It’s human nature to relax. Rest on laurels.
The Knicks spent a summer soaking in the adulation, appearing at more events and national TV shows than any team in NBA history. At least that’s the way it felt the past three months. They don’t have a Basketball Reference page to track these things.
The players — particularly Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jose Alvarado, OG Anunoby, Jordan Clarkson and Josh Hart — didn’t shy from their popularity.
But starting this week, the focus shifts.
Back to basketball.
“Is it cliché if I say it’s 0-0 again?” Towns said. “That’s kind of the same thing we said every playoff game, and when we won and kept winning it was great. But this season is about us going out there and starting again at 0-0. Bringing that same hungry team, that team that’s hungry to prove everyone wrong. The underdogs.”
Towns was speaking Thursday on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” perhaps his last national TV appearance before training camp starts this week. Perhaps not? Brunson also had “Saturday Night Live” to host ahead of Monday’s Media Day at the training facility.
None of these appearances are detrimental to basketball. It’s better than partying and drinking for a summer. This collection of Knicks players, as multiple people around the organization have explained, are more mature and responsible than any previous roster incarnation. There was one shaky incident involving Clarkson in July, when he was escorted out of a club by police, and that was it.
But the amount of widespread attention and adulation does beg some questions: Can the Knicks avoid complacency? Can they maintain the edge that pushed them through a historic playoff run?
Brunson, whose profile is higher than any current New York athlete, understands the assignment.
“We’ve done something that everyone has wanted us to do for 53 years now. And now people are going around saying, You guys are the champs, you guys are the best thing ever. It’s been said to us all summer. God knows how long it’s going to continue,” the point guard told The Post last month. “When people say that, can we let that go through one ear and out the other? Can we just focus on what we can do this year? Because last year was last year.
“It’s OK for people to talk to us about it, and say, ‘Oh that was great.’ But we’re moving on. So it cannot be in our mindset. It cannot be our focal point if we want to get better. So I think that’s the question we need to ask. And if we can do that, we’re going to be in good shape to be able to be in a better mindset. If not, then we’re going to be behind the eight ball.”
It’s an overarching theme in training camp, when the progress is supposed to start but it’s hard to find motivation — especially for accomplished vets — because real games are still weeks away.
One of the self-motivating tactics clearly being implemented by the Knicks is focusing on the doubters. For instance, they are not the betting favorites to win the title (they are tied for third and below the Thunder and Spurs, according to FanDuel). They have zero players in ESPN’s recently released top-five ranking (Brunson is sixth). They are hearing a lot about the new threats of Philadelphia, Miami, Toronto.
There’s more to prove, in other words.
“I don’t think we have a big target because I don’t think anyone is picking us to win again,” Hart said on ESPN’s U.S. Open broadcast. “We’re using it as fuel, we’re still the hunters, we’re not satisfied with one.
Following up on that mindset starts in camp.
