WHEN THE NEW YORK KNICKS trimmed a 27-point road deficit to four last week against the Boston Celtics, the team that hadn't found an answer for the defending champs all season looked like it might find a way to escape TD Garden with a thrilling comeback win.
"I think we just reached a level of not really caring anymore," Knicks All-Star guard Jalen Brunson said of the rally, which left New York trailing 89-85 with 11:32 remaining in the fourth quarter. "Like, 'OK, we've got to go [compete] somehow.'"
It didn't take long for the Celtics to course-correct. Over the next four minutes, Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis and Jaylen Brown pushed their lead back to 16 points. The Celtics ultimately KO'd the Knicks by 13.
Believe it or not, it was the tightest margin New York has managed in a game with Boston this season: The Knicks were blasted by 23 on opening night as the Celtics tied the NBA record for 3-pointers in a single game, then got drilled at Madison Square Garden by 27 in early February.
Adding insult to injury, that latest loss in Boston came one game after the Knicks took a 37-point shellacking against the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers -- their largest margin of defeat in coach Tom Thibodeau's five seasons.
The Knicks, who own the NBA's fourth-best record and are on pace for their most wins in over a decade, are now 0-7 against the Celtics, Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder, the three teams ahead of them in the standings. More concerning than the winless record, though, is that New York is running out of chances to change the narrative against those championship contenders.
All of which raises the question: Why are the Knicks falling woefully short against the NBA's best? And what, if anything, can they lean into in hopes of closing the gap come playoff time?
EXECUTIVES AND SCOUTS looked at the Knicks' offseason moves and saw them replicating what the Celtics did in 2022 and 2023.
In acquiring Mikal Bridges from the Brooklyn Nets, the Knicks landed a versatile defender and scoring wing, who they figured could perform far better in an environment with more talent, much like White did after being traded to Boston from the San Antonio Spurs. And after losing Isaiah Hartenstein to the Thunder in free agency, New York swung a blockbuster trade for All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns to fill the center spot. That move -- like the Celtics dealing for Kristaps Porzingis -- was designed to break opposing defenses by spreading them out and forcing them into Catch-22s prioritizing either Brunson or Towns in pick-and-roll scenarios.
This isn't to say the trades were equivalent. It's noteworthy that Boston, which ultimately netted an additional first-round pick for parting ways with Josh Richardson and ex-captain Marcus Smart for White and Porzingis, gave up far less to acquire its new starters compared to the Knicks. New York unloaded two-time All-NBA forward Julius Randle, vastly improved wing Donte DiVincenzo and a first-round pick to get Towns, and before that sent over five first-round picks to pluck Bridges from the Nets.
Nonetheless, the moves overhauled the Knicks' offense, which has been highly impressive, ranking third in the NBA even as it continues to incorporate two players who got considerable reps as No. 1 options with their previous teams. With Towns in particular, the threat of his jumper -- he's shooting a career-best 42.7% from 3 this season -- has created an endless amount of space for New York. Brunson is shooting better at the rim (66%) than he ever has as a Knick. Towns himself is logging 118 points per 100 drives, up considerably from the 108 points per 100 drives he scored with Minnesota last year.
"Playing against Towns is more of a mental battle," Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy said after Towns and the Knicks beat the Jazz in January. "The 3s are loud, but the reality is, he took 20 shots tonight, and only six were 3s. It's not like he bombed away and took 14 of them.
"When he makes two in a row ... it warps your brain. You start thinking, 'Oh man, he's killing us from 3.' And then after the game, you go, 'He had 31 points, and [only] nine of them were from 3s.'"
Hardy's assessment, while praising Towns' fit in New York, underscores part of why the Knicks are struggling against top contenders. Yes, Towns is one of the best jump shooters ever for his size, but he's attempting just 4.8 triples per game, his fewest since 2018-19. In that same vein, the Knicks as a team rank sixth in the NBA in 3-point accuracy, but just 28th in 3-point attempt rate.
The latter is a massive slide from last season, when they finished 11th in attempt rate. (This is undoubtedly where losing DiVincenzo, who launched a team-high 8.7 triples per night and finished with the NBA's third-most 3s last year behind Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic, stings New York most.)
The Celtics, Cavs and Thunder, by contrast, rank first, fourth and 15th in 3-point attempt rate, respectively. And the Knicks have been outmatched attempts wise in five of their seven games against those clubs, including all five of the showdowns with Boston and Cleveland.
"At the root of it all, it's math," an Eastern Conference scout said. "They're really efficient, and will win a ton of games. But the [3-point] volume isn't enough to beat the Clevelands and the Bostons. Especially when you also factor in that the Knicks are [offensive] rebounding and getting to the line a lot less than last year's team did."
There's one other area where the club's diminished results are hurting its ability to compete at the highest level.
