It was too little, too late and Brandon Jennings called out his team for losing “a game we should win.” But on a night the Knicks had a chance to get to .500 against the struggling Wizards (3-8), coach Jeff Hornacek lamented that his team “kind of fell back to where we were before” on defense and that “the fight, defensively, wasn’t there.”
Both teams were playing the second game of a back-to-back. The Knicks are now 0-3 in those situations this season.
Washington entered the game as the third-worst three-point shooting team in the NBA, but hit its first six threes and eight of its first 10 to cruise to an early lead. The Wizards hit 15-of-25 from downtown in the game, which was four threes shy of the most ever hit by a Knicks opponent.
Kristaps Porzingis (16 points) couldn’t follow up his career-high 35-point night with another star-quality performance and Carmelo Anthony scored 19 points, but went 1-for-8 from three-point range.
The Knicks trailed by as many as 27 points in the third quarter and were down by 23 in the fourth quarter. If there is one positive to take from the game it is that Derrick Rose (27 points) seemed to get his offense untracked. It sparked the Knicks to rally to cut the deficit to nine points with two minutes to go.
Jennings finished with 17 points and 10 assists in 25 minutes off the bench as the Knicks scored 47 points in the fourth quarter.
The schedule now gets tougher, with the Hawks (9-2), Trail Blazers (7-5) and Hornets (7-3) up next.
We’ll have an early Knicks Game Day for Sunday’s game against Atlanta. Tip-off is noon, so we hit the air at 11:30 AM on MSG.
