Tom Thibodeau wanted a 48-minute team. What he has instead is a 12-minute team. The kind of team that believes it is talented enough to sleepwalk through the first three quarters of any game before turning it during winning time.
Newsflash: Flipping a switch — or turning it on — only works for teams that have been there and done that already.
The Knicks have neither been there nor done that, and after a disappointing Game 2 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Monday, it’s unclear if they ever will.
At least as presently constructed. At least if they play the way they did through the first two games of their 2025 playoff run.
The Knicks were thoroughly outplayed through the first three quarters of Game 1 before blowing the Pistons out of the water via a 21-0 fourth-quarter run.
The Pistons outplayed the Knicks again through the first three quarters of Game 2. The Madison Square Garden faithful bubbled with anticipation. Could the Knicks pull off the improbable again?
The answer is no. Because playing from behind isn’t a practical approach to winning basketball games — even if the Knicks were fortunate enough to win Game 1. Now, New York heads to Detroit having ceded home-court advantage to a Pistons team that has now beaten them four times in their last five meetings.
Yet this is the same kind of bad habit formed in the regular season that has a tendency of rearing its ugly head in the playoffs.
Jalen Brunson is expected to win the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award — and he is well-deserving of the honor — but the Knicks were in far too many predicaments that required his late-game heroics in the first place. They were in those predicaments because they thought they could talent their way to victory on one too many nights.
That won’t work. Not in the playoffs. Not in any game worth its weight in the win column.
“The Knicks, give them credit, came out and played with a sense of urgency in that quarter,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said ahead of tipoff on Monday. “And I do feel like it’s just one of those things that you have to learn how to do, right? You go through our progress through this season, we had to learn how to win regular-season games first, right? And I thought our guys did a great job of figuring that out. Now, this is different. Now, you have to figure out a way to win playoff games and win them in the fourth quarter when it matters most.”
It was easy to gloss over the trend before the games truly began to count. Now, it’s the very thorn in New York’s side what could be this team’s undoing — if not in the first round, then almost certainly in Round 2, should the Knicks advance to face the defending champion Boston Celtics.
And it’s concerning given the bare facts of New York’s first-round playoff series. The Knicks are the far more experienced team. They are far more talented than the Pistons, too.
And yet there was trepidation as to whether or not they could put the Pistons away in convincing fashion. That trepidation was warranted after they forked over Game 2 at The Garden on Monday.
BAD DEFENSE
The vaunted defense the Knicks deployed against Pistons star Cade Cunningham in Game 1 failed miserably in Game 2.
Cunningham, who averaged 31 points against the Knicks during the regular season, shot just 8-of-21 for 21 points in Game 1. The All-Star guard was aggressive all night in Game 2, with 33 points and 12 rebounds on 11-of-21 shooting from the field.
“He’s such a dynamic player, there’s times you can defend him perfectly, and he still has the ability to make a shot or make a play, so you have to have the wherewithal to continue to do it throughout, for 48 minutes, with the understanding that he can make tough plays, he’s a great player,” Thibodeau said ahead of tipoff on Monday. “The idea is you have to try to make him work as much as you can, and then everyone’s gotta be working together cause any time you put two on him, you’ve gotta protect the paint and then react out and cover the three point line to challenge a shot and then get back to a body tor rebound, so it requires everyone putting a lot of work into it.”
NO BRIDGES IN THE TOWNS
Mikal Bridges played an aggressive offensive game but came up short on the game-deciding possession. Brunson drove the lane, forced the Pistons defense to collapse, then sprayed the ball out to the top of the key, where Bridges had a wide-open look at a three that would have tied the game at 97 with 11 seconds left on the clock.
The shot fell well short, undermining a 19-point night for the player New York traded five draft picks to acquire last summer.
Karl-Anthony Towns wasn’t much better. The All-Star big man finished with 10 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field.
Eleven shots for an All-Star starter in a playoff game isn’t going to cut it. Towns took no shots in the fourth quarter.