THERE WAS THE blown 21-point second-half lead against the lowly Nets, who notched 40 points in the fourth quarter at the Garden in November. There was the improbable ending against the Atlanta Hawks last month, when the Knicks surrendered 76 points in the second half at home and somehow blew a six-point lead in the final 10 seconds of regulation to allow Atlanta to force overtime.
New York managed to squeak by in each outing, with the clutch Brunson nailing the deciding jumper both times and Bridges coming up with game-sealing blocks in the two victories. Still, as entertaining as the wins were, little about them felt Knicks-like in nature.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson combine for 80 points to handle the Hawks in overtime.
In beating a rebuilding Brooklyn club, New York gave up 122 points. The Knicks gave up 148 to the Hawks, 137 of which came in regulation. Yes, it's a new day for the up-tempo, sharpshooting league, and it isn't fair to expect defenses to hold opponents under 100 anymore, but with that in mind, the Knicks' identity appears to have shifted from one with a gritty, hard-nosed defense to one that now often hangs its hat on relentless scoring.
Against better competition, that approach isn't enough.
Take the January game at the Garden against the resurgent Pistons. New York was having no problem scoring that night, and traded baskets with Detroit for three quarters. Then came the fourth quarter, and the Knicks, who had shot 50% from 3 to that point, suddenly went cold, connecting on just 3-of-13 the rest of the way. (Amazingly, they still made nine of 10 shots from 2-point range in the final period.)
But the defense ultimately couldn't get stops when it needed to. Pistons All-Star Cade Cunningham, who finished with 29 points in the second half alone, got pretty much wherever he wanted, and the Pistons scored eight times in their final 13 possessions. The Knicks, desperate for a stop, cranked up the pressure to force the ball out of Cunningham's hands twice in the final minute, only for Detroit wing Malik Beasley to hit a pair of game-sealing triples.
"We're losing games I feel like we shouldn't be losing," Knicks guard Josh Hart said after the game. "If we want to be the team we're trying to be at the end of the season, we need to start correcting stuff now."
From Bridges' precipitous drop in trips to the line to the club's lack of spacing whenever Towns is off the floor to the starters' high-minute totals, there's plenty to analyze about the Knicks' shortcomings as a contender. But the one that stands out most, by far, is poor defense, an odd weakness for a Thibodeau-coached club this late in a season.
New York, ninth in the NBA on defense in 2023-24, finds itself 20th on that end thus far. The new-look Knicks showed encouraging improvement in December, posting top-five numbers after ranking 23rd in the league through November. But things have slipped rapidly in the months since, with New York ranking 16th in January before finishing 29th in February by surrendering a dismal 120.1 points per 100 possessions.
Perhaps the most troubling number of all for a team striving to contend for a title: The Knicks' defense also ranks 29th against top-10 offenses. Only the lottery-bound Raptors have hemorrhaged more points per 100 possessions against elite scoring clubs, per ESPN Research.
A huge chunk of that appears to stem from the drop scheme the Knicks often favor when defending pick-and-roll sets. New York, for instance, has utilized soft coverage against Boston's ball screens 48% of the time, a far higher rate than any other club against the Celtics, who are on a historic pace from a 3-point-attempt standpoint.
The result through three games: Boston has scorched the Knicks for 134 points per 100 plays in those scenarios, more than the Celtics have scored against any team using drop coverage. It feeds into yet another problem area: New York ranks last in opponent 3-point percentage.
Thibodeau, asked about the club's issues in defending the arc, said he generally focuses more on making sure his group limits attempts rather than the opponents' 3-point percentage. (For the season, the Knicks have allowed the fifth-fewest 3-point tries in the league.) But a plain look at the numbers against the primary contenders -- 53% of Boston's shots against the Knicks this season have been from deep, while Cleveland checks in at 42% -- would suggest New York has plenty of schematic work to do against the cream of the crop.
Part of the issue is how easily elite teams have scored on Towns. Those top-10 offenses have shot 62% on when Towns is the closest defender, the worst mark in the league among players who have contested at least 300 attempts. Largely because of that, whenever the Knicks' defense collapses to seal off the paint, it often results in the opposing club making a simple kick-out pass for an open look from the corner or wing.
There's reason to believe things could improve a bit over the final month of play. Center Mitchell Robinson, who, when healthy, has been a solid paint deterrent and a good enough athlete to step out and defend ball handlers on the perimeter, returned to the lineup in Memphis on Friday after a seasonlong absence following his ankle surgery in May. Thibodeau will almost certainly pair him with Towns at times to see whether that alignment -- one that would look closer to what Towns had in Minnesota with elite rim protector Rudy Gobert -- can do better.
But at this point, with the regular season's hourglass emptying and New York seemingly miles behind the Cavs and the Celtics in the title race, despite being in fourth place in the leaguewide standings, something has to give.