Knicks happy to return home following tough stretch of road games
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns posts up Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic, right, during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, in Chicago. Credit: AP/Melissa Tamez
CHICAGO
Karl-Anthony Towns was the last player left in the Knicks’ locker room Saturday night at United Center. He had not showered yet and still was panting and sweating from an arduous weightlifting session when Zach LaVine barged in.
LaVine told him to finish up and invited Towns and his family to join his family for a late dinner. Other Knicks already had scattered to assorted steakhouses for a last night on the road.
The Knicks would fly home in the morning and wouldn’t need to get on another plane for nearly a month. So while there was disappointment in their play Saturday night after dropping consecutive games for the first time in almost two months — a 117-107 loss to the Thunder and a 139-126 loss to the Bulls — there also was some relief that they would be going home to stay for a while.
With the back-to-back set in Oklahoma City and Chicago, the Knicks ended a stretch of the season in which 21 of their first 36 games were on the road, matching the Indiana Pacers for the most road games to this point.
“Yeah, obviously the travel is always tough,” Josh Hart said. “When you do that, you don’t realize how nice it is and what an advantage it is to sleep in your own bed. [Friday] night, I don’t think I went to sleep until 4 [a.m.] with the travel and the craziness.
“So it’ll be good. Really just [to] rest up. I think that’s the biggest thing. We don’t have to worry about traveling or anything like that.”
The Knicks got through this portion of the season firmly in third place in the Eastern Conference, managing a 13-8 record on the road and 11-4 at home. Part of the road success might be due to the opposition, as they completed a recent run through the bottom of the standings before facing the Thunder.
Survival usually is the first goal on the road, and the Knicks accomplished that. Have they made clear exactly what they are this season? That’s a different question.
They have yet to beat the top two teams in either conference — 0-4 against Cleveland, Boston, Oklahoma City and Houston. Depth is an issue right now, as it was expected to be at the start of the season.
So maybe this road stretch showed something, and maybe at home they can prove that they are capable of doing something more than just chasing those top teams.
“We don’t complain and worry about the schedule and how it affects us,” said Jalen Brunson, whose team will play 12 of the next 14 games at home — with the only road games in Brooklyn and Philadelphia.
“It’s a time for us to be home, get some practice time in. [Also we] get some more time together where we’re watching film and in the comforts of our own home facility with the fans. It’s just scheduling. We’ve got to take advantage of it.”
“Overall, we just went through a pretty tough stretch in terms of where we were in the schedule,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I think we’re plus-6 to the road, five of the last six on the road. So now we got a chance to go home and obviously there’s a lot of things we got to work on and clean up.
“We get a chance to go home. But it’s a good challenge for us . . . There’s a lot of teams playing well right now that are coming in. So we got to take it day by day, game by game.
“Don’t look too far ahead. Just get ready for Orlando. But get our legs under us and get a chance to get in the gym and fix things and work on things and continue to improve. I don’t want us to get away from the way we mapped out the season. And that’s to focus on daily improvement. And don’t get lost.”
Just as the heavy road schedule provided a hint of a test for the Knicks, so will the next month as they see if they can take advantage of their time at home. Crying babies and family obligations may make the task more difficult than it sounds, but most of us don’t have 19,812 fans screaming support for us at work, and the Knicks will have that now.
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.