The Knicks already had posted several impressive wins this season against some of the NBA’s expected top teams, including Milwaukee, Utah and Boston.
A toe-to-toe victory Sunday would have rocked a full Garden from its foundation to the rafters, but the Knicks ran out of steam inside their empty home arena and their league-leading defense couldn’t stop Los Angeles’ stars in a mostly entertaining 129-115 loss to the high-rolling Clippers.
“They put a lot of pressure on you,” Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “We work, but they put tremendous pressure on you. They also, to their credit, and there’s a reason why they have that record, they play very hard and they play very unselfishly.
“I thought offensively, it was good. Defensively, it’s not what we would have liked.”
Rookie point guard Immanuel Quickley appeared poised to front a comeback from a 12-point third-quarter deficit with 11 of his 25 points off the bench in the fourth, including a couple of 3-pointers to draw the Knicks (9-12) within two with under eight minutes remaining.
But former Knicks forward Marcus Morris, who was traded at last year’s deadline for the eventual 25th-overall pick that enabled the Knicks to draft Quickley, dropped in a corner 3 to reopen the LA lead to nine. Kawhi Leonard (28 points) pushed it back over double digits with 5:40 to go as the title-contending Clippers (16-5) pulled away.
The Knicks pushed the Clippers but ultimately lost 129-115 this afternoon at the Garden. NBAE via Getty Images“It takes a lot. It takes a game plan, game-plan discipline. It takes a little bit of luck. It takes effort. It takes really everything to really go your way. And sometimes it doesn’t,” Quickley said. “Coming in as a rookie, I haven’t seen everything. But what I seen tonight — they were making a lot of tough shots. That’s a credit to them.
“I feel like we tried the best we could. Our energy and effort, I feel like, was there. They just made some really good plays, so credit to them. … Honestly, I feel like we did a good job, just not a great job, not good enough to beat a team like that.”
Reggie Jackson finished with 18 points and Paul George had 17 as the Clippers shot 17-for-38 (44.7 percent) from 3-point range and 54.3 percent overall.
Julius Randle, who said afterward that the Clippers “absolutely” were the best team the Knicks have faced this season, recorded 27 points and 12 rebounds, while RJ Barrett added 23 on 9-for-14 shooting for the Knicks. They will play their next two games Monday and Wednesday in Chicago, where Thibodeau coached the Bulls from 2010-15.
From the start, this wasn’t a typical lethargic afternoon tipoff at MSG, as each team shot better than 50 percent from the floor in a back-and-forth first half. The result was a high-scoring 66-65 lead for the Clippers at the break.
The Knicks buried eight of their first 10 from the field, and they led by seven on Barrett’s steal and slam with just under three minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Quickley provided another spark off the bench with 10 points in the second, while Randle and Barrett combined for 29 before halftime, helping the Knicks stay within one, 66-65, at intermission.
The Clippers netted the first seven points of the second half and they built the first double-digit lead (12) for either team, with Jackson scoring 10 in the session for a 101-91 game entering the final quarter.
“One hundred and fifteen points should be good enough to get a win,” Thibodeau said. “The thing is, you have to play 48 minutes against them. I thought we played overall very well in the first half, but the start of the third quarter, we started slowly and it gave them a cushion. And then we played from behind and that made it different for us.”
