Not too long ago, the New York Knicks were painted as a deeply flawed contender, a wannabe championship hopeful that was a brutal brew of too dependent on Jalen Brunson, defensively vulnerable, and hardly deep enough. As their Game 3 romp of the Philadelphia 76ers without OG Anunoby proves once and for all, they are actually none of those things.
Sure, the Knicks have been crescendoing into the Eastern Conference behemoth we see now for quite some time. But even with things going well, they engendered enough skepticism during the regular season to wait for the other shoe to drop—for Karl-Anthony Towns to fall off, for Mikal Bridges to vanish again, for Jordan Clarkson to remember he’s Jordan Clarkson, for the offense to recede into its time-old bouts of too much Jalen Brunson, and so on.
Well, the other shoe did drop. It just wasn’t any of the aforementioned ones. It was, in many ways, actually worse.
Anunoby is arguably the one player beyond Brunson the Knicks can’t afford to lose. And they lost him. Though he received a day-to-day designation with a right hamstring strain, the nature of the injury coupled with his own history ratchets up the iffyness.Â
New York was forced to soldier on without him in Game 3, a huge blow considering he’s both the lifeblood of the defense and, now, the No. 3 offensive option. It would be a stretch to say the Knicks didn’t miss him, but the manner in which they won undermines just about every concern critics hold.
The Knicks just did something insane without OG Anunoby
Beating the Sixers by 14 is cool. Doing so while delivering one of your best defensive performances of the postseason is even cooler.
The Knicks held Philly to just 1.02 points per possession. That is their second-best mark of the playoffs. And it came without Anunoby, the team’s best defender, and a legitimate candidate, if not lock, to make an All-Defense squad.Â
Credit goes to…virtually everyone. Mikal Bridges helped shut down Paul George after a red-hot first quarter. Landry Shamet fought his behind off. (The offensive foul he drew on Joel Embiid while chasing around Tyrese Maxey was absurd.) Deuce McBride pestered both of Philly’s star guards. Towns made Embiid work. Mitchell Robinson made him work even harder than that—all while hitting enough of his free throws to log a playoff-high 19 minutes. Clarkson’s defensive reinvention gets more authentic by the game. Brunson battled against Kelly Oubre Jr., even helping force a steal by jumping an entry pass.Â
This entire performance was a reminder of a development already underway, but still stunning: The Knicks’ defense is more than Anunoby. So much more.
New York is dispelling all of its biggest misconceptions
This stroll down Proving The Haters Wrong Lane doesn’t stop with Anunoby, or defense. It’s much bigger.
These Knicks are deep. Really, actually, deep.Â
So deep, that they have won the minutes without Brunson this series by 12 points, and are now a plus-44 without him for the entire postseason. So deep, they can mess around with minutes for Clarkson, Shamet, and Alvarado depending on the matchup. So deep, they’re ready and willing to dust off Ariel Hukporti before garbage time. So deep, that even without Anunoby, they can have Brunson playing off the ball more than he ever.
It remains to be seen whether these Knicks have enough to win it all. Tough challenges await. No matter what happens next, though, they've already shown that they enough to be what so many though they weren't: deep, defense-oriented, and adaptable.
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