Knicks still battling Pistons while other East contenders are resting, healing

DETROIT — The focus, as has been the case in every game in the Knicks’ first-round playoff series against the Detroit Pistons, was on the final moments when Tuesday’s game was decided.

On that night, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau found the spotlight — with fingers pointing at him — for his inability to find a way to get Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart back on the floor with the game in the balance. On another night it was Karl-Anthony Towns’ inability to get involved in the offense. And even in the three wins that put the Knicks on the verge of moving on to the Eastern Conference semifinals, the glare of the postseason picks targets and dissects them.

“He’s used to it,” Hart said of the criticism of Thibodeau. “Bull’s-eye on his back for that. He’s got a bull’s-eye on his back the whole season for minutes, rotations and all of that stuff. That’s our coach. We’re going to back him 100%. Everyone is on this team because we have faith and trust in them, and I think that’s a byproduct of that. We got stops. We got good looks. What more do you want besides getting stops and getting good looks for good players? I don’t know.”

The simple answer is postseason success, and the Knicks were still working on that. After two straight seasons seeing the ending come in the Eastern Conference semifinals, this rebuilt roster is fighting to get that far again.

So while the rest of the Eastern Conference contenders already had completed their first-round series in four or five games and are resting, healing and preparing for the next opponent, the Knicks were back at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday for another round of the battle they’d found themselves in.

“Playoff basketball,” Brunson said. “We’ve been playing the same [team] for now, this is the sixth time. I’m pretty sure they know us and we know them. We’re in a position now where we need to just go out and just earn it. It’s not going to be given to us. They’re not going to hand anything over. We got to go out there and play the best we can regardless of what’s happening. It’s never going to be easy. We’ve just got to go out there and go get it.”

There is some risk and possible reward for the Knicks. The biggest risk is not getting to the next round, a scenario the Knicks didn’t want to consider. But also there is a risk of injury with every extra game that they play. Brunson already has been dealing with an ankle injury for nearly two months, and it was that ankle that put him on the sideline in the final minutes Tuesday. Hart was sent off after a hard fall with what he called overall pain but required imaging to ensure he hadn’t suffered a serious injury to his left wrist.

The reward could be that, while those other teams are resting and practicing, the Knicks could be facing Boston in the opening game of the next round Monday night with either three days off or just one if they have to play a Game 7 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.

“Nah, we don’t think about that,” Hart said. “That’s just kind of that ongoing debate with never really much proof. We can sit there and be like, we play six or seven games, we’re in a good flow of stuff, they’re off for a week. They’re not in rhythm. It don’t matter . . . At the end of the day, we’ve got to take care of what we’ve got to take care of.

“Give those teams credit. They played tough series and were able to come out in four or five games. I don’t think any of us thought this series is going to be a cakewalk. This is a heck of a team over there with a really good coach and coaching staff. We respect them. So we’ve just got to make sure we focus on that. The other teams can get rest, it’s cool for them, you know. We’ve got to make sure we take care of what we can take care of and control.”

The other part of that is that the Knicks haven’t found that rhythm or flow yet even while building the 3-2 lead that they brought into Thursday.

“Not at all. Not even close,” Hart said. “I think we’ve had spurts where we’ve played very well and then we’ve had spurts where we’ve played terrible — i.e., that third quarter [in Game 5]. So we have to make sure we find ways to keep good flow and good rhythm all the way throughout the game. That’s playing faster, that’s making them make decisions, and when you make teams make decisions, you put them in a position to make mistakes. When you put them in that position, then you can counter and make them pay for those mistakes.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

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.