Out of gas. Out of steam. Out of horses. Out of limbs. Out of bodies. But if there was one quality these New York Knicks had not fully depleted, it was their unrelenting heart.
Many fans would agree: they have not had this much fun rooting for a New York Knicks team in 25 years.
During a Game 7 at home, the Knicks’ first time hosting such a contest since 1995, the Indiana Pacers torched New York to the fine-tuned hum of shooting 67.1% from the floor, an astronomical feat despite a frenzied Garden crowd. But man, if Donte DiVincenzo, Alec Burks, and Josh Hart, who couldn’t even cough or breathe without it hurting, didn’t leave everything they had out on that floor…
Save for a miracle shot from Andrew Nembhard in Game 3 in Indiana, New York was a breath away from a 3-0 lead in the series after Alec Burks, who had not played all postseason, gave the Knicks a lift in OG Anunoby’s absence. Burks was tremendous in the five games he ended up playing, including 26 points on 8 of 13 shooting from the field in what was likely his last game as a Knick in Game 7, a flourish to his second stint in New York.
In the case of these New York Knicks, injuries were not an excuse for their unceremonious finish, but rather, a veritable explanation in a campaign mired by so many “what ifs.”
The Knicks lost Julius Randle, now a three-time All-Star in New York, named to an All-NBA second and third team in his time with the team, to shoulder surgery before the postseason even started.
Mitchell Robinson, who tried everything he could to rebound from being taken to the floor against the Sixers, couldn’t move on his injured ankle against Indiana.
Bojan Bogdanovic, whose wrist and ankle injuries became too much, never could get going in the playoffs.
OG Anunoby, who carried the Knicks in Game 2 of the Pacers series when Jalen Brunson was felled by a foot injury, mustering a playoff career-high 28 points in as many minutes, pulled up lame in that same contest, trying to channel the energy of the Garden crowd into an emphatic dunk that otherwise failed.
Josh Hart, the NBA playoff minutes leader who played 374 minutes out of a possible 384 across an eight-game stretch at one point, wasn’t letting an abdominal strain keep him off the floor in Game 7, proving himself the heart and soul of this team, outrebounding men a foot taller than him in Randle’s absence. He fouled out in the closing minutes of Game 7 to a rousing standing ovation, a deserved honor for a player who embodies the blue-collar moxie New Yorkers have come to love.
And Jalen Brunson, the team’s deft and capable savior, suffered a foot injury that could not stop him from dropping 29, 26, and 44 points in Games 2, 3, and 5 of this series, finally succumbing to a fractured hand when he swiped at Tyrese Haliburton on his way to the rim in Game 7’s third quarter.
Despite these mounting ailments that ultimately became too much for coach Tom Thibodeau’s supremely conditioned, always-prepared squad, the Knicks never let injuries serve as an excuse for their failures, putting forth Herculean efforts when lesser Knicks teams of the past would have folded.
In Game 5, I had the pleasure of being in attendance for a playoff game at the Garden, my first time at MSG since I was a teenager to root on my Knicks, my first professional sports love, thanks to the beneficence of a cousin who is like a brother to me. The crowd’s energy, which helped fashion the Knicks’ best, top-to-bottom team performance of these playoffs, will be a memory I can forever cherish.
This run was one for the ages. I won’t soon forget how this team made me feel and brought me closer in relationship with my sons.
For one, we now have our superstar in Jalen Brunson, whose feats not even Carmelo Anthony, one of the most prolific scorers in league history, himself, a seven-year Knick, could come close to matching.
His 47 points in a 97-92 Game 4 victory in Philadelphia broke a 40-year Knicks single-game postseason record, held by Bernard King.
In that series, he became the second NBA player—the first since Oscar Robertson in the 1973 NBA playoffs—to amass three 35+-point/10+-assist games in an NBA playoff series.
By closing out the Philly series with three consecutive 40+-point games, Brunson completed a feat last equaled by Michael Jordan in his 1989 series against Cleveland.
By opening the Pacers series with 43 points and 6 assists, Brunson was the fourth player in NBA history—the first since Jordan in the 1993 NBA Finals—to score 40 or more points in four consecutive playoff games, the only player to do so with five or more assists in each of those four playoff games.
Until Brunson, no other Knick had posted five consecutive 30+ point/5+ assist games.
By Game 5, the Knicks’ best effort in these 2024 playoffs, Brunson topped 44 points, including 28 in the first half, setting a Knicks record for points scored in a playoff half.
Fittingly, only a broken hand could stop his streak.
Brunson, who ended his campaign with a second-team, All-NBA nod, has everyone believing in this team beyond 2024, one left in the able hands of Leon Rose, Coach Thibodeau, and its diminutive leader whose ultimate playoff stat line across thirteen games—33.7 PPG, 3.6 RPG, and 7.3 APG with a true shooting percentage of 54.1%—should be more than enough to quiet his biggest detractors in Becky Hammon, Kenny Smith, and Marc Berman.
By re-signing Isaiah Hartenstein and OG Anunoby, the latter of whom helped the Knicks to a 26-6 record—including the playoffs—when he played, New York can shore up its defensive and rebounding fronts. A healthy Randle and Bogdanovic offer size and scoring from the frontcourt positions, with the Knicks able to feature a potential starting five of Hartenstein (should he re-sign), Randle, Anunoby (should he also re-sign), DiVincenzo, and Brunson, with Mitchell Robinson, Josh Hart, Miles McBride, and Bogdanovic running the second unit, rounded out by two first-round picks in this draft that would behoove the Knicks not to trade this offseason, seeing as how what this draft doesn’t have in franchise, cornerstone stars, it makes up for with reserves and role players (The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor projects New York to select France’s Pacome Dadiet, a lengthy shooter off the dribble who can defend and Purdue legend Zach Edey at picks 24 and 25).
Granted, Dadiet is a project, only 19 years of age, but if Thibodeau captures the means to groom a prospect, a practice that prevails against every fiber of his being, then he may have just the body to spell Anunoby, whose injury history may require load management (see, too, what Bogdanovic would do for Randle in that same regard next season). The same goes for Edey, an already polished player who can likely stand in for Hartenstein and Robinson in ways Jericho Sims has proven he cannot.
In addition to the grit that epitomized their 2023-2024 campaign, most notably in the playoffs, what has defined Leon Rose’s time in offense has been patience, passing on a star like Donovan Mitchell, offloading a beloved player who failed to live up to expectations (RJ Barrett) at the expense of also shipping out a fan favorite (Immanuel Quickley) when the move for the right player (OG Anunoby) presented itself, and striking the right deals—on what is now deemed the incredibly cheap—for the likes of Jalen Brunson, Isaiah Hartenstein, Donte DiVincenzo, and Miles McBride, all of whom fit seamlessly into Thibodeau’s system as if they’ve always belonged, some reaching heights nobody could have possibly projected (Brunson, an All-NBA player, and DiVincenzo, the recordbreaking sharpshooter who evidently trapped in a bottle whatever it is he gleaned from his short time with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in Golden State).
The long and short of it: re-sign key players, fill out the fringes with able bodies, and run it back with hopes that a healthier nucleus gets the New York Knicks to the mountaintop before they reach the 60-year anniversary of their last title.
Because at some point, their heart has to amount to something more than a shortened playoff run.
