Barrett, R J (2000- )

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    Knicks Absorb First Blow in Throwback Battle With Miami Heat

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    Losing Game 1 at home was a setback for the Knicks, but it’s not a reason to count them out. They still have their depth and defense.The Knicks walked off the court at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon with their shoulders slumped. The energy that gripped the arena at the start of the game against Miami had dissolved into a mélange of people shuffling out, Heat fans boasting and a few Knicks fans shouting insults, mostly at the game officials and the Heat fans.Perspective is difficult to have in a moment like this.“I was horrific,” said Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, who scored 25 points but missed all seven of his 3-point attempts.On Sunday, the Knicks lost to the Heat, 108-101, in Game 1 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference semifinals. They lost even though the Heat star Jimmy Butler didn’t have the kind of scoring explosion he used to knock off the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs.But despite the dour mood that engulfed the Garden after the game, it would be unwise to bury the Knicks for their performance. In some ways, everything the Knicks are doing in the playoffs is a bonus. Perhaps more important, there is still time for them to survive this series.“I don’t think anyone thought this game was going to be, or the series was going to be, won or lost in the first game,” Knicks guard Josh Hart said. He added later: “I don’t think there’s an opportunity that we let slip away. It’s going to be a tough, physical series and every game’s different.”Neither the Heat nor the Knicks were expected to last very long in the playoffs.RJ Barrett, center, led the Knicks with 26 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists.John Minchillo/Associated PressThe Knicks finished the regular season as the fifth seed in the East, facing a Cleveland Cavaliers team that had traded for the star the Knicks wouldn’t — Donovan Mitchell.The Heat faced even longer odds as the eighth seed against a Bucks team expected to compete for the championship and led by Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is a finalist for this year’s Most Valuable Player Award.Instead, the Heat and the Knicks easily dispatched their first-round opponents, each needing just five games to do it. Miami benefited from an injury to Antetokounmpo and the dynamism of Butler. Butler scored 56 points in Miami’s Game 4 win against the Bucks and 42 in the series-clinching win two days later.That meant containing Butler would be critical for the Knicks, a team driven by its defense and depth.The Knicks had home-court advantage and a tactical advantage in that Coach Tom Thibodeau knows Butler well. He coached Butler with the Chicago Bulls for Butler’s first four seasons in the N.B.A., and again when Butler played for the Minnesota Timberwolves.On Sunday, Butler had 25 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. More critically, the attention he commanded on the court made things easier for his teammates, many of whom have thrived under playoff pressure before.The Knicks’ shooting was also particularly damaging for them. Brunson wasn’t the only one who struggled from 3. Overall, the Knicks made only 20.6 percent of their 3-pointers, including just 3 of 16 in the first half.With 5 minutes 5 seconds remaining, Butler struggled to rise from the court after turning his ankle while tangling with Hart. He refused to leave the game. With Butler hobbled, the Heat relied on guard Kyle Lowry and extended their lead to 11 points from 3.“That certainly is inspiring that he would not come out of the game,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And to be able to finish the game just infused a bunch of confidence to the rest of the guys that we have to finish this off.”Historically, when the Heat and Knicks have played each other in the playoffs, the battles have more closely resembled boxing matches than basketball games. Their physicality was legendary in the 1990s, with the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing and Miami’s Alonzo Mourning, both of whom were at Sunday’s game, going at each other in the paint.Sunday’s game was higher scoring than those contests from a quarter-century ago, but was similarly physical.“I wouldn’t just assume that each game is going to look like this,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve played these guys four times during the regular season. Two of the games were in the mud like this, the throwback Heat and Knicks that you would expect. And then we had two shootouts.”But he also said he expected the series to be a “cagefight.”What the Knicks have done already this postseason is cause for optimism for their future.They were not supposed to make a deep playoff run this year even with Brunson, who was a finalist for the league’s Most Improved Player Award. The Knicks are widely considered to be one superstar away from being championship contenders. If they win this series and get to the conference finals, they will have surpassed most expectations.They have avoided the kind of ridiculous drama that characterized the decade-long desert they wandered through until creating a stable environment with Thibodeau at the helm.The Knicks beat the Cavaliers soundly, justifying their unwillingness to gut their roster in order to trade for Mitchell.Their depth propelled them against Cleveland. It is why they have often succeeded even when playing short-handed.On Sunday, they were playing without Julius Randle, who is out with a sprained ankle. Thibodeau refused to use that as an excuse for why they lost the game.“We have more than enough,” he said after the game.The Heat were also missing a key player — guard Tyler Herro, who broke his hand during the first round and is expected to be out for several weeks.Butler did not address reporters after the game, and Spoelstra said he didn’t know the status of Butler’s injury. But if it is serious, it could change the complexion of the series. Still, the Knicks saw what the Heat did in the first round against the Bucks and know how difficult they can be.“They’re never going to give up,” Knicks forward RJ Barrett said. “That’s one thing I personally enjoy about this series. It’s going to be hard-fought. It’s going to be tough. You’ve got to go out there and kind of take it.” More

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      The Knicks Stumbled Last Season. Here’s How They Can Recover.

