Derek Fisher’s New York Knicks have had a strong finish to a rough season, but at the end of the road, the finality of the situation set in on Friday night.
The New York roster has been shaken up countless times throughout the season, only to be reconstructed with rookies and journeymen players, and as Coach Fish identified, the reality of what the end of the season meant for many of the players in blue and orange sucked the energy from the Knicks locker room before their season-ending 112-90 defeat to the Detroit Pistons.
“It was heavy for our guys, the reality that this might be their last game,” Fish explained. “We have a number of guys on our roster who have been in situations where the job next year for them isn’t guaranteed. I think that weighed a lot on them tonight. The energy just wasn’t there. It was just a very heavy moment for them.”
Though the team could never get untracked as a group, which ultimately led to their defeat, the Knicks did have two spark plugs on Wednesday. New York forward Cole Aldrich set a career-high with 24 points and added 15 rebounds. Guard Tim Hardaway Jr. led all scorers with 25 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the floor.
Like many of the New York players, Hardaway has endured an up-and-down campaign with the Knicks, his second season in the league and in New York. The sophomore missed much of the latter half of the season with a wrist injury, but returned and showed some major promise, ending the season with a combined 48 points in the last two games.
As Fish alluded afterward, having the game of basketball taken away from him while being injured ultimately helped the second generation player to improve upon return.
“Tim learned a lot about himself and what’s possible out there on the floor when he was out with the injury,” Derek said. “I think he has been a different player since he’s been back. He’s attacking the basket, being aggressive, talking and communicating more on defense, which was a big area of growth for him.”
While Hardaway played with great effort on both ends of the floor Wednesday, the Knicks lacked that as a whole.
New York had shown some incredible energy down the stretch of the season, resulting in a string of three wins in five games that gave the players a reason to feel a little bit better about the progress they’d made over the course of a difficult campaign . The Knicks even rode a two-game winning streak into the season finale against the Pistons, but they fell flat in that final loss.
The team’s lack of energy showed up in the minute details of the game. Turnovers were a problem for the Knicks all night. New York coughed it up 20 times, while getting just 12 takeaways. The Knicks also shot poorly from the charity stripe, sinking just 63 percent (17-for-27) of their free throws.
As a result the Pistons never trailed in the game. Detroit jumped out to a 9-4 lead and the Knicks briefly closed the gap to tie the game at 11. But from there, the Pistons went on a 12-3 run and by the end of the opening frame they held a nine-point advantage, in front 34-25.
Neither team gained an advantage in the second quarter, where both teams tallied 21 points and the Pistons took a 55-46 lead into the half.
After the break, New York mounted a rally. Aldrich narrowed the gap to just three points when he hit a running hook shot to bring the score to 66-63 with 5:45 remaining in the third. But Detroit answered with a run that put the game out of reach.
An 18-7 run by the visiting Pistons to end the third frame gave them an 84-70 lead after three quarters. The Knicks couldn’t mount much of an answer in their final quarter of the season. They scored just 20 points in the frame and fell by 22 points.
In total it was a rough season for the Knicks, but it became all about building for the future, and Coach Fish believes New York succeeded from that standpoint.
“It obviously was a difficult season for us. We were forced to deal with some realities,” said Derek. “We got a lot accomplished internally, and I think we set some new standards on what we expect from players who play for this organization.”
Derek and the New York brass will look to continue that process, as they now turn their attention to the offseason and this year’s draft, where they are guaranteed a Top 5 pick.
Heading into the draft lottery which will be held May 20th, the Knicks have a 19.9 percent chance to obtain the first-overall pick in the draft, the second best chance of any team in the league behind only the Minnesota Timberwolves, who finished with the league’s worst record, one game worse than New York.
The 2015 NBA Draft is slated for Thursday, June 26th, and NBA free agency opens five days later.