Michael Jordan was sitting on the opposing sideline, and still this was going to be the Knicks’ big night. Jordan used to delight in tormenting the Knicks, home or away, to the extent that he later teased their executives about their futile pursuit of his Bulls.
But the greatest NBA player of all time has hardly been the greatest owner of all time, and the struggling Knicks were about to run Jordan’s Hornets right off their own floor. Better yet, they were about to do it with the point guard Jordan had drafted 10 years ago out of Connecticut, Kemba Walker, leading the charge.
The beleaguered Walker had walked into a homecoming lovefest — cheers from the fans, hugs from so many familiar faces — and the experience made him young again, made him that adored Charlotte All-Star again. Walker came out smoking in the first quarter, scoring 17 points as his Knicks took a 16-point lead. The Knicks had walked into the building carrying heavy baggage from recent games gone awry, but it seemed as if they would walk out hours later carrying a much lighter load.
Yet at the end of the night, Jordan was the one wearing a look of satisfaction on his face, his chin resting in his hand. The Knicks had fallen apart right in front of him, as if acting out a frayed script from the 1990s, and lost to the Hornets by a 104-96 count for their fifth defeat in their past seven games.
Having won five of their previous six road games, the Knicks’ worst moments this year have unfolded at home. They haven’t been able to protect their own court, and after their most recent Garden defeat, coach Tom Thibodeau reminded everyone that the Knicks had to start playing with nonstop intensity at home because every player in the league gets fired up to perform on the NBA’s answer to Broadway.
The Knicks didn’t have any available excuses Friday night, as nobody — not even the Hornets — gets all that fired up to play in Spectrum Center. The Knicks had the better team and the much more accomplished head coach, and that should have been enough to carry an early 16-point lead to the house. Only it wasn’t, in large part because Thibodeau’s starters broke down yet again in the third quarter, when Charlotte scored 12 of the first 13 points to flip the game upside down.
It got wild and crazy from there. The Knicks punched back with Immanuel Quickley 3-pointers and nasty Obi Toppin dunks. They recovered from an 11-point deficit to take a two-point lead into the closing minutes, all the hard labor handled by the Knicks’ remarkable second unit, which finished the game with a combined plus-minus ratio of +38. The starters? Make that a combined plus-minus ratio of -78.
Derrick Rose got banged up and had to hand the point back to Walker with 4:47 left, and it felt like a fitting twist of fate. In his first 11 games with the Knicks, Walker had averaged a career-low 11.3 points and a career-low 3.1 assists over a career-low 25.7 minutes, while posting a career-low player efficiency rating of 14.68. He had looked like an aging wide receiver who could no longer create separation in the secondary.
“I would like to put the onus on myself to be honest,” Walker said Thursday of the Knicks’ problems. Quarterbacking this team had been a childhood dream for the Bronx-born-and-raised Walker, and at 31, coming off a knee injury and playing poorly, he could’ve really used a happy ending on this feel-good night. Jordan had called Walker “a special player, with a tremendous heart and tireless work ethic.” This was the point guard’s chance to remind the GOAT of why he’d drafted him.
Walker did all of that, until the endgame got away from him. He missed a layup to tie with 4:29 left, and then missed a 3 to tie with 2:36 left. The Knicks were down six with 1:01 to play when Walker lobbed an inbound pass that was picked off by LaMelo Ball, who took it downcourt and pushed the lead to eight. Game, set, overmatched.
“We’ve got to find a way to be better,” said Walker, who still finished with a season-high 26 points.
“Right now we’re not playing as well as we can,” Thibodeau said, “so we have to fix it.”
Easier said than done. The Knicks’ two best players, Julius Randle and RJ Barrett (a combined 12 points on 5-for-24 shooting) were completely dominated by Miles Bridges and Gordon Hayward (a combined 46 points on 17-for-34 shooting). Thibodeau had benched his starting five for the entire fourth quarter in Wednesday’s loss to the Bucks, and had called the process of new teammates needing time to build chemistry “a bunch of bulls–t.” And yet his team didn’t respond to him.
So the Knicks left Michael Jordan’s gym looking like a total mess. Well, what else is new?