Barbara Barker: Knicks fall to Pistons by 38 without Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby
Detroit Pistons forward Duncan Robinson knocks the ball away from Knicks guard Josh Hart during the first half of an NBA basketball game on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Detroit. Credit: AP/Duane Burleson
DETROIT — No, they are not the same team.
The Knicks are not the same team the Detroit Pistons mopped the floor with here a little more than a month ago. They are not the same team that lost by 31 points here on Jan. 5, hours after their owner declared in a radio interview that he expected them to get to the NBA Finals. They are much better than they showed the last time the teams met here.
Of course, that was hard to tell by the lopsided final score of the Knicks’ 118-80 loss to the Pistons on Friday, a game in which they trailed by 43. Ugly.
Playing without two-fifths of their starting lineup, the Knicks were no match for a Pistons team that is still smarting from the way the Knicks knocked them out of the playoffs last season. Detroit showed absolutely no mercy in handing the Knicks their most lopsided loss of the season.
In fact, the Pistons (38-13) have handed the Knicks (33-19) their two most lopsided losses of the season. They also are responsible for being the first team to hold their offense to fewer than 90 points.
The Knicks team that entered Little Caesars Arena was on a season-high eight-game winning streak, so the game appeared to be the perfect stage for them to measure how far they had come since that dismal stretch in January in which they lost nine of 11 games, including the 121-90 clunker to the Pistons.
A half-hour before tipoff, however, much of the luster was taken off the rematch when the Knicks announced they would be without Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby. Towns was out with a laceration over his right eye suffered in the Knicks’ double-overtime win over the Nuggets on Wednesday. Anunoby, one of the Knicks’ best defenders, was out with a right toe injury. For the Pistons, Jalen Duren sat out with soreness in his right knee.
The loss to the Eastern Conference’s top seed dropped the Knicks to third place in the conference. They are a half-game behind the Celtics entering the teams’ matchup in Boston at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.
The Knicks could be down another player for that game; Josh Hart left Friday’s game in the third quarter with a right ankle injury. He was not in the locker room after the game and coach Mike Brown said he did not know the severity of the injury.
Of course, what mattered most to those at the game is that Jalen Brunson and Cade Cunningham, the two most important players for both teams, were on the floor.
Brunson, who became the player Detroit fans love to hate when he eliminated the Pistons with a three-pointer at the buzzer in Game 6 of last season’s first-round playoff matchup, looked worn two days after carrying the Knicks to a win over Denver in their double-overtime thriller.
Brunson scored 12 points and shot 4-for-20, but he wasn’t the only one whose shots weren’t falling. Three of the Knicks’ starters — Hart, Mitchell Robinson and Mo Diawara — scored five or fewer points. The Knicks shot 35.8% overall and 24.2% from three-point range.
Brunson was asked after the game if the team was exhausted mentally and physically from the emotions of their eight-game winning streak capped by the double-overtime victory.
“Yeah, but there’s no excuse for what happened today,” he said. “You have to come here and be professional. We just didn’t do our job well tonight.”
Cunningham, who had 29 points and 13 assists in Detroit’s win over the Knicks in January, scored only 11 points in 22 minutes. Former St. John’s star Daniss Jenkins had 18 for Detroit.
Now the Knicks have to quickly regroup for Sunday’s game. They could be joined by guard Jose Alvarado, whom they obtained before Thursday’s trade deadline.
Brown deserves credit for piloting the Knicks though that tough early January stretch. He made the tweaks he needed to make to simplify the defense and encouraged the players to communicate more. He played around with rotations, giving more minutes to Landry Shamet and Robinson. And even when it looked as if the ship was beginning to take on water, he remained a voice of calm.
Which helped make the Knicks not the same team that lost here by 31 in January — even if they lost by 38 this time.
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.
