Whose man is Tim Hardaway Jr.?
It’s the opening possession of Saturday night’s game at Madison Square Garden — a prime opportunity for the Knicks to extend their winning streak to five — and Detroit’s Jaden Ivey grabs a rebound off Jalen Brunson’s pull-up miss.
Ivey pushes the ball and kicks it to Cade Cunningham at the top of the key. Cunningham doesn’t hesitate. He spots Hardaway — a sharpshooter who once called Madison Square Garden home — alone in the corner, unnoticed by the Knicks’ defense.
Before New York could even set, Cunningham delivers a pinpoint pass, and Hardaway rattles home the three — a fitting start to a night where Detroit would pick apart the Knicks’ defense, possession by possession
It was the first of Cunningham’s career-high 15 assists, a harbinger of a night where Detroit dissected New York’s defense, possession by possession.
Cunningham would finish with a 29-point triple double. He would score 16 points on 4-of-4 shooting from deep in the second quarter alone. The game was largely decided in the opening period. The Pistons didn’t just expose the Knick defense — they put a spotlight on the lingering flaws this team must address as it strives to peak when it matters most.
Because in their 120-111 loss, the Knicks’ first-quarter collapse was a microcosm of a larger issue: While their offense is on pace to break records, defensive inconsistencies — and a fragile center situation — are threatening to undermine championship aspirations.
“[Our defense is] not good. Not good,” Mikal Bridges admits at his locker after the game. “I think we pick and choose when [we want to play defense], and we ain’t that good to just pick and choose when we want to play defense. I don’t think any team’s that good. It starts with me as well. Just gotta be more vocal and lead by example. It’s all of us.”
“When you’re shorthanded, your margin of error is a lot tighter,” adds Tom Thibodeau. “You’ve got to play with great intensity on every possession, and if you do that, you’re going to have a chance to win.”
***
Why are the Knicks doubling Cunningham?
It’s the second possession of the opening period, and Jericho Sims, starting for Karl-Anthony Towns (patellar tendinopathy) is in motion.
His man, Jalen Duren, just set a pin-down screen on Ivey. Now, he’s flaring up to the top of the key to set a screen on Bridges, guarding Cunningham at the point of attack.
Bridges fights over the screen and sticks with Cunningham. Sims follows. The unguarded Duren rolls hard to the paint.
Now, Josh Hart is in a bind: Whose man is this?
Hart leaves Tobias Harris wide open in the corner to take away the easy pass to Duren for the dunk.
Cunningham, smothered by the Sims-Bridges double, picks up his dribble, then whips a cross-court pass to Harris.
Harris missed the open look, but for a second possession in a row, the Knicks would cede an open three. The Pistons would shoot 7-of-15 from deep in the opening period alone and 18-of-36 on the night.
“Think communication is the biggest thing. A lot of transition, just no communication, just not talking to each other. And it’s not like we don’t like each other or anything. It’s just that sense of urgency, trying to help each other out,” Bridges said at his locker after the game. “We gotta understand that when we don’t talk to each other, it’s gonna hurt us, and so in transition, not saying nothing, so somebody’s gonna step up, and two are gonna go to the ball, and two are gonna go to one man, and you give up open 3s.
“And we ain’t trying to do it on purpose or be a bad person. We’ve just gotta be better. We’ve just gotta be able to talk. We’ve gotta build that.”
***
Now Sims is making the right play.
He’s closing out hard to Ivey and recovering to take away the baseline drive. Cunningham, however, is playing chess against a Knicks defense playing tic-tac-toe. He begins this possession using his six-inch height advantage in a mismatch with Brunson on the high post.
Cunningham watches OG Anunoby cheat before committing to the double. He watches Bridges slowly cheat off of Hardaway, to cover for Anunoby. Hart is next in rotation. He is up to leave his man — Ivey in the corner — to cover for Bridges. With Bridges and Hart caught mid-rotation, Cunningham whips a pass to the open man to Hardaway before Hart begins to rotate.
“I thought it was a work of art, to not only move the ball — we did — but to have the recognition and the reads of what their defense was trying to do,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after the game. “And then we
use their defense against them to create open opportunities.”
