Mike Brown skewers ‘nonexistent’ Knicks defense after loss to Bulls

CHICAGO — Knicks head coach Mike Brown didn’t sugarcoat it.

After watching his team fall 135-125 to the Bulls on Halloween – their third straight loss and a winless finish to their first road trip of the season – Brown spoke about the lack of defensive effort from his players.

“Our ability to protect the basketball was not good in the first half. We were getting blown out possession after possession and guys were finishing at the rim without any help on defense. And if we provided help, they were spraying the ball like they were playing, and we didn’t have the shooters. We didn’t get close for a purpose and get to their air space to make them uncomfortable,” Brown said after his team fell below .500 for the first time this year.

“Our defense tonight was non-existent and it starts with guarding the basketball. We have to guard the basketball better. And it has to be with a physical sense because if we don’t do that, teams will do exactly what Chicago did tonight on the offensive end of the court.”

The Bulls broke through New York’s defense from the first point. They scored 35 points in the first quarter and 37 in the second, turning a game that looked even on paper into a mismatch on the court. Six Chicago players finished in double figures, including a career-high 32 points from Josh Giddey and 26 from Nikola Vucevic.

“They got what they wanted,” said team captain Jalen Brunson, who led the Knicks with 29 points on 12-of-25 shooting.

Brown pointed to the lack of discipline in the game plan as the root cause. The Knicks allowed Bulls reserve Ayo Dosunmu to torch them for 22 points on 8-of-10 shooting — many of them in near identical fashion.

“I know there’s a lot of things game plan-wise that we didn’t stick to, and I can give you a great example: Ayo is a good player,” Brown said. “But seven of his baskets, probably six, were going to his right hand. And we don’t want to give up the outside first of all, and secondly, we don’t want him to be able to reach his right hand and we made this possession after possession after possession.”

The breakdowns did not stop there. The Knicks also gave up 17 threes on 37 Bulls attempts — a byproduct, Brown said, of overly aggressive and undisciplined closeouts that gave Chicago driving lanes and second-chance looks.

The Bulls shot 17 of 37 from three-point range, continuing a troubling early-season pattern for New York’s defense. Two nights earlier, the Bucks were 14 of 34 (41%) from deep in Milwaukee. Before that, the Heat connected on 13 of 37 (35%) in Miami.

“[The Bulls] I hit the paint too much and they were making shots,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “We knew how well they were playing before the game and we just didn’t do enough to play at that kind of level.”

Brown said the Knicks’ perimeter issues start with poor ball containment and overzealous closeouts that compromise the team’s helping rotations — a recipe that continues to produce the same result.

“When we get close to guys, we have to do our best to take away their air space, but not crush them. We passed about four or five guys in the first half and when that happens, they get to the paint, now the help comes, and that’s when the three sprays come,” Brown said. “So we’ve got to do a better job with the ball knowing who we’re guarding, and then on our closeouts, we’ve got to do a better job of closing out, getting out of airspace and sitting back and guarding.”

For the Knicks, it was a humiliating defensive failure – one that Brunson couldn’t explain, only his own.

“We just had no discipline in our game plan. We didn’t do what was asked of us,” he said. “The coach comes up with a game plan and it’s up to us to implement it. We can’t change the game plan if we don’t implement it enough. I don’t know what to say.”