Knicks Understand What Needs To Happen 'to Be Better' In Game 4 After Watching Film Of First Loss In 13 Games

Josh Hart said it perfectly while talking to reporters after the Knicks’ practice on Tuesday, “We knew they weren’t just gonna lay down and let us win four straight.”

Hart, of course, was referring to the San Antonio Spurs, who recovered from losing the first two games at home in the NBA Finals by beating New York in Game 3 on Monday night at Madison Square Garden and putting the pressure on the Knicks, who are up 2-1 heading into Wednesday’s Game 4.

“We knew this was gonna be a battle,” Hart said. “They played very well, and you gotta give them credit for that.”

Still, in the loss, the team’s first since April 23, New York made some uncharacteristic mistakes that it wasn’t making during its 13-game winning streak. 

Perhaps the most obvious was the number of turnovers – the Knicks had 13 to the Spurs’ eight, which led to San Antonio scoring 21 points. Jalen Brunson had five turnovers by himself and emphasized not turning the ball over as a way to improve the team’s flow offensively.

“Our attention to detail needs to be better,” he said.

“We were making turnovers that were uncharacteristic of us, just being sloppy with the ball, not being on the same page,” OG Anunoby added. “Throughout the course of a game stuff like that happens, so we’re just gonna try and clean it up.”

Turnovers are a part of the game, and there’s no escaping them entirely. However, the goal is to cough up the ball fewer times than the opponent, which New York had been doing an excellent job of during the playoffs.

Another thing the Knicks had done so well until Monday’s loss was moving the ball around and not being stagnant on offense. Yes, Brunson is capable of playing hero ball late in the game when his team needs a clutch bucket, but New York was running teams out of the gym in previous rounds thanks to its game speed and constant movement around the court.

But in Game 3, the Knicks had just 18 assists, their lowest total in the postseason and the first time they’d gone under 20 assists since their last playoff loss against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round.

“We gotta pick up the ball movement for sure,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “… We have 13 games in a row, 50 days of film to show what it looks like when we’re at our best so we got good film. We’ll get back to our fundamentals, which makes us great, and get back to work tomorrow.”

“We didn’t play to the best of our capabilities, and I think that’s the frustrating part because we knew we didn’t play our best basketball,” Hart added. “We learned from film today, and we’ll be better tomorrow.”

Hart dove into the benefits of watching film, not just from the loss to the Spurs, but in general, as it can help players and a team quickly identify and correct mistakes or how to plan to counteract an opponent’s strengths.

“You wanna watch kind of as much film as you can or get as much information as you can to then go out there and play to that,” he said. “Obviously, you want to play with your instincts as a basketball player that you’ve been playing the game for such a long time, but certain situations, you want to have that information so certain plays you can try to deter them from getting to their spots.”

Despite losing Game 3, head coach Mike Brown mentioned that “nobody is panicking” in his “veteran group." In fact, whether the Knicks won or lost on Monday night, nothing would’ve changed with their preparation on Tuesday for Game 4, a mentality they’ve been running with for a while now.

If anything, a loss, especially after such a long time without one, can bring out new ways to improve.

“Obviously, I'm a firm believer that you can grow and learn a lot in wins, but you can do the same in losses, too,” Brown said. “... Everybody is disappointed that we didn't go out and execute and play to what we feel our standard is.

“That's not taking anything away from San Antonio, but we feel like we can play a lot better than what we did. We're looking forward to going out on the floor and showing it.”

“Each game, no matter what the situation is, we're growing as a team,” Brunson added. “I think we're learning and we're getting better… No matter what the situation is, we're going to stick together. We're going to execute, we're going to be better. That's just how our mindset has to be going forward.”