The Knicks only took their sixth win last season in their 26th game, four games after head coach David Fizdale was axed in early December with a 4-18 record.
Obviously it’s not the time to nitpick, but Tom Thibodeau’s improved team shot just 35.8 percent from the floor and 12-for-20 from the free-throw line Friday night in a 101-89 loss to the Thunder at the Garden , ending their three-game winning streak.
The Knicks (5-4) failed to take a sixth win after nine games for the first time since an 8-1 start in 2012-13 – a season with 54 wins under current assistant coach Mike Woodson.
‘It’s a tough competition. It’s a tough competition to win, ”said Thibodeau. ‘You have to get ahead every night. If you don’t, it will be difficult for you. In this competition, as soon as you start to feel too good about yourself, you will be knocked down.
So you have to take it with you every night. You have to bring it every day. Like I said, I think I am very satisfied with the approach, the attitude. And I think if we get into a hole, I think we had the right intentions. We wanted to be clear. But you cannot do it individually. You have to stay a team and do it together.
RJ Barrett led the Knicks by 19 points in 44 minutes, but he missed 14 of 21 shots from the floor, including 4 of 5 from a 3-point range.
Top scorer Julius Randle was in trouble early on and didn’t score in the first half, but he finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in 31 minutes.
“I just felt like today, for whatever reason, we just weren’t playing for each other at both ends of the floor,” said Randle. “It happens, you go through that, but the important thing is that now we nip it in the bud and now take care of it and go back to playing unselfishly and playing for each other, sharing the ball, playing for each other. get that lead back to us. “
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder (4-4) with 25 points, and Queens’s product, Hamidou Diallo, scored a season-high 23 with 11 rebounds.
The Knicks, who will host the Nuggets on Sunday, led a whopping eleven in the first quarter, but they needed a late Barrett floater and a Mitchell Robinson dunk to reach halftime in a 42-42 tie. Ten lead changes in the third quarter saw Oklahoma City rise 57-56 midway through the period, before a dunk and two free throws from Diallo increased Thunder’s lead to nine.
Austin Rivers, Wednesday’s fourth quarter hero, deflated a 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer and an early bucket in the fourth to pull the Knicks back in four hours, but a steel and dunk from Diallo and a 3-pointer from Gilgeous-Alexander pushed the Knicks down to 13, their biggest of the match, with 4:21 to go.
“Pretty much all aspects of it – dribble penetration, loose balls, the rebound. If we don’t take care of that, it will be a long night. And it was, ”said Thibodeau. “And although we had a 10 point lead early on, I didn’t like the way our defense looked, and then our bench came in and we have to be ready to go. From top to bottom, we just didn’t. We can do much better than we did. “