A few seconds after the final buzzer, the fake noise machine went off and the garden fell silent, like the Knicks ’offense.
It is not a catastrophe. The Knicks still have five wins after nine games.
In 2019-20, the Knicks didn’t get their fifth win until the 25th game of the season, and only after the dismissal of David Fizdale and the rise of Mike Miller. However, that stench, it really did stink: that home loss 101-89 Friday in rebuild, Thunder nameless.
By any standards, it was a nightmare offensive performance, as empty as the blue seats after the Knicks had won five of their last six. Maybe he was seeing Miller as an assistant on the sidelines of Oklahoma City who reminded them of last season’s losses.
Or maybe the Knicks just got tired of their legs after all the minutes their major players have recorded. Yes, that has been marked as the only concern for the understanding coach Tom Thibodeau.
RJ Barrett and Julius Randle ranked as the top two finishers in the NBA in minutes.
Randle looked too much like last season. In the first half he was without goals. Then, in the fourth quarter, Randle dribbled the ball lazily on the court and Queens pride Hamidou Diallo stripped the ball from behind and ran into a position to get an 11-point Thunder lead.
Moments earlier, Diallo (who finished with 21 points and 11 assists) had tipped his own foul. Former keeper George Hill had dripped uncomfortably to make an iron, which he remembered too much from recent years.
Each club entered the pandemic season perceived as tank tracks and storage. Each team has defied low expectations, with the Knicks now 5-4 and the Thunder becoming a .500 team on Friday.
It was a terrible loss against a club that starts with guys like Darius Bazley and Luguentz Dort, who has the best name and best body in the league, but is a defensive specialist. Dort beat the Knicks in the fourth quarter with a 3-point lead.
Also in the rotation of the Thunder is rookie Aleksej Pokusevski, who entered the game shooting 9.5 percent but scored two big triples in the final period.
Thibodeau’s Knicks was the best start to the franchise since entering 2012-13 tonight.
ESPN’s new outspoken star Kendrick Perkins presented the Knicks’ new offense as key to his rebirth. But Perkins put the hex on the Knicks, who shot 35.8 percent against the Thunder.
Thibodeau said he felt that after the Knicks lost a lead in the first half, they stopped moving the ball.
“We tried to get out of it individually,” Thibodeau said. “We got into it together, we have to get out of it together.”
Perkins was the center of the Celtics for three seasons when Thibodeau was Doc Rivers’ assistant coach in Boston.
“When he was out of his two years, he was reevaluated and came back with a different coach,” Perkins told ESPN before Friday’s game. “Because some of the plays they’re making and some of the freedom they have on offense, I’ve never seen a Tom Thibodeau team have so much freedom. But I love it. ”
Soon, Thibodeau will get credit for inventing the synthetic protein that is key to the new vaccine. Seriously, Perkins’ statements on national television deserve further inspection before confirming their veracity.
They’re playing at a faster pace, hitting triples with higher efficiency and moving the ball better than with Jeff Hornacek, Fizdale and Miller.
But what about X and O and more freedom? They still ranked 28th in the scoring average (104 points) before Friday. Their offense will continue to be a problem and they will need Alec Burks, a badly shot swinger, sooner rather than later.
The players who have gained strength, such as Austin Rivers and Immanuel Quickley, were not Friday. Rivers even missed a three-point shot in the fourth quarter.
And Quickley looked like a second-round pick, after all. Quickley had his worst night as a professional – he won the 1-on-9 and nearly broke the shield on a float too hard.
“I still see some vanilla for that reason,” said Bryan Oringher, a former Wizards, Hawks and Raptors explorer who posted a two-part Scouting review on his YouTube channel on Thursday. “But they definitely defend.”
Randle has been a different player after his long initial campaign season in Dallas. Randle has been defending and starting offensively, with All-Star figures of 23.1 points, 12 rebounds and 7.4 assists before Friday’s foul.
“At both ends of the floor, we weren’t playing for each other,” Randle said.
Oringher is still unsure if this is the “baffling” Randle or a new Randle in the future, saying the Texas Southpaw has been playing “out of his scary mind.”
“He’s doing what he did last year,” Oringher said. “He’s doing better.”
Thibodeau has shown his ability to stay with the right players in the fourth quarter, a cardinal sin for Fizdale. But on Friday those players looked tired, especially Barrett.
The painful question is whether it is the beginning of a trend.