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      With free agency beginning, the Knicks have several options to build on what’s working and to move on from what is not.Good news for Knicks fans: The franchise has lured one of the best free agents, a rare occurrence for the team this century.The bad news: It’s a weak free-agent class, and this top free agent — the 25-year-old point guard Jalen Brunson — has never made an All-Star team. He has agreed to sign with the Knicks for $104 million over four seasons, his agents Aaron Mintz and Sam Rose told ESPN. Rose is the son of the team’s president, Leon Rose.That’s a hefty investment to make in a player who, in his best of four seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, averaged 16.3 points and 4.8 assists per game. He has been a full-time starter for just one season. But Brunson represents a significant upgrade at point guard, a position where the Knicks have long struggled to find playmakers. In the last two decades, Knicks starting point guards have included Chris Duhon, Toney Douglas, Trey Burke and Pablo Prigioni. Brunson has an excellent floater game in the paint, he’s a reliable shooter and he can break down a defense and put pressure at the rim.Brunson’s father, Rick, who briefly played for the team in the late-1990s, also is expected to be an assistant coach on the team next season. The Knicks have not announced his hiring, but in early June multiple reports said they were nearing a deal. The team did not respond to a request for comment.With the younger Brunson running the floor, the Knicks could be a dangerous playoff team, like they were in 2020-21, or one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference, like they were last season. That’s how much variance there is with the roster as free agency signings begin Wednesday.Jalen Brunson started 61 games for the Dallas Mavericks last season, averaging 16.3 points per game for the season, the most in his career.Jed Jacobsohn/Associated PressThe conundrum facing the Knicks is that their rotation players are talented but flawed. Brunson, in essence, embodies this. He can score in bunches, but he isn’t a quality defender. He’s almost assuredly not good enough to be the best player on a contending team, and it’s not certain that his ceiling is much higher than what he showed last season.The 22-year-old RJ Barrett, who is entering his fourth season, has not shown enough consistency to be a cornerstone. He’s good at getting to the rim but not at finishing, and his jumper needs work. The other young hopes, including power forward Obi Toppin, 24, and point guard Immanuel Quickley, 23, have alternated between being solid contributors and being liabilities. Toppin cuts and runs the floor well, but he is a below-average shooter and struggles defensively. Quickley was better at running the offense during his second season in 2021-22, but he is an inefficient scorer and his size makes him an easy target on defense.Last season was — charitably — a step back for the Knicks. They seemed to be finally finding their way out of the darkness with their 2021 postseason run. They signed Julius Randle to a pricey contract extension and gave new deals to the veterans Derrick Rose, Alec Burks and Nerlens Noel. Then, they missed the playoffs last season, and the weight of those new deals felt heavier. Randle struggled last season, and the veterans didn’t play well enough to merit being part of the team long term.Mitchell Robinson, the 24-year-old center, is another good example of the team’s talented-but-flawed issue. He is an excellent rim protector and lob threat around the rim, but he has no offensive range to speak of and hasn’t improved much in four seasons. Still, the Knicks have agreed to bring him back on a four-year, $60 million deal, his agents Thad Foucher and Joe Smith told ESPN.The Knicks will need to make salary-cap space to sign Brunson, and that likely means moving on from some of the ill-fitting veterans. But beyond that, the Knicks need to add players who can help them rise out of mediocrity — the worst place to be in the N.B.A. They aren’t bad enough to receive high draft picks but aren’t not good enough to justify their biggest contracts.Quality veterans looking to chase a ring most likely would not take a pay cut to join them because the Knicks don’t have a roster that can realistically contend for a championship at the moment. If a star becomes available, say a Kevin Durant or a Kyrie Irving, the Knicks probably won’t have the best package to offer: not the best young prospects, not the highest draft picks, just a mishmash of middling pieces. It’s hard to see the ceiling for this team as anything higher than a low seed in the playoffs.But the N.B.A. is an increasingly fluid league, and there is a real reason to believe the Knicks can overcome their deficiencies and surpass expectations.The Knicks likely will start the season with Brunson, Randle and Barrett as the primary ballhandlers. Even with their weaknesses, that’s a better-than-average group of playmakers in today’s N.B.A. Brunson’s ability to penetrate will take pressure off Randle, who could use more time not being the primary attack point on the offense. Brunson’s shooting will create more space for him and Randle to operate around the basket. If Randle has some of that pressure relieved, he can put more energy toward his other strengths, such as rebounding and passing. Maybe the Knicks will get the All-Star version of Randle back.And Brunson’s arrival should also make life easier for Barrett. He had a bigger role in the offense after the All-Star break last season and averaged 24.5 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. He shot only 40.1 percent from the field in those games — talented but flawed! — but he showed potential as the No. 1 option. If Barrett can bring a passable efficiency to the game, he becomes a borderline All-Star alongside Randle.To complement that core, the Knicks need consistent shooting around them. They already have someone who can help with that in Evan Fournier, who shot 38.9 percent from deep last year. Quickley didn’t shoot well last year, but in his rookie year, he also shot 38.9 percent from 3.Rose, who was injured for much of last season, also should be able to help. With the Knicks, Rose has been a surprisingly good shooter and another body to help break down defenses. At 33, and with a lengthy injury history, he likely can’t be the sixth man off the bench, but his return will be a welcome sight for the team. There is a world in which a closing lineup of Randle, Barrett, Brunson, Fournier and Rose is extremely difficult to defend.There is some light beyond this year — some being the operative word. The Knicks have a pile of first-round draft picks in coming years, including picks from Dallas, Washington and Detroit. Next year, the Knicks could have four first-round picks. Several of the picks have conditions, which lowers their value. And if the Knicks keep being OK but not great, their own draft picks most likely would fall in the mid-to-late first round, which also reduces their value.But having a stockpile of picks is better than having none, and the Knicks could use some of them in a trade instead of holding them to select intriguing prospects. The agreement to sign Brunson to a major deal suggests the Knicks are trying to win now. Leon Rose rarely speaks publicly, so the Knicks’ broader strategy is unclear.The Knicks were one of the worst teams in the league for years, but they still have the core pieces that helped them secure home-court advantage in the playoffs just two seasons ago. The Knicks are not a superteam, but in today’s N.B.A., that might be OK. More

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      The Knicks’ Struggles Go Deeper Than Kemba Walker

