Donte DiVincenzo completed his greatest season with his longest performance, a possibility of a playoff series near his hometown and an announcement from his girlfriend that they recently welcomed their baby boy.
Not a bad day for the 27-year-old.
DiVincenzo exceeded any reasonable expectations by setting the franchise’s single-season record with 283 3-pointers, which he capped Sunday by scoring 25 points on five treys in a career-high 53 minutes during a 120-119 overtime win over the Bulls.
He sat for 30 seconds at the end of the first quarter, returned to start the second, and never went back to the bench again.
“It was actually fine,” DiVincenzo, who obliterated Evan Fournier’s previous Knicks’ single-season record for 3s, said about his minutes. “Now we’re in the playoffs and we’re all locked in and there’s no back-to-backs.”
The Knicks, who locked up the 2-seed, will face the winner of Wednesday’s play-in game between the No. 7 Sixers and No. 8 Heat.
on Instagram. Screengrab via X/@NBA_NewYork
If it’s the Sixers, DiVincenzo, a Delaware product, will get games near his family and in the city of his college, Villanova.
“Hell yeah [it would be cool],” DiVincenzo said. “Family is right there. So obviously we [myself, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart] went to school in Philly. So whoever we play. But if it’s Philly, it will be fun.”
DiVincenzo’s girlfriend, Morgan Calantoni, posted pictures Sunday afternoon of their new baby on Instagram.
“Life is so much sweeter with you in it,” Calantoni wrote.
Brunson recorded his 11th 40-point game of the season on Sunday, tying Patrick Ewing for second in franchise history.
Bernard King still holds the record with 13 40-point games in 1984-85.
Brunson, who emerged as a fringe MVP candidate and should get Second Team All-NBA, finished with averages of 28.7 points on 48 percent shooting — it’s tied with Carmelo Anthony for the third-highest points per game in a season as a Knick, trailing only King (32.9) and Richie Guerin (29.5).
Asked to reflect on his campaign, Brunson said, “It’s not over yet, so I’ll evaluate when I’m done.”
Tom Thibodeau, an assistant coach with the Knicks under Jeff Van Gundy, compared Brunson to Ewing.
“When I was hired by Jeff on the first day in the middle of the summer, it’s nine o’clock in the morning and Patrick’s already in,” Thibodeau said. “Patrick wasn’t running around telling people how hard he worked, you saw it every day. If you just came into the organization, you said, ‘This is the way we do things.’
“I think the same thing holds true [with Jalen]. As soon as we signed Jalen, he was immediately in the gym. You could come in any day in the summer, and he’s in at the same time. Full speed, great concentration, there’s no fake-a-gram or Instagram or whatever they call it.”
Brunson, it should be noted, does have an Instagram account and a podcast.
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