Knicks 106, Wizards 102: “BANG!”
The Knicks played their second straight game against the Wizards and looked dead in the water after three putrid quarters. But then the whole team lit up at once, and a ferocious 17-point comeback led by RJ Barrett and Alec Burks sent the Knicks back to a game over .500.
It's hard to figure out where to start tonight.
The game played out as if the Knicks had collectively decided to artificially turn up the difficulty in an actual, real life NBA game. by spotting their opponent a 15 point lead for 36 minutes. To watch the Knicks in the first three quarters was to observe the platonic ideal of futility. The turnovers were bountiful. The shots were bricked. The defense was braindead. And the Elfrid stood above all, the crown jewel of shit in a river of refuse.
Those first three quarters may well be the worst stretch we'll see all season. In those horrific 36 minutes, there's literally two moments worth mentioning. We got Kevin Knox finally taking the ball to the rack with force:
And we saw Obi Toppin get himself a nice block in transition to save a layup:
At one point, I was considering whether Taj Gibson was the player of the game. I thought about the best object in my apartment to slam my head into so that it would cause the appropriate amount of pain to distract from this shit-show, while still leaving me with brain cells. I pondered the teachings of every major and minor deity as the Knicks gave up offensive rebounds on at least two missed free throws. I reflected on the true meaning of sports fandom, and the scientific studies that have shown the negativity bias of the human brain. Images flashed through my head.
Fizdale smiling as the Knicks are down 30.
JR Smith takes a jumper, but the game should be over.
Andrea Bargnani falls to the floor as the ball, imbued with a dramatic sense of humor, bounces off his head.
All is lost.
And yet... despite all that... despite the extremely triggering nature of that deficit… I knew, just as you did, that this team is different. Don't turn off the game just yet. They're only down 15. And soon after that, the not-at-all-fake comeback began. After being down by 15 basically the entire game, the Knicks clawed and fought and pushed and shoved, and all of the sudden, the lead was cut to seven after RJ Barrett stiff armed the man formerly known as Isaac Bonga into oblivion:
Then, the FireBurks show began (I'll be here all week):
Emboldened, RJ Barrett, who just played the worst half of his season, started to pick up the slack with a couple of dishes to eternal OG Taj. The Barrett 3-pointer that followed jammed the door wide open. The gap inched closer and closer. And finally, as the butt-clenching Wizards did their best to throw the game away, RJ swooped in to snatch it out of their hands with an absolutely monstrous and-one in transition (to the eternal delight of Mike Breen):
From there, it was a cornucopia of highlights, with the usual Knicks staples making an appearance. Kicking us off, an Immanuel Quickley pull-up three!
And then, Julius Randle in his office on the right baseline, fading for the clutch midrange combo to cap off the comeback:
And what a comeback it was. The Wizards are a terrible basketball team (Russell Westbrook is a caricature of himself at this point), but this Knicks team won this game while losing three of the four quarters. That's not something we've seen very often in the last decade.
Notes
— Game ball goes to RJ Barrett. The box score won't show it, but this was a game Kobe Bryant would be proud of. Barrett was beyond terrible in the first half, throwing mindless passes, making bad decisions, and missing pretty much everything. I actually felt bad for him at points. But man... this kid does not have a conscience. When his shot wasn't falling, when nobody else could buy a three, RJ continued to pressure the rim, play with an unmatched physicality, and fight his god damn ass off. I'm pretty sure he had more put-backs on the offensive glass than the rest of the team combined. Then there's the sequence where he had two assists, a three, and the aforementioned and-one to singlehandedly create 10 points on a night where nobody else had it going (it might have been 10 straight, actually). As a weak-minded basketball player who wanted to quit every time I tossed up an air ball, this kind of performance never ceases to amaze me. What a game.
— Alec Burks was the lifeline that gave the Knicks a bucket every time they needed one. Throughout the game, Burks was consistently the only one who had it going, and he combined that with some clutch pull-up shooting to boot. Point Burks somehow worked again, which is something I still can't believe we've seen, let alone profited from. If defenses let him get to his elbow pull-up in rhythm, that shot is automatic. A surprisingly effective game on defense as well, where he was a big part of frustrating and containing Beal all night. That's also another 20-point game (and a season-high 27), which makes four in a row.
