Knox start less than ‘perfect’

Kevin Knox isn’t a prototypical 18-year-old ninth overall pick. He will play in the NBA as a rookie. A lot.

He will be expected, at the very least, to demonstrate the potential of a franchise cornerstone. The Knicks strategy is built around hitting on their draft picks, and Knox is currently at the center of those plans.

It’s then understandable that Knox plays like his learning curve should be accelerated. Despite mistakes and misses flying out of his hands like racing pigeons the last two games, Knox continued to press the issue and produced an especially horrid stat line: first two games at MSG, 64 minutes, 8-for-28 shooting, 1for-9 on 3-pointers, 10 turnovers.

Coach David Fizdale, who has already proven himself to be a proactive coach when issues emerge, tried to calm his rookie.

“Trying to be perfect. And that always happens to high draft picks,” Fizdale said of Knox’s issues. “They want to just please everybody and do everything right. And when you start playing like that you usually make mistakes. So just got to get him back into a reckless mode where he’s not worried about pleasing anybody or trying to be perfect.”

Knox’s preseason included 11 consecutive missed 3-pointers until he finally buried one in the fourth quarter of Monday night’s loss to the Wizards. His looks were open, for the most part, but Knox said an adjustment to MSG is partially responsible for the misfires – “The backdrop. The environment. The people,” he explained.

“I’m trying to go 100 miles per hour,” he added. “He really just wants me to slow down, play smart, just look at the whole court and make the right play. I think right now it’s going so fast, and it’s messing up everything I’m trying to do.”

The positive spin from Knox’s preseason struggles is that he’s confident and aggressive, two things the Knicks have said are lacking in 2017 first-round pick Frank Ntilikina’s game.