Heat 127, Knicks 120: An encouraging affair

The Knicks lost to the Heat, but showed some progress from a number of young players, namely RJ Barrett and Quentin Grimes.

The swings continue! This team can’t seem to help but string wins or losses together. After a disappointing home loss to the Timberwolves that saw them allow 140 points in regulation, the Knicks journeyed down the coast to South Beach to take on the rival Miami Heat. Despite playing well on both ends for much of the game, the Knicks fell short 127-120. 

An encouraging affair

I’ll be honest; I do not think this was an overly interesting basketball game to discuss. The Knicks didn’t get their best output from many players except two (more on them later), but their process was sound on both ends for almost 48 minutes. The Heat hit shots they haven’t hit all season and got an incredibly friendly whistle. Jimmy Butler shot 14 free throws to Julius Randle’s one. ONE. There is very little more frustrating than two teams in the same game playing by two different sets of rules. 

But the Knicks didn’t lose this game because of a few bad whistles. Although, it would be nice if Tom Thibodeau would use his challenge on one of these egregious calls (he does know they don’t carry over, right?). They lost because a good team executed slightly better than they did. The Heat had fewer turnovers and hit a ludicrous 57% from 3. That’s gonna win a lot of games. Still, as Strickland contributor ShwinnyPooh said on the postgame show last night: if the Knicks play like they did in Miami, they’re going to win more games than they lose.

Offensively the ball hopped around more than it has all season. The Knicks had 29 assists on 42 field goals, an outlandish ratio for a team whose foundation is isolating and offensive rebounds. And that felt low. The ball got sticky at a few inopportune moments. This was not the case when the bench unit was on the floor. With Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett running the show, the offense was especially egalitarian.

Defensively, the Knicks stuck to their principles from start to finish. Mitchell Robinson patrolled the paint. Quickley, RJ Barrett, Josh Hart and Quentin Grimes fought at the point of attack. The Knicks’ weakside defenders showed help at the nail and recovered onto shooters. This is all stuff most Knick fans are familiar with 74 games into the season. This may seem generous, given the Knicks allowed 127 points, but the truth of the matter is that when one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the league hits a bunch of shots, sometimes you just have to tip your cap and move on.

However, there was one glaring exception; Jalen Brunson. Brunson didn’t have it on the defensive end at all. For the second straight game he was targeted in a way that almost seemed downright cruel. Whether it was Gabe Vincent, Kyle Lowry, Tyler Herro, or even Max Strus the Heat put the ball in the hands of whomever Brunson was matched up against and bet on that advantage paying dividends. We have not arrived at worry-territory, but we are slowly inching in that direction. The playoffs are all about matchups and exploiting weaknesses. For months now, as this team has performed as legitimately one of the best teams in the league, we have lauded this group as one without a major weakness. That tends to be the case when you have as many good basketball players as the Knicks do. Is it possible opposing teams are exposing the first major crack in the Knicks’ armor? Only time will tell.

The young wings

Make no mistake, the ceiling of the 2023 Knicks assumes the best versions of Brunson and Randle. This is hardly unique to the Knicks; a team can only be as great as its best players allow them to be. So, from a certain perspective, this was actually an encouraging game. As I mentioned above, Brunson was a sieve defensively. And Randle wasn’t much better. After almost four seasons of watching a player, you pick up on their trends. This was a game we’ve seen from Randle before, one where an inconsistent whistle dictated Randle’s impact and affected his mental state on the court. 

And yet, the Knicks were in the game from start to finish. Barrett and Grimes led the charge and kept the Knicks within striking distance, contributing on both ends of the court. Barrett played perhaps his most complete game of the season. The Heat steered clear of him on most offensive possessions, but the few that allowed Barrett to be involved saw him bring out his best. Barrett was the one Knick that Jimmy Butler, who was marvelous the whole way through, did not have an answer for. 

