Knicks hope to emulate ‘1617 Heat to turn their season around
that’s the biggest discrepancy in the game.”
The Knicks are shooting 67.1% from the freethrow line, which ranks dead last in the NBA.
They’re leaving some crucial points at the line.
The Knicks have remained optimistic, at least publicly.
They’ve been encouraged by the fact that they’ve at least given themselves a chance to win in several of their losses.
The Spurs on Saturday led by as many as 28 points, but the Knicks climbed back and ended up losing by seven. And the Knicks were down by 14 in the first quarter against the Nets before eventually fighting back to tie it and later losing by two points.
The Knicks have also played the Celtics down to the final seconds before losing on a Jayson Tatum buzzerbeater earlier this month.
And two of their wins came against potential MVPcandidate Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks, a team that should contend in the Western
Conference.
Dennis Smith Jr. thinks the Knicks are better than their record indicates.
“Onehundred percent,” Smith said. “We’ve had some bad losses but we’ve been pushing some teams to the brink and it’s little, little discipline things, it’s certain things with discipline that we’ve got to work on in the fourth and I think we’ll clean that up.”
The blowouts they’ve suffered, though, are the issue.
They’ve come against mediocre teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons and Sacramento Kings.
The Knicks might be finding some more consistency, but their schedule isn’t getting any easier.
It’s getting much more difficult.
They travel to play the Raptors in Toronto on Wednesday before hosting the Sixers on Friday. They then play the Boston Celtics at home before playing the Bucks in Milwaukee on the second half of a backtoback.
Then they play the Denver Nuggets at home.
All of those teams have chances at winning their respective conferences.
Pushing those teams is one thing. They actually have to win at least one of them to avoid falling to 418.
“We’re going to take it a game at a time and continue to try to give ourselves a chance to win every night,” Fizdale said.
Wayne Ellington knows that Miami Heat team Fizdale often references well.
He was on it.
The veteran guard believes his current team is capable of turning things around.
Whether they actually do that is the big question.
“It’s not easy to win in this league,” Ellington said. “That’s what I continue to tell the young guys. I see a lot of similarities to that team that we went 1130 and flipped the whole thing and went 3011 to finish the season. I don’t plan on us going 1130, but I think that we’re going to have a breakthrough sooner or later.”