For three quarters Monday night, Tim Hardaway Jr. was the answer to a simple question: “What makes $71 million and is invisible offensively for the Knicks?” As that question, essentially, was being put to Hardaway, teammate Courtney Lee, standing nearby, interjected.
“He made a lot of good plays throughout the game, though,” Lee said.
He did. Then in the fourth, he appeared and was huge in the Knicks’ offense. During a head-spinning span of 2:04 especially, Hardaway also was the answer to, “Whose scoring burst saved the Knicks from a defeat of unspeakable embarrassment?”
Oh, Kristaps Porzingis crushed the Nuggets’ hearts with 38 points. But don’t overlook what Hardaway contributed in the eventual 116-110 victory. Hardaway crammed all 13 of his points into that game-saving fourth quarter, 11 of them coming in a row for the Knicks — all those in a span of 2:04.
“Just defending and focusing on the little things to keep us in it. Extra pass, rebounding. Boxing out. Getting 50-50 balls,” Hardaway said of his scoreless first three quarters, in which he missed all five of his shots. “When you’ve got KP pouring in, if their big men aren’t going to play defense on KP, which is ridiculous, I mean, why not keep feeding him the ball and let him go to work and do what he wants to do?”
Sounds logical.
As the Knicks kicked the Nuggets up and down the Garden floor, leading by 23 points early in the third quarter, Hardaway didn’t attempt a shot in the first quarter and took just three in the second, missing them all. He hoisted two more bricks in the third quarter, when the Knicks began unraveling amid alarming 12-turnover slop. The Knicks actually fell behind in the third quarter but regained themselves and took an 84-81 lead entering the fourth. They needed more help.
Then Hardaway finally got going. From 9:35 to 7:31 of the fourth, he scored 11 straight. The Knicks were clinging to an 89-88 lead. So Hardaway nailed a 3-pointer, finished in transition, then a pair of 3-pointers followed, with his triple at 7:31 providing a 100-93 lead.
“I was trying to be aggressive and pick and choose my spots to be aggressive, but tonight, it just wasn’t happening throughout the game, so I didn’t want to force too much,” said Hardaway, who was coming off his 34-point explosion in Cleveland. “I just realized how they were playing me, really uptight and trying to trap and get the ball out of my hands, so I just tried to do whatever I can to get the hockey assist, give it to a big and rolling and let KP or Enes [Kanter] or [Kyle O’Quinn] make the play.”
Until he had to.
“It was great to see him do that in the fourth quarter,” Jeff Hornacek said. “To miss all your shots going into the fourth quarter and then hit some big ones, that’s his confidence that’s his ability and his shooting. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t hang his head, didn’t aim his shots. He just let it fly and he hit some big ones.”