SAN ANTONIO — There are schedule losses and then there are schedule beatdowns.
The former is more acceptable. They happen through the course of the season, no matter how good one team is and how bad another is. At the end of the day, the NBA is full of professionals.
The New York Knicks on Wednesday night, though, suffered a schedule beatdown. A team with New York’s aspirations — even without Jalen Brunson — shouldn’t lose the way it did against a team of the San Antonio Spurs’ stature. San Antonio is without stars Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox for the season. The Spurs don’t have the same luxuries the Knicks do to withstand such absences. San Antonio won by 15. It led by as many as 28 in the first half for a final score of 120-105.
The players will tell you that the way New York lost isn’t acceptable, even if the grind of its recent schedule caught up to them physically and mentally.
There were too many mental lapses on defense in the first half and the fourth quarter. San Antonio outrebounded New York by eight with its only center being Bismack Biyombo, and he only played 10 minutes. The Knicks couldn’t make a shot after the first few opening possessions. A New York starter not named Karl-Anthony Towns didn’t record a field goal until under two minutes in the second quarter. You read that correctly. Shot making comes and goes, although rarely ever that extreme, but the defense and hustle, which has been sturdy and consistent as any team in basketball as of late, was nowhere to be found for large chunks of the game.
At this point in the season, the mental lapses the Knicks had against San Antonio shouldn’t be that glaring. It’s getting closer to win-or-go-home time.
“These are some of the more important days,” New York guard Miles McBride said. “If you played in the playoffs before, these are the times where guys are trying to tune up even more and these games become even more important, whether you’re trying to get into the playoffs or trying to get a better seeding. These are games where I feel like guys are trying to tune up and get ready, and I don’t feel like we showed that tonight.”
New York has touched every corner of the country in recent weeks. Feb. 28, the Knicks played in Memphis, Tenn., before flying down to Miami for a game two days later. After that, New York flew back home to the East Coast for one game against the Golden State Warriors. March 6, two days after facing the Warriors at home, the Knicks were playing the Lakers in Los Angeles and then the next day the Clippers. New York was on the West Coast for 12 days before coming home to play one game, on one day’s rest, and then heading right back out to face San Antonio. New York left Texas after the game to face the Hornets, in Charlotte, on the second half of a back-to-back Thursday night.
That’s a brutal schedule for any person, professional athlete or not. The Knicks looked every bit like a team whose miles have caught up to it. However, every team goes through a stretch in the schedule as taxing as this. It’s part of the gig.
“The schedule is the schedule,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Sometimes it’s in your favor, sometimes it’s not. We’ve been on the road a long time, come home for one and then turn right back around. But that’s our reality. We have to find a way to win. In the third quarter, I thought we had the right approach, and that helped. I think we got (the score) to eight and then we get hurt with the 3.”
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After poor ball pressure to open the game, which allowed the likes of Chris Paul to get wherever he wanted, New York’s defense ramped up in the third. However, the Knicks’ lackadaisical defense to start the game bit them in the end, as the Spurs’ Sandro Mamukelashvili hit more 3s than vowels in his last name. He was a perfect 7-for-7 from deep, and though that is an anomaly, New York didn’t do much to make him uncomfortable. It was almost deserving given the miscues and mental lapses.
In the above clip, which was Mamukelashvili’s first 3 of the night, Precious Achiuwa gets caught ball watching and allows the San Antonio big man to step into a practice shot.
This is Mamukelashvili’s third 3 of the night, and once again it’s a practice shot. There is poor communication between the New York defenders and no real urgency to do the work early to make sure he doesn’t get that loose.
At the point of this shot, when the Knicks clawed back to make it a game, Mamukelashvili was 7-of-8 from the floor. He was unbothered, just like he was letting this shot fly. Towns’ close-out attempt isn’t aggressive enough, especially since Mamukelashvili had left Earth by this point. Towns must force Mamukelashvili to put the ball on the floor and beat him elsewhere. Instead, for someone as hot as Mamukelashvili was, it’s another practice shot.
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This play here perfectly depicts just how unfocused New York was for the bulk of the night. Mamukelashvili got a free dunk after the Knicks made a free throw because he wasn’t accounted for. Repeat: The best player on the floor the entire night was forgotten.
“He’s in the NBA for a reason,” Josh Hart said when asked. “He’s a good player. We weren’t focused enough and locked in enough to realize what was going on. The IQ wasn’t there. I think he was 13-of-14 and 7-of-7 from the 3-point line. When a guy has a game going like that, we have to find him and get to his body and be physical with him, get him out of rhythm. We didn’t do that.”
It’s likely this Knicks loss — which is one of the worst of the season but not quite the 37-point loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in February — will end up just being a blip on the radar that’ll eventually be forgotten and chalked up to unfortunate scheduling. The mental fatigue is as real as the physical fatigue, and New York was in a fog for much of the night as a collective. However, it is a little concerning that a team trying to go where New York wants to is capable of these types of mental blunders at this point in the season.
The sky isn’t falling, but it’s worth monitoring as basketball inches closer and closer to its most unforgiving and intense stage.
(Photo: Ronald Cortes / Getty Images)
