Knicks 122, Nuggets 84: It is a good dream
If the Knicks’ winning streak feels too good to be true, the defending champs can tell you: this @#$% is for real
“I am asleep,” Aragorn tells Arwen in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. “This is a dream.” He’s right: he is asleep, and dreaming.
“Then it is a good dream,” she answers, and she, too, is right. It is a good dream.
You may recall earlier this season, the New York Knicks were criticized for beating up on losing teams while struggling against the big boys. Sure, they’d knocked off the Clippers, but that was an L.A. team still finding its level after their early-season trade for James Harden. And okay, they won in Phoenix, but those Suns had yet to become the white-hot scoring bomb they’ve been the past few weeks. If you really wanna be a stickler, you’d point out the Christmas win over the Bucks broke a nine-game losing streak against Milwaukee. So the rep seems fair. Or seemed, unless you’ve been in a coma since New Year’s.
Because this month, this January in the year of our OG 2024, the Knicks are the hottest team in the NBA: knocking off Minnesota, the West’s top team all year, winning by 36 in Philadelphia and smoking Denver last night by 38. Sure, the defending champs were on the last leg of a 10-day, five-game road trip. That and $5.80 gets you a Metro card and nobody’s sympathies. When your best player is the reigning Finals MVP and a little media ennui from being the 3-time defending league MVP, nobody’s playing the violin for you.
Nikola Jokić put up 31 points in 27 minutes, an output that typically implies a Denver demolition. But his next highest-scoring teammate was Aaron Gordon with 12; he was the only other Nugget in double-figures. Jokić played so little because his play was besides the point. The Knicks won a wire-to-wire runaway, with six players scoring in double-figures and OG Anunoby nearly reaching double-digits in steals alone, more than one courtesy of Jokić.
Anunoby added 26 points, his most so far as a Knick, meaning for once Jalen Brunson didn’t need to score 30 points or 20 in the fourth quarter. 21 in 27 minutes for JB, just the third time this season he’s played fewer than 30 in a Knicks win. Ditto Julius Randle, who nearly had another triple-double in 30 minutes, the third-fewest he’s played in a win this year. For a change, blessedly, this win wasn’t all the starters flourishing and the bench floundering.
The Knick reserves outscored the Nuggets’ 40-22. With Isaiah Hartenstein missing his second straight game, Jericho Sims and Precious Achiuwa combined for 18 rebounds. Donte DiVincenzo and Quentin Grimes scored 35 on just 21 shots. Deuce McBride splashed four of his five 3-point tries. 11 Knicks played, 11 had positive ratings; all 14 Nuggets who saw the floor ended up in the red. The recap itself is childishly simple: the ‘bockers made the NBA champs look like they didn’t belong on the same floor as St. John’s, much less the Knicks.
The significance of that is yet to be determined. Do the Knicks push more chips to the middle of the table and swing another trade? If they lose in the second round in six to Boston or Milwaukee, far better teams than Miami a year ago, is that growth? Or stagnation? Those answers won’t be known for a while, but the questions are the real story. We’re no longer hoping the Knicks can prove themselves to the NBA’s best. We’ve seen them do it enough with the new lineup to be able to say something we haven’t since 2013: the NBA’s best includes the Knicks. So let your imaginations run wild and free. There’s no way to know what the future looks like, and for once there’s no point missing a very enjoyable now in anticipation of what dreams may come. If this is a dream, it is a good dream.
