These are the stolen moments when it doesn’t hurt your soul to be a Knicks fan, when you can get carried away by the moment, when you can seek temporary amnesia for what you’ve endured the past couple of decades and a brief respite from the here and now. It is still possible for Madison Square Garden to sound like this.
It is still possible for the arena to elevate its athletes.
Not every night, no.
On this night?
“It was so electric in here,” RJ Barrett said. “I hope that’s just the first of many nights I get to feel it the way I felt it tonight.”
The Knicks were buried by the Bulls, twice falling behind by 18 points, and they fought back, twice. They tied the game at 88 when Bobby Portis splashed a 26-foot 3 midway through the fourth quarter and while the Garden was still echoing with glee the Bulls regained the lead, pushed it out to 98-90. The Knicks called for time.
A couple of funny things happened right about then.
For one thing, there was no steady stream of customers fleeing for the exits, grim as things might’ve looked. All 19,812 stood where they sat.
For another thing, the Knicks didn’t feel beaten.
“That’s a lot of time, man,” Barrett, 19-year-old kid, fourth NBA game, said. “Eight down with three to play? Game isn’t over.”
“One thing we can say about this team for sure,” David Fizdale, the coach, said, “is we’ve got a lot of fight in us.”
They came back: a cutting layup by Wayne Ellington. A turnaround by Marcus Morris Sr. A free throw and then a put-back off his own miss by Barrett (19 points, 15 rebounds, five assists, insatiable energy). Then the killers: two more 3s from Portis, the ex-Bull, who was 4-for-4 from deep, grabbed 11 rebounds, scored 28 points.
It was 103-98. It ended 105-98. You’ll notice the number on the right side of the hyphen didn’t budge for the final 3 minutes and 33 seconds of the game: the Knicks were suddenly borrowing from their mid-’90s forebears, and for 3 ½ minutes made it impossible for Chicago to find a good shot anywhere.
The buzzer groaned. The crowd roared. The Knicks improved to 1-3, and soon enough everyone would remember that, just not now. Just not yet.
“I’ll enjoy this until midnight,” Portis said. “Then I’ll start worrying about Orlando.”
Fizdale’s Midnight Rule is a good standard for fans of this Knicks team, too. Savor nights like this one. Feel good about them. Enjoy the fire that Barrett and Julius Randle bring to every possession. Marvel at nights when Portis percolates as he did Monday, inside and outside. Watch Kevin Knox (14 points) improve, and dream about what he could be someday.
Why not? There will be plenty of stretches like the second half against the Celtics on Saturday night in the home opener, and the fourth quarter against the Spurs, and the hard-to-believe mess of a first quarter Monday night (it was 33-15 after 12 minutes, and the Garden felt like the least-enjoyable place to be in all of Manhattan at that moment).
There will be plenty of finishes like the one Friday night in Brooklyn, when the Knicks were so close to forcing Kyrie Irving to gulp down his boastful words and instead let Irving steal the game away from them, late, with a couple of long-distance daggers.
It is OK to enjoy the good times, even if they prove fleeting, since a year ago everyone learned some hard lessons about how terrible a strategy it is to tank in the NBA. It is OK, in fact, to boo poor play (as the Garden did more than once) and to treat Fizdale as a coach and not a caretaker, meaning it was OK to shake your head (or worse) when he took Portis out of the game in the fourth quarter (before quickly and wisely sending him back in).
“I knew we would fight back tonight,” Fizdale said. “I didn’t know if we would get over the hump but I knew we would fight, and they did that, they trusted tonight in that second half.”
More important, they made some shots, and they guarded some Bulls, and they were treated to some vintage Garden thunder at the end, the faithful chanting Portis’ name, Portis slapping hands with a courtside fan named John McEnroe. This is unlikely to be the norm this year so when you get a night like this it’s best to sip, and savor, and enjoy.
You’ve earned that much, no?
For more on the Knicks, listen to the latest episode of the “Big Apple Buckets” podcast: