Knicks won yesterday. See you again today!

The Knicks made a trip to Atlanta to complete the first game of another back-to-back set ending Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

All New York did was blast the Hawks, beating Trae Young’s mob 121-105 on Saturday night.

Here’s what Coach Thibs and a few Knickerbockers had to say after yesterday’s after and before getting win No. 50 later today.

Tom Thibodeau

On Saturday’s win over the Hawks:

“Just all-around solid on both ends.”

On defending Trae Young:

“[We were] just tied together. I thought a good aggressiveness on the ball and then good help, great effort, second and third effort. When you’re defending Trae Young it requires you to do more than one thing. You’ve got to fly around and I thought we did that. And then I thought the rebounding was good and then you’re concerned about them because they’re so disruptive defensively.”

On Atlanta’s bench scoring:

“Yeah, we were concerned about LeVert and Niang off the bench. If you don’t pay attention they can do a lot of damage. That team is an outstanding offensive team. If you let your guard down at all, they can get 10 in a minute easy.”

On Anunoby’s role with Brunson returning:

“The notion of all that stuff, it’s white noise. The game tells you what to do, you know? So, whose shot is it in transition? The open man, right? And if there’s two on somebody, who shot is it, right? You have the responsibility as a primary scorer to make the right play. So, the notion that it has to be this way, that way, no. There has to be a willingness to sacrifice by everybody. The team has to come first. What’s best for our team? What gives the team the best chance to win? And that’s all everyone should be thinking about. They shouldn’t be thinking about who’s doing this, who’s doing that. That’s not the way this game works. If you care about winning, that stuff shouldn’t matter.”

On Anunoby’s positioning and scoring:

“No, [Anunoby] never spent exclusively… that notion’s a bunch of garbage. I’ll tell you another thing: I value the corners a lot more than most people because I know that’s the most valuable spot on the floor. He’s all over the floor. That’s the way he’s scoring. That’s the way everybody’s scoring. So if you have a drive pass, pass who’s supposed to be in the corner? It’s drive and kick and if you’re cutting and you’re moving without the ball, which is what you’re supposed to do, right? If you push the ball up, your first responsibility is to create pace. Your second responsibility is to create movement and everyone’s supposed to read the man in front of them. So, if you’re reading the man in front of you and he cuts, then you replace in front, right? That’s the way this game works. So that’s a bunch of excuse-making. And that’s the way I see it.”

On team ball movement and unselfish play:

“I think it’s huge, and to succeed in this league, you have to do it together. You can’t win at the highest level in this league individually, you have to do it collectively. So everyone had to be willing to sacrifice. I think offense is about execution. Everyone has a job to do. You have to go out there and do your job and you have to help each other. Everyone works together and hits the open man, pass up a good shot to get a great shot, but that willingness to be unselfish and play for each other is huge.”

On Brunson’s availability:

“When he’s ready to go. He’s very close. When he’s ready we’ll know… You just take it as it comes. Whatever the team needs the most and what’s best, you’re not going to jeopardize a player’s health. So if he can play he’ll play. And if it’s better for him not to play he won’t play. There’s some moving parts here where we’re trying to reintegrate players that come back after being out for a while. So there’s that challenge as well.”

On passing Pat Riley in Knicks wins:

“All the individual stuff, it’s a byproduct of the team working together. I’ve had a great team. I’ve got great players. It’s a great organization, so you share in all that stuff as a group. As far as Pat Riley, he’s unbelievable, probably the best to ever do it. I was fortunate to be with Jeff [Van Gundy] and Jeff I put up there with anybody. Those guys had great impact on my coaching philosophy. Of course Red Holzman and all the guys that have been here, it’s an honor to be the coach here.”

On his coaching background and being part of the “Riley Coaching Tree”:

“I’m a mutt. I’ve been around a lot of people that have had great influence on me. Obviously the head coaches, but a lot of assistant coaches have had great impact on me as well.”

Josh Hart

On narrowly missing a triple-double:

“I wanted to stay in to get the last one but I wasn’t playing the game the right way. I was trying to play for that. I didn’t really deserve it, and that’s probably why I didn’t get it. I was playing the game the wrong way at that point, so it is what it is.”

