The New York Knicks have lost nine of their last 11 games, and are in the midst of a stunning collapse after their strong start to the season. Throughout this slump, they simply cannot figure out what is causing their season to fall off the rails.
The Knicks are not bought into the head coach’s system
Evidenced by their play on the court, head coach Mike Brown’s strategies don’t seem to have the same effect as they did at the start of the year. The defense is continuing to worsen, and the offense has now stalled after being a juggernaut through the first 32 games of the season.
SNY’s Ian Begley backed up that evidence, suggesting that some of the Knicks players aren’t bought in to the new system Brown has brought this year.
“In digging around on this, one theme has come up consistently over the past couple of weeks: This group is not tied together in the way that their early season success would suggest. Players haven’t fully bought into their roles under head coach Mike Brown. Those reasons are cited often when you talk to people about the Knicks’ flaws Now, these issues aren’t unique to this year’s team.
“They existed to a degree in the locker room last season. But the Knicks coaching change hasn’t rooted them out,” Begley wrote.
The Knicks are a broken group currently
The Knicks had similar cohesion problems in spurts last season under Tom Thibodeau, but they were able to bounce back and recalibrate rather quickly. This year, it feels as though their problems are only getting worse and have no immediate fix.
New York entered Monday’s game against the Dallas Mavericks as 10-point favorites. The Knicks had a fully healthy roster, to which Brown boasted about before the game, and the Mavericks had several of their top players out due to injury.
What should’ve been a statement game at the Garden for the Knicks quickly turned into an embarrassment on national television. They trailed by as much as 30 in the first half, and entered the halftime break down by 28, with a sea of boos raining down on the players from the crowd as they departed the court and headed to the locker room.
It was the second straight game that featured a smattering of boos, which is unprecedented for a team that boasts a home record of 16-6 on the season.
It was not the only loss that reached that level of embarrassment over this skid. They’ve also dropped games in blowouts to the Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, and blew double-digit leads to the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns. What was supposed to be a light month for this group has turned into a disaster, and there is no telling when it will end.
The Knicks need a fix
The Knicks have been simply bad for the entire month of January. They rank 26th in offensive efficiency and 27th in defensive efficiency, being the only team in the league to rank in the bottom five of both categories this month. Teams that consider themselves contenders typically don’t get away with having major flaws like this.
This is more than a slump. This is a prolonged stretch of bad play that represents a broken basketball team. They are disjointed, disconnected, and far from where they expected to be at this point in the season.
Whether or not this stretch ignites them to better play remains to be seen. It’s also undetermined what kind of changes could come out of this, but up until the trade deadline, this will be a pivotal three weeks for a Knicks team that needs to find their spark.