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      N.B.A. Awards Picks: Why Stephen Curry Could Win M.V.P.

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      Denver’s Nikola Jokic separated himself early with historic play. Then Curry, who has won two Most Valuable Player Awards with Golden State, went on a historic run of his own.The N.B.A.’s 75th season began on Dec. 22 — and the chatter about individual award races began soon after. Some things, even in pandemic times, never change in this league.The New York Times does not participate in balloting for such awards in any sport, but breaking down each of the six major races and who I would have chosen is always a good way to take stock of what we just saw.Most Valuable PlayerDenver’s Nikola Jokic increased his scoring average by nearly 7 points per game from last season.David Zalubowski/Associated PressNikola Jokic, Denver NuggetsRest of the ballot: 2. Stephen Curry (Golden State); 3. Chris Paul (Phoenix); 4. Joel Embiid (Philadelphia); 5. Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee).Preseason prediction: Luka Doncic (Dallas)Jokic averaged 26.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 8.3 assists per game and shot 38.8 percent on 3-pointers to deliver dreamlike statistical diversity for a big man, and rightfully ranked as the M.V.P. favorite for some time. He was also one of just 11 players this season to appear in all 72 games, dodging the injury hex and coronavirus intrusions that affected so many fellow stars, including the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray, in a season rife with postponements and challenges.With Embiid missing 21 games, and Paul having a dramatic impact on a team that had missed the playoffs for 10 consecutive seasons but without the accompaniment of gaudy statistics, Jokic appeared well positioned to become the lowest-drafted (No. 41 overall in 2014) M.V.P. in league history.Then, in the season’s final days, I and many others got swept up in Curry’s remarkable ride to a scoring title (32 points per game) that made him the oldest player, at 33, to win one since Michael Jordan at 35 in 1997-98. Without the injured Klay Thompson on an otherwise offensively challenged team, Curry was swarmed by defenses like never before but still managed to sink a league-best 337 3-pointers and lead the Warriors to a 37-26 record (equal to a 48-win pace in a typical 82-game season) when in uniform.If he prevails in the real-life M.V.P. race, Curry would be just the second player since Moses Malone in 1981-82 to win the award on a team that fell shy of 50 wins (or the shortened-season equivalent). Russell Westbrook was the last to do it in 2016-17, when he averaged a triple-double for the first time for 47-win Oklahoma City. Chances are Curry won’t finish higher than second because of Golden State’s struggles, but this race is as complex and layered as the season itself.The list of worthy candidates is so long that Doncic, Portland’s Damian Lillard, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, Miami’s Jimmy Butler, Utah’s Rudy Gobert and the Knicks’ Julius Randle are bound to be left off many ballots since there are only five openings.Coach of the YearTom Thibodeau turned the Knicks into a defensive force in his first season as coach.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressTom Thibodeau, KnicksRest of the ballot: 2. Monty Williams (Phoenix); 3. Quin Snyder (Utah)Preseason prediction: Steve Nash, NetsPhiladelphia was the East’s No. 6 seed last season. The 76ers hired Doc Rivers as their head coach and, with a few notable roster tweaks, posted the best record in the conference for the first time since the Allen Iverson-led Sixers did so in 2000-1.Rivers isn’t the only one responsible for Philadelphia’s rise, but the utter lack of buzz he is generating in this season’s coach of the year race shows the depth of the field. Thibodeau, Williams and Snyder all have tremendous cases, with Williams named on Monday as the National Basketball Coaches Association coach of the year in balloting by his peers.I expect Thibodeau to (narrowly) beat Williams in the news media vote after achieving one of the hardest things in coaching in Year 1 at Madison Square Garden — changing the Knicks’ culture with his relentless drive and attention to defensive detail. Thibodeau backers like to amplify their support by pointing out how much the Knicks overachieved with such a star-shy roster, finishing fourth in the East, but Williams’ bid shouldn’t be downgraded, as some say, because he could lean so hard on Chris Paul. I contend that it strengthens Williams’s bid that his presence helped persuade Paul to push to be traded to Phoenix from Oklahoma City, rather than to the Knicks, so that he could reunite with Williams, who coached him in New Orleans.There isn’t even room on the three-spot ballot to recognize the jobs done by Rivers, Memphis’s Taylor Jenkins, Atlanta’s Nate McMillan and Nash, who had his three best Nets (Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving) together on the floor for a whopping 202 minutes in his first year.Rookie of the YearLaMelo Ball helped solidify his case for the Rookie of the Year Award when he returned for the final 10 games of the season after breaking his wrist.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesLaMelo Ball, Charlotte HornetsRest of the ballot: 2. Anthony Edwards (Minnesota); 3. Tyrese Haliburton (Sacramento)Preseason prediction: Deni Avdija (Washington)Ball’s all-around play, for a team that unexpectedly contended for a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference until losing Gordon Hayward to injury, was the clincher. He averaged 15.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game and, amid great skepticism regarding his shooting stroke, proved passable from the field (43.6 percent) and 3-point range (35.2 percent).Ball then addressed the biggest hole in his résumé by returning from fracturing his right wrist on March 20 to play in Charlotte’s last 10 games, ultimately taking part in 71 percent of the Hornets’ season. Had he not returned, Ball would have played in only 57 percent of Charlotte’s games, which would have been the lowest availability rate ever for a rookie of the year. Patrick Ewing’s 60 percent (50 out of 82 games) for the Knicks in the 1985-86 season is the lowest.The extra games can only help Ball in his bid to hold off Edwards. In the second half of the season, when the Timberwolves went 16-20 after a dreadful a 7-29 start, Edwards averaged 23.8 points per game and shot 45.4 percent from the field, inspiring loud support from fans who felt Ball was prematurely anointed the winner.Most Improved PlayerJulius Randle became a solid 3-point shooter in