The New York Knicks, at their best, can play with anyone in the NBA. That much was evident in the first three quarters of Friday night's game in Oklahoma City. For 36 minutes the Knicks outplayed the best team in the Western Conference in just about every way, even with their raucous crowd behind them. New York won the second quarter alone by 15 points and led by eight after three quarters.
But the Thunder dominated the fourth quarter, 37-19, and stole the 117-107 win to end the Knicks' nine-game winning streak and extend their own to 14 consecutive victories. It was a scene that is becoming all too familiar for an otherwise stellar Knicks team. They have the NBA's fourth-best overall net rating at plus-8.4 ... but the 22nd-ranked fourth-quarter net rating at minus-4.2.
This isn't necessarily a skill issue for the Knicks. Jalen Brunson can create fourth-quarter shots just as well as any star in the NBA. His slower, mid-range oriented skill set is perfect for late-game slogs, and the Knicks have OG Anunoby to throw on whoever is trying to create similar shots for the opponents. On paper, the Knicks look like they should be one of the best late-game teams in the NBA. Sure, there are exploitable issues. The Thunder tested Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns in pick-and-roll, for example, and other teams do that plenty as well. But if that were some fatal flaw, it would kill the Knicks for four full quarters instead of just the fourth quarter itself. That isn't happening.
So what is happening? If you believe in Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The Knicks have five of the top 35 players on the minutes per game leaderboard, including three players in the top 10 and the top two players overall (Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart). All five Knicks starters played at least 40 minutes on Friday. No Oklahoma City player got there. New York got 30 total bench minutes. The Thunder got 70. Four of the five Thunder reserves to play on Friday scored at least six points. This is relevant because New York's bench scored only five points in total.
All of that points to the simplest of simple explanations: The Knicks got tired.
Now, it's certainly true that New York's starters are used to handling abnormally large workloads. It has more or less always been Tom Thibodeau's calling card, and you could argue it pays dividends in the playoffs, when the Knicks are almost always better conditioned than their opponents. Of course, you could just as easily argue that it leads to injuries. Take a look at who played for the Knicks at the end of their series with the Pacers last season if you're interested in the evidence supporting that. But we're not here to litigate Thibodeau's approach to minutes distribution. No, we're here to look at what it meant against the Thunder, specifically, and what that is going to mean when the stakes in these games start to rise.
The Thunder tire their opponents out more than perhaps any other NBA team. Their seemingly limitless depth keeps just about everyone on the floor fresh. They didn't even have Chet Holmgren or Alex Caruso on Friday and it was hardly noticeable. No team pressures the ball more than the Thunder. Only three teams in NBA history have averaged more steals per game than they do. They are one of the youngest and most athletic teams in the NBA. They rank ninth in pace. The Knicks rank 25th. If you were going to point to a game on the calendar and say "this is the one where the Knicks tire out and fade in the fourth quarter," you'd likely pick the road game in Oklahoma City without a healthy Deuce McBride.
The catch here is that New York's championship ambitions are going to put teams like the Thunder in their crosshairs when it counts. Boston is no easier, as the Knicks learned firsthand on opening night. Part of beating the best teams is ensuring that your team is playing at its best as often as possible. That's not going to happen if the Knicks are wearing out in fourth quarters, but more broadly, it's not going to happen if the Knicks keep betting their season on just five players.
The Brunson-Towns-Anunoby-Hart-Bridges lineup is either the best lineup in the NBA or very close to it. Only the starting lineups for the Celtics and Pacers have outscored opponents by more total points this season. But the Thunder didn't win this game exclusively on the backs of the starters. They won it in large part because Aaron Wiggins, the eighth- or ninth-man on the healthy version of this roster, scored 15 fourth-quarter points.
Whether it's Wiggins or Ajay Mitchell or a handful of other lesser-known players, the Thunder have the luxury of running the hot hand and letting them swing quarters and, potentially, games. The Knicks just don't have spare players like that. Only two New York reserves, Cam Payne and the recently-released Matt Ryan, have had fourth quarters even half as prolific in terms of scoring as Wiggins did on Friday, and both of them came in garbage time of blowout wins.
Beyond the limited bench scoring, the Knicks just lack schematic versatility from their reserves. The Thunder turned this game around during a fourth-quarter small-ball stretch that coincided with Wiggins' scoring outburst. Perhaps a healthy Mitchell Robinson could have stemmed the tide, either by replacing Towns and giving the Knicks more defense to counter the Thunder or by pairing them in a jumbo look designed specifically to punish smaller players. As valuable as a healthy McBride can be for the Knicks, he's much more of an analogue for their existing wings that can get them more rest than any sort of major stylistic changeup. Thus far this season, the Knicks have largely been locked into their base playing style in terms of both lineup construction and scheme.
It works quite well most of the time, as their 24-11 record proves, but "most of the time," isn't "do or die time" in May and June. The best teams are usually the most versatile. The Thunder, the Celtics and Cavaliers have dozens of ways to beat opponents. The Knicks don't. That's a fixable problem, but an increasingly dire one as the trade deadline approaches.
The Feb. 6 deadline is a bit less than five weeks away. The latest update on Robinson's health has him returning to practice "some time this month" due to ankle injuries sustained last season, according to Thibodeau. He has not yet even been cleared to run. Maybe he takes the floor before the deadline. Maybe he doesn't. But it will almost certainly be impossible for the Knicks to get an honest appraisal of his health and fit with this group before decision time comes at the trade deadline. In a perfect world, Robinson would be the depth addition New York needs to compete with teams like the Thunder. The reality is murkier.
The Knicks are at least one player short right now of the depth they'll need to compete with teams like the Thunder and Celtics. Robinson being that player is the preferred solution. If he isn't, his $14.3 million salary is by far the likeliest path the Knicks have to getting one, and given the uncertainty surrounding his health, they might not have a choice but to include him in a trade for a more reliable player. Aggregate him with Precious Achiuwa and Leon Rose suddenly has more than $20 million in salary to work with in order to fortify this lacking bench. New York's draft capital is limited after the Bridges trade, but they still have a handful of first-round swaps to dangle. Those look valuable since they're deep in the future, when this core likely ages out of its contention window.
Outplaying the Thunder on the road for three quarters is among the more impressive feats of this Knicks season. It's proof of concept for this core. But teams are more than their cores, and right now, the Knicks just don't have enough viable supporting pieces to complement that core properly. That was the difference against Oklahoma City in the fourth quarter on Friday, and that will be the difference for the Knicks this spring if nothing changes in the next month or so.
