Knicks have chance to create separation in East standings: ‘Don’t play with your food’
The Knicks haven’t played with their food all season.
If they keep cleaning their plate, they’ll create separation in the Eastern Conference standings.
With Saturday’s victory over the Washington Wizards, the Knicks improved to 14-1 over teams currently owning a losing record. The lone defeat came in Utah with a disappointing 117-113 loss to the Jazz amid a December skid.
Otherwise, the Knicks have been Teflon against teams who are below-.500.
The key to success against lesser opponents, according to Julius Randle?
“Don’t play with your food. Don’t play with your food,” Randle said. “Take care of what you’re supposed to take care of and just keep improving. [The] basketball gods got a funny way of rewarding you or humbling you. We just try to approach each game the right way and play basketball the right way. Let the chips fall where they may.”
It’s an approach the Knicks need to maintain if they hope to solidify their standing as a non-Play-In Tournament team.
The Eastern Conference playoff picture after the top three seeds in No. 1 Boston, No. 2 Milwaukee and No. 3 Philadelphia is a cluster-you-know-what.
The Knicks (21-15) were fourth in the East after Saturday’s victory in the nation’s capital, but after two consecutive days without a game, they have fallen to a three-way tie for sixth with the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat are tied for seventh and eighth, respectively, at 20-15.
That’s five teams within a half-game of one another. The Sixers only have a 2.5-game cushion above the No. 4 seed and proved to be vulnerable when the Knicks ran the score up so much at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center that it started to sound like a home game.
Any team below the sixth seed does not have its playoff status ensured. If the Knicks fall anywhere from seventh to 10th, they will have to participate in the Play-In Tournament, which is essentially a sudden-death showdown with playoff livelihood hanging in the balance.
That’s why it’s important the Knicks, as Randle so eloquently stated, don’t play with their food. And if food, in this case, is an opponent with a subpar record, the Knicks’ January plate looks like a Thanksgiving spread.
The Knicks will host the Portland Trail Blazers (10-25), who own the Western Conference’s second-worst record, on Tuesday — though it should be noted the Trail Blazers came back from down 10 in the third quarter to force overtime and beat the Nets (another below-.500 team) at Barclays Center on Sunday.
Of the Knicks’ 19 remaining games before the NBA All-Star break, nine are against teams with losing records.
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, however, is quick to note there’s nuance to both a team’s record and the circumstances that led the Knicks to beat a losing team in the first place.
The Los Angeles Lakers, for example, currently have a losing record (18-19), but no one in their right mind would consider a team with LeBron James and Anthony Davis a cake walk.
The Memphis Grizzlies are another team on the docket with a losing record, but they are 6-3 since Ja Morant returned to the rotation after serving a 25-game suspension.
Even the Wizards, as abominable as they have been with only six wins in 35 games, cut a 26-point Knicks lead down to five in the third quarter before the Knicks proceeded to run them out of their own gym.
“I know you guys measure all that [wins against losing teams], but to me there’s always context to it. A team may have a losing record when they have guys that are out, and I also know that every team in this league is capable of beating you,” Thibodeau said after beating the Wizards. “We just went through a stretch where we played some really tough teams and we got wins against the tough teams, too, or the so-called ‘tough teams,’ but in my eyes, the other 29 teams in this league are tough. You can’t get here without being a great player. You can’t.”
Twenty-one of the Knicks’ remaining 36 games are against teams who currently own a below-.500 record. That could change at any moment. For example, the Los Angeles Clippers had a losing record when the Knicks beat them in James Harden’s debut.
The Clippers are now nine games over .500 and are considered a legitimate championship contender. Things can turn in an instant.
The Golden State Warriors are another team with a losing record, but make no mistake: All it takes is one game for Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green to start clicking again.
The Knicks will face the Warriors twice this season: Feb. 29 and Mar. 18.
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Here’s what the Knicks’ schedule looks like through the next 10 games:
Tuesday vs. Portland (10-25)
Thursday at Dallas (22-15)
Saturday at Memphis (13-23, but 6-3 since Morant’s return)
Jan. 15 vs. Orlando (21-15, and defeated the Knicks, 117-108, on Dec. 29)
Jan. 17 vs. Houston (18-16)
Jan. 18 vs. Washington (6-29)
Jan. 20 vs. Toronto (15-21)
Jan. 23 at Brooklyn (16-21)
Jan. 25 vs. Denver (26-12)
Jan. 27 vs. Miami (20-15)
ESPN has the Knicks favored to win all but one of their next eight games, with the lone projected loss coming in Dallas against the superstar tandem of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
Saturday’s victory over the Wizards marked the Knicks’ eighth set of back-to-backs and their 22nd road game of the season.
They have five more sets of back-to-backs this season and 19 more road games to 27 home games.
Thibodeau said the team knew what rigors the season had in store when the schedule released over the summer.
“There’s times when the schedule’s heavy, and sometimes it’s in your favor,” Thibodeau said. “Sometimes it’s not, and that’s why we pressed from the beginning on being ready for what we were gonna face. And that’s why your conditioning is so important, your mental toughness is so important. I don’t care what it is that you have: You give the team whatever you have. So if you can play 10 minutes, you play 10 minutes. But you have to practice hard, you have to play hard, and build that habit. Either you’re building the habit to get through things or you’re building the habit to not get through things.”
