Elfrid Payton has many flaws as a basketball player, but he has one attribute that makes him very attractive to Knicks fans right now: point-guardiness.
The Knicks have been without a real, actual, run-the-offense point guard for… since whenever Payton got injured in the first place. And it has showed. Their offense has been chaotic, disjointed, inept, basically any negative adjective you can think of (olid, invirile, perverted, to give some more examples), you can use to describe what the Knicks have been doing lately. Making RJ Barrett be some sort of offensive initiator might have helped his development, but it didn’t help the Knicks win games.
Payton likes running offenses. That’s what he does. He can score, but scoring is not something he should be doing a whole lot of. His jumper is still pretty wonky, even after he cut off that hair thing that was blocking his view of the rim and messing with his release (no danger of the ball hitting his hair anymore). His finishing is suspect. But he can penetrate defenses, and most importantly, pass the ball.
He only had 4 assists tonight, an oddly low total, but he must have been doing something right, because the Knicks played way better with him on the court and managed to get a rare win against a good (ish) team. Two wins in a row might be too much for Knicks fans to handle at this point; if you have a friend or family member or neighbor who is a Knicks fan, be a good citizen and check up on them, see how they’re doing. They might have injured themselves in their excitement over consecutive victories.