The 44-25 Knicks host the 15-53 Pacers on Tuesday.
If you’re a casual fan, you’ll skip this one. If you know the New York-Indy history and the no-tanking-against-NY policy of the Pacers, you’ll be glued to your streaming device of preference.
Here’s the latest from your superheroes.
Mike Brown
On relying on comebacks to win games:
“Our group, it starts with me as a head coach, we have to figure out how we don’t have to go into games relying on some amazing comeback because we did not start the game the right way.”
On whether Bridges should rest:
“If our performance group says this guy needs a rest or that guy needs a game to get their body right, mind right, whatever it might be, 100 percent, I’ll give anybody a game. That’s something that’s done collectively. I’m not going to say, ‘You sit; you play; you sit; you play,’ because not everybody is the same. But we all have to play better than the way we’re playing right now, especially to start games.”
On Bridges’ struggles and team play:
“We all have to play better. It’s no secret Mikal has not shot the ball well. But he’s given us life, at times.”
On calling early timeouts:
“With a veteran team that has won and has experience at a very high level, I shouldn’t have to call two timeouts in the first six minutes of the ball game, and I’m not talking X’s and O’s.”
Jordan Clarkson
On staying ready despite limited minutes:
“I’ve been doing the same thing my whole career in terms of my consistency of, coming to the gym, getting shots up, getting ready. The work’s been solid and consistent, and I think I just hold my hat on that and let the cards fall where they may.”
Mikal Bridges
On the struggles to find his role on the Knicks’ offense:
“Sometimes, you try to get open, and sometimes, it doesn’t find me. Just try to find ways to stay aggressive; that’s it.”
Jalen Brunson
On never being a finished product:
“I’ve said this many times: We never want to be a finished product. We never want to think you’re good enough at any point of the season. You always want to find ways to get better. There’s certain aspects of the game that each team goes through on a weekly basis or a game-by-game basis where things get better or things get worse, and you’ve got to make sure you’re the best teammate you can be completely. There’s always things to work on.”
Karl-Anthony Towns
On lacking early-game aggressiveness:
“I mean we’re just not playing as aggressive, as physical, as we do when we’re down. It’s a little bit like the recipe we played with last year. We played with fire a lot. We just always came out on the other side unscathed. Down 20 in the playoffs and found ourselves winning those games. Like I said last year and I’ll say it again, that’s not a recipe for success. But it’s great when you know you can do that. The game’s never too out of hand for us to have confidence we can win the game. Yeah, we’re playing with fire. Even Sunday night, all of you all were sitting in media row like, ‘they’re going to get whupped up tonight,’ especially when you see 21 points they’re up . . . I mean, it looked bad. It looked bad in Utah, too. Like I said, it’s not a recipe for success. This is not something to be proud of. But this is something that, I said it last year, inexpensive expensive lesson. It’s expensive that you had to work so much harder to get the win, but it’s inexpensive because it didn’t cost us anything. We got the win. That’s the only thing that really matters at the end of the day.”