The issues were arguably even more pronounced on the other end, where the ball pressure, physicality, length, quickness and tenacity of the Pistons\u2019 No. 2-ranked defense<\/a> completely short-circuited the Knicks\u2019 attack. New York shot just 19-for-46 (41.3%) inside the 3-point arc, with a mere six makes inside the restricted area, and had a season-high-tying 20 turnovers, with six apiece coming from the All-NBA tandem of Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. And while Brunson finished with a team-high 25 points, he also failed to register a single assist for the first time since March of 2024<\/a> (a game in which he played just 47 seconds before leaving with a knee contusion<\/a>) and for the first time in a full game since March of 2022<\/a> \u2014 when he was still backing up Luka Don\u010di\u0107 in Dallas.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The result: The Knicks posted an offensive rating of just 96.1 before garbage time, according to Cleaning the Glass<\/a> \u2014 their second-worst offensive outing of the season. The chaser to that bitter shot? Their worst came three days earlier, in last Friday\u2019s loss to the Hawks (95.1)<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of which is to say: The vibes surrounding the Knicks, so immaculate just three weeks ago when they hoisted the NBA Cup in Las Vegas<\/a>, have taken a dramatic and dire turn during what\u2019s now a four-game losing streak, the team\u2019s longest since February of 2024<\/a>. And that downturn \u2014 which now has the Knicks looking up in the standings at not only the Pistons, but also the red-hot Celtics<\/a>, and just a game and a half clear of fourth-place Toronto \u2014 is prompting the sort of look inward that sounds an awful lot like reaching DEFCON: Team Meeting. From Vincent Goodwill of ESPN<\/a>:<\/p>\n “A lot needs to be addressed,” Knicks guard Jalen Brunson said.<\/p>\n Brunson declined to elaborate on precisely what he meant, but when asked if the members of the team had any discussions amongst themselves before the media was allowed in, he said, “Yeah, a little bit.” […]<\/p>\n “We just gotta respond. A lot more needs to be said. We keep it internal,” he said. “If we want to be the team we say we want to be, we have to be better, simple as that.”<\/p>\n And from Stefan Bondy of the New York Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get to the drawing board,\u201d Towns said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to figure it out. Offensively, defensively, we\u2019ve got to figure it out. It just hasn\u2019t been good basketball from us recently.\u201d […]<\/p>\n \u201c[The Pistons] were ready to go tonight. They wanted to play,\u201d said Brunson […] \u201cThey truly wanted to win and we didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n And from James L. Edwards III of The Athletic<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a bad, bad time,\u201d [Towns] said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have it be this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n It\u2019s been this bad for weeks now. At the time they won the NBA Cup, the Knicks were 18-7 with the NBA\u2019s No. 2 offense, No. 13 defense and No. 3 net rating<\/a>. Since the Cup win, though, they\u2019re now 5-6, including four of their eight double-digit defeats on the season. In this span, they\u2019ve plummeted down to 17th on offense and 27th on defense<\/a>, getting outscored by a downright Wizardian 5.6 points per 100 possessions \u2014 and if there\u2019s one thing we know, it\u2019s that you never want to be downright Wizardian.<\/p>\n Not if you fancy yourself a title contender, anyway, which the Knicks very much do \u2014 an assessment made abundantly clear on Monday by none other than Knicks owner James L. Dolan, who, during a rare interview on New York radio station WFAN<\/a>, laid out his expectation that his team would make the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. (Which, for the record, was right before Dolan took the franchise\u2019s reins from his father. Y\u2019know, in case you were wondering.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to get to The Finals, and we should win The Finals,\u201d Dolan said<\/a>. \u201cThis is sports [\u2026] anything can happen in sports. But getting to the Finals, we absolutely gotta do. Winning the Finals, we should win.\u201d<\/p>\n After four straight losses punctuated by the most lopsided blowout defeat of their season<\/a>, the Knicks feel awfully far away from that sort of rarefied air \u2014 and from the confidence, overflowing mere weeks ago, that they could get there. The question facing Mike Brown and his staff: How do they get that back?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Well, some reinforcements couldn\u2019t hurt. The Knicks have gone 2-4 since losing Josh Hart, who was off to arguably the best start of his career, to a sprained right ankle<\/a> on Christmas Day, and have been without reserve guard Landry Shamet (right shoulder sprain<\/a>) since before Thanksgiving. Both could return to the fold by the end of the week, according to SNY\u2019s Ian Begley<\/a>, and both could provide welcome infusions in areas that have ailed the Knicks.<\/p>\n Hart gives head coach Mike Brown another dogged perimeter defender to ease the burdens on OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges \u2014 and to help insulate the vulnerable Brunson and Towns \u2014 while also offering a source of complementary ball-handling and playmaking, another physical rebounder for a team that\u2019s been outrebounded in four of the last six games, and a jolt of grab-and-go offense in transition. Shamet, for his part, was shooting 42.4% from 3-point range before his injury while pairing with Deuce McBride as two of New York\u2019s best point-of-attack defenders \u2014 a particular pain point for a Knicks team that\u2019s given up blow-by after blow-by in recent weeks, a major factor in New York ranking 23rd in the NBA in the share of opponents\u2019 shots that come at the rim<\/a> over the last 11 games.