The Knicks Beat the Nets, But It Didn't Seem To Matter Much
NEW YORK — On any other night, Sunday's Knicks-Nets showdown at Madison Square Garden would've been a triumph for the home team, winning 110-97.
Julius Randle had a team-high 22 points and 15 rebounds and dominated the second half as the Knicks pulled away. Mitchell Robinson had 12 points on 6-6 shooting and similarly helped bury the Nets down the stretch. Marcus Morris continued looking like an efficient star-level performer with 21 points of his own. Frank Ntilikina regained his form, scoring 11 points on 5-9 shooting in 18 minutes.
And yet, to feel the energy in Madison Square Garden before and during the game, as well as the atmosphere in the locker room after, the result of the game didn't seem to matter much at all to anyone. All that mattered Sunday night was honoring Kobe Bryant, following the death of him, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other passengers on Sunday morning in a helicopter accident in Calabasas, California.
With the Garden ceiling lit up in Lakers purple and gold, the game started with a moment of silence for Kobe and his family, as the Knicks ran out the 24-second shot clock in No. 24's honor. Chants of "KO-BE, KO-BE, KO-BE" filled 4 Pennsylvania Plaza in what were easily the loudest chants of the night.
Next came the Nets and Knicks trading 24-second shot clock violations after the opening tip, in what became the league-wide tribute to honor Bryant after the Raptors and Rockets started the trend earlier in the afternoon.
And then... silence. Madison Square Garden has perhaps never been quieter to start a game. Between buckets, one could hear individual people talking in the crowd for the better part of the first six minutes of the game. Polite golf claps met both Knicks and Nets buckets, just an appreciation for the game at hand; for many in the crowd, Kobe likely played a key role in the love of that game. Even if a Knicks fan has only seen Bryant play at the Garden and not any other games in his illustrious career, it might have been enough to make a fan for life — Kobe averaged 29.9 points per game in 16 career games at The Mecca, and held the MSG scoring record for almost five years after a 61-point outburst in 2009.
Things would eventually pick up from there as the crowd got into the game at hand — again, sort of a tribute to Bryant in itself. It's often difficult to say what those who are gone would have wanted, but it's almost a certainty that Kobe Bean Bryant wouldn't have wanted the basketball world to stop turning on his account. If anything, he'd likely have wanted everyone to play harder in his memory.
In that respect, the Knicks and Nets definitely succeeded on Sunday night. On the court, they gave the fans a show, after a slow start likely weighed down by heavy hearts. The Knicks ultimately came out with the win on their home court, and provided highlights aplenty in the second half. And the shades of Kobe's influence were apparent, as always with a generation of players in their early-to-mid 20s that grew up idolizing him.
But as the game came to its conclusion in the final minutes, the Garden went eerily quiet again, followed by more chants of "KO-BE BRY-ANT" by the New York crowd. What would ordinarily be the time to light the proverbial victory cigar for the crowd became one last opportunity to honor one of the NBA's greatest players ever, on one of the sadder days in NBA history.
As the game came to its close, the Knicks fans in the building found it in them to cheer for their team and welcome the team's victory, even on a day of such consequential loss for the league.
Given the circumstances, Knicks head coach Mike Miller was impressed both with the poise of his players and the effort level that they put out in the face of a horrible tragedy.
"As we go through this, real life things are going on," Miller said. "Our locker room had some heavy hearts in there, but they went out and played. I would say that it was a tribute to Kobe to go out there and play the game like he would play the game."
After the game, the Knicks' locker room did not look like the scene of a win. Julius Randle, who played with Bryant for his first two seasons in the NBA, rightfully was allowed to leave the locker room before fielding questions on what was surely an emotional day for him. But his comments in a preseason interview with ESPN shed all the light needed about his thoughts on Kobe.
"While Kobe was my idol and my favorite player growing up, he was obviously tremendously skilled," Randle said in the interview. "No. 8 was a crazy athlete and did a lot of freak things on the court. But it was his killer instinct, his mentality and how he approached everything every day, his work ethic. I get my work ethic from my mom, and that’s kind of where I relate with Kob, out-working everybody.
"I always point to a specific story, my rookie year training camp before I broke my leg, y’know I’m a rookie thinking I’m getting there early, when I got there 8 o'clock or whenever it was, he was already full sweat, almost at the end of his workout. And it just kinda opened my eyes up where like he’s really, 18th year, he has everything he wants, accomplished everything he wants, but he’s still out-working everybody. And that’s just kinda one of the things I always took from him."
Knicks that stuck around in the locker room to talk to the media included vets Marcus Morris and Taj Gibson, who, for all of the talk of sending away veterans to free up playing time younger players before the NBA trade deadline on Feb. 7, served as always as a valuable lightning rod to deflect the burden of answering tough questions from their younger counterparts.
"He was an ultimate competitor," Gibson said of Kobe. "One of the last true GOATs that was really around the game a lot. You see him with his daughter a lot. You see him around the game constantly. If you ask him a question he'll spend some time with you and make sure you understand what you needed to do to get better and be a better player. This was a big loss for the NBA, a big loss for the game of basketball. We lost a great role model today."
Morris added a similar sentiment when asked what he admired about Bryant.
"The way he approached the game," Morris said. "They way he approached life. His mentality. I've never watched anyone just impose their will on the game like that, impose his will on life. Even after he retired, to have so much impact on the outside world and the players in the league. It's a tough loss for everybody."
Frank Ntilikina also gave his two cents, whose game has clearly been influenced by Bryant to anyone that's paying attention.
“He was one of the best to ever play this game," Ntilikina said. "And for everything I said, how I studied him, it allowed me to improve as a player but also as a man. I’m thankful.”
As quiet as the postgame locker room was, Ntilikina said that pregame wasn't much different.
"Quiet," he said. "It was quiet. Everybody was hurting, and we still had to play the game, but you know, it’s tough.”
Ultimately, the Knicks are now 13-34. They're 2-2 against the Nets this season. That should all matter to the team and fans, but nobody will ever look back January 26, 2020 as anything but a day to remember a legend. And that's how it should be.
