The Knicks hit the midway point of the 82-game season with the third-best record in the Eastern Conference and the fifth-best in the entire NBA.
Tom Thibodeau often says — and reiterated as much following Monday’s home loss to the Pistons — that he is striving for daily improvement, with the goal to peak at the end of the season in time for the start of the playoffs.
“There’s a lot of challenges throughout the course of the season, so there’s ups and downs, and you have to handle that,” Thibodeau said after the Knicks lost for the fifth time in seven games following a nine-game winning streak. “You’ve got to get through things together, but you never can lose sight of how important it is to improve every day, and then hopefully at the end you’re playing your best basketball.
“There’s still a lot of things that we can do better that we have to lock into.”
Here are five areas in which the Knicks (26-15) most need to improve over the final 41 regular-season games, beginning with Wednesday’s road game against the banged-up 76ers:
Guarding the 3-point line
With two 3-pointers converted in the final minute by Detroit’s Malik Beasley the latest examples, the Knick own the sixth-worst defensive percentage from beyond the arc in the league at 37.3 percent. This should not be the case with strong perimeter defenders such as OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and reserve Miles McBride in the rotation.
More offensive consistency
The Knicks already have played 10 games in which they converted fewer than 10 3-pointers, and they lost seven of those games. Jalen Brunson is in a 13-for-62 outside funk (21.0 percent) over his past 12 appearances, including six of seven misses from deep Monday night. But that number drops to 15.4 percent if you take out a 5-for-10 showing in his 44-point performance against the Bucks on Sunday.
Interior D
With center Karl-Anthony Towns playing 34.7 minutes per game — his most since 2017-18 in Minnesota — the Knicks rank 12th in the NBA in points allowed in the paint at 48.4 per game. The eventual return of Mitchell Robinson (1.9 career blocks per game) should help, but the 7-footer might not be back before the Feb. 6 trade deadline since he still hasn’t resumed practicing or even running at full speed.
Youth gone wild
The Pistons are young and long and athletic and now have defeated the Knicks twice. Thibodeau needs to find a better way to combat this type of team, as evidenced by additional losses recently against the Rockets, the Hawks, the Magic and the Thunder (twice), although few opposing teams have been able to get past West-leading OKC.
Find another bench piece
Perhaps Robinson helps to rectify this need, but then again, he isn’t likely to greatly increase the team’s dead-last 20.2 bench points per game unless Thibodeau better balances the playing-time disparity. The Knicks starters are logging the most minutes per game (36.2) across the league and the reserves the fewest (11.9).
Thibodeau mostly has gone with an eight-man rotation in the first half, although McBride, Cam Payne, Precious Achiuwa and Landry Shamet combined for 45 minutes against the Pistons. Rookies Tyler Kolek, Ariel Hukporti and Pacome Dadiet still have not secured regular roles.
“We got more than enough. We have to find a way to get that done,” Thibodeau said. “Again, it comes down to a one-possession game, basically. We fell short. We’ve got to take a look at it and see what we can do better and continue to fight to win every possession in every game. You never know which possession it is that makes a difference, so get locked in and get ready for Philly.”