<\/p>\n Jalen Brunson #11 of the New York Knicks reacts during the third quarter against the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on December 27, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Todd Kirkland\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n (Todd Kirkland via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Brunson has been the culprit<\/a> in plenty of those blow-bys. While opposing offenses, particularly those helmed by bigger and\/or more athletic lead guards, have long hunted the smaller Brunson<\/a> at the point of attack, the Knicks have largely come out ahead in the bargain by virtue of Brunson\u2019s ability to consistently marshal an elite offense that dishes out at least as much punishment as it takes. But despite Brunson continuing to put up great numbers during New York\u2019s post-Cup swoon \u2014 just under 30 points and six assists per game<\/a> on 45\/39\/86 shooting splits \u2014 New York\u2019s offense, on the whole, has dipped down below league-average over the past several weeks.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n And while the offense has been markedly better in Brunson\u2019s minutes than when he\u2019s taken a seat, it\u2019s still performed like a fringe-top-10 outfit with the captain on the ball<\/a> rather than the league-best-caliber murderer\u2019s row it was in his floor time<\/a> earlier in the season.\u00a0That\u2019s not nearly effective enough to overcome the kind of defensive hemorrhaging that the Knicks have been suffering with him on the floor \u2014 and a level of slippage that feels like, if not regression, at least a bit of reversion to old habits.<\/p>\n [Get more Knicks news: New York team feed<\/a>]<\/p>\n Brunson\u2019s usage rate<\/a>, time of possession<\/a>, seconds per touch<\/a> and dribbles per touch<\/a> are all up during this downturn from<\/a> where<\/a> they<\/a> were<\/a> earlier this season, and the Knicks are throwing about 16 fewer passes per game<\/a> than they were earlier this season<\/a>. Against the Pistons, Brunson ended 42.4% of the Knicks\u2019 offensive possessions<\/a> with a shot attempt, foul drawn or turnover \u2014 the kind of gargantuan usage that he\u2019d begun to eschew during the Knicks\u2019 hot start, and the kind of ball-dominant, isolation-heavy style of play from which Brown was brought in, in part, to steer New York\u2019s offense away.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not getting off [the ball] like we were in the past,\u201d Brown told reporters<\/a> after the Detroit loss. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to make quick decisions, and as soon as you feel another body come to you, you\u2019ve got to get off it. And right now, we\u2019re not doing it. We\u2019re holding onto it too much, trying to force the issue too much. […] You\u2019ve got to play off two feet, you\u2019ve got to spray the basketball, and you\u2019ve got to rely on your teammates to make decisions once you do spray it.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n On one hand, it\u2019s difficult to blame Brunson for taking it upon himself to shoulder a heavier offensive burden when few, if any, of his teammates seem up to the task of dribbling through defensive pressure without losing the ball or generating and making shots against tight coverage. On the other, it\u2019s an approach that can kickstart a vicious cycle: stagnant possessions begetting misses and turnovers that give opponents the opportunity to attack in transition against a Knicks defense that isn\u2019t set, increasing the likelihood that they score, forcing New York to take the ball out and bring it up the floor against a defense that is set in the half-court, leading to stagnant possessions that beget misses and turnovers, and so on, and so on.<\/p>\n (It can become a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: Are Towns, Anunoby, Bridges, et al., struggling to catch a rhythm and make plays because they\u2019re reduced to bystanders while Brunson\u2019s trying to cook? Or is Brunson having to try to cook so much because they \u2014 most notably Towns, who has played well all-around this season<\/a>, but has seen his touches and offensive production dip<\/a> as he adjusts to a new system<\/a> under Brown \u2014 are struggling to catch a rhythm and make plays?)<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Those cycles can turn virtuous, too. More intentional attacking, quicker decisions and better ball\/body movement can lead to better, more open shots (and, if defenders are scrambling and out of position, more offensive rebounding opportunities). Make those, and you get the chance to set your defense more often, giving you a better shot of getting the kind of stops that give you the chance to run and hunt early offense. String enough of those sorts of sequences together, and you\u2019re on the front foot, acting as the aggressor and knocking the opposition back on its heels \u2014 playing to the win-the-possession-battle identity<\/a> that the Knicks, at their best, wield like a weapon<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bad news is that the Knicks haven\u2019t done much of that lately. The good news, Brown noted, is that they\u2019ve done it before, and they\u2019re capable of doing it again.<\/p>\n![\"ATLANTA,](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/228a2ea1-da72-45c2-9a79-e48b049222d0.jpeg\"\/)
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