The Knicks hit the halfway mark at a low point of this roller-coaster season.
Behind clutch 3-pointers from Malik Beasley and dominant offense from Cade Cunningham, the Pistons escaped Monday night with another victory at MSG, 124-119, exposing the Knicks’ faulty defense.
“Offense wasn’t the problem tonight,” Jalen Brunson said. “Defensively, we just gave them a lot of confidence.”
With about 40 seconds remaining, the Knicks double-teamed their tormentor of the evening — Cunningham — which led to a pair of passes around the perimeter to Beasley for an open trey and a four-point Pistons advantage.
Then with six seconds remaining and a two-point Pistons lead, a similar play evolved from the Knicks doubling Cunningham. It left Beasley open again for the dagger 3-pointer and the final bucket of the game.
“Defensively, we got to be better,” Josh Hart said before pausing as if stopping short of revealing his extended feelings. “Yeah, we just got to be better.”
The Knicks (26-15) are still on pace to win 52 games, but it feels worse as they’ve dropped five of their past seven.
“We’re losing games I feel like we shouldn’t be losing,” Hart said. “So we got to figure it out. We’re halfway into the season at this point. Nothing we can do about the first half now, we got to focus on the second. But if we want to be the team we want to be at the end of the year, we got to start correcting these.”
The Knicks tried to ride Brunson in the fourth quarter, and the Captain responded with 12 of his 31 points in the final nine minutes. But they couldn’t stop the Pistons down the stretch, especially Cunningham, who finished with 36 points in just 32 minutes.
“He had a terrific game,” Tom Thibodeau said. “That’s the way he’s been playing, and he puts a lot of stress on you and everyone’s got to be tied together. Beasley had a hot hand, and we’ve got to be there on the catch.”
The Knicks, in other words, didn’t rotate fast enough defensively on passes that went from Cunningham to Tim Hardaway Jr. to Beasley on both critical possessions.
“And Beasley, who was shooting great all night, got two easy looks,” Brunson said.
These aren’t the same ol’ Pistons, and the struggling Knicks, who were riding a 16-game winning streak against Detroit before this season, were hit with a reminder. Thibodeau’s paper-thin bench was outscored 46-13.
“We have more than enough,” Thibodeau repeated, without much evidence, about his reserves being outgunned.
Karl-Anthony Towns, meanwhile, totaled 43 minutes as Thibodeau decided against using a backup center. Towns was also hampered by an injured thumb sustained in the first half on a layup attempt, with his hand crashing into the backboard. He put a black wrap around his right thumb, often winced in pain and misfired badly on a few shots while scoring 26 points with 12 rebounds.
An embarrassment last season under Monty Williams, the Pistons (21-19) have been trending upward and entered Monday with nine wins in their past 11 games. It’s a product of development and offseason upgrades, with JB Bickerstaff taking over as coach and general manager Trajan Langdon adding sharpshooting vets to complement Cunningham.
Detroit flexed those improvements Monday night. The Knicks have been going in the other direction.
“There’s still a lot of things that we can do better that we have to lock into,” Thibodeau said.