Getty Julius Randle and Quentin Grimes of the New York Knicks guards Darius Garland of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The New York Knicks have upgraded Quentin Grimes’ status from out to questionable to play in Game 5 of their Eastern Conference first-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Grimes’ contused right shoulder is no longer in a sling, according to The New York Post’s Zach Braziller.
With Grimes out in Game 4, Josh Hart started in his place and played 40 minutes.
Hart delivered 19 points, seven rebounds, two assists and two steals in an almost no-relief job. He also helped limit Mitchell to only two points in the second half on a horrible 1-of-9 shooting from the floor.
Despite the exhausting job of defending Donovan Mitchell, Hart still had the energy to crash the boards and pull down two key offensive rebounds inside the final 1:48 that helped the Knicks grab a commanding 3-1 series lead.
Grimes has yet to find his rhythm in the series, averaging only 3.0 points on 3.7 shots per game. He’s shooting a woeful 18.2% from the field and 11.1% from deep in the first three games of the series.
Meanwhile, Jericho Sims, who is not part of the Knicks’ current rotation, is out for the second straight game with a sore right shoulder.
Knicks’ Title Odds Rise Exponentially
On the cusp of advancing to the second round, the Knicks’ title odds have jumped to 15%, tied with the Philadelphia 76ers and behind only the Boston Celtics’s 25% chance, according to The Ringer’s odds machine as of April 26.
The Knicks are pegged to have a 60% chance of winning the second round after the Miami Heat put the Milwaukee Bucks on the ropes, with a 3-1 series lead, on the back of Jimmy Butler’s career-high 56 points in Game 4.
Like Cleveland, Miami has a 1-3 record against New York this season. On the other hand, the Knicks haven’t beaten the Bucks this season and are on a six-game losing streak against them dating back to last season.
Jalen Brunson Warns Knicks of Complacency
The Knicks have the first of three cracks to oust the higher-seeded Cavaliers today, April 26, in Cleveland.
Their backcourt leader Jalen Brunson warned the team not to get ahead of themselves and stay in the moment.
“It’s not over,” Brunson told reporters during his postgame interview. “It’s not even close to being over. We’ll continue to keep focusing on one day at a time, and there’s nothing to celebrate. There’s nothing to be truly happy about, so, obviously, we’d won tonight and it’s one step closer, but we have to continue to have that same mindset, mentality that we have over the past couple of games.”
Closing out a desperate Cleveland team on their home court will be tough.
For Brunson, their approach should be “to not think about closing it out.”
“Don’t think about closing it out at all,” Brunson said. “Just think of it like, ‘Hey, we’re going to the hostile environment, and they’re going to play desperate, and we just gotta be able to bring it, and we gotta focus on one possession, one quarter at a time and just keep building off that and then keep fighting and we’ll go from there.’”