The New York Knicks might have made the best signing in free agency for the second season in a row, as after coming away with Jalen Brunson in 2022, the signing of Donte DiVincenzo has been a home run for the team this season. DiVincenzo is just 18 points shy of tying the Knicks' single-season record for most three-pointers made, which is 241, set by Evan Fournier in 2022. DiVincenzo credited Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau with giving him the freedom to score the way he does, despite coming into this season as a bench player.
“That's the foundation: defense and rebounding. If you defend and rebounding and you do what he asks, then offensively it's a green light,” Donte DiVincenzo said, via Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “It's freedom, within reason. There's not a situation where he's going to be like, ‘Don't shoot that shot.' He wants everybody to play with the utmost confidence as long as you're playing on the defensive end.”
Tom Thibodeau has the Knicks in a solid position in the Eastern Conference, despite the injuries to Julius Randle and OG Anunoby. The Knicks hope to get healthy in time for the playoffs to potentially make a deep run.
Donte DiVincenzo knows he is approaching the Knicks' single-season record for threes
DiVincenzo knows he is approaching the record, and wants to break it. He has 12 games left to do it.
“Hell yeah, obviously I want to be in the record books,” DiVincenzo said, Bondy.
Despite aiming to beat the record, DiVincenzo admitted that it is not his main focus going into each game for the Knicks.
“I don't think about it. Obviously I'm aware of it, but I don't go into the game going, ‘How many do I need?'” DiVincenzo said, via Bondy. “That's for you guys to talk about, that's for everybody else to have fun with. But when you start doing that — there's basketball karma, basketball gods. That's not something [I want to mess with].”
The Knicks sit at 42-28, half of a game back of the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third seed in the Eastern Conference, and 3.5 games back of the Milwaukee Bucks for the second seed. However, the Orlando Magic are just half of a game back of the Knicks for the fourth seed.
The Eastern Conference is tightly-contested, so DiVincenzo's priority is to do whatever it takes to help his team win down the stretch in these last 12 games, as chasing a record is secondary to maximizing playoff seeding.
As DiVincenzo said, it is for us to watch and talk about when he could break Fournier's record.
Up next for the Knicks is a home game against the Detroit Pistons on Monday. Last time the two teams played at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks won a wild one shortly after the trade deadline.
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