Mavericks 122, Knicks 108: Putting the L in painless
The Knicks have lost two of three games for the first time in a month. Nobody cares.
Last night the overmatched New York Knicks fought but fell to a star-powered Western conference team in a game everyone knew was an L before tip-off. That lede could have been written in February of 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014 and almost all of the century prior. And in most of those prior seasons, the explanation behind it would be discouraging:
They stink.
They don’t have cap space to improve.
Don’t have draft picks to improve.
The coach doesn’t have a clue.
The front office doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Dolan.
This time, the Knicks lost 122-108 to the Dallas Mavericks at MSG in a game they’d have been better off forfeiting than playing – but not because they’re hopeless. Far from it. The Knicks lost because the following players were allllllll unavailable, either ‘cuz they were out injured, left the game injured, were traded away or are yet to arrive after traded here:
Jalen Brunson
Julius Randle
OG Anunoby
Mitchell Robinson
Isaiah Hartenstein
Jericho Sims
Quentin Grimes
Malachi Flynn
Evan Fournier
Ryan Aricidiacono
Bojan Bogdanović
Alec Burks
That’s literally an entire roster worth of DNPs. Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving are a test in the best of times, which last night was not. In a big-picture sense, the loss didn’t teach us anything new about the players who were available.
Donte DiVincenzo remains hotter than the melting ice caps. Josh Hart will never be the swishmeister he was his first months as a Knick last year, but he does some of everything, evidenced by his second triple-double of the season. Tom Thibodeau’s so driven to win every single moment he’d hit on 20 playing blackjack, a.k.a. play four starters 39+ minutes in a hopeless chase for a W; he’d have made it all five if Hartenstein hadn’t landed awkwardly on his foot and left the game in the first half after aggravating the same Achilles that forced him to miss two games a few weeks ago.
Jacob Toppin is the second-best Toppin ever to have worn the blue and orange. Charlie Brown’s better at basketball than he is trying to kick footballs, though pro’ly not an NBA rotation player. Taj Gibson is 38, played 20+ minutes for the first time in over a year and looked it.
One thing some people learned: Deuce McBride can hop.
In the past, you’d write this loss off as a competitive mismatch, which it was. The difference is that now, help is on the way. The Knicks finish their homestand tomorrow against Indiana, a game Brunson, Burks and Bogdanović could? should? be available for. Thibs says Mitch will began basketball activities in three weeks, around the same time Anunoby is up for evaluation after surgery to remove loose bone fragments in his right elbow, which could be around the same time Randle is re-evaluated.
The Knicks play eight games those three weeks. Five are at home, including Grimes’ revenge game when he faces New York for the first time since being traded to Detroit. One of the road games is in Philadelphia, where the 76ers are sinking in the standings, tied to the anchor that is Joel Embiid’s meniscus injury and recovery. If they can win those two games and split the other six, they’ll have positioned themselves for a six-week run chasing the 2- or 3-seed. In the meantime, they carry on, incomplete – which will hurt now, but maybe help later.
In the playoffs, teams target and try to take away what their opponent likes to do best. Offensively, the Knicks center around Brunson and Randle; defensively, they center on walling off the paint, the reason Thibodeau wants a defensive big on the floor at all times. Have they seen something in DiVincenzo’s success that wasn’t visible when he’s deferring to three or four teammates, something that could pay off in an important stretch of a playoff game? Might they learn something about McBride that could inform their approach come playoff time? The defensive end remains tricky, with no word yet on Hartenstein’s status going forward and Gibson having just finished a 10-day contract. Per Posting & Toasting’s Antonio Losada:
“If the Knicks sign Gibson to another 10-day deal . . . they would also be bringing the veteran back to the team for a period that would overlap with the All-Star break, thus losing some valuable time on that 10-day span . . . they will also be forced to make a decision . . . either re-sign Gibson for the remainder of the season or waive him and not be able to sign him anymore . . . [N]ow entering the buyout period . . . means a three-week span in which they can sign players that get cut by other teams until March 1, the final day in which player signing a deal with a team is eligible for postseason play.
“Another interesting wrinkle this season with the new rules . . . is that franchises above a certain tax cannot sign players during the next few weeks who were making more than the mid-level exception . . . The Knicks can sign whoever they want, but signing Gibson would mean filling one roster spot that could be filled by whoever they think is worth chasing in the buyout market, and that could prove to be a more important piece later in the season, namely in the playoffs.”
As anyone who’s ever had money problems and then made more money knows, the problems never go away. They just evolve. The Knicks lost a game they had no chance to win and are still in need of a savior. But fighting with one hand tied behind your back is more admirable than never putting up a fight, and while they were never going to win last night, they didn’t appear to accept that until the last minutes. And when salvation is less a question of “Can we get LeBron or KD?” and more “Do we want Taj Gibson or Robin Lopez as our fourth bench big?”, heaven’s just a stone’s throw away.
