Knicks Getting 'Comfortable' On Lengthy Road Trip

The New York Knicks are set to embark on their longest road trip of the season.

Nov 18, 2024; New York, New York, USA; New York Knicks forward Mikal Bridges (25) drives to the basket against Washington Wizards guard Carlton Carrington (8) during the third quarter at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images / Brad Penner-Imagn Images

The New York Knicks will be among the many traveling for Thanksgiving.

New York is set to embark on a five-game road trip that will take up the rest of the month, starting with Wednesday's visit to Phoenix (10 p.m. ET, ESPN). It's their longest stretch of consecutive road games until March, when they play five more games on the West Coast when the Big East Men's Basketball Tournament takes over Madison Square Garden.

The Knicks (8-6) enter the trip with the most momentum they've had in this young season, taking three of four straight home games, including a hard-earned sweep of the rival Brooklyn Nets. The stretch concluded with a dominant triumph over the woebegone Washington Wizards on Monday.

While no one's expecting the Nets and Wizards to make the playoffs, value no doubt lingers in those wins: championship-contending teams know how to do the ordinary things extraordinarily well and the Knicks did plenty of good over the last three games after last Wednesday's heartbreaker against Chicago.

The scariest part for their competition is that they're starting to realize it.

“We’re starting to get comfortable with each other," captain and point guard Jalen Brunson said, per Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post. "It shows."

The new-look Knicks are particularly pleased with the way they've been distributing and justification lies in both traditional and advanced numbers: over the past three games, they're averaging a league-best 31.7 assists per game, leading to an average tally of 124 points (third-best behind Eastern leaders Cleveland and Boston). In that same span, the Knicks have earned an assist on 68.8 percent of their successful field goals (ninth) and lead the league in assist ratio at 22.6.

“The unselfishness has been terrific,” head coach Tom Thibodeau noted in Vaccaro's column. “As long as we keep moving, attacking space, cutting, then good things are going to happen.”

“We’re very unselfish,” Josh Hart concurred in the same post. “We don’t care about who gets the shine or the points and we’re starting to find a groove.”

To Hart's point, no one on the Knicks' roster has led the team in scoring in consecutive games since Karl-Anthony Towns (whose expanded passing was recently lauded by Thibodeau) on Nov. 6-8. To put the expanded helping hands into perspective, the Knicks were decent enough in assists over their first 11 games (26.5, tied for 11th) but were 21st in percentage.

Now, they'll look to keep the momentum alive amidst holiday travel: they'll face a Phoenix Suns team likely missing Kevin Durant on Wednesday while they also visit Utah, Denver, Dallas, and Charlotte.

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