Knicks Defense Hit New Low in Warriors Loss

In a 126-114 defeat, they allowed 134 points per 100 possessions. They were late on rotations and soft in one-on-one coverage, the exact same recipe that's repeatedly done them in as of recent. Over the Knicks' last nine games, a stretch in which they've come away with wins just twice, their 121.7 defensive rating has been the second-worst in the entire league. Opponents are getting easy shots against their defense and knocking them down with ease.

Worsening Habits

Even on their good days, the Knicks were dead-set on fortifying their defense from the inside-out. Anchor-big Mitchell Robinson and his quick rim-rotators were constantly sure to make life scoring at the basket especially difficult, but that left open shots around the perimeter for opponents to sting New York from outside.

Even before this nightmare-ish two-week span, the Knicks were in the bottom quarter of the NBA in opponent effective field goal percentage, which measures how players convert scoring opportunities both in-game and at the line by acknowledging some buckets as more valuable than others. It's no surprise, then, that those facing the Knicks are knocking down over 37% of their 3-point jumpers, the fourth-highest mark in the game on the sixth-most nightly attempts.

Look no further than the beating they took in Golden State, a game in which the band of good-not-great shooters on the Warriors rode the Knicks' "defense" to 20 long-range makes on 45 tries. That's a 44.4% success rate.

They were always a step behind in attempting to communicate as a team, stumbling on nearly every action that involved someone operating alongside screens. That issue was always going to be exposed when going against a one-of-one scorer like Stephen Curry, but they didn't seem to be in proper positioning against anyone that night.

The constantly-open Warriors punished nearly every man defender who saw sufficient minutes for New York. Josh Hart held his ground, relatively speaking, and he still allowed over 44% of buckets that he directly contested to fall. Stunningly, that was the lowest of any Knicks starter; OG Anunoby couldn't escape the switching game in watching opponents shoot 9/13 on his watch, while 10 of the 11 attempts that Mikal Bridges tried to get in the way of eventually found nylon.

That's to say nothing of Karl-Anthony Towns, who's rightfully heard the lion's share of the coaching staff's ire during his stretch of ineffective, poorly-thought-through processing.

Games like this should be seen as an indictment of the Knicks defense; no contender should collapse this easily, especially with as many name-brand defenders as they have. This is a team-wide coordination issue, and it now falls on Brown to fix on the fly.