You get games like this sometimes. It’s a long season, and it never feels longer than the exact middle of January, with snow on the way and three full months between now and the playoffs. You hit slogs. You hit slumps. You get banged up.
You lose games you have no business losing. It happens.
The Knicks had no business losing this game to the Magic on Monday afternoon. There was a full house for an MLK Day matinee. Celebrity row was bursting and bustling. Jalen Brunson was missing his second straight game, but Orlando was short, too. The Knicks were up much of the game. They kept threatening to put it away. They never put it away, and then they went Arctic cold. They looked like they were shooting free throws with their feet. The Magic roared back.
And that was that.
Magic 98, Knicks 94.
“It was a choppy game,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “They’re a very good defensive team, but we should’ve been in position to win the game. Offensively we’ve gotta do better.”
“Stagnant,” said Julius Randle, who gritted his way through 38 minutes on a bum right ankle and missed 13 of his 18 shots from the floor. “We were way too stagnant.”
The full house was grumbling as it trundled out, because even if you accept that you get games like this sometimes, you don’t want to get them when you’re actually at the game, when you plunk down your own money to bear witness. The Knicks looked like they were grumbling as they were leaving the floor, too. Even in a long season, you can kick yourself when you let one get away. They let this one get away. It wasn’t at all easy on the eyes.
The fact is the Knicks were damned lucky to escape Saturday night’s game in Memphis, when the Grizzlies mostly played the winners of open tryouts against them and still led in the third quarter. That game and this game are certainly a reminder — if anyone needed a reminder — of just how essential Brunson is to who the Knicks are, and what the Knicks are. Especially on days when Randle is less than brilliant. Saturday Randle just played poorly, Monday he twisted the ankle early on and was compromised the rest of the way.
For a second straight game Deuce McBride was wonderful (20 points, four 3s), and he has clearly embraced the dueling opportunities afforded him thanks to the trade of Immanuel Quickley and Brunson’s balky calf. But it is clear that at this point in his career, McBride’s sweet spot is as an energy guy off the bench. He isn’t solely responsible by any means for the Knicks’ offense going in the tank down the stretch.
But he isn’t the game-controller Brunson is. Few are. And Brunson is made of a lot of things — grit, toughness, competitiveness. He’s not made of iron. He’s not made of steel. Occasionally the Knicks will have to try to win without him.
“Jalen is a big piece for us so that’s tough, but we have enough to win the game,” Randle said. “We just didn’t close it strong”
Randle looked perplexed, Thibodeau puzzled.
“We’ve got more than enough to win the game,” he said.
Again: one game. Long season. You get games like this. You get days like this. But this is a part of the season where the Knicks have to be about the business of stacking wins, gaining separation from the glut of teams who have similar records in the East. This was the first game of 14-game stretch when the Knicks will play 13 of them in New York City — 12 at the Garden, another in Brooklyn. It’s an agreeable part of the schedule, and you don’t ever expect to run the table. You have hiccups. You have cold snaps.
The Knicks hiccuped Monday. At the start of a week when the mercury in New York City is barely going to escape the high 20s, they gave a late-game performance equal to the forecast. It happens.
It just can’t happen very often. Not the way the East stacks up this year. Not if they want to have something left to play for when the sun finally returns for good.
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