They get a few days to rest some weary muscles, to catch their breath and, most important, to learn the identity of their first-round opponent. For the Knicks, this is a respite well-earned and just as much a part of the perks of finishing with the second seed in the East as earning Game 7 at home in the first round — and the second, if they make it that far.
Those six words, of course, will be backburnered by anyone with any kind of affinity with or allegiance to the Knicks right now. There has already been a feisty debate about whether they’d have been smarter to start playing games with basketball fate once they knew they’d clinched no worse than the three seed Sunday afternoon.
(If you read this column Monday — and if so, at the top, thank you! — you know I think they did the right thing, opponent be damned.)
We actually have some evidence from around these parts that white-flagging it — which in this case would’ve meant conceding Game 82 to Chicago, ceding the No. 2 seed to Milwaukee and falling into a 3-6 duel with Indiana — can be a hazardous game.
Back in 2014, the Nets were so spooked at the prospect of playing the Bulls — who a year earlier, without Derrick Rose, had stunned them in what remains one of the top-shelf coaching jobs in Tom Thibodeau’s career — that they gave a half-effort against the Knicks in Game 81 and did a full tank job in Game 82.
The immediate dividends worked out: The Nets beat the Raptors, whom they preferred to play, in a Game 7 in Toronto. But it turned out the Bulls would have been the easier draw (they got smoked by the Wizards in five) and the bigger point was that the Nets drew the Heat in the second round instead of the Pacers.
Not only did Miami pan-fry the Nets in five, Dwyane Wade’s knee flared up on him in the conference finals. If Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and friends could’ve stuck around until then, the LeBron Heat, on their last legs as a mini-dynasty, were just dying to be had (as the Spurs proved in the Finals).
See, that’s the thing. If you are the Knicks, you must think about taking big swings here. They have clearly already moved on — as well as they can move on — from losing Julius Randle. This group, with OG Anunoby, is 20-3. Down the stretch, they won five straight and six out of seven. They ran through the tape Sunday against the Bulls.
“The thing every season,” Thibodeau said Sunday, echoing something he’s said 82 times this year, “is to be playing your best at the end of the season.”
They’re doing that. And so it would almost be disrespectful to congratulate the Knicks on a job well done, on a gritty and overachieving season, and not expect more.
They won a first-round series last year? They need to do that again this year — never mind if the 76ers and the Heat each send a certain faction of Knicks fandom into spasm.
They lost in the second round last year with home-court advantage, never even making it to Game 7 at the Garden? They need to be better than that this year, even if the Bucks survive the Pacers, even if they have Giannis Antetokounmpo back at reasonably full strength, even if it means all hands on deck in New York City for a Game 7.
They haven’t been to the conference finals since 2000, when Reggie Miller fired the last arrow of his career straight into the Knicks’ chest (and basically made the Knicks disappear for the next 20 years)? And if they do, they’ll get the Celtics, who by advanced numbers are the one of the most efficient NBA teams of all time? They need to get there, anyway, climb in the ring, plot a few well-timed uppercuts and hooks.
We can talk about next year and the year after, and what happens when Randle returns, and what happens if Superstar X is finally lured to town, but that’s not nearly as interesting as the opportunity the Knicks have in front of them as we speak. They earned the No. 2 slot on merit, not in a sweepstakes. Starting Saturday, they have to be equal to the seed.
Those 2014 Nets never again got back the opportunity they squandered by trying to engineer an easier path for themselves. Maybe there’s a pothole lurking for these Knicks, eager to swallow them whole before Game 1 in Boston sometime in early June. And maybe it turns out losing Randle was too big an impediment to clear. If that happens, we’ll spend plenty of time assessing loss and distributing blame, believe me.
For now, they are the 2. It’s exactly where every team should want to be, if they can’t be Boston. The Knicks need to honor the seed. You have to believe, if you’ve seen even five minutes of this team this year, that they feel the exact same way.
