Barbara Barker: Will Knicks be able to flip a switch when games begin to really count?
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson brings the ball up court against the Chicago Bulls during the first quarter at Madison Square Garden on Friday. Credit: Brad Penner
Is there something seriously off with the Knicks? Or is there just something seriously off with the belief that how they play in the final month of the season will determine how they fare in the playoffs?
With four games left in the regular season, the Knicks are fighting to hold on to the third seed in the Eastern Conference. Not a horrible position to be in, except that most pundits predicted they would finish at the top of the conference.
The Knicks have had little problem putting away bad teams. Witness the way they rolled over the lottery-bound Bulls, 136-96, on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.
Yet it’s been almost a month since the Knicks beat a team with a winning record, which has caused a substantial amount of hand-wringing among the fans, given that the Knicks’ final four opponents — Atlanta, Boston, Toronto and Charlotte — have winning records.
Every time Karl-Anthony Towns finishes with single-digit attempts, some jump to the conclusion that there is a problem between him and Jalen Brunson. Every time a Knick makes a comment after a bad loss, it gets dissected for signs that there could be a division in the locker room.
One person not all that worried is coach Mike Brown.
“You always want your team to be playing at the highest of high cylinders,” he said before Friday’s game. “Do I think we’re there right now? No. Do I have belief in this team? Yes I do.
“I’ve seen us play really good basketball throughout the course of the year. Even in games where there’s quote-unquote manufactured pressure, we’ve played really good basketball. So I like what we have in that locker room and I like the things that we’ve done this year. But I expect more from myself first and everybody else second.”
The Knicks have gone 9-5 since they destroyed Denver, 142-103, on March 6. No, they are not steamrolling their way into the playoffs, but neither was last season’s team, which became the first Knicks squad to make it to the Eastern Conference finals since 2000.
In fact, the Knicks’ record of 50-28 is identical to their record last season before they caught fire in the postseason. In fact, there wasn’t much to give fans hope back then when they lost to Boston, Detroit and Cleveland in the final week of the regular season.
The early hype and promise of this team might have something to do with the plethora of concerns.
The Knicks came into the season with a new coach, a better bench and what appeared to be weaker Eastern Conference competition. The Celtics started the season without injured Jayson Tatum and were unsure if he’d come back. The Pacers, without Tyrese Haliburton, were headed in another direction. The Cavaliers were coming off another disappointing postseason.
What’s more, Knicks management set the bar incredibly high shortly after the Knicks won the NBA Cup in December. Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan said in an interview on WFAN that getting to the NBA Finals was something “we absolutely got to do.”
Back when they won the NBA Cup, it was hard not to get enthusiastic about the Knicks. The problem is the ceiling is so high and the floor is so low on this team that it is nearly impossible to project how far they can go in the playoffs.
There are nights, such as in Denver, when the Knicks make believers out of even the biggest skeptics. And then there are others — such as the most recent stretch of three consecutive double-digit losses to Charlotte, Oklahoma City and Houston — when you wonder why they can’t get it together and beat a team with a winning record.
Yes, there are some genuine concerns with this team. The bench, which was supposed to be better this season, continues to be a weakness and is the third-lowest-scoring group of reserves in the league. The team continues to be overly reliant on Brunson offensively, as there really is no reliable No. 2 scorer.
Still, the Knicks have shown they can play well when the games count the most.
Said Brown: “My belief going into the playoffs is when it’s real, that’s when our guys will arise to the occasion.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