his seventh season.Pool photo by ElsaJulius Randle, KnicksRest of the ballot: 2. Michael Porter Jr. (Denver); 3. Jerami Grant (Detroit)Preseason prediction: Christian Wood (Houston)This is our one layup. Randle is unlikely to receive enough All-N.B.A. or M.V.P. votes to satiate rabid fans who suddenly see him as Knicks royalty, but he should be a runaway M.I.P. selection. He and Jokic were the only players to amass at least 1,600 points, 700 rebounds and 400 assists this season.As covered in our recent piece on Randle, his jump to 41.1 percent on 3-pointers this season from 27.7 percent in 2019-20 — in his seventh pro season — has no N.B.A. precedent. Randle has likewise flourished as a playmaker whose decision-making and versatility have lifted those around him and enabled the Knicks to be just functional enough offensively to make the most of their fourth-ranked defense.Porter Jr., Grant, Wood and Dallas’s Jalen Brunson made telling leaps, too, but the Knicks could have not have become as unexpectedly viable as they did if Randle didn’t first transform himself so dramatically.Sixth Man AwardJoe Ingles gets the edge in an unexpectedly tight, and packed, race for the Sixth Man of the Year Award.Randall Benton/Associated PressJoe Ingles, Utah JazzRest of the ballot: 2. Jordan Clarkson (Utah); 3. Derrick Rose (Knicks)Preseason prediction: Caris LeVert (Indiana; began the season as a Nets reserve)In yet another anomaly in a season oozing with oddities, Utah (Clarkson and Ingles) and Dallas (Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jalen Brunson) each have two top reserves — possibly the four best reserves beyond Rose — to make settling on a top three trickier than usual.Clarkson averaged a heady 18.4 points per game, but Ingles nudged into my top spot because of his combination of excellent shooting (48.9 percent from the field and 45.1 percent on 3-pointers), offensive versatility and success as a fill-in starter when Utah faced injuries.Rather than trying to choose between the two Mavericks for one remaining spot, I went with Rose at No. 3 in a nod to the Knicks’ 24-11 record with Rose in uniform after acquiring him from Detroit. That also gave him the edge over the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kyle Kuzma, Chicago’s Thaddeus Young and Indiana’s T.J. McConnell.Defensive Player of the YearThe Jazz needed Rudy Gobert’s defense this year to offset the reduced firepower in the offense because of injuries.George Frey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRudy Gobert (Utah)Rest of the ballot: 2. Draymond Green (Golden State); 3. Ben Simmons (Philadelphia)Preseason prediction: Anthony Davis (Los Angeles Lakers)Perhaps I am falling prey to recency bias, but I can’t remember a season when even the D.P.O.Y. ballot was teeming with this many options. Maybe it’s a function of how much attention league observers and curators of advanced statistics are paying to defensive matters these days, judging by the lobbying in recent weeks for Green, Simmons, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Miami’s Bam Adebayo, Atlanta’s Clint Capela and Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday.Yet this, once again, is Gobert’s domain; look for him to be named D.P.O.Y. for the third time in four seasons. While Coach Quin Snyder was revamping the Jazz’s offense to commit more to 3-point shooting, Gobert kept them in the league’s top three in defensive efficiency.He also missed only one game in a season in which Utah, because of long stretches without Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley, needed his durability to finish with the best record in the league for the first time.The Scoop @TheSteinLineThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeRobert Horry hit a clutch 3-pointer for the Spurs against the Pistons in Game 5 of the 2005 N.B.A. finals.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: Good player, many clutch moments, seems like an awesome guy — and incredibly fortunate to have played with great players and for great coaches. All that can be true, while still recognizing that Robert Horry is not a Hall of Fame player. — @MikeMcCullochAZ from TwitterStein: During his Hall of Fame induction on Saturday night, the longtime Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich lobbied for Robert Horry’s enshrinement. I posted Rudy T’s plea on Twitter and there was no shortage of resistance to the idea, because Horry averaged just 7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game in his 16 N.B.A. seasons.Horry’s case, though, cannot be so readily dismissed. He amassed seven N.B.A. championship rings, with three franchises, as one of the finest role players in league history. Those who played with and coached him, like Tomjanovich, insist that he delivered so much more than the two mammoth 3-pointers he is best known for, which essentially made two of those titles possible: a buzzer-beater for the Lakers in Game 4 of the 2002 Western Conference finals against the Sacramento Kings that kept Los Angeles from a presumably fatal 3-1 series deficit; and a 3-pointer for the San Antonio Spurs in overtime of Game 5 of the 2005 N.B.A. finals to seal a series-turning victory against Detroit.After that masterpiece against the Pistons, I wrote a column proclaiming Horry to be the No. 1 role player in league history. He hadn’t scored in the first half but finished with 21 points, mitigating the damage from the six consecutive free throws that Tim Duncan, who just entered the Hall of Fame alongside Tomjanovich, clanked in the fourth quarter.Almost every year, there’s a discussion about how Rajon Rondo becomes Playoff Rondo after sleepy regular seasons. Although he has his own catchy moniker, Big Shot Rob, Horry was Playoff Rondo years before anyone was clever enough to use a nickname to spotlight the tendency. In 1994-95, he averaged 10.2 points per game during the regular season but 17.8 points and 10 rebounds per game in Houston’s four-game finals sweep of Shaquille O’Neal’s Orlando Magic.Ben Wallace, announced on Sunday as a member of the Hall’s 2021 class, won the Defensive Player of the Year Award four times but was passed over for induction until his fifth year of eligibility, likely because of his minuscule career scoring average of 5.7 points per game. Apart from a spot on the 1992-93 all-rookie team, Horry’s Basketball Reference page is far more barren than Wallace’s when it comes to individual honors. Perhaps he will never overcome the pedestrian nature of his career statistics to get that Hall of Fame call, but know this: Tomjanovich is far from the only one of Horry’s former colleagues who thinks he belongs in Springfield.Q: If more than one team finishes the season with the same