If you hadn’t watched a game between the Knicks and the Heat after the ‘90s, yesterday’s matchup must have felt like two games rolled into one.
New York and Miami combined for the most points ever in a head-to-head, and even then, the most surprising thing was a man called Landry Shamet.
Here’s everything said before and after yesterday’s events.
**_On the defensive challenge against Miami:_**
“We have to do a better job of guarding the basketball. A lot of the quote-unquote top teams in the league, if you look at it, give up the most threes per game because they’re shifting and protecting the paint because it’s easier to score in the paint than outside the paint, so we’re no different. When you play a team like Miami, they really put a premium on you guarding the ball first and then your shifts being in the right position and making sure you’re able to get out to shooters to be the second jumper. We’re getting better in that area, but tonight’s another test for us to see where we’re at because of the uniqueness of how they play in that regard.”
**_On Miami’s transition offense:_**
“Their transition is unbelievable. They just keep coming at ya, keep coming at ya, keep coming at ya, whether it’s a make or a miss. And so we have to do a fantastic job with our transition defense for 48 minutes because they’re capable of putting up 150 points in the blink of an eye.”
**_On the high-scoring game vs. Miami:_**
“Fun game for the fans, probably. It was almost like a glorified pick-up game with good spacing… on both ends of the floor, and both teams were just hooping. They’re so hard to guard, they just catch the ball, they snap drive, they put their head down, and as soon as they feel contact, they almost explode into you.”
**_On overcoming the Heat’s foul-drawing ability:_**
“This is the first time we won a game where a team shot 30+ free throws. It was extremely hard to keep them off the line.”
**_On Josh Hart’s triple-double and defensive impact:_**
“We won the possession game barely, and we needed every one of those 50-50 balls that he came up with. So heckuva job by Josh, getting a triple-double tonight.”
**_On the in-game decision to play zone defense:_**
“We were having trouble guarding them off the dribble, and so we just wanted to try and junk up the game, give them a different look, see if we could get them out of rhythm a little bit. You think that it worked, but I don’t know, it’s a good team, and Spo is a great coach. They missed a few out of it. We gotta do a better job rebounding it. But the reality is, we worked on the zone one day, and it wasn’t the zone that we used tonight. We kinda just threw that together, and our guys did, not a great job, a helluva job of responding and reacting to the zone that we called on the fly.”
**_On the rematch with the Heat next Monday:_**
“We gotta keep trying to guard the ball better by showing our hands and hopefully they don’t get these calls the next time we play ‘em.”
**_On the coaching staff’s role in the win over Miami:_**
“My fricken’ staff was unbelievable. Chris Jent was fabulous. Rick Brunson was fabulous. Brendan O’Conner, they were all really good and they were on point helping me with substitutions, mixing in zone, figuring out where we need to go with the ball offensively.”
**_On Landry Shamet’s performance on Friday:_**
“As a new coach, you watch the tape from last year, and what I saw last year, he shot almost 40% from the 3. But more than anything else, defensively, you feel him defensively.”
**_On Shamet’s all-around game vs. Miami:_**
“People can sleep on him if they want, but if you think of him at Wichita State, he was a point guard then and was extremely athletic. He will dunk on you in a heartbeat. It’s not just about his shooting, and he’s making great decisions.”
**_On managing player minutes for long-term success:_**
“The biggest thing is, you know, trying to make sure you watch everybody’s minutes instead of trying to chase games. There might be some games that, maybe throw the towel in early. You know, just instead of – if you’re in that many close games, just instead of chasing every single game – it’s important to win, but you also have to understand, ‘hey, I want to keep this guy’s minutes here, this guy’s minutes here, this guy’s minutes here, instead of trying to extend everybody’s minutes. Because if the season is long, we don’t want anybody worn out by the end of the season.”
**_On leaving Jalen Brunson in the game late vs. Orlando:_**
“I’ve been a part of some crazy, crazy comebacks. I’m trying to win the game. A couple minutes left. A stop and two 3s, and it’s a two-possession game. That’s all I was trying to do, is win the game.”
**_On his decision-making around when to pull starters:_**
“If I feel like our guys are still being competitive and still trying to play the right way and win the game, and I feel like there’s a chance, then I’m going to try to win the game.”
**_On Brunson’s ankle injury and diagnosis:_**
“I don’t try to figure out much about the medical. I don’t know much about the technical terms. When somebody says \[an\] MRI or X-ray or whatever is negative, that’s a good thing. So when I heard, ‘Negative,’ I was like, ‘Great.’ But when they say Grade-this, Grade-that, I couldn’t tell you. But you never want anybody hurt, let alone somebody on your team and somebody in the caliber of Jalen.”
**_On the team handling Brunson’s absence:_**
“This is a process. It’s about having the next-man-up mentality. If this guy’s out, next man step up, and you don’t have to do anything extraordinary. Just do your job. No different for me. If a guy is down, I’ve got to do my job and not try to be too creative.”
**_On the team’s mentality without Brunson and Anunoby:_**
“It’s about the next man up. Who that next man is gonna be, I don’t know. There was no way I could tell you that some of these guys were gonna score the ball the way they did. … We have a standard that we’ve all bought into, that we’ve all embraced.”
**_On his offensive role:_**
“We have a system that bodes well for connectivity. The ball moves. It can be any one of us any night. I think we were just playing within our system. Sometimes shots find you.”
**_On stepping up in Brunson’s absence:_**
“Whatever it takes. We’ve got Jalen out. We lose OG early there, and we got great contributions across the board from everyone. It’s the mentality we have to have and we’ll continue to have.”
**_On the team’s mentality:_**
“What makes this group special, we got a lot of guys that just care about winning. Whatever it takes, we got Jalen out, we lose OG early there and we got great contributions across the board from everyone. It’s the mentality we have to have and we’ll continue to have. It’s next man up. A lot of teams talk about that, but I think this group really embodies it, and will continue to.”
**_On the team’s defense vs. Miami:_**
“Wasn’t great tonight defensively. None of us were. We didn’t guard like we are accustomed to, but that’s a credit to them, too. They drive the ball at you every single possession; it’s hard to guard. Credit to them. We definitely gotta be better, I gotta be better on that front. Taking pride on that end of the floor, shots aren’t always gonna go in, can’t control that all the time. So we gotta be a team that’s gonna win games defensively… so, that’s gotta be the constant.”
**_On the MSG crowd:_**
“These fans know I love them. I’ll say that till I’m blue in the face, love it. Love the energy every night. Cup game on a Friday, it’s as good as it gets. It was very fun.”
**_On Shamet’s breakout performance:_**
“It was huge, him coming out, being aggressive, knocking down shots, playing off the dribble. He was amazing for us today. That’s something that was big for us. We need him to keep that confidence and continue to be rolling.”
**_On stepping up with Brunson out:_**
“JB was missing the game today and we all had to step up and contribute to our team, so I wanted to do my best to pick up the offense that he gives our team. And in the first half, I did a good job of that. In the second half, I wasn’t trying to force it. I’ve had those days, so I was just letting the game come to me and Landry Shamet is a big reason \[for that\].”
**_On the Knicks being more dangerous without Brunson:_**
“Him being out actually kind of makes them a little bit more dangerous, too, just because they move the ball more. They’re not really stagnant, they’ve got guys, defensively, who can really guard. Like Miles McBride, he can really guard.”