The New York Knicks traded six first-round picks, another pick swap, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo last summer for Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges. Suffice to say, they did not deal that much for these two guys to combine for zero points in the fourth quarter of a tight playoff loss.
But that’s precisely what happened on Monday as the Knicks fell 100-94 to the Detroit Pistons, who ended the longest playoff losing streak in the league with their first postseason win since 2008 to draw the series to a 1-1 tie heading to Detroit for Game 3 on Thursday.
Towns finished with 10 points on 11 shots. He took just three shots in the second half, missing them all, with the last one coming at the 5:20 mark of the third quarter. Jalen Brunson tried to play Batman again, but he needed a Robin. Towns wasn’t there, which is a credit to Detroit’s nasty defense and the physicality with which the officials were letting these teams play. Still, New York obviously needs more from Towns if he’s going to be the “get them over the hump” superstar he was, or is, supposed to be and played like all season.
Bridges isn’t expected to be a superstar even though he cost the Knicks way more to obtain. But Bridges has not been as good this season, or certainly in this series, as a guy who cost you FIVE first-round picks is supposed to be.
On Monday, Bridges, who mustered just eight points in Game 1, found a nice rhythm for a stretch and finished with a respectable box-score number of 18 points. But he was 3 of 11 from 3 and had four opportunities to convert what would’ve been huge, late-fourth-quarter buckets as the Knicks were within range of pulling off another wild comeback.
He missed them all, starting with a catch-and-shoot 3 from the corner at the four-minute mark with the Knicks, who had the been down as many as 15, in position to cut their deficit to three.
On the ensuing possession with the Knicks still down six, Bridges, instead of pulling it out and making sure that Brunson, who was the only one creating offense in the fourth, got a touch, went one-on-one to the baseline and got his reverse attempt snuffed out.
Two possessions later, with the Knicks now down just four, Bridges clanked a pull-up 3 in transition.
And finally, with 11 seconds left and the Knicks trailing by three, Bridges got about as wide-open a look as you can possibly expect to get with a chance to tie a playoff game in the waning seconds, and he left it short.
Every one of these shots, with the last one being the most obvious, felt like they had a chance to turn this game in the Knicks’ favor. They were classic blow-the-roof-off momentum shots with the Knicks mounting an electric rally at Madison Square Garden, and they all let the air out of the building.
The Knicks are theoretically built to win in the playoffs, having copied the Boston blueprint with pretty much every resource at their disposal, but the only way that becomes a reality is if Towns, who was great in Game 1, and Bridges earn their keep. They certainly didn’t do that in Game 2, and now the Knicks are in a dogfight with the Pistons, who, outside of the 21-0 run that swung Game 1, have felt like the better team in this series.
