Knicks 112, Timberwolves 106: No RJ, but plenty of JR
Thanks to someone old and someone new, the orange and blue won their first game as the new Knicks over mighty Minnesota.
After an uneventful end to 2023, the New York Knicks opened 2024 with a 112-106 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves.
What’s that? A trade, you say? Who? For what?
Our word “sarcasm” comes from the Greek sarkazein, describing dogs tearing the flesh from bone. It’s just as incisive as a rhetorical tool. Sarcasm undercuts by understating, a predator whose prey is assumptions. But in addition to death being not proud, it’s also not quite as terminal as its rep suggests. Death is as much a beginning as an end.
“To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” Hamlet said that, the prince of both Denmark and disaffected youth. The youthful Knicks showed a few signs of disaffection early this season, between Josh Hart and Quentin Grimes publicly questioning their usage and roles. Nothing remarkable, really, other than it being the first time that’s really happened since Tom Thibodeau’s arrival. That’s how it works with death. And birth. There’s discomfort. Fear. Transition. Then the beyond. You can’t finish the trip the same as you were when you started.
With Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett gone, the Knicks are firmly in the discomfort/fear zone. They traded two of their longest-tenured players for a couple of strangers. They were clear-eyed when they chose to. The Knicks are looking to transition from a little engine that could to a team nobody wants to run into in a dark alley or a seven-game series. They had to change. So they did. And that was a big reason they were able to knock off the West-leading Wolves.
Malachi Flynn sat with a twisted ankle and Precious Achiuwa looked to have some homecoming jitters, but OG Anunoby played like he’s been a Knick for years. Like this sequence, where he forces an All-Star center in Karl-Anthony Towns, who has five inches and 20 pounds on him, into a laughable shot attempt, pushing the ball the other way till he’s in the paint, then making the pass that led to the ball movement that led to a three.
There were also oohs and ahhs at sights not often seen. Like the same guy who gave Towns fits early helping to lock down Anthony Edwards late, with the Wolves having cut a 22-point Knick lead down to six. In a universe very similar to our own, RJ would have been guarding Edwards down the stretch. Pity that dimension; they missed out on Anunoby’s defense again turning directly into offense.
Writing of a fictional other world in “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges claimed their appach to literature, unlike ours, was symbiotic: “Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete." The counterbook to the Knicks’ win being driven by the new guy is that it was driven as much by anybody as the new old guy.
Julius Randle is 29. That’s not an insult, though after years of “The Knicks are loaded with guys 25 and under, and even Randle’s only 27!” and this weekend’s trade, the Knicks are less loaded with 25-and-unders, and after a while even Kevin Knox isn’t 19 anymore. It’s an ode to endurance: with Mitchell Robinson out for the year and RJ now a Raptor, Randle is the current Knickerbocker oldhead. Don’t let that fool you. Age also means vintage.
With a little over five minutes left in the fourth, the lead was down to four, and less than a minute later Anunoby fouled out. The Knicks had lost the momentum to a team that’s won a lot of games together. They didn’t have OG. They didn’t have RJ. They didn’t have IQ. Jalen Brunson had a career-best 14 assists, but his shot wasn’t there today. So the O.G. went to work: Randle scored 12 of his game-high 39 in the final five minutes; as per his season so far, he did most of the damage inside the arc, drawing 13 free throw attempts while making two-thirds of his 2-point attempts. In a game featuring Edwards and Towns, Randle was the best player on the floor.
There are plenty of 72-point font headlines from this game, but some of its softer truths may resonate more down the line. Grimes had a nice stretch in the first half, and with his role more secure and more minutes available he could be in line for a better run of play. The Knicks lost a lot of creation in trading Barrett and Quickley; does that point to Donte DiVincenzo returning to the bench at some point, bringing his on-ball skill to that unit while starting two quality spot-up shooters in Grimes and Anunoby around Randle and Brunson?
The most exciting number from this one might be 106. The number of points New York allowed were the second-fewest they’ve permitted in their last 14 games, a run that began just before Mitchell Robinson’s injury. Watching Anunoby defend is like watching a predator hunt its prey before striking, but maybe more intriguing is his impact on other defender’s opportunities. As Ben Ritholtz highlighted on Twitter, acquiring Anunoby means Josh Hart doesn’t have to play power forward when Anunobdy plays with the bench. In the initial clip of OG defending Towns, note Hart playing off Mike Conley in the bottom corner. With Anunoby defending Towns, Hart’s free to corral the rebound and ignite the break. Hart can guard bigger players, but having him free to throw at 1s and 2s instead of 4s is a bonus benefit from the trade.
After the British defeated the Germans in North Africa, a necessity in continuing the war, Churchill said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” A Monday matinee win over Minnesota is not what Leon Rose and Tom Thibodeau were hired to do, not ultimately. But the Good Ship Knicks have taken a clear course toward deeper waters. They aren’t there yet, and they aren’t even the they who’ll end up there, if they get there. They’re something different than when they started. Whether they’ve died or dreamed, it’s time to wake up. Might be time for the league to wake up to them, too.
