Barbara Barker: Knicks' poor starts can't continue against better teams
Knicks center Mitchell Robinson looks on against the Philadelphia 76ers in the first half of an NBA game at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 3. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Knicks need to have a better attitude when it comes to facing inferior teams.
So says Mitchell Robinson, who clearly was not happy with the team’s approach in their nail-biting 93-92 win over the Nets on Friday night. Robinson, the longest tenured Knick, would like to see the Knicks get themselves right, starting with Sunday’s game against the Washington Wizards, who were bringing a 15-game losing streak into Madison Square Garden.
“Our approach has to be better,” Robinson said in the locker room after the Knicks survived a physical game against the Nets to pull out a squeaker. “We can’t just look at their record and say, ‘We’re going to whip their butts.’ We just have to be better altogether. Until we figure that one out, it’s going to be a long roller coaster.”
The Knicks (46-25) entered Sunday's game on a five-game winning streak with all five wins against sub-.500 teams. That record, however, masks some serious concerns as the Knicks have had to rely on second-half surges in order to beat opponents they should have dominated from the get-go.
In three of their five wins, the Knicks have trailed after the first quarter. Against Brooklyn the Knicks trailed by eight, against Golden State by 14 and against Utah by 15. In the other two, both against league bottom-feeder Indiana, the Knicks led by just four and three points after the first quarter. All of this against teams who are eyeing the lottery and really aren’t all that concerned about winning.
So what, you say? Does it really matter as long as the Knicks are the team on top after the fourth quarter. Well, it kind of does.
This habit of slow starts is more than a bit disconcerting because while the Knicks might be able to overcome a bad start against a bad team, it’s much harder to do against good or even mediocre ones. This was clearly on display in the Knicks' two losses before the start of the five-game streak as both the Lakers and Clippers jumped out to leads in the first quarter to set the tone for the game.
“We just have to come out better. We have to do better as a team,” said Mikal Bridges, who actually bucked that trend by scoring seven of his nine points in the first quarter of the Nets game. “It’s just mentally, I think. It’s just being mentally ready when the game starts.”
Coach Mike Brown has spent a good chunk of the season talking about how the Knicks have to get off to better starts, and he again found himself in that position after the narrow win over the Nets on Friday night.
“I thought we were real lackadaisical with the basketball,” Brown said. “We had 13 turnovers at halftime . . . 13 or 14 is what we usually have in a game. And we had 13 at halftime. And we ended the game with 22. That’s not a good ingredient to have when you’re trying to get a road win, no matter who you’re playing. If your approach is not what it should be and the other team feels it, any team can beat it at any time.
“We know we have to play better. And I believe our guys will play better.”
There’s no time like the present as the Wizards are a team everyone else is able to beat up on. This is the team, after all, that Miami’s Bam Adebayo scored 83 points on two weeks ago. In fact, 10 different NBA players are averaging 31.0 or more points against the Wizards. Perhaps the Knicks could join the scoring pile-on.
Said Robinson: “We just have to be ready to go. We can’t take [the Wizards] like we did this game tonight. We have to be ready to go on Sunday. They are grownup men like us and are in the NBA just like us. Our approach has to be better and more respectful.”
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.
