From time to time, it is perfectly delicious to play a game like this, to welcome a team like these Sacramento Kings to your home, as in many ways they are like the perfect enemy for the Homecoming Game. They are fun to watch, with lots of stunning young stars.
And they can’t keep a stop sign.
That’s how a team that will never be confused with Paul Westhead’s former Loyola Marymount teams can score 140 points in a single basketball game, as the Knicks did before a satisfied meeting of just under 2,000 fans at Madison Square Garden on Thursday at night.
There were times when Tom Thibodeau, the defensive whisper coach, looked like he was going to pass out watching the Knicks surrender at 121, but only coaches really care about games like this. As long as the home team ends on the left side of the hyphen, customers will be happy. And the Knicks, for the third time in the last 10 days, advanced to 0.500.
“We’re getting there,” said Thibodeau.
At 16-17, the Knicks are also slowly advancing towards the mid-season mark, three games before 36, so we have officially reached the point where we can ask ourselves, with data and information and 33 testimonials, exactly what is our standard recalibrated because this season should be.
Is it still normal to focus exclusively on the process?
Is it okay to focus on the possibility of the playoffs?
“I would say it is just as important,” said Thibodeau about 90 minutes before the game. “I don’t want us to get lost and go too far. I just want us to focus on what’s ahead of us. I think you start the season with [playoffs] in mind and all the things you need to do.
“You want to build these habits consistently. Practicing well is important, knowing your opponent well. If you start to distance yourself from that and look too far down the road, that’s when you’re going to get hit and fall. “
It’s fair. Still, victories became a habit of winning far more than anyone thought realistic in Thibodeau’s first year. They were, remember, by the Vegas virtual consensus, assigned an Over / Under number of 22.5 wins. They are well ahead of that pace. They are, in fact, square in the middle of an Eastern Conference that now appears to be divided into three different castes:
The well-defined elite: the Sixers, the Nets and (despite some poor quality moves recently) the Bucks.
Teams that fought, but logic and common sense insist that they will get it right and make a comfortable advance towards the top five: Celtics and Heat.
The dispute for slots 6 to 10.
And this is where the Knicks season becomes terribly intriguing, because on Friday morning they woke up tied with the Raptors for fifth place, involved in a fight that will almost certainly be a seven-team rock fight for the final five slots of the playoff in the East. At the moment, the Knicks, Pacers, Raptors, Bulls, Hornets, Hawks and Magic are all three losses from each other in the standings. Five of those seven will enter (assuming you don’t believe Washington’s recent turnaround is permanent; if you believe it, it will be five out of eight).
All of these teams have flaws and flaws, just like the Knicks. None of these teams have any reasonable chance of making any noise in the playoffs, assuming that things will fall into place as they are likely to happen in the second half. And so everyone will be asking the same question:
Process during the playoffs?
Heats throughout the process?
Both?
Both are ideal. But are both realistic?
“Think about what it takes to win every day and create the right habits,” said Thibodeau before the game.
“We’re getting there,” he would say afterwards, twice.
Where, anyway? On Saturday, the Pacers come to the garden and, suddenly, there are many intriguing things at stake. Another crack at 0.500. A chance to defeat a team in that crowded pile of suitors and contenders waiting to be sifted from side to side in the next few months.
And, of course: working on the process, which means keeping an eye on the prize, which means not rushing too far. It is still better to have thoughts about the playoffs existing only in feverish dreams. Maybe they can coexist, after all.