— There's nothing worse than watching your favorite team shit the bed while listening to the opposing announcing team. Not only do I have to watch my favorite team do a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the prime Process Sixers, I have to listen to two gibbering fools pretend the Wizards were playing good defense instead of understanding that the Knicks just blew chunks out their collective asses. It feels personally humiliating. It's a very unique feeling. Thus is the plight of illegal streams (truthfully, the Wiz broadcast wasn't that bad).
- The defensive game plan was masterful, as usual. The Knicks did a fantastic job on Beal in their first matchup, and that continued tonight. The game plan was to top lock Beal — essentially placing the defender between Beal and the coming screen, trying to force a backdoor cut (where help was waiting). Since so much of Beal's damage comes on pin-downs and similar off-ball action, stopping those looks bogged down the Wizards’ offense and kept them from getting anything easy for the second game in a row. Beal got one or two buckets on those backdoor cuts, but shot 8-23 overall. Excellent game plan and execution.
— Elfrid Payton stunk — we all know this. Not to beat a dead horse too much, but there's some dark comedy to be had here. Our favorite punching bag had four turnovers to zero assists as a starting point guard. I believe that means, mathematically, Elfrid Payton's assist to turnover ratio is infinitely bad. Undefinably bad. Pick whichever one sounds worse.
— Sadly, Mitchell Robinson also stunk. The box score is unremarkable, but Mitch was fidgety on defense and found himself out of position constantly. It seemed like he came into this game expecting a red carpet welcome, apparently forgetting that human turnstile Mo Wagner had been traded earlier in the day. Understandable, but not for Thibs, and not for playing actual minutes. He was deservedly stapled to the bench as the Knicks made their comeback in favor of...
— Taj Gibson! Gotta love it. Basically worthless on offense, but sets the most illegal of screens, bodies people around, and generally causes trouble for opponents despite his obvious limitations. I love this guy. He was a big part of the comeback on the defensive end.
— Julius Randle had himself an interesting game. For most of it, he appeared to have temporarily devolved into the Julius Randle of our Fizdale-riddled nightmares. Open shooters were missed, bad shots were taken, and the defensive effort was lacking. But when it came down to it, when it was slam-the-door time, he went down to his office and hit his pet shot, one which you can't blame Washington for allowing after such a shitty performance. And Randle, to his credit, nailed both of them. Gutsy and impressive performance, terrible box score. I'll take it, though.
— The rest of the squad was more or less what you would expect. Quickley had some ups and downs — he's still slow to diagnose holes in the defense, and lacks tact while trying to exploit the holes he does notice, but I don't expect to see marked improvement on that front until next year at best. Frank was disappointing in his short stint, and I'm ready to storm the NBA referee headquarters to find out who's spearheading the touch foul marathon that causes him to pick up ticky-tacky bullshit twice a game. I will destroy them. Nothing hurts me more than watching Frank be bad. His transition turnover where a man named Garrison poked the ball out from behind made me want to cry.
— The mindset and mental resilience of this team is special. Thibs deserves credit for this, but every single one of the players deserves equal credit for buying in. This was a brutally disheartening performance for an extremely long time — nearly two real time hours of poopy diapers inhabiting an NBA team. I gave up like five different times. That's why I'm a weak-minded asshole and these guys are NBA players. Shouts to every one of them. This team is so fun.
— Thibs deserves a big shoutout as well. I know as well as anyone that he can be frustrating in the short term (short term = any time Elfrid Payton is on the floor), but all in all, Thibs had himself a night. I thought the rotations made sense based on the game flow (Knox coming in early as an attempted shot in the arm sort of worked — would have helped if he could hit a jumper), the defensive game plan was smart and simple, and the second half rotational adjustments helped spark the comeback. Would they have been better without Elf playing at all? Probably. But with Rose and Bullock out, Payton was going to play. Thibs deserves credit for cutting it to 20 minutes. Also, it does take guts to close this one out with Taj Gibson over Mitchell Robinson, even though that decision was sorta obvious.
Quoth the legend Mike Breen himself: "BANG!". A hell of a performance from a hell of a team. Next up, Knicks at (gulp) Bucks on Saturday at 8 PM. Let's hope tonight got all the poor shooting out of their systems, because you better come correct if you don't want to embarrass yourself against those guys.
