By this point, it should’ve been expected, anticipated, foreshadowed, predicted — anything but surprising. This is who the Knicks are. This is who Tom Thibodeau wanted them to be. They can adapt to the unadaptable, adjust to the unadjustable, turn even the most impossible scenarios into something that seems, at the very least, possible.
That was the case again Sunday, when Precious Achiuwa jumped toward Joel Embiid in the final minutes of Game 4 and swatted a 3-point attempt into the Wells Fargo Center seats. The mid-season acquisition — an afterthought in the OG Anunoby deal — hadn’t even played in Games 1 and 2 of the Knicks’ first-round series against the 76ers. He probably wouldn’t have played in Games 3 or 4, either, if Mitchell Robinson’s left ankle hadn’t encountered a setback, and Achiuwa almost certainly wouldn’t have been on the court in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter if starting center Isaiah Hartenstein hadn’t picked up five fouls in the third frame.
But for most of the regular season, the 2023-24 edition of the Knicks constructed a reputation based on figuring out how to resourcefully win games despite strange, bizarre, how-is-this-happening circumstances.
That has carried over into the playoffs.
They won with Jalen Brunson scoring fewer than 25 points and with the star guard pouring in a team playoff-record 47. They’ve won with Robinson and without him. They won as Hartenstein navigated foul trouble and with Achiuwa closing. They won with Miles McBride on the court in clutch moments instead of Donte DiVincenzo, and they won with DiVincenzo hitting the go-ahead 3-pointer. They’ve done all of this with their second-best player, Julius Randle, sidelined for the season.
It’s one thing for that to happen in an innocuous Game 45 or an irrelevant Game 33. The Knicks are built to win in different ways. That’s required in an 82-game marathon. But this is the playoffs. This is the point in the season when teams have blueprints and do everything possible to avoid straying from them. But now, the Knicks’ versatility has them positioned to close out their first-round series with a win at the Garden on Tuesday night.
Game 1 was the McBride game. The third-year guard — not a regular member of the rotation until the Knicks shipped Immanuel Quickley to Toronto at the end of December — scored 21 points in 28 minutes off the bench, picking up the slack while Brunson shot 8-for-26 and prompting the Garden crowd to chant his name by the final buzzer.
It was already different by Game 2. Josh Hart’s 19 points in the first half were beyond unexpected — he’d scored 19 or more points just five times during the regular season, let alone across a 24-minute stretch. But with Brunson struggling again, it bought the Knicks time, and DiVincenzo, the franchise’s leader for 3s in both a game and a season, buried one of the eight 3s the struggling guard has hit in the series to spark a miraculous, last-minute comeback. Thibodeau demoted DiVincenzo to the bench in crunch time at times against the 76ers. But the Knicks certainly needed him on the court at that moment.
And Sunday turned into the latest formula that ended with a Knicks victory. This time, Brunson was at the center of it with his 47 points, the vintage performance that felt like it’d happen at some point. Because this was Brunson. The Knicks will always go as far as he carries them. Still, they needed Anunoby’s double-double, Hart’s 17 rebounds and, of course, Achiuwa’s key minutes down the stretch to snag a 3-1 lead.
The Knicks are built to win in different ways because they have to be. If they win Tuesday, or even if it takes until a Game 6 or 7 to eliminate the 76ers, would any of this work again in the second round against the Pacers or in the Eastern Conference finals against presumably the Celtics? The Pacers will test the Knicks with their pace, which was the second-highest in the NBA (102.16) behind only the Wizards. The Knicks finished last in that category.
Could that challenge the Knicks if they’re counting on rotation members to log 45 minutes, especially if Robinson and Bojan Bogdanovic — who exited Game 4 with a left ankle contusion and won’t play in Game 5 — miss time? Will the Knicks run out of steam? There are counters to all of these ways the Knicks can win and have won, but Philadelphia just hasn’t uncovered those yet.
So by the end of Tuesday night, the Knicks might discover a fourth different way to win a postseason game with their current roster. Maybe Brunson will carry them again. That’s the most sustainable, and repeatable, way to string together playoff victories. They can’t bank on any of the others happening often or ever again, and that, at its core, is why the Knicks are a contender to begin with.
Today’s back page
The anti-Yankees route
It took time, but the Orioles have started to benefit from their years of irrelevance. Their lineup Monday night in a 2-0 win to start a four-game series against the Yankees captured that.
Starter Grayson Rodriguez was the No. 11 overall pick in 2018. Catcher Adley Rutschman went No. 1 overall the next year. That was followed by Heston Kjerstad (No. 2 overall in 2020), who’s a reserve outfielder, and starting outfielder Colton Cowser (No. 5 overall in 2021). Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 overall pick in 2022, reached the majors this month with an early-season tear in Triple-A, but a putrid 2-for-34 start resulted in a return to the minors.
The Orioles possessed a top-11 pick for five consecutive years — that’s what at least 87 losses in four of those seasons will lead to, and it doesn’t even count 2019 second-round pick Gunnar Henderson — and stockpiled plenty of strong draft picks, and it allowed them to construct a core that should remain stable for most of the next decade. The blueprint wouldn’t work for every franchise. But in the short-term, they entered the four-game set with the Yankees a game out of the AL East lead. In the long-term, they’ve likely become the team to beat, or at least keep pace with, in the division.