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      A surprising reconsideration of the lineup that pushed Walker out of the rotation could help with some of the team’s issues, but not all of them.Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau has long been known as resistant to change, particularly in the way he uses his starters. He’s often been criticized for playing them for too many minutes, rain or shine, whether or not they are performing well.So it was surprising this week, a quarter of a way through the season, when Thibodeau said that he was pulling the plug on Kemba Walker as the starting point guard in favor of Alec Burks, a reserve for most of his career and not a traditional point guard. And it wasn’t just that Walker, a four-time All-Star who signed with the Knicks in the summer, was being yanked from the lineup. Thibodeau told reporters that Walker would be out of the rotation entirely.Changing a starter this early in the season is significant, particularly when it’s one with Walker’s résumé. At 31, Walker, in theory, should still be in his athletic prime.But Thibodeau was trying to correct for an urgent, and frequent, problem: Knicks starters putting the team in a hole that the bench has to dig it out of. If playoff teams are consistently hurt by any part of their roster, it’s usually a thin bench. But for the Knicks, the starters — even beyond Walker — are the reason they are a fringe playoff team instead of near the top of the Eastern Conference standings.Tuesday night’s game against the Nets was illustrative. Down 1 point at halftime, the Nets came out of the break with a blistering 14-0 run against the Knicks’ starters minus guard RJ Barrett, who missed the second half with an unspecified illness. The starters climbed back into the game and briefly took the lead. But the Knicks lost the 112-110 thriller in Brooklyn — in part because coming out of halftime flat left the team playing the Nets (15-6) from behind for most of the second half.Julius Randle regularly draws multiple defenders.Michelle Farsi/Getty ImagesThis wasn’t an exception. In a Nov. 10 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, the reigning champions, the Knicks went down double digits in the first quarter. Even against the Houston Rockets, one of the worst teams in the N.B.A., the Knicks fell behind 18-11 in the first quarter before tying the game by halftime and winning. The next night, Nov. 21, against Chicago, the Bulls raced out to a 20-8 start en route to victory.The starting lineup the Knicks (11-10) have played for much of the season — Walker, Barrett, Evan Fournier, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson — hasn’t just struggled. Its net rating — a measure of how much better or worse a team or group is than their opponents — is negative 15.7, according to the league’s tracking numbers. That places this unit among the worst starting or bench lineups in the N.B.A.The evidence was becoming undeniable. Thibodeau needed to try something else.Walker wasn’t the sole issue, but he was a big part of the problem. He’s averaging 11.7 points per game on 42.9 percent shooting from the field, and an excellent 41.3 percent from 3-point range. But Walker’s play took a nosedive in November after a hot start. In 12 games last month, Walker shot only 29.6 percent from deep. If his 3s aren’t falling, there isn’t much else he’s doing on the court.Because of chronic knee issues in recent years, Walker has lost his explosive first step, so he’s not able to get to the rim as effectively. And because of his height — Walker is listed at 6 feet tall — and slower foot speed, Walker was targeted on defense. The only way to justify keeping him on the court would be if he spread the floor with his shooting, and he is no longer doing that.Inserting Burks into the starting lineup for Walker makes some things easier for the Knicks. He’s bigger — listed at 6-foot-6 — which makes him a more versatile defender. On Tuesday night, he was just as likely to guard the 6-foot-5 James Harden as the quick rookie guard Cameron Thomas, who is 6-foot-3. Early in the third quarter, Burks blocked a Patty Mills 3-pointer — easier for him than for Walker.“You’re able to switch 1 through 4,” Derrick Rose, the Knicks reserve guard, said of Burks’s insertion into the lineup. “You’re more versatile. I mean, A.B. is a hell of a player. A playmaker. A great shooter.”But Burks doesn’t fully solve a starting lineup problem that led Thibodeau to increasingly rely on the bench late in games. The Knicks don’t have much of a fast-break offense and often depend on isolations to get their points — which would be fine if their shooters did more work on their own to get open rather than just standing still. The team is near the top of the league in contested shots and toward the bottom in wide-open ones.Fournier’s stats dipped in November like Walker’s did, causing Thibodeau to barely use him in key moments late in games. Thibodeau did call his number on Tuesday night against the Nets, and Fournier rewarded him by hitting a game-tying 3-pointer with 18 seconds left. But overall, Fournier shot 5 for 12 for 13 points in 22 minutes, with no rebounds or assists. Like with Walker, if Fournier isn’t consistently a 3-point threat, there’s little reason for him to be on the floor.Randle, the team’s best player, has faced an onslaught of double teams without reliable shooting around him, and he has struggled. Randle is shooting only 41.7 percent from the field and 32.5 percent from 3 — all below his career averages. All of Barrett’s numbers have declined from last year as well. Barrett has improved his finishing around the rim, but his shooting has always been his biggest question mark, one he appeared to answer last year when he shot 40.1 percent from deep. Now he’s at 32.1 percent. (For his part, Barrett also started slowly last year, only to pick it up in the second half of the season.)Thibodeau was not in the mood to discuss the lineup change after Tuesday’s loss. Asked about it, Thibodeau expressed anger at the game’s officiating and then left the news conference after just one question.The saving grace for the Knicks has been their bench trio of Rose, Obi Toppin and Immanuel Quickley. The team is third in the N.B.A. in bench scoring. Toppin is a sorely needed threat at the rim and in transition and does something the Knicks generally don’t do well: cut. Quickley and Rose have provided quality shooting, especially late in games, and Rose has been one of the few Knicks effective at getting to the rim.Swapping Walker for Burks swap has already paid dividends. He scored 25 and 23 points in the last two games, his only two starts of the season. And the Knicks may need to make more adjustments. More lineup changes mean the increased potential for hurt feelings among veteran players, but as Thibodeau said before the game on Tuesday: “You have to put winning first.” More

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      The Knicks Enter a Summer of Tough Calls

