Why the Knicks Still Feel Unpredictable Despite Strong Numbers and a Playoff Push

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — On Monday, hours before the L.A. Clippers’ game against New York, two old friends shared a laugh near center court. It has been more than two decades since Jeff Van Gundy coached the Knicks, and just as long since Patrick Ewing played there. But here they were, reunited, Van Gundy, an assistant coach with the Clippers, and Ewing chatting it up from a pair of courtside seats.

“A heartwarming sight,” Mike Breen said later on the MSG Network broadcast.

What happened after that was not.

The Clippers beat the Knicks on Monday, 126–118. A close game at the half stretched to a nine-point lead in the third quarter before the surging sons of Tyronn Lue pulled out an eight-point win. New York “couldn’t hit the side of a barn” early, said Knicks coach Mike Brown. Couldn’t do much with Kawhi Leonard, either—he scored 29 points and finished a whopping +26.

What to make of the Knicks? As the season grinds toward its final weeks, it’s one of the NBA’s big questions. On paper, New York is pretty good. It has the NBA’s third-best offense, its sixth-best defense and fifth-best net rating. It went 0–2 on the Tinseltown trip, but before that beat up Toronto and Denver and nearly pulled off a win in Oklahoma City.

Yet there are times the Knicks just look … off. They won 11 out of 13 games in December. They started January 2–8. They have blowout wins over Denver and Boston and shaky losses to Sacramento and Indiana. Early in the season, owner James Dolan declared that these Knicks should win a championship. But there remains a level of unpredictability that is perplexing this late in the season.

This L.A. swing offered some good examples. On Sunday, New York faced a LeBron James–less Lakers team … and lost by 13. The Knicks committed 19 turnovers in that one, prompting Brown to emphasize to the team the importance of taking care of the basketball. A day later they played the Clippers … and committed 20.

“The biggest difference in the basketball game was our turnovers,” said Brown. “That fueled their break.”

The Knicks have a great starting lineup. Jalen Brunson scored 28 points against the Clippers, spinning, slashing and three-point bombing his way there. Karl-Anthony Towns scored 35. For all of Towns’s basketball warts, he is a freight train going downhill and arguably the best shooting big man in the game. He shot 13 of 17 against the Clippers, including 3 of 4 from three-point range.

The bench is another story. With Deuce McBride down, New York has searched for answers. The Knicks reserves scored 14 points against the Clippers. Two players, Mohamed Diawara (five points) and Landry Shamet (nine), accounted for all of them. Brown pushed nearly every button trying to find production. Jose Alvarado? Nope. Jordan Clarkson? Nothing. Brown even dusted off Tyler Kolek for a couple of fourth-quarter minutes “to see if we [could] get a boost from him,” Brown said.

If you missed his 114-second stint, he didn’t.

Before the game, Brown expressed confidence in the team’s position. “Embrace your standard” is a favored Brown phrase, noting that “our guys have embraced the standard of sacrifice, better spirit, connectivity and overall each other in the process.” The Knicks have “to really lock in and be focused on small things at this point,” Brown said, adding that “overall as a group we’ve done a pretty good job.”

Those things, Brown says, are what define winners. Brown has won at high levels before. He led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals in 2007. He won two championships as an assistant in Golden State. The Knicks brought Brown in because of his willingness to collaborate with the front office. But they certainly hoped his championship experience would rub off.

“All those teams [I coached] they sacrifice for one another,” said Brown. “All those teams, they’re connected. All those teams have a competitive spirit. All those teams have a belief in the process and each other. And they have those things while holding each other accountable at a pretty high level.

“And throughout the course of the year, we’ve grown a lot in those areas. And everybody needs to go through adversity. We went through some adversity, and we were able to try to lean on our standards while we did do that. The X’s and O’s, you’ve got to be physical, you got to have a great defense, you’ve got to be able to play with pace on offense with a lot of floor spacing and share the ball. All those things are common amongst good teams. But if you don’t have that other stuff, then it’s going to be hard because the X’s and O’s sometimes blow out the window in a seven-game series versus another good team.”

This L.A. trip was a setback for the Knicks. They have a half-game lead over Cleveland for the third seed in the East, while catching the surging Celtics for the second spot gets more unlikely by the game. Finding consistency will be a key. Van Gundy and Ewing had some good days in the ’90s. The Knicks hope better days are ahead.

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