Knicks searching for answers following loss to Magic and three-game losing streak
Knicks guard Josh Hart, guard Jalen Brunson and head coach Tom Thibodeau react to a call in the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Orlando Magic at Madison Square Garden on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
It’s easy in this world of instantaneous opinions and minute-by-minute assessments, to forget that 100 minutes of game time have passed since the Knicks were leading in Oklahoma City with just over four minutes left Friday night.
That’s four minutes from a 10-game winning streak, four minutes from a win over one of the best teams — maybe the best team — in the NBA this season. And four minutes is all it took for the Knicks to squander the lead and follow up with losses to Chicago and Orlando. And now the Knicks are left wondering aloud where it had all gone wrong.
Before we get to that, just a reminder — four minutes from beating the Thunder.
“At the end of the day we’ve got to figure out what kind of team we’re going to be,” Josh Hart said Monday after the Knicks had spent 48 minutes chasing an injury-depleted Orlando Magic squad at Madison Square Garden. “Are we going to be a team that’s high energy and happy when you make shots and low energy when we don’t? Or are we going to be a team that goes out there with energy every game. Games where we’re not making shots we [should] still have that energy and still have execution, that grind, where we’re able to get wins.
“It’s an 82-game season, we’re not going to have energy or make shots all the time. But we’ve got to make sure we find a way to win basketball games.”
It wasn’t just Hart who felt that there was something alarming in the loss to Orlando. Oklahoma City on the road is one thing. Even Chicago on Derrick Rose Night is one you might expect an impassioned effort from the Bulls.
But Orlando was missing nearly every key piece of their roster and the one thing that they had was a willingness to do the things that Tom Thibodeau usually demands from his team. The Knicks were left wondering where the effort was and if their struggles on offense had caused the shoulders to slump and the effort to sag.
“I don’t want to say a lack of effort because I think guys were trying,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “But we played low energy and we couldn’t get anything going and so we have to get our energy back and that’s a big part of this league. Things change quickly and so we’ve got to make it go our way.”
The Knicks needed a Cam Payne three-pointer in the final seconds to avoid being the third team in the NBA to connect on just three three-point field goals in a game. As a team they shot 4-for-22 from three-point range — about half the number of threes Thibodeau would ideally like the Knicks to hoist up in a game and far below the efficiency and accuracy he’d prefer.
Shooting comes and goes in the NBA, but the Knicks have been in a prolonged slump from beyond the arc and perhaps Orlando was just the latest and worst example. The Knicks didn’t have Karl-Anthony Towns and his ability to stretch the floor. And Jalen Brunson, nursing a tight right calf, has found himself in a shooting slump beyond the arc. Brunson attempted just one shot beyond the arc Monday and has converted just 1-of-10 in three games since returning from a night out of action. Over his last eight games Brunson is 5-for-39 from three, shooting 21% overall and 12.8% from three.
“Ball's just not going in for us, but that shouldn't be the reason why we're not winning games,” Brunson said. “We got to find a way to impact the game in other areas when we're not making shots like that. It starts with me.”
“It’s an NBA season. There’s going to be peaks and valleys,” Hart said. “There’s going to be games we shoot the lights out, going to be games where we can’t buy a shot. We’ve got to make sure we are focused, we give off the right energy. We can’t have our own individual agendas. We can’t do any of that. We’ve got to make sure we’re locked into this team, sacrifice for this team and go out there and play.”
The Knicks, even with a 24-13 record and in third place in the East don’t have a lot of time to show that they’ve got that as more than a postgame speech. They face Toronto Wednesday, a team that has struggled but finally has their key pieces in place — including RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, who will certainly want to put on a show in a return to the Garden. And then on Friday the Knicks get another shot at Oklahoma City, another chance to prove that they can back up their words.
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.
