The Knicks played a super shitty game of basketball, is what happened. There’s a reason Justin Holiday’s crying blood in that picture.
For a while it was just the Pistons hitting junk while Derrick Rose did this to them:
.@drose 1Q Highlights #Knicks #NYKvsDET pic.twitter.com/TZoace3FRc
— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) November 2, 2016
... but for another while it was the Knicks slouching through basic, stagnant Triangle stuff while the Pistons gashed them apart the other way. A lot of this:
And a lot of this:
Yucks all around, dudes. Y’all got worked by your inferiors.
Kristaps Porzingis was cold early, Derrick Rose and Carmelo Anthony were cold late, and Lance Thomas stayed sooooooo cold throughout. And after both Rose and Brandon Jennings started strong, those guards found it hard to gain separation and create easy looks for people. (Not that those easy looks would have dropped on sucha night.
But really, mostly, it was that defense. Very slow on the ball, very slow to help, very slow to close out. Just very slow and bad. They got so sad they even tried to zone up at one point.
Recap’s coming up in the morning. Rockets tomorrow, which is going to be very challenging for a defense like that.
I’d credit Jeff Hornacek for saving each Knick’s legs a few extra minutes with his long rotation, but the players did that for themselves by simply loafing around. Good loafing, ya loafs!