On Thibodeau’s coaching getting him to the fourth-most wins in franchise history:

“It’s dope. It’s a tribute to the talent that he has in terms of coaching and success. It also shows the stability the franchise has with him — and needs with him. A great accomplishment, and hopefully we keep going up.”

“His preparation is top tier. Sometimes we’d like him to get out of the office and enjoy life a little bit. He has an amazing house, so sometimes we’d like him to at least go home and enjoy his house. But just the preparation, his dedication to excellence and the process — he doesn’t believe winning starts at 7:30 when the game starts. He believes winning starts in the summer.”

On defending Trae Young:

“Obviously he’s a hell of a player. We were just trying to make it difficult for him, get him off the ball, and have other guys do the playmaking and getting shots up. KAT did a good job in the blitz. Kal’s [Bridges] been doing a great job on him all year, so that was kind of the game plan and we executed it.”

On the Knicks’ offensive focus through Saturday’s game:

“I think we were just focused, locked-in, obviously we knew we had to bring it with an early start to the game.”

Karl-Anthony Towns

On the Knicks readiness for reintegrating Jalen Brunson and other sidelined players:

“I don’t know when guys come back but I know any team would be very much improved with Deuce McBride and Jalen Brunson. We’re going to do everything we can because like I said before to y’all that the team and where we’re at is farther along when we’re back to integrating them.”

On the team’s execution vs. Atlanta:

“We did a good job of being aggressive on the basketball. And our defense translates to our offense. So obviously hitting 3s helps tremendously. And we shot really well. So just doing a good job of executing.”

On the Knicks late-season push:

“We try to win every game we play. Not just two. We got to do a good job of staying focused and finishing out the season strong.”

OG Anunoby

On the Knicks’ team-wide shooting depth:

“We have a lot of great shooting. Landry [Shamet] can really shoot. Delon [Wright] can shoot. Cam [Payne] can shoot. KAT [Karl-Anthony Towns]. Everyone. Josh. So we have a great team of shooters and everyone is shooting with confidence and it’s contagious.”

On how to handle back-to-back games:

“Try to recover the best you can, try to sleep the best you can. And in the morning, just see how it goes.”

Carmelo Anthony

On his Hall of Fame induction:

“This is the greatest accomplishment that I ever will attain.”

“This is it. This is it. It don’t get no better than this. It don’t get greater than this. All of those things, those accomplishments that you have mentioned, this just puts a cap on that and it makes it all worth the while.”

“I’m satisfied. It was worth it. I’m here. Again, it just comes back to being satisfied. When you are an athlete and you’re playing, you’re competing, your coaches tell you, never be satisfied. So you have that mentality until you can sit back and take yourself out of that situation in that moment and realize, ‘I’m good on basketball.’ I’m satisfied. This is the gate, these are the doors. And it’s nothing that anyone can take away from me now.”

“I keep trying to come up with things to say for these moments and there’s nothing that I can say that’s actually going to express the way that I feel or the way that I’m just trying to take this moment in. It’s a lot to put into perspective. You get the call about coming to be entered into the Hall of Fame for what you’ve done for your career and as an individual and what you’ve brought to this game of basketball.”

On his possible jersey retirement in NYC and Denver:

“Why not? So we’ll see, but I would love to see that, man. For me it’s like, why wait? You know, it’s why wait? If you got to think about it, then cool, just let it be… I would like to see that jersey in both rafters, Denver and New York.”

“I don’t know, man, to be honest with you. A lot of surprises are happening right now around me, so I’m trying to stay in the moment, and if that’s one of the surprises, then I would be ecstatic about that. I would love to see that jersey hung up.”

On the Knicks’ chances of winning the chip this season:

“We’re going to get healthy, we’re getting healthy now. We have a couple games left before the playoffs. I’m rolling with us. I think we have a really, really good team. I think we have the pieces everybody said that we needed. It’s just a matter of them putting it all together. It’s on the players at this point.”