Hitting Reset

The Knicks hope that some home cooking can flip the narrative of this series on its axis one more time.

Good morning! Biggest game of the season tonight. No pressure or anything.

Game Night

TONIGHT: Pacers at Knicks, 8 pm, TNT

Halftime: No Zoom tonight as I’ll be at MSG, but I’ll be back on Friday.

Injury Report: As expected, no OG Anunoby tonight for the Knicks, but no one else is listed on the injury report. In other news, Mitchell Robinson had a successful small procedure yesterday on his left ankle. His surgeon and the team’s medical staff decided it was the best course after further consideration. Robinson will be re-evaluated in 6-8 weeks.

As for Indy, Tyrese Haliburton (low back spasms, sacral contusion, ankle sprain) is being listed as questionable.

What to watch for: I might be reaching here, but the Knicks have lost three straight games only three times this season, and only once since the All-Star break (and two of those were heartbreakers against San Antonio and OKC). We have talked up their ability to be resilient so, so many times. Let’s see if they can inspire us once more.

Escaping the Blender

Many times over the last seven months, fans have compared this Knicks season to a roller coaster ride.

Between roster changes, trades, injuries, winning streak and losing streaks, it’s not an unfair analogy. This postseason alone reminds me of the Great American Scream Machine (the first roller coaster I ever rode, and in my humble opinion, still elite).

But despite that feeling, the Knicks - for the most part - have been a model of consistency. Their offense from October to now has been reliable, at least relative to the personnel. They have been consistently elite at some things (rebounding; protecting the paint) and rock solid at others (3-point shooting; posting a quality shot diet). Rarely have they been flat out bad in any one area.

The one exception is defense, where there have been periods of dominance interspersed with periods of futility. After being pretty decent for the first six weeks, New York sported the worst defense in the league in the month of December, only to turn around and boast the league’s very best unit the following month. In February, they were back down to 27th, and then in March, they were back up to second before ranking 21st in April.

Personnel changes obviously had a lot to do with those fluctuations, but even considering those alterations, defensive consistency is not necessarily the strongest link in this team’s DNA. Consider that OG Anunoby played just three of 14 games in their dominant March but six of eight games in their meh April.

The trend has continued in the wrong direction. Going into last night’s game, the Knicks had the second worst defensive rating in the postseason, ahead of only the winless Suns. For all the consternation that existed after New York scored just 19 points in the first 16 minutes of the Game 4 disaster, they entered play on Sunday with the second best offense in the playoffs.

The only team with a better number? You guessed it: Indiana.

Yes, the Knicks scored like an undermanned middle school team on Mother’s Day, but going back and rewatching the first quarter and a half (after which things really started to unravel), the vast majority of their looks were at least decent, and most of those were high quality shots that just missed.

For all the attention that has been paid to the switch Indy made to put Nesmith on Brunson, the Pacers did not become the ‘04 Pistons overnight. If anything, Sunday was a reminder that the Knicks are like almost any other NBA team: when the threes are falling, they look great. When they aren’t, they don’t.

Obviously Jalen Brunson getting back to being Jalen Brunson is the biggest reversion that needs to happen, followed by a potential starting lineup change with Deuce coming in for Precious, who Indiana just flatly is not guarding.

(Credit to the Knicks trying to find some creative ways to get Achiuwa involved…

…but I’m not sure how tenable this is moving forward. Even if the starting lineup doesn’t change, I’d expect a quicker hook if New York’s offense gets off to another slow start tonight.)

The bigger change needs to happen on defense, which is to say that New York needs to start playing some.