Knicks know what they need to clean up as they hit the road
Jalen Brunson of the Knicks looks on late during the fourth quarter against the Celtics at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
ATLANTA — The Knicks are beyond moral victories, something that Tom Thibodeau never wanted to settle for even when the team was struggling through a lottery-bound season two years ago. But there was something that the team seemed able to take from the opening night loss to Boston — a belief that they played the championship favorite nearly to a draw on a night when they filled the 48 minutes with uncharacteristic miscues and misses.
Shooting terribly around the rim and at the free-throw line, the Knicks still led Boston in the final minutes before falling short. But any opening night jitters that could be excused are countered by the awareness that the tests keep coming. The Knicks moved from this measuring stick right to the road, embarking on a three-game road trip that begins here Friday night.
“I mean, that’s what we want at the beginning,” Isaiah Hartenstein said. “I think you want tests at the beginning so we can keep learning and getting to where we want to. I think you’ve just got to really attack it day by day. So I’m excited, even though we lost. I’m excited where we’re at right now. Just have to keep improving.”
It’s a safe bet that the Knicks won’t have another game — at least they hope they don’t — where Jalen Brunson shoots 6-for-21, Julius Randle converts just 5 of 22 shots and the team shoots 53.8% from the free-throw line. Fix any one of those issues and the Knicks might have come away with a confidence-boosting start to the season. But Thibodeau didn’t want the team to take moral victories from this game.
“I don’t want that mindset,” Thibodeau said. “I want the mindset of we fell short, and I want us to be determined to get better. Whether we win or we lose I want us to understand why we’ve done either one of those things. And then make the necessary steps to move forward and then get ready for your next opponent.
"Build the habit of what goes into winning. That’s the most important thing. Some nights you’re going to fall short. Hopefully each game we learn. That’s where I want the focus to be — on learning. I don’t want it to be, sometimes even if you win you start feeling good and you’re not learning. You always have to correct things. There’s always things we can do better. That’s what we have to lock into."
The shooting will come, and it wasn’t just Brunson and Randle who struggled. Newcomer Donte DiVincenzo was 0-for-4 (0-for-3 from beyond the arc) in his Knicks debut and even RJ Barrett, who kept them afloat for much of the night, shot 8-for-20. Thibodeau pointed to other issues — defensive rotations, shot selection among them — that need to be cleaned up before the Knicks face the Hawks, Pelicans and Cavaliers on this trip. With back-to-back games against Atlanta and New Orleans, a home-and-home, back-to-back set with Cleveland and a schedule that doesn’t get much easier after that, there is little time to get it right.
“One game at a time,” Quentin Grimes said. “You can’t look too far. We’ve got a road schedule ahead of us. We’ve got to take it one game at a time, not worry about this one. We did good things to learn from this game, bad things we have to correct, but we have to keep getting better, take it one game at a time and we’ll be all right.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
