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A loss to the Pacers highlighted Knick issues on both ends, plus a glaring lack of depth.

Good morning.

I hate losing to that freaking team.

Game 9: Pacers 132, Knicks 121

• Indiana out-mathed the Knicks, nearly making more threes (21) than the Knicks attempted (25).

• After a decent start that had them up 10 midway through the third, New York’s defense completely lost the plot, allowing 67 points over the final 20 minutes as Indy worked the Knicks’ drop coverage like a speed bag

• Mikal Bridges struggled getting around screens and making shots (0-of-6 from 3)

• OG Anunoby had arguably his best half as a Knick to open the game

• Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns ended up with impressive stat lines but their impact felt more muted than the numbers suggested

• With no Cam Payne or Precious Achiuwa once again, Thibs essentially played a seven-man rotation, giving Tyler Kolek just two first half minutes and playing Jericho Sims just three minutes after halftime.

The highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

New York’s early season roller coaster ride took another downturn yesterday in a loss to Indiana that looked nothing like the first matchup between these two teams.

In that game, the Knicks’ wings stifled Indy’s attack as Tyrese Haliburton had perhaps his worst game as a Pacer. He more than made up for it on Sunday night.

With Hali slicing and dicing his way through New York’s defense like an onion on the cutting board, this turned into yet another game where the Knicks’ grand plan came into question.

It starts with the D, which held up well for a while but eventually got caught in the Indy spin cycle.

Was New York’s defense as bad as the numbers make it seem? Probably not, if only because you never anticipate a team hitting 9-of-12 from behind the arc, which the Pacers did over the nine-minute stretch of the fourth quarter that ultimately put the game away.

But every one of those threes was at least a decent look, and they were almost all generated after ample ball-movement from Indiana. At no point did the Knicks seem to make the Pacers uncomfortable, and that falls on everyone.

(OK, almost everyone. OG Anunoby has been otherworldly.)

It starts at the point of attack, where Mikal Bridges simply has not been navigating screens well enough to justify his massively important role in the drop coverage. If he can’t consistently get over and around screens, everything starts to fall apart.

Once that initial veil has been pierced, Towns isn’t able to clean up the messes that result, but the struggles go well beyond him. New York’s rotations haven’t been nearly crisp enough this season, and it showed against one of the league’s best offenses.

On the other end of the floor, the Knicks generated a 122.2 offensive rating, which actually improved their season-long number to 119.5. That’s good enough for second best in the entire league, trailing only the undefeated Cavaliers.

And yet, despite that lofty perch, last night felt like a game in which New York gave in to the opposing game plan. Under Rick Carlisle, the Pacers have often conceded good looks inside the arc in an effort to take away the three. Sure enough, last night’s total of 25 attempts from behind the arc was a season low for the Knicks.

Looking at their second half performance, in which they missed their first eight shots from long range until KAT made a meaningless one with 1:22 remaining, it’s fair to wonder which is the chicken and which is the egg. Did they fail to find the range because they weren’t taking enough threes, or did they stop looking for threes because they couldn’t find the range?

Either way, for all of their offensive talent, New York doesn’t get two on the ball as easily as they used to, which means less opportunities for open kick outs, as DJ Zullo pointed out after this one was over:

But lamenting the offense after this loss is a little like crying over a scratched rim when your engine is on fire.

Yes, the gambit with the Towns trade was always going to be winning with an elite offense, but even using the ‘23 Nuggets formula, the defense needs to be at least passable. Yesterday, it fell short of that low bar.

Could tired bodies and minds have something to do with it?

Like a cloud hovering over all of this is the fact that Tom Thibodeau is running out of players he trusts. New York came into this one with nine player games logged of at least 39 minutes, which was tied with the Mavs and Kings for most in the league for non-OT games. Last night they added four more to the ledger, with Anunoby the only starter missing that mark (and by just two at 37 minutes).

Indiana, like the Knicks, was down four rotation players, but still played 10 men. Two of those 10 - Ben Mathurin and Myles Turner - topped 39 minutes themselves, but it’s fair to wonder whether the minutes are catching up to New York’s players.

(For whatever its worth, their schedule has been fairly spread out, and only Washington has played fewer games. An interesting test will come this week, when the Knicks play their first back to back on Tuesday and Wednesday. They’ve also been on the road an awful lot, and haven’t played consecutive games in the same place in two weeks, which could have something to do with the dragging defense.)

At some point, the injured players will return, and with them, a return to more manageable playing time. That much seems like a safe bet. Less certain is how long it will take this defense to develop some modicum of consistency. So much is riding on that timeline, and whether optimization can be achieved with the current scheme and the present starting five.

These are not questions to be asking after nine games, but 4-5 does leave an unpleasant aftertaste. Hopefully the next game goes down a little smoother.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Josh Hart: I might already be grading on a curve with Towns, but even with 30 points on 19 shots, his two-way impact felt less than Hart’s, who is responsible for our Juan Shining Moment of the game:

Hart finished with 16, 10 & 6 against Indy, which are right around his season averages. He is doing a little bit of everything for the Knicks. Funny enough, nine games into the season, his offensive on/off discrepancy is still the best on the team. For all the talk about how his lack of 3-point shooting will hurt the offense, it seems to lose a hefty dose of zip whenever he sits down.

Not that he’s sitting very often.

⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: One game after his best passing effort of the season, Brunson had his best scoring outing here, going for 33 on 17 shots while dishing 10 assists. It was the sixth 30/10 game of Brunson’s Knick career, which is fourth most all-time in franchise history behind Clyde (nine), Richie Guerin and Stephon Marbury (seven each). He definitely found the groove that seemed to be eluding him. Hopefully it carries forward from here.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ OG Anunoby: Today’s Autograph Signature Moment of the Game is brought to us by none other than Benjy Ritholtz:

Plays like this, where Anunoby shows his unrivaled combination of physicality and speed, are why there is a growing gap in New York’s defensive rating between the minutes OG plays (112.2) and the ones he sits (119.2). It’s also a reminder that he’s only one man, and timely rotations will always be necessary to make sure his efforts aren’t for naught.

Offensively, Anunoby carried the Knicks for portions of the first half. Perhaps surprisingly, he is currently New York’s third leading scorer at 15.6 points after putting up 25 points on 14 shots. If the Knicks got only one All-Star, it would be Towns based on his breathtaking numbers in the early going, but it’s easy to argue OG has been their most consistent player.

Final Thought

This too shall pass, but every loss in which the vision looks blurry stings a little more than the last. A winning streak sometime soon would go a long way to calming the nerves.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”