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DALLAS – There were multiple stretches Wednesday that summed up the Knicks’ ice-cold first half in Dallas.
There was the second-quarter sequence in which Karl-Anthony Towns’ missed six-footer came sandwiched between 3-pointers by the Mavericks’ Quentin Grimes and P.J. Washington.
Two minutes later, there was the missed alley-oop dunk by OG Anunoby, which Dallas’ Kyrie Irving and Naji Marshall followed with two more 3-pointers.
And there were all of the Knicks’ misses from beyond the arc.
It added up to an early deficit that proved insurmountable as the Mavericks carved up the Knicks, 129-114, on the eve of Thanksgiving, despite playing without Luka Dončić or Klay Thompson.
“We couldn’t buy a basket to save our lives to start the game,” Jalen Brunson said. “Defensively, we just weren’t there.”
The Knicks shot just 11-of-42 (26.2%) from the field and 2-of-16 from 3-point range in the first half, after which they trailed, 60-38.
Anunoby started the game 0-of-11 from the field and finished with eight points on 3-of-15 shooting, two days after his career-high 40 points led the Knicks to a 145-114 win in Denver.
Towns scored only eight of his 25 points before halftime Wednesday, while Josh Hart did not score until the third quarter.
The slow start stemmed from the Mavericks presenting problems with a switch-heavy defense and from the Knicks flat out missing good looks.
“I think it causes us to get stagnant,” Hart said of the Knicks’ struggles against switching. “When teams [are] switching, we’ve got to play faster. We’ve got to put them in a position to make mistakes.”
The lopsided loss spoiled a 37-point performance by Brunson, who was playing in Dallas for the second time since he left the Mavericks for the Knicks as a free agent before the 2022-23 season.
Brunson, who spent his first four NBA seasons with Dallas, scored 21 points in the second half, helping the Knicks outscore the Mavericks in the third and fourth quarters.
But it was too little, too late as the Knicks fell to 10-8 this season and 2-2 on their four-game road trip.
“We missed some shots that we probably could make, and we allowed that to impact other parts of the game,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Whether it’s a make or a miss, that shouldn’t deter how you perform on the other end. Sometimes you’ve just got to work your way through things. You can’t let go of the rope.”
The Mavericks shot 48-of-85 (56.5%) from the field and outrebounded the Knicks, 43-33.
Irving scored 21 points on 10-of-21 shooting, including a pair of contested 3-pointers that energized a sellout American Airlines Center crowd of 20,413 in the first half.
But role players stepped up, too, as Dončić missed his fourth consecutive game with a sprained wrist and Thompson sat with plantar fascia.
Marshall led Dallas with 24 points, while Spencer Dinwiddie added 21 off the bench.
Grimes, the Knicks’ first-round pick in 2021, scored a season-high 21 points against his former team. He made four 3-pointers, including one in the fourth quarter that he converted into a four-point play.
The Knicks shot 29-of-44 in the second half, but they never managed to cut the deficit to single digits.
They’ll look to deliver a more complete performance — and end their road trip on a high note — Friday night in Charlotte.
“It’s honestly the NBA,” Brunson said. “Some nights you can look ridiculous and some nights you can look ridiculous in the other way. We’ve got to level out. It can’t be a rollercoaster.”
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