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      Their transformation into a playoff team was one of the more remarkable stories of the season. But keeping the momentum going will require some more good calls.As the dejected Knicks wound down the closing minute of their season on Wednesday night, the near-capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden rained cheers on them.It didn’t seem to matter that the Knicks had been thumped once again by the Atlanta Hawks, or that they had lost their first playoff series since 2013 in a surprisingly noncompetitive fashion, four games to one. It didn’t seem to matter to the fans that one of the best defenses in the league was carved up by Trae Young, or that much of this team is unlikely to be back next season, since many are set to be free agents.Asked what the biggest difference was between this season and last, RJ Barrett, the Knicks guard, put it succinctly: “A lot more winning. Winning was fun.”This team’s overnight turnaround from 21-45 to 41-31 was one of the more remarkable stories of a turbulent N.B.A. season. And even though the Knicks collapsed in the playoffs, raising some new questions entering the off-season, this iteration was one that their fans could enjoy watching again. In the 21st century, that was something Knicks aficionados could only rarely say.The Knicks team that made the playoffs could be headed for a makeover.Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I’m proud of what our team accomplished this year,” Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Obviously, disappointed with the result tonight, and hopefully we can learn and get better from it. But I thought our guys gave us everything they had all year long.”The Knicks confounded preseason expectations by earning the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference after many observers wrote them off even before the season began. But it wasn’t just that they won more games this season. It was the way they did it.The Knicks were rarely the most talented team on the floor. They won on the back of a tough defense and cast of scrappy players who reflected their coach, Thibodeau. Their best player, Julius Randle, had been underwhelming a year ago, renewing questions about whether the three-year, $63 million contract he had received in 2019 was just the latest in a long line of ill-fated Knicks signings.Instead, the 6-foot-8, 250-pound Randle reinvented his game under Thibodeau and adapted to the modern N.B.A.: He developed his 3-point shot while also improving his passing and defense. Doubts about Randle faded as he morphed into an All Star.“We’re bringing a brand of basketball back that the city can be proud of,” Randle said, adding, “We have something to build on for the future.”That is the most important takeaway from this season. The Knicks are a coveted ticket again, which means they may be more successful at attracting top free agents, a task at which the team has struggled for most of the last two decades. That change in perception alone could make this season a success, regardless of how the series against the Hawks ended.The Knicks finally have something they have craved for years: They have built the ground floor of something. Under the team president Leon Rose and the coaching of Thibodeau, there appears to be an organizational direction and a sincere — at least, for now — commitment to long-term development over short-term thinking. There are promising young players like Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin. There are building blocks like Barrett and Randle. The Knicks also have multiple first-round picks in this year’s draft.And, because of a handful of expiring contracts, the Knicks will have a great deal of cap flexibility. Several of this year’s Knicks, including Derrick Rose, Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel, Reggie Bullock and Elfrid Payton, will be free agents this summer — the result of a strategy in recent years to stack their rosters with short-term contracts.To be sure, the Knicks have some important decisions to make. In many ways, the season that just ended was supposed to have been a bridge year. Instead, the team overachieved by making the playoffs, and then underachieved once it got there.One of the first big calls will be deciding what to do about Randle, who turns 27 in November. As strong as he was in the regular season, Randle was abysmal against the Hawks in his first postseason, shooting 29.7 percent. This was his seventh N.B.A. season, but which is the real Randle: the one who grew into an All-Star during the season, or the one who vanished against the Hawks? And what now?The Knicks must decide whether to tie up a large portion of their salary budget with a long-term extension for Randle and build the team around him, or to sell high as they did with Kristaps Porzingis, the last Knicks All-Star who excited the fan base.It was a promising season for Knicks fans.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I told him I still do believe in him,” guard Derrick Rose said. “I’m going to ride with him to the end just like everybody on the team. Like, he got us here.”The calculations only get more complicated from there. Should the Knicks give Mitchell Robinson, their shot-blocking center, an enormous extension, or go shopping in a thin free-agent year? DeMar DeRozan, who just finished a successful run with the San Antonio Spurs, and Kyle Lowry of the Toronto Raptors are two players who do seem to fit the Thibodeau mold. Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers could opt for free agency if the Clippers lose to the Dallas Mavericks in the first round.Committing lots of money to the wrong players, though, is the surest way for a team to keep itself in N.B.A. purgatory, a fact that Knicks fans know as well as anyone. Draft picks can be squandered. Signings can go wrong. Injuries might derail a run.But those worries can wait a day or two. For the moment, this season can be viewed as a refreshing change in direction for the Knicks. For most franchises, making the playoffs would be a small step. For the Knicks, it was a giant leap. They are back in the discussion.“Who wouldn’t want to play for the Knicks or be in New York?” Rose said Wednesday night.When was the last time the Knicks, or their fans, could say that and mean it? More

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      A Wrenching Knicks Loss, but an Electric Night at the Garden

