Early and late the Knicks offered no defense, while the game as a whole offered countless questions

Last night the New York Knicks lost 125-116 in Toronto to the Raptors. They continue to struggle without their best interior defender, Mitchell Robinson. Compounding that, for the first time this year they had to play without Immanuel Quickley, their best perimeter defender. My game notes are mostly questions scribbled in furious black ink. This game left a bad taste in my mouth. I have questions.

As the NBA’s lone non-American team, do the Raptors enjoy diplomatic immunity? Is that why they rip and rake every Knick without ever getting called for it, while on the other end if a Knick so much as shifts their pupils in a Raptor’s direction the whistle blows? Also, when did the referees decide that anytime a player takes a shot anywhere near the hoop, they have to wait to see if it goes in or not before deciding whether there was a foul?  

Does Evan Fournier owe Julius Randle money? Has he owed it since last season? There was an unusually animated and protracted exchange between the two in the first half, something we saw some last year too. Did Fournier try to offer Randle advice on alternative approaches to a double-team besides picking up your dribble and staring down the same passing lane for five seconds? Is Randle frustrated that half the time he does get doubled, his teammates refuse to cut or move at all? Are Randle’s teammates frustrated that in a close game late in the third, Fred VanVleet was called for a technical foul and Randle went to the line despite Fournier, Jalen Brunson and Quentin Grimes all being available? Randle missed.

How does VanVleet, who doesn’t look athletic enough to teach gym class, kill the Knicks every single time he faces them?

Brunson’s struggles at the line continued, “struggle” meaning missing two of seven. What’s up with that?

Is Isaiah Hartenstein the world’s greatest performance artist? How can anybody make millions of dollars playing professional basketball and yet be unable to score, defend or simply time their jump properly to corral a rebound when THEY’RE FOUR F$#@!%&* INCHES TALLER THAN EVERYONE ELSE PLAYING?!?!

How did the team that entered this game on the second leg of a back-to-back dominate the fourth quarter against the team that was rested?

Has Tom Thibodeau ever been in love? If so, did Obi Toppin steal his girl? If not, what does he have to do to get playing time? Have you ever seen a player come in a game, drill four straight first-quarter 3-pointers, hustle on defense, create off-the-dribble for a teammate, and only play 11 minutes? The ninth-most among the 10 Knicks who played? How many threes would Toppin need to hit to deserve some run? Or to have the team call something, ANYTHING for him besides “Stand in the corner and wait”? 

Is it me, or has Grimes started to rush his 3-pointers? Is there a reason he would? Has McBride regressed on offense? Or is he now pretty much where he was when he first cracked the rotation? Even if the Knicks are determined to trade Cam Reddish, how does any team that fancies itself invested in winning going to play Fournier for 21 minutes against Team Reed Richards and keep a longer, more athletic, capable defender of a wing in bubble-wrap on the bench? 

One question burns me above all.

Thibodeau decides not to play Toppin more than 11 minutes, despite his terrific play. Thibodeau loses his biggest, bestest rim protector for at least a month. Yet instead of seizing the opportunity to midwife some invention by pairing Randle/Obi more, or – God forbid – slotting Toppin at center against A TEAM THAT DOESN’T HAVE ONE – Thibs delivers the stillborn gray sadness of the same game plan as always, only with two lesser centers. And yet, with the game in its final 40 seconds and the Knicks down 10, there’s Thibs, screaming “DOUBLE! DOUBLE!” at Randle and Grimes like a banshee outta New Britain. My question is this:

Why?

Why are you yelling at players to push push push and never quit when your coaching is having the same effect as them quitting would, i.e. making those who are push push pushing’s jobs harder? Demanding maximum effort even when things seem hopeless? Obsessive, yes, but we value that neurosis in rich players and coaches. Deciding Hartenstein + Sims comes closer to equaling Robinson’s impact than experimenting with Randle and Toppin? Conservative, though one does not hire Tom Thibodeau thinking they’re getting John Waters. Refusing to modify or diversify your defense at all, ever, so that even poor-shooting 3-point teams like the Raptors get a ton of early open looks, make a ton and end up 44% from deep for the game? Fair, given that, minus Mitch, the defense is already vulnerable in the paint. Might as well sell-out, right?

Wrong, I think. The Knicks are sooo much a better team, roster and franchise than they were when they hired Thibodeau. Toronto is always a tough match-up for them; they could gene-splice Joe Lapchick, Red Holzman, Pat Riley and Monica McNutt into one basketball super-brain and still lose this game. Mitchell Robinson is not their best player, nor their most important, but he is their most irreplaceable. The Knicks will probably lose their next game Tuesday vs. Cleveland, given the size and skill of the Cavaliers’ top bigs. They’ll lose more games than we’d like over the month (at least) Mitch is out.

When I said continuing to take the same approach to defense was “fair,” that wasn’t a compliment. There’s a certain Juggernaut charm to Thibodeau, a character who believes will alone can create enough momentum to overrun any challenge. If he just coaches harder and the players just play harder, they can make it work. But what’s fair often is not what’s right.

The Knicks are playing with something at stake, both in their present and future. Thibodeau is as responsible as anyone for dragging them to this point from a past both dark and dreary. But he continues to wield his wisdom as a hammer and the patient in front of him needs a somewhat sophisticated surgery. If Thibodeau repeatedly rejects switching from hammer to scalpel, aren’t “obsessive” and “conservative” simply euphemisms for “malpractice”?