Knicks welcome back three players from injury, look quite healthy in win over 76ers
The Knicks' Donte DiVincenzo, right, goes up for a shot past the 76ers' Buddy Hield during the second half of an NBA game Thursday in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
PHILADELPHIA — The Knicks ended the pre-All Star break segment to the season in a depleted state that even exceeded Tom Thibodeau’s mantra of “Next man up,” missing six of their top eight players and in desperate need of a moment to heal.
And while still far from completely healthy, the Knicks resumed their season Thursday halfway there, welcoming back three of the missing pieces, enough to look ahead to the finish line with a vision of what they can be. A first step came with a 110-96 win over the Philadelphia 76ers.
“Everything pre-All-Star, obviously is important and big,” Josh Hart said before the game. “But these next 27 games – this is really when it really starts, really begins. That’s all you got to focus on. And I think the biggest thing last year, at this point I was on a different team that wasn’t going to make the playoffs. So it’s cool to see the preparation last year. Now I’m kind of understanding that aspect a little bit more, and focusing on that 27 games and making sure that as a team, and individually, got to be clicking on all cylinders.”
While Thibodeau tries to not allow thoughts to look beyond the task at hand, the Knicks are hoping to find their form ahead of the postseason. With Donte DiVincenzo, Isaiah Hartenstein and Bojan Bogdanovic back in the rotation Thursday night it was a start, but the Knicks are still waiting on Julius Randle, OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson to complete their rehabilitation and complete the roster.
Bogdanovic provided the early push with 19 of his 22 points in the first half and Jalen Brunson struggled through a 5-for-18 shooting performance but still managed 21 points and 12 assists. Tyrese Maxey had 35 points for Philadelphia.
The Knicks beat Philadelphia by 36 points on Jan. 5 when the team was in the midst of a torrid month and now, while the Knicks were still shorthanded, the Sixers were without the reigning MVP, Joel Embiid (knee), and it showed.
The Knicks dominated this one in the first half with Brunson taking the MVP chants at the Wells Fargo Center, jumping out to a 15-3 lead and after building a 32-21 lead at the end of the first quarter the second unit stretched the margin quickly. Bogdanovic connected on all five of his three-point attempts and the Knicks led by as many as 26 — taking a 69-46 advantage into halftime.
While the Knicks will need all of their pieces in place to make any sort of run in the postseason on this night they had more than enough with Josh Hart providing the Knicks with 18 points 12 rebounds and Precious Achiuwa contributing 18 points and 11 rebounds.
“The challenge is we gotta get everyone back,” Thibodeau said. “We gotta get people back. . . .There’s 27 games to go. So we can keep talking about kicking it down the road, but . . . we gotta be ready now.
When Bogdanovic missed on a drive to finish a break the Sixers raced it down the other end with Kelly Oubre connecting on the layup to close the gap to 92-86 — as close as Philadelphia had been since the first quarter — and the Knicks called timeout.
But with Brunson struggling with his shot — and seven turnovers — the Knicks managed to hang on thanks to the contributions from others. Achiuwa followed a Brunson miss for a big bucket. DiVincenzo delivered a three-pointer to halt the slide and then another to give the Knicks a 102-88 lead with 5:27 to play.
With a 34-22 record the Knicks have positioned themselves as — well, let Hart tell you.
“Where do I see us right now?” Hart said. “The fourth seed, That’s where we are.”
So by the end of the season? With the 76ers missing Embiid, the Bucks having already fired their coach and facing questions about dysfunction, where can the Knicks take this season?
“Take it day by day,” Hart said. “Obviously by the end of that you want to be highest seed possible. So there’s going to be lucky breaks, unlucky breaks for teams. At the end of the day we just got to figure out what we do well and at this point in the season, you want to be playing your best basketball. And if guys are out that benefits us in terms of us trying to get a higher seed. But we can’t control it. We have no idea when Joel is coming back. The Bucks can come back and be undefeated with Doc. You just really don’t know. That’s why you have to focus on your own self.”
“You would like to have the whole unit together as much as possible,” DiVincenzo said. “But in the grand scheme of things as long as you’re going into the last little bit of the season with everybody going into playoffs, that’s when you want to be playing your best basketball. You don’t want to be playing your best basketball in December. You want to be playing it going into April.
“So I think, first and foremost, we want to get everybody healthy. However long that takes I think we have enough people on the team to ride that wave. Then once we get everybody back — like I said, it doesn’t feel as depleted right now — so once we get those guys back it’s just going to take us to a whole other level. It doesn’t matter how many games we get in as long as we go into the playoffs feeling that mental side of confidence.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
