Knicks lose their third straight with a poor effort against the undermanned Magic

The Knicks have played some beautiful basketball this season but this game was not that. The Magic, with four starters out and not a single player on the floor averaging double digits, got the Knicks in a defensive slugfest and came out on top, sending the Knicks to a 103-94 defeat. It’s the first time all year the Knicks have lost three straight games.

New York played the game without Karl-Anthony Towns, who sat out with knee soreness, the third game he’s missed this season. It’s hard to blame this loss on Towns’ absence yet it’s clear the team struggled without their center. Jericho Sims got the start and it’s like playing 4-on-5 offensively with Sims in there, as he’s essentially afraid to shoot. This would have been an ideal time to get Ariel Hukporti some minutes but he was a DNP-CD.

The Knicks opened an early seven-point lead but it was all downhill from there. New York hit three of its first six shots from behind the arc and then went on to miss 15 straight 3-pointers, until Cameron Payne hit one in garbage time late in the fourth quarter.

For most of the night the Magic were equally bad from long distance. And then in the fourth quarter they hit four consecutive shots from behind the arc, with most of those coming at the end of the shot clock while the Knicks were trying to come back.

Orlando did a nice job of controlling tempo, playing very deliberately on offense and forcing the Knicks to use most of the shot clock on a majority of their possessions, too.

Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson each had 24 points to lead the Knicks, with Josh Hart adding 15 points and 14 rebounds. But once again, the Knicks got very little from their bench, as the reserves added 15 points in 53 minutes.

Of course, the bench production was hurt by Miles McBride missing his fourth straight game. And it didn’t help that the next most productive reserve, Payne, logged just 11 minutes. Precious Achiuwa was solid offensively, with 10 points in 22 minutes. But he notched a minus-14 with his time on the court.

The only player not to finish with a negative plus/minus was reserve Landry Shamet, who recorded a plus/minus of 0 in his 20 minutes on the floor. But Shamet is supposed to provide offense and he was 0-3 in the game.

New York returns to action Wednesday night, when it hosts the Toronto Raptors