The New York Knicks are having a good season. They’re a pretty safe bet to remain a top-three seed in the Eastern Conference. The Karl-Anthony Towns trade looks like a home run. Both Towns and Brunson are headed for All-NBA selections. Josh Hart has blossomed into one of the most impactful players in the league. The offense is elite. They’ve stayed healthy for the most part, and the one guy they’ve been without, Mitchell Robinson, is close to making his season debut.
There’s only one problem with the Knicks’ season so far: They can’t beat the NBA’s elite teams. In fact, they can’t even come close to beating the NBA’s elite teams. With a 142-105 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, the Knicks are now 0-6 against the league’s top three teams (OKC, Cleveland and Boston). They have lost all but one of those games by double digits — one by 37, two by at least 25, another by 23, with an average margin of defeat of 21 points.
Yikes.
It’s worth noting that Hart didn’t play on Friday. The Knicks are not the same without him. But he played in the other losses against these top teams. OG Anunoby, though he played on Friday, isn’t totally healthy right now. Towns and Brunson had good numbers with a combined 49 points on 32 shots, but the Knicks were minus-27 in the 3-point column and trailed by 27 at halftime. It was never a game.
Big picture, New York’s defense looks like it’s going to be a postseason problem. It was supposed to be a strength with the perimeter trio of Anunoby, Hart and Mikal Bridges. Getting Robinson back will surely help the paint protection, but we’re at the point now where it just doesn’t look like this team has the juice defensively.
The Knicks rank just outside the bottom 10 in defensive efficiency, and in their six losses to Cleveland, OKC and Boston, they have surrendered an average of 126 points. These are not championship-contending numbers, even with a top-shelf offense.
The Knicks have the personnel to be better defensively, despite Towns’ lack of rim protection. But it has to come from the aforementioned perimeter trio. That’s the strength. That’s the blueprint New York drew up specifically to be able to match up with a two-way, wing-dominant lineup like Boston. So far, that part clearly has not gone according to plan.
