The scary part is that the Knicks didn’t play bad.
In fact, their offensive attack was just as good if not better than the whole season.
Julius Randle was his usual handful. Rookie sensation Immanuel Quickley was electric, his game dubbed ‘crazy and fearless’ by Clippers star Paul George afterwards. And RJ Barrett was a strong 23 point strength.
“I loved his way of thinking,” Kawhi Leonard, an off-season free agent, said of Barrett. “The sky is the limit.”
It’s the Knicks own Big 3 of Hope – 26, 22, and 20 years old, respectively.
And although the Knicks played three and a half quarters with the Clippers, taking in two runs with 7:42 over after a wave of Quickley baskets, it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
Paul George and Leonard’s Clippers are loaded and look like Championship material in beating the Knicks 129-115 on Sunday afternoon at the Garden.
Best team the Knicks have played this season? Oh yes, said Randle, who amassed 27 points, 12 rebounds and five assists.
“Absolutely, 100 percent, without a doubt,” said Randle, scoring inside, outside and in between to continue an All-Star caliber campaign. “You can tell they are a championship-level team that we want to be. We put ourselves in position. At the end of the day, they are really good – hats off to them. ”
The off-season addition of Serge Ibaka was an overlooked gem and he buried the Knicks with a 3-pointer and three-point play late in an offensive rebound.
Marcus Morris, the ex-Knick, looks perfectly comfortable as a complementary Clippers sofa piece instead of last season’s No.1 option in orange and blue.
Morris hit a dagger left corner 3 on Sunday in the fourth quarter, finishing with 11 points. Morris had three of Clippers ’17 3s that likely kept Thibodeau awake all Sunday night after the team arrived at his former workplace, Chicago.
Miss Morris, traded on the February New York deadline? Not really. He now sees the garden as his springboard.
Morris said afterwards that he plays for ‘the best staff’ in the NBA under the leadership of Tyronn Lue, who took the Clippers to the second best record in the NBA 16-5.
“We have something wrong,” said Morris. “I had the opportunity to show what I could do in New York. Everyone noticed that. I used that platform to get on a bigger stage. I’m here to compete for a championship. I want to be part of that team to win the first championship for the Clippers and we are on our way in that direction.
The Knicks did the right thing by exchanging Morris last February for a late first-rounder that changed to Quickley, who collected 25 more runs from the bench in 27 minutes on Sunday.
Quickley looked at his idol Lou Williams, shook his hand and told him. But Quickley was not intimidated. In the fourth, he took an offensive rebound in the lane from his own 3-point miss and floated it, however. He then paid his respects to the Clippers.
“You need everything to go ahead,” said Quickley. “They took a lot of difficult photos.”
Don’t tell that to Thibodeau, who led the NBA’s top defense and three-point defense. Thibodeau said the “closeouts were short” of the Knicks on the 3-pointers. He also felt like they weren’t grabbing a handful of loose balls and long rebounds, which resulted in more Clipper 3s.
“Offensively it was good,” said Thibodeau. “Defensively, it was not what we wanted. [Scoring] 115 points should be good enough to win. ”
After the game, the Knicks flew to snowy Chicago, where Thibodeau did his best job in five seasons as head coach, with a record of 394-255. Living in a high-rise overlooking Lake Michigan, Thibodeau was a toast of the town. The fans loved him, although they can’t cheer him on for the back-to-back with the Knicks on Monday and Wednesday.
Thibodeau is 9-12 in New York, but has earned a lot of fan confidence. This loss was not about coaching or rotations. (He called two timeouts 17 seconds apart in the fourth quarter.) Pat Riley, Red Holzman and Jeff Van Gundy could not have won the way the Clippers played.
“I spent a lot of time there and certainly enjoyed it,” said Thibodeau of Chicago. “It’s a great city, a great organization, a great tradition. I certainly enjoyed my time in Chicago. ”
With a core Randle-Barrett-Quickley trio to team up with, Thibodeau might have fun times on the road, but the Clippers showed it’s been a long time.