In a perfect world, the walk-ons would have been on the floor, grinding out garbage time. In a perfect world, at a point in the Knicks schedule when they could use a laugher — against a team that had lost 40 of its first 48 games, a team that specializes in laughers — the starters would’ve already had towels draped over their legs, the page already turned to Tuesday and the Pelicans.
But things aren’t quite so perfect around the Knicks these days.
And this was turning into the most imperfect of nights for the Knicks, who let the Pistons stay in the game for 47 minutes and were about to absorb the worst loss of the season in the 48th. Old friend Quentin Grimes had made the go-ahead bucket — because of course he had — and suddenly the Pistons were up, 111-110 with 37.3 seconds left in the game.
The Garden was hushed but hopeful. Jalen Brunson dribbled upcourt. For two years, there have been few greater sources of comfort for any precinct of New York fans than the ball in Brunson’s hands, a game in the balance. But Brunson fired up a 3. It wasn’t close. Grimes saved the ball, pushed it toward teammate Simone Fontecchio.
Josh Hart stole the ball. He flicked it to Isaiah Hartenstein.
Twelve seconds left now.
“Keep fighting,” Brunson would say later. “No matter what.”
Hartenstein got the ball to Donte DiVincenzo, and here is where the night truly took a turn for the surreal. Here was DiVincenzo, looking for Brunson, but throwing the ball instead to Detroit’s Ausar Thompson. Eight seconds now, and it was here that the Garden emitted one of those groans that only the Garden can muster, in those moments when the home team is about to send them all home grumbling.
“Those are scramble plays,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Second and third effort. Just find a way. No matter what.”
Thompson never quite got a handle on the ball. It rolled toward half-court. DiVincenzo, desperate, collided with Thompson, right at the “D” in the “Madison Square Garden” stamp on the floor opposite the Pistons bench. We haven’t seen many open-field tackles executed that well on football Sundays around here. Somehow, there was no call.
Pistons coach Monty Williams took six steps onto the floor, as if he was trying to get a better listen at a whistle that never blew.
There were four seconds left.
The ball reached Brunson. Somehow, he saw Hart cutting to the basket. Hart made the layup. He was fouled. He missed the free throw. Hartenstein tapped the rebound to Hart. He was fouled again. Made one, missed one, and somehow Hart got the rebound. The buzzer sounded. And there was relief where normally there would be a roar.
“That sums up our team, sums up our city,” Hart said when it was over at last. “We grind, we fight, we scratch, we claw, we find a way.”
They found a way. Exactly two weeks earlier, the Knicks had lost a game because a ref blew a whistle when he shouldn’t have; this time, they probably won a game because a ref kept his breath out of a whistle. Maybe those last 37.3 seconds help explain 8-49 for the Pistons. Maybe they help illustrate why the Knicks have developed the character they have.
One thing good teams learn, somewhere around the line, is to steal games they don’t deserve to win. One of the most fabled games in Knicks history was the 106-105 game the Knicks won over the Cincinnati Royals on Nov. 28, 1969, when they somehow erased a five-point lead in the game’s final 27 seconds to beat the Royals, at neutral Cleveland Arena, to set a then-NBA record with their 18th straight win.
Those Royals weren’t as epically awful as these Pistons, but they didn’t belong on the same floor with those Knicks, either. It was Clyde Frazier, after that one, who crowed: “Call us Houdini. That was a great escape!”
DiVincenzo was more chaste this time: “Respect the game. Respect the opponent. And just play basketball.”
It wasn’t a perfect game by any definition, just a perfect outcome. The Knicks need to stack wins, especially in these days as they toil without their entire starting frontcourt. Perfection will be elusive. Being good enough will have to do.
“We had one more play in us than they did,” Brunson said.
That’ll have to do, too.
