Halting the Knicks' losing skid might not be a simple fix

On the surface, the timing seems awful.

The Knicks — losers of three in a row — will play the Eastern Conference-leading Pistons for the first time since last season’s playoffs at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on Monday night. Yet Mike Brown doesn’t care if his Knicks are facing the team with the best record in the conference or the worst. He just wants to get a win.

“For us, it really doesn’t matter who we are playing,” Brown said Saturday after a 130-119 loss to Philadelphia at Madison Square Garden. “It’s whoever is in front of us. We need to figure out how to go play the right way on both ends of the floor and get a win. It’s as simple as that.”

Yet fixing what has ailed the Knicks since they won the NBA Cup might not be that simple in that it involves problems on both ends of the floor.

The Knicks (23-12) have gone 5-5 since winning the Cup in December. More tellingly, they have gone 2-3 since Josh Hart injured an ankle on Christmas Day.

Hart, who won’t be reevaluated until Friday, is the lowest-paid starter on the team and doesn’t post the gaudy scoring stats that his higher-paid teammates do, but his absence has hurt the Knicks on both offense and defense. They miss his offensive rebounding. They miss his physical defense on the perimeter. And they miss his ability to push the pace in transition.

“At the end of the day, having Josh out there helps a ton,” said Brown, who added that the team also misses Landry Shamet, out with a shoulder injury. “Right now, our pace is not good. We’re walking the ball up almost every time and then everything is just going to the front side. It’s been a while, at least these last two games, our staples — our pace in the full court and the frontcourt — we want to space the floor correctly, we want to make quick decisions, we want to touch the paint and we want the ball getting reversed, and we haven’t seen a lot of any of that.”

Mikal Bridges said the lack of pace is a group effort.

“I think we’re not playing fast enough, and that’s on everybody,” he said. “We’ve got to know what we’ve got to do spacing-wise. I think we know what we should do, but we’re either not thinking or taking too long to think about what we have to get into, and that’s been our problem.”

The Knicks also need to get more out of Karl-Anthony Towns on offense. They have always tried to overlook Towns’ lack of prowess on the defensive end because he puts up such huge numbers on offense. This season, as he struggles to adjust to an offense that doesn’t make him the focal point as much as he used to be, he is shooting a career-worst 47.3% overall and making 35.4% of his three-pointers, which is his lowest percentage since his rookie season in 2015-16.

Those struggles intensify when Brown starts Mitchell Robinson at center and moves Towns to power forward, as he did Saturday night against the 76ers. Towns was 0-for-5 from three-point range and 6-for-16 from the field, with a good chunk of his 23 points coming on 11 made free throws.

Of course, it wasn’t long ago that the Knicks were playing like the contender they were projected to be at the start of the season. Brown believes it is only natural for a team to go through a little adversity. After the Knicks lost three in a row early in the season, they bounced back with a five-game winning streak.

“I hope history repeats itself. For history to repeat itself, we’ve got to lock in and be ready for the next game,” Towns said. “And it’s not going get any easier for us with Detroit, a team that’s playing extremely well. We’ve got to go out there and execute at a higher level and bring that energy and physicality that’s needed.”

No matter whom they play.

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

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.