record, do they have the same odds in the draft lottery? For example: If four teams tied with the league’s worst record, would they all have the same odds to land the No. 1 overall pick? — Chezky Krasner (Jerusalem, Israel)Stein: No. The league conducts tiebreakers, via a drawing overseen by a representative from Ernst & Young, when teams finish with identical records. The winner of the tiebreaker gets the higher draft pick or the higher placement in the lottery standings. The draft is July 29.There are several ties that the league will need to break in this manner, most crucially between Cleveland (22-50) and Oklahoma City (22-50) to see which team will have the fourth- and fifth-highest odds in the June 22 draft lottery. The Cavaliers and the Thunder will each get 115 number combinations, with one chosen at random to break the tie.Also to be decided in tiebreakers that are scheduled for May 25:Chicago (which owes its first-round pick to Orlando as part of the Nikola Vucevic trade) finished in a three-way tie for the No. 8 overall selection with New Orleans and Sacramento at 31-41.Charlotte and San Antonio (33-39) will have a tiebreaker draw if both teams lose this week in the play-in tournament.The Knicks and Atlanta (41-31) will need a tiebreaker to determine the Nos. 19 and 20 picks.There is a three-way tie for the No. 21 draft slot between the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland (which owes its first-round pick to Houston as part of the Robert Covington trade) and Dallas (which owes its first-rounder to the Knicks as part of the Kristaps Porzingis trade).Denver and the Los Angeles Clippers (47-25) will need a tiebreaker to determine the Nos. 25 and 26.Q: Your recent commentary on the play-in round almost persuaded me, but I can’t help but be very sympathetic to No. 7 teams whose records are quite a bit better than the other teams in the play-in round. Your point about how No. 7 seeds don’t win N.B.A. championships doesn’t change the fact that fans of those teams deserve to see their teams in the playoffs even if they have minimal hope of winning it all. — Simon Rosenblum (Toronto)Stein: This is a common retort to those, like me, who love the play-in concept. It’s an eye-of-the-beholder thing, but I just don’t see the No. 7 seed in either conference as some sacred thing we have to protect.The No. 7 seed, even in a scenario like you describe with a record far superior to Nos. 8 to 10, gets two chances to win one play-in game to claim a playoff spot. The system still skews heavily in No. 7’s favor, while also making the regular season infinitely more interesting and competitive as teams strain to finish no lower than No. 6.As for this season, injuries are the only reason that the defending champion Lakers slipped to No. 7. Anthony Davis missed 36 games, and LeBron James missed 27 after the shortest off-season (71 days) in N.B.A. history. I expect no one outside of Phoenix will pick the Suns, one of just two 50-win teams in this 72-game season, to beat the Lakers in the first round if the Lakers beat Golden State on Wednesday to get the seventh seed.Judging by what the oddsmakers in Las Vegas are saying, they will be the scariest No. 7 seed in N.B.A. history, rather than a team at risk for an unjust early exit this week. Only the Nets have shorter championship odds.Numbers GameHaving fewer fans may have contributed to home teams’ increased losses this season.Christian Petersen/Getty Images54.4Home teams won 54.4 percent of the time this season, going 293-247 (.543) in the East and 294-246 (.544) in the West. It’s the lowest success rate for home teams in league history, dipping below last season’s 55.1 percent.8This was the eighth consecutive season in which home teams won less than 60 percent of the time, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.84The empty arenas and reduced crowds mandated by league health and safety restrictions have been regularly cited as contributing factors in the further erosion of home-court advantage this season. But as the season progressed, home teams gradually got better at dealing with the baseball-style series in which teams hosted the same opponent in two consecutive games to reduce travel.Home teams won both games 27 times in 84 such series, lost both games 16 times and settled for a split 41 times, according to Ben Falk of Cleaning the Glass. Of the 41 splits, home teams won the first game and lost the second 17 times, and won the second game after losing the first 24 times. Additional time in one city and the increased familiarity resulting from two consecutive games against the same foe were expected to greatly help visiting teams in this scenario.2Two teams posted a losing record at home and a winning record on the road: Indiana (13-23 at home; 21-15 on the road) and San Antonio (14-22 at home; 19-17 on the road). Memphis nearly joined them but rallied to win its last four games at FedEx Forum to finish 18-18 at home compared to 20-16 on the road. The Toronto Raptors, in their temporary home in Tampa, Fla., because of Canada’s pandemic restrictions, were in a category by themselves. They were 16-20 in Tampa, and 11-25 on the road.27-11Phoenix fell one game shy of the league’s best record, going 51-21 to Utah’s 52-20, but the Suns went 27-11 against .500-or-better opposition to lead the league. Seven other teams had winning records against .500-or-better foes: Utah (24-14), the Nets (23-13), Dallas (22-16), Denver (21-17), the Los Angeles Clippers (21-17), Philadelphia (19-17) and Milwaukee (19-17).Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. 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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      Nobody Saw the Knicks Coming

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      Behind Julius Randle, the Knicks have become one of the N.B.A.’s most surprising — and best defensive — teams. Kristaps Porzingis, who?If the Knicks had known how well Julius Randle would play for Coach Tom Thibodeau, presumably they would not have selected Obi Toppin, who essentially plays the same position, with the eighth overall pick in November’s N.B.A. draft.If Knicks fans had known what Randle would become in his second season in New York, maybe they would not have despaired to such extremes when Kristaps Porzingis was traded to Dallas in January 2019.If anyone had known Randle could transform himself from a career 29.5 percent shooter from 3-point range into a 40.5 percent shooter this season, and dared to say so, chances are such bold souls would not have been believed. Randle’s improvement from deep, after all, is the most significant midcareer increase in long-distance shooting proficiency in league history.You can look it up: Randle is on pace to become the first N.B.A. player to enter a season with a 3-point success rate below 30 percent (on more than 500 attempts) and then shoot 40 percent or better on 3s (with a minimum of 150 attempts), according to research from the noted statistical expert Justin Kubatko.