Which brings us to the roller-coaster ride that has been the start to Sims’ fourth NBA season. Now in rotation, Sims closes out hard on Ivey, recovers and denies the baseline drive, forcing the crafty guard to pick up his dribble.
But his teammates collapse the paint — and Brunson leaves Cunningham to help under the rim. The Pistons’ star floats to the corner for a wide-open three.
The first quarter was rife with defensive miscues and miscommunication. There were far too many instances, particularly in transition, where Pistons feasted from downtown.
“Yeah [we always talk on defense] but I think we can always be better. And today we lacked it real early.” Bridges said. “Yeah, it just tends, when things don’t go well offensively, we tend to not talk, get back, and we kind of just jog back and just pick up, probably, the man that you’re probably gonna guard.
“[But] in transition, you’ve got no man. You’ve got to guard the person that’s closest to you. I think we’ve gotta learn that while we play.”
***
Now Sims is walking to the bench. After back-to-back crippling turnovers, Thibodeau has little choice but to pull the night’s starting center.
Sims can leap with the best of them and has flashed the potential to rebound at a high level, but costly mistakes on offense have hurt his opportunities this season.
After his dogged defense on Ivey, Sims turns the ball over on back-to-back possessions, Detroit scoring on both: first a fumbled dump-off pass on a rare look from Brunson, then an inexcusable drive to the rim from the three-point line, which, as expected, results in a turnover.
Seething with anger, Thibodeau hooks Sims after six first-quarter minutes and benches him for the night. Next up is Ariel Hukporti, the 58th and final pick in the June 2024 NBA Draft.
No Towns. No Mitchell Robinson. Now, no Sims. Thibodeau is “searching.”
The Pistons posed a flurry of defensive questions, and the Knicks failed Saturday’s test miserably.
“We wanted energy. You have to hustle. You have Cunningham and Ivey, very dynamic off the dribble. So any time you put two on the ball, you have to protect the rim, but you also have to rotate cleanly to challenge shots,” Thibodeau continued. “Everyone’s gotta know what the next guy’s doing. Normally, we’re good at that. We weren’t tonight. And we’ve gotta fix it quickly and get ready for the next game.”
***
Now, Precious Achiuwa is confused.
This is only his second game back since suffering a hamstring strain in the Oct. 18 preseason finale.
Suddenly, Achiuwa finds himself responsible for two Pistons on the three-point line, with the other four Knicks trained on three Detroit players.
The confusion was emblematic of a larger defensive issue.
Whose man is this?
Simone Fontecchio quickly shovels the ball to Malik Beasley. Achiuwa, caught in between the two, concedes a wide-open corner look for Beasley’s second of seven made 3s on 10 attempts off the bench. On the very next possession, he makes a heat-check three over Bridges’ arm.
“Defensively, we’ve just gotta take out the three-point shots and put together a whole effort defensively,” Achiuwa said. “Pick-and-roll, we’ve gotta fix that of course, and figuring out what we wanna do defensively with the pick-and-roll, especially with me being out there and OG and ‘Kal, I think we’re very dynamic.
“We gotta figure out what we wanna do, the three of us. I think we’re very gifted defensively. We were having defensive mishaps.”
And with 2.5 seconds left in the first, he makes his fourth 3-pointer on five attempts.
On this play, Cunningham is inbounding the ball on the left sideline as Isaiah Stewart sets a screen on Hart for Beasley at the top of the key.
Hart isn’t ready for the screen, and Achiuwa doesn’t follow the shooter to the corner. Cunningham’s pass soars by both, and Beasley cashes in before the buzzer.
His shot lifted the Pistons to 39 first-quarter against the Knicks. It’s the second-most the Pistons have scored in any quarter this season.
And it’s the 10th time a porous, inconsistent Knick defense has allowed 35 or more points in any period this season.
This game, however, wasn’t lost in just any period. It unraveled in the first — a layered issue the Knicks must “fix quickly” if they have any hope of contending for a title.
“The game starts at 7:30,” Brunson said. “We’ve gotta be ready at 7:30.”