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The Knicks hung a championship banner above them. But they didn’t have their legs beneath them.
“All throughout the game,” coach Mike Brown said, “it looked like we were running in mud.”
The Knicks were sunk by a lack of pace in their 106-100 season-opening loss to the 76ers on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
It was most glaring with their transition defense, where the Knicks struggled to keep up with the 76ers’ speedy backcourt — particularly Tyrese Maxey, who finished with a game-high 28 points. And it was the starters who were most to blame.
“They had nine fast-break points in the first half [in how the Knicks track it],” Brown said. “And then in the second half, they had 19 fast-break points. That’s where the game was won and lost, especially in the third quarter when our starters were out there.”
But it also reared its head on the offensive end. The ball movement and off-ball cutting that defined their championship run last year were missing and the offense was instead stagnant.
The Knicks, ideally, want to get to 20 “sprays” — what Brown describes as drives into the paint leading to kickout 3-pointers — per game. They only had seven Tuesday.
It resulted in a rough shooting performance — they shot just 37.2 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from 3-point range. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, who are two of the biggest beneficiaries and two of the most dependent on that movement around them, were particularly off the mark, shooting a combined 5-for-20 from the field and 1-for-11 from deep.
“Part of us looking like we were running in mud was our spacing wasn’t great,” Brown said. “We were walking everywhere, which hurt our spacing.”
It is understandable that the Knicks weren’t their freshest immediately after an emotional banner and ring ceremony before the game. At times, they looked drained.
“Transition defense, yeah,” Jalen Brunson said. “Our offense, I think we were good in spurts. But it’s not good enough.”