The Knicks have officially avoided an NBA play-in scenario for the second year in a row.
When the Heat lost to the Mavericks in Miami on Wednesday night, Tom Thibodeau’s team clinched a top-six playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
The Knicks have three games left in the regular season, which begins Thursday in Boston, but could still finish anywhere from second to sixth in the East.
These positions are just three games apart, with the third-place Knicks 1 ¹/₂ games behind second-place Milwaukee and the same distance above fifth-place Orlando and sixth-place Indiana.
“Same mentality. Same approach,” Jalen Brunson said after Tuesday’s win at Chicago. “As we get closer to the end of the season, I think we’ve been talking about just sprinting to the finish line instead of jogging to the finish line. So we’re playing as hard as we can and making sure we’re getting better every day. We’ll see. And we had to make sure we were mentally ready.”
The Heat emerged from the play-ins a year ago and advanced to the NBA Finals as the No. 8 seed in the East, defeating the Knicks in six games in the second round.
The Knicks are now without key players RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and injured All-Star Julius Randle from their playoff team.
But they added sharpshooter Donte DiVincenzo and two-way forward OG Anunoby, and Brunson took the next step toward superstar status with 28.4 points and 6.7 assists per game.
Following Thursday’s game in Boston, the Knicks (47-32) will close out the regular season with games at the Garden against the Nets (Friday) and Bulls (Sunday).
“We want to win every game, so we’re going to play every game to win,” Anunoby said after Tuesday’s game. “We’re not really worried about anything else. Just try to win every game.”
