I’ll open this with a question.
What were you feeling as the Knicks inbounded, down by two, with three seconds to play on Wednesday?
Feel free to put your own thoughts in the comments, but my feelings were more acceptance than anything else. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that between Deuce McBride, Mikal Bridges, Karl-Anthony Towns, and OG Anunoby that the Knicks couldn’t make a shot to tie or win the game.
It’s that they just don’t do it.
On December 26, 2012, the Knicks were facing the Phoenix Suns in a late-night dogfight. In a tie game with one second left, Jason Kidd inbounded the ball to J.R. Smith, who sped around a screen by Tyson Chandler to rise for a long two over current Knicks hypeman P.J. Tucker as the buzzer sounded. In typical J.R. fashion, he drained it.
It was Smith’s second buzzer-beating game-winner in the month, as the Knicks improved to 21-8 on the season.
Since that moment, only two Knicks have replicated a feat that J.R. did twice in a month.
Now, no team will inherently shoot well in a frantic buzzer-beating scenario, but the Knicks went just 1-for-36 from the start of 2013 to the night of Mikal Bridges’ heroics. Hell, that number might be low if we widen the parameters and include some near-misses.
You might think that this total is skewed by desperation heaves, but very few of the 37 are from halfcourt or longer. Kyle O’Quinn chucked up a 70-footer that didn’t come close in December 2016 (in a play that also involved PJ Tucker), Evan Fournier just missed a halfcourt bomb in November 2021, and Immanuel Quickley threw up a 60-footer as the entire basketball world was in relative shock after the Mavs’ improbable nine-point comeback on the Knicks in December 2022.
Granted, that doesn’t mean all of the other 34 were close to going in. During the dark period, the Knicks deferred their final shots to guys like Elfrid Payton, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Tim Hardaway Jr. Some of these weren’t even close.
The worst attempt of them all, to me, was Carmelo Anthony’s “floater” attempt for the win on January 20, 2016 against the Utah Jazz.
Yeesh. Melo had a few of these, going 0-5 at the buzzer from 2013-17 including some horrible misses. He also had a few that didn’t count, but set up a few tip-ins that wouldn’t go.
Julius Randle is the only other person to attempt more than three of these shots. In his five attempts, he almost always went with his signature stepback fadeaway, missing a pair in the 2020-21 season and another on Valentine’s Day 2022.
Aside from Melo and Randle, JR Smith is the only other person to attempt more than two, missing a tip-in in 2013, a same-spot jumper against Phoenix in early 2014, and a good look from 3 in November 2014.
Jalen Brunson has only attempted two, missing both in heartbreaking fashion.
The first one was after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hit a tough midrange over Deuce McBride with two seconds left for the lead, Brunson almost hit the answer right in SGA’s mouth, but alas.
Earlier this season, Brunson looked to bail out a critical Josh Hart mistake (this sounds familiar) with a buzzer-beater for the win against the Bulls. It rimmed out.
Of course, I cannot neglect to mention the only made buzzer-beater between January 2013 and March 2025. RJ Barrett went 1-for-2 in these spots as a Knick, but his iconic 3 that called bank to walk off the Celtics in Madison Square Garden is forever legendary.
Improbably, this remains the only Knicks’ buzzer-beating game-winner at MSG since David Lee’s tip-in on December 20, 2006 in double overtime against the Bobcats:
Barrett and Bridges are the only two to make a buzzer-beater for the win, but Kristaps Porzingis was a milisecond away from having one on Veteran’s Day 2015 in Charlotte:
Come on. Are you serious?
Pain.
Going season-by-season with these 37 instances, five different seasons have had four such opportunities. This season alone has had six.
The first was the aforementioned Bulls game. After that, you had KAT’s blocked alley-oop layup against Washington:
Since the New Year, we saw two mind-boggling game-winner attempts from Anunoby and Bridges on shots nobody thought was going in. Anunoby tried a stepback against the Sixers in January and Bridges shot a grenade off the side of the backboard earlier this month.
Only twice in this study did I find two in one game. Remember that 4OT game in 2017? It featured zero.
A May 2021 matchup with the Lakers saw a pair of misses by Randle and Barrett, but the other one was just two days ago.
Remember Deuce not even coming close at the end of regulation from 35 feet? That counts.
And, of course, the one that will leave a fond memory as a bright spot of this season, regardless of how it ends:
(All 37 attempts can be found here)