New York Knicks' Problems Go Well Beyond the Talent Gap

BOSTON — Three games into their season and the New York Knicks already appear to be gunning for the title of Worst Team in the NBA.

It's not just the losses, though there have been plenty of those. There have been three to start the new season following the five in the preseason, all of which have come without the team notching a single victory, which is why the context of a winless preseason suddenly begins to carry more weight. Exhibition games are usually poor predictors, but in the Knicks' case, they're beginning to appear prophetic.

Two of the Knicks' three regular-season losses have been embarrassing blowout defeats. In the third, they blew a 21-point second-quarter lead against the Detroit Pistons, who were on the second night of a road back-to-back. The defense looks clueless, the offense stale. As current ESPN analyst and former Brooklyn Nets executive Bobby Marks pointed out in the middle of the Knicks' embarrassing 110-89 road loss to the Boston Celtics, effort in general is lacking.

But losing sometimes happens, and this, year one of the post-Carmelo Anthony era, is supposed to be a rebuilding year. This is also a year when the Knicks actually own their first-round draft pick. Nabbing good lottery odds and drafting a young stud to flank Kristaps Porzingis is not a bad path.

Thing is, unless you have a once-in-a-generation talent like LeBron James, there's more to remaking a franchise than simply finding some talented dudes. You need an infrastructure, and you need a culture. Not because they're buzzy TED Talks phrases, but so you can better foster your talent and, once the roster is properly stacked, quickly and smoothly morph into a competitor.

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It's here where the Knicks are both failing and flailing.

Defense is an area that a rebuilding team can laser in on. Constructing a foundation doesn't require waiting for the big fish to arrive. It's about picking the proper scheme, deciding what shots to take away from the other team and making that part of your identity. Whatever that identity is, it should include walling off the rim and funneling shooters away from the corners.

Last year, head coach Jeff Hornacek's first season with the team, the Knicks surrendered more looks at the rim than anyone and allowed opposing shooters to camp out in the corners, according to Cleaning the Glass. So far this season, both of these trends have continued.

Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

In fact, many of the Knicks' current issues can be traced back to Hornacek, a coach already on both the hot seat and thin ice. (Maybe his hot seat is on thin ice?)

There's his insistence on playing Porzingis at the 4, alongside another big, which not only wastes some of Porzingis' unicorn talent but also prevents the offense from having the sort of spacing required to take advantage of mismatches. There were multiple possessions Tuesday night where the Celtics switched a smaller defender onto Porzingis following a screen, only to switch back before the ball could be delivered to him in the post. The reason? With Enes Kanter camped out in the paint, there's always a second big defender just a few steps away.

"We messed up on a lot of plays where the ball wasn't getting delivered on time or one or two guys not being on the same page as far as the play-calling," Courtney Lee said afterward. "That's on us. We've got to pay attention more in practice, make sure we execute more when we're out there."

And then there's Hornacek's mystifying decision to bury Willy Hernangomez, an All-Rookie team selection last year, at the end of the bench. Hornacek has yet to fully clarify the call. He's mentioned Hernangomez's poor defense. That sounds fine, except it doesn't explain why Kanter, who finished as the third-worst-rated center last season, according to ESPN's defensive real plus/minus metric—and whose former head coach was caught on camera appearing to tell an assistant that you "can't play Kanter" after watching yet another opposing pick-and-roll end in a dunk—is seeing 25-plus minutes a game.

Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

Hornacek's approach to player development also appears problematic. On Tuesday, he was asked about Porzingis' improved post game.

"I'm sure he worked on it over the summer," Hornacek said. Asked if that meant he wasn't aware of what aspect of his game Porzingis was addressing over the summer, Hornacek responded:

"Well, great players know what they need to work on. You ask guys that have been in the league for 10 years they'll tell you, 'I'm working on this this summer'; they take ownership. Sometimes that's better than having a list of things. ... No one told us [when I was playing in the NBA] what to work on, you figure it out yourself."

Perhaps. But that's not how other franchises approach the offseason.

"Whether it's a text, whether it's giving them a plan, whether it's a call, we're in constant touch with these guys," Brooklyn Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson said Wednesday night when asked how his coaching staff attacks offseason development. "Really, we try to make sure nothing falls through the crack, and that's not only from a basketball standpoint, it's performance too."

On the surface, each of these issues may seem minor. It's (very) early. Offenses evolve and defenses jell. But it's not just that the Knicks are bad now—which, considering they own their first-round selection this season, on the surface isn't the worst thing. It's that we're just three games into the year and already the entire infrastructure seems on the brink of collapse.

Losing games is one thing. Losing games while simultaneously failing to build for your future is what turns one-year rebuilding projects into five-year affairs and places the crown of Worst Team in the NBA upon a franchise's head.

Yaron Weitzman covers the Knicks and NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow Yaron on Twitter, @YaronWeitzman, and listen to his Knicks-themed podcast here.