Clippers coach Ty Lue excited about his talented team visiting Madison Square Garden to face Knicks
Clippers guard James Harden dribbles against the Knicks in the first half of an NBA game at Madison Square Garden on Monday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Ty Lue knew that it could be special Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
It’s always the place where players want to make history, something he even did as a player.
It wasn’t quite the same sort of atmosphere in 2005, a final week of the season heading to the lottery when Lue took the court at Madison Square Garden and poured in a career-high 32 points.
But this was different as he brought his Los Angeles Clippers into the Garden for the debut of the James Harden era, creating a lineup that could break the budget of almost any fan trying to collect jerseys of all the stars on this team.
“Anytime you can play in the Garden, it’s great,” Lue said before the game. “The mecca of basketball. It’s where I have my career high, in the Garden. Everyone wants to play well in the Garden. It’s a great start for us, a great place to play. Hopefully we can have a lot of energy coming out into this game. The fans are going to be great. Even though they’re big Knicks fans they are fans of good basketball, so hopefully we can give them that tonight.”
Putting on a show may be secondary to winning the championship title that has eluded the franchise, but the Clippers have undoubtedly become a showcase for the NBA. Already, they had Paul George and Kawhi Leonard paired up for years and then added Russell Westbrook last season. Now, after a long — sometimes ugly — negotiation, they have added Harden to the place he wanted to be, giving them a starting lineup that includes four certain Hall of Famers.
"Yeah he’s another weapon for them,” Jalen Brunson said after Sunday’s practice. “They have a lot of great players over there. Really impressive resumes and all that stuff, and their careers have been nothing short of spectacular. So, it’s a lot of firepower. We’ve just got to be ready to go.”
“We got to be aware, alert,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “We’ve got to fly around. Puts so much pressure on you because they have so many guys who can go off the dribble. And once they go off the dribble they’re also playmakers. So they shoot the three extremely well. They go to the board hard. They’re quick to the ball. They put pressure on the rim with [Ivica] Zubac. It’s going to require great effort for 48 minutes.”
It’s hardly the first time the Knicks have seemed like secondary characters in the show at the Garden with superstars always circling this on their calendars. They entered the game with a 2-4 record and were getting their own lineup fully intact with RJ Barrett returning after two games sidelined with left knee tendinopathy. And they could use the help, having lost both games in his absence. The Knicks have had trouble getting their offense going with Julius Randle struggling through the first six games. He is shooting just 27.1% from the floor, the worst in the league of any player averaging at least 10 points per game.
Still, on this night it was Barrett’s versatility on defense that might have been the most necessary ingredient for the Knicks. The Clippers had a lineup up that Lue compared to having four cooks — all able to create.
“I just hope when they're cooking they're not eating all the food,” he joked. “That's the biggest thing, man. That's going be my job, to make sure I manage it, make sure everyone is in a rhythm on a nightly basis. That's my job. I’m excited to see it tonight, see how it looks. And we can go from there.”
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.
