If you received a snapshot of a certain timestamp in almost every single Knicks game since the all-star break, you’d think the team was in the midst of another January collapse that would have them plummeting towards the play-in tournament and have Mike Brown receiving his pink slip:
Trailed 93-75 with 10:50 left in the 4th vs HOU (2/21) Trailed 95-94 with 2:40 left in 4th @ CHI (2/22) Trailed 19-7 with 4:00 left in the 1st vs SA (3/1) Trailed 27-17 with 3:10 left in the 1st @ TOR (3/3) Trailed 23-14
with 3:05 left in the 1st @ DEN (3/6) Trailed 49-31 with 9:35 left in the 2nd @ UTAH (3/11) Trailed 74-73 with 0.1 left in the 3rd @ IND (3/13) Trailed 46-25 with 9:10 left in the 2nd vs GSW (3/15)
Add in the lopsided losses in Los Angeles and the Detroit/Cleveland losses, it paints the picture of a team that’s just not good.
Well, except that the Knicks won all eight of the games listed above. That includes three 18+-point comebacks, surviving scares from multiple lottery teams, and overcoming terrible offensive and defensive starts against playoff teams. It’s proven that the team, does in fact, have the ability to overcome adversity, regardless of what some people say.
But it doesn’t make the way they go into lulls any less baffling. They sleepwalked for much of the first quarter against both San Antonio and Denver before blitzing them the rest of the game. They got utterly barraged from downtown by the Warriors and Jazz before taking control and throttling those teams over the remaining 2.5 quarters. They’ve played with their food several times, but have usually come out on top.
It’s frankly inexplicable. The Knicks still boast the league’s best defensive rating over the past eight weeks, but have started several games recently, unable to defend a high school offense. The talent eventually has overwhelmed both Utah and Golden State in the last week, but look at the way they started these games offensively:
Utah:
Started: 18/29 FG (62.1%), 11/13 3PT (64.6%)
Ended: 24/58 FG (41.4%), 7/23 3PT (30.4%)
Golden State:
Started: 15/22 FG (68.2%), 8/14 3PT (57.1%)
Ended: 25/60 FG (41.7%), 6/24 3PT (25%)
The defense was so bad against the Warriors that Mike Brown refused to name a DPOG for the first time this season!
Even when they get off to unbelievably poor starts, both luck and effort-wise, the Knicks have had an ability to just flip a switch and immediately start mucking things up defensively, which we’ve seen in these games and several others. Remember the Houston game where they couldn’t stop a nosebleed and then had one of the most ferocious defensive quarters of the season?
It seems to be a trend that the team plays better defense as the game goes on. Over the last 26 games, the Knicks have a blistering +24.2 net rating and 96.6 defensive rating in fourth quarters, numbers that have the team firmly as the best fourth-quarter team in basketball.
Is it a problem with the starting lineup? Maybe, but consider this:
The lineup isn’t necessarily poor; it just cannot get off to a good start. The offense looks like it’s stuck in quicksand, and everyone is a step late defensively. We’ve seen incredible stretches from this lineup that starts on the defensive end and turns into offensive brilliance when the wings make their threes and Brunson is cooking in isolation.
Speaking of the offense, they’ve had some frigid stretches lately:
@ LAL (through 3Q): 39.6 FG%, 5/26 3PT
@ UTAH (1Q): 33.3 FG%, 3/12 3PT
@ IND (second half): 35 FG%, 4/15 3PT
vs GSW (first 19:30): 36.4 FG%, 3/17 3PT
You see stretches like these, but then you see that they’re third in both 35-point quarters (62) and 40-point quarters (18) and see that they remain fourth in 3-point percentage and it’s one of the most confusing things you’ll ever see.
The Knicks are an enigma. One minute, they’re unstoppable, playing ferocious defense and knocking down threes to overwhelm the competition. The next minute, they can’t hit the side of a barn, and the defense looks more like Swiss cheese. It’s not a game-to-game inconsistency, it’s a quarter-to-quarter inconsistency.
