Dinged-up Knicks will need to go all-out again in Game 6
Knicks’ Quentin Grimes in pain while playing the Miami Heat during the fourth quarter in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals at Madison Square Garden in New York City May 10, 2023 Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
One by one they hobbled to the media room.
Julius Randle was first, his eye nearly shut from an elbow that he took in the opening minutes of Wednesday night's win. Quentin Grimes favored his left knee, which he awkwardly injured in the final minute of a night when he played all 48 minutes. And Jalen Brunson, who has been playing with a painful right ankle, stepped to the table, one more move on a night when he carried the Knicks on his shoulders for all 48 minutes.
The exhausting battle, enduring the blows, got the Knicks a must-win 112-103 victory over the Heat in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden and kept the season alive. Now, after a recovery day Thursday, the Knicks will have a chance to do it all again in Game 6 in Miami. And if that means the same sort of anything-it-takes effort, so be it.
"We’ll see what Game 6 brings,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “If it requires them to do that, then I’m not afraid to do it.”
Grimes, who had been relegated to the second unit for the first three games of the series, didn’t get any hint from Thibodeau what was to come Wednesday, but as the night wore on, he got an idea.
“I don’t think you go into a game expecting to play 48,” Grimes said. “But in the fourth quarter, five, six minutes left, I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, I’m going to play 48.’ ”
That might be what is required, piecing together minutes from bruised and battered parts.
“Great way to bounce back,” Brunson said of the team’s play in Game 5 after dropping both games in Miami. “Way to fight. We live to see another day. We get the chance to get better, get a chance to get another one.
“Nothing really to celebrate. We obviously won, get to see another day. This is great, but we got to go get one down there.”
Just how they do it is the question. Immanuel Quickley has already missed the last two games with a sprained left ankle and is listed as doubtful for Friday night. Grimes collided with Miami’s Bam Adebayo with just under two minutes remaining Wednesday and went to the ground in pain before limping back into the play and coming up with a huge steal from Jimmy Butler. Grimes was not on the injury report, which might give you a hint of the importance of the all-hands-on-deck approach necessary.
This is the hole that the Knicks dug for themselves, where every game will take everything that they have to keep playing for another day. On the other side, the Heat's Butler has played through ankle issues and claimed after the game that he’s ready for 48 minutes if necessary on Friday.
“If [Heat coach Erik Spoelstra] tells me to play 48 minutes, I will be suited and booted and ready to do that,” Butler said, adding, “And we’ll win.”
If Butler felt like the Heat need this game Friday, avoiding a Game 7 back at Madison Square Garden, what he doesn’t have is the desperation that the Knicks must bring once again — a win-or-go-home approach for a team that suddenly seems as if it doesn’t want to go home.
“The thing about our team is that we have a bunch of gym rats,” Thibodeau said. “You give them an off day, they’re in there all day. They’re gonna lift, shoot, watch film. So I know that’s who they are. When you have guys like that, you know they’re ready. They know.”
RJ Barrett, one of the few who didn’t seem last-gasping his way through Wednesday’s game, playing 38 minutes and seeming ready for another 48 minutes, said, “Playoffs. Their guys are playing a lot of minutes, too; this is what it is. You got to kind of scratch and claw and do whatever you can to win the game.”
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.
