Miles McBride and Jordan Clarkson have taken more shots than the Knicks’ two highest-paid players.
It’s halftime of New York’s Monday night matchup against the Detroit Pistons, an opportunity for the Knicks to stave off what could be a season-worst four-game losing streak, and Jalen Brunson has taken 13 shots. Mikal Bridges has gotten eight looks. But Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby mustered just two shot attempts apiece, spending their time watching idly as the Knicks offense incessantly grinds into a standstill.
They would go on to combine for 11 points on two-of-seven shooting from the field as the Knicks fell behind by as many as 33 points in a 121-90 defeat, their fourth in a row, and by far the team’s worst performance under new head coach Mike Brown.
Brown hoped his team would rise to the challenge after their 130-119 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Saturday. That didn’t happen. Quite the opposite.
“It’s the first time all year we’ve lost three in a row, so we’re in an area that we’re not used to. We’ve hit a little bit of adversity,” he said after the loss to Philadelphia on Saturday. “I’ve never been part of a team that has not gone through adversity throughout the course of a year whether we’ve won it at the end of the season or we were in the Finals or we had a halfway decent season.
“Every team’s gonna hit [adversity], and now for us, it’s about how do we respond? How do we come out of it? And this is a great opportunity for us to see what we’re made of while we’re coming out of this stretch.”
Turns out the Knicks are made of turnstiles, but forget for a moment they have been abominable on defense (the Knicks were 25th in defensive rating before surrendering 121 points to the Pistons on Monday).
This team’s offense is out of whack. It has completely reversed course from the free-flowing system predicated on ball and player movement Brown installed when he took the coaching job in late August.
And instead of paint sprays leading to spray threes, instead of read-and-react basketball playing off of ball reversals and quick decisions, it’s more of the same-old Knicks offense the team wished to do away with when it made the shocking decision to change head coaches following the first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years.
It’s iso-ball. It’s standing around and watching. It’s one or two passes before the ball goes to the rim, over and over again, the very antithesis of everything that helped the Knicks on their Cinderella run to the NBA Cup Final.
And now for the defense, because the moment forgetting how bad it was has come and gone: For the third game in a row, an opposing team’s best player has had their way with the Knicks defensive stoppers.
Jalen Johnson (18 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds) posted a triple-double in the Knicks’ loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Tyrese Maxey put up 36 points on only eight missed shots on Saturday. And Cade Cunningham scored 29 points in 29 minutes, shooting 11-of-17 from the field and three-of-four from downtown to go with 13 assists on the night.
The Pistons’ bench outscored the Knicks’, 58-42.
Meanwhile Brunson scored 25 points on 10-of-21 shooting from the field. He had six turnovers and no assists. Mikal Bridges scored 10 points on 11 shots, and McBride was the only reprieve: 17 points off the bench in 25 minutes.
The Knicks miss Josh Hart, but Hart’s absence shouldn’t have sent this team down a dark spiral.
New York is now 2-4 in games Hart has missed with an ankle sprain–and their offense looks completely out of sorts.
It looks so bad, it’s made the poor defense an afterthought.
