Something had to give when the NBA’s third-ranked offense collided with the league’s top-rated defense, and that something clearly has taken the Knicks out of the high-powered groove they’ve enjoyed all season.
The Knicks departed Cleveland with a needed split of the first two games of their opening-round playoff series, but the Cavaliers’ stingy defense still must be solved by Tom Thibodeau’s misfiring team entering Friday’s Game 3 at Madison Square Garden.
“We knew the challenge would be the intensity of the game, and so the physicality, the ball pressure, and then you’ve got to make shots,” Thibodeau said following Tuesday’s 107-90 Game 2 loss. “When you get blitzed, trust the pass, make the second pass. You do that and see if you get a good shot, and you’ve got to make shots.”
The Knicks averaged 116.0 points per game during the regular season and 108.8 in taking three of four from the Cavs, but they followed up a physical 101-97 win in the series opener with a 90-point effort in a blowout loss in Game 2.
And even those numbers were skewed by a 30-25 edge in the fourth quarter after they’d trailed 82-60 through three.
“It started with their defense, not necessarily their offense,” Immanuel Quickley said. “Their defense was real physical, they got into us right off the jump.”
Quickley, a finalist for the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award, is one of several Knicks looking to get on track as the series shifts to New York for the next two games.
Quickley and starting wings RJ Barrett and Quentin Grimes are shooting a combined 25.0 percent (11-for-44) from the field and 15.0 percent (3-for-20) from 3-point range over the first two games.
“Their defense is definitely very good, but so is ours,” Barrett said. “This series, the game is more of who can get steals and get easy baskets, get offensive rebounds, put-backs? Which team can do more of the dirty work? I think that’s the team that’ll win.”
Point guard Jalen Brunson also missed seven of eight tries from long distance as part of a 5-for-17 shooting night in Game 2.
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And leading scorer Julius Randle committed six of the Knicks’ 17 turnovers, five more than their average (12.0) over the 82-game regular season.
“They were aggressive with the closeouts. We started the game well, but I think for the majority of the game, they had more of a sense of urgency than we did,” Randle said. “That’s correctable on our part. And also we’ll be able to execute better.”
The Cavaliers’ game plan appeared to be to trap Brunson to try to get the ball out of his hands as much as possible, but that means someone should be open if the Knicks can move the ball quickly and knock down shots.
Still, they have connected on 39.5 percent from the floor and 25.9 percent from beyond the arc during the two-game split, down from 47.0 and 35.4 in those categories during the regular season.
“It’s just your outlets. Part of that is the shot making. You have wide-open shots, you’ve gotta knock them down,” Thibodeau said. “You don’t make them, you’ve got to get to the offensive boards.
“Usually when a team is blitzing, it puts you in rotation, when you’re in rotation, it gives you an opportunity to get second shots.”
The Knicks attempted a similar approach against Donovan Mitchell following his 38-point performance in the series opener.
The All-Star guard was held to 17 in Game 2, but he finished with 13 assists, with Darius Garland scoring 32 points and Caris LeVert adding 24 off the bench.
Starting big men Jarret Allen and Evan Mobley also combined for 23 rebounds, five steals and five blocked shots in Game 2.
“You’ve got to give them credit. They played really well,” Brunson said. “I’m never really disappointed in my teammates. We go out there and we do it together. If we win, we win together. If we lose, we lose together.
“I’m not disappointed in them at all. We’ve just got to be better.”