Everything went right out of the gate for the Knicks last season, when they won eight of their first nine games and shot nearly 42 percent from beyond the arc in the first month. The hot start helped them survive some lulls later in the season, when they endured a three-game losing streak and two four-game losing streaks en route to the second seed in the Eastern Conference.
The start hasn’t been quite so hot this time around.
Now 1-3, the Knicks are in a dire position after defensive backbone Tyson Chandler went down with a broken leg. To top it all off, Carmelo Anthony said he saw some of his teammates putting their heads down in Tuesday’s loss to the Bobcats, prompting a players-only meeting in New York.
“We shut the door after the game, talked it out a little bit,” Anthony said, according to the New York Post. “Try to figure out what was happening and going on. We just weren’t competing the way we know how to compete. We weren’t playing the way we know how to play.
“Hopefully, the conversation we had after the game made everyone else realize, though it is early, there are things we need to fix and fix now.”
Anthony’s frustration stemmed for the 102-97 defeat in a game the Knicks trailed at halftime 64-53. They were outrebounded 51-33 and allowed the Bobcats to shoot 42 free throws.
“[The meeting was] just players,” Anthony told the Post. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with the coaches. It’s us out there playing. I felt we needed to sit down and talk and get that out of the way.”
Four games into his 11th NBA season, Anthony may want to look most closely at himself. He is taking 22.3 shots per game, the second-highest rate of his career, while shooting just 37 percent from the field, the lowest percentage of his career. He is shooting just 39 percent on 2-pointers alone — or 23 percentage points lower than Atlanta’s Kyle Korver is shooting on 3-pointers.
