Just when you think the New York Knicks season can’t get any worse, it does. The Knicks started their West Coast road trip with another embarrassing performance.
The Knicks lost to the Portland Trailblazers 115-87 making that 10 straight defeats. They faced the old face of the franchise in Carmelo Anthony who dropped 16 on his former team. His teammate Damian Lillard had his way with the Knicks like every other superstar in the league, pouring in an easy 31 points.
Either Lillard is just that good or the Knicks perimeter defense is just that bad. We’ll take the ladder on that.
The Knicks have some of the laziest defense when guarding beyond the arc fans have ever seen. One of their laziest players is Julius Randle. He doesn’t play any defense and looks gassed a majority of the time. Lillard was toying with him to begin the game on pick-and-rolls where he did a quick step back to nail a 3 in his face. Teams have to be laughing at the Knicks, just like fans are.
Mitchell Robinson had 14 points off the bench, but he needs to be starting. It’s gotten to the point where it’s not about winning games clearly. It should be about developing the young players for the future. Robinson should be starting over Taj Gibson. He should also be playing more then Randle. Randle hurts the team more as compared to helping them. He isn’t in the future plans or at least until a coach can figure out how to use him.
Interim head coach Mike Miller said after the game, “In an 82-game schedule you may have some nights where it won’t go in, and we found ourselves in that.” The Knicks have found themselves in that scenario a lot this season and it’s getting old. It especially comes on the road as they only have one road victory on the season. One.
The New York Knicks continue their West Coast road trip in Golden State tonight at 10:30 pm. Can they get a win against the second worst team in the league? At this point, very doubtful.