The Knicks continued their dominance at home on Tuesday night, defeating the Grizzlies 133-120, pushing their winning streak to five games and starting the season 7-0 at MSG.
New York showed a lot of what has made them dangerous in the early going. They throttled the Grizzlies' defense for 78 first-half points and forced 11 Memphis turnovers. If you saw the final score, you'd think it was a much closer game, and the Knicks would tell you that it shouldn't have been.
Despite their offensive outburst in the first half, the Grizzlies outplayed them in the second, outscoring the Knicks 66-56. And first-year head coach Mike Brown brought up his team's defensive lapses in his opening statement after Tuesday's win.
"The first half, we did a really good job in a lot of areas…and our transition defense in the first half wasn't great but it was ok against a team like that," Brown said. "According to our measurements, they had 16 fastbreak points against us in the first half. The second half, we let up. We didn't sprint back like we should have…we did not play our rules and they got layup after layup after layup against us in transition, which gave them confidence…29 fastbreak points to a team in a half is going to kill ya. Especially when you have 11 turnovers in that half. We were careless with the ball as well…Hopefully, we'll grow from this and try to put 48 minutes in our next game because those two areas we did not do a good job of."
The Knicks will hope to put together that full 48-minute performance on the second of their back-to-back on Wednesday against the Magic, but they wasted an opportunity for extra rest because they allowed the Grizzlies to stick around. One positive is that New York is expected to have center Mitchell Robinson in the lineup after he sat out Tuesday due to injury management. Brown was asked about the defense and Robinson's role in it, but the coach didn't want that to be an excuse.
"It wasn't about Mitch; they killed us in transition," he said. "Give them credit because they kept fighting, but we could have had anybody on the floor, it would have been bad. We didn't do a good job…
..
