KNICKS TAKE BOOS CRUISE
Garden lets ’em have it as comeback falls short and skid hits 3
Based on their encouraging track record at home to start this season, the Knicks seemingly had Monday’s game against Portland precisely where they wanted it. Or, perhaps this time finally was one too many. Jeff Hornacek’s team couldn’t rely on another frenetic comeback to be completed, as the admittedly lethargic Knicks couldn’t fully erase a 26-point hole and slipped back to the breakeven mark at 1010 with their third straight defeat, 103-91 to the Blazers, earning some deserved boos for much of the night from the Garden crowd. “No words … I don’t know what to say. We gotta come out better, no excuses,” Tim Hardaway Jr. said. “We’re a better team and we know that. We have to make sure this doesn’t ever happen again. “All it is is effort. There’s no big math or science problem to figure out why we lost the game. It’s effort. Like I said, we’ve got to do a better job of it from the jump.” Kristaps Porzingis netted 22 points to lead the Knicks after missing the previous game with back stiffness, while Damian Lillard finished with a game-high 32 points — including two technical foul shots called against rookie Frank Ntilikina and Michael Beasley during a skirmish midway through the fourth — for Portland (13-8). “We just don’t want to be in those situations anymore,” Porzingis said. “We have to be able to play better the first three quarters or two quarters. And then we don’t have to play uphill from there. We had so many situations like this already. Sometimes we get out of it. “Sometimes, like today, it was too hard.” Indeed, the Knicks had rallied back from deficits of at least 10 points to win six previous games at the Garden through their first dozen at home (93), most recently on the night before Thanksgiving against Toronto. Of course, they also have squandered plenty of sizable advantages, including blowing an early 22-point cushion during their loss in Houston on Saturday without both Porzingis and starting center Enes Kanter, who has missed the past three games with back spasms. “I think if you look around the league that’s going to be a recurring thing,” Hornacek said. “We’ve got to get off that subject of leads coming and going. No lead is going to be safe in this league anymore. “That’s why we try to tell our guys that every
play matters. You can’t ever take two or three plays off and think you have a game wrapped up. That’s where (we’re) trying to grow to, trying to get to.”
Porzingis scored 14 points in the first half, but he missed eight of 12 shots from the field. The Knicks also played porous interior defense, as the Blazers erupted for a 17-1 spurt bridging the opening two quarters and jumped to a 53-37 lead by intermission.
“The game was low energy from our guys, I felt,” Hornacek said. “We’re not the team that can just come out there and think we’re just going to play and try to step it up later. We’ve got to do it from the tip-off. I thought our energy was not good enough in the first three quarters.”
The Knicks’ defensive passivity and sloppy play continued after halftime and Portland extended its bulge to 26 points on a turnover and a dunk by Lillard near the end of the third quarter, prompting more groans and boos from the home faithful.
The Knicks slashed the 90-64 deficit to a dozen with a 14-0 spurt to open the final period. Porzingis’ two free throws and two more by Hardaway (16 points) got them within eight with 1:15 remaining, but they couldn’t get any closer. Not this time. “It’s very difficult. You’re already down in the hole so big, we just can’t rely on being at home and coming back from large deficits,” Courtney Lee said. “We’ve had a couple of games we’ve been able to do that, but you can’t hang your hat on that.”