach deserves his flowers in the form of Coach of the Year votes.
“He better be in the running. We all believe in Thibs,” Barrett said. “He’s been doing just a tremendous job in the way he’s turned everything around, the way he has us playing hard every single night, and we’re getting wins. From him to the whole staff, night-in and night-out, every day, working hard, just pushing and pushing. It’s a great feeling.”
Randle still needs help. He put up a 40-ball to go with 10 rebounds and four assists, bulldozing Hawks forward John Collins for a goahead basket down the stretch of regulation. Randle’s 40-point game marked his fifth of at least 30 points in his last six games. His play is far from a fluke.
The Hawks responded to that basket, though, with an inbounds play to Bogdan Bogdanovic, who the Knicks let escape to the left corner pocket for an uncontested three.
There’s another part of that perforated, not-so fine line: The buck stops with Young, but in his absence, his teammates stepped up. If it’s not Young, it’s Collins. If not Collins, it’s Bogdanovic. If not Bogdanovic, it could be the smooth-shooting Kevin Huerter or Atlanta’s newly acquired Lou Williams.
For the Knicks, it was Derrick Rose and Immanuel Quickley, each of whom scored 20 points off the bench. Quickley made four threes, again, including the dagger shot that made it a 10-point game with 44 seconds to go in overtime. They got another 16 points from RJ Barrett, and six threes for 18 points from Reggie Bullock, who has become the team’s most reliable marksman.
There’s the last part of that blurred line: Execution on the defensive end. The Hawks have lethal shooters on the perimeter but the