Monday night’s contest was certainly a fun one for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
It started with a first quarter in which they shot 60 percent from the field and opened a 19-point advantage, and it was capped off by Donte DiVincenzo’s franchise-record-breaking 11th-made three late in the fourth quarter.
It was all smiles as the Knicks fed the red-hot shooting guard down the stretch to help him set the record and finish with a new career-high 40 points on 11-of-20 shooting from behind the arc.
The Garden faithful certainly loved the lights-out performance as they were encouraging DiVincenzo to fire away each time he touched the ball, but not everyone was happy about it.
When asked about the 27-year-old’s strong showing postgame, Detroit head coach Monty Williams was none too pleased about New York’s stat-padding down the stretch in the blowout.
“I don’t care about their team at all,” Williams said. “I could care less. Those guys, the way they got those threes, I don’t want to be a pair of their story.”
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, on the other hand, was nothing but impressed with how his breakout shooting guard performed in the commanding victory.
“He’s been doing that all year,” he said. “I thought his teammates helped create good shots for him and he knocked them down and played hard the whole game, it was really impressive.”
As for Williams, Knicks star small forward Josh Hart offered the first-year head coach a simple solution when reporters informed him of what he had to say.
“If he didn’t want to be part of the story he should’ve told his guys to defend better. What else is there to say? We’ve got a guy that’s hot, we’re going to try to find the guy that’s hot, that’s common sense in basketball,” he said. “He’s a head coach in the league I think he has the IQ to know if someone’s hot you go to them, they’ll be part of the story regardless.”
After Monday’s dominating effort, the Knicks now sit just 0.5 GB of the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third seed in the Eastern Conference with 11 games left to play this season.
Source Agencies