“The big thing is, when he added the 3-point shot,” Thibodeau said last week, “that just opened up everything else.”Thibodeau was referring to Randle’s game, but he might as well have been talking about the entire franchise. Ignited by Randle’s improvement, the Knicks are having the kind of enjoyable season that so many teams, even with better records, have not had because of pandemic challenges and injury woes.It’s a season that, based on pretty much any reputable projection in December, was supposed to end with, at best, 25 wins for the Knicks. After Tuesday’s victory over Charlotte, they are 32-27 and hold a seven-game winning streak that ranks as the N.B.A.’s longest active unbeaten run. The Nets are New York’s championship contenders, but the Knicks — the city’s true basketball love — appear headed, at worst, for a spot in the playoff play-in round after missing the postseason for seven consecutive years.The Knicks, largely at Thibodeau’s urging, chased Gordon Hayward in free agency, when the gruff new coach wasn’t sure that his team had a foundational player. Hayward chose to sign with the Hornets, who were willing to go to a financial level ($120 million over four years) that Thibodeau’s bosses deemed too rich, given Hayward’s age and injury history. Randle soon illustrated that the roster wasn’t nearly as barren as feared.“The biggest thing is Ju is setting the tempo every night with putting pressure on the rim, putting pressure on the defense, and we’re trying to play around him,” said Derrick Rose, the former All-Star acquired by the Knicks from Detroit in February to bolster the bench.In March, Randle became the Knicks’ only current All-Star when he was named to the team for the first time. As of Monday, 58 games into the 72-game schedule, he had played in 57 and was averaging 23.7 points, 10.5 rebounds and 6.1 assists, while shooting that 40.5 percent from 3-point range. Those offensive numbers have been matched or exceeded by only one player this season — Denver’s Nikola Jokic, a favorite for the Most Valuable Player Award — and only one player reached them before this season: Larry Bird in 1984-85, one of three M.V.P. seasons for the Boston Celtics star.After four consecutive 30-point games, something no other Knick had managed since Carmelo Anthony in 2014, Randle on Monday was named the N.B.A.’s player of the week in the Eastern Conference. Yet it was Friday’s masterpiece in Dallas, Randle’s hometown, that gave the Knicks their most significant jolt of positivity since, well, who can even remember?Lined up against Porzingis, and a Mavericks team many thought had fleeced the Knicks in the Porzingis deal, Randle rumbled for 44 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists in the Knicks’ 117-109 victory. Perhaps it’s no accident that Randle had such a big game in his lone appearance of the season back home. The franchises and their fan bases have seemingly been locked in a staredown since the trade, constantly seeking validation that their team chose the right course. Dallas is also where Randle did most of his shooting and fitness work in the off-season.While performances like that can’t undo how little the Knicks got out of the Porzingis trade, Randle’s improved shooting and playmaking have allowed fans to stop dwelling on the aspects of the deal that didn’t work out. That means focusing on the two first-round draft picks that the Knicks received in the deal from Dallas, rather than Dennis Smith Jr.’s disappointing play until he was traded to Detroit for Rose — or how DeAndre Jordan, instead of helping to recruit Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to the Knicks, wound up joining them with the Nets.One season of strong 3-point shooting certainly doesn’t put Randle in the same sentence as Golden State’s Stephen Curry, but one thing Randle and Curry share is that they made the most of extended off-seasons after their teams failed to qualify to play at last summer’s N.B.A. restart at Walt Disney World. Curry told me in February that he’d had the most productive off-season of his career. The same holds for Randle, who recently described himself as “obsessive over” broadening his shooting range before this season.“He’s prepared himself for this,” Thibodeau said. “You can’t forget that.”This pairing of player and coach also turned out to be a better-than-anticipated match. Randle was regarded for years as a major defensive liability but has responded the hard-driving Thibodeau’s prodding with more engaged defense. For all the skepticism about Thibodeau’s ability to nurture a younger team, the Knicks awoke Tuesday with the league’s third-best defense.Thibodeau, as a result, is up there with Phoenix’s Monty Williams and Utah’s Quin Snyder as a contender to be named coach of the year, while Randle is a favorite for the Most Improved Player award — and a potential All-N.B.A. selection.I must reiterate that I still find it jarring to see Randle wearing No. 30, which the Knicks should have retired long ago in tribute to Bernard King. Full disclosure: King was my favorite player throughout high school, but he also won an N.B.A. scoring title in 1984-85 and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013. Those achievements trump any suggestion that he wasn’t in New York long enough for his number to hang in the Madison Square Garden rafters.I called King on Tuesday to get his view. “It’s always strange for me, just a little bit, when I see No. 30 running up and down the court,” he said, but added that he is a Randle admirer who watches every Knicks game he can from his home in Atlanta.“I’m a Knick,” King said.For those of us who have lost hope that the Knicks will ever remove those digits from circulation in King’s honor, there is a hint of consolation in the knowledge that Randle, the fourth player to wear No. 30 since King left the Knicks for Washington in 1987, is the first to perform at a level reminiscent of King.What it says on the front of the jersey apparently means just as much to Randle, too.“I’m damn proud to be a Knick,” Randle wrote in March in an essay for The Players’ Tribune.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeA reader said that he was a fan of Julius Erving (6) in the 1970s and that “nobody I’ve ever watched since has recreated that kind of excitement and electricity.”Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be condensed or slightly edited for clarity.)Q: Knowing your fondness for both basketball and soccer, what was your perspective on the proposed European Super League? The idea that there would be reserved slots in a breakaway soccer league for 12 to 15 founding clubs and a few rotating slots set aside for qualifying teams looks very much like the current EuroLeague basketball setup. Why is this format deemed OK in basketball but not soccer? — Stew Levine (Plano, Texas)Stein: If European basketball had all the best players in the world, as do the elite teams in European soccer that wanted to break away from UEFA and form their own version of the Champions League, there would be a similarly raucous outcry about the EuroLeague template. EuroLeague basketball doesn’t have anywhere near the same mass following as soccer’s Champions League because the best basketball players in the world are overwhelmingly in the N.B.A.Yet it’s great that you brought up the EuroLeague, because the link here wasn’t being mentioned enough. Many in Europe described the Super League proposal as a desire among the owners of the 12 breakaway clubs in England, Spain and Italy to adopt an American major league sports model, at least in part because of the influence of American owners in the group who also own N.F.L., N.B.A. and Major League Baseball franchises. Another handy way of looking at it was that they wanted to adopt a EuroLeague basketball approach, in which Europe’s traditional powers were essentially assured of staying in the league no matter how they fared in their domestic leagues, with elements of the American franchise system mixed in.Owners of the richest soccer clubs abroad surely envy many things when they compare the Champions League to the N.B.A. or the N.F.L. They want a league that their teams don’t have to qualify for every season, that carries no threat of relegation, and that has the most high-profile clubs playing each other more often — all to collect more television and commercial revenue without having to share as much as they do now. Even though their ambitions swiftly unraveled this week, I think we can safely presume that they would prefer the EuroLeague structure, which still falls under FIBA’s jurisdiction, over fully embracing the N.B.A.’s template.To truly adopt the American model for major league team sports would mean signing up for a salary cap (with luxury-tax penalties) and, if not some sort of draft procedure, likely a league office headed by an independent commissioner to keep order. The teams at the heart of the Super League proposal don’t have to deal with any of that now and are presumably prepared to go only so far in reinventing themselves.Also: There is an interesting N.B.A. footnote to all of this. Leading up to the Champions League final, I wrote this piece in May 2019 about the N.B.A.’s growing interest in working a soccer-style cup competition into the middle of its regular-season schedule. The N.B.A.’s thinking: Adding an extra trophy for teams to chase might give the 82-game regular-season grind more meaning and excitement.Financial distress for even soccer’s richest clubs because of the pandemic was certainly a factor in the Super League proposal, but I can’t say I expected the Champions League’s existence to be challenged so overtly before the N.B.A. could launch its experiment.Q: He’s still playing? What is he, like, 50? — @BoltBill from TwitterStein: I’ve been getting this question a lot since I reported on Monday that the Nets were in advanced talks to sign Mike James, the former Phoenix and New Orleans guard.This is the Mike James, 30, who played briefly in the N.B.A. during the 2017-18 season, spent much of the past two seasons at CSKA Moscow in Russia and has mostly played overseas since turning professional in 2014-15.The Mike James you referred to in your question is 45, last appeared in the N.B.A. in the 2013-14 season and played on 11 different teams, including two stints each with Houston and Chicago.Q: My N.B.A. fandom started in Southern California when my parents amazingly got a television for my brother’s and my bedroom in 1968. Wilt Chamberlain had joined the Lakers, Jerry West was the resident star and I was hooked. Then in 1976, I lived for three months in Park Slope in Brooklyn in a rent-controlled apartment. One of the residents on our floor had the Nets’ games on local television and a bunch of us would crowd into the apartment to watch games.I vividly remember that, at least once a game, Julius Erving would do something unexpected and breathtaking. Nobody I’ve ever watched since has recreated that kind of excitement and electricity. As good as Dr. J was in the N.B.A. with Philadelphia, it doesn’t compare to how good he was as a Net in the A.B.A. The next tier for me would be Connie Hawkins, Vince Carter and Zion Williamson, but Erving was at a different level. — Richard NeumanStein: Sometimes a nostalgic story is as good as an insightful question. I think we’ve established by now how much I love to reminisce about the 1970s and 1980s N.B.A., so thanks for sending this in.Talk about the 1970s Nets has picked up in recent weeks given the team’s emerging status as championship contenders and the fast-approaching 45th anniversary of the Nets’ last A.B.A. game on May 13, 1976.Allow me to refer you to this wonderful recent piece from my colleague Harvey Araton, the retired New York Times columnist, on how some of the principles from the Nets’ glory days (Kevin Loughery, Rod Thorn and Dr. J himself) still wonder about what might have been if the Nets hadn’t sold the rights to Erving to fund their move into the N.B.A. in 1976.Numbers GameBernard King won the league’s scoring title in the 1984-85 season.Larry C. Morris30The four players to wear No. 30 for the Knicks since Bernard King left the franchise in 1987 are Frank Williams (2003-4), Earl Barron (2010), John Jenkins (2019) and Julius Randle, starting in the 2019-20 season.19,951LaMarcus Aldridge, who abruptly announced his retirement last week because of a heart condition, was drafted in 2006. Since that draft, Aldridge and LeBron James are the only two players to record at least 19,000 points and 8,000 rebounds. With 19,951 career points, Aldridge was 49 shy of 20,000 when he walked away.12One of the most notable achievements in Aldridge’s N.B.A. career was not statistical: He was the most coveted player in the N.B.A.’s 2015 free-agent class and lured San Antonio back to the marketplace after Coach Gregg Popovich — foiled in his attempt to persuade Jason Kidd to leave the Nets in July 2003 — had essentially sworn off competing for top free agents for more than a decade.42When he scored 42 points in a recent loss to Utah, Luguentz Dort became the first Oklahoma City player to reach the 40-point plateau before his 22nd birthday since Kevin Durant, who did it 12 times in