New York Knicks: Already As Many Losses As 2012-13
By now, it’s no secret that the New York Knicks have become the NBA’s laughingstock this season.
We’re not even through the 2014 portion of the league’s schedule, and the Knicks have already had separate losing streaks of seven, 10 and now currently, eight games.
As a club that’s operating in its 69th season, New York is off to its worst start in franchise history and is presently on a team-high eight-game home losing streak.
Through Sunday night, Dec. 28, the Knicks led the league in losses and incredibly have a lone victory in their past 19 games, dating back to the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Despite being largely competitive in many of their games, New York has managed to lose 17 of 20 games this year in which they were within five points or less, with five minutes remaining.
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Yet to put the Knicks’ futility in its proper perspective, one has to see how far New York has fallen so fast, and what the team’s latest loss (in Portland, on Sunday night) represented.
It was only two seasons ago that franchise star Carmelo Anthony was winning his first league scoring title and J.R. Smith, his only Sixth Man of the Year Award, while helping the Knicks to a 54-28 record and the club’s first division title since 1994.
Contrast that with New York’s current record of 5-28, and the rapid descent is shocking.
Only two seasons later, the Knicks have already reached the same number of losses in a mere 33 games that they had in their entire 2012-13 season.
Or to put it in even more unbelievable terms: New York has FORTY-NINE (!) fewer wins by the time the Knicks reached the same number of losses they had two years ago.
Sure, there have been a lot of changes since then. There’s an entirely new coaching staff now. Tyson Chandler is no longer around. The leadership of Jason Kidd is gone, as is the accountability provided by Rasheed Wallace and the positive locker room presence of Kurt Thomas and Marcus Camby, even though those last three didn’t play that much for New York.
However, the core is still very much the same. The team is still built around Anthony, and key holdovers in Smith, Iman Shumpert, Amar’e Stoudemire and Pablo Prigioni haven’t gone anywhere.
So a decline, especially after seeing the Knicks drop by 17 wins, to 37 victories last year, wasn’t that surprising.
But a similar core group of players already losing as many games with only FIVE wins, that it had while putting up FIFTY-FOUR wins only two years ago, is a stunning turn of events.
With all of the other mindboggling and depressing numbers New York has posted this season, that comparison, and knowing that before we even reach New Year’s Day, the Knicks would already have to run the table, at 49-0, just to match what they did two years ago, points out just how bad things have become for them this year.
All that may be left is whether New York will shatter a team mark for its worst season ever, when the Knicks had a .263 winning percentage (going 21-59) in 1962-63, and even reach 70 losses — which at 5-28, they’re on pace to do.
That could be the largest measure of showing just how bad things have become for a team that in only 20 months has gone from 54-28 to 5-28.