The New York Knicks are coming off another struggling loss. The team fell 115-99 to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday night leaving the players feeling pretty embarrassed over their performance. New York has officially lost nine of their last 10 games while falling to 3-10 on the year. The Timberwolves had been struggling during a five-game losing streak, but the Knicks allowed them to look like playoff contenders and JR Smith is not happy about it.
The boxscore for the Knicks is ugly. Iman Shumpert missed 10 of 11 shots while combining with Smith and Tim Hardaway Jr to go 4-for-19 for just 12 points. The lone bright spot was Carmelo Anthony's 20 points and Amar'e Stoudemire's 19 points while hitting seven of nine shots. Other than that things were bad as the Knicks were down 26 at one point.
"Coach challenged us at halftime to go out there and play hard and see what happens. For some reason, it's something we have to be reminded of, to play hard, which is really embarrassing at some point because you're a professional athlete," Smith said, via ESPN.com. "People pay a lot of money to come watch us play. Competing shouldn't be an issue. So they came out and ... that second quarter, they just kicked it into another gear. For some reason, we just wait until we're down and just start playing, and we can't do that."
If this type of play continues for the Knicks, will Phil Jackson begin to get aggressive in trying to make trades? Right now his best assets are Shumpert and Smith as no one wants to pick up the over-sized contracts of Stoudemire and Bargnani at this point in the season. Could the Knicks trade Jose Calderon? The New York Post reported during training camp that the point guard might simply be on the team to serve as an asset in an upcoming trade. The likelihood that the Knicks retain him past this year are slim considering they have their eyes on Rajon Rondo in free agency.
The Knicks have been trying to push trades for the entire offseason and so far nothing is working for them. ESPN's Ian Begley reported that a deal for Smith was favored over Shumpert, but with both players struggling Jackson will find shopping them tough.
