New York fully a Knicks town once again

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

By Mike Vaccaro

This is how you know that the New York basketball globe is properly spinning on its axis again. The Nets fans inside Barclays Center were pleading for a satisfying fourth quarter from the nominal home team.

They kept trying out that mildly eerie “Broook-lyyyyn” chant. They tried to encourage the Nets to forget about the love-22 that the Clippers had slapped on them to close out Sunday’s game in Los Angeles, even as the fourth-quarter lead kept shrinking, from nine to six, back to eight, down to three, back to six, down to one.

Except it never mattered all night. The whole game, the invaders among the 17,732 kept overpowering and overwhelming the guardians of the Nets. There were regular chants of “M!V! P!” whenever Jalen Brunson did something reasonably electrifying, and at 30 points and four assists there were plenty of opportunities. There were the random and robust pleas of “LET’S GO KNICKS!”

And then came the hammer, the amplifiers jacked up at last to 11. There were 68 seconds left in a tie game. Dennis Smith Jr. drove the lane. Josh Hart got a hand up, maybe ticked it away. Precious Achiuwa swatted further, but the ball ricocheted into the hands of Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson. Johnson tried to shove a 6-footer over the fingertip of OG Anunoby.

Anunoby (four steals, two blocks) rejected it. The ball seemed to be skidding out of bounds, but Hart plucked it before it did. Hart found Randle at midcourt. Randle fed Jalen Bruson, and darted for the basket. Brunson zipped a bounce pass to Randle, who dunked it.

“Play of the year so far,” Brunson said.

“That’s our team,” said Randle (30 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, 7-for-7 from the line). “Those are the plays that win games. Winning play. Guys battling.”

That made it 103-101, Knicks, on the way to 108-103 Knicks, and it also filled Barclays Center with a roar that soon spilled out onto Atlantic Avenue as whatever Nets fans there actually were sprinted for the exits.

“That,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said, “is the unique thing about playing for the Knicks.”

It is when the Knicks are playing well, and when they are the better team, and they are on a nice little run now, 10-2 since the trade for Anunoby with the world-champion Nuggets on deck back at Madison Square Garden Thursday night.

Of course, even when the Nets were the star-studded carnival version of themselves during the fleeting peak of the KD/Kyrie/Harden experiment there would still be sizably throaty pockets of Knicks fans at Barclays, and Nets fans would return the favor across the Manhattan Bridge. But this was different. This rivalry switched from Jersey to Brooklyn 11 years ago. It’s never sounded quite like this before.

“The crowd,” Randle said, “was lit.”

And the Nets noticed, believe that. Bad enough that they’re in an indisputable (but, thankfully well-rested) 2-11 tailspin since everyone got the day off that dreadful night against the Bucks during Christmas week. The Nets were wearing their dark uniforms, which still feels weird at NBA arenas for home games.

Except it looked right on Tuesday night. And so did the Knicks wearing home whites.

“It felt like a friggin’ away game when they made their run,” said Nets star Mikal Bridges, who was brilliant for the first 3 ½ quarters with 36 points, including 7-for-13 from 3, but scored only three in the fourth quarter, missing four of his five shots.

The greater piece of satisfaction for the Knicks was the final score. The Nets didn’t exactly play like a team returning from the West Coast, and the Knicks didn’t exactly put them away because they were still a little too loose with the ball and were obviously missing Isaiah Hartenstein, down with an Achilles injury, despite Achiuwa and Jericho Sims combining for 12 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks (all by Sims) in his stead.

“I didn’t think we played particularly well but I loved how we responded in the fourth quarter [Knicks 32, Nets 18],” Thibodeau said. “It says a lot about who we are. Winning when you’re not at your best is huge.”

Said Randle: “[Me and Jalen] get a lot of attention. But everyone was battling tonight. Everyone had a hand in tonight.”

The Knicks will take a few steps up in class Thursday. They believe winning against bad teams, and winning when they spend most of the game looking like a bad game, helps solidify winning habits. We’ll see soon enough.