Heroes abounded as the Knicks rebounded to clip the Clippers’ wings

Winning – in life and the NBA – is often a matter of endurance. When plan A isn’t working, do you have a plan B? Last night the New York Knicks rode a second-half sprint to a 111-97 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. It was James Harden’s first game for a Clipper team in the early days of their new plan A, one starring four future Hall of Famers. The Knicks plan A – All-Star play from Juilus Randle and Jalen Brunson, plus RJ Barrett ascending – has been stuck in neutral so far this season due to Randle’s shooting struggles and Barrett’s hot start cut short by knee soreness. Yesterday marked RJ’s literal and Randle’s figurative returns, and that, Mitchell Robinson and the now yearly tradition of an elite Knicks bench resulted in their best win of the young season.

Randle and the Knicks as a team have struggled sooo much with shots around the rim not falling, like a baseball player who keeps hitting line drives right at someone – the odds tell you it’s gotta turn around sometime, but every time it happens it feels endless. Going up against a defensive frontcourt featuring Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Ivica Zubac feels like a slumping hitter facing a three-game set against Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz. But after a few early flares of the hesitance he’s shown much of this season, Randle grew more comfortable and more effective. Or more effective and then more comfortable. After not scoring more than five baskets in a game this season, he had four in the first half to go with four free throws and 13 points. When guarded by Leonard, George or Zubac, he shot 9 of 14. 

The Knicks welcomed Rowan Barrett Junior back into the fray and one of the season’s brightest points of light lit up the Clips for 26, making most of his twos, half of his threes and all six of his ones. He even scored on four of his six attempts against Leonard and George, All-Defense a combined 11 times. The game looks to have slowed down just enough for RJ to look less like Thomas Anderson’s panicked attempt at escaping the bad guys in the Matrix (flailing and failing, Clyde might say)  and more like Neo balletically transcending their bullets. A Leap Year RJ adds a whole new counter to New York’s arsenal.

Before the season, some handsome fool wrote about Mitchell Robinson becoming a top-five Knicks center of all-time. We’re now at the point where we have to ask whether Mitch is the most dominant defensive player in New York since Lawrence Taylor. Robinson had three screen assists, four deflections, four steals, 15 rebounds – nine offensive – and even those numbers fail to capture the full scale of his force. If you’re a center and you can’t operate beyond the arc, and your name isn’t Bam Adebayo, you are getting outplayed by Mitch. Period. 

They’re not the same type of player, but there’s a Charles Oakley-level of security with Robinson at this stage of his career. How many bigs will protect the paint, get left on a switch guarding Kawhi on the perimeter and do a damn fine job of it, grab 25% of the available offensive rebounds, tip a million loose balls, recover a few, haunt your opponents that night in their dreams and do it all without having a single play run for you? God bless you, Mitchell Robinson.

In the latest episode of “The Knick bench were heroes,” the Knick bench were once again heroes, blowing open a close game with a 23-7 blitzkrieg to open the fourth, most of it against the Clippers’ Hall of Fame tetrad. Perhaps the biggest number there isn’t “four” but “32, 33, 34 and 35,” their ages. Immanuel Quickly, Donte DiVincenzo, Isaiah Hartenstein and Josh Hart upped the pace and the spacing, pairing up with RJ in making the Voltron Methusaleh play fullcourt and draining 5 of their 12 threes. 

IQ looks better and better. Hartenstein has been terrific for so long now as a Knick it’s nearly impossible to remember his initial struggles. If Mitch is LT, DiVincenzo is one-time Jet Antonio Cromartie: an absolute playmaker, sometimes for both teams. Last night Good Donte was everything everywhere all at once, drilling threes, hitting the glass, saving balls from going out of bounds. Tracking data shows no Knick covered more ground per minute than DDV.

As for the visitors? They’re something new, something we don’t see very often; to paraphrase Mike Breen, this is a team that can sit three players who can score 30 any night and still have a guy out there who can score 30 any night. Harden lent credence to the idea that he can roll outta bed and give you 20 and 10, playing his first game since May and scoring 17 on only nine shots to go with six assists and just two turnovers in 31 minutes. Los Angeles strikes me a bit like this year’s Boston team: immense top-end talent that in no way feels likely to survive 82 games without one or more players missing significant time. 

Take last night. The Clippers had seven offensive rebounds; the Knicks had five different players with 2+ offensive rebounds. Some of that is New York’s roster being a dream team of preternatural rebounders. Some of that was L.A. absorbing and adjusting to the shock of a player of Harden’s gravity falling into their galaxy of stars; obviously they’ll jell with more reps. Some of it may simply be that too many Clippers have too many miles on their wheels to think they’re going to make it to June. The Knicks are physical by today’s NBA standards; to win it all, the Clippers need to survive four best-of-7s against teams who will all turn up the intensity. 

They may have the talent to pull it off. A healthy Kawhi/PG pairing is about as close as you’re gonna get to a Jordan/Pippen simulacrum. In Harden and Russell Westbrook, the Clippers’ backcourt features the only two players in NBA history to win multiple scoring and assist titles. Norman Powell is scoring incarnate. If you blink while defending Bones Hyland, he just got his shot off. Nobody will want to face them, but there are reasons Vegas only gives them the third- to fifth-best odds of winning the West. Even after adding Westbrook and Harden, their plan A boils down to the same thing it did when they signed Kawhi and George more than four years ago: pray for good health.

The Knicks’ next game is tomorrow when they host San Antonio and future billionaire Victor Wembanyama. There’s never been someone like him before. Tune in to see Tom Thibodeau’s team try plans A, B, C all the way through Z against the 7-foot-4 chimera.