BOSTON — The New York Knicks entered this weekend hoping to show they’d made strides in matching up with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, the cream of the crop in the Eastern Conference this season.
Instead, after a 37-point shellacking at the hands of the Cavaliers in Cleveland Friday, followed by a 118-105 loss to the Celtics here at TD Garden on Sunday afternoon — a game Boston led by 27 and had total control of for the vast majority of the action — New York admitted it has a long way to go to catch its rivals after falling to 0-5 against Boston and Cleveland this season.
“Where I said from the beginning of the season: We’re a work in progress,” Karl-Anthony Towns said of where he thinks the Knicks stand in comparison to their elite competition in the East. “We’re going to be a work in progress all year until the day we step into the postseason.
“Every team in the NBA will tell you the same thing. We’re all a work in progress until the postseason, when you put all the chips and cards and see what the season taught you.”
It’s good for the Knicks (37-20) that they still have another 25 games to go, because what this one against Boston (41-16) showed is that there remains a Grand Canyon-sized gap between New York and its historic rival. The Celtics have won the three matchups with the Knicks by a combined 63 points and spent most of this game threatening to win by another 20-plus-point margin after jumping out to a 38-19 lead after the first quarter.
“Because we have good defenders,” said Kristaps Porzingis, who finished with 15 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocked shots, on what has allowed Boston to dominate its matchup with New York this season. “We make it difficult on them. Obviously they have really talented offensive players, but our versatility and the guys we have on the team can make it really difficult for them.
“Obviously it’s a dangerous team anyway, but we respect them and we came out the right way in the first and we set the tone for the game.”
The Celtics set the tone with that first quarter, and the Knicks — once again — found themselves floundering against an elite team. With more than two-thirds of the season in the books, the numbers across the board are beyond concerning.
New York is 26-6 against teams with losing records, and 11-14 against teams with winning records. The Knicks are now 20th overall in defensive rating — a shocking number for a Tom Thibodeau-coached team. Against top-10 offenses this season, the number is even worse — dipping all the way down to 29th in the NBA, ahead of only the Toronto Raptors, per ESPN Research.
“It’s probably a combination of things,” Thibodeau said of New York’s struggles defensively against elite teams. “One, they’re elite, and I think the volume 3- shooting teams, you can do a good job, but it just takes two or three minutes of not getting it right and they can go on a run on you. So it’s something that we got to continue to work on and that’s the test of the league. So learn from each game, get ready for the next one. And that’s where we want to focus on.”
What’s become clear across the first three games this season against Boston — even though this was the first time Porzingis had played against his former team this year — is that it’s a difficult matchup for Towns, in particular, to handle. New York has run more drop coverage against Boston — 48% of the time against ball screens, per ESPN Research — than any team in the league.
And, across those possessions, the Celtics have averaged 1.34 points per direct pick, per ESPN Research — their best rate against any team playing drop coverage against them this season.
While Towns playing center has, as expected, juiced New York’s offense — the Knicks are more than nine points per 100 possessions better offensively with Towns on the floor than on the bench — the other end, against all opponents, has been a concern.
Going back to those games against top-10 offenses, Towns has allowed opponents in those games to shoot 63% from the field — ranking 346th out of 346 players to contest at least 50 shots against those teams, per ESPN Research.
On layups and dunks in those games, Towns is allowing 70% shooting — and opponents are shooting 60% overall on layups and dunks against him, which is the worst mark of any player to contest at least 300 of them.
While Towns eventually got going in the second half, finishing with 24 points and 18 rebounds in 41 minutes as he played a significant part in New York cutting into the lead, Boston gave him and the rest of the Knicks’ defense a ton of trouble throughout the game.
“Just mistakes we made that we can’t make,” Towns said of New York’s defensive issues. “We’ve just got to clean it up.”
Towns also briefly left the game in the fourth quarter after limping following an attempted dunk. He walked back to the locker room after checking out of the game during an ensuing timeout, only to eventually return for the final few minutes.
Asked about it afterward, Towns said, “We’ll just see how the next couple days go. Time will tell.
“It’s a long season. It has peaks and valleys. It is what it is.”
The same could be said for these two games. Instead of a statement of intent for the Knicks’ hopes of breaking a 52-year championship drought and a 26-year NBA Finals drought, the losses to the Cavaliers and Celtics — making New York 0-7 this season against them and the Oklahoma City Thunder — instead made a very different kind of statement about where the Knicks sit right now in comparison to their championship rivals. And while the Knicks did their best to point to an impressive 23-5 third-quarter run as a tangible sign of improvement, that could only be taken so far.
“You’ve got to take something positive out of something,” Jalen Brunson said. “I think the positive from this game is that third quarter and how we played. But I mean, I can keep saying all this stuff, but we’ve got to go out there and do it.
“That’s all.”
