The New York Knicks earned their ninth consecutive win on New Year’s Day, but the momentum has not carried over into the rest of January.
Since that victory to open the calendar year, the Knicks have lost five of seven in advance of a Wednesday matchup against the host Philadelphia 76ers, who are equally hungry for a win.
New York is coming off a 124-119 home defeat to the Detroit Pistons on Monday. Three players had double-doubles for the Knicks: Jalen Brunson with 31 points and 11 assists, Karl-Anthony Towns with 26 points and 12 rebounds, and Josh Hart with 12 points and 14 boards.
The Knicks shot well from the field (50.0 percent), the 3-point arc (40.5 percent) and the foul line (82.8 percent), but they were unable to get enough stops against Cade Cunningham and the improving Pistons. Cunningham put up 36 points, and five of his teammates scored in double figures.
“Offense wasn’t the problem tonight,” Brunson said. “Defensively, we just gave them a lot of confidence.”
The Knicks have given up at least 100 points in nine of their last 10 games, including individual games in which they allowed 132, 117, 139, 126 and 124 points.
“Defensively, we’ve got to be better,” Hart said. “Yeah, we’ve just got to be better.”
The Knicks have not won back-to-back games since the end of the winning streak, a resounding victory over the Utah Jazz on Jan 1. On the bright side, they will play seven of their next eight games at home after the Wednesday contest.
“We’re losing games I feel like we shouldn’t be losing,” Hart said. “We’ve got to start figuring it out. We’re halfway through. There’s nothing we can do about the first half now. But if we want to be the team we’re trying to be at the end of the season, we need to start correcting stuff now.”
The Sixers have shared that mindset all season, as they have dealt with injuries to key players on Opening Night and nearly every game since then. Their health situation reached a new low Tuesday when they played without eight of their top 10 players (in terms of minutes per game) in a 118-102 loss to the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder.
“I always play who’s available,” said Philadelphia coach Nick Nurse, adding that he didn’t have an update on the status of Joel Embiid (foot), Tyrese Maxey (hand) or Paul George (ankle) for the Wednesday affair.
In the meantime, the Sixers coach was forced to give heavy minutes to players such as Justin Edwards and Jeff Dowtin Jr., both of whom produced career-high point totals on Tuesday (25 and 18, respectively). Edwards and Ricky Council IV both played more than 35 minutes against the Thunder.
“For the most part, some of those guys played pretty good, played pretty hard and executed pretty well,” Nurse said.
Maxey has missed seven games this season, while George has sat out 12 games. Embiid, the former NBA MVP, has only appeared in 13 of 38 contests.
“You take a little bit of a gut punch (when you find out that those guys won’t play) and then you regroup and figure out the starting lineups … and go play,” Nurse said.
The Wednesday game is the second of four meetings between the teams this season. The visiting Knicks topped the Sixers 111-99 on Nov. 12 as OG Anunoby scored 24 points.
