Knicks coach David Fizdale is also disappointed by the perception he’s coaching to lose games to ensure the best odds to win the lottery, with the top prize being Zion Williamson.
“Yeah, a lot of fans, they always say some dumb stuff,’’ Knox said at the morning shootaround at Quicken Loans Arena. “You see it all the time with the tanking and want us to lose, stuff like that. It’s kind of stupid. They’re not really true New Yorkers. Real Knicks fans know that we’re trying to just take this year to just develop us young guys and then next year hopefully make a push.”
“Every night we’re just going to go out and just play hard. We’re going to compete at the highest level,” Knox said. “We might make some mistakes towards the end of the game which costs us the games. We’re in a lot of close games with a lot of great teams, playoff teams. That just shows you how close we are from winning those games.
“We’re just missing a couple of pieces. It’s really good for us young guys to go out there and play against some of those playoff teams and be able to be in games. We lose to the Raptors by five, it’s a playoff team. It’s good to see us — we’re getting better every single game.”
Indeed, the New York Lottery Police Department has worked overtime this season. But Fizdale said it’s key to differentiate coaching to lose and coaching to develop the future. He believes he has done the latter.
“I think there’s actually been teams that have come into games trying to lose a game,” Fizdale said. “That’s just not in our vocabulary. Do we play well every night? Do we do enough to win the game every night? Maybe not. But at the end of the day I know these guys are coming out to compete to win.
“I don’t read it and listen to it, so I don’t get caught up in [the fans’ reactions]. I just think there’s a difference between losing games and trying to lose games. That’s why I think a lot of people have cracked down on just the idea of, you’re just coming in to try to lose a game. You’re cheating the game. I won’t let our players do that.”
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