The Knicks seemingly cannot lose a game these days.
Remember when New York was closer to tanking the season than winning the East like, three days ago? Yeah, right.
Here’s a bunch of quotes as we approach the trade deadline coming off another dub on Wednesday.
**_On adjusting offensively on Wednesday:_**
“We had to throw out everything we had to do offensively in terms of sets and early offense and say, ‘Hey, if they’re up in you, go by them.’”
**_On OG Anunoby’s defensive impact vs. Toronto:_**
“\[Anunoby\] had six steals, seven deflections. Those numbers are unheard of defensively. The thing I loved about OG was his ability to attack the rim. He attacked the rim like a grown man. His finishes were unbelievable.”
**_On not caring about the standings in January:_**
“I haven’t looked at it recently, but I know we’re right there. There’s still a lot of basketball left. Every game is important. Try to go get it. But it’s not the end of the world because there’s a long season left. If we win, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to finish ahead of them. If they win, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to finish ahead of us.”
“I’ve got no control over it. You know how rumors fly left and right every day. Now what I do generally talk about is ignoring the noise. Not just during, quote-unquote, this trade time, but throughout the course of the year you’ve got to have a bunker mentality. There’s a lot of noise out there, whether you’re in New York, there was noise in Sacramento, there was noise in Golden State. There’s noise all over where we’ve been.”
**_On the Knicks’ players dealing with rumors:_**
“Our guys have been around the league a long time. And they know there’s a lot of noise around this time. They just got to deal with it.”
**_On the trade rumors around him:_**
“I feel like I’ve been in trade rumors a lot for a lot of times, for a year damn near. That don’t matter to me. I don’t look at social media or none of that stuff. I focus on the job on hand which is trying to get wins every single night. As long as I do that, I do my job, I go home happy and I feel accomplished. I’m not worried about what anybody got to say or people write or anything like that.”
**_On the Knicks’ priorities amid trade whispers:_**
“We only worry about one thing. That’s winning. So I got no reason to go into depth on anything else. It’s just at the end of the day the conversations revolve around one thing and one thing only every single day, 24 hours a day, is winning. How can we win? How can I help this team win? The sacrifices I’ve got to continue to make every single night for us to be the best version of ourselves. I’ve been willing to do that every single night, regardless of what anyone talks about.”
**_On his delightful pass to Mikal:_**
“I took a good guess that \[Bridges\] would be in that area, trusted him. Trust was rewarded, he was exactly where I thought he was and we were able to get two points and keep the momentum going.”
**_On trade deadline chatter:_**
“I don’t really care honestly until something happens. This is good content for people to get through until the trade deadline. Can’t really let that stuff affect you or get to you. Ninety percent of that stuff doesn’t actually materialize. You just kind of go with it.”
**_On self-reflection and accountability:_**
“In the past weeks, I was just feeling like I wasn’t being coachable to my standard. I don’t know what it was, maybe I was feeling too entitled. But it was something where I had to sit down and talk to myself a little bit, and just look at yourself in the mirror and what type of player I want to be. It was affecting me personally on both sides of the ball.”
**_On staying composed during Toronto’s first-half run:_**
“Just staying with it man, they came out going fast and pressuring us and we didn’t let that bother us. We stuck with it.”
**_On responding physically and emotionally on Wednesday:_**
“Once you get them legs going, and that competitive spirit comes out, we felt like they tried to punk us a little bit. And it kinda pissed us off. And we went from there.”
**_On his offensive turnaround:_**
“A lot. I think a lot of it comes from not just shooting the ball, but I wasn’t playing how I wasn’t supposed to be playing. I wasn’t coachable enough. I don’t know what it was. Maybe I felt too much entitlement but I had to just talk to myself about it and be coachable, be the best teammate I can be and let the basketball speak for itself.”