The Knicks were on track to end their winless streak against the NBA’s top teams on Friday.
New York was dominating the shorthanded Cavaliers, who were resting a good number of their starters with their playoff seeding locked up, and leading by as many as 23 points in the first half, but suddenly things changed.
Cleveland came storming back, taking their first lead of the game at the five-minute mark of the fourth quarter, and then securing the come-from-behind win thanks to some timely buckets from Darius Garland and Max Strus.
New York was ultimately handed their third consecutive loss, which helped them finish an ugly 0-8 against the two teams above them in the Eastern Conference, the Cavs and Boston Celtics.
“You have to play for 48 minutes in this league, no lead is safe,” Tom Thibodeau said.
What exactly went wrong down the stretch? The head coach felt just about everything.
“We gotta look at ourselves and see what we did and get it fixed fast,” he said. “That’s the challenge that we have -- we’re heading down the stretch. We knew the challenge with Jalen [Brunson] being out and then coming back and losing other guys.
"But you have to have rhythm going into the playoffs, this has to be changed quickly."
And it certainly does -- the Knicks have just one more regular season game on Sunday afternoon against the rival Nets before they kick off the postseason with their first-round matchup against the Pistons, who beat them earlier this week.
Detroit’s squad presents no easy task, as they went 3-1 against New York this year.
“That’s a good young team,” Josh Hart said. “We know the brand of basketball that they play. We have to go out there, match their physicality and exceed it. We have one more game on Sunday so we have to focus on that and we have one week to prepare.”
While Hart this team isn’t playing anywhere close to their best brand of basketball at the moment, he remains confident that they’ll be able to turn things around when it matters the most.
“At the end of the day playoff basketball is totally different,” he said. “Everyone starts 0-0, everything else is just outside noise. We just have to focus on the guys in this locker room and doing what it takes to have success as a team, and go out there and execute.”
