Tom Thibodeau cautions against complacency as Knicks sit in easier part of schedule
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau looks on from the sideline during the second half of an NBA Cup basketball game against the Orlando Magic, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. Credit: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
When Tom Thibodeau spent much of his postgame press conference Tuesday repeating a mantra to nearly every question - “Just worried about Charlotte” - you could believe him because he’d gone through this just days earlier.
A week ago, Thibodeau had brought the Knicks to Charlotte to face a depleted Hornets squad as the team finished off a five-game road trip andhad to scrape to manage a one-point victory. And that is why Thibodeau will never allow himself to look ahead, to plot out and imagine what the Knicks could do with a stretch of the schedule — or at least never talk about it out loud.
But we have no such constraints, so after the Knicks easily handled New Orleans — also a depleted roster — and Orlando to start the month, we can look at the schedule and see that in December the Knicks have an advantageous series of games which can help position themselves for the postseason.
According to NBA.com's strength of schedule rankings the Knicks have the easiest schedule in the league this month — at least before figuring in the NBA Cup schedule, which has only provided a quarterfinal matchup with the Atlanta Hawks next Wednesday so far. The Knicks have just one back-to-back set and face eight teams below .500 — and just five against teams with winning records (Orlando twice, Minnesota, San Antonio and the Cup game against Atlanta).
“I think we all look at the schedule,” Josh Hart admitted. “I think, one, just out of curiosity, we want to know what the month entails. We have enough teams that have struggled so far, but at the end of the day those teams - they’re all good players that are here for a reason, so we can’t sit here and take anyone too lightly.
“You do that and you don’t come ready, it’s going to be a tough game. When you give guys life, opposing teams life, sometimes that’s the worst thing you can do. Try not to overlook whoever we have today or Saturday or whatever it is, but we know we have an opportunity to string some wins together, but we’ve got to go out there and do it.”
The Knicks did that with Charlotte last week, giving their roster of fill-ins belief on their homecourt that they could beat the Knicks and they nearly did.
After that game, Thibodeau went through the list of reasons whyno opponent, and no game, could be taken lightly, maybe the sort of lesson that the team needed to see to believe.
“I thought it was going to be a challenge because of a number of reasons,” Thibodeau said last week. “One, us being on the road as long as we were and just dig it out. It was an early start, changing time zones and all that stuff, so find a way to win and get it done.
“I knew how hard they're going to play. I know the personnel on their team. I felt it was going to be a physical game and we were going to need energy - a lot of it - and so we just kept working the game, working the game and then found a way to win down the stretch.”
Approaching the Hornets again so soon, even after a pair of convincing victories - and three straight dating back to the Charlotte win on Black Friday - provided Thibodeau with a fresh memory of what could go wrong — and he emphasized this challenge was even tougher.
“The thing that makes them a little different is Nick Richards and Mark Williams are back, which is their size at the center position,” Thibodeau said before the game Thursday. “And they play fast and they’re gonna shoot a lot of threes, [Brandon] Miller is a terrific talent. They’re a very dangerous team because of their ability to shoot the three, their offensive rebounding and their ability to play fast, so we have to be ready for them.”
Notes & quotes: Cam Payne was held out Thursday with what the team called left elbow effusion. Precious Achiuwa was available to play for the first time this season after suffering a strained hamstring in the preseason.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
