Julius Randle couldn't fall asleep as Sunday night bled into Monday morning, as the Knicks finished off their first week of the new season by falling flat in the fourth quarter against a Magic team that had no business fighting for a win at Madison Square Garden.
Randle and the Knicks, who had just demolished the Magic in Orlando two nights prior, watched Cole Anthony and Terrence Ross pick apart their defense to come away with a stunning 110-104 win, handing New York its first loss of the season.
The performance by the Knicks was certainly startling enough to keep Randle tossing and turning that night.
"I was sick man, I ain't go to sleep until like 4 o'clock," Randle said. "I was sick, everybody else was sick we let that slip. But we need those games like that. Last year I feel like we had a game like that against Oklahoma City, when we let a game slip away early in the season on our home court that we felt like we should have won, and didn't come out and play with energy. And we just responded."
The response was an emphatic one, and one that has come to be expected under head coach Tom Thibodeau. Behind a dominant second quarter and a breakout game by Kemba Walker, the Knicks redeemed themselves with a 112-99 win over the 76ers on Tuesday, dominating a team that hopes to contend in the Eastern Conference this season. New York led by as many as 27 points, and quickly washing out the bad taste of Sunday's surprising defeat.
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"We didn't bring it the other night, we had to come in tonight and just kind of redeem ourselves," Walker said. "That's how this league works. There's gonna be nights when things aren't going your way, but the best thing about this league is, two nights later you have another game. It's how you come back. That's what it's all about.
"That's the thing about this league. That's the thing about good teams in this league, high-character teams. It's OK to have adversity. It's OK to have slip-ups. It's about how you respond."
The Knicks put together an ideal response on Tuesday night, showing in a span of 48 hours what they're capable of against contending teams, but also how far they still have to go. They will get another tough test on Thursday against the undefeated Bulls in Chicago, where a performance like Sunday's loss would likely run them out of the building.
But the Knicks hope that kind of game is now behind them.
"We knew we didn't play well," Thibodeau said. "We have a really good group of guys, and they're serious-minded. We were disappointed with the way we played, that we didn't close out that game the way they should have. I could tell that night, the next day, and then last night, the gym was packed with people working. And this was a good test for us. But it doesn't stop."
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