The New York Knicks had their four-game winning streak snapped when they suffered a 115-107 home loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers that dropped the Knicks to 6-5 on Wednesday night.
Certain stats clearly stuck out to Knicks head coach Mike Brown following his team’s defeat.
Mike Brown hopes “to get a little bit better whistle” in future games
“(Knicks captain Jalen Brunson) plays 34 minutes or almost 35 minutes and he has zero free-throw attempts,” Brown explained while speaking with reporters after the game, per Jared Schwartz of the New York Post. “That’s pretty alarming. I’m not sure how or why it’s that way. I know at one time, the free throw advantage was 18-3. That’s not why we lost the game, but you just hope to get a little bit better whistle when you’re playing a good team like that, because it’s already hard enough to go win a game. That was part of the reason why we lost the possession game.”
Schwartz noted that Wednesday’s contest was the first that Brunson finished without a free throwsince Feb. 11 last year. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Vincent Goodwill shared that Brunson entered the evening averaging a career-high 7.8 free-throw attempts per game.
As a team, the Cavaliers went 20-of-25 from the line. To compare, the Knicks were 11-of-11.
As Brown referenced, such disparity can’t be blamed for the fact that Cleveland’s James Harden produced his best outing, to date, of the young season. Harden went for a game-high 32 points, and he hit a massive three-pointer with under 4:30 remaining in the fourth quarter that took some life out of what had become an energized Madison Square Garden crowd.
“… James Harden had a great game as well,” Brown continued. “James shot as many free throws (9-of-11 from the line) as our whole team.”