Deja Vu

The Knicks lost a game that was a microcosm of their season.

Good morning.

Yeah.

Game 5: Pistons 106, Knicks 103

For those expecting a game recap filled with flowing prose about the latest & greatest disappointing effort by this year’s Knicks, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The only flow you’ll get in today’s newsletter is that game getting flushed down the toilet.

Let’s call it my ode to their performance.

In rough order of importance, here’s my 10 biggest thoughts about an outing that was in lockstep with everything this team had shown us over the previous 86 games…

1. Not adding up

It has some competition, and there’s still time to change the narrative (however unlikely that may be), but the single biggest storyline coming out of this season will almost certainly wind up being a starting five that never justified its own existence.

Trending downward since Christmas trees were still up, they entered last night having been outscored by one in the series. As I wrote yesterday, they’d actually been quite good outside of the third quarter - much more on that issue in a bit - but the numbers are now too overwhelming to ignore.

In 118 postseason minutes together - eight more than the next most used lineup - New York’s starters are getting outscored by 8.2 points per 100 possessions, with a dreadful offense and below average defense¹. Put in more concrete terms, when the starters have played, the Knicks have been outscored by 13 points. In the other 122 minutes, New York has outscored Detroit by 18.

Last night was unquestionably their nadir, as Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby, Hart and Towns were outpaced 53-43 in nearly 22 minutes of action. If you take away two fast break points and seven second chance points, that left just 34 points of half-court offense for a unit that started the season as one of the most fearsome scoring machines in the NBA.

Detroit’s ability to throw multiple wrenches into whatever is left of that machine has become the defining story of this series, and last night, the Pistons were better than ever, preventing the Knicks from creating any advantages through ample switching and pinpoint hedge and recovers.

The season-long solution many have wanted - replacing Hart with Deuce - feels fraught due to Hart being arguably their most consistent player in the series and McBride’s jump shot completely abandoning him at the worst possible time (4-of-16 from deep, 7-of-26 overall). The other low hanging fruit (s/o Zach Lowe) is to run more Brunson / KAT pick & roll, but even that didn’t generate much success in Game 5, which is a good transition to…

2. Collapsed stars