Knicks 114, Heat 103: Scenes from the Kymelo O’Quinthony show

Hey, a double-digit win! And over Miami, no less! (Not that the Heat are particularly good but, you know, Pat Riley.) While the Knicks have been playing quite well of late, it’s been almost a month since we had one of those. After a really lethargic first half, New York got their shit together coming out of the locker room for the third quarter and pretty much immediately opened up a sizable lead on the Heat. I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but it feels like the Knicks have come out especially invigorated for the second half fairly often this season, something I imagine speaks well to Hornacek’s ability to fire the team up at halftime.

Given the nature of this win, there are a fair amount of highlights. So let’s get to them.

As I alluded to in both the headline and subheadline, Carmelo Anthony and Kyle O’Quinn played quite well tonight. KOQ put up a 12-7-3 line in 27 wondrous minutes. And Melo cooked some serious soup, with 35 points on 13/27 from the field (plus he moved into 10th all-time in scoring in Knicks history, as Rebecca Haarlow helpfully pointed out while I was writing this paragraph). O’Quinn hit Melo for two beautiful alley-oops:

Not to be outdone by O’Quinn’s passing, Anthony had 2 assists of his own, including this excellent cross-court pass:

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a big Melo game if he didn’t hit a buzzer beater:

Kristaps Porzingis stayed pretty cold with 14 points on 6/15 FG. (12 rebounds though!) Regardless, he still had some plays worth noting because Kristaps:

You can also see some good o-bounds from Joakim Noah in that first video. He had 7 of those on his way to his first double-double of the year.

Derrick Rose left the game in the third with back spasms, but prior to that, he did sneak in this nice pass in transition:

Finally, here’s your daily Mindaugas Kuzminskas highlight:

So, yeah, that was a real fun win. Professor Miranda’s gonna teach you all about how great it was in his recap.