his first three seasons with the Thunder franchise, including once as a rookie in Seattle. Dort, a noted defensive specialist, also hounded Utah’s Donovan Mitchell into a 7-for-16 shooting performance in the same game. Mitchell had averaged 40.5 points in his previous four games.39.1Golden State’s Stephen Curry entered Monday’s game at Philadelphia having averaged 39.1 points on 54.6 percent shooting over his previous 10 games. The last player to assemble a 10-game stretch that matched Curry in both categories was Chicago’s Michael Jordan, who averaged 39.4 points on 59.4 percent shooting over a 10-game stretch late in the 1989-90 season, according to Basketball Reference.Curry then scored 49 points in a victory over the 76ers on Monday and his April tear (nearly 41 points per game) has hiked his scoring average for the season up to a league-leading 31.4 points per game. Curry, who turned 33 in March, is on track to join Jordan on the short list of players to average at least 30 points per game for an entire season at age 32 or older.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. 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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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      Irving Scores 40 as Short-Handed Nets Beat the Knicks

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      With Kevin Durant out and James Harden departing early with a sore hamstring, Kyrie Irving took over in a win against the Knicks.The injured Nets star Kevin Durant has been missing since mid-February, but his team got some good news on Monday with the return of James Harden, who had missed Brooklyn’s last two games with a hamstring injury.Harden’s return lasted four minutes.When the injury flared up again, he asked to come out. That left the Nets in a serious bind against the Knicks at Barclays Center, their Big Three reduced to a lonely one.James Harden, Nets say, is out for the rest of tonight’s game against the Knicks with right hamstring tightness.— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) April 5, 2021
      Step forward, Kyrie Irving. The third member of the Nets’ star triumvirate poured in 40 points with a blend of speed, strength and deep 3-pointers, as the Nets — short-handed as they have been for much of the season — beat the Knicks, 114-112.Irving shot 15 of 28 from the field, made five 3-pointers and also led his team with seven assists. Jeff Green added 23 points, tying his season high, but was merely a supporting player in Irving’s impressive performance.Irving’s final basket was a long 3-pointer that extended the Nets’ lead to 5 points with a minute left.After the Knicks rallied to tie the score at 112-112, Green drew a foul with three seconds left and hit both free throws. Julius Randle, who had a triple-double for the Knicks, missed a driving jumper to tie it as time expired.“This is the Brooklyn way, also mixed with a little Jersey swag,” Irving said in an on-court interview after the game, to the cheers of the pandemic-limited crowd of 1,700. He went to high school in Elizabeth, N.J., before spending his only college season at Duke.Harden had started the game but asked out early after pulling up in front of the scorer’s table and reaching for his hamstring. Coach Steve Nash quickly removed him.His cameo ended without a point, bringing to an end his 450-game streak of scoring in double digits. (LeBron James continues to lead that category with more than 1,000.)“Very similar to last time,” Nash said of Harden’s injury. “He has an awareness of something’s not right in his hammy. His scan was clean. His strength tests when he came back to the locker room were normal. It’s something where we have to protect him, we have to trust him. Very frustrating for James, but we can’t risk it, if we can afford not to.”Nash held out hope that Monday was merely a brief delay in Harden’s recovery, and not something that could imperil the championship dreams of the first-place Nets (35-16).“Who knows?” Nash said. This may linger or it may be all be behind us, like we thought it was before the game.”Even the injured Kevin Durant seemed impressed with some of Irving’s shots.Vincent Carchietta/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHarden remains a most valuable player candidate, scoring 25 points a game and leading the league in assists (10.9 per game) and minutes (37.1).With a third straight win over the Knicks, the Nets completed a season sweep of their rivals for the first time since 2014-15.Durant, who has his own hamstring injury, shot around before the game, and the Nets said they were hopeful he would return soon. Durant, Harden and Irving have played together only seven times since joining the Nets, making it all the more remarkable that the team leads the Eastern Conference.Randle’s triple-double — 19 points, 15 rebounds, 12 assists — was his fourth of the season. The Knicks are hanging on to the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference, on track for their first playoff appearance since 2012-13. More

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      Jeremy Lin Talks N.B.A. Comeback and Anti-Asian Racism

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      Lin, who exploded to fame with the Knicks in 2012, said he has learned to embrace his basketball journey and his platform to speak out amid a wave of attacks on Asian-Americans.It was Room 3296 at Coronado Springs Resort, inside the gates of Walt Disney World in Florida. Jeremy Lin said he had memorized every aspect of its layout.“I know where the scratch marks on the wall are,” Lin said. “I know where the spider webs were.”Lin spent 43 days and 42 nights in that room as a member of the Santa Cruz Warriors, playing in the N.B.A. G League bubble in a bid to make it back to the best league in the world for the first time since the 2018-19 season. After a season of gaudy statistics and rock-star treatment with the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association, Lin bypassed millions of dollars in China to play for $35,000 in the N.B.A.’s developmental league and give scouts ample opportunity to study him.Lin, 32, finished the G League’s abbreviated season at 19.8 points per game on 50.5 percent shooting and with strong, 42.6 percent shooting from 3-point range, but missed six of the 15 games with a back injury. While he waits to see if he did enough for an N.B.A. team to sign him, Lin once again finds himself in the spotlight as a leading voice in the Asian-American community.After another G League player called him “coronavirus” on the court, Lin, who is Taiwanese-American, has been speaking out against the racism and bigotry that numerous Asian-Americans have faced since former President Donald J. Trump began referring to the coronavirus as the “China virus” last year.Lin spoke about his N.B.A. comeback bid and his activism in a wide-ranging phone conversation on Monday.