The New York Knicks will get a chance to advance to the NBA Cup quarterfinals on Tuesday night.
Before that, however, the Knicks are focused on a more immediate goal: establishing the consistency necessary to contend for an NBA title. They will attempt to break their win-one, lose-one cycle when they host the New Orleans Pelicans in a nonconference matchup on Sunday night.
Both teams were off Saturday after playing NBA Cup games on Friday. The Knicks overcame a six-point fourth-quarter deficit to edge the Charlotte Hornets 99-98 in East Group A action, while the struggling Pelicans fell to the Memphis Grizzlies 120-109 in a West Group C game.
With the win, the Knicks improved to 3-0 and set up a winner-take-all game for East Group A’s automatic bid to the quarterfinals against the Orlando Magic, who are also unbeaten through three games following Friday’s 123-100 victory over the Brooklyn Nets.
The Knicks entered Saturday as one of four Eastern Conference teams with at least 10 wins this season, despite having won back-to-back games just once outside of a four-game winning streak from November 15-20.
For much of Friday afternoon, the Knicks appeared headed for their second two-game losing streak of the season. New York, which suffered a 129-114 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night despite Dallas being without superstar point guard Luka Doncic (right wrist), trailed the Hornets for more than 38 minutes on Friday, even though Charlotte star LaMelo Ball sat out with a left calf injury.
Jalen Brunson helped the Knicks avoid an upset in the final five minutes by scoring 11 of his game-high 31 points. The victory allowed New York to finish 3-2 on a road trip that began with four games against Western Conference foes before the Black Friday noon tipoff in North Carolina.
The search for a win has grown increasingly frustrating for the injury-riddled Pelicans, who suffered their seventh straight loss and fell to 1-13 in their last 14 games with Friday’s defeat.
New Orleans, which sits last in the Western Conference with a 4-16 record, has played just three games this season with its optimal starting lineup of Brandon Ingram, Herbert Jones, C.J. McCollum, Daniel Theis, and Zion Williamson. The quintet has combined to miss 52 games. Ingram (right calf) is day-to-day after missing the last three games, while Jones (right shoulder) and Williamson (left hamstring) are out indefinitely.
The Pelicans lost by 11 points or fewer for the sixth time in their last 13 defeats on Friday, missing opportunities to close the gap with the Grizzlies in the second half. New Orleans committed turnovers on consecutive trips while down 83-75 late in the third quarter and went five straight possessions without scoring in a 101-89 game shortly before the midway point of the fourth.
