Here’s the thing:
They can play better than this. They can play a lot better than this. The Knicks stomped the Celtics on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. They took the lead for the first time when Julius Randle knocked down a 3-pointer 102 seconds in and never gave it back, the final buzzer of a 109-94 win muted by the happy roar of 19,852 patrons.
“We came out with the right energy and the right mindset,” said Mitch Robinson, another monstrous two-way game in the books for him, 10 points and 13 rebounds and two blocks and countless moments when the Celtics wanted no part of shooting the ball anywhere near him. “And we got it done.”
They got it done despite a third straight subpar game from Jalen Brunson (who, admittedly, we are beginning to grade on a steep curve), despite only 50 combined points from their Big 3 of Brunson, Randle and RJ Barrett (8 ½ below their average), despite looking sluggish on offense for large swaths of the game.
They shot fine (47.4 percent), but not spectacularly. They missed 11 free throws. There were a few restless moments when it looked like they might succumb to their chronic Garden hiccups — although it does feel like this group is different than the iteration that spent the season’s first few months treating home court like kryptonite.
And this wasn’t against a yawning team like Charlotte or Detroit or Houston; this was against the Celtics, defending Eastern Conference champs. Were they missing Jaylen Brown? Sure. But the Celtics had already played 11 games without Brown this year, won nine of them. They pride themselves on their next-man-up mentality.
And for a night, anyway, they were the second-best team on the floor on a night when the Knicks were the other team on the floor, on a night when the Knicks only hinted at their A-game. The Knicks weren’t perfect. And smoked the Celtics anyway.
Believe yet?
“I thought a good, solid team win,” said Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who has gone from a guy sitting a few steps away from the griddle in November to his familiar position where he’ll surely get his share of Coach-of-the-Year votes. “Their record tells you how good they are, they can make up ground very quickly because of the way they shoot the 3. No lead feels safe with them. We had good all-around play.”
So much of what the Knicks were able to do came thanks to an astonishing effort against Boston’s MVP candidate, Jayson Tatum, who was limited to 14 points — 16 below his average — and missed eight of his nine 3-point attempts. By game’s end Tatum was taking the walk of shame back to the visitor’s locker room after drawing his second technical of the night with 3:46 to go.
He left amid a loud chorus of hoots and catcalls. The basketball team wasn’t the only one who could feel the whisper of a playoff atmosphere in the old gym Monday night. The fans were engaged from the jump, all over the Celtics during pregame warm-ups.
Believe yet?
“We start off every year thinking: ‘Let’s get better every day’,” Thibodeau said. “You want to be able to play your best at the end of the season. This will feel good tonight but tomorrow we get ready for Brooklyn.”
Said Josh Hart, 12 points, five rebounds and five assists off the bench and still unbeaten in six games wearing a Knicks uniform: “It took everyone being on the same wavelength. We were locked into the game plan and we were able to execute.”
This wasn’t a fluke and the prosperous stretch the Knicks are enjoying can no longer be contained to the small-sample-size bin. In the last 35 days the Knicks have beaten the Cavaliers, the Sixers, the Nets and the Celtics — twice. If they are still lacking the franchise alpha dog essential to legit title contention they sure have plenty of parts that make them must-see TV, and must-see MSG, every night.
“We have a team of leaders,” Thibodeau said, “and a team of gym rats.”
Hart: “We want to keep pushing. We don’t want to make the playoffs. We want to make a run in the playoffs.”
Believe yet?
