Knicks 'Confident' In Abilities to Survive Injury Scares
The New York Knicks remain a top-four team in the Eastern Conference despite a packed injury report. Since OG Anunoby (elbow) and Julius Randle (shoulder) left the lineup, the Knicks are 6-8 after winning 12 of their first 14 in the new year when the former joined the fold after a December trade with Toronto.
But the Knicks (35-25) continue to avoid making excuses for their recent swoon, which endured a 110-99 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Thursday night.
"We have enough guys," center Isaiah Hartenstein, who recently missed four games of his own, said in video from SNY. "We're confident in that until everyone comes back."
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"We can definitely learn from our past. We can be upset, pissed off for the rest of today, until we fall asleep. But tomorrow morning, we've got to be focused on the next one," point guard Jalen Brunson added, per Tim Bontemps of ESPN. "Keep our spirits up, keep our confidence up. We all need to work hard individually to be confident. Just come in the next day, be ready to go, just keep trusting each other, just keep chipping away."
Injuries are inevitable in the NBA and the Knicks are dealing with that unfortunate reality. With that in mind, New York is suddenly standing on tenuous ground in he Eastern Conference playoff picture: entering the weekend, the Knicks are only 1.5 games up on Indiana and Miami to avoid the Eastern Conference's four-team Play-In Tournament. A crucial test awaits on Sunday evening when they face the second-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers (7 p.m. ET, MSG/ESPN).
Ultimately, the Knicks can only control what they can control ... and injuries aren't on that list. However, they can control their attitude in how they respond to the injuries and that's where the confidence, whether blind or not, has them in the only direction they can take.
