Despite the Knicks winning 50 games in the regular season and grabbing the No. 2 seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference, the year has been marred by a season-long injury crisis. A trend that has, unfortunately, continued to dog the team in the playoffs.
A season of phenomenal play that has only come to a stop through forced time on the sideline: first Mitchell Robinson for 50 games in December, Julius Randle for the season in January and OG Anunoby had extended spells out in January and March during the regular season. And then Bojan Bogdanovic in the opening round before Robinson and Anunoby were again lost to the operating table and training room during the second-round series against the Indiana Pacers.
A familiar culprit was found: head coach Tom Thibodeau and the demanding volume of minutes his charges must play.
For Josh Hart, who has played 441 minutes over the first 10 playoff games this year, the outside narrative is just nonsense.
โYou expect ignorance when people have no idea what goes on in this building,โ Hart said Tuesday morning ahead of Game 5 against the Pacers.
โPeople love to have a narrative or label and they love to run with it,โ he continued. โNone of those guys are here watching us practice. None of those guys are watching what we do. At the end of the day, seventh year of my career, I probably had more off days [than] the other years. We don’t go contact in practice, but everyone thinks we do three-hour practices of scrimmaging.โ
Former NBA player turned sports talk pundit Paul Pierce was one of those outside voices who to the head coach and โthe high minutes and high usageโ that he has been known for.
“It looks like a wear and tear of the minutes they’re playing and fatigue in the muscles,” Pierce said of the foot injury to Jalen Brunson in Game 2 of the series. “Because initially you see a guy gets hurt it’s the way he landed or ankle turn or you could see he pulled something. When I see Brunson, that could just be from fatigue in the muscle and stepping the wrong way.โ
Brunson, who averaged over 35 minutes in each of his first two seasons in New York and has played 408 minutes in the playoffs, said he is feeling โgoodโ despite the lingering injury and back-to-back defeats in Indiana.
With Anunobyโs hamstring injury that will sideline him for weeks, Pierce said he saw the forward stop and โhis leg gave out, that could be just from fatigue of the muscle.โ
Chandler Parsons, another former player turned pundit,…