Mike Brown acknowledged the Knicks are facing unfamiliar adversity and said the team now has a chance to show what they're made of in this challenging stretch.
The New York Knicks fell 130-119 to the Philadelphia 76ers on Saturday at Madison Square Garden, dropping both games of a back-to-back and falling into their first three-game losing streak since late October.
That October stretch was also the only other time the team had lost consecutive games this season.
After a hot streak in which they won 11 of 12 games, including their NBA Cup victory, the Knicks have struggled recently, going 4-5 over their last nine games and sitting at 5-5 since claiming the Cup.
"We're in an area that we're not used to, where you've hit a little bit of adversity," coach Mike Brown said. "I've never been part of a team that has not gone through adversity throughout the course of the year, whether we won it at the end of the season, or we were in the finals, or we had a halfway decent season. Every team is gonna hit it.
"Now for us, it's about: How do we respond?" he added. "How do we come out of it? This is a great opportunity for us to see what we're made of while we're going through this stretch."
"Right now we're not as physical as we should be… we're not navigating the ball screen as we should be," Brown said, citing struggles with pick-and-roll execution and foul trouble as contributing factors.
The Knicks currently sit at 23-12 on the season.
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