RJ Barrett, Knicks slip late against Chris Paul’s Suns

The game changed at the end of the third quarter, with one of those sequences that boosts one team and deflates the other.

The Phoenix Suns managed to score four points on two baskets in the final second, with Cameron Payne connecting on the second after intercepting a lazy in-bounds pass from RJ Barrett and converting a lay-up at the buzzer. It gave Phoenix its first lead since the first quarter, and the Knicks never recovered in a 128-105 loss Friday night.

Chris Paul, celebrating his 36th birthday, woke up to pummel the Knicks down the stretch, motivated by a cheap foul from Taj Gibson. Paul was shoulder-checked by Gibson, who was hit with a flagrant foul. Paul was furious and walked to the Knicks sideline to vent at Tom Thibodeau.

From that moment, Paul scored seven points in slightly more than two minutes and buried the Knicks (37-30), who’ve lost two straight for the first time in over a month.

The Suns (48-19) outscored the Knicks in the fourth quarter, 38-17.

In Friday results relevant to their playoff position, the Miami Heat beat the Minnesota Timberwolves to move into sole position of No. 6 in the East, now just one game behind the Knicks. The No. 7 Boston Celtics lost to the Chicago Bulls and remained two games behind them.

The Knicks have five games remaining and host the Celtics in the season finale.

Thibodeau’s bench was weakened with the absences of injured guards Immanuel Quickley and Alec Burks. Quickley sprained his ankle two nights earlier in Denver. Burks, who missed eight straight games recently while in COVID protocols, had a contused left knee.

“He’s got some soreness. So precautionary,” Thibodeau said. “When he’s ready to go, we’ll get him back in there. But we wanted to be smart.”

Julius Randle and Barrett combined for 47 points and Derrick Rose added 17, but the Knicks got little from the supporting cast. The team missed 21 of 32 three-point attempts.

The Knicks lost to the Suns just 11 days before a close battle at the Garden, a defeat that snapped their nine-game winning streak. They were also coming off a blowout loss Wednesday in Denver, a humbling performance against a contender that Thibodeau said turned by poor rebounding and an early deficit.

“I think the big thing is, the start of that game. The rebounding is really what got us,” the Knicks coach said. “So we have to take what we looked at on film. That will be the challenge (against the Suns). We’re playing an elite team, we’re on the road, you’ve got to bring the energy, you’ve got to bring fight. The one thing I thought in the second half (against the Nuggets), we didn’t make shots but we did fight. Sometimes you can miss good shots but you can’t allow that to impact the other parts of the game.”

The start of Friday’s game looked similar. The Knicks trailed 10-3. Thibodeau was forced to call a timeout after just three minutes.

This time, the Knicks responded immediately and took the lead heading into the second quarter. They waited until the end of the third quarter to collapse.