In the final minutes of the Knicks’ blowout loss to Cooper Flagg and the Dallas Mavericks on Monday at Madison Square Garden, Knicks fans booed their team.
And the team’s stars didn’t blame them.
“I’d be booing us, too,” team captain Jalen Brunson told Alan Hahn of the MSG Network in the locker room after the team’s fourth straight loss.
“You spend $140 to represent your favorite player with a jersey, or more,” Knicks big man and New Jersey native Karl-Anthony Towns told reporters. “You come to MLK Day here at The Garden and tickets are three times the price and to come here and spend your hard-earned money, money that you’ve saved up to bring your family to this game...I’d be disappointed, too.”
The Knicks had Brunson and Josh Hart back from injuries and were playing a Dallas team that entered 4-15 on the road and was missing several key players.
Yet the Knicks got down by 30 points and were completely dominated en route to a 114-97 loss.
New York is now 2-9 since New Year’s Eve and is just half a game ahead of the Toronto Raptors for the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Knicks announcers Clyde Frazier and Mike Breen weighed in, too, with Breen saying a performance like this could incentivize team president Leon Rose to make a trade ahead of the deadline Feb 5.
“Knicks fans like me [are] very concerned with the way the team is playing,” Frazier said.
Added Breen: “As we said the other night, it’s certainly not time to panic yet, but it’s major concerns right now on how the team has responded to some of this and these are the kinds of games [that] could bring the front office with the different approach to the trading deadline coming up...There’s all sorts of rumors of players being out, we’ll see what happens. The trading deadline coming up in February.”