During recent years, that was the Rays. They were the analytically driven organization that found pitcher after pitcher and hitter after hitter out of nowhere, assembling them into a roster that would near — or in one case reach — 100 wins but could never quite get over the World Series hump. They were the model for consistency.
Now, though, the Orioles are in the early stages of stealing that label. They ended up taking a similar path that the Astros used — which makes sense, given that general manager Mike Elias was an assistant GM in Houston, as The Post’s Joel Sherman wrote in February — in adding George Springer, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker between 2011-15. That nucleus has shaped the Astros’ run to the ALCS in seven consecutive seasons. Two of those ended with World Series titles.
But reaching those eras of dominance takes patience. They’re tough sells for fanbases. Five years, at least, of MLB irrelevance? Or 100-plus losses? Or seasons where seemingly everyone knows where they’ll end — on the outside of the playoff picture — before they even begin?
It’d be a difficult path for the Yankees to ever embark on, given their reputation set in the past, the pressure from fans and the expectation from ownership for being consistently good. They’ll oftentimes trade away top prospects to land established stars and remain on that path. But it certainly appears to be an effective route for the Orioles.
The latest on LeBron
The time of year when LeBron James figures out his NBA future has become an unofficial part of the league’s calendar.
After the Lakers were swept by the Nuggets in the Western Conference finals last year, James gave a cryptic answer in his press conference that included the line, “I’ve got a lot to think about.” He was 38 years old at the time. He’s 39 now. The stretch of unknown in the immediate aftermath of a season — when emotions are raw, the sting of a season-ending loss still present — is something that most aging athletes experience, but it’s even more amplified for someone such as James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
And after the Lakers lost, 108-106, to the Nuggets in Game 5 of their first-round series Monday night and were eliminated from the playoffs, James’ future has become a topic of discussion again. He didn’t want to address whether that was his final game with the Lakers, but The Athletic reported that the Lakers might be open to drafting Bronny, his son, in June to help James “fulfill his dream” and perhaps that would help keep James in Los Angeles for next season.
James dropped plenty of coy comments — or were they hints — about his future throughout the 2023-24 campaign, a year where he made the All-Star Game again and averaged 25.7 points per game on a Lakers team that earned the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference. At the All-Star Game, James admitted that he didn’t know how his basketball future would unfold, but he added that he hopes it’ll involve the Lakers. Then, after Los Angeles’ game against the Nets at Barclays Center in March, James admitted that he doesn’t have “very long” left in his career.
“I’m on the other side of the hill,” James told reporters at the time. “I’m not going to play another 21 years. That’s for damn sure. Not very long. I don’t know when that door will close as far as when I retire, but I don’t have much time left.”
So this is where it gets interesting. James could opt out of his contract. He could activate a player option for 2024-25 and make $51.4 million. He has always expressed a desire to play with Bronny, who just completed his freshman year at USC, declared for the 2024 NBA Draft and entered the transfer portal.
There are plenty of variables that could determine James’ next step. But with the Lakers’ season over, those points and discussions have become relevant again.
Net gain
Gotham FC didn’t necessarily have a goalkeeper problem. Cassie Miller, whom it acquired from the Kansas City Current in January, had started the first four NWSL games of 2024 and allowed four goals. It didn’t help that Gotham’s offense, across that stretch, managed just two — with both scored by Esther González.
But in their 1-1 draw against Racing Louisville FC on Sunday, Ann-Katrin Berger made her team debut in net after Gotham acquired her earlier this month — in exchange for a transfer fee — from Chelsea FC Women and produced a strong first impression. She made four saves, including a key one in the 99th minute to preserve a point for Gotham, and allowed just the one goal.
There are plenty of problems on offense that Gotham needs to fix. Its three goals scored this season rank last in the NWSL, though it tallied a season-best 19 shots on target against Louisville. Rose Lavelle subbed into the match in the 74th minute to mark her Gotham debut, while Lynn Williams created plenty of other opportunities while attacking down the left side of the field.
But if Gotham ever needed a goalie spark, it appears that they have another option to consider.
“I obviously had played against her a little when I was at [Manchester] City, and so, like, I immediately knew, I was like, ‘She’s really frickin’ good, and she’s gonna … elevate this group that much more,’” Lavelle, who missed the start of the year due to a leg injury, said. … She’s great with her feet, she has a good … soccer mind, and then she comes up in big moments. She’s somebody who is gonna make us so much better, and she’s somebody who’s gonna make us better in training, too, in the piece that we need to maybe get better at — the final third and the finishing — because you’re gonna have to be really frickin’ good if you want to score on her.”
What we’re reading 👀
⚾ Luis Severino kept Mets fans glued to their seats Monday night in taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning. A walk, a soft hit and a bullpen meltdown later and the Mets had a disappointing loss on their hands to the Cubs. On the brights side, as Mike Puma writes, Severino “is back pitching at a level scarcely seen since his prime years with the Yankees.”
🏀 It hasn’t taken long for Joel Embiid to join the long list of villains in the Knicks universe. “Embiid has the two crucial ingredients required for any worthy scoundrel: He’s awfully good at his craft. And he seems to go out of his way to draw enmity,” writes Mike Vaccaro.
🏈 The Giants tried to move up in the draft to No. 3 and take Duke’s Drake Maye, but when the Patriots decided to keep the pick, the Giants were forced to keep backing Daniel Jones as their QB…for now.
🏒 Rest or rust? The Rangers will have to navigate the pluses and perils of both as they wait to begin the next round of the playoffs, writes Mollie Walker.
