It's okay to sit back and enjoy what you're watching. It's fine to do what an authority of Pat Riley's stature has been doing for years, urging players to live in the “precious present,” but this is because he's the writer Spencer Johnson These are words borrowed from the Knicks, and they should be the Knicks' sacred mantra. current fans.
Tomorrow is for tomorrow. May and June are May and June. The fact that the Knicks still fall a little short when compared to the Beast of the East, no matter how stellar they looked in a wide-ranging swatch that defeated the Blazers 112-84 in front of 19,812 occasionally ecstatic fans on Tuesday night. It's reality. At Madison Square Garden. But for now, you can safely forget about it.
“We really connected,” OG Anunoby said. He had the Garden chanting his name with a remarkable 29-minute substitution in which he scored 23 points, including 4 of 6 from deep. “Jumping around, stopping and looking out for each other.”
they were. It's been 5-on-5 since Leon Rose acquired Anunoby as the centerpiece of the deal that sent RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley to Toronto, an effect that continued last year when the Knicks went 9-0. The atmosphere is eerily similar to the match. They acquired Josh Hart from Portland.
The ball is moving. My legs are moving. The Blazers are 15-1 against teams with a losing record this season, and are now guaranteed to be part of the NBA's remnants. However, two of the five wins since the trade have come against Minnesota and Philadelphia, who have a combined record of 49-22.
It's all very heady.
That's fine.
“We're trying to be a team that can play 48 minutes,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I thought we had a good rhythm and were very aggressive early on.”
Because he is who he is, Thibodeau was clear about the fact that the Blazers outscored the Knicks 23-15 in the fourth quarter despite clearing the bench and giving walk-ons as much playing time as possible. He had a salty attitude. Available all year round. It's just that Thibs is his Thibs, and he can't enjoy this moment of the season as long as that continues.
But even he was happy to admit: “The spirit in the team is very strong right now.”
please look. If you want to be really good at all of these things, you can do it very easily. A neon pink elephant weighing 4,000 pounds is always present in every gym where the Knicks play. The Knicks are still very close to their players. they are still far away. They are still out of the room when the conversation turns to the real candidates.
What the Knicks are showing every night now might not be enough to steal 4 of 7 wins from the Celtics or Bucks in May, but… well, 2¹/₂ hours in the garden on a rainy night in January. It's enough to energize. .
“We're playing for each other on both ends of the floor,” Julius Randle said. His balanced offense of 20 points, 7 rebounds, and 8 assists could easily overcome Jalen Brunson's rare subpar night (12 points, 3-of-11 from the field). . “The players are doing a great job being active. We're playing good basketball and winning games. I like what we're doing.”
That's also OK.
“The goal is to play our best at the end of the year,” Thibodeau said. “We have to keep doing what we’re doing and get better.”
Perhaps better conditions mean Rose can come up with a new acquisition before next month's trade deadline, but unless some random superstar gets horribly unhappy over the next six weeks, It is difficult to determine who will be. Perhaps that means that as the weather warms, there will be a channel for the familiar old skepticism to seep back in. That would be fair.
But so is this. It's okay to like what you see. It's okay to look forward to a fun matchup against Luka, Kyrie, and the Mavericks on Thursday. Somehow, this year is the 25th anniversary of the last time the Knicks made it to the Finals, and there have been almost 9,000 days and nights and so many awful empty games since then. It's okay to hold off on eternal expectations of the sky falling for now. It's okay to have fun now.
It's all OK and fine.
