SACRAMENTO — This isn’t the way Mike Brown envisioned his first game against the organization that fired him, but rarely do things go according to plan. The Knicks, from top to bottom, know this all too well. Because winning the third-ever NBA Cup was supposed to signal New York’s ascent to the league’s upper echelon.
Yet on Wednesday, at a Golden 1 Center Brown once called home, the 10-30 Kings secured win No. 11 in a 112-101 victory over the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed. The Kings led by as many as 25 points without All-Star center Domantas Sabonis, emerging forward Keegan Murray or veteran point guard Dennis Schroder. The Knicks’ struggles were apparent long before Jalen Brunson exited the game with a right ankle injury at the 7:01 mark of the first quarter.
“All glory to God for humbling us,” said Miles McBride. “He takes us low and brings us back up again.”
The loss set a new low in a series of new lows the Knicks have endured coming out of their NBA Cup win. Wednesday marked New York’s sixth loss in its last eight games and its eighth loss in the 15 games played since the Cup.
The losses have grown more embarrassing by the night, but the result in Sacramento was flat-out unacceptable.
And the Knicks know it. They didn’t show up for their coach when their coach needed them most.
“We failed him,” a dejected Josh Hart said after the game. “We can handle a loss. It’s an 82-game season, so there’s going to be losses.
“It’s how we lost today. It was embarrassing.”
Brown and his coaching staff drew up the game plan. As usual, they wanted to touch the paint to generate spray threes, a signature of the new-look Knicks offense. But in this particular game, Brown said the Knicks wanted to keep bodies on Precious Achiuwa and Russell Westbrook without running them off the three-point line. Achiuwa, against the team that declined to re-sign him as a free agent during the offseason, finished with 20 points and 13 rebounds. Westbrook finished with 19 points and 11 assists.
“I feel like it’s never really X’s and O’s,” said McBride. “Coaches can drop any game plan, but we’re the ones out there playing.”
Brown was most disappointed by his team’s collective decision not to spray the ball out to the three-point line despite frequently touching the paint on drives to the rim.
“We had 12 sprays for the game. We had plenty of opportunities to spray the ball and play off of two feet, but we kept driving and shooting tough shots that we either A) missed or B) got blocked,” he said. “And for us to touch the paint as many times as we did but not share or move it like we normally do was tough to see.”
Hart wore his emotions on his face in front of his locker after the game. The Knicks sent the Kings to the free throw line 38 times, including 20 times in the third quarter alone.
“You keep talking about offense. Offense is secondary to how s*** our defense was,” he said. “[We] gave up what, 40 free throws? Undisciplined. Didn’t lock in on the game plan. It was an embarrassment. Today, I really don’t care about the offense. Defensively, we’ve got to figure it out.”
The sad truth about this Knicks team dates back to last season. If the offense isn’t clicking, the defense quickly follows suit, as does the effort on hustle plays. The Knicks shot 8-of-41 from downtown on Wednesday. So it’s no surprise the Kings shot 47% from the field as a team, with all five of their starters scoring 10 or more points and four of those five scoring 19 or more.
“Sadly [shot-making] does [impact defense]. I don’t think it should,” said McBride. “I did my best, even though I’m not making shots, I’ve never tried to live and die by making shots or not. I’ve always wanted to bring impact. But I think it definitely did.
“Because for me, I want to see other guys scoring, I want to see other guys bringing energy. [sic] So we just have to do a better job of not letting it affect us.”
Brown couldn’t believe what he’d just seen.
Karl-Anthony Towns fell to the ground and lost the ball on a drive to the rim with 1:44 left in the second quarter and the Knicks down 14. The possession resulted in a missed transition corner three for Westbrook, with Hart batting the loose ball into the back court. But it took Towns 12 seconds to get up and get past half-court after his turnover. By then, Achiuwa had already beaten Tyler Kolek in a foot race to the ball, and Brown flailed his arms in frustration while screaming for his All-Star to get off the floor.
“When you fall down, you got to get up and got to sprint down the floor, and even when you’re the last guy down the floor, you got to get down there just in case there’s a long rebound,” said Brown. “But there was no urgency. That wasn’t the only play. There were a handful of plays that we did that.”
The Kings swung the ball right back to Westbrook, who made a three from the exact same spot he missed the first from seconds earlier.
“On that particular play [sic] it was a five-point swing,” Brown continued. “If [KAT] at least gets down the floor, long rebound, he’s going to get it because he’s trailing the play. We watched the play at halftime, and he didn’t even cross halfcourt. That sums up what our night was.”
This is what Brown has coined as “next-play speed,” the ability to switch from one side of the ball to the other–immediately–regardless of the outcome of a given possession.
The Knicks play with next-play speed when they feel like it.
“Honestly, it’s a concern. It’s something that’s been continuous,” said Hart. “We have to play harder. We have to play with more intensity, more competitiveness. It starts with me. I have to bring that, and we have to fix it.”
Asked about effort, Towns said opponents have been scouting the Knicks effectively.
“Teams got enough tape on us. They’re gonna adjust and coordinate their offensive game plan to us,” he said.
“We’ve gotta do a better job of executing and making them miss shots. We didn’t do enough of that tonight.
“Before we start pointing fingers at anybody, we didn’t do enough to have those conversations come up.”
Josh Hart is going to keep it real, and it doesn’t get much more real than this: The Knicks better wake up. They’ve been asleep at the wheel for nearly 30 days.
“The last month we’ve been a terrible defensive team. At some point we’ve got to stop making excuses. We’ve got to wake up,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re locked in on the game plan and put effort in on [the defensive] side of the ball. When we do that, offensively, we’re going to flourish. We’re going to get more possessions. We’re going to run faster. We’re going to play our kind of style. Everyone’s going to get the ball, everyone’s going to score, everyone’s going to eat. And we need to do that.”
The Knicks believe they can get back to the style of play that won them the NBA Cup. But those days feel like a distant memory for a team in an all-out free fall to start the new calendar year.
“Sometimes it’s just different challenges throughout the season. Different stretches that you just have to figure out,” said McBride. “I’ve never seen a perfect season before. So it’s just one of those times when we have to figure it out and get through it, however we can.
“And it flips quick. Things can be going really good quickly, and they can go bad really quickly and turn back around. So we just have to have a positivity, a belief in us that we can change it.”
