Magic pummels Knicks on offense and defense
Knicks head coach David Fizdale looks on during the second half of the game against the Orlando Magic at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
There are nights when coaches just want to throw away the boxscore and pretend it never happened.
And then there are nights like the one the Knicks had Sunday night against Orlando. David Fizdale couldn’t have been blamed if he wanted to shred the boxscore, burn the strips and bury them in the backyard in case anyone ever wanted to remind him of it.
The Knicks suffered their worst humiliation of what is shaping up to be a long, tough season as they were whacked by the Magic, 115-89, at Madison Square Garden.
“I think this is the most disappointing loss all season,” Tim Hardaway Jr. said. “Leaving Toronto and coming back home for a home game. It [stinks] coming back here stinking up the Garden in front of our own hometown. We can’t let that happen again.”
The Knicks (4-10) have had their fair share of big losses before. On Saturday, they were dominated by a superior Toronto Raptors team, 128-112. The loss to Orlando, however, was by far their worst of the season, given that the Knicks were playing on their home court against a team they had a chance of beating.
The Magic (6-7) were led by Terrence Ross, who came off the bench to score 22 points in 22 minutes and shoot 8-for-12, including 5-for-8 on three-pointers. Nikola Vucevic had 21 points and 14 rebounds and rookie Mo Bamba added 15 points and eight rebounds.
Enes Kanter was the only player on the Knicks able to put the ball in the basket with any regularity. Kanter, who recently lost his spot in the starting rotation, came off the bench to score 16 points and grab 15 rebounds. Kevin Knox had 17 points, former Magic player Mario Hezonja added 12 and Trey Burke had 10.
Not a single Knicks starter finished in double figures, scoring 20 points between them. Three starters — Frank Ntilikina, Mitchell Robinson and Damyean Dotson — finished the first half without a single point.
Hardaway, who at one point in the first quarter slapped the scorer’s table in frustration, had a particularly tough night. He finished with seven points, shot 2-for-12 and went 0-for-6 from three-point range.
Coming off a back-to-back that started on the road, the Knicks could have been forgiven a slow start, and they looked lost from the tip-off as the Magic took a 10-0 lead.
“No excuses,’’ Fizdale said. “This is the NBA.”
Fizdale called two timeouts in the first 7:38, but nothing seemed to work. By the time the first quarter had ended, the Knicks trailed 30-10 and were being booed.
That’s right. The Knicks scored 10 points in the first quarter and made 21 percent of their shots. They wound up shooting 5-for-28 from three-point range.
By the end of the third quarter, fans started cheering for Fizdale to put in Ron Baker. The Knicks trailed by as many as 34 points (98-64) as fans began to leave the building.
“There always seems to be a quarter where nothing’s clicking for us,” Fizdale said. “We didn’t see the ball go in. We missed multiple open shots and it affected our defense. I don’t know if it was necessarily effort. I need to watch the film before I make that judgment.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
