A blowout in 2023. Embarrassment in 2024. Maybe the third time’s a charm for the Knicks, who’ve become pros at the early-stage NBA Cup exit.
The Knicks have made it to the first round of the NBA Cup in each of the three years of its existence. And they’ll go 0-3 if they can’t get their road act together and handle business at the Scotiabank Center, where a new-and-improved (albeit struggling in recent weeks) Toronto Raptors team stands in-between the Knicks and a free trip to Las Vegas where the finalists will compete for the third-annual NBA Cup.
For the Knicks, it’s about more than just hanging a banner from the rafters at Madison Square Garden — though it’s been 52 long, gut-wrenching seasons since an NBA championship parade came down 33rd and 7th. It’s about competitive pride, one of the standards new head coach Mike Brown said is non negotiable in his first year on the job. And it’s about preparing for the long haul, becoming familiar with the duress that comes with playing games with your back against the wall.
It might not be the playoffs. The season isn’t hinging on misses and makes in December. But these NBA Cup games just might feel like the playoffs — and that’s as close as the Knicks are going to get to simulating year-end pressure before the new calendar year.
“Life is short, and you want excitement in your life, so you try to put yourself in positions where you have ‘pressure’ at times, and that’s something that if you’re a competitor and you want some excitement in your life, you embrace it,” Brown said after practice on Monday. “But also, it helps prepare you for times down the road when you’re put in the same situation, and so during the regular season, this is probably about as close as you can get to simulating a playoff run. And so we try to talk about it, add more pressure to it so our guys will embrace it, handle it the right way so our guys will go get it.”
The Knicks, of course, can’t even begin to think about pressure, stakes, or that ever-so elusive NBA Cup if they can’t advance past the Raptors on Tuesday.
Their Cup quarterfinal appearances have been painted with the brush strokes of heartbreak: The Knicks were dreaming of ways to spend their In-Season Tournament prize money in 2023 when elimination came in a 24-point beatdown at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks. And last season, the Atlanta Hawks stunned the Knicks on their own home floor, a defeat underscored by the unforgettable image of Trae Young rolling imaginary dice on the Madison Square Garden center-court logo.
“[I forgot about Trae rolling the dice] until you said it. It happened so long ago. So much stuff has happened,” Josh Hart said after practice on Monday. “I think every year, [we’ve] fallen short at this stage. We’ve got to get over this hump. So it will be a good test against a good Toronto team.”
Young’s antics are a thing of the past. But not the way the Knicks coughed up two trips to Vegas after qualifying for the quarterfinals in each of the last two seasons.
“The past is the past, but there has to be a level of urgency,” said team captain Jalen Brunson. “This isn’t a series. It’s a one-game series. This is win or go home so you’ve gotta be ready to go. There’s no easy win to this. So there has to be a level or urgency.”
Meanwhile, the Cup has its quirks, like a schedule that had yet to be announced as of practice on Monday. The Knicks knew they’d be playing against the Raptors on Tuesday. They didn’t know anything about their opponents beyond that date, as who they face next will vary depending on the result of the quarterfinal matchup.
Plus family members and loved ones want to tag along for the trip to Sin City, but the players don’t know if they’re going yet — and the flight prices, even for multi-million-dollar athletes, is steep. Brunson, for example, is a new father with a one-year old. It reminds him of the ebbs and flows of his childhood growing up in an NBA household during his father, Rick Brunson’s career.
“Yeah it brings up question marks, trying to plan especially around the holidays. You just don’t know,” he said on Monday. “But I feel like in this life, even as a kid, you just don’t know, things are always gonna change, plans don’t go as planned, you’re kinda just going with the flow. So it’s not the easiest thing in the world, but you don’t complain. You just trying to do what you’ve have to do and cross bridges when you have to.”
The Knicks are going to do just that: cross those bridges when they get there. They’re focused on Toronto. Win or lose, the attention shifts to who comes up next on the schedule. And if they’re fortunate enough to win it all, how excited will these Knicks be to hang an NBA Cup flag alongside the ’73 championship banner?
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” said Brunson.
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