Knicks 122, Heat 120: Knicksanity
The Knicks pull out a last-second win at MSG II, a.k.a. Miami
Seven seconds left. Knicks down one with the ball. How many times we seen this tragedy play out?
But now is not then, no matter the resemblance. Julius Randle is trying to create 45 feet from the hoop while defended by Jimmy Butler, a man named to five All-Defense teams. You’d have been forgiven for feeling cynical at this point. The Knicks run some nice after-timeout players throughout the game, but more often than not game-ending actions tend to be Randle or Jalen Brunson going one-on-one while the other 3-4 Knicks stand still, an option still buffering just in case their defender happens to spontaneously combust.
Tyler Herro runs at Randle from all the way across the other sideline. It’s the smart play by Miami: Randle can get flustered by double-teams he’s not familiar with, and I’m not sure we’ve ever seen the doubler run a 50-foot dash right at him. The defense is probably hoping Randle swings it back to Josh Hart, open from Herro abandoning him. That would be playing into the Heat’s hands: they have their best perimeter defender on Randle, are bringing a double-team to him and have Victor Oladipo stuck to Brunson. Swinging the ball the other way may create a temporary opening, but it also swings the ball completely away from your two best creators with only seconds left. Randle is going to push for him or Brunson to have the ball in their ends at the end.
Chaos is not generally Randle’s friend. Butler is able to knock the ball away from him briefly, allowing Herro to position himself right in front of him. You’d be forgiven for expecting a turnover. Somewhere in the deep recesses of memory, you may have envisioned Randle losing the ball out of bounds and wheeling around with both arms up, as quick to unleash blame as he is a side-step 3.
The temptation here is to get the ball to Brunson in the corner. The hope then is that he could go baseline and draw Bam Adebayo’s attention, leaving either Hart open atop the arc or Immanuel Quickley alone in the weakside corner. But time often moves master than we think; Oladipo is a smart defender on a team that doesn’t often make dumb mistakes. He’s not leaving Brunson free, not for a moment. Hart and IQ have both made themselves an easier target for Randle, though down one maybe someone could have cut inside the 3-point line. Still, despite having briefly lost possession, Randle’s re-gather sets him up for a familiar rhythm. One. Two. Fade. Shoot.
There’s a woman to the right of Randle with silver hair and a black top. She’s been noticeable in the last few minutes, maybe only because of how rare it is to observe a really demonstrative Miami Heat fan. I’m struck by her body language during this possession. As Randle begins to attack Butler, she’s jumping up and down. When Randle loses the ball, she pumps her fist. The twist comes next: as soon Randle rises to shoot, she holds her hands with her head. She immediately assumes the worst. It’s really quite beautiful.
Look at her now. She looks like the women I grew up seeing in church, who’d wave their arms or leave them raised straight up in the air while the hosannas and hallelujahs rose like incense. Agony and ecstasy look the same from a distance.
So much at stake as the ball flies through the air. A Heat win leaves them just two back in the loss column of the Knicks and Nets for the fifth seed. It’d also have completed a second-half comeback that saw Miami outscore New York 64-51. The Heat, like the Hawks, are a team you don’t want to give any breathing room; it only takes a little oxygen to feed a fire.
A Knick win guarantees them at least a head-to-head split of the season series and pretty much a better conference record than the Heat, another tiebreaker. It also puts them 4.5 games up with only 17 to play, meaning the Knicks could go 9-8 the rest of the way and the Heat would have to go 15-3 or better to pass them. And the 4/5 bracket contains its own riches: it means escaping an MVP frontrunner in the first round, whether Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum or Joel Embiid. You may be old enough to remember a time when Metallica and Guns ‘N’ Roses went on tour together. If you are, you may or may not remember the third band on that tour was Faith No More. The Cleveland Cavaliers are a good team. Faith No More was a popular band. They weren’t Metallica or GNR. The Cavs are not the Bucks/Celtics/76ers.
You may remember Jeremy Lin’s Valentine’s Day game-winner in Toronto.
That shot pushed the Knicks winning streak to six games. Know what came next? They split their next six, then lost six straight. Two weeks later, Lin was lost for the year with a torn meniscus. He never played for New York after that. Linsanity was over.
What about Knicksanity? This team is getting the magic from half its rotation players. Seriously: Randle, Brunson, Quickley, Hart and Mitchell Robinson are all doing amazing things night in and night out. It’s hard to see them splitting their next six, much less going on any kind of losing streak. It’s becomes less and less crazy to admit you can’t see this team losing another game. A few weeks ago they needed a 20-5 finish to reach 50 wins; it wasn’t even worth imagining. Eight straight Ws later, is 12-5 beyond them? No way. When the Knicks are winning games like this, I’m not sure what if anything is beyond them.
