It's a distant memory, now that the increasingly zombified New York Knicks have dropped two straight in their second-round series against the Indiana Pacers, but in January this team was structurally complete and ascendant.OG Anunoby, newly arrived from the Toronto Raptors, slid into the starting lineup like a keystone, giving the Knicks the wing defense and play-finishing they lacked. Backup center Isaiah Hartenstein was making the case that he should have never been the backup. Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle were twin battering rams of a squelching, iso-heavy offense. The defense was stingy enough to make head coach Tom Thibodeau's hands shake with excitement. Offensive rebounding was so robust that it became a viable strategy to just chuck the ball up in the vicinity of the hoop to get the possession started. At one point, the Knicks won eight in a row, and finished the month 14-2.
The team that was blasted out of contention within the first quarter of Game 4 on Sunday, and sits at two games apiece against Indiana, bears no resemblance to the team that surged in January—or even the one that secured the second seed at the end of the regular season. The Knicks are now down three of their starters. Julius Randle didn't even make it to the end of January, after he dislocated his shoulder, tried to rehabilitate it, and was scheduled for season-ending surgery instead. Big man Mitchell Robinson enjoyed a triumphant late-season return after missing 50 games, helped the Knicks claw past Joel Embiid in the first round of the playoffs, and then suffered a stress fracture on his surgically repaired ankle. Bojan Bogdanovic had season-ending foot surgery after the series against the 76ers, too, robbing them of some valuable wing depth and scoring. And Anunoby has missed Games 3 and 4 with a hamstring injury after he came up limping after planting his foot for a layup late in Game 2 against the Pacers. On Sunday, Thibodeau said that Anunoby has been doing "pool work" and hasn't started running yet.