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      Playoff basketball returned to Manhattan as a cultural event with a loud, spirited crowd and a new archenemy, the Hawks’ Trae Young.For 47 minutes 59.1 seconds, the fans at Madison Square Garden ranged from raucous to delirious, as the Knicks — their Knicks — were locked in a dogfight on Sunday night against the Atlanta Hawks in the New York team’s first N.B.A. playoff game since 2013.And with nine-10ths of a second remaining, Trae Young, the Hawks’ star guard, was able to get around Frank Ntilikina, a guard ostensibly known for his defense, and hit a game-winning floater.Young then added insult to injury by using his finger to shush the crowd, a good portion of which had been sending profane chants his way for much of the game, a 107-105 Hawks win.”Next one.”🤫🤫-@TheTraeYoung pic.twitter.com/e41Knsyl53— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) May 24, 2021
      “I’ve always looked at it as I’m doing something right if I’m offending them with my play that much,” Young told reporters after the game, adding, “Just got to let my play do the talking because at the end of the day, fans can only talk. They can’t guard me.”Neither could the Knicks in Game 1 of this best-of-seven first-round series. An unfazed Young took the air of the building repeatedly as he took over in the fourth quarter. It wasn’t just the game winner. It was the two free throws with 28 seconds left. Another floater with less than two minutes left, plus a free throw. Young scored 13 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter, deftly casting aside the howling home fans and the haymakers the Knicks kept throwing the Hawks’ way in a back-and-forth thriller. All nine of Young’s free throws came in the final quarter, as did three of his 10 assists.The Knicks tried valiantly to keep Young contained in pick-and-rolls. It didn’t work, as Young used his best weapon — the floater — to frustrate much taller centers.“He’s a great player,” Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks’ coach, said. “We’ll take a look at the film. You’re not going to be able to stay with a steady diet of anything, so obviously we have to do a better job.”Gathering outside Madison Square Garden before the game.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesOn their feet inside near the end of the game.Pool photo by Seth WenigSunday’s game had all the hallmarks of the classic Knicks playoff games N.B.A. audiences were accustomed to in the 1990s. (Before tipoff, Thibodeau, who was an assistant coach for the Knicks then, recalled that he had never heard a building as loud as Madison Square Garden when Larry Johnson hit a game-tying 3 against the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of the 1999 Eastern Conference finals — one of the most famous shots in Knicks history.)Game 1 was low scoring and defensively oriented, much like the premillennium Knicks. Angry fans chanted profanities at an opposing team’s best player (and the referees). Those same ones screamed so loudly that the public-address announcer could not be heard after RJ Barrett’s fast-break dunk over Bogdan Bogdanovic in the third quarter sent the crowd of 15,047 into a frenzy.An exuberant Spike Lee berated the referees and embraced Knicks players from the sideline. Other celebrities, like Tracy Morgan, Jon Stewart and Rachel Brosnahan, sat courtside to aid in efforts to rattle the Hawks. Christopher Jackson, the Broadway star, sang the national anthem. David Guetta, the French D.J., performed at halftime.The playoff opener was a reminder that at its best, the Knicks basketball experience is as much a cultural event in New York as it is a basketball one. (To that end, Andrew Yang, one of the leading candidates for mayor of New York City, posted a video of himself on Twitter shaking hands with attendees outside the arena before the game. He had apparently gotten over his previous disavowal of the franchise, which had also been done on Twitter.)The contest had everything Knicks fans could want except for a win. But this was the kind of game that had some significant outliers, making it difficult to project the rest of the series. For one thing, while Young, an All-Star, came through for the Hawks, the Knicks’ All-Star did not. Julius Randle, facing a steady rush of double teams, shot 6 for 23 from the field for 15 points. He dominated the Hawks during the regular season, but could not get his jumpers to fall on Sunday.“Listen, I’m not making no excuses,” Randle said. “I’ve got to be better, and I will be better. I’ll just leave it at that.”As a whole, the Knicks were one of the most accurate 3-point-shooting teams in the N.B.A. On Sunday, they were 10 for 30 from deep — 33 percent, far below their season average of 39 percent.The Knicks stayed in the game mostly because of the play of the reserves, particularly Alec Burks, who led the team with 27 points off the bench. Derrick Rose had 17 points and Immanuel Quickley added 10, including two momentum shifting 3s.Immanuel Quickley celebrated after hitting a 3-pointer in the first-half.Pool photo by Seth WenigA slight bounce here or a friendly foul call that doesn’t go Young’s way, and this discussion is way different. It would be about the Knicks returning to playoff glory and the large number of city residents who suddenly had to — wink, wink — call out sick on Monday. It would be about how the Knicks beat the Hawks despite their best players not playing well, and how well that bodes in a series in which the Knicks have home-court advantage.But the Hawks pulled it out. And they’re one game closer to a series win than the Knicks are.But there’s plenty of reason for optimism for the Knicks heading into Game 2 on Wednesday night at the Garden. Randle showed himself to be too good a player this season, particularly against Atlanta, to have a repeat of Sunday’s game. By the law of averages, more of those 3s the Knicks missed will start going in. The supporting cast showed it was capable of taking some of the load off Randle. And the team was 25-11 at home in the regular season.The unsolvable issue may be Young, one of the few players who can hurt a team from anywhere on the court. When the Knicks played up on him, he drove around them. When they gave him room to operate, he got off his floater or found Hawks teammates for dunks. The answer may be to pack the paint and encourage him to shoot more from 3-point range, where he was a 34.3 percent shooter during the regular season, or to send more traps at him to force the ball out of his hands.Even though Ntilikina was burned on Young’s game winner, he may get more time if Young continues to abuse the guards who had difficulty with him, like the starting guard Elfrid Payton, who continued to be ineffective.The one constant for Game 2 is that Knicks fans will be out in force. Lee will be there screaming, and thousands of others will match him note for note. As Rose said about the opener, the fans gave the team “everything that we expected and probably a little bit more.” More

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      Brace Yourselves: The Knicks Are Going to the Playoffs

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      New York’s seven-year postseason drought ended when the Celtics lost on Wednesday.Let’s keep this simple: The Knicks — the Knicks! — are going back to the playoffs.When the Boston Celtics lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, the Knicks clinched a top-six seed in the Eastern Conference.That means the Knicks will avoid the N.B.A.’s play-in round. And while their final playoff seed is still to be determined, they know they will make their first playoff appearance in eight years.WE HERE.The New York Knicks are headed to the Playoffs. #NewYorkForever pic.twitter.com/kpp3Pu3RJr— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) May 13, 2021
      “Check it off the list. We not close to done #NYWEHERE,” Julius Randle, the Knicks star, said on Twitter on Wednesday.Immanuel Quickley, the team’s rookie guard, expressed his emotions in a single word: “CLINCHED!”This will be the Knicks’ first postseason trip since the 2012-13 season, when Mike Woodson was coaching the team and Carmelo Anthony was its franchise player. That was an outlier burst of competitiveness in which the team made the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. For most of the 21st century, the Knicks have been defined by the carousel of coaches, public drama, underachieving players and late-spring vacations. Since the 2000-1 season, the Knicks have made the playoffs only five times, including this season, and won just one series so far, after a decade of deep playoff runs led by Patrick Ewing.Returning to the playoffs is another step in a remarkable turnaround for the Knicks. Last season, they were one of the worst teams in the league and fired their coach, David Fizdale, after a 4-18 start, the worst one in team history. Once again, the Knicks were a punchline.But two months after Fizdale’s firing, the Knicks named Leon Rose as their team president. One of Rose’s first moves in the summer was to hire Tom Thibodeau as coach, and Thibodeau has established a competitive team culture in which effort on the floor is paramount.This year, the drama-free Knicks have a chance to host a playoff series in the first round, thanks in part to the growth of players like Randle and the second-year guard RJ Barrett. Rose has made several other savvy additions, including trading for guard Derrick Rose, who has offered a scoring boost, and acquiring Quickley in a draft-day trade.The Knicks’ playoff seed will be determined over the final three games of the regular season. At 38-31 entering Thursday’s games, they are battling with the Atlanta Hawks (39-31) and the Miami Heat (38-31) for the fourth, fifth and sixth seeds. Getting the fourth seed would mean the Knicks would not only have home-court advantage in the first round, but they would also avoid the Nets, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers — currently the conference’s top three seeds — in an opening-round matchup.But if the Knicks do meet Brooklyn, it will be the first playoff meeting between the teams since 2004, when the Nets, based in New Jersey at the time, swept the Knicks in the first round.The Knicks have been one of the hottest teams in the league over the last month of the season, going 13-4 in their last 17 games. More

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      The Root of the Knicks’ Success? Caring When They Didn’t Have To.

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      In a season of uncertainty, the Knicks gave fans, and opponents, one thing to count on: “They were coming to play,” one observer said.Of all the postseason-ensuring victories across the Knicks’ grand reawakening of a regular season, none rose to the level of their most compelling, collective triumph. That would be the defeat of every team’s most formidable opponent: the coronavirus pandemic.Like most teams in all sports, they have had their brushes with Covid-19. But at least until a swing out West that always loomed as a caveat to their playoff seeding, the Knicks could be counted on to “show up every night,” to quote a dearly departed season ticket holder I long knew.Some N.B.A. teams did little to improve on borderline playoff rosters or gutted them completely. Others that figured to be measurably superior to the Knicks have wobbled under the weight of too many nights when they didn’t show up — physically or spiritually.The N.B.A. this season has experienced an acute blowout problem, on pace late last month for more games after the All-Star break decided by 20 or more points since 1967-68. Let Jeff Van Gundy, the loquacious network analyst and former Knicks coach, begin to explain.“In a trying season for everybody — with testing and Covid, injuries and load management — you just haven’t known who’s going to be there, night in and night out,” he said in a telephone interview. “But with the Knicks, you have known, for the most part, they were coming to play.”This is where the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as coach was seamlessly set to pandemic conditions. Especially for what Van Gundy called “the whole crowd thing,” meaning that because there were no fans in arenas for most of the season, there has largely been no external force helping teams hold on to the rope after falling behind.Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFrom no fans to some fans, these Knicks didn’t much need to be incentivized by a Madison Square Garden crowd. The coach’s baritone voice has been more than enough.Who among the emerging young players (RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley), veterans on expiring contracts (Reggie Bullock, Alec Burks) or reacquainted Thibodeau loyalists (Taj Gibson, Derrick Rose) was not going to be all-in with an old-school taskmaster, in his first year on the job?Van Gundy, who had Thibodeau on his Knicks staff two decades ago during the last multiseason period of Knicks relevance, mentioned an unnamed coach who told him that the higher the level of basketball you reach, winning during the regular season tends to “matter less and less to the players.” Maybe that’s an exaggeration, or simply not true. But with these Knicks, Van Gundy said, “the care factor has been exceptionally high.”Forgive the nostalgia, but their season has been reminiscent of 1982-83, when Hubie Brown rolled into town with a reputation much like Thibodeau’s, preaching defense and devotion, albeit in an exacting voice that over time grew discordant.Bernard King was the star of Hubie Brown’s 1982-83 Knicks team.Bill Kostroun/Associated PressBrown’s first Knicks team lost 26 of its first 40 games, then caught fire, won 24 of 30 and steamed into the playoffs to win a round (for the record, against the Nets).As with Julius Randle now, Bernard King was their lone star then, the one indispensable Knick, wearing the same No. 30. While other teams have required an Etch A Sketch to chart their stars’ nightly lineup availability, Randle has lost one game to injury and none to rest, leading the league in minutes played.Load management is generally for the established elite, not for a guy in the midst of a remarkable breakout season, and who began it with a partially guaranteed salary for 2021-22.Beyond Randle, Leon Rose, the team’s president, built a deep roster of interchangeable parts, ready for a condensed schedule promising to be marred by pandemic unpredictability. When the starting center Mitchell Robinson went down, the peripatetic young veteran Nerlens Noel stepped up. When Burks, a strong contributor to the team’s improved offense, was out because of virus protocols, Rose and Bullock picked up the scoring pace.“In the regular season, you can’t be top-heavy, you need depth, which Leon did a great job with,” Van Gundy said. “In the playoffs, you need greatness.”Watching the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic dismantle the Knicks in Denver last week may well have been a playoff preview. But wherever the Knicks’ season goes from here, it has been all the more astonishing when considering how little they have to show for their last five lottery picks, all top 10.Julius Randle colliding into Nuggets forward Paul Millsap in Denver on Wednesday.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBasically, it’s the ever-improving Barrett, at least until Obi Toppin gets to prove he is more than the second coming of Kenny Walker, better known as Sky. Kristaps Porzingis? Long gone. Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox? Might as well be.Here, again, is where the Thibodeau hiring has been a timely blessing. You may have argued last fall that this would be the perfect season to sacrifice achievement for player development, with few paying customers to please. I know I did. Why not find out once and for all about Ntilikina and Knox? Why not turn Toppin and Quickley loose from Day 1?Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Peter Roby, a childhood friend of Thibodeau’s, who in 1985 hired him for the coaching staff at Harvard, likes to playfully remind people of how Thibodeau, the acclaimed defensive guru, was known in his “knucklehead” youth for never passing up a shot. But in a recent telephone interview, he brought up Thibodeau’s age, 63, old enough to have been introduced to the pro game by the Knicks’ early 1970s championship team.Those Knicks were all about ball sharing and defense, the kind of championship DNA, Roby said, that Thibodeau associates with the franchise, even if it hasn’t won a title since the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.“Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley — those are his Knicks,” Roby said.His father’s Knicks, as well. Thibodeau wanted this generation-connective job too much to embark on a five-year plan that could easily disintegrate, given the organization’s trademark volatility under the ownership of James L. Dolan.Even with few or no fans, the Knicks have played hard.Pool photo by ElsaHe also knows how easily an N.B.A. head coach his age can overnight be downgraded from outstanding to outdated with one twist of fate — what befell Brown after King tore up a knee at the height of his scoring prowess in 1985.Chasing pickup games with Thibodeau while growing up in New Britain, Conn., a border town where sports passion is split between Boston and New York, Roby also chose the Knicks over the Celtics. As a former athletic director at Northeastern and current interim athletic director at Dartmouth, he’s long been closer to Boston but is a bigger Knicks fan than ever, thanks to his old pal.“Can you imagine what it would be like if they were playing in front of a full Garden house?” Roby said.We can, but perhaps we shouldn’t. Not yet. Because who knows what comes next, when the high-achieving role players, Derrick Rose included, will demand their free-agent rewards. When road games — such as Friday night’s in Phoenix, where the Knicks faltered late in front of 8,063 fans — may again require competing with a full-throated cacophony. When expectation will become part of the equation and, yes, when Thibodeau’s voice could begin to grate.Stirring to life a long-slumbering franchise, the story of the season has been harmony for coach and players, all while withstanding, even foiling, the daunting challenge of a pandemic. More