(The highlights of the interview have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)On his willingness to play in the G League as a nine-year N.B.A. veteran:The more that we talked to teams, they were telling my agent: “Hey, we want to see if Jeremy’s healthy, and we want to see if Jeremy can still go. No offense to some of the leagues overseas, but we would love to see him here in front of us, in an N.B.A. system, playing under N.B.A. rules.”I know I’m an N.B.A. player. I know I’m a better shooter. I know I’m a better defender. I know I’m more well rounded as a basketball player. I know these things, but I just needed a chance to show it.Lin, with Santa Cruz, going against the Toronto Raptors’ G League team.Juan Ocampo/NBAE, via Getty ImagesOn how he was received by fellow G Leaguers:There were two instances where a player said to me, “I grew up watching you play.” I’ve never had another player tell me that, but then I was like, “OK, well, you’re 18 or 19 years old, so I understand that.”On facing younger players still trying to establish an N.B.A. foothold:Ever since I was out of the league, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get back in. Now you can put your money where your mouth is and compete against all these hungry players. It’s the ultimate competitors’ den where everyone in there is just going at each other.I’ve been a target my whole life. Since I was a kid, I was either a target because people look at me and they’re like: “Oh, he’s not that good. I’m going to take his head off. He’s lunch meat.” Or they don’t want to be embarrassed by me. Now you add on the whole “Linsanity” thing, and I have an even bigger target, and if you watched the games, I was commanding a lot of attention from opposing teams. But it’s fun.Fans hold up New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin photos during a game against Sacramento in his Linsanity run in New York.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressOn initially not wanting to discuss Linsanity, his run with the Knicks in February 2012 that landed him on Sports Illustrated’s cover two weeks in a row:That’s how I felt about it for a few years after. But at this point I’ve come around now to really appreciating and embracing it. For a while it was kind of this phenomenon, or this shadow, or this expectation, or this ghost that I was chasing — sometimes chasing, and sometimes trying to run away from. Now it’s more like a badge of honor that I’m really proud of and what it meant to so many people.At the same time, there’s a lot more basketball left in my body. I definitely appreciate everything about Linsanity and what it taught me, but I really believe I’m a better player now than I was then. The G League validated a lot of what I felt like I was doing in my training but I hadn’t shown yet.On revealing the on-court incident in which he was called “coronavirus” and speaking out to support the #StopAsianHate campaign:With everything happening recently, I feel like I needed to say something. The hate, the racism and the attacks on the Asian-American community are obviously wrong, so that needs to be stated and that’s part of my role. I also feel like part of my role is to bring solidarity and unity, so I need to educate myself and continue to learn more and also support other groups, other movements and other organizations while also bringing awareness to the Asian-American plight.And then another part is to play basketball and play well, because I think there’s a lot of underlying stuff about Asian-Americans being quiet and passive and just, “Yeah, we’ll tell them what to do and they won’t talk back.” So for me to play basketball at the highest level is going to do more than words themselves can say.On working with the G League to handle the incident internally without naming the player who directed the slur at him — and Lin’s talks with the player:Everything’s good. It was a really cool conversation. I felt like it was handled the best way. At the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. We were able to just discuss everything.I wanted to share that everybody is susceptible to these types of things and to racism, but to me that’s not the main focus. The goal isn’t like: “Woe is me. Look at this situation.” The real issues right now are the people that are dying, the people that are getting spit on, the people that are getting robbed, the people that are getting burned, the people that are getting stabbed. That’s where the attention needs to be.Lin won a championship with the Raptors in the 2018-19 season, though he hardly played during the finals.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesOn his time in Toronto and winning a championship — but playing only one minute in the 2019 N.B.A. finals:On one hand, I came out of it with a ring. I was the first Asian-American to win an N.B.A. championship, so there’s something super special about that. Even just being in Toronto, to see how the city, how the country, rallied around that team, to go to a parade with two million people — it was incredible, man.At the same time, honestly, it’s what I needed. I had a 10- to 12-game stretch where I could try to break into the rotation. I didn’t play the way I needed to play, but I learned what I needed to learn. I came off two years of injury and I realized after that stretch that I had to get surgery on my shooting arm that nobody knew about. I never said anything to anybody.It was already starting when I first got to Toronto where something didn’t feel right. It got to the point where, in the playoffs, I couldn’t even shoot a 3-pointer because there was a small bone spur in my shooting elbow. During the playoffs, no one knew, but by the end of the finals I could only shoot out to the free-throw line.So I had to do the surgery and I was struggling with that a lot, but also mentally I had a lot of trauma and fears from my prior injuries that I hadn’t appropriately resolved. And that’s what Toronto and part of the season in China last year really showed me: You’ve been approaching the injuries like it’s physical rehab that you need. You are already physically beyond where you were before you got hurt. You have to rehab the mental side.On his confidence that one more N.B.A. call will come:I’ve done what I needed to do. I took on the challenge. I went to the G League when some people thought it was crazy for me to go. I think it’s just a matter of time, and I believe it’s going to happen. We’ll see. I know I belong.The Scoop @TheSteinLineJalen Green of the G League Ignite team averaged 17.9 points per game in the shortened season.