LOS ANGELES — A day earlier, coach Mike Brown made an impassioned plea to his players about taking care of the ball.
As he put it, control the controllables.
They didn’t listen.
The Knicks committed 20 turnovers in a second consecutive slopfest in L.A., this time falling 126-118 to the Clippers on Monday night at the Intuit Dome. The defeat felt sealed, appropriately, with consecutive Knicks turnovers in the final 3:05 — one by Jalen Brunson, the other by Landry Shamet.
But the Knicks still held hope until Shamet and OG Anunoby missed contested 3-pointers in the final 25 seconds.
So the Knicks (41-25), who allowed 24 points off turnovers, left Southern California with consecutive defeats. It wasted a rare high-scoring performance from Karl-Anthony Towns, who dropped 33 points on 12-for-16 shooting. It was the first time he scored 30-plus points since December.
But the Knicks couldn’t overcome the turnovers. Anunoby was the sloppiest with four of them. Brunson, Towns and Josh Hart all had three.
On Sunday in an ugly loss to the Lakers, the Knicks committed 18 turnovers, which prompted Brown to list that as a main issue alongside fouling too much and poor rebounding.
His team was certainly better at rebounding Monday. They were slightly better at avoiding stupid fouls. They were worse at turnovers.
Mikal Bridges, who went scoreless in Sunday’s loss to the Lakers, didn’t hit a shot until midway through the second quarter against the Clippers. He finished with seven points in 26 minutes and was benched for crunch time. His backup at the two-guard, Shamet, endured a brickfest while missing his first eight 3-pointers. Shamet closed over Bridges and finished with nine points on 3-for-12 shooting, with all attempts from beyond the arc.
Brunson, meanwhile, arrived in a deep shooting slump and quickly righted the ship Monday. He scored 13 in the first quarter with three assists and two rebounds.
“He’s human and he’s going to have some nights [when he struggles to shoot],” Brown said. “His track record shows that he can go get it done. It’s not anything I’m concerned about or I’m looking at. And like I said, when he does have nights like that, how else can you impact the game, and he’s shown that he can do that.”
Brunson was cooking in the first quarter. Then Towns took over the offense.
The center feasted on the slower Brook Lopez, who had difficulty defending Towns last season with the Bucks, as well.
Towns finished the first half with 21 points — including 17 in the second quarter — but New York’s defense underwhelmed, and the Knicks went into the break with a nine-point deficit.
It was the first time since Dec. 27 that both Brunson and Towns had at least 25 points in the same game.
“They’ve stepped up and done different things at different times. They both can score, but what I like especially as of late, great players have a way of impacting the game on both ends of the floor,” Brown said before Monday’s clunker. “They’re both trying to do that in a lot of different ways. There may be nights where KAT is not scoring, but man he’s rebounding.”
On Monday, the pair were in sync scoring but it didn’t matter.
The good news for Knicks fans is the schedule eases up considerably. They face terrible teams in six of their next seven games, including Wednesday at Utah and Friday at Indiana.
It’s a chance to regroup after their poor back-to-back turnover-fests in La-La land.
