NEW YORK — The Knicks suffered their 10th home loss of the season on Saturday, playing against an injury-ravaged Grizzlies team that came in losing five straight and seven of its last eight games.
The noon start time wasn’t as big of a problem as it had been in New York’s previous two early starts, when the team suffered blowout losses of 31 points to the Spurs and 41 points to the Celtics. But they did trail by nine in the first quarter and by as many as 19 in the second half before a late run had them within four points with under 30 seconds to play.
Ultimately, the rally fell short, just like the Knicks have all season long. And at the moment, Carmelo Anthony believes the issues are mental more than they are related to basketball.
“I don’t think it’s nothing that has to do with basketball at this point,” he said of the home losses afterward. “I think it’s in our heads. It’s the mental part of it. And as individual players we’ve got to get out of our own mind, our own head and start — I don’t know what you have to do, but just start having fun again and playing basketball, and not trying to worry about too many other things that’s going on out there.”
That might be believable if there weren’t so many legitimate problems with this team, all of which were on display in this one.
Tyson Chandler is supposed to be the Knicks primary rim protector and anchor of the defense. But after managing just eight points and six rebounds in almost 33 minutes of action while seeing Memphis outrebound the Knicks by an absurd 56-29 margin, it’s clear he’s nowhere near 100 percent, playing in just his second game back after missing all but the season’s first four with a right leg fracture.
“I’m getting there. Battling,” Chandler said, when I asked him how we was feeling physically. “I’m trying to come back, trying to get my conditioning right, trying to get my timing right and my legs under me and all that good stuff while trying to stop whoever’s in front of me. But I expect it to take time, and I expect it to take a little while for myself to get in a rhythm with my teammates, and for my teammates to get back in rhythm with me.”
Speaking of rhythm, there is absolutely none of it to the Knicks offense. Beno Udrih is starting at point guard, and his uncertainty with the ball combined with his questionable decision-making and lack of court vision sees things devolve into isolation sets more often than not. When Woodson tried to go without a point guard in the lineup, the offense resembled a bad pickup game where whoever dribbled up the ball took the shot as quickly as possible, without bothering to see if a teammate might be open for a better look.
One play in particular saw Amar’e Stoudemire frantically jumping up and down while waving his arms all alone under the basket, only to see the ball swing to the other side for a three-point attempt instead.
The Knicks did play well in spurts, and showed an energy and intensity at times that makes you believe they should be doing much better in the standings, if only they could put it together for extended stretches.
That’s been the most frustrating thing for Anthony to deal with as the home losses continue to pile up, and the season continues to spiral further out of control for the Knicks.
“There’s just a sense of inconsistency right now,” he said. “We have spurts where we’re playing great basketball, then we have spurts where we’re just dead out there. We’ve got to get better at that. We’ve got to try to put together a full game and start becoming a more consistent basketball team.”
