From time to time it’s perfectly charming to play a game like this, to welcome a team like these Sacramento Kings into your home, as in many ways they are the perfect enemy of the game back home. They’re fun to watch, with lots of young stars filling it dazzling.
And they can’t save any stop sign.
That’s how a team that will never be confused with Paul Westhead’s former Loyola Marymount teams can add 140 points in a single basketball game, just as the Knicks did before a satisfied meeting of just under 2,000 Madison fans. Square Garden Thursday night.
There were times when Tom Thibodeau, the defensive whispering coach, looked like he could shut down watching the Knicks 121 surrender, but only coaches care about games like this. As long as the home team finishes on the left side of the hyphen, customers will be happy. And the Knicks, for the third time in ten days, have been dragged into a .500 game.
“We’re here,” Thibodeau said.
At 16-17, the Knicks are also moving slowly toward the middle of the season, three games to 36, so we’ve officially gotten to the point where we can ask ourselves, with data and information and 33 witnesses, exactly what it’s our recalibrated standard because this season should be.
Is it still okay to focus exclusively on the process?
Is it okay now to focus on the possibility of the playoffs?
“I would say it’s just as important,” Thibodeau had said about 90 minutes before the game. “I do not want to be lost and move too far. I just want us to focus on what lies ahead. I think you start the season with [playoffs] in mind and all the things you need to do.
“You want to build these habits constantly. Practicing well is important, knowing your opponent well. If you start moving away from that and start looking too much down the road, that’s when you’ll be cut off and fall. ”
Fair enough. Still, victories have made the habit of winning much more than anyone thought realistic in Thibodeau’s first year. Recall, by virtual consensus in Vegas, they were assigned an Over / Under number of 22.5 wins. They are well ahead of that pace. In fact, they are square in the middle of an Eastern conference that, right now, seems divided into three different castes:
The clear elite: the Sixers, the Nets and (despite having played poorly recently) the Bucks.
Teams that have faced each other, but logic and common sense insist, will straighten up and make a comfortable push toward the top five: the Celtics and the Heat.
The fight for slots from 6 to 10.
And this is where this Knicks season becomes tremendously intriguing, because on Friday morning they wake up tied with the Raptors for fifth place, engaged in a battle that will surely be seven teams for the last five playoff spots in the East. Right now, the Knicks, Pacers, Raptors, Bulls, Hornets, Hawks and Magic are three losses behind each other in the standings. Five of those seven will go in (assuming you don’t think Washington’s recent change is permanent; if you do, it’s five out of eight).
All of these teams have flaws and flaws, just like the Knicks do. None of these teams have a reasonable chance of making any noise in the playoffs, assuming things fall into place as they will likely happen in the second half. And so everyone will ask themselves the same thing:
Want to process the playoffs?
Want to finish the playoffs?
Both of us?
Both are ideal. But are they realistic?
“You just have to think about what it means to win every day and build the right habits,” Thibodeau said before the match.
“We get there,” he said then, twice.
Where, in short? On Saturday, the Pacers arrive in the garden and suddenly there are a lot of interesting things at stake. Another crack at .500. The chance to beat a team in that crowd of suitors and aspirants waiting to be sifted to one side or the other in the coming months.
And, of course: working on the process, which means being attentive to the award, which means not getting too far ahead. It still beats to keep in mind the playoffs that only exist in feverish dreams. Maybe they can live together after all.