WIN STREAK ENDS WITH A THUD
Awful shooting ends Knicks' win streak in loss to thunder
The Knicks didn’t secure their sixth win last season until their 26th game, four contests after head coach David Fizdale had been axed in early December with a 4-18 record.
It’s clearly not the time to nitpick, but Tom Thibodeau’s improved team shot just 35.8 percent from the floor and 12-for-20 from the free-throw line Friday night in a 101-89 loss to the Thunder at the Garden, ending their three-game winning streak.
The Knicks (5-4) failed to earn a sixth win after nine games for the first time since an 8-1 start in 2012-13 — a 54-win season under current assistant coach Mike
Woodson.
“It’s a hard league. It’s a hard league to get wins in,” Thibodeau said. “You have to come with an edge every night. If you don’t do that, it’ll be difficult for you. In this league, as soon as you start feeling too good about yourself you’re going to get knocked down.
“So every night you’ve got to bring it. Every day you’ve got to bring it. As I said, I think I’ve been very pleased with the approach, the attitude. And I think when we get down in a hole, I think we had the right intentions. We obviously wanted to get out of it. But you can’t do it individually. You have to remain a team and do it together.
RJ Barrett led the Knicks with 19 points in 44 minutes, but he missed
14 of 21 shots from the floor, including 4 of 5 from 3-point range.
Leading scorer Julius Randle was in early foul trouble and didn’t score in the first half, but he finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in 31 minutes.
“I just felt like today, at both ends of the floor, for whatever reason, we just didn’t play for each other,” Randle said. “It happens, you go through that, but the biggest thing is that we nip it in the bud right now and take care of it right now and get back to playing unselfish and playing for each other, sharing the ball, playing for each other on the defensive end, and get that edge about us back.”
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder (4-4) with 25 points, and Queens product Hamidou Diallo netted a season-high 23 with 11 rebounds.
The Knicks, who will host the Nuggets on Sunday, led by as many as 11 in the first quarter, but they needed a late Barrett floater and a Mitchell Robinson dunk to reach halftime in a 42-42 tie. Ten lead changes in the third quarter had Oklahoma City up 57-56 midway through the period, before a dunk and two free throws by Diallo extended the Thunder lead to nine.
Wednesday’s fourth-quarter hero, Austin Rivers, drained a 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer and an early bucket in the fourth to draw the Knicks back within four, but a steal and dunk by Diallo and a 3-pointer by Gilgeous-Alexander pushed the Knicks’ deficit to 13, their largest of the game, with 4:21 to go.
“Pretty much all aspects of it — dribble penetration, loose balls, the rebounding. If we don’t take care of that, it’s going to be a long night. And it was,” Thibodeau said. “And even though we had a 10-point lead early, I didn’t like the way our defense looked, and then our bench came in and we’ve got to be ready to go. From top to bottom, we just didn’t get it done. We’re capable of doing much better than we did.”