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      Why the Knicks Keep, Ahem, Winning

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      The recently awful Knicks have won six straight behind the All-Star Julius Randle, vintage play from Derrick Rose and tough team defense.It was only an overtime victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, the kind of win even pessimistic Knicks fans would have thought possible going into the season.But the win on Sunday was something more: It was the Knicks’ sixth straight; the team hadn’t even won five in a row since 2014.Pessimistic Knicks fans? Who remembers them? New York fans are over the moon about their team and are eagerly looking forward to its first playoff appearance in eight long years.While the streak has included two wins over the Pelicans and one over the Raptors, there were also wins over three legitimate playoff teams, the Grizzlies, the Mavericks and the (admittedly depleted) Lakers.That puts the Knicks at 31-27, sitting in sixth in the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference and, let’s just say it out loud, only a half-game out of fourth place and home-court advantage for the first round of the playoffs.The eminently respectable season is all the more surprising because the Knicks were expected to be one of the worst teams in the league. They were a league-worst 17-65 in 2018-19 and 21-45 in the shortened 2019-20 season.Bookmakers this time set their over-under at 22.5 wins for the 72-game season. Over bettors cashed that ticket in March. If the Knicks go .500 the rest of the way, they will finish 38-34, a .528 winning percentage that would be the best since their last playoff appearance in 2013.While the playoffs will be an uphill climb for the Pelicans, they can take heart from the performance of Zion Williamson, whose second season has brought 27 points a game and an All-Star selection. He had 34 against the Knicks on Sunday in his first game at Madison Square Garden as a pro.With the Knicks trailing by 103-100 with 7.8 seconds to go, Derrick Rose drove to the basket, then passed to Reggie Bullock, who made a 3-pointer to tie the score. Pelicans Coach Stan Van Gundy, displeased afterward, confirmed that he had told his team to foul, but it did not manage to. The Knicks pulled away to win comfortably in overtime, 122-112.As for the reasons for the Knicks’ resurgence, No. 1 has to be Julius Randle, who had 33 points on Sunday. He has career highs in points (23.7 per game), rebounds (10.5) and assists (6.1) and made his first All-Star Game. Nikola Jokic of the Nuggets is the only other player in the top 12 in total points, rebounds and assists.The much-traveled Rose, acquired in February, has played well in his second stint with the Knicks, and RJ Barrett could be on his way to stardom, especially if he more consistently hits his 3s.While the team’s offense has its strong points — a .380 3-point percentage ranks sixth in the league — the improvement can be credited in large part to defense.The team ranks third in defensive rating, allowing just 108 points per 100 possessions, trailing only the heralded defenses of the Lakers and the 76ers. Last season, it was 23rd.Although the scale of the transformation is surprising, many did expect a focus on defense this season after the team hired Coach Tom Thibodeau, a defensive specialist, last summer.The 3-point defense has been especially notable. With the Knicks aggressively defending on the perimeter, the team is allowing opponents to shoot just .334 from 3, best in the league. Last season, with more time to shoot, Knicks opponents made 38 percent of their 3s, and the Knicks ranked an abysmal 28th in that category.Nerlens Noel ranks second to only Rudy Gobert of the Jazz in Basketball Reference’s defensive rating, which measures things like blocks (Noel is in the top five), steals, defensive rebounds and forced turnovers. Randle is in the top 10 of defensive rating as well.And the team is doing it all with a payroll under $100 million, the second lowest in the league. Even Knicks haters, who have been dormant for want of a target in recent years, are starting to emerge on social media to duel with exuberant Knicks fans.After years of anger, despair and, even worse, apathy, New Yorkers, and the rest of the league, are starting to take notice of the action at the Garden again. More

