NEW YORK Jimmy Butler made a and-1 with 3:40 remaining in the third quarter on Friday night, and when Jimmy Butler’s coach’s challenge failed, New York Knicks player Immanuel Quickley glanced at the scoreboard and realized that his team was behind by 21 points. The Miami Heat star then made the subsequent free throw.
Quickley would later say, “It’s a decision to mentally check out or not.” “The choice to continue fighting is made. Making the choice to always tell oneself, “You got to keep fighting,” is what it takes.
“I did look at the score and say, ‘Dang,’ when I seen how much we was down, I literally said that. But then I got right back to it, seeing where I was at mentally and said, ‘Let’s go. Let’s try to get a comeback going.'”
And, sure enough, Quickley did get a comeback going. He buried a 3-pointer 21 seconds later, beginning a 38-15 game-closing run for the Knicks in a stunning 100-98 victory at a raucous, sold-out Madison Square Garden.
But the focus on this night was on the remarkable way the game flipped over the final 15 minutes, as Quickley (14 points), R.J. Barrett and Jalen Brunson (8 each) led the Knicks back in a game the Heat seemingly had put away.
“It’s special,” Brunson said of the feeling after pulling off such a comeback. “That was pretty cool, I’m not going to lie.”
With the win, the Knicks (9-6) exacted a measure of revenge on their hated rivals, who ended their season in the second round of the playoffs last May. They also remained alive in the in-season tournament, as a loss would’ve eliminated them from the competition.
Leave a Reply