Knicks captain Jalen Brunson is placing the onus for his team’s free-fall squarely on the players, not the coaching staff.
The superstar point guard reportedly called a players-only meeting following New York’s blowout loss at Madison Square Garden to the lowly Dallas Mavericks, which was its ninth defeat in the last 11 games.
As first reported by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Brunson told his teammates that they “needed to find answers for their poor play in January among themselves, rather than look to the coaching staff for solutions.”
The Knicks’ current stretch is the equivalent of the sprinting cartoon character stepping on a rake and having the handle hit them squarely in the face. They looked like legitimate championship contenders with first-year head coach Mike Brown after starting the 2025-26 season 23-9, including an NBA Cup title, their first major piece of silverware since 1973.
Over their last 10 games, prior to Wednesday night’s matchup with the Brooklyn Nets, the Knicks’ 107.1 points per game ranked second-worst in the NBA, while their 43.4% field goal percentage ranked dead last. Opponents are shooting 37.5% from three-point range, which is fourth-worst in the league.
It came to a head on Monday when they entered the locker room at halftime, serenaded by boos down by 30, 75-45, against a Mavericks team that is 12th in the Western Conference.
When asked if the team has to start doing some soul searching, Brunson admitted that “it should’ve started a couple weeks ago.”
Josh Hart said the effort was “embarrassing.”
“I think we all need to do some soul-searching, some looking in the mirror,” Hart said (h/t SNY). “Figuring out what we’re going to do individually, what we’re going to do as a team, what our identity is. Right now, we’re playing embarrassing basketball. We’re not executing on the offensive end. Defensively, we’ve been abysmal. We’ve been terrible defensively all year.”
