Jalen Brunson sat at the podium, moments after the Knicks were eliminated by the Pacers in the conference finals last year, and acknowledged how much had to happen just to get back to where they were.
They wouldn’t just start again in the conference finals. They’d have to go through the preseason, through the regular season, then climb through the playoffs once again. So many things would have to go right along the way. So many potential pitfalls would stand in their way.
Now comes the defining part.
“At the end of the day,” Karl-Anthony Towns said after practice Wednesday, “We’ll be judged on what we do on this run.”
All that matters is what comes next and how far the Knicks go this postseason. And just getting back to the conference finals won’t be good enough — Tom Thibodeau was fired after reaching the conference finals, after all. Owner James Dolan explicitly issued a Finals-or-bust mandate this season, despite Mike Brown being in his first season with the team.
There is no escaping that pressure. There is only embracing it, or folding under it.
What makes them believe they’re equipped to live up to it?
“To be honest, there’s a lot of things that go on that you guys don’t see,” Brunson said Wednesday. “A lot of things we talk about, a lot of things we do that we don’t even say publicly. For a reason — because we want to keep everything in-house. We want to make sure the people inside this building, inside that locker room, we’re all we got, no matter what.
“I have the utmost confidence in them.”
The trap, of course, is looking ahead to the final piece of that mandate — reaching the Finals — and overlooking the immediate challenge right in front of them in the Hawks.
Flash back to last year, and the Celtics and Cavaliers were widely expected to meet in the conference finals. Neither did. There were much bigger doubts surrounding the Knicks and Pacers, who ended up being the two teams in the conference finals.
They must perform every step of the way, meticulously delivering high-stakes results just to get back to where they were last year before they have a chance to exceed it.
“I enjoy that,” Brunson said. “I enjoy the process every single day. Yes, it’s tough. Yes. There’s times, there’s ups and downs and self-doubt creeps in maybe sometimes, but this is something that I enjoy doing and it’s something I worked my entire life for. So I embrace the opportunity.”
Those ups and downs were the theme of the regular season. With the Finals-or-bust mandate hovering over everything, their polarizing performances at times made it seem believable and at times made it seem inconceivable.
In truth, that pressure is not just starting now. It’s been a constant all season. They’ve known for a while now that if they fall short, all options are on the table in terms of what changes could be made.
“The highs are high and the lows are lows,” Towns said. “You just weather the storms, you stick with each other. That’s when team bonding and unity are so important, when things aren’t going well. It’s never when things are going great that team bonding is lacking. You test each other when things are going bad. We’ve had those highs of highs this year with the [NBA] Cup. We’ve had the lows of lows with the losing streak. And this team has stuck together. The locker room has been great. So it’s good for us to know that if things are not going well, we’re going to lean into each other and get closer.”
That volatility has also helped the best version of the Knicks emerge.
“We started off the year playing one way on offense and one way on defense and we made some pretty big changes throughout the course of the year,” Brown said Wednesday. “I don’t know if I’ve ever gone through a season with a team, as a head coach or as an assistant coach, making the changes that we’ve made with a group of guys. And them continuing to try to stay the course and believe and buy in and all that, to see that from a veteran group, when we’ve hit some adversity even during that time, has a lot to do with their makeup.”
From the moment Brunson delivered his message at the podium, close to midnight May 31, the only thing that has mattered is getting at least one step farther.
They’ve completed the preliminary steps in the preseason and regular season. Finally, here comes the defining part.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
