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The New York Knicks are about to fully form a legendary four-team grouping.
Alas for New York, it won't be partaking in Thursday's semifinal round of the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament. The loss that eliminated them, Tuesday's 146-122 shellacking at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks, suggests there will be yet another addition to their 23-year conference finals appearance drought.
Instead, the Knicks will become just the fourth team in NBA history to play 42 official road games in a single season and the first since the Bucks in 1979-80. They're joined by the 1974-75 Seattle SuperSonics and the Houston Rockets group from the year after.
Such a scheduling quirk emerges from the aftermath of the Knicks' In-Season Tournament run: falling to the Bucks has forced New York (12-8) into a de facto Eastern Conference third-place game against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden on Friday night (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG/NBA TV).
Had Boston won its quarterfinal, the Knicks would've hosted the Indiana Pacers at Madison Square Garden. Though the Pacers won their group, the Knicks would've won homecourt thanks to the same point differential that allowed them to steal the East's lone knockout round wildcard spot afforded to the top runner-up.
Instead, Manhattan's Garden is empty while the Pacers make the trip to Las Vegas to play the Bucks for a berth in the championship game on Thursday late afternoon (5 p.m. ET, ESPN). While Milwaukee is considered the home team, each side got its 41st home game by hosting their respective quarterfinal match. The Western quarterfinal losers, Phoenix and Sacramento, found perfect scheduling balance: the Kings hosted New Orleans in their quarterfinal but will go to the desert thanks the the Suns' margin.
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau isn't crying foul over the discrepancy, simply chalking it up to the flaws of a brand new concept.
"Any time you do something for the first time, it’s not going be perfect,” Thibodeau, whose stance on the In-Season Tournament has warmed throughout the process, said in a report from Kristian Winfield the New York Daily News. “I think everyone understands that. I think, for the most part, (the In-Season Tournament) has been very positive.”
Losing a single MSG date is one thing, but the Knicks' bad luck doesn't end there: their tournament games, the lone dates left open on the release of their 82-game schedule, come against Milwaukee and Boston, the top two seeds on last year's Eastern Conference playoff bracket.
With that in mind, it appears that the Knicks are being punished for doing the right thing. Whereas their brief but prosperous tournament run forced them into extra matchups with the Bucks and Celtics, some of their contemporaries who failed to reach the knockout stage got off fairly easy: both the Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers, for example, got to play the Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards (combined 12-26 record) in their own consolation slates.
The Knicks on the floor have responded with varying layers of sarcasm. Josh Hart took to X to declare his facetious "love" of the "IST" while Julius Randle jokingly entertained the idea of the idea of playing the Detroit Pistons in Whitfield's report, though his original response to the query perhaps hinted at his true feelings.
“What do you want me to say?" Randle rhetorically, calmly asked on Thursday during his public comments at the Knicks' Tarrytown practice facility, per Barbara Barker of Newsday. "It’s bull****?”
Detroit, far and away the NBA's worst at 2-19 and mired in an 18-game losing streak, instead drew Memphis and Orlando to round out its schedule.
But the Knicks are staying positive in the wake of this unique adversity, claiming that the extra showdowns against the Bucks and Celtics give them a chance to hone their skills against the NBA's finest. New York has handled business against lesser competition this season (10-0 against teams with records currently at .500 or worse) but has struggled against the class of the conferences (2-8, including 0-4 against Milwaukee and Boston).
“I think you have to choose how you want to frame it in your own mind, and I like to think of the positive of it,” Thibodeau said in another report from Winfield. “So I think when you’re facing those types of teams, it makes you better and so that’s the way I want to approach it, and so if we’re doing the right things, good things are going to happen.”
“Life’s not fair,” Brunson said, per Winfield. “It is what it is. It’s all about how you respond to certain situations. It’s all about how you build your team to be the best by the end of the year. We are going to continue to get better one day at a time. … There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
More must-reads:
- Watch: Kyrie Irving helps Mavs erase 31-point deficit in Game 4 vs. Clippers
- Stephen A. Smith blasts NBA for not suspending Russell Westbrook
- The 'Most points in a playoff game by team' quiz
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