Wow what an amazing night. This team just delivers whenever the going starts to get tough, they've done it all season long. We are seeing all of the things Thibs preaches that sound cliche, night after night in post games throughout the season, all come to life. Building habits, conditioning your body etc.
While Brunson has been out of this world, every single night we get signature moments and signature contributions from an array of other guys and that array of guys seems to switch on a nightly basis. Definition of a TEAM and also props to Thibs for pushing the right buttons enough to find the winning formula to put us in a position to win 5 out of 6 games down the stretch.
The Deuce game, the Josh 3s in game 1, the Mitch 4th quarter D in game 1, the Bogie momentum 3s, the Dante heroics in game 2, the iHart rebound in game 2, the Precious/OG suffocation in game 4, the Dante 1st Q last night, the OG dunk, the Hart sealer. Brunson heroics sprinkled throughout. So many moments and every single player got a piece.
I understand the Josh Hart strategy, it worked for Miami, but is it me or does this guy have more game busting 3s in crunch time than anyone on our team? Even going back to Cleveland last year, this guy has won us a ton of games with late game 3s. I don't understand leaving him wide open, he has proven he will hit the big shots. Throw the numbers out the window when it's winning time.
I was perplexed when Thibs subbed iHart back in the game with tons of time left in the 4th Q. Embiid was hot all night and just taking it to iHart, our doubles when iHart was in were getting blasted with open 3s from their role players. Mitch was guarding him effectively straight up. I thought Thibs was trying to give Mitch 1-2 mins so he could finish the game. But he went with iHart and iHart delivered big time once again. I believe the same thing happened in game 2, where Mitch just looked like the better defender on Embiid but Thibs went with iHart who had one of the biggest rebounds in Knick history to lead to the Dante shot. iHart was huge down the stretch last night.
OG is low key the unsung hero last night though. He got us back in the game late in the 3rd quarter when it was getting dicey, and I think had 5 straight points to even it up going into the 4th. That was massive. This guy is a pure winner. I look around the league and think to myself sometimes how all these teams need an OG Anunoby or a Josh Hart and we have both those guys. The two best glue guys in the league in different ways and we have them both.
Looking at our box score, damn this team is close to having zero depth. Basically, Burks, Shake, and Precious are the only guys left with any sort of real NBA experience. Thibs needs to integrate one of these guys into the rotation for Indy, he has 4 days to get one of those guys ready. We can't play 7 guys all the way through. And with Mitch coming off the bench, it really leaves Deuce as the only guy who can provide any points at all. Indy has a deep bench that puts up a ton of points. We need to get some scoring support - I think Alec is the guy. With Brunson playing 40 minutes and Deuce rounding into form, I think Alec can come in and play off ball and just try to let the game come to him instead of playing pseudo-point guard. We need Burks now.