And Grimes had the type of game Knicks fans have been waiting all season for. Some have often wondered why it seems so easy for Grimes to get lost in the offense with the starters, but when Immanuel Quickley plays with them he manages to get his usual shot diet. Some have opined that it is a matter of trust (specifically: the trust of Randle and Brunson). I believe the root of the problem is aggression. Grimes simply has to seek out his own shot more. His jumpshot is damn near incontestable, it is extremely difficult for Grimes to take one that is deemed “bad.” Last night saw Grimes, who finished the game with 22 points on 7-12 shooting, find that aggressiveness. You saw him actively seeking to initiate when he got his hands on the ball.

The Knicks may only go as far as Brunson and Randle take them, but they can’t do it alone. They’re not that level of star. Grimes and Barrett finding the level they did last night elevates the team’s ceiling. Quickley and Hart have been consistently impactful; with Grimes and Barrett joining them at the table the Knicks are guaranteeing production at two wing positions between Brunson and Randle. This takes pressure off the Knicks’ two stars, but it also puts it on them a little bit. When the Knicks lost to Atlanta in five games in 2021, Randle struggled. That was forgivable because the Hawks basically had five defenders keyed in on him for the entire series. If Grimes and Barrett play like this, those excuses disappear like tears in the rain. This is a team good enough to compete in any playoff series. It’s on Brunson and Randle to ensure that happens.

Closing time

Against the Timberwolves, Thibodeau brought Brunson and Randle back around the seven-minute mark of the 4th quarter. That night, Thibodeau chose IQ and Hart to be the Robins to the Knicks two Batmen. Due to the Timberwolves’ size, this was a somewhat controversial decision, something that was not helped by the fact that the Knicks struggled down the stretch. 

Last night, the Knicks were put in a similar quandary. When Thibodeau reinserted Randle and Brunson into the game in the 4th, Grimes, who was magnificent, was not on the floor to close the game. It was at that time that I wondered, is there anything Grimes can do to close a game? With a little under four minutes to play and the Knicks trailing by ten, Thibodeau reinserted Grimes for Robinson in a rare small lineup. An act of pure desperation from Thibodeau.

This issue is not going away. With Brunson and Randle firmly locked into these minutes, and one of the Knicks’ two centers always on the court, the Knicks have four good players vying for two spots. I promise you all four players think they deserve to be out there at the end of games. Monday night it was Barrett who was passed over; last night it was Quickley, who saw just 19 minutes. This was hardly ghastly – Quickley, who missed seven of eight shots, was far from his best. Still, given his overall impact on the season, it’s difficult to justify him playing 19 minutes on any night.

There are, of course, a few solutions. The most obvious is that Quickley could get more back-up point guard minutes. Of Quickley’s 19 minutes last night, over half came with Brunson on the court next to him. That means over half of Quickley’s minutes came with him playing in one of the two available spots these four players are fighting for. But if Quickley gets a few more minutes without Brunson, that’s more time that just three guys are battling for two spots.

The other solution is to go small. We saw it at the end of the game and it produced good results. Conclusions shouldn’t be written based on a four minute sample, but the Knicks were able to produce an abundance of great looks with less clogged spacing, and their defense wasn’t the sieve many – including the head coach – assume it would be without a true rim protector on the court. 

It’s important to note that there are multiple ways to go small. After Julius Randle picked up a technical midway through the third, the Knicks trailed 88-77. At that point, Randle had been ineffective, Brunson was being targeted by the Heat’s offense and Grimes and Barrett were carrying the team. Thibodeau wanted to change it up and called for Quickley and Hart, as he usually does around this time. Why not try a lineup of Quickley-Grimes-Barrett-Hart-Robinson? You keep your rim protecting center on the court but surround him with four wings.

If I had one takeaway from last night’s game it’s that the jury is still very much out on Thibodeau as a ceiling-raiser. He’s been wonderful this season and made adjustments his biggest critics didn’t think were possible. Lineup creativity is his endboss. In the playoffs you have to be willing to adapt on the fly and adjust based on what’s happening in front of you. These small lineups cannot be seen as Hail Marys at the end of games. “Situational” has to actually stay true to its meaning. There will be situations where the best course of action for the Knicks is to go small. Will Thibodeau keep adapting? The playoffs are a couple of weeks away. Let’s see what he’s got.

