{"id":550192,"date":"2026-01-21T03:22:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/550192\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T03:22:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:22:26","slug":"jalen-brunsons-telling-answer-is-at-crux-of-everything-for-flailing-knicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/550192\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson’s telling answer is at crux of everything for flailing Knicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jalen Brunson said a whole lot with just a few words.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have to care\u00a0a little more\u00a0about what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Brunson said after practice on Tuesday. \u201cIt has to mean a little more to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a team that entered the season with NBA Finals-or-bust expectations, it should not be a question midway through the year if the players \u201ccare\u201d or not. But a lack of \u201ceffort\u201d was a concerning theme in the locker room after the Knicks\u2019 114-97 loss to the Mavericks<\/a> on Monday night at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not so much talent or schematic issues that are plaguing the Knicks right now. It\u2019s something at a more baseline level that is threatening to derail their season<\/a>, having lost nine of their past 11 games and riding a four-game skid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Josh Hart, after Monday\u2019s game, made a pointed comparison between this year\u2019s team and last year\u2019s. A year ago, he said, the Knicks could overcome poor shooting or offensive showings with grit, physicality and defensive intensity. They could, to put it simply, outwork teams. But he has seen that trait dissipate this year.<\/p>\n

Most of the personnel, other than some changes to the bench, is the same. So what explains the difference?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. If I could answer that question, I don\u2019t think we\u2019d be having this conversation right now,\u201d Hart said Tuesday. \u201cWe just have to play with more energy, more physicality. You see how teams play, when we played recently in Phoenix, they picked guys up, they made guys uncomfortable on every possession, and that\u2019s something that we don\u2019t do. We don\u2019t do that until the second half and we\u2019re down 15 and we gotta try and make a comeback. We have to figure out how to do that for the whole game. Start the game and sustain it.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Tuesday\u2019s practice] felt like ass. We just got embarrassed. We got booed on our home court. It\u2019s not more embarrassing than that. And we\u2019ll see how we respond [Wednesday against the Nets]. How we\u2019ve been playing has not been up to our caliber and like I said, embarrassing. We have to fix that, no one\u2019s gonna fix it for us. We gotta dig ourselves out of the hole that we made. We have the capability of doing it, but now we have to stop talking and go out there and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JalenKnicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) when the team practiced Tuesday, January 20, 2026 at Madison Square Garden Training Center in Greenburgh, Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

Tom Thibodeau had long built a reputation for getting his teams to play hard and outwork opponents. Mike Brown had this year\u2019s team playing hard through the NBA Cup, but hasn\u2019t been able to light a fire in them during this downturn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to compare,\u201d Hart said. \u201cThibs was here for what, four or five years? And built that identity over a period of time. And what you saw last year and the year before, it was more set in stone. Now it\u2019s the same group of guys but it\u2019s a new philosophy, a new coach, a new system, new voices. So it\u2019s gonna take time to really forge and build that. And you really only forge and build that through adversity. In the sense that we\u2019re going through this adverse situation, it\u2019s a great opportunity to build.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miles McBride suggested Monday that the Knicks were riding too high after winning the NBA Cup and took their foot off the gas pedal. A day later, Brunson said \u201cthat could be part of it.\u201d They are 7-11 since the Cup and are now just 1 \u00bd games above the play-in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The first half of Monday\u2019s loss was a new low point of this season, giving up 75 points to a decimated Mavericks team. At halftime, Brown said he didn\u2019t talk much about X\u2019s and O\u2019s. He instead challenged them to \u201cdo your f\u2013king job.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Knicks outscored the Mavericks by 11 points in the second half. Brown chalked it up entirely to better effort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t change anything schematically in the second half,\u201d Brown said Tuesday. \u201cAnd there were more clips when it comes to showing the film that we pulled from the second half than the first half, that showed us doing our job the right way. The way that they talk about, the way that we talk about, the way that we drill it, the way that we watch it. We had more opportunities \u2014 clips that showed positives in the second half than the first half, and that can\u2019t be the case. We have to try to do it for 48 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NewKnicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) speaks at a press conference when the Knicks practiced Tuesday, January 20, 2026 at Madison Square Garden Training Center in Greenburgh, Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

True contenders shouldn\u2019t be talking this much about desire and effort. But, just over halfway through the year, that\u2019s where the Knicks find themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson said a whole lot with just a few words. \u201cWe just have to care\u00a0a little more\u00a0about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,288,327,304,6,1136,191,3810,3806,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-550192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-knicks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jalen-brunson","10":"tag-josh-hart","11":"tag-knicks","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkknicks","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115930946693936289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}