The Knicks are in a bit of a funk right now, no way around it. They've dropped eight of their last 10 games heading into Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr.
Day matchup against the Dallas Mavericks. But head coach Mike Brown isn’t panicking - in fact, he sees signs that his team is starting to turn the corner.
“We were doing [playing well],” Brown said pregame at Madison Square Garden. “We were winning games, but as time went on, we weren’t able to get together [in practice] as much as I’d like, and we started to have a little slippage and it showed.
Now we’ve had a little time to get together. We have to try to continue to help them on both sides of the ball.
Hopefully, we’ll start trending up again.”
That’s the hope. Since Dec. 30, the Knicks have gone 2-8, and they’re 7-10 since capturing the NBA Cup on Dec.
- That’s a stark contrast from their pre-Cup form, when they were 18-7 and among the hottest teams in the league.
Still, at 25-17, they entered the MLK Day slate sitting third in the Eastern Conference, trailing only the Detroit Pistons (30-10) and the Boston Celtics (26-15). The Celtics held a 1.5-game edge over the Knicks despite being without Jayson Tatum, who’s sidelined with an Achilles injury.
The recent slide hasn’t been pretty, but Brown is finding positives - especially in their latest outing, a 106-99 loss to the Phoenix Suns.
“We played fairly well I thought in Portland on both sides of the ball. We laid an egg in Sacramento.
I thought we were better in Golden State. I thought we were really good in our last game [against the Suns], especially defensively,” Brown said.
“I thought it was probably one of our best defensive games, against Phoenix. We just couldn’t close.”
That inability to finish games has been a recurring theme lately, but help could be on the way.
Brunson and Hart Return
The Knicks welcomed back two key rotation players on Monday: Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart. Brunson missed the previous two games after tweaking his ankle just five minutes into the Sacramento game. Hart, who suffered an ankle injury on Christmas Day, had been sidelined for two-and-a-half weeks and missed Saturday’s game against Phoenix due to lingering soreness.
Hart didn’t have a magic answer for the Knicks’ recent struggles, but he did point to some familiar culprits.
“If I could [diagnose it], I don’t think we’d be in this stretch,” Hart said. “I don’t know, I think it’s a combination of stuff.
Just gotta be better defensively, more physical, into the ball, more effort, more energy. That kind of stuff.”
Hart also acknowledged what many around the league quietly accept: January can be a grind. The stretch between Christmas and the All-Star break is often the toughest part of the season, both physically and mentally.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised because obviously January - middle of January especially - those are the kind of dog days of the season,” he said. “So not too surprised; you kind of see a few teams around kind of showing that fatigue.
You know it happens every year. And then kind of refresh at All-Star, right after All-Star, and kind of just carry that through.
So, you know, it happens.”
A Full Roster - Finally
For the first time all season, Brown had something that’s felt like a luxury: a full roster.
“When I was trying to figure out our rotation tonight or minutes sheet, this felt like it was the first time all year we had our 14 roster guys together,” Brown said. “It was really unique.”
That kind of continuity - or the lack of it - has been a major storyline for the Knicks this season. Injuries have forced Brown to mix and match lineups on the fly, and that’s made it difficult to build rhythm and chemistry, especially on the defensive end.
In fact, when Brown went to plug in a new lineup combination for the Mavericks game, he got a surprising response from his analytics team.
“I sent one of our analytics guys a combination of players that I wanted to play together, and I said ‘Hey, what does this group look like analytically, offensively, defensively?’ They said, ‘We haven’t played that combination together before.’ I was like ‘OK, that will be something new that we see today.’”
It’s a reminder of just how much this team has had to adapt on the fly. But Brown isn’t using that as an excuse - quite the opposite.
“Anytime you’re missing anybody, it’s tough, but I said this before: this is why we have 16 guys,” he said. “At the beginning of the season, we were missing guys and we found a way to get it done. If we’re missing guys in the future, we have to continue to try to find ways to get it done.”
The Knicks aren’t where they want to be, but they’re still in the thick of the Eastern Conference race. With a healthier roster and a chance to recalibrate, they’ve got a shot to rediscover the form that made them Cup champions just a month ago. Brown’s message is clear: the foundation is there - now it’s time to build on it.