In the Knicks’ final tune-up game ahead of the regular season, Tom Thibodeau spent much of the night appearing upset about the defense as the Washington Wizards, led by Jordan Poole’s 41 points, earned a 131-106 win.
“Disappointed would be the perfect word,” Thibodeau said at the start of his postgame news conference. “So, obviously we have a lot to work on and we can’t stay down, we can’t stay sorry for ourselves, we have to fix it.”
Poole accounted for six of the visitor’s 20 three-pointers and scored another 15 from the free-throw line to accomplish his monster scoring outburst in just 27 minutes. Veteran center Mike Muscala added 20 points on 7-for-10 shooting in just 25 minutes off the bench.
“You’re not gonna win like that,” Thibodeau said of allowing an “explosive scorer” like Poole to find a rhythm and Muscala to continue to get to his spot behind the arc where he went 5-for-7.
“The defense, the rebounding, the turnovers are problematic,” he continued. “Quentin
[Grimes] got into early foul trouble, but it was across the board and we have to fix it and we have to fix it fast.”
Donte DiVincenzo, the lone big addition to the Knicks’ roster this offseason, said the team’s poor defensive night against Washington can be addressed by the players tapping into their “competitive side” each night.
“You can wrinkle out the Xs and Os and the schemes and the communication, but first and foremost, you just gotta compete harder,” DiVincenzo said. “And everybody knows in here that we all have it in us, but we can’t pace ourselves. We know that a week from tonight is opening night and if we’re not ready, we’re gonna get smacked.”
DiVincenzo, who finished with a minus-23 in 24 minutes as the first man off the Knicks’ bench Wednesday, added they “can draw up anything you want,” but “we have to take pride in competing.”
Thibs characterized the difference between the preseason and the regular season as a matter of intensity that players can’t get into the mindset of pacing themselves through it.
“The intensity that’s required defensively is not a sometimes thing, it’s an all-the-time thing and it has to be played frantically,” he said. “…You got to understand how hard you have to compete for everything, like guarding the ball, challenging shots, rebounding the ball, being in the appropriate help position, reading the ball correctly, moving on the flight of the ball, all of those things. There’s no shortcuts to it.”
With the Boston Celtics coming to New York next Wednesday to open the regular season, Thibodeau said the intensity level that is required is a habit that can only be built through practice habits and understanding what level of intensity is consistently required.
“We gotta put as much as we can into this,” he said, “and when we do we’re a good team. And we don’t, were not. It’s not really complicated.”
After characterizing the preseason as “choppy,” the head coach indicated that there is still some gelling that needs to go on before the season opener to get everyone at the same commitment level and working at “the same intensity level all the time because that’s how you play the game.”
“The game is played at a high-intensity level. So everyone has to be used to you playing at that level,” Thibodeau said. “That’s something that we have to work on and we’ve gotta get everyone in together. The chemistry part is important, the commitment part is obviously very important, but we gotta get that going.”
DiVincenzo said that everybody in the locker room has confidence in Thibs and each other heading into that final week of practice.
“Everybody’s buying in and there’s nobody, you know, panic button hitting, going into it,” he said. “But we know what we’re, what we need to do. I mean, we’re aware of where it can go. So, we come back and have a great week of practice and we stay together and we start the season off strong.”