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      The Knicks Are Like Blink-182. Let Us Explain.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyon pro basketballThe Knicks Are Like Blink-182. Let Us Explain.Hot in the 1990s and early ’00s. A source of joy and pain for a wildly devoted fan base. An unexpected resurgence. Yep, the parallels are there.“As a team, we all really support each other,” Knicks guard RJ Barrett, left, said.Credit…Pool photo by Sarah StierMarch 5, 2021, 5:35 p.m. ETIn the 1990s and early 2000s, Blink-182 was huge. With songs like “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things,” the rock trio’s blend of pop punk and unapologetic juvenility propelled them to an influential stature in American culture, with a loud, dedicated fan base.Hang with us for a second. We know you’re here to read about basketball.Then, in 2005, the band disappeared for a while, returning in 2011 with its first album since 2003. It was a flop; internal acrimony hurt the recording process. Next came “California,” in 2016, an album met with low expectations because of the past acrimony and the likelihood that this band, like many before, would struggle to regain its mojo after so many years away.Except the album turned out to be great, a success that fired up the fan base. The music felt fresh while still offering enough of what made the band so popular in the first place.The cover for the Blink-182 album “California,” which was released in 2016.If that sounds familiar, and not just because you learned to play the guitar riff in “Dammit,” you just might be a Knicks fan watching the team make a serious run this year for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.The Knicks are Blink-182.They are 19-18, a half-game behind the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. And fans are optimistic. “Yelling outside Madison Square Garden” optimistic. “Spending a bunch of money on coronavirus tests just to attend a game” optimistic. It seems like ages since the Knicks have had this much excitement. Except we must now remind you that the Knicks were 18-18 not so long ago, in the 2017-18 season, and then the wheels fell off.That can happen this season, too. But the feeling around these Knicks is different.“As a team, we all really support each other,” said RJ Barrett, the team’s starting guard. “Always happy for each other. Whoever’s night it is, we’re always cheering. We really like each other off the court.”So midway through the season, is this team for real? Enough to make the playoffs? Or will this season go the way of 2017-18, when they won only about a quarter of their games after the All-Star break?Here’s a look at what to expect from the Knicks in the second half of the season.A Tougher ScheduleThe Knicks have had one of the easiest schedules. They are last in strength of schedule, a measure of the difficulty of a team’s opponents, but the second half stands to be harder. Coming out of the All-Star break, three of the Knicks’ next four games will be against finals contenders: the Nets, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers. When only a handful of games are separating the fourth seed from the 11th seed, those games are crucial. There’s also a brutal road trip in May that will take the team to Denver, Phoenix and Los Angeles, where they will play the Lakers and the Clippers.Julius Randle’s DominanceJulius Randle is leading the Knicks in total points, rebounds and assists. The only other players doing that for their teams are Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks), Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets) and Luka Doncic (Dallas Mavericks).Forward Julius Randle is leading the Knicks in points, rebounds and assists.Credit…Craig Mitchelldyer/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThat’s a heavy load that Randle has to carry night in and night out. He’s also top-three in the league in minutes played. Randle is only 26, but you have to wonder if fatigue will become a factor in the second half.RJ Barrett’s Stephen Curry ImpersonationRJ Barrett is undoubtedly having a better year than he did his rookie season, but it has still been a strange one. In December, he shot a terrible 12.5 percent from 3, including an 0-for-8 performance against the Toronto Raptors. The next month, Barrett raised his percentage to a passable 35.1 percent. In February, though, Barrett turned into an elite shooter at 47.4 percent from outside. Oddly, it’s inside where Barrett struggles the most, sometimes forcing midrange shots.He doesn’t take many 3-pointers — only 3.3 a game — but if Barrett remains a legitimate weapon out there, it will help the Knicks offense, which is below average.Frank Ntilikina Is Coming in From the ColdFrank Ntilikina, who the Knicks drafted eighth over all in 2017, hasn’t worked out as expected. His minutes have waned, and he hasn’t shown he can be a consistent scorer. But on Tuesday night, in his first start of the season, Ntilikina broke out for 13 points. New York Knicks guard Frank Ntilikina has played in only nine games this season.Credit…Daniel Dunn/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe performance inspired euphoria among Knicks fans. It spurred several memes and a donation to charity from overjoyed devotees on Reddit.File this under “Possible Correlation, Not Causation”: Ntilikina has played in only nine games this season. In two of them, he entered in garbage time when the Knicks were well on the way to losing. But in the other seven, all of which Ntilikina played at least 11 minutes, the Knicks are 6-1. This includes the game on Thursday night against the Detroit Pistons, when he scored 9 points in 13 minutes.It’s a limited sample size, but Ntilikina might be earning himself more playing time in the second half of the season. He’s hitting his shots (61.9 percent from 3) and has always been a tough defender. He even had a game-sealing steal against the Indiana Pacers at the end of February.Alec Burks and Julius Randle of the New York Knicks fight Nikola Vucevic of the Orlando Magic for a rebound at Amway Center in February.Credit…Alex Menendez/Getty ImagesDE-FENSE! [Clap, Clap] DE-FENSE!The Knicks are the second-best defensive team in the league, which isn’t surprising, because Coach Tom Thibodeau has long been known as a defensive wizard. The last time the Knicks had a top-five defense was in the 2011-12 season. Incidentally, the team made the playoffs that year in another shortened season.To give you an idea of how much more offensive-minded the N.B.A. is today: In 2015-16, the Knicks had a better defensive efficiency than they do this year, but they were just the league’s 18th-best defense. It’s not a question of teams simply playing faster and scoring more points either, since efficiency factors in pace. Offenses are just better now, especially with the focus on the 3.Can Immanuel Quickley Start? Please?The Knicks often struggle offensively, yet one of their best offensive players doesn’t get much playing time.An early victory of the Leon Rose-era Knicks is the play of Immanuel Quickley, who was selected 25th in the draft last year. He is having an impressive rookie season, averaging 12.2 points, while shooting 38.1 percent from 3. His floaters are a thing of beauty. He’s one of the few players on the Knicks, outside of Randle, Barrett and Derrick Rose, who can break down a defense. On top of that, he is automatic from the free-throw line, shooting better than 94 percent.Immanuel Quickley is an active defender and automatic from the free-throw line.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesQuickley plays less than 20 minutes a game, and it’s high time for that to be increased for a team as offensively challenged as the Knicks. He’s also an active defender and a strong communicator. He’s undersized and is still learning, but he has a better defensive rating than Barrett and Mitchell Robinson — two players who have been lauded for their defense. (Defensive rating is a measure of how many points the team gives up with you on the floor, extrapolated for 100 possessions. It’s an imprecise measure, and is affected by who is also on the floor with you.)Elfrid Payton has been the starting point guard for most of the year. But his poor shooting causes spacing issues, particularly for Randle. Quickley is arguably the team’s second-best offensive player. It’s worth giving him more time.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More