For all the focus on the Knicks’ improved offense early this season, their defense has always remained the No. 1 priority of coach Tom Thibodeau.
On Monday night at the Garden, it went missing for the bulk of two quarters and it cost the Knicks a win.
After storming out to a 15-point lead early in the second quarter, the Knicks fell apart with a combination of poor defense and sloppy turnovers as they fell to the undermanned Raptors, 113-104.
“I think they just played harder than us, honestly,” RJ Barrett said. “In the NBA, most of the time, the hardest-playing team is going to win.”
The loss snapped the Knicks’ three-game winning streak, which they had reeled off after a similar loss to the Magic last Monday in which they were outworked by an opponent they felt they should have beaten.
“You can get a win, feel good, and usually that’s when you get knocked down,” Thibodeau said. “You start feeling too good about yourself, you’re not going to have the right edge. Every game you have to be honest. … I believe in the character of this team. We got great character. We’re disciplined. But we got to get back in there tomorrow and get to work.”
The Raptors (5-3), who were missing rookie Scottie Barnes and All-Star Pascal Siakam to injuries, started their comeback in the second quarter and opened the floodgates in the third, when they poured in 38 points to take the lead for good. OG Anunoby led the way with 36 points while Gary Trent Jr. chipped in 26 points.
Barrett scored 27 points as he tried to will the Knicks (5-2) back into the game in the fourth quarter, but they had built too big of a hole to climb out of. Julius Randle, after piling up 18 points in a scorching first quarter, scored only four points the rest of the game.
The Knicks committed 17 turnovers, matching a season-high, and were outscored 21-3 in fast-break points.
“It was really the middle of the second quarter, that’s where the game turned,” Thibodeau said. “So we got back on our heels, we turned the ball over, we gave them fast breaks, then we gave them hope. Third quarter we got drilled.”
After going on an 18-7 run to close within 57-53 at the half, the Raptors went ahead 58-57 just 90 seconds into the third quarter — their first lead since 2-0.
The teams then traded baskets until the Raptors began to catch fire from downtown to pull away. In a nearly three-minute span beginning at the 6:28 mark, the Raptors hit five straight 3-pointers, the last one from Fred VanVleet to put them ahead 85-74 and force Thibodeau to call a timeout.
The Raptors stretched their lead to as many as 14 points before taking a 91-79 advantage into the fourth quarter and never let it go.
The Knicks didn’t help themselves as turnovers led to fast-break opportunities for the Raptors. They also gave up 16 second-chance points while allowing the Raptors to bring down 13 offensive rebounds.
“[The defense] wasn’t good,” Randle said. “They got to 100 pretty fast. Yeah, it wasn’t good. And a lot of that, too, was second-chance points.”
Randle came out firing with 18 points in the first quarter on 5 of 6 shooting from the field, 4 of 5 from deep and 4 of 4 from the line. He scored more points in the opening 12 minutes than he had in any of his previous three games.
But he was held scoreless in the second quarter as the Knicks began to fall apart and never got his groove back the rest of the night.
“Just flow of the game, I guess,” said Randle, who insisted the Raptors did “nothing” different defensively after the first quarter. “I don’t know.”