Knicks practice notes: Uh-oh, we’re talking about butts again

The New York Knicks got right back to work, practicing the day after an underwhelming home loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Nobody took the defeat harder than Kristaps Porzingis, who was thoroughly out-muscled by OKC’s frontcourt. The wounded Unicorn burns for vengeance:

“Ugly. You don’t want to be on a film after games like this. You always look for yourself on the film, and like, ‘F--k,’” Porzingis said. “So it was ugly. Some of the things we didn’t do or do wrong. But it’s really good for us to see ourselves. And yeah, not only see and say, ‘Okay we didn’t play good.’ But actually look at yourself and say, ‘Okay, what can I do better?’

“So it was tough to watch that film. But we need days like that. We need to watch film like that to find ourselves again. Maybe that kind of burns. For me, for sure, burns on the inside and I can’t wait for the next game.”

One of the hallmarks of the Phil Jackson Era is that, whenever the going gets tough, somebody starts talking to the media about butts. This time, it isn’t Charley Rosen waxing poetic about Greg Monroe’s large posterior or insulting Karl-Anthony Towns’ lack of a badonkadonk; this time, it is head coach Jeff Hornacek imploring young Porzingis to please, please use that booty:

“There’s some fact that when you’re 30 pounds under the other guy, it’s tougher,” Hornacek said. “But that’s when you’ve got to fight harder, you’ve got to, the simple thing is, ‘Can you bench press more or can you squat more weigh?’ We want you to squat more weight. So you’ve got to use you’re legs, you’ve got to bend, stick your read end into guys and drive guys out that way.

“When you’re undersized you can’t think you’re just going to use your arms and get some of those guys out of there. You’ve got to use your tail.”

It always comes down to butts with this organization.