The Knicks don’t have the luxury to rest in their season finale.
Not after stinking it up in their last three games — three consecutive losses to the best in the East: first to the Boston Celtics, then to the same Detroit Pistons they’re penned into facing in the first round of the playoffs, and finally, a 23-point lead evaporated into a sobering loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Madison Square Garden on Friday.
No. The Knicks haven’t earned that right. Their second-straight 50-win season is now a footnote. What matters now is the slide, the inconsistency and the unsettling sense of a team spiraling up the standings but down in form.
And yet, because Indiana lost to Orlando on Friday, New York is locked in the East’s No. 3 seed regardless. The Knicks will host the sixth-seeded Pistons in Round 1. But their recent track record isn’t encouraging: 1-3 against Detroit, 0-4 against Boston, 0-4 against Cleveland. Zero wins against any of the NBA’s top-three seeds if you include the 0-2 swing against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Zero confidence entering the postseason on a three-game skid, even if the team outwardly suggests otherwise.
“Does [losing these three] do anything to our confidence? No,” Josh Hart said after Friday’s loss. “Obviously we would have liked to get at least one if not both, but like I said, it’s playoff basketball, we have to flip the page. We have to focus on Brooklyn, ending the season off right, and then Detroit.”
This was supposed to be the season the Knicks ascended to the league’s top tier, backed by trades for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns. Instead, they’re limping into the playoffs with more questions than answers.
And only one game left to answer them.
So yes, Sunday’s finale against the Nets is technically meaningless. The seeding is set, and the Nets are locked into the sixth-best odds at No. 1 in the NBA Draft Lottery.
But the stakes? For the Knicks? They’ve never been higher. This team doesn’t need a victory for seeding.
It needs a win for its confidence.
“We have to go into this next game with the right mentality and right mindset and have a short-term memory,” said Jalen Brunson, steady as ever after Friday’s collapse. “We can’t let things like this linger on. It’s important to have short-term memory right now and continue to look forward. I know it’s tough. It sounds like it’s B.S., but it’s literally what we have to do right now in order for us to do better.”
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According to Tom Thibodeau, it starts in the mirror.
“We got to be honest with ourselves, look at what we did wrong,” the coach said. “We got to get it fixed. And we got to get it fixed fast.”
Friday’s loss stung more than most. The Cavs were without Donovan Mitchell, De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill. The Knicks, missing only Towns, built a 23-point first-half lead. And then gave it all back.
“We’ve got to play for 48 minutes — both sides of the ball,” Thibodeau said. “That’s the challenge that we have. We’ve got to have rhythm going into the playoffs. So this has to be changed quickly.”
The problem wasn’t just execution. It was identity. Like the Knicks had no answer for Cade Cunningham (36 points on Thursday) and had no answer for Jayson Tatum (32 points on Tuesday), they had no response for Darius Garland, who erupted for 26 points and 13 assists on Friday.
The Knicks sat Towns in the second leg of a Thursday-Friday back-to-back, explaining the 49-35 discrepancy on the glass. But the Cavaliers were far from whole. The Knicks were expecting to win this game — and the Cavs had no intention of making it competitive until the Knicks proved they couldn’t hang onto a comfortable, 20-plus-point lead.
“Obviously, we have to be better. To make it short and sweet: we have to be better,” said Brunson. “Everything you guys see and we see. We have to fix that.”
That’s not a good sign for a team that hopes to advance beyond the first round — against a Pistons team they’ve struggled with all season.
“We’re not playing close to our best basketball this week,” said Hart. “We’ll look at situations and how to get us into our best basketball offensive and defensively and figure that out. We’ve gotta go out there and end the season right in Brooklyn and prepare mentally and physically [for Detroit].”
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The saving grace counterpoint? The Knicks haven’t been whole.
They weren’t at full strength in Detroit. They weren’t against Cleveland. They’re still ramping up. The No. 3 seed was all but locked either way.
But that logic doesn’t fly for a Thibodeau team.
“I always think you need to win,” he said. “There’s value in winning. I know that.”
It’s telling that this Knicks team, one with championship aspirations, hasn’t beaten a single opponent with a better record this season. And they’ve now ceded a 3-1 season series record to the team they’ll face in Round 1. The only silver lining? OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson all sat in that Thursday loss to the Pistons.
“Yeah I mean, even not being at full strength, I think the Boston one is one we for sure should have won. Even Detroit and today, we weren’t our full team out there, but we were capable of winning both of those games — today we were up [23],” Hart said. “We’ve got to find what makes this team successful. And playoff basketball is a different level: The intensity picks up, physicality picks up, so we’ve gotta make sure we spend this week preparing, but more importantly, mentally.”
The Knicks have one last tune-up before the real pressure begins. One more shot to find rhythm, regain confidence and enter the playoffs with momentum. It’s clear they need to regain the rhythm the offense once carried. That rhythm has been missing since Brunson returned to the rotation after a monthlong layoff due to his ankle injury.
The star Knicks guard finished with 27 points against the Cavs on Friday but mustered just two assists while his teammates struggled to find shots in the flow of the offense. Brunson shot 5-of-15 from the field in the loss to the Pistons, and against the Celtics, he finished with 27 points and 10 assists, but Bridges and Anunoby — who’d each found scoring strides with Brunson out, couldn’t catch their rhythm.
“Until you have it, you play through. We need to get rhythm,” said Thibodeau. “We need to get better as a team, we need to get rhythm and so there’s always rest versus rhythm. You get the highest seed you possibly can, and then you make those decisions about whether you rest or what you’re doing.”
Which brings us to Sunday, and what was supposed to be an otherwise meaningless game against the rival Nets now carries the weight of an entire organization hoping to prove it is not the sum of its last three games.
A win won’t change the seed.
But it might change the vibe, though it’s unclear if vibes are enough to save a team that hasn’t stacked up with the elite this season.
“I want to win on Sunday [in Brooklyn],” said Brunson. “It’s just plain and simple regardless.”
Is there enough time for any of the changes to stick?
“That’s the challenge that we have. So we’re heading down the stretch,” said Thibodeau. “We knew the challenge of Jalen going out and then coming back and then losing a couple other guys. But we got to have rhythm going into the playoffs. So this has to be changed quickly.”
