{"id":125416,"date":"2025-02-24T15:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=125416"},"modified":"2025-02-24T15:14:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T20:14:30","slug":"knicks-continue-concerning-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/24\/knicks-continue-concerning-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks Continue Concerning Trend Over Disastrous Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heading into this past weekend, the New York Knicks<\/a> had a golden opportunity to reverse the narrative about them. Although NY has had a great season, there was one more box to check: beating the league’s best. In five outings against the NBA’s top-three contenders, Boston, OKC, and Cleveland, the Knicks had yet to win a single one. To make matters worse, they weren’t even competitive in three of the five defeats, sparking concern over their status as true title threats. Luckily, (or so they thought) New York had a prime chance to change this over the weekend with road tests in Cleveland and Boston. Unfortunately, once again, the Knicks crumbled versus the top teams, and alarm bells are sounding.<\/p>\n

Knicks Continue Concerning Trend Over Disastrous Weekend<\/h2>\n

Rather than being competitive against the East’s two best squads, New York looked outmatched from the tip in both games. Against Cleveland, they suffered their worst loss of Tom Thibodeau’s tenure, falling by 37. The Cavs shot 60.9% from the field and 51.4% from deep in what was a laughably easy win. The Knicks looked too slow, too unathletic, and too small for the endless waves of depth from Cleveland en route to an embarrassing loss. Yes, Josh Hart<\/a> was still out with knee soreness, and Mitchell Robinson<\/a> has yet to return, but the issues went far beyond their absences.<\/p>\n

If you expected a bounce-back effort against the champs on Sunday, you were sorely mistaken. Despite getting destroyed on Friday, the Knicks had no response for Boston. In a game where New York never led after the first minute and trailed by as much as 27, the Celtics sent a clear message: these teams are not on the same level. Hart took the floor and had a stellar game, dropping 20 points, 11 rebounds, and nine assists. It didn’t matter, as the Celtics dominated New York at every other position besides point guard. Karl-Anthony Towns<\/a>, Mikal Bridges<\/a>, and OG Anunoby<\/a> all had pitiful performances, and the bench groups were often outclassed. Outside of Jalen Brunson<\/a>‘s usual heroics in a third-quarter run, the Knicks had no advantages over Boston.<\/p>\n

New York’s Numbers Against Top Three Teams Are Stunning\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Again, it’s not so much that the Knicks haven’t beaten a great team yet this year. It’s not even that the two teams they’ll have to beat in the East have gotten them all five times. The wildly concerning part is how bad they’ve looked doing it. In seven games against OKC, Cleveland, and Boston, the Knicks are 0-7<\/a>. They have lost by an average margin of 20 points, scoring just 105 while allowing an alarming 125. In only three of these losses did New York even have a chance to win after halftime.<\/p>\n

NY is posting a 54.4% true shooting in the seven losses, which is 5.3% down from their average of 59.7%<\/a>. In five of the seven games, the Knicks never led in the second quarter or later, and blew double-digit leads in the other two. They’ve been outclassed on both ends of the floor in every feasible way and they’ve looked overmatched under the onslaught of intensity from the three contenders. I never thought I’d say that about a Tom Thibodeau team, but here we are.<\/p>\n

Look, the Knicks have been banged up and exhausted for a while now, while these other squads are fully healthy. These road games were always going to be a tough spot with three games in four nights, considering their injuries. Getting back to full strength by the playoffs is the key<\/a>, and New York will certainly have a chance. As of now, however, it looks grim for the Knicks. It’s gut-chuck time for Thibodeau’s guys.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Ken Blaze-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heading into this past weekend, the New York Knicks had a golden opportunity to reverse the narrative about them. Although NY has had a great season, there was one more box to check: beating the league’s best. In five outings against the NBA’s top-three contenders, Boston, OKC, and Cleveland, the Knicks had yet to win […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5412,"featured_media":125483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,12],"tags":[1417,215],"class_list":["post-125416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-knicks","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-tom-thibodeau"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125416"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125484,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125416\/revisions\/125484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}