Eleven games above .500 is an impressive mark, but when the bar is set at a championship, even minor imperfections can feel like glaring failures.
The Knicks have let a few too many winnable games slip away, including Friday’s 116-99 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
That game marked their sixth loss of the last nine outings and the fourth loss in six home games at Madison Square Garden to start the New Year — a disappointing stretch given a favorable slate of 14 home games in a 16-game span.
“Obviously [we’re] not taking advantage [of the home stand]. Lost to some really good teams and it’s something that we just need to get back on track,” team captain Jalen Brunson said after practice at the Tarrytown training facility Sunday afternoon. “It’s going to be a roller coaster but it’s all about how we manage it and how we look forward. Yeah, we’ve already messed up. We already lost games at home. But we can’t just dwell on it and be like, ‘Alright, it sucks.’ No, what are we going to do to change it?”
Despite this, as of Sunday afternoon, New York (27-16) remained firmly in the Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed, sitting 2.5 games behind the Boston Celtics (29-13), 2.5 ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks (23-17) and nine games behind the Cleveland Cavaliers (34-7), who are running away with the Oklahoma City Thunder (35-6) as the only teams still boasting a single-digit loss column.
It’s clear the Knicks are a good team — a very good team. But the divide between “very good” and “elite” is stark.
Right now, the Knicks hover on the edge of that distinction. As elite teams do, the Knicks have beaten up on the teams destined for the NBA Draft Lottery, but they have struggled against their championship-contending peers, boasting a 1-5 record against teams not named the Bucks ranked in the top-four in either conference.
“I think for the most part we’ve done a good job of talking to each other every day, saying that we want to get better every single day,” Brunson said. “Regardless of what our goals are down the road, we’ve got to take it one day at a time. So, yes, after our wins, we’re happy about our wins, and after our losses, we need to get better. But most important, after our wins, we can still get better. It’s a process of not being satisfied.”
Brunson credits head coach Tom Thibodeau for instilling that mentality.
“We take the identity of our coach, and he’s never satisfied when it comes to us,” he added. “Yes, he’s going to congratulate us and make sure we know what’s important, but just making sure moving forward not getting sidetracked by anything.”
That relentless focus is necessary, especially for a team that has struggled defensively — an area long associated with Thibodeau’s coaching identity.
Since their nine-game winning streak ended with a 117-107 loss to the Thunder on Jan. 3, the Knicks have posted the NBA’s third-worst defensive rating. They are bottom-10 in both net rating and opponent three-pointers made and are dead-last in opponent three-point percentage.
Offensively, they rank in a virtual tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the league’s worst bench scoring.
Slow starts have also plagued the Knicks. In their 16 losses, they’ve trailed after the first quarter 13 times, tied once, and won the opening frame only twice. That trend continued against Minnesota, where New York fell behind 28-21 in the first quarter and never recovered. The Knicks have trailed in the opening period in four of their six losses in 2025.
“We started off slow, the rebounding put us in a hole. So obviously we’ve got to do better there,” Thibodeau said after Sunday’s practice. “And that’s probably the biggest thing — containment of the ball, challenging shots, and the rebounding.”
Bench scoring, while concerning however, isn’t the primary concern. The Knicks believe a healthy Karl-Anthony Towns — who has missed the last two games due to a thumb injury — can restore their offense to elite status.
Defensively, the issues remain glaring. Thibodeau believes as long as the team improves every day, things will eventually fall into place.
“Over the course of the season, some days you’re going to fall short, but other days, you’re going to play well, and to understand what goes into winning each and every day, and for us to focus on that daily improvement so you don’t get lost,” Thibodeau said on Sunday. ” And I’m a big believer in that you could always do things better. So there’s certain things you’re doing well. [That] doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll continue to do them well unless you put the work into it. The same things that you have to shore up, you have to focus in on and make sure you’re correcting them and fixing them.”
The Knicks aspire to be a team strong on both sides of the ball. With Towns out, they remain poor defensively but the offense has sputtered. He will return to play through his thumb injury, but the lopsided discrepancy from one end of the ball to the other is a reality mirroring New York’s record.
Eleven games above .500 may look impressive on paper, but it doesn’t fully capture where this team stands on its journey toward title contention.
“For the most part, I want to see us stick together,” Brunson said. “All the X’s and O’s are great, but the tighter we are as a group, the better we’re gonna be.”