The Captain

Full disclosure: I’ve never been one to mourn the deaths of athletes or celebrities. In late January of 2020, I was playing a poker tournament in Atlantic City a few days after Kobe Bryant was taken from us. The world was still in shock, and the primary discussion of that particular day was Kyrie Irving requesting time off to deal with his grief. Opinions ranged, including that of one fellow who had put the Brooklyn Nets in a parlay, but all were shaded by a hint of sadness. The person to my right spent the entire 10-hour day watching Kobe footage on his phone in between hands. That is not an exaggeration. I am a hyper-rationalist. Perhaps to a fault. My baseline perspective has always been: we do not know these people. Mourning them, especially in the public way we often see, seems (to me) more self-serving than anything.

On Tuesday morning, Knicks legend Willis Reed passed away. My dad, the man responsible for my fandom of this roller-coaster of a franchise, called me and ran through the stages of grief in about a half-hour. I think what got me most was the pure disbelief that Willis was gone. Logically, this was an 80-year-old man; is it really that shocking for it to be his time to go? And, again, this was someone neither of us had ever met. Where was this sadness coming from?

But the picture my father painted was clear: Willis wasn’t just a random athlete, he was a beacon of his childhood. And his death was yet another reminder of how distant that time of life is in the rearview mirror of my father’s life. I don’t know why it took me 33 years to get it, but it finally hit me that grief is always contextual. It is a personal journey, and one that does not know the boundaries of interpersonal relationships. 

Kobe Bryant wasn’t just a person, he represented 20 of watching basketball. Where were you when Bryant hit that buzzer beater over Raja Bell? How many times did you practice Kobe’s magical footwork in the gym or at the park? Who was that friend in your life you were always with around the time the infamous Kobe Bryant and LeBron James puppet commercial debuted, sparking numerous debates? Kobe’s passing wasn’t just about him and his daughter Gianna going too soon; it was also a reminder that all of those wonderful memories he had been such a huge part of were gone.

So when I heard my father talking about being a kid and watching Willis emerge from that dark tunnel in 1970, I started to think about what Willis Reed meant to me. I was born almost 20 years after he won MVP and led the Knicks to their first championship, but I’ve watched that clip hundreds of times. It is on a short list of videos on a playlist I have titled “Dad” that he and I watch almost any time we’re together. Reed’s death reminds me of my father and the time I’ve been lucky to spend with him.

Lastly, Reed’s death brought me back to the Knicks’ community as a whole. I created this pseudonymous Twitter account less than two years ago as a way to isolate the content I viewed on a day-to-day basis. People often talk about echochambers – my echochamber was not political, but rather one of descent and religion. The New York Knicks brought me to this strange world where we spend hours discussing a team that has brought us very little but pain and frustration. Zero championships in fifty seasons. One playoff series win this millennium. Yet here we are, still standing. That says something about us. 

This is not merely a fanbase, it’s a family. One we have created for ourselves. Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier are the voices of this family. You need no more evidence than last night’s game to see how much Reed meant to this family. Frazier, who won two championships with Reed, channeled The Captain’s inner strength by holding it together for two hours as this Knicks team fought on the court. Breen and Frazier called the game but spent much of it chronicling Reed’s life and offering a perspective many Knick fans did not have. 

As Breen closed the broadcast, eyes filled with tears and a voice so hoarse there may as well have been an actual frog in his throat, he thanked Frazier for his strength and helping him eulogize Reed. Frazier nodded solemnly and told Breen, “The hard part starts now,” to which Breen responded the entire Knicks family is here for him. Tears mixed with gratuity and sadness filled Frazier’s eyes. They filled mine too. And I’m sure I was not alone. So no, I did not know Reed, but I will mourn him nonetheless. That’s what you do for your family. And that’s what you do for someone who played a part in this journey we are all on.

Rest in peace Willis Reed. You will be missed.