Post Game Reaction: Nuggets 131 Knicks 123

The New York Knicks were back in action tonight against the Denver Nuggets. The last few days the drama between the Charles Oakley ejection and the Melo trade rumors have been the main topic of discussion. Tonight the Knicks only thought that they needed to play on end of the court. In a high scoring game, the Knicks lost to the Nuggets 131-123. There was very little defense being played and it felt like an All-Star game as both teams were getting up and down the court, scoring with ease. 

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The Nuggets were missing three starters Mudiay, Faried and Gallo, yet still scored 131pts, which tells me that either the Nuggets are a deep team or the Knicks are just a bad defensive team. Most likely it was a mix of both. The Nuggets were led by Jokic with 40pts, 19 pts from Chandler, 16pts 12asts from Nelson and 16pts from Gary Harris. The Knicks got 33pts from Melo, 17pts from Porzingis and 15 pts from Lee. Scoring was not the problem for either team. This was a game that the Knicks needed to win as they were at full strength and should have taken advantage of a young Nuggets team playing on the road. Lets breakdown what happened. 

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Jokic is a beast. If you have never seen Jokic play, you are missing out on one of the best young big man in the game. All Jokic did was score 40pts 9rebs and dish out 5asts. He was hitting threes and hitting hook shots in the post. He was scoring with so much ease and was the focal point of the Nuggets offense. When you watch him play he reminds you of Marc Gasol, a guy that can dominate in different ways. This is something that Porzingis will need to learn to do. Clearly Jokic is the better player than Porzingis at the moment. The Knicks had no answer for him. 

The Knicks defense keeps getting worse. The Knicks lack of defense was evident all night. If you just looked at the final score you knew there was no defense being played. They gave up 131pts to a roster that was missing 3 starters. That is unbelievable. The lack of effort has become a troubling problem. The Nuggets shot 57% from the field, hitting 16 threes. They also had 68 paint points. So they did not stop the Nuggets from scoring inside or from hitting the three-ball. You cannot win games, when you let teams do whatever they want. This was an unacceptable outing by the Knicks. Hornacek tried switching things up by playing some role players like Ron Baker, Kyle O'Quinn and Hernangomez but they did very little to change the intensity on defense. 

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If you are a fan of basketball, it was a fun game to watch as the game was free-flowing and up and down the court. But as a Knick fan it has to be troubling as they played very little defense. I am not sure they even played this bad when Mike D'Antonio was the coach. Until these guys put more effort on defense, the Knicks are going to lose more games. They maybe fun to watch as they will score 100-110 points every night but will also give up 120-125pts as well. Even tonight, Melo scored 20pts in the 4th and that was fun and all but at the end of day the Knicks still lost the game. The Knicks next game is on Sunday, lets see if they put in more effort.