Here’s how Miles McBride summed up the Knicks’ embarrassing Opening Night in Boston:
“That’s championship-level basketball. For us, it was a punch in the mouth and we gotta respond. Obviously, it’s a long year. Can’t overreact to one game but I don’t think that’s how you go into a year and set the tone.”
If you’re wondering how to process what you saw from the Knicks on Tuesday, I think McBride offers a good blueprint.
Yes, you should be concerned about the defense. It was historically bad. Tom Thibodeau and some players said the Knicks didn’t give the kind of second and third effort on defense that’s required against a good team like the Celtics.
“One effort is not going to be enough,” Thibodeau said.
It’s too early to sound any alarms. Let’s see how the Knicks defend on Friday night against Indiana. Let’s see where they are after 20 games. It’s going to take some time to incorporate Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges, and adjust to life without Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle, Isaiah Hartenstein and Mitchell Robinson.
The Knicks are one game into an 82-game season. So they have plenty of time to figure it out.
But that doesn’t make what happened on Tuesday night acceptable.
“I think it just comes down to effort on defense. I feel like we could have just made more effort plays,” McBride said late Tuesday. “I feel like our first effort was there. But the second, third has to get better.”
THE NOISE AROUND MIKAL
Bridges’ new jump shot drew a lot of attention in the preseason. His high release point was being analyzed all over social media after Bridges missed 17 of his 19 three-point attempts during the preseason.
Josh Hart doesn’t want to hear it.
“We don’t care about all that background noise about Mikal, his shot — we don’t care about it,” Hart said after the Knicks’ loss. “He puts the work in every day. He’s going to be good. The talk around it is stupid and there is stupidity to it because at the end of the day he’s been almost a 40% three-point shooter. Talk around it is stupid and we’re not really going to entertain it.”
Bridges knocked down two of his three three-point attempts in the second half and had 16 points overall in the final two quarters. Afterward, he credited his teammates for continuing to look for him after his rough first half.
“Making one is just like letting the lid off. But that’s pretty much it, just teammates finding me, staying aggressive,” Bridges said.