There is never a good time for a 44-point loss, after which a coach says his team did not believe it could beat its opponent.
But David Fizdale sees otherwise, perhaps because his job depends on it. And the Knicks will have an immediate chance to prove him right that it was just one bad night — not an indication that this is just who they are — when the Nuggets visit the Garden on Thursday night.
“It’s a perfect thing, actually, that you can challenge exactly that thing that you felt like you were weak in,” Fizdale said Wednesday after practice. “You get to come back and answer the bell.”
The Eastern Conference-leading Bucks obliterated the Knicks 132-88 Monday night in Milwaukee. Now, as the Knicks (4-17) try to pull themselves off the mat after their worst showing during their current seven-game losing streak, the Nuggets (13-5) won’t offer much help.
Fizdale chalked the brutal Bucks loss up to “some games you just get your ass whooped.” Those who will decide Fizdale’s fate as coach seemed to agree, with a source telling The Post’s Marc Berman that Knicks brass saw it as a “one-off.”
But the danger of another whooping Thursday looms, even with the Knicks hoping to get Marcus Morris, Frank Ntilikina and Elfrid Payton back from injuries.
“Guys came in today, we had one of our best practices of the year and we worked on the things we felt like we didn’t take care of against Milwaukee and hopefully we can apply them against Denver,” Fizdale said.
Their mindset might have needed the most work. Fizdale made a damning comment after the Bucks loss, saying, “I think we didn’t come in with an idea we could beat this team from the beginning.”
Fizdale insisted Wednesday he had a “heck of a [pregame] message,” though it seemed to fall flat on its face. But he didn’t take that as a sign that his players have stopped listening to him.
“No, these dudes hear me. We’ve got a great group. We have a collection of character. Elfrid Payton’s running right now and the team is rooting him on,” Fizdale said, pointing to the other side of the gym where Payton was running sprints. “When you’ve got a bad group of guys that’s going their separate ways, you don’t have that type of stuff going on. I’ve been a part of teams like that before, everybody runs out of the gym as soon as the whistle blows and everybody goes their separate ways. But we have none of that going on.
“This group is connected and they’re just working every day to get better. They’re just approaching it as, ‘[At] some point we’re going to have our breakthrough and when we do, good things will start happening for us.’ ”
Those good things have been few and far between in the early going. The Knicks have two wins over the Mavericks on their résumé, two wins over sub-.500 teams and then a handful of other games where they were competitive before losing.
Monday’s blowout loss to the Bucks came four days after a 28-point clunker against the Raptors. For those to be the exception and not the norm, the Knicks will need to prove it Thursday against the Nuggets.
“We got to play together and let it go,” Morris said. “Expectations is nothing. We’re just putting too much pressure on ourselves to win games instead of just competing in games. If you do what you are supposed to do, the game will take care of itself.”
For more on the Knicks, listen to the latest episode of the “Big Apple Buckets” podcast:
