The New York Knicks don’t have a lot going for them right now, and that applies to the defensive side of the ball as well.
According to Ian Begley of ESPN on Wednesday, some of the team’s veterans have begun to privately express frustration with the defensive scheme of associate head coach Kurt Rambis.
Rambis was put in charge of the defense after the Knicks began the season dead last in defensive efficiency through their first six games. The hope was that Rambis could jump-start the team on that end of the floor, but the results have been marginal at best with the Knicks now 26th in defensive efficiency through 39 games (per ESPN). Their 108.6 points allowed per game also ranks 25th in the league and second-worst in the Eastern Conference.
Begley’s report does not include any names. But it’s worth noting that Courtney Lee (who played under Dave Joerger in Memphis and Steve Clifford in Charlotte), Lance Thomas (who played under Monty Williams in New Orleans), and Joakim Noah (who was a Defensive Player of the Year under Tom Thibodeau in Chicago) are all veterans on the Knicks roster who come from relatively strong defensive backgrounds.
There’s an argument to be made that Rambis, who never presided over a top-25 defense during his time as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, was a poor choice to begin with. Now that the 17-22 Knicks appear to have lost faith in his defensive gameplan (on top of all the other problems they’re facing right now), it’s starting to look like yet another lost season in the Big Apple.
