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BOSTON — The Knicks bricked too many shots in their first two games. Plenty of open ones, too. But coach Mike Brown wasn’t concerned about the misfiring after his team was toppled Friday night by the Celtics.
Those will eventually fall. Especially Jalen Brunson’s. The Knicks aren’t going to shoot just 40.8 percent like the combined home and road openers.
But Brown did identify a glaring issue because the championship hangover apparently hit the Knicks with laziness.
“It was a physical ballgame and [the Celtics] had the advantage out there with the physicality,” Brown said.
Brown reiterated, several times after Friday’s 107-103 defeat, the problem that has plagued the Knicks intermittently for years: the inability, or unwillingness, to fight through picks.
It was exacerbated in Beantown because the refs were cooler than usual with moving screens, allowing the Celtics to hunt mismatches with weaker defenders like Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
“They set a screen, and we lay on the screen, don’t fight to get through it,” Brown said. “And then we have to switch and get the wrong matchup. That’s why I bring up their physicality in screens, whether it’s the pick-and-roll or off the ball. If that is there from the other team and we’re not defending the screens the right way, communicating, and navigating them the right way instead of laying, laying, laying — it’s going to start the dominoes to fall. If they’re illegal or not, it doesn’t matter.”
Jayson Tatum cooked the Knicks for 36 points, three days after another star ball handler, Tyrese Maxey, filleted the Knicks for 28 points.
The point-of-attack defense has been suspect and OG Anunoby’s rough start is a problematic factor. He’s supposed to be the Knicks’ top stopper and owns the worst defensive rating among the starters through two games.
Mikal Bridges, the other defensive specialist, was benched for much of Friday’s game — including the final 8 ¹/₂ minutes — amid a 2-for-16 shooting slump.
The Knicks closed with Miles McBride over Bridges and nearly pulled off the comeback, but Tatum buried a couple of difficult shots over Josh Hart.
“At the end of the first quarter there was a two-minute stretch where we were just b—hing to the referees instead of just playing through it,” Brown said. “In the third, their level of physicality picked up. And also the beginning of the fourth quarter. And we found a combination toward the end that handled their physicality. And we were just as physical back. And that gave us a chance to win. But against a good team on the road, it was too late.”
Brown said the effort also negatively impacted the team’s offense because it led to turnovers.
“When we tried to drive the basketball, we either fell on the ground and there was no call, or when we got in the paint, and they brought a second guy they had us either jumping in the air and turning it over, or they had us on the heels, trying to make sprays. And it was just because they got us in our bodies,” the coach said. There was a level of physicality that Boston brought to the table that caused us to have 18 turnovers on the road compared to their 11 turnovers. It’s going to be tough to win.”
The Knicks, as a result, became the first defending champs to start 0-2 since the Mavericks in 2011. The good news is they’re back home Sunday against the Magic, who are also 0-2 after getting blown out Friday by the Timberwolves.
A defeat against Orlando would have Brown contemplating a losing start to the first segment of the championship-defending season.
“We break the season into five-game segments,” Brown said. “There are marks that we like to hit in those five games and it kind of gives us a good feel of where you were, in a fair amount of games, and to see if you can make progress in the next five.
“Obviously you want to go 5-0, you’ll take 4-1, and then maybe you have to take 3-2. But if you’re doing anything less than that, you know that nobody is reaching their potential.”