Knicks head into trade deadline with tight win over Magic

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Knicks’ body of work is now complete ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline, and it’s up to team president Leon Rose whether to provide this up-and-down team with a talent boost for a potential playoff push.

The roller coaster remained on the upward track with Tuesday night’s hairy 102-98 win over the youthful Magic before a decidedly partisan crowd often thunderously chanting “Let’s Go Knicks” at Amway Center.

All-Star forward Julius Randle posted 22 points, 14 rebounds and six assists as the Knicks (30-26) essentially pulled even with the sixth-place Heat (29-25) in the Eastern Conference standings, although they technically still are percentage points behind and in the No. 7 play-in position ahead of the trade deadline.

“I love our team, but that’s Leon’s job,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the Knicks’ third win in four games. “You see it league-wide right now, and things heat up and that’s his job to listen to people, to talk, to see what’s going on in the league. Leon and his staff are always thinking about the possibilities and can we improve the team?

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“But we love our team. We know we have a really good roster that we like. We have a lot of good young players that we know are going to get better as time goes on.”

Jalen Brunson netted a game-high 25 points, while Immanuel Quickley buried 4 of 9 attempts from 3-point range and netted 18. RJ Barrett endured a rocky shooting night in his return from a one-game illness absence, finishing with 15 points on 5-for-16 shooting in 35 minutes.

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Markelle Fultz scored 21 points, Franz Wagner had 18 and hotshot rookie Paolo Banchero added 16 for the Magic, who had won six of their previous 10 games.

“We talked to our team about how well Orlando had been playing. We knew it would be a fight,” Thibodeau said. “We started off in a hole. But we fought out of the hole.”

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Indeed, the Knicks clanked seven of their first 10 attempts from the floor — including the first four shots by Barrett — as Orlando grabbed an 18-7 lead six minutes into the game and a 26-22 advantage through one period.

Randle, who has scored the league’s second-most points in the first quarter this season, attempted only three shots for three points, although he registered four of the Knicks’ six assists in the session.

Barrett opened the second quarter alongside the Knicks’ four-game second unit and buried an early pull-up jumper for his first points of the game, but that was his only make among seven field-goal attempts in the first two quarters.

Cole Anthony’s alley-oop dunk and his 3-pointer pushed the Orlando lead to 12, before consecutive triples by Randle made it a 41-36 game with four minutes left until halftime.

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Fultz’s two buckets in the final minute boosted the Magic lead to 48-40 at intermission, but a left-side trey by Quentin Grimes closed the deficit to two midway through the third.

“We keep putting ourselves in the position that we’re climbing back from deficits,” Brunson said. “We have to be better and start faster, but on the flip side, we keep fighting.”

Randle was slapped with a technical foul for arguing a non-call by the referees late in the third, and the Knicks trailed 69-66 entering the final period. But two key offensive rebounds and two dunks by Jericho Sims (eight points, nine boards) put the Knicks up 85-84 with just under five minutes to play, and Randle connected from downtown for a two-point lead with 2:54 to go.

Fultz’s driving dunk pushed the Magic back ahead by one, but Brunson sank a short jumper and then fed Sims for his second dunk for a 96-93 Knicks advantage with 39.8 seconds left. Brunson also coolly knocked down four free throws in the final 7.7 seconds and Randle added two more as the road crowd thunderously chanted “Let’s Go Knicks” one final time.

“[The fans] always show up big here, so it’s fun to play here. Almost feels like a home game,” Randle said. “Basically what the game came down to at the end was we made our free throws, got rebounds and didn’t turn the ball over. That was huge.”