Just another game but Knicks are better since the season opening of drubbing by Celtics

It had to hurt.

For three weeks, Knicks had been the NBA’s speech. Days before training camp, the franchise had drawn a three-team blockbuster trade that sent starting Julius Randle and Divincenzo to Minnesota for five-time all-star Karl-Anthony Towns. This movement combined with the earlier acquisition of Mikal Bridges put the league on announcement that Knicks was tired of becoming known as a group of scary over performance.

They were ready to win and win now. Or they thought.

And then it was both painful and humiliating when the Boston-De Defense Masters and the team they were built to challenge-made Knicks, 132-109, in the season opener in TD Garden. Still, you wouldn’t have known it from Knick’s coach Tom Thibodeau’s behavior. Instead of pressing the panic button, Thibodeau refused to raise the game to something other than just a loss in the loss column.

“It’s disappointing that we didn’t play better, but I’m not disappointed with our team,” Thibodeau said. “Tomorrow we have to get back to work. You must have the appropriate reaction to it. “

Learn and move on. It has been Thibodeau’s reaction to all the dents in the road during his tenure as Knicks’ coach. That is why his team has been able to steadily improve, that’s why they were able to get within a W from the eastern conference final last season.

And that was why they were so pumped up to Saturday night’s national TV -Rematch with Celtics at Madison Square Garden.

Knicks have played 50 games since this season opening loss, and in the process has learned a lot about himself. The Knicks team, which came into Saturday evening’s game, was far better than what was destroyed in a barrier of triangles in Boston on October 22.

Knicks have won seven of their last eight games and have gone 29-11 since they got on a 5-6 start. Celtics, once 26-9, has gone 10-7 since then.

The defense champions have not been as overpowered this season as one may have predicted. While Cavaliers have been in first place at the conference since charging the gate with 15 even wins, Celtics’ grip has been at best at best. Most recently, they lost Thursday to an undermanned Mavericks team that was missing both Luka Doncic, which they had sent to Lakers, and the new addition Anthony Davis, who is not expected to make his Dallas debut until this weekend.

Knicks went into Saturday’s match only 1 ½ match behind Celtics, something that seemed almost inevitable after the season opener. A win on Saturday would move Knicks as close as they have been to Celtics since that defeat.

Thibodeau said his team was ready for the Boston game as they would do for anyone else.

“You don’t want to change how to prepare for people,” Thibodeau said. “Your normal protocol would be to watch previous matches against the opponent. Then watch two or three of their previous games. Then you look at what you’re doing now, what they’re doing now. Who are you for them if for them. Who are you for us who are out for us. “

The cities and bridges have acclimated their new teammates over the last 50 matches.

Bridges, who was one of the primary defenders on Jayson Tatum as he tormented Knicks to 37 points in October, has been one of the most reliable knicks on both sides of the ball and is the only player on the team not to go miss a game. Cities that scored a disappointing 12 points in its first game as Knick have been an average of 24.3 points and 13.6 rebounds.

Whether cities would be available or not was a decision on game time as the great man suffered from patellar tendinopathy in his right knee. He gave the team his thumb 30 minutes before the Tipoff and was clearly pumped up to the re -match.

“I mean, we’re another team, just understand each other, continuity, understanding where our strengths are,” Towns said when asked about the team’s development since October. “And we’re just another mindset as a team too. We have confidence with each other. “

A familiarity that Saturday night hoped to learn from past evil and move on.

Barbara Barker is an award -winning spalist and contains a writer in the sports department on Newsday. She has been covering sports in New York for more than 20 years.