Burned by trio in Garden rout
When it rains it pours, and for the Knicks there are no bright skies. They couldn’t stop the Suns from bringing doom and gloom to Madison Square Garden in a 121-98 loss on Thursday night that drew boos from the crowd by the end.
The Knicks couldn’t stop Deandre Ayton from abusing the paint. They couldn’t stop Devin Booker from getting to his spots. And they couldn’t stop Ricky Rubio from recording a 25-point, 13assist, eight-rebound gem.
Despite this, some members of the Knicks still felt they should have won Thursday night’s game.
“Kudos to Phoenix, but at the end of the day, we were a better team,” Marcus Morris said. “We should have got that win tonight.”
“They didn’t take it to us,” Mitchell Robinson added. “They just made shots.”
That’s a tough sell: The Knicks lost by 23 to a Phoenix team seven games below .500. That same Phoenix team just lost to league-worst Atlanta Hawks, though Rubio missed that game for the birth of his first son.
It’s now the Knicks, who have lost seven of their last eight games, who are in danger of having the worst record in the NBA. They have only two more wins than the Hawks and the injury-riddled Golden State Warriors at the midway point of the season.
By the 7:46 mark in the fourth quarter, the game was over. A defensive breakdown left Booker — a sharpshooter despite middling percentages from downtown — wide open for a three. He made it, giving him three of his 25 points on the night and the Suns a 19point lead.
“When you talk about consistency and you talk about how hard we want to play, we were behind plays all night,” Knicks coach Mike Miller said. “We talked about taking things away, and we didn’t take anything away.”
Later in that fourth quarter, Morris airballed a step-back three, leading to a half-court alley-oop from Rubio to Ayton. The shower of boos came down from the seats for good reason: The Suns closed the game with an 18-2 run before the Knicks scored in the final minute.
“That’s one of those things where you can choose to play hard and choose to do the little things,” Morris said. “It’s on us. I’ve gotta be better, man.”
Julius Randle scored 26 points on 11-of-23 shooting, but the Knicks were outscored by 19 during his minutes on the floor. Morris scored 17 points but got most of his points at the foul line on a rough 4-of-11 shooting night. Kevin Knox shot 2-of-8, and Frank Ntilikina shot one-of-seven. RJ Barrett shot 2-of-8 from the field before leaving the game in the third quarter with a sprained right ankle.
The Knicks’ young players have not improved enough year-over-year, except Mitchell Robinson, who had a good game against Phoenix with 12 points, eight rebounds, three steals and two blocks off the bench. Maybe it’s time to put him in the starting lineup.
Ayton dominated with 26 points and 21 rebounds, missing only four shots on the night.
Booker, meanwhile, finished with a game-high 29 points, and Rubio orchestrated it all with his playmaking. If only the Knicks had a point guard to organize the offense, score and defend at a high level.
Then again, every team seems to have success doing that against the orange and blue.