DALLAS — A whistle saved the Knicks from an embarrassing defeat.
Mavericks guard Brandon Williams appeared to hit the game-tying bucket in the final seconds Wednesday, but he was called for hooking defender Landry Shamet and the Knicks escaped American Airlines Center with a 113-111 nail-biter over Dallas.
Shamet, in the end, became the unlikely hero.
Facing a terrible and undermanned Mavericks squad, the Knicks found themselves in a tight battle and needing big buckets — and Shamet came through.
The veteran guard, who has occupied a consistent starting role despite joining the team on a nonguaranteed contract, knocked down a pair of 3-pointers in the final 62 seconds, including the go-ahead shot with about 30 ticks remaining.
Still, Shamet and his teammates nearly blew it. Shamet clanked two potential game-sealing free throws with 22 seconds left. Then Mitchell Robinson flubbed a pair from the foul line. And then Jalen Brunson, returning to the lineup, converted just 1 of 2.
It left the Knicks a disappointing 1-for-6 from the charity stripe in the final 30 seconds, providing Dallas life. After Brunson’s final free throw, the Mavericks got the inbounds pass to Williams, who clearly hooked Shamet on the drive and didn’t get away with it.
The tying bucket went in but didn’t count.
So the Knicks (9-5) backed into an unimpressive win. But at least they pulled it out on the road, where they improved to 1-4 on the season.
Brunson dropped a game-high 28 points in his return from a two-game absence because of a sprained ankle, an injury sustained in garbage time of a loss to the Magic. It’s safe to assume Brunson wanted to play in Dallas, the place he called home for the first four seasons of his career. There was extra motivation.
After all, it wasn’t a clean break from Dallas. The Mavericks initially declined to offer Brunson a reasonable contract, then cried foul and tampering when Brunson didn’t give the Mavericks a chance to match New York’s offer in 2022.
More recently, Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban fed into a theory that Brunson’s contract circumvented the cap, similar to the alleged Kawhi Leonard and Clippers’ cap circumvention.
The Knicks were found guilty by the NBA of tampering with Brunson and gave up a second-round pick, but there’s been no evidence of cap circumvention.
“I don’t know. I just think there were a lot of things at play there. You know, that’s behind me,” Cuban said on journalist Pablo Torre’s podcast. “More power to JB. More power to everything. Was I happy that they only got dinged for a second-round pick? No. No, it should have been far worse, but it is what it is.”
The Mavericks, meanwhile, entered the evening in shambles. They recently fired the team president, Nico Harrison, less than a year after his disastrous Luka Doncic trade. They are injury-riddled with Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis shelved indefinitely, although Davis might return soon.
Even Cooper Flagg, their best reason to feel hopeful about the direction of the franchise, was inactive Wednesday because of an illness. It was unfortunate timing considering the Mavericks gave away Flagg posters at every seat.
But the Mavericks hung around against New York’s porous defense, which allowed the Mavericks to shoot 16-for-44 from deep. Naji Marshall and D’Angelo Russell each scored 23 for Dallas off the bench.
For the Knicks, Karl-Anthony Towns scored 18 points with 14 rebounds on just 6-for-16 shooting. Josh Hart had 16 points and 10 rebounds off the bench — including a big 3-pointer in the fourth quarter. But the Knicks couldn’t create enough space to get comfortable against an inferior opponent, and Mike Brown’s squad needed help from Shamet and the referee to avoid what would’ve been their worst defeat of the season.