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeThe Malice at the Palace on Nov. 19, 2004, left the Indiana Pacers especially shorthanded the next night against Orlando.Getty ImagesYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Responses may be lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)Q: Is there anything the league can do to encourage more stars to participate in the dunk contest? It stinks for fans that the biggest stars refuse to even try. — Andrew Brotherton (Atlanta)Stein: The reflex answer here has always been for the league and its sponsors to arrange a seven-figure, winner-take-all prize for the dunk champion to persuade the biggest names to risk whatever street cred they think they’d lose by competing. I’m so pessimistic in general about the state of the dunk contest that I’m not even sure that would do it at this point.Would the fallout from a dunk contest flop really be so long-lasting in our short attention span world? It’s evident that many more players than not think that participating comes with some sort of grave risk if they perform poorly.I got my hopes up when New Orleans’s Zion Williamson was so cryptic about joining the dunk field. I thought he was just trying to build up the suspense before he entered — especially since this All-Star Game was so dependent on this year’s All-Stars filling up the individual skills competitions to reduce the number of players traveling to Atlanta. Gullible me.I think I’ve mentioned before that in my high school days, no annual event was bigger in my circle than the Saturday night every February commandeered by the dunk contest. What’s so frustrating for dunk devotees is that the 3-point contest field only seems to get stronger every year. The prospect of a poor shooting performance and the potential embarrassment apparently doesn’t trouble vaunted shooters as it does dunkers.Q: The league has been postponing games all season if a team has fewer than eight players available to suit up, but I seem to remember Indiana playing a game after the brawl in Detroit with only six players. This has probably happened on other occasions besides my Pacers example, right? — Jeff Moye (Bogota, N.J.)Stein: Even in the game you’re thinking of, Indiana had eight players in uniform. Two of them (Scot Pollard and Jamaal Tinsley) were injured and couldn’t play, but the Pacers still had to have them dressed to avoid forfeiting the game.It was Indiana’s first game after the brawl that spilled into the stands at Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004. The Pacers had a home game against Orlando the next night — without the suspended players Metta World Peace (then known as Ron Artest), Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson. With Reggie Miller sidelined by a broken hand and facing suspension for leaving the bench, Fred Jones and Eddie Gill each played 48 minutes as the Pacers’ lone available guards.There have been other games in which an N.B.A. team used only six players: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Portland was the last to do so in a win over Sacramento on April 10, 2019. But the league’s requirement to have eight players has been in place for decades.Leave it to my tireless historian pal Todd Spehr from Australia to inform me that the New Orleans Jazz may have been the last team to play a game with fewer than eight players in uniform on March 18, 1977. Elgin Baylor, then the coach of the Jazz, was granted special permission to dress seven players rather than the required eight because five of his players had been injured in a taxi accident that afternoon. Led by 51 points from Pete Maravich, the seven-man New Orleans Jazz beat Phoenix.Q: Has there ever been a team that had three of the league’s top 20 scorers, as the Nets do? — Meet Kachly (Mumbai, India)Stein: It’s rare, but it has happened in the modern era. Some examples are provided here even though Kevin Durant has dropped out of the top 20 because he doesn’t qualify for the league leaders now that he has played in just 19 of the Nets’ 40 games.2018-19: Golden State’s Stephen Curry (No. 5 at 27.3 points per game), Durant (No. 8 at 26) and Klay Thompson (No. 18 at 21.5).2013-14: Rudy Gay did not start the season in Sacramento, but his arrival in a December 2013 trade from Toronto gave those Kings a third top-20 scorer alongside No. 9 DeMarcus Cousins (22.7 points per game) and No. 17 Isaiah Thomas (20.3). Gay was 19th at 20 points per game.1990-91: The “Run TMC” Warriors had three players among the league’s top 11 scorers: No. 8 Chris Mullin (25.7 points per game), No. 10 Mitch Richmond (23.9) and No. 11 Tim Hardaway (22.9).1986-87: Seattle had No. 8 Dale Ellis (24.9 points per game), No. 13 Tom Chambers (23.3) and No. 15 Xavier McDaniel (23).1982-83: Denver had the league’s top two scorers — Alex English at 28.4 points per game and Kiki Vandeweghe at 26.7 points per game — with Dan Issel (21.6) at No. 18.Numbers GameCarmelo Anthony is averaging 14.2 points per game this season with Portland as he climbs toward the top 10 in career scoring.Steve Dykes/Associated Press6Only six teams had winning records against teams that were .500 or better entering Tuesday’s games. Philadelphia (13-6) and the Nets (17-3) are the lone East teams that qualify; Utah (17-8), Phoenix (13-5), the Los Angeles Clippers (11-10) and Denver (11-10) represent the West.41The Houston Rockets have not won a game for 41 days, dating to their Feb. 4 victory at Memphis. That was also the last time Christian Wood played for the Rockets before injuring his ankle. He’s averaging 22 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.343Portland’s Carmelo Anthony needed 343 more points to pass Elvin Hayes (27,313 points) for 10th place in N.B.A. regular-season scoring heading into Tuesday’s game. The only players above Anthony on the league’s scoring charts who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame are not yet eligible: No. 3 LeBron James (35,211) and No. 6 Dirk Nowitzki (31,560).28.8With his recent Most Valuable Player Award-winning performance in Atlanta, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo improved his scoring average in the All-Star Game to a record 28.8 points per game.11Another interesting history reminder from the aforementioned @ToddSpehr35: Active rosters were reduced to 11 players from 12 for the 1977-78 season through 1980-81. The league voted to go back to 12 for the 1981-82 season. Including two slots for two-way players, teams can have rosters of 17 players and, in this pandemic season, list 15 as active for each game.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. 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