No one has won Saturday's Masters. Ultimately, I'm hoping to be in top shape by the final nine holes on Sunday afternoon. The back nine is always where the drama happens. The 15th or 17th hole is where the ball hits the water, the heroic sand save is made, the tournament-clinching putt is drained, and the green jacket is changed.
You can't win on Saturday.
But they could certainly lose on Saturday. That's why Saturday at Augusta National has always been known as “Moving Day.” Saturday is the time to get ready for Sunday and jockey into position on Sunday. You can hit a lights-out 64 on Sunday, but it won't mean anything if you end Saturday at the bottom of the leaderboard.
The Knicks won't be able to make a final decision on what will happen in the five weeks between now and the Feb. 8 trade deadline, but they will certainly be in position to make something interesting in the final stages of this season. The Knicks will play 20 games from now until February 10th, two days after the deadline, which probably tells us all we need to know about them.
14 of those games were played at Madison Square Garden, and after spending much of the first two and a half months of the season on the road, they are obligated to play a number of home games, including the last home the league gave them. Game bonuses not included. The February 26 game against the Pistons was moved from Detroit to New York to account for the imbalance caused by the midseason tournament.
And of the six games the Knicks will play on the road, only two, Friday at Philadelphia and next Thursday at Dallas, are likely to be substantial underdogs.
It's an emotional day for the Knicks.
The Knicks just came off their toughest schedule of the season, with their season still intact and their record still three games north of .500. From December 5 to New Year's Day, the Knicks played 14 games, 12 of which were against teams with a batting average of .500 or higher, or the team the Knicks were playing at the time. Ten of them were on the road. They had 6 wins and 8 losses.
There will never be a sonnet written about the Knicks' 14 games of the season, but when the final book about this season is published, we'll look back at December and see where they survived a fundamentally compromised challenge. You might find out it's a place. And terribly dangerous. They are tied for the 7th seed in the East, half a game out of 6th and one full game out of 5th. It's all still there for them.
“We've got to keep building on the wins,” Jalen Brunson said last week.
And this is where this stretch becomes very important. The Knicks kicked off the new year with a 112-106 victory over the Timberwolves, the best team in the Western Conference, on Monday. There were times when the Garden felt like the most fun place in the world to watch a basketball game as they built a 22-point lead. Even as Minnesota continued to chip away at the lead, the Knicks accepted a fun two-way game that left most teams out. The regulars cried out in hope.
OG Anunoby's debut certainly brought back the way the Knicks reacted aggressively to signing Josh Hart last year. The key will be turning that hint into a full-fledged connection Wednesday night as they begin their 20th straight game against the Bulls at the Garden. Accumulating some wins at this favorable time on the calendar will help him do two things:
1) The eastern side will have a tough battle on two fronts. Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee are almost certain to compete for the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 seeds. And as more than eight teams, including both the Knicks and Nets, compete for the No. 4 seed (guaranteed home court in the first round) and No. 5 and 6 seeds (guaranteed home court in the first round) You must believe that you have these qualities. Please avoid play-ins).
2) If the Knicks take advantage of this portion of the schedule leading up to the trade deadline, the inevitable second phase of Leon Rose's in-season rebuild could occur. It's still difficult to know what that will be, but a lot can change for the team and the players in six weeks. And if the Knicks win a good spot, it remains to be seen how the still-unsettled star players will come to terms with the change of scenery, with the team still undecided.
The Knicks have continued to perform well over the last month. Now let's paint a more detailed picture of who they are. It's a key moment of the season. It's moving day for the next 39 days.
