![\"Josh](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3-new-york-knicks-guard-124974018.jpg\")
Josh Hart #3 of the New York Knicks and guard Jalen Brunson #11 of the New York Knicks speak on the court during the first half at Madison Square Garden, Friday April 3rd, 2026, in New York, NY. Jason Szenes for the New York Post<\/p>\nMonday represents an unwanted milestone for the Knicks.<\/p>\n
It marks one month since they beat a team above .500. Their last such win came against the Nuggets in Denver on March 6. Since then? They\u2019ve gone 0-5 against teams with winning records. All of those games were on the road against the Lakers, Clippers, Hornets, Thunder and Rockets.<\/p>\n
Monday starts a final four-game stretch against teams above .500 to close the regular season, beginning in Atlanta against the Hawks, followed by home games against the Celtics, Raptors and Hornets.<\/p>\n
Josh Hart #3 of the New York Knicks and guard Jalen Brunson #11 of the New York Knicks speak on the court during the first half at Madison Square Garden, Friday April 3rd, 2026, in New York, NY. Jason Szenes for the New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, I think it\u2019s just making sure we\u2019re locked in and focused,\u201d Josh Hart said after practice Sunday. \u201cObviously this is a good little stretch to end the season to make sure we\u2019re as sharp as we can be going into the playoffs. The past is the past, nothing you can do about it now. Our focus is on tomorrow being 1-0 against playoff teams, and then we move on to the next one, and then we want to be 1-0, and then we want to move onto the next one and be 1-0. Nothing in the past really matters. It\u2019s about what we do moving forward that we\u2019ll be judged on and what we judge ourselves on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those five losses are sandwiched between seven- and two-game winning streaks against teams well below .500 and, for the most part, tanking. And they are part of a growing concern that the Knicks have struggled against higher quality opposition for a while now.<\/p>\n
The NBA, this year more than ever, has clear haves and have-nots in team quality. A few wins or blowouts over bottom-feeders composed of youngsters or G-Leaguers don\u2019t quell the alarm bells regarding how the Knicks fare in real tests.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just the results that are troubling, it\u2019s how the Knicks lose. Their offense becomes more stagnant and Jalen Brunson-heavy. There are particularly bad starts to games, which they might be able to overcome against lowly teams but find much harder to overcome against quality teams. Their transition defense is shoddy, betraying so much of their improvement on that side of the ball in the second half of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gotta give Charlotte, Oklahoma City and Houston credit, they played well,\u201d coach Mike Brown said. \u201cI said it postgame, we did not play well in some areas. \u2026 We didn\u2019t play well in those three games and we deserved to lose, as much as you hate to say it. And hopefully we\u2019ll play better going forward because we\u2019ve got a couple of teams above .500, so we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond simply being above .500, all four of the Knicks\u2019 remaining opponents will be Eastern Conference playoff or play-in teams. One thing Brown acknowledged is that they don\u2019t want to show these potential playoff opponents everything and that they want to keep a few looks in their back pocket to unleash during the postseason.<\/p>\n
It creates a weird dynamic this final week.<\/p>\n
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/44-new-york-knicks-puts-124974020.jpg\")
Knicks guard Landry Shamet puts up a shot as guard Josh Giddey #3 of the Chicago Bulls defends during the first half at Madison Square Garden, Friday April 3rd, 2026, in New York, NY. Jason Szenes for the New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a challenging stretch that not a lot of people talk about,\u201d Landry Shamet said Sunday. \u201cThis last stretch of the season, these last few games, you\u2019re kind of gearing up for the playoffs, you know what you\u2019re building for, but you gotta be here and locked in each night, each team, each challenge in front of you. I think it\u2019s more about approaching each game with the right mentality. Make it more about us than who we\u2019re playing. We\u2019re working on something bigger and building for something bigger, keeping that top of mind while still taking each game seriously and approaching them as you should.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the Knicks\u2019 struggles against top opposition in the regular season \u2014 particularly with the Celtics \u2014 didn\u2019t really translate to the postseason. But they should not just be ignored or considered meaningless.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Just relying on everything changing once the playoffs start is a risky mindset.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not something you can just flip a switch in the playoffs and say, \u2018OK the playoffs are here, let\u2019s go out there and do our thing,\u2019 \u201d Hart said. \u201cWe gotta make sure that we take these next four games as serious as we can, make sure we lock in mentally and physically to what the game plan is and to what this team wants to do moving forward and execute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four more games means four final chances for the Knicks to quiet a worrying narrative that has recently begun hovering over them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday represents an unwanted milestone for the Knicks. It marks one month since they beat a team above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4778,21,9,24,55,54,1104,56,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-186796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-josh-hart","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}