Daily Report – 12/4/25
Knicks
It’s easy to beat Charlotte. The 6-16 Charlotte Hornets don’t threaten the New York Knicks.
The big bad Knicks think they’re so great. They can be. They should be. But they aren’t. Not yet.
Last night at the Garden, the Knicks beat the Hornets 119-104 and improved to 11-1 at home. However, it was clear the Knicks didn’t learn anything from their loss in Boston the night before.
In the first quarter, the Knicks limited Charlotte to 12 points, the fewest points they’ve allowed in any quarter this season. But in the second frame, Charlotte won the scoring battle 35-26, and they cut a 20-point lead to three points. The Knicks didn’t give in, but they couldn’t contain LaMelo Ball either, who unleashed 34 points.
Karl-Anthony Towns was better, putting up 35 points, 18 rebounds, and a +21 rating, but he had to play 39 minutes because, with Mitchell Robinson on load management, the Knicks couldn’t replace Towns’s production at center. Also, the big man didn’t look like much of a center defensively.
To be clear, I am being overly critical of Towns. Credit to him for grinding it out for 39 minutes and only turning the ball over once. Credit to him for waiting to start shooting three-pointers until after spending some time in the paint. However, before Towns’s first made three of the third quarter, Charlotte twice cut a 20-point deficit to three. That suggests Towns struggled defensively in the paint.
As far as his offense is concerned, Towns is an elite NBA scorer. He’s arguably the best three-point shooting big man in NBA history. I wrote about this yesterday. But it should also be acknowledged that, without OG Anunoby, Towns’s defensive struggles get exposed. Granted, so do those of his teammates, but it is important to focus on Towns because he serves as Jalen Brunson’s right-hand man.
It’s hard to defend in the paint. It’s much harder to defend than to score in general, but because the Knicks don’t have a reliable backup for Towns, he has to alternate between two positions every night. And that is not easy. But for the Knicks to reach a true level of championship contention, Towns must become a more reliable defender.
The bottom line is that, at home, against a team like Charlotte, there is no excuse for the Knicks to allow their opponent to cut a 20-point lead to three points twice. Against Boston on Tuesday, second-quarter defensive woes – aka when substitute players enter the game – put the Knicks behind. When the bench is activated, Towns often has to alternate between center and forward. The difference against Charlotte was that the Hornets didn’t have the manpower to erase the Knicks’ lead.
“We build a lead, you’ve got to anticipate [opponents are] going to fight back,” Brunson said. “They’re not just going to give up. We’ve got to do a better job of slowing down their runs and limiting them, but we can’t let them get all the way back like we’ve been doing. But I think, first and foremost, how we respond to that is how we get better as a team.”
While the Knicks finished the game with a 15-point scoring advantage, they collected the same number of rebounds (44) as Charlotte and shot just as well (0.6% better) from three-point range. That doesn’t exactly scream “championship contenders.” It looked more like the Knicks did “just enough” to beat a team that’s statistically much worse than they are.
Schedule
7:00 PM (6:00 PM CST): NYR at OTT; MSG, Gotham Sports
8:15 PM (7:15 PM CST): Thursday Night Football (TNF), Week 14 – Dallas Cowboys (6-5-1) at Detroit Lions (7-5); Prime Video
