won the NBA Cup<\/a>. The NBA Finals isn\u2019t guaranteed to anybody, and we\u2019ve gotta go and take the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s symbolic because the Knicks have adhered at least to a preexisting standard of excellence that\u2019s survived a coaching change and offensive and defensive philosophical overhauls. This Knicks team is not the same as the one that won over the hearts of fans during two consecutive 50-win seasons concluding Thibodeau\u2019s MSG tenure. Some might say this team is worse \u2014 less connected, less organized \u2014 than they were before Thibs came up short in the conference finals last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a good spot. We did a good job this year of dictating our destiny through the good and bad,\u201d said Towns. \u201cYou ask in the preseason, and you ask in training camp, that we control our own destiny. So we\u2019ve just gotta be better all around. We\u2019ve gotta be the best version of ourselves, be the sharpest tool. Right now, we just practiced, and at practice, we got a lot done. We\u2019ve gotta show it tomorrow [against the Celtics].\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why these final three games are so important, as are the implications of victory \u2014 or the ramifications of defeat \u2014 staring down the home stretch of the regular season.<\/p>\n
The Thursday-Friday back-to-back against the Celtics and Raptors is a playoff preview, as is the season finale against No. 9 Charlotte: If the playoffs started Wednesday afternoon, the Knicks would be scheduled to face the No. 6 Raptors in the first round and the No. 2 Celtics in the second. But the Knicks still have a shot at the No. 2 seed, provided they win the remaining three games and get some help via Boston losing two of their last three, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big believer in taking care of the present, and it\u2019ll take care of the future,\u201d said Towns. \u201cSo right now. We\u2019ve just gotta stay in the present. Tomorrow is the most important game because it\u2019s the next game in our season, and we\u2019ve gotta make sure we execute with discipline no matter what happens, we leave that court tomorrow feeling we got better.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of that is outside of the Knicks\u2019 control. What\u2019s within their control is adhering to the game plan, focusing on the details, playing for one another and, of course, starting games stronger. They have three games left, plus a week\u2019s worth of time to practice before the dress rehearsal is over and the real thing begins.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Last season, the Indiana Pacers went 50-32 and finished fourth in the Eastern Conference. They won the East, made it to the NBA Finals, and forced Game 7 against the juggernaut Oklahoma City Thunder. The season prior, the Dallas Mavericks won 50 games, ran through the West and made it to the NBA Finals as a fifth seed against No. 1 Boston.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a decade since two No. 1 seeds faced each other in the NBA Finals. The trend favors the Knicks, who fancy themselves as better than the teams currently ahead of them in the standings.<\/p>\n
The Detroit Pistons have had the Knicks\u2019 number, sure, in dominant fashion at that, this season. But the Knicks went 1-3 against the Pistons last year before beating them in six games in the first round last season \u2014 a series the Pistons remember vividly as a robbery of epic proportions. The Celtics, too, were expected to have a gap year of sorts given Jayson Tatum\u2019s career-threatening Achilles injury sustained in the second round against the Knicks last season. Boston also traded away both Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis.<\/p>\n
Yet barring an end-of-season meltdown, the Celtics are positioned, alongside the Pistons, to finish the year with better seeding than New York.<\/p>\n
Viewing the Knicks through such a prism would certainly cause concern: The Knicks brought back the same core that made it to the conference finals last year but are finishing worse in the standings than both teams they beat to reach Round 3 of the playoffs last year.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one way to look at it. Here\u2019s another.<\/p>\n
The Knicks have had growing pains all season long. A coach who changed the team\u2019s identity before his first day on the job. A pair of All-Stars who\u2019ve been asked to expand their games for the good of the players around them. A team that tasted a championship when it won the NBA Cup, then immediately began smelling itself a little too much and lost nine of an 11-game stretch. And now a team sitting on its exact same win total as last season, needing a victory over a playoff opponent to set the bar just an inch higher.<\/p>\n
The Knicks aren\u2019t worried about the standings. Brown isn\u2019t worried about Thibodeau\u2019s record. He\u2019s worried about two things: tomorrow and June. Everything else is the hyphen separating the present from where the Knicks have to be when the season\u2019s final buzzer sounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt depends,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cI think also, it\u2019s how you\u2019re winning games and all that stuff. Am I too big on the win-loss column as much, especially with how you\u2019re playing? You know, you can play a really good game and lose. I\u2019d rather, you know, in these situations, lose and learn from it in the regular season than, like, win a game and have none of our details and our values or not playing the right way.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, I think the win-loss column \u2014 I see both sides. Of course, you want to win. But, yeah, it\u2019s just how you\u2019re winning and, you know, if you\u2019re growing or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Brown swears on his grandson: He didn\u2019t know how many games the Knicks won last season under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,304,23817,3357,6,1136,191,3810,3806,1416],"class_list":{"0":"post-705774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-knicks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-knicks","10":"tag-kristian-winfield","11":"tag-mike-brown","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkknicks","17":"tag-tom-thibodeau"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116370773401799163","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}