NEW YORK — As good as the New York Knicks can be, they sure do have some bad losses. One could make the case their list of impressive wins is as long as their list of head-scratching defeats.
The latest example came Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, where the 13-win Indiana Pacers became the 14-win Indiana Pacers with a 137-134 overtime victory. Hobbled Indiana came into the game ranked last in offense in the NBA, but put up 124 points in regulation before outlasting their arch nemesis in extra time. Put this Knicks loss somewhere in the mix with the loss to the Sacramento Kings, the pair of 30-plus-point losses to the Detroit Pistons, the beatdown at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks at home and a convincing loss to the Atlanta Hawks.
The Knicks were absent some key players in a few of those games, as were the other teams. However, losing to Detroit that badly (twice) shouldn’t happen when three starters are available. Not being able to stop Indiana shouldn’t happen, not at the level that it did. No team with championship aspirations should be losing to the Kings after Christmas.
Tuesday’s defeat wasn’t just another blemish on the Knicks’ record, but, according to Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson, it was also the night New York officially renounced itself as a team that can truly contend for an NBA title. Jackson’s “40-20” theory states that if a team wins 40 games before it suffers 20 losses, it’s a championship contender. The Knicks dropped to 34-20 after falling to Indiana.
Jackson’s logic has a few flaws, including that it doesn’t account for injuries, but it has generally rung true. Since the NBA adopted the 3-point line for the 1979-80 season, while not counting shortened seasons (whether because of work stoppage or the pandemic), only four teams have won the NBA championship without winning 40 games before losing 20: the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, the 2003-04 Pistons, the 2005-06 Miami Heat and the 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks. Going back further, since the NBA expanded to an 82-game regular-season schedule for the 1967-68 season, only five more teams (1967-68 Boston Celtics; 1974-75 Golden State Warriors; 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers; 1977-78 Washington Bullets; and 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics) have made Jackson look silly.
No one believes New York isn’t talented enough to skirt its way around the odds and become just the fifth team since 1979-80 to win the NBA title while losing 20 games before getting to 40 wins. It can be done. Yet, based on some of its discombobulated performances this season, anyone without blue-and-orange-colored glasses can see how this team could be a disappointment in the postseason.
“We didn’t do a great job of getting into their airspace,” said New York coach Mike Brown, whose team allowed the Pacers to convert on 18 of its 45 (40 percent) 3-point attempts. “We did a little better job in the second half, but by then, they were feeling pretty good about where they were in the game.
“The past 12, 15 games, we’ve been pretty good about getting to 3-point shooters. We’ve been pretty good about putting physicality on the ball and a lot of other areas defensively. Tonight, it wasn’t there — at least at the level that it has been, along with our communication. Got to give Indiana a lot of credit.”
New York can reach high highs. We just saw it during an eight-game win streak, when the defense was stifling and the offense was efficient. The Knicks can also have low lows, and that’s where people’s hesitation about how far they can go comes into play.
“Offensively wasn’t the problem tonight,” said Jalen Brunson, who scored 40 points in the loss. “Obviously, defensively, they had a rhythm early, and they kept their confidence and rhythm throughout the entire game.”
Brunson is correct about the offensive performance on Tuesday, but the offense hasn’t been perfect this year. That’s why the Knicks need to be able to hang their hat on their defense — for nights when Brunson, the king of crunch time last season, looks like a human, until Karl-Anthony Towns finds his shot and Mikal Bridges stops disappearing for long stretches.
Getting the defense to a consistently good level will determine how far the Knicks can go. Not having OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson hurt, but that’s no excuse for allowing the Pacers to shoot 52 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3. Just two days earlier, New York held the Celtics to 89 points in a win without Anunoby and with Robinson playing just 16 minutes.
The Knicks have what it takes to be one of the final two teams standing in the NBA. We’ve all seen it with our own two eyes. We’ve also witnessed some pretty decisive losses to both good opponents and not-so-good ones.
For New York to have a real chance at proving Jackson’s theory wrong, it simply needs to cut down on the lowest of the lows. The quicker the Knicks stop seesawing through their schedule and find more level ground, the less likely they are to be haunted by poor regular-season performances come the playoffs.