DETROIT — PJ Tucker didn’t know what to anticipate.
He obtained a textual content Thursday morning that he was a part of the rotation for the sport in opposition to the Pistons, after which, to his shock, Tucker was the primary participant off the Knicks bench in a 115-106 loss.
By the top, Tucker had logged 27 minutes — by far a season excessive — whereas mixing it up bodily and scoring his first regular-season factors in precisely a yr on a trademark nook 3-pointer.
“Once I got through my first wind, it was really good,” Tucker mentioned. “I started to open up a little bit. I started to feel good, started talking, getting involved with the game and it’s like riding a bike.”
Tucker even closed out the shut sport within the fourth quarter in a lineup with starters.
April 10, 2025. NBAE through Getty Photographs
Nonetheless, there’s no assure he’ll see the court docket once more.
Josh Hart and OG Anunoby, who each rested Thursday, ought to return for Friday’s sport in opposition to the Cavaliers.
Tucker relished the prospect — and felt at house getting bodily.
“The plays like that, the box outs, the 50-50 balls, that stuff is that feeling,” Tucker mentioned. “Getting offensive rebounds, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m back.’ It felt good.”
The proof reveals Tom Thibodeau doesn’t truly put on down his gamers.
With Thibodeau’s fame for destroying our bodies with heavy minutes because the impetus, The Guardian took a deep dive into the info beginning in 2010 (Thibodeau’s first yr as a head coach) and found “there’s no clear or consistent pattern showing Thibodeau-coached players are more likely to get hurt than anyone else.”
The graph equipped with the story confirmed three of Thibodeau’s 5 seasons in Chicago correlated with a excessive variety of accidents, however his subsequent years with the Timberwolves and Knicks have been both about common or more healthy than a lot of the NBA.
Thibodeau, who rested two starters in Thursday’s loss to the Pistons, shrugged off the findings as a result of it gained’t cease the opposing view.
“I don’t worry about it because there’s always opinions,” Thibodeau mentioned. “Any time there’s science for it, there’s science against. And then there’s opinions. And there’s the trained eye. And there’s a lot that goes into it. I always say, you prepare for what you want to do. And you have to have a mentality and the mindset is everything. I’ve been around a lot of players and I’ve learned from them, I’ve learned from different people I’ve been around. I don’t worry about any of that stuff.”
