Knicks Lose Forward for Game 5

There’s Garden party set for Tuesday night but Bojan Bogdanovic will have to decline.

The New York Knicks forward is listed as out for Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against the Philadelphia 76ers at Madison Square Garden (7 p.m. ET, MSG/TNT), costing Manhattan some of its valuable depth as it goes to punch its second-round ticket. Bogdanovic lasted mere seconds in Game 4, enduring a foot injury when Nic Batum landed on him during a chase for a loose ball at the onset of the second quarter.

With both Bogdanovic and Mitchell Robinson out, the Knicks played with seven men for a majority of their 97-92 victory at Wells Fargo Center. Robinson is currently listed as questionable on Tuesday’s injury report as he continues to work off the aftershocks of his Game 3 encounter with Sixers star Joel Embiid. Precious Achiuwa filled in serviceably for Robinson and now the question becomes whether head coach Tom Thibodeau will find a Bogdanovic replacement.

The Bogdanovic equivalent left in the Knicks’ de facto bullpen is fellow Detroit import Alec Burks. While Burks hadly matches Bogdanovic’s size, he could potentially fulfill the three-point void left behind.

While Bogdanovic began to find a slight groove in the metropolitan rotation, Burks’ return to Manhattan hasn’t gone as planned: in 23 appearances since the reunion at the trade deadline, Burks shot less than 31 percent from the field and he has been exiled from any New York rotation, appearing in just one game since Apr. 6.

Thibodeau has long faced tired criticism about his workloads and the Knicks have made an eight-man set work, even if it meant temporarily exiling a legitimate contributor like Achiuwa. There’s no doubt that Burks would come into Game 5 cold if he gets the call, but time is of the relative essence: the Knicks would no doubt like to close out this series as quickly as possible and forcing a seven-man group (assuming Robinson is still out) into that box seems like a tad too much to as for, even if they’re capable of pulling off such a gambit.

It’s certainly not an ideal situation, but there would perhaps be no more poetic way for the Knicks to earn postseason advancement than by overcoming medical woes.

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