The New York Knicks are one of the best teams in the NBA this season, but when they play against other top squads, they tend to struggle. So far on the year, the Knicks are 37-20, which is good for third place in the Eastern Conference. However, against the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder, New York is a combined 0-7. Those are three of the best teams in the NBA. In order to be the best, you have to beat the best, and one Karl-Anthony Towns stat might explain the struggles against the league’s best teams.
Karl-Anthony Towns has not been good defensively against teams with good offense. Tim Bontemps pointed out a stat during an episode of The Hoop Collective, and it is one that Knicks fans won’t want to hear.
“When Karl Anthony-Towns is on the court against any of the top-10 offenses in the league this season, the Knicks’ defensive rating is 127,” Tim Bontemps said. “The worst defensive rating in the league is 118. So to say that is bad is an understatement.”
That is not good. All of the blame can’t be put on Towns, but the Knicks are clearly struggling a bit on the defensive end when he is on the court against top offenses. The team’s defensive rankings in general are down in these situations against top-10 offensive teams.
“If we isolate games playing against the top-10 offenses in the league,” Bontemps said. “So all the teams, you play the top-10 offenses in the league, how do you fare. The Knicks rank 29th in defensive efficiency. The only team that’s worse are the Toronto Raptors, who basically have not had their team at any point this entire season.”
Something needs to be done about this if the Knicks want to be looked at as legitimate contenders. Right now, the Knicks are one of the best teams in the league, and it looks like they will end up being a top-four seed in the playoffs if the season plays out the way that most people expect it to. However, how deep can this team go playing defense like this? Probably not very far.
If the season ended today, the Knicks would play the Detroit Pistons in the first round of the playoffs. The Pistons have been one of the worst teams in the NBA in recent years, but that isn’t the case this year. The Knicks have been beating up on lesser talent this year, but they won’t be safe against anyone in the playoffs if they can’t improve on defense. You know what they say: Defense wins championships.
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