Good morning! It’s December. I hope everyone is in the holiday spirit, because this team is starting to get interesting…

13-6 overall (won 4 straight); 10-1 Home

If all you saw from this game was the first quarter and the final score, you’d have thought it was a pretty boring evening at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

After the Knicks got off to their hottest shooting start of the season thanks in large part to Deuce McBride nailing 4-of-5 from deep in the first five minutes, they cruised to yet another 40+ point quarter and a 19-point advantage. Between the end of the first and the final buzzer, they added three more points to that lead.

Nice and easy, right?

Not so much. The roller coaster that ensued over the middle portion of this win definitely came with a height requirement and was not for the faint of heart. Toronto stole all of New York’s early hot shooting, and despite the Knicks hitting nine of their first 13 from downtown and their opponent converting just 1-of-8 threes to start, the Raps briefly held the higher 3-point percentage midway through the third.

Between that and some physical defense to throw the Knicks off their game, a 24-point lead eventually shrunk to three thanks to an all-too-familiar outburst from Immanuel Quickley, albeit in a different uniform than the one he wore for so many previous explosions.

Making matters worse, neither Jalen Brunson nor Karl-Anthony Towns was there to the rescue. Brunson finished 6-for-19 for 18 points, and while he soaked up a lot of Toronto’s attention, this was still his second worst shooting night and second lowest point total of the season. As for KAT, his final stat line (22 points on 8-of-15 shooting) diminishes what was a constant struggle against Scottie Barnes. He deserves credit for sticking with it, but this wasn’t the night Towns broke out of his season-long funk. As a result, other heroes needed to step up.

Thankfully for the Knicks, quite a few were up to the task, but none more so than a guy who has been putting up All-Star numbers ever since he was inserted back into the starting lineup.

Josh Hart…

Who is he? What is he? Why is he?

Starter or reserve, sinner or saint, engine or impediment? We’ve seen it all over his 32 months (is that really all its been?) as a Knick.

Those fluctuations shouldn’t be surprising about someone whose heart on his sleeve is as easy to notice as the HART on his jersey. For a player who gets as much out of his physical attributes as anyone in the league, so much of Hart comes down to what is going on above the neck. When he’s confident, he is unstoppable.

And right now, everything is clicking.

The Knicks needed Hart in the worst way during the dicy portion of this game, and during a 16-1 run that turned this from a nail-biter back into a laugher, Hart scored eight straight points, including back-to-back threes, a steal, an offensive board and an assist.

In four games as a starter, Hart is averaging 17, 12 & 7 on 53/45/85 shooting splits, and yet somehow, that isn’t the most impressive part of what he’s doing.

For that, you have to take 1:43 to listen to Mike Brown talk about Josh after the game. I strongly encourage watching the whole thing, but if you can’t, here’s the part that resonated the most with me:

“We have a standard. That’s that contract that everybody signed. Its about sacrifice, connectivity, competitive spirit, but then a belief in each other, but just as much as that, a belief in the process. Josh was huge on two of those things. His sacrifice was unbelievable…but more importantly, his belief in the process…and when you’re a leader, you have to show that or embrace those types of things more than everybody else because you have to set the example, and if someone steps out of the realm of what our standard is, because you did it as a leader, now you can tell them ‘hey, come back over here’ because we all have to do it…he’s a special player, but he’s also a great human being to be around.”

For this team to achieve its goals, even more than who is hitting threes or how they’re guarding opposing pick and rolls, team-wide buy in and sacrifice has to be there in a big way. For Hart to respond like he has, both before and after he got this starting job, is the sort of thing that can unite a group. Its no coincidence that New York’s 11-3 November coincided with Hart getting back to playing at a high level, and when he’s going like this, they become an incredibly difficult team to stop.

The Raptors just found that out the hard way. I’m sure they’ll be ready to repay the favor when these teams meet again in nine days for the NBA Cup Quarterfinal, likely with RJ Barrett and Jacob Poeltl back in the lineup. Hopefully OG is back too, although Mike Brown said beforehand that they weren’t going to rush him despite the fact that he’s playing 3-on-3 and taking controlled contact. Either way, it should be a great game.

In the meantime, the Knicks are proving to be a far more versatile team than they were last season, with multiple looks they can throw at opponents that equate to more ways they can win games. Just last night, we saw them succeed with hot shooting and with defense, with five-out and with double bigs, and with neither JB or KAT as their best player during a key stretch.

That’s one hell of a menu of options for a team with this sort of talent, and it helped them get back up to second place in the East for the first time in a while.

And they don’t look like they’re done rising just yet.

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson

⭐️ ⭐️ Mikal Bridges

The last two spots were extremely close between Mitch, Mikal and Deuce McBride, who not only got off to an insanely hot shooting start but was exceptional at all the usual Deuce things throughout the rest of the game. Tyler Kolek also deserves a tip of the cap for another solid run as the backup point guard.

But I had to give some love to my guy Mitch for a season-high 15 rebounds in just 17 minutes of action. He grabbed more than a third of all available rebounds during his stint, and currently leads the league in rebound rate. It was the most Mitch has looked like Mitch in quite some time, which is probably the most significant big picture takeaway from this win.

As for Bridges, we’re now nearly a quarter of the way through the season and he has been New York’s most consistently positive player during that time. That showed itself during the third quarter especially, including during the play of the game:

Bridges has 64 total “stocks” (steals + blocks), which is tied with Scottie Barnes for first in the NBA.

Worth all of the picks.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Josh Hart: One game after taking the primary assignment on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Hart drew Scottie Barnes’ name last night and helped hold the likely All-Star forward to 18 points on 17 shots. Amidst all the criticism about his offense over the last year and change, his defense has also come under fire (and justifiably so at times). This week, Hart reminded everyone that he can d-up with the best of ‘em when he puts his mind to it.

Between that and 20, 12 & 7, Hart was an easy choice for top honors.

The Knicks are good, in case you were wondering.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”