“It’s time to lock in.”
I’ve been critical of how locked this team has been this season, but in his post-game interview on ESPN, Jayson Tatum clearly knows what time it is post All-Star break. But do the New York Knicks? Now 0-7 against the top-3 teams in NBA, do they understand that they’ll eventually have to dial in and beat teams like the Boston Celtics?
And even if they do, are they even good?
Or are they just playing their best players one bajillion minutes? They have no balance, no curveball. It’s Jalen Brunson foul-hunting or Karl-Anthony Towns creation, and Sunday afternoon saw them get approximately no help from approximately no one. They got steamrolled in the first half, made a cute comeback to cut it to four but then resumed getting their knickers absolutely bocked.
The Celtics played pretty well, but the Knicks played a horrendous brand of basketball, motivated not by a coherent strategy to beat the full-strength Celtics but by a total lack of options. Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby were in a contest to see who could accomplish the least, with the Knicks’ two “elite wing defenders” doing not-that for the 28 and 37 minutes they each logged.
“There’s really levels to this,” said ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins postgame, which was exactly what I was thinking. “No one is beating this team in a 7-game series.”
That part wasn’t exactly what I was thinking, but I’ll take some hyperbole after an excellent matinée win. There are teams — the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Denver Nuggets and to some extent, the Cleveland Cavaliers — that have shown they can perhaps beat the Celtics in a series, but they still probably won’t. But the Knicks? These Knicks? No way.
Here are a few questions: is the 6’1” Brunson going to carry this team offensively for three months in the playoffs without injury? Is Towns, who went down with a late injury but returned to the game despite it being over for some reason, going to be able to better than the worst rim protector in the league without Mitchell Robinson? Does Precious Achiuwa do literally anything, against Boston or otherwise?
And those are just general question. The Celtics will ask harder ones, like… how are you going to stop Kristaps Porzingis with your horrid interior defense? What is your plan to slow down Tatum and Jaylen Brown when the mountain of evidence shows Anunoby gets molly-whopped by both of them despite his nominally-elite defensive profile? And can you stay healthy, playing all those guys that much, Thibs?
I actually thought this team had what it took to beat Boston this offseason. But they, uh… don’t. And the Celtics exposing that fact has me very bullish on the rest of this season, much more so than earlier this year. There are indeed levels to this, and Boston is on the top one. The Knicks, though, are somewhere in the middle until they prove otherwise.
