Knicks turn page on championship summer with complacency challenge looming at training camp
It’s human nature to relax.Rest on laurels.The Knicks spent a summer soaking in the adulation, appearing at more events and national TV shows than any team in NBA history.
At least that’s the way it felt the past three months.They don’t have a Basketball Reference page to track these things.The players — particularly Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jose Alvarado, OG Anunoby, Jordan Clarkson and Josh Hart — didn’t shy from their popularity.But starting this week, the focus shifts.Back to basketball.“Is it cliché if I say it’s 0-0 again?” Towns said.
“That’s kind of the same thing we said every playoff game, and when we won and kept winning it was great.But this season is about us going out there and starting again at 0-0.
Bringing that same hungry team, that team that’s hungry to prove everyone wrong.The underdogs.”Towns was speaking Thursday on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” perhaps his last national TV appearance before training camp starts this week.
Perhaps not? Brunson also had “Saturday Night Live” to host ahead of Monday’s Media Day at the training facility.None of these appearances are detrimental to basketball.It’s better than partying and drinking for a summer.
This collection of Knicks players, as multiple people around the organization have explained, are more mature and responsible than any previous roster incarnation.There was one shaky incident involving Clarkson in July, when he was escorted out of a club by police, and that was it.But the amount of widespread attention and adulation does beg some questions: Can the Knicks avoid complacency? Can they maintain the edge that pushed them through a historic playoff run?Brunson, whose profile is higher than any current New York athlete, understands the assignment.“We’ve done something that everyone has wanted us to do for 53 years now.
And now people are going around saying, You guys are the champs, you guys are the best thing ever.It’s been sai...