Cam Payne chucked and sank an otherwise meaningless 25-footer with eight seconds remaining Monday night, preventing the Knicks at least from tying the NBA-low this season for 3-pointers in one game.
The Knicks finished their awful 103-94 home loss to the depleted Magic with just four conversions in 22 attempts from beyond the arc, continuing a recent icy patch from long range, especially during their first three-game losing streak of the season.
“It’s an NBA season. There’s going to be peaks and valleys,” Josh Hart said after the game. “There’s going to be games we shoot the lights out, going to be games where we can’t buy a shot.
“We’ve got to make sure we are focused, we give off the right energy. We can’t have our own individual agendas. We can’t do any of that. We’ve got to make sure we’re locked into this team, sacrifice for this team and go out there and play.”
The Knicks still rank fifth in the NBA overall in 3-point efficiency at 37.9 percent for the season entering Wednesday’s game against the Raptors at the Garden.
Nevertheless, since they sat in second place (at 39.8 percent) behind the league-best Cavaliers through Dec. 23, the Knicks mostly have been misfiring from long distance over their past eight games.
They won the first five of those matchups as part of a nine-game surge, but they rank dead last in both 3-point attempts (30.6 per game) and 3-point efficiency (29.4 percent) over that span.
The numbers are even worse during their three-game losing streak, with 28.0 attempts per game and a 25.0 percent conversion rate.
“It’s a hard thing, I want to look at the 3s,” Tom Thibodeau said after Monday’s loss. “Some of them I felt were good [looks]. Some of them I felt there were hard close-outs and we’ve gotta read it better. So we can do better than we did tonight. We’ll take a look at it.”
One of Thibodeau’s stated points of emphasis for the Knicks this season was to increase their volume of 3-point shots to take advantage of their proficiency from the outside.
But they are 24th overall in the league with 35.1 attempts per game, more than 15 on average behind the league-leading Celtics (50.2).
Leading scorer Jalen Brunson by far has been the worst offender during the team-wide shooting malaise, hitting just 5-for-39 (12.8 percent) in eight appearances with one missed game since Dec. 23.
He even was 3-for-11 from deep in his 55-point performance against the Wizards on Dec. 28.
“Ball’s just not going in for us, but that shouldn’t be the reason why we’re not winning games,” Brunson said Monday night. “We gotta find a way to impact the game in other areas when we’re not making shots like that. It starts with me.”
The team captain also called the Knicks’ self-described “low energy” level in Monday’s loss — which began a stretch of 12 of 14 games at the Garden following a heavy road slate — “unacceptable.”
“[The schedule is] good for us,” Brunson added, “but we gotta make the most of it.”
Brunson certainly hasn’t been alone during the wayward shooting skein.
Karl-Anthony Towns sat out Monday’s game with right knee soreness, but he is the only starter connecting above 33 percent (36.7) from long distance in the eight-game stretch.
Precious Achiuwa also is 3-for-7 (42.9 percent) on 3s during that time.
Miles McBride has missed the past four games, but he’d made just six of his last 23 (26.1 percent) from 3-point range before suffering a hamstring injury.
Hart (29.4 percent), OG Anunoby (31.0), Mikal Bridges (32.1) and reserves Landry Shamet (30.0) and Payne (31.6) also have struggled from the outside since Christmas.
Beginning with their victory that day over the Spurs, the Knicks have only shot above 35 percent from deep once in the eight games — 39.1 percent in a win over the Jazz to open 2025.
Monday’s loss also marked their fourth consecutive game with fewer than 10 made treys.
“I don’t know [the reason], we just gotta keep shooting them and stay with it. Keep trusting. Everybody’s in the gym, so I don’t think we’re really looking at it like that,” said Bridges, who missed six of seven 3-point tries against Orlando. “I think [the Magic] just played harder than us.”
