They tried as hard as they possibly could to give it away, but the New York Knicks narrowly escaped Philadelphia with a 112-109 victory over the 76ers. It’s the team’s second straight victory, marking their first winning streak of 2026.
Despite the road win over a playoff team in the Eastern Conference, multiple pressing issues persisted for New York. These problems must be addressed promptly if the Knicks want to extend their winning streak.
1. The starting lineup remains a liability
Before Saturday’s game, we discussed the limitations of New York’s primary five-man combination: the starting lineup of Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Across a mammoth sample size of minutes between the 2024-25 regular season, the 2025 playoffs, and this year’s regular season, that particular combination has definitively shown it is not strong enough to be the starting lineup of a championship team.
The Knicks have multiple alternative options that have displayed higher ceilings, but between Tom Thibodeau and now Mike Brown, they insist on spamming this mediocre starting lineup.
The win in Philadelphia was the latest example of this lineup’s hard-capped ceiling.
New York used their starting lineup for 10 minutes against the 76ers, and they got outscored by 5 points in those minutes. In 38 minutes without that grouping on the court, the Knicks outscored Philadelphia by 8 points.
It is not ideal when you have to rely on the bench to dig the team out of holes dug by the starters. It’s supposed to be the other way around.
On the year, this five-man combo now has a net rating of +3.4 across 168 minutes. It is almost identical to the +3.3 net rating that it had in 940 minutes across the 2024-25 regular season. These are mediocre numbers for the lineup that is supposed to be the strongest on the roster of a championship-hopeful team. Compare them to the net ratings of the current starting lineups used by the Detroit Pistons (+8.4) and the Boston Celtics (+17.4).
At what point will the Knicks admit the reality that stares them in the face?
Josh Hart has to sit, and he needs to be replaced by either Mitchell Robinson or Miles McBride (preferably the latter). If the Knicks trot out this lineup in the playoffs against Detroit or Boston, they will consistently dig themselves into deep holes.
A switch must be made sooner rather than later so a new lineup can build chemistry ahead of the playoffs.
This is not an indictment of Hart. He was a +5 in New York’s win. The fact of the matter is simply that Hart has a better impact when involved in any combination besides the exact five-man grouping that New York insists on starting each night.
In Philly, Hart was a +10 when used in any five-man combination besides the starting lineup.
If Brown closely studies his team’s lineup data between this season and last, it will become clear to him that he is hurting the Knicks’ chances of victory by sending out one of their most mediocre five-man lineups to start each game. It’s concerning enough that we’re almost to February and he hasn’t figured this out yet, but we still have more than two months until the playoffs, so it’s not too late for him to do what’s right.
2. Karl-Anthony Towns still seems lost
While the Knicks pulled off the victory, they had to do it despite Karl-Anthony Towns essentially having a no-show.
Foul trouble limited Towns to 16 minutes; he eventually fouled out. When on the court, Towns was invisible on both ends.
Offensively, Towns only had seven true shot attempts (four FGA, three trips to the line), finishing with 10 points. Defensively, Towns was annihilated; per NBA.com, he allowed eight makes on just 10 field goal attempts (80% shooting), and that was in only 16 minutes.
New York had a defensive rating of 132.4 with Towns on the court, almost 16 points worse than any other player in a game where the Knicks played well defensively.
Towns finished with a -6, giving him the only negative plus-minus among the starters. New York was a +9 with him on the bench, representing a 15-point turnaround.
Over the last month, Towns has struggled mightily to play a central role in winning basketball. He has not had a game with more than 20 points and a positive plus-minus since Dec. 23 against the Timberwolves. Through that date, Towns had achieved this 12 times out of 29 games; since then, he has gone 16 straight games without doing it.
The Knicks have enough talent to scrape out some ugly regular-season wins with Towns playing like this, as they showed in Philadelphia, but they won’t go far in the playoffs unless he gets back to being who he was through the first 29 games.
3. The Knicks cannot make free throws on the road
There are many reasons why the Knicks have eight more wins at home than on the road. Perhaps the most glaring is their shocking disparity from the free-throw line, an issue that was extremely obvious in Philly.
Despite the win, New York made just 15 of their 26 free-throw attempts, a ghastly 57.7%. Multiple misses in clutch time opened the door for the 76ers to nearly complete a miraculous comeback.
For the season, the Knicks are shooting 82.7% on free throws at home (second-best in the NBA) and 74.6% on the road. The 8.1% drop-off is the largest in the NBA.
As much time as we spend poring over the complexity of schemes and lineup combinations, basketball is often a simple game. Sometimes, you just have to do a better job of making the ball go through the net.
Simple as that.
