Knicks Make It Close, Clippers Make It Count

 

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — There are nights in the NBA when the numbers look fine, the stars get theirs, and the box score politely suggests everything is under control. Then you look a little closer and realize the truth: the other team had the game in its hands almost the whole night.

That was Monday night for the New York Knicks.

The Clippers beat them 126–118 at Intuit Dome, and while the Knicks made enough late noise to keep the scoreboard respectable, the feeling around this one wasn’t about a comeback that fell short. It felt more like another game where the Knicks spent too long chasing.

Two straight road losses now. Three defeats in their last four games. For a team sitting third in the Eastern Conference, it’s the kind of stretch that makes people start asking whether this is a wobble — or the start of something worse.

Karl-Anthony Towns did everything you could reasonably ask from a big man trying to keep his team afloat. He finished with 35 points on 13-of-17 shooting, 12 rebounds, and seven assists before fouling out in the closing seconds. It was the kind of stat line that usually ends with a win.

It didn’t Monday.

Jalen Brunson gave the Knicks 28 points, OG Anunoby chipped in 22, and still it wasn’t enough because the Clippers had answers all night long — starting with Kawhi Leonard, who continues to move through the season with the quiet inevitability of a metronome.

Leonard scored 29 points, extending his streak to 42 straight games with at least 20 points, the second-longest active run in the league. No drama, no theatrics. Just buckets. One after another.

And the Clippers had plenty of help.

Bennedict Mathurin came off the bench and poured in 28 points, including 22 in the second half, the kind of scoring burst that tends to tilt games when a defense starts to tire. Darius Garland added 23 points and seven assists in his second start, and five Clippers finished in double figures.

The Knicks were chasing early.

Los Angeles opened the game by hitting four straight three-pointers, the basketball equivalent of a starter’s pistol. Suddenly the Knicks were down, the Clippers had rhythm, and the building had energy.

By halftime the Clippers led 64–55, thanks in large part to a mini duel between Leonard and Towns. Leonard scored 10 straight for L.A. at one point, and Towns answered with eight in a row for New York.

The problem was the Knicks never truly seized control of the game.

They tried in the third.

Backed by loud “Let’s go Knicks!” chants that echoed through the Intuit Dome — the kind of traveling crowd New York teams often bring to the West Coast — the Knicks chipped away at a 15-point deficit. Brunson sparked a 17–9 run, scoring six straight to help trim the gap.

By the end of the quarter the Knicks had it down to 88–81, and the game finally felt like it might flip.

But every time New York edged close in the fourth, the Clippers pushed them right back.

Three times in the final four minutes the Knicks got within five points. Three times Los Angeles answered. Mathurin finished a three-point play. Derrick Jones Jr. knocked down a dagger three. The last two minutes belonged to the Clippers.

Ballgame.

For Los Angeles, the win pushed them to 32–32, back to .500 for the first time since early November after starting the season in a brutal 6–21 tailspin. They’ve now won five of their first six games in March and are suddenly looking like a team determined to climb the Western Conference play-in ladder.

For the Knicks, the view is more complicated.

They remain one of the top teams in the East, but the road trip hasn’t gone smoothly. They also still haven’t won in Los Angeles against the Clippers since 2022, and Monday’s loss left them with a split in the season series.

The Knicks are too good, too deep, and too well coached to panic over a week of uneven basketball. That would be nonsense.

But the NBA season has a way of exposing small cracks before they become bigger ones.

The Knicks scored. Their stars produced. Their fans filled the building with noise three time zones from home.

And still they walked off the floor with another road loss.

Sometimes the box score lies.

Sometimes the scoreboard tells the truth.

Will the Real Knicks Please Stand Up?

 

The New York Knicks continue to play basketball like a team with two personalities.

One night they look like contenders. The next, like Sunday in Los Angeles, they look like a team still searching for itself.

The Los Angeles Lakers beat them 110–97 without LeBron James, which tells you plenty. Luka Dončić scored 35 points and controlled the game, while Austin Reaves added 25. The Lakers never trailed.

