A few seconds after the final buzzer, the fake noise was turned off, and the Garden was silent – like Knicks’ offense.
It’s not a disaster. The Knicks still have five wins after nine games.
In 2019-20, the Knicks did not win their fifth victory until the 25th game of the season and only after David Fizdale was fired and Mike Miller was promoted. However, this stink, even stink – this loss of 101-89 home on Friday to rebuild, Thunder nameless.
By any standard, this was a nightmare offensive performance, as empty as the blue seats after the Knicks won five of the last six. Maybe he had seen Miller as an assistant on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, which reminded them of last season’s losses.
Or maybe the Knicks just got tired of the legs after all the minutes their important players recorded. Yes, this has been identified as the only concern about the esteemed coach Tom Thibodeau.
RJ Barrett and Julius Randle ranked among the top two in the NBA within minutes of entering the game.
Randle looked too much like Randle from last season. He was kept without a score in the first half. Then, in the fourth quarter, Randle dribbled the ball lazily on the field and Queens’ pride, Hamidou Diallo, stripped the ball from behind and entered a half for an 11-point Thunder lead.
Moments before, Diallo (who finished with 21 points and 11 assists) had thrown his own miss. Former police officer George Hill had dribbled tirelessly for a stretch – which is too reminiscent of recent years.
Each club entered the pandemic season perceived as storage and storage reserves. Each team defied low expectations, with the Knicks now 5-4 and the Thunder becoming a .500 team on Friday.
This was an ugly loss against a club that starts guys like Darius Bazley and Luguentz Dort, who has the best name and the best body in the league, but is a defensive specialist. Dort stabbed the Knicks in the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer sealing game.
Also in the Thunder rotation is the debutant Aleksej Pokusevski, who entered the game shooting with 9.5 percent, but who hit two big triples lately.
Thibodeau’s Knicks was the best start to the franchise in 2012-13, entering the evening.
ESPN’s new open star, Kendrick Perkins, has backed Knicks’ new offense as a key to their rebirth. But Perkins put the hex on the Knicks, who shot 35.8% against the Thunder.
Thibodeau said he felt that after the Knicks lost the lead in the first half, they stopped moving the ball.
“We tried to get out of it individually,” Thibodeau said. “We went into it together, we have to go out together.”
Perkins was the center of the Celtics for three seasons, when Thibodeau was assistant coach of Doc Rivers in Boston.
“During the time he left in the two years, he was reevaluated and returned with another coach,” Perkins told ESPN before Friday’s game. “Because some of the songs they make and some of the freedom they have in the end offensively – I’ve never seen a Tom Thibodeau team have so much freedom. But I love him. “
Soon, Thibodeau will receive credit for inventing the synthetic protein that is the key to the new vaccine. Seriously, Perkins’ remarks on national television deserve further inspection before confirming their veracity.
He played at a faster pace, hitting triples with greater efficiency and moving the ball better than they did under Jeff Hornacek, Fizdale and Miller.
But what about X and O and more freedom? They were still in 28th place in the average score (104 ppg) before Brick Friday. Their crime will remain a problem and they will need the injured Alec Burks swing, sooner rather than later.
Players who climbed into the clutch, such as Austin Rivers and Immanuel Quickley, were not on Friday. Rivers even missed a 3-point shot in the fourth quarter.
And Quickley looked like a second-round pick – in the end. Quickley had the worst night of the professional – 1-for-9 and almost broke the panel on a too hard float.
“I still see enough vanilla in this regard,” said former witch, hawk and kidnapper researcher Bryan Oringher, who analyzed a two-part review of Knicks’ crime and defense on his YouTube channel on Thursday. “But he’s definitely defending himself.”
Randle was a different player after his extensive training season in Dallas. Randle defended and tore her offensively, with 23.1 points, 12 rebounds and 7.4 assists before the unpleasant culprit.
“At both ends of the floor, we didn’t play for each other,” Randle said.
Oringher is still not sure if this is a “weird” Randle or a new Randle, who says that Southpaw from Texas played “from his weird mind”.
“He’s doing what he did last year,” Oringher said. “It just makes it better.”
Thibodeau showed an ability to stay with the right players in the fourth quarter – a cardinal sin of Fizdale. But on Friday, those players looked tired, especially Barrett.
The painful question is whether it is the beginning of a trend.