Knicks’ bad habits from regular season now biting them in playoffs as they head to Detroit tied with Pistons

Tom Thibodeau wanted a 48-minute team. What he has instead is a 12-minute team. The kind of team that believes it is talented enough to sleepwalk through the first three quarters of any game before turning it during winning time.

Newsflash: Flipping a switch — or turning it on — only works for teams that have been there and done that already.

The Knicks have neither been there nor done that, and after a disappointing Game 2 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Monday, it’s unclear if they ever will.

At least as presently constructed. At least if they play the way they did through the first two games of their 2025 playoff run.

“Missed shots are part of the game. Rebounding, we control that. That’s your effort,” Thibodeau said after New York fell to 1-1 in its first-round series against Detroit on Monday. “If you’re not shooting well, do other things to help us win. So rebound the ball. We know we got to rebound better.”

The Knicks were thoroughly outplayed through the first three quarters of Game 1 before blowing the Pistons out of the water via a 21-0 fourth-quarter run.

The Pistons outplayed the Knicks again through the first three quarters of Game 2. The Madison Square Garden faithful bubbled with anticipation. Could the Knicks pull off the improbable again?

The answer is no. Because playing from behind isn’t a practical approach to winning basketball games — even if the Knicks were fortunate enough to win Game 1. Now, New York heads to Detroit having ceded home-court advantage to a Pistons team that has now beaten them four times in their last five meetings.

“We literally just need to be ready to go at 7:37, 7:38, whatever [time the game starts, not the fourth quarter],” said Jalen Brunson.

Yet this is the same kind of bad habit formed in the regular season that has a tendency of rearing its ugly head in the playoffs.

Brunson is expected to win the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award — and he is well-deserving of the honor — but the Knicks were in far too many predicaments that required his late-game heroics in the first place. They were in those predicaments because they thought they could talent their way to victory on one too many nights.

“We’ve got to start better,” said Mikal Bridges. “Got to defend better as a team, talk to each other more, and just play the right way on both ends.”

That won’t work. Not in the playoffs. Not in any game worth its weight in the win column.

Josh Hart said playing at a faster pace can help the Knicks generate better looks if the offense gets stagnant.

“I think when we play fast, it’s tough for teams to keep up. We’ve got a lot of weapons out there,” Hart said after the game. “When you’re playing fast, you can cause the defense to make mistakes. When you’re stagnant, it’s tougher. It’s tougher for them to make a mistake, it’s tougher to attack the basket, it’s tougher to do certain things. I’d say we played a little too slow. The thing about the playoffs is it’s never easy. Now we’ve got to watch film, learn and grow from it.”

It was easy to gloss over the trend before the games truly began to count. Now, it’s the very thorn in New York’s side what could be this team’s undoing — if not in the first round, then almost certainly in Round 2, should the Knicks advance to face the defending champion Boston Celtics.

And it’s concerning given the bare facts of New York’s first-round playoff series. The Knicks are the far more experienced team. They are far more talented than the Pistons, too.

And yet there was trepidation as to whether or not they could put the Pistons away in convincing fashion. That trepidation was warranted after they forked over Game 2 at The Garden on Monday.

“[The first three quarters were] similar game [to Game 1], huh? Not every day you’re gonna get a 21-0 run, we can’t be expecting stuff like that,” said Karl-Anthony Towns. “We can’t expect to flip a switch and then all of a sudden, we’re the team that we worked so hard all year to be. We gotta bring that execution and discipline all game.”

The vaunted defense the Knicks deployed against Pistons star Cade Cunningham in Game 1 failed miserably in Game 2.

Cunningham, who averaged 31 points against the Knicks during the regular season, shot just 8-of-21 for 21 points in Game 1. The All-Star guard was aggressive all night in Game 2, with 33 points and 12 rebounds on 11-of-21 shooting from the field.

“They’re running stuff to get me off of his body, setting screens to get me off of him,” said OG Anunoby. “Doing stuff like that. They made some adjustments, so we’ll make some adjustments and be ready. We’ll watch the film and figure it out.”

Mikal Bridges played an aggressive offensive game but came up short on the game-deciding possession. Brunson drove the lane, forced the Pistons defense to collapse, then sprayed the ball out to the top of the key, where Bridges had a wide-open look at a three that would have tied the game at 97 with 11 seconds left on the clock.

The shot fell well short, undermining a 19-point night for the player New York traded five draft picks to acquire last summer.

Karl-Anthony Towns wasn’t much better. The All-Star big man finished with 10 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field.

Eleven shots for an All-Star starter in a playoff game isn’t going to cut it. Towns took no shots in the fourth quarter.

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Knicks’ bad habits from regular season now biting them in playoffs as they head to Detroit tied with Pistons

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