The Knicks made a run late, cutting a 23-point deficit to 10 when the Lakers went cold for six minutes in the fourth. But the Knicks did what inconsistent teams do: they wasted the opportunity.

They shot 8-for-34 from three and turned the ball over eight times in the fourth quarter.

Karl-Anthony Towns did his part with 25 points and 16 rebounds. Jalen Brunson scored 24, including 10 late.

And Mikal Bridges?
Twenty-seven minutes. Zero points.

That’s the Knicks in one stat line.

They started this trip by beating Denver. Two games later they can’t make a shot in Los Angeles against a team missing its biggest star.

Championship teams have bad nights. But they usually know who they are.

Right now the Knicks don’t.

History says inconsistent teams rarely win titles. The Houston Rockets in 1995 pulled it off behind Hakeem Olajuwon. The Dallas Mavericks did it in 2011 with Dirk Nowitzki.

But those teams found themselves when it mattered.

The Knicks are still looking for the real one.

Same Old Ending: Knicks Fall Short Again Against Thunder, 103–100

 

NEW YORK — The Knicks had the champs on the ropes for a moment Wednesday night. Naturally, it didn’t last.

The Oklahoma City Thunder walked into Madison Square Garden and walked out with a 103–100 win, the kind that looks competitive in the box score but leaves Knicks fans with that familiar hollow feeling. Close enough to convince yourself things are improving, far enough away to remind you how the story usually ends.

Chet Holmgren led the Thunder with 28 points and eight rebounds, tying a career high with six three-pointers. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 26 points, while Lu Dort chipped in 16 as Oklahoma City won its fourth straight. When the defending champions needed a bucket or a stop, they found one. When the Knicks needed the same, they found the rim.

New York had its chances. Plenty of them, actually.

Jalen Brunson finished with 16 points and a season-high 15 assists, but his shooting line — 5-for-18 — tells most of the story. OG Anunoby also scored 16, and Karl-Anthony Towns put up a respectable 17 points and 17 rebounds. Solid numbers. Hardworking numbers. The kind that look good until the final score reminds everyone that “solid” rarely beats “championship caliber.”

The Garden crowd got a brief taste of hope in the third quarter, which in Knicks history usually means the setup for disappointment. Down 63–48 midway through the period, New York exploded for a 24–9 run to claw back into the game. Brunson drilled a three-pointer that caught a friendly bounce to tie it, and Mikal Bridges buried another from deep with 1.2 seconds left in the quarter to give the Knicks an 80–77 lead.

For a moment, the building felt alive.

Then reality returned.

The Thunder calmly regained control early in the fourth quarter and spent the rest of the night doing what championship teams do: protecting a small lead like it was federal gold reserves. No panic, no mistakes, no dramatic collapses.

The Knicks, meanwhile, had the final possession with a chance to tie. Brunson missed a three. Anunoby missed another. Game over. Another night of “almost.”

Holmgren had set the tone long before that ending. The 7-foot-1 forward came out firing, scoring 14 points in the first quarter alone and knocking down four three-pointers. Oklahoma City built an early 44–31 lead before briefly forgetting how to score for five minutes, which is usually the only way teams let the Knicks hang around.

Holmgren eventually ended the drought with back-to-back threes late in the half, sending the Thunder to the locker room up 50–40.

There was also the usual bit of Garden drama. Early in the first quarter, the Knicks believed Gilgeous-Alexander should have been called for his third foul after crashing into Brunson. Instead, head coach Mike Brown picked up a technical while arguing the call, marking his first as Knicks coach. A fitting introduction to the experience of trying to beat a contender while hoping the officiating gods might blink first.

They didn’t.

The loss snapped New York’s three-game winning streak and served as a reminder of the thin margin separating hopeful playoff teams from actual champions. The Knicks, for all their effort, remain a team that fights, scrambles, rallies — and eventually comes up one possession short.

Two wins kept them from the NBA Finals last season. Nights like this make that distance feel much longer.

At some point, “close” stops being encouraging.

For Knicks fans, that realization arrived a long time ago.