The end was climactic, when it didn’t need to be, because nothing in this ragged, unrelenting season has been easy. Not in New York, not for the Knicks. They have so surpassed expectations that it seems like eons ago that this cohesive, grinding group of street fighters was thought to be one of the league’s worst teams. This was supposed to be just another gap year for the franchise, a bridge to somewhere (or maybe nowhere again).
Advertisement
Instead, there they all were Sunday afternoon, in a nearly empty Madison Square Garden, basking in the glow of a 96-92 win over the Celtics and one of the most astonishing seasons in recent memory. The Knicks, thought to be forgettable just five months ago, are 41-31 and going to the playoffs. They’ll be the No. 4 seed in the East and host a first-round game next weekend with home-court advantage.
It would be a remarkable statement if the shock had not been smoothed over by a few months of groundwork for this. The Knicks were not expected to become one of the league’s darlings — a roster of overachievers, of second and third chances, of wily veterans and fun rookies. The NBA doesn’t usually do surprises on this grand of a scale. Rarely does it take perpetual losers and turn them into playoff teams overnight without some kind of seismic interceding event. But these Knicks, of Tom Thibodeau and Julius Randle, have turned a franchise that has loomed over the 29 others for years as an archvillain or a court jester into one of the NBA’s best stories.
Sunday was an end and a beginning. The transition point from the regular season to the playoffs. The Knicks put a coda on one with a hardscrabble win over the depleted Celtics, nearly blowing a 21-point lead but pulling it out before calamity truly struck. That was good enough to preserve their postseason seeding. Now the Hawks await, a team the Knicks beat in all three games.
“Enjoy today and then prepare ourselves for tomorrow,” Thibodeau said.
Then, he added: “You don’t want to feel too good because you always want more. It’s important for us to be hungry.”
Still, some appreciation for this season is appropriate. The Knicks won more often in this shortened 72-game season than they did in the previous two combined (38 in all). It is the second-best season of the last 20 years; only the 2012-13 Knicks had a higher winning percentage.
Advertisement
The last two decades have been defined by difficulty and tumult. This season was supposed to be more of the same. A new team president hired a new coach but cobbled together a team most believed would be among the league’s very worst. The Knicks didn’t care about that.
“It doesn’t matter then,” Randle said of those preseason predictions. “It doesn’t matter now.”
All that matters now are the next few weeks. The playoffs are one of the few times in the NBA calendar when only the immediate future matters. The next day, the next game, the next quarter. The Knicks, so often looking to the next year, can live in the moment.
Thibodeau apprised them of what that means shortly after the finale. In the din of another win he told the Knicks the regular season and the playoffs are not the same. There is a line that separates the two. Success in one does not assure anyone of victory in the other.
Though the Knicks swept the season series, Thibodeau takes little from it.
“It means nothing going into the playoffs,” he said. “The regular season is the regular season.”
The Hawks are dangerous, and just one game separated the two teams this season. Just as the Knicks have crested during the second half of the season, so have the Hawks. They are 26-11 since firing Lloyd Pierce on March 1 and replacing him with Nate McMillan as head coach — the third-best record in the league from that date.
Trae Young is a virtuoso with the basketball, a point guard with a gift for scoring and playmaking, and the playoffs offer him a platform to work the officials like no other. Clint Capela is a commanding center who can hurt defenses and rims all the same; he averaged 15.2 points, 14.3 rebounds and 2.0 blocks this season and will test the Knicks’ interior defense. Atlanta has enough artillery, in John Collins and Bogdan Bogdanovic, Danilo Gallinari and Lou Williams, that the offense can rev up quickly and make it painful for the Knicks.
Advertisement
New York will face a different version of the Hawks this month. Bogdanovic is rolling, and the Hawks have a lively backcourt that will give the Knicks defense fits. Collins can stretch the floor and attack the rim; he’ll push Randle on the defensive end. Deandre Hunter, the Hawks’ top wing, is still returning to full capacity, but Atlanta is better with him than without him.
But it will all start with Young, who offers problems like few other guards around the league.
“He’s a lot to deal with when he’s playing free,” Derrick Rose said. “And we got to make sure that we always got bodies around him and contest all his shots and make it hard on him. Not only him but his entire team.”
The Knicks have their own questions to sort out. Elfrid Payton remains a starter and an issue; he went scoreless in 14 minutes. Will an offense that too often has fallen into an iso-ball slog at the end of tight games figure out those hiccups? Can an offense that feasts on 3-point shooting still find as many open looks in the playoffs?
This will be the first time in the playoffs for all but a few Knicks, and that will bring its own challenges. Randle will now take on the burden of not just the Knicks offense but also a defense that has taken a week to prepare for him. RJ Barrett, at 20, will step into the postseason for the first time too. Rose has the scars of several playoff rounds in Chicago and will be counted on to lead the way, but as he returns from a sprained ankle that left him looking off-kilter Sunday.
It will all be new for the Knicks, who haven’t reached the playoffs in eight years, but after a season that has already surpassed the rosiest forecasts, New York is ready for it to start.
“It’s going to test you in a lot of different ways,” Thibodeau said. “Hopefully we built the proper habits throughout the course of the season to prepare ourselves for that kind of intensity and environment.”
(Photo of Julius Randle: Garrett Ellwood / NBAE via Getty Images)
