Jalen Brunson declined to reply the query. The Orlando Magic answered it for him.
The Knicks entered Wednesday evening using a league-best 7-0 house document, the form of arbitrary streak a workforce can both rally round or ignore fully. And traditionally, these Knicks have chosen the latter — no emotional swings, no victory laps, no panic buttons. By no means too low, by no means too excessive.
Precisely like their chief.
So when requested whether or not the Knicks wished to guard the streak — to make use of it as gasoline, nevertheless pointless it may be given no NBA workforce has ever really gone undefeated at house — Brunson didn’t hassle indulging the premise.
“I don’t have to answer that,” he mentioned.
Possibly he didn’t must. Possibly what’s understood doesn’t must be mentioned. As a result of the Magic made the purpose for him. They rolled into Madison Sq. Backyard, took the Knicks’ finest house begin in a decade, and shredded it with out subtlety, with out ceremony, with out even their franchise participant accessible after halftime.
The undefeated house streak is gone — and with it, a few of the early glamour hooked up to a splashy teaching rent, a revamped offense and protection, and a roster fortified over the summer season.
The Knicks are good. They may very well be superb in an Jap Convention that’s abruptly vast open with Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton shelved.
However their flaws? They aren’t new. They aren’t delicate. And towards groups just like the Magic, they don’t seem to be survivable.
When groups get bodily with the Knicks, issues have traditionally fallen aside.
Detroit practically bullied New York right into a first-round upset final postseason. Houston and Atlanta — two of the league’s most rugged defenses — induced points all through final 12 months. And earlier than accidents derailed them, the Magic went 3-1 towards the Knicks two seasons in the past, exploiting each stress level alongside the best way.
Orlando represents the precise archetype New York struggles with: lengthy, athletic, disciplined, and unbothered by the Knicks’ most popular tempo and spacing.
“They’re a big team. They’re athletic. They’re long. They’re well-coached,” head coach Mike Brown mentioned pregame. “They’re a lot better than what their record says.”
The issue? Brown was proper.
Sure, Wednesday’s assembly was the second leg of a back-to-back, the Knicks’ third sport in 4 nights. However Orlando was on the identical schedule burden, their back-to-back falling on Sunday and Monday.
But the Magic punched first, punched more durable, and by no means let the Knicks discover their composure.
Even worse: the Magic didn’t want Paolo Banchero to do it. The All-Star ahead exited within the first half with a groin damage. The Magic led by 20 on the half. And regardless of Banchero’s absence, the Knicks didn’t minimize the deficit to single digits till halfway via the fourth quarter..
That’s the damning half — Banchero didn’t construct the lead. Franz Wagner did.
Wagner hunted mismatches, lived on the rim, and completed the primary half with 17 factors en path to 24 by the early fourth. Orlando repeatedly compelled cross-matches, and New York repeatedly had no counters.
When the Magic tightened the screws bodily, the Knicks reverted to the worst model of themselves. The ball stopped transferring. Brown’s new offense — free-flowing, read-and-react, pace-heavy — evaporated the second the lead swelled.
Then got here the isolations. The stagnant possessions. Gamers observing one another as Brunson tried to rescue possessions towards a set protection with size at each place.
He completed with 31 factors on 10-of-23 capturing from the sector — however New York was a team-worst minus-20 in his 37 minutes as Brunson was embroiled in foul hassle. He finally fouled himself out of the sport with beneath two minutes left within the fourth quarter after tweaking his proper ankle on a drive to the rim.
But essentially the most regarding efficiency of the evening belonged to Karl-Anthony Cities. He has traditionally been undisciplined relating to private fouls (he had 5 towards the Magic on Wednesday) however normally the All-Star massive man can make the most of a lesser matchup.
Not on Wednesday. Regardless of a perceived matchup benefit vs. Wendell Carter Jr., Cities struggled to impose his will. He completed with a 15 factors on 6-of-15 capturing from the sector, overshadowed by Carter’s steadiness and defensive self-discipline. The Magic’s beginning middle completed with 13 factors and eight rebounds on simply eight shot makes an attempt.
And whereas Cities publicly says the proper issues about persistence and system match, he nonetheless hasn’t backed the system with an all-out endorsement — and Brown’s offense has up to now tilted towards wings and guards, not the self-proclaimed finest capturing massive man in NBA historical past. And when Cities did have his alternatives, he couldn’t take benefit towards Carter Jr., who owns neither All-Star alternatives nor All-Defensive Workforce honors. Plus Cities practically picked up a technical foul after Orlando’s Jonathan Isaac pissed off him with a bodily deny and box-out on the low block, a sequence the All-Star massive man responded to by throwing Isaac to the bottom.
“I think we’re a work in progress,” Cities mentioned after scoring 28 towards Brooklyn on Tuesday. “We’re working and all of us are trying to figure out how to impact the game the most in the system.”
He’s proper. The Knicks are a piece in progress. Rome wasn’t constructed in a single day. The identical is true for the Knicks’ grand imaginative and prescient of remodeling Madison Sq. Backyard right into a coliseum of championship banners.
However the Magic — with their size, their physicality, their defensive versatility, their continuity — stay one of many obstacles the Knicks have but to resolve.
The undefeated streak is gone. The forty-point quarters have been absent on Wednesday, too. These, in fact, are arbitrary storylines.
The actual story is that the Knicks’ Achilles heel hasn’t modified, and till they discover a solution for it, their path to the NBA Finals — their first since 1999 — stays blocked by groups constructed precisely just like the one which walked into MSG on Wednesday and gave them their first house actuality examine of the season.
