Magic 118, Knicks 100: ”Yuck”

Thank deities, the break is upon us.

The New York Knicks got to escape (barely, but still) the final four games before Cancún alive as we are all (well, not me) going on vacation until next Thursday when NBA action returns following the All-Star Weekend festivities scheduled for Feb. 16-18.

It wasn’t pretty, mind you, with New York losing their fourth consecutive game on Wednesday against the young, spry, and healthy Orlando Magic, 118-100.

As herbert pollack put it yesterday: “yuck.”

The New York Knicks have certainly had many worse starting lineups hitting the court from the get-go not long ago. You just need to go back exactly five years and you’ll acknowledge that fact.

The devil, however, is in the details.

There is no denying the lineups the Knicks have been forced to use of late have been the closest thing to atrocious you can get. Outside of Jalen Brunson, who will grace the ASW stage for the first time in his career this weekend, the rest of the men who have found themselves sharing the court with JB for the most part since we turned the calendar page to February are, well, let’s say mediocre at best, subpar at worst.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not saying Josh Hart isn’t an extraordinary do-it-all type of player. Precious Achiuwa can give anybody and everybody fits in the paint and he’s shown some floor-stretching tendencies here and there. Donte DiVincenzo ruled out ahead of Wednesday’s matchup, has been an absolute walking flamethrower since he became a nightly starter.

But think about what New York was/is missing: four starters (Julius Randle, OG Anunoby, Mitchell Robinson, and by-extension Isaiah Hartenstein and DDV) and one reserve (Bojan Bogdanovic). Feel free to rearrange their roles as you please.

On the active gameday roster: G League performers Jacob Toppin and Charlie Brown Jr. and pension-plan-applicant Taj Gibson.

On the sideline: Tom Thibodeau. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Wrong!

For one time, Jalen Brunson was removed from the game having played “only” 35 minutes. But that’s not the point of this recap. The actual thing is, New York was up nine points by the end of the first quarter. Following that early positive development, Thibs introduced the reserves and things went south.

Orlando put together a 22-2 run, flipped a 12-point Knicks lead and turned it into an eight-point lead of their own, and called mostly it a day.

Happens when Brown Jr. (five minutes) and Gibson (nine) are two of your four second-unit players and both of them end the game with a zero in the scoring column (at least Taj stole a rock).

Happens when you other two reserves are Young Toppin (17 minutes) scoring 11 points and grabbing four rebounds, and Miles McBride getting 32 minutes in which he goes 2-of-11 from the field scoring eight points all depths considered.

All starters with the exception of Achiuwa (some things never change, do they, Thibs?) logged between 30 and 39 minutes.

Precious was on the floor for 43 rounds of the clock dub-dubbing with a 23-14 and adding five dimes to that. No wonder he registered/tied career-high figures on the O-Board and assists columns while falling just four points short of his best-ever mark there (27 last season).

Alec Burks played 30 minutes and found a way to finish the game with a minus-28 plus/minus. The Knicks' second unit as a whole, for context, finished with a plus/minus of minus-29 in 63 minutes. Burks: great role player, not-so-great starter.

Jericho Sims started at the five, nearly reached 40 minutes, scored eight points, grabbed eight rebounds. Jalen Brunson was fantastic in limited time of action, 33 points, six dimes, two steals, one rebound. Can’t really ask for much more.

If you’ve read all of the above, congratulations. If you’ve read the last three (I missed the one against Dallas—my bad) recaps, real kudos go to you. That’s because the Knicks have played the four most nonsensical, forgettable, impossible-to-properly-analyze games of their 2024 season to date in the last week and it’s not even close.

New York has gone with the flow, tried to keep its collective head above water while reasonably failing at it (0-4 is the record), and is now entering a one-week hiatus that won’t bring any success on the court but that should (must) bring only good-to-great news off of it.

We don’t know for a fact when OG and Randle will be back, but we’ve been promised they’ll be approaching their respective returns by the end of the month.

We don’t know when (if at all) Mitch will play basketball once more this season, but Thibs has said of late that he should get back to doing some work on the practice court as the weeks go on aiming at a return before/during the postseason.

We know that the likes of iHart, DiVo, and Bogey have been left out of the lineups and the court of late mostly as a precaution and to avoid further issues and injuries impacting an already-ravaged roster.

I’m still not quite there at believing this team already has everything it needs in place (even with all members of the roster available and healthy) to put together a championship-bound run as early as next June, but I’m convinced the days of enduring four-game losing streaks are over (or close to being so, alright...) as we approach spring on March 20 and the playoffs by mid-April.

Enjoy the week off, get some fresh air, root for Toppin and Brunson on Saturday and Sunday, and get back to putting on your Blue and Orange cape starting next Thursday. The best part of the season lies ahead.

Go Knicks!