When was the last time you had this much fun watching one of your teams? When was the last time one of the clubs you follow was this much of a gas? Forget the wins and the losses for a second — but only for a second, because part of what augments the enjoyment of the Knicks right now is that they win every night.
When’s the last time you raced home to watch a regular-season game?
When’s the last time you made sure to DVR the game if you had other plans?
“We have a joy to us right now,” is the way Donte DiVincenzo put it in the immediate aftermath of their latest ode to joy, a 118-103 win over the Jazz that wasn’t anywhere near as close as the numbers flanking the hyphen would hint.
Joy is a good word for what’s happening with this team right now.
But so is fun. Maybe Tom Thibodeau still looks like he’s in a dentist’s chair in the dying moments of these games when the lead dips under 20, but everyone else seems to be having a hell of a time, starting with the 19,133 who spent most of the game directing “MVP!” chants at Jalen Brunson and the last of it trying to coax old friend Taj Gibson off the bench.
“Our guys are playing hard, they’re defending, they’re rebounding the ball, playing smart, playing tough,” Thibodeau said. “That goes a long way.”
Maybe this is ultimately unsustainable, the way they have utterly ransacked January, winning 14 of the 16 games they played this month without one second from Mitchell Robinson and the last two games without Julius Randle and OG Anunoby. In most of those wins, the only angst attached to them were the Minutes Police fretting about Thibodeau keeping his starters in too long. That’s when you know times are good.
But even that doesn’t obscure the pleasure of watching this team the way it’s playing now. They work ferociously, both ends of the floor, the ball moving around, everyone getting a touch, everyone getting their shots. They rebound. They play defense. The only reason why they didn’t keep a team under 100 points for the 15th time this season is because the Jazz (a team averaging 128 points their past 12 games) maximized garbage time.
“We’re doing a lot of little things,” said Josh Hart, master of little basketball things, a nifty 10-10-10 triple-double etched next to his name on the final stat sheet. “We’re playing within the flow of the offense and we’re being very aggressive on defense.”
Said DiVincenzo, who scored 33 points with four assists, four steals and nine (!!!) 3s: “Without Julius and OG we knew that everyone had to step up a little bit. And we did that.”
It was hard to believe the Knicks could find a new level of fun after throttling both participants in last year’s Finals, the Nuggets and Heat, by a combined 54 points before dueling raucous Garden audiences last week. And there was a legit pall that fell over the bliss when Randle went down Saturday, and nobody was much laughing when Anunoby’s elbow started to act up in Charlotte on Monday.
But that’s part of what makes this all so easy on the eyes. “Next man up” is a wonderful credo and it’s an easy slogan to scratch on a chalkboard, less so to put it into practice. The Knicks played eight masterful quarters against Denver and Miami at virtual full strength (sans Robinson). The competition the past few games has lessened; the results have not.
“We accept the challenges along the way,” Thibodeau said. “Most teams go through things like that. Mental toughness is a big part of that.”
The result is a team that is becoming must-see TV, that is becoming more and more of a must-have ticket for the bold-faced names. (Jennifer Grey was in the house, and when she appeared on the overhead scoreboard and did a couple of moves to the one of the “Dirty Dancing” songs it nearly brought the house down.)
“It’s a collective effort,” said Brunson, who dropped a 29-point, nine-assist night as his final piece of testimony before the All-Star teams are revealed Thursday. “We’ve got a couple of guys out, it’s not going to be one guy, everyone is stepping up and we have the right personnel and the right mindset to do that. Everyone is pitching in and most important we’re winning.”
And doing it with style, with flair with … well, DiVincenzo hit one of the right words: joy. Fun is the other. We haven’t had a lot of fun in New York the last few years, and it’s wise to enjoy this for as long as we have it. With any luck at all, maybe it can even carry us deep into the spring.
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