New York Knicks face dauntingly difficult schedule ahead
The New York Knicks have the NBA’s second-worst record at 2-9 and with a challenging road ahead, the losses may continue to pile up.
To start the season, the NBA schedule has not been too kind to the New York Knicks. They have already played seven games on the road and have come up short in all but one of them. Unfortunately for fans of the blue and orange, they should not be expecting the team to add to their win total much at all over the next few weeks.
New York is heading into arguably the most difficult part of their schedule all season.
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From Nov. 20 to Dec. 10, the Knicks are slated to play 10 games; nine against teams with expectations if making the postseason. Over this span they will play the Philapdelphia 76ers twice while also facing off against the Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Milwaukee Bucks.
One could argue that these squads are the four best in the Eastern Conference, so to play them all within a three-week time frame spells trouble for a youthful, inexperienced New York roster.
The aforementioned Eastern Conference powerhouses own a combined 31-11 record thus far. The Celtics are playing inspired basketball to begin the new campaign, atop the East with the NBA’s best record at 9-1.
Toronto is second in the East at 8-3, Milwaukee is tied with the Miami Heat at 7-3 and Philadelphia is a half-game back in a fifth-place deadlock with the Indiana Pacers at 7-4.
The Knicks will also take on the Pacers and Brooklyn Nets during this 10-game span and while they are not contenders, both groups plan on reaching the playoffs and will be a tough out for New York regardless.
Two of the last four games of this brutally difficult stretch of outings will be against some of the best in the West. The Denver Nuggets will stop by Madison Sqaure Garden on Dec. 5 and the Knicks will head to Portland Dec. 10 to take on the Trail Blazers in the Moda Center.
Denver is 7-3 and fourth in the West. The Trail Blazers, on the other hand, have struggled to begin the year, and as a result are 4-8 which places them 13th in the conference. Despite this, look for Portland to turn things around by the time the two franchises meet weeks from now.
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Led by Damian Lillard, the Blazers are a versatile and talented bunch and their conference finals appearance last season was certainly no fluke.
It would be wishful thinking to believe that the Knicks will manage to win more than a handful of games from Nov. 20 to Dec. 10. New York will be battling some of the best teams in the league on a nightly basis for three straight weeks. The Knicks may struggle to maintain a high level of competitiveness at times, something that has been a somewhat common occurrance in 2019-20.
It will be interesting to see how New York performs during this period against top competition. Will RJ Barrett continue to impress against some of the association’s best teams? Will one of these games cost coach David Fizdale his job? Only time will well.
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Regardless of how the Knicks fare from late November through early December, the organization seems to be in an upward trend considering their plethora of young, developing talent.