In the Knicks' 120-113 win over the Magic, Trey Burke and Frank Ntilikina each played 30 minutes while Emmanuel Mudiay played 23 minutes. Jarrett Jack didn't play at all. Burke made the most of his time, leading the Knicks with points 26 points on 12 of 22 shooting. He also added 6 assists and 4 rebounds.
"I know he can put the ball in the hole and he can get hot," Hornacek said, via Marc Berman of NY Post. "He can control the pace. He's a guy that when they're putting a lot of pressure on it, you give him the ball, he'll be able to get something going. But defensively, I thought he was the key because he got up on the guy. He was in that locker room, looked like he was dead tired. I said that's how the guys are supposed to be when they come in that locker room. Trey was great on both sides of the ball."
While many fans are hoping the Knicks get the best possible draft position, Burke says it's not in his DNA to not try and win.
"We're still trying to win games," Burke said. "I know a lot of people think otherwise. It's not in our DNA to go out there and lay down and not win."
I think that could be part of the "issue" for us in our remaining games. We have players like Burke, Hardaway, and Kanter [to name a few] that want to win games and are not going to lay down and throw games. Last night our box score was pretty consistent through four quarters and that is what won us the game in the end because despite Orlando's hot first quarter (41) and decent second quarter (28), their scoring fell significantly enough in the third and fourth quarter to let us back in, whereas ours remained consistent (31, 32, 30, 27). For us to lose last night would have required Hornacek to sit Burke, Hardaway, Kanter and play the fringe players. On the one hand that helps our tank, but on the other it creates negativity because there is no incentive for players to get hot like Burke did because they just end up getting benched. So as much as we'd like to see the tank fully embraced to boost our lottery odds, I think it is going to be difficult to get these players on board with that because we have too many that aren't going to lay down and not want to win.
The only way we could fully embrace the tank would be to limit the minutes of potential difference making players, bench players when they start to get too hot, give the fringe guys more minutes, and utilize a Sacramento Kings policy where they rest a few veteran players each night and rotate which ones play with the youngsters and which ones rest and don't play on that night. An issue with that is would players like Hardaway, Lee, O'Quinn, Beasley accept being rested for a night, then play on the next, then rested? I don't think that kind of policy would be popular, and it could be counterproductive in building a positive locker room to build on next season. Unless of course Hornacek is out at the end of this season regardless and a new regime is brought in, then whatever happens this season might not matter as much, but it could still alienate certain players and put them off wanting to remain here.