Another sloppy, peculiar effort by the Knicks last night. The two losses against the Cavaliers were objectively worse, but getting run off their own court by a team without its best player, and coming off a six game losing streak, ranks right down there. The Knicks are now 6-5 since the trade, and four of the five losses count as the terrible kind (Cavs twice, Mavericks last Thursday, Pacers last night). Arguably, five of the six wins were impressive (only the win against Milwaukee at home might be considered an expected win) -- which means this team is swinging wildly between extremes as it tries to gel.

One area of commonality between the Cavs and Pacers which has given the Knicks fits is the presence of jumpy, mobile, unorthodox and unpredictable power forwards in JJ Hickson and Tyler Hansborough. The Knicks' conundrum on defense is that Amare is nominally a power forward but more typically defends centers, while Jeffries is nominally a center but tends to roam on defense between inside players and perimeter players. Carmelo is sometimes matched up against power forwards but is really a small forward with a power game.

The Knicks -- using a combination of Jeffries and Turiaf, or some schemes involving double teams and swarming the ball selectively -- can defend certain types of scoring power forwards with a more set offensive game reliant on isolations or pick and pop jumpers. But oddly, Hickson and Hansborough with the way they throw their body around in the lane and attack from the wing like small forwards from time to time (even if that also means they have some ugly possessions), have confounded the Knicks. Jeffries isn't strong enough, while Amare and Turiaf tend to pick up cheap fouls and then back off. (Wilson Chandler's underrated versatility on defense is missed in these situations). The flimsy attempts of the Knicks to maintain defensive discipline tend to fall part when confronted with these types of players as well.

Hansborough has been playing well for the Pacers lately under Frank Vogel (after pointed remarks about the way he was used by Jim O'Brien), and he had a throwback to his UNC days (29 points, 8 rebounds) in the way he killed the Knicks with his weird looking jumpers and his shuffling yet relentless drives toward the basket, constantly finding holes in the horrific Knick defense. His effort was the highlight of an otherwise balanced attack by the Pacers, who went 10 deep and got contributions from everyone.

The Knicks were out of sync on offense in Billups' first game back after his thigh was mashed to a pulp by Dwight Howard's knee on a screen, and he was in less than optimal form. Considering he only played four games as a Knick before getting hurt, he struggled to get in rhythm with his teammates, and worked mainly to get the ball early to Carmelo or take a lot of long spot up jumpers. He had some nice highlights early (notably a three quarters court sidearm pass to Melo on a fastbreak in the first quarter to give the Knicks their only lead), but he mostly seemed to labor.

Toney Douglas, unfortunately, compounded things off the bench with his worst shooting game since the trade. Many of his shots were shots he normally makes, but still, 1-8 from three point range to combine with Billups' 0-7 meant the two point guards combined to miss 14 of 15 threes.

Carmelo and Amare had decent scoring lines on the surface but you'd be hard pressed to find emptier 25 and 28 point efforts -- Melo's points came mostly in the first quarter, Amare's in the fourth quarter, but their points didn't stem the Pacer tide at all given how ineffective the Knick defense was. D'Antoni's post game comments about the team operating in quicksand were perfect -- the harder they tried to bear down, the more they seemed to make the wrong rotation or do something inexplicable (like Carmelo's stumbling foul on a Dahntay Jones three point attempt in the third quarter). The way the Knick defense seemed to get out of sorts with nothing more than a simple high screen -- over and over again -- resulting in Pacers with the ball in the 15 foot area and tons of space in front of them, or a single Knick defender trying to guard two shooters outside the 3 point line, was excruciating to watch.

The offense never really had good moments in this game, unlike all the other losses, even the ugliest ones, where there was usually a good stretch of shooting. Some of this was good Pacer defense, some of it was the Knicks being a little unlucky, but a fair amount of it was too much one on one play from the stars, including Billups. Only 4 assists and 4 turnovers for Billups, 2 assists for Amare, and 0 assists from Carmelo (after he averaged nearly 6 assists the previous four games) -- this type of non-ball movement plays right into the hands of the opposition who can load up on the scorers.

Summarizing the strange awfulness of last night's effort was the Knicks getting 15 offensive rebounds to the Pacers' 5 (and outrebounding the Pacers 44 to 33), yet being outscored in the paint 44-28. In other words, the Knicks made it harder on themselves in the paint than they did on the Pacers, despite more chances.

The Knicks also fouled too much, and had difficulty adjusting to the whistles -- perhaps it was all the college basketball played at the Garden in the last week, because the mix of touch fouls on the perimeter combined with incredibly physical play inside with no foul calls was more reminiscent of a Big Ten or Big East tournament semifinal than a Sunday NBA game in March.

Carmelo spoke in the post game press conference through oversized sunglasses, sounding distinctly peeved and promising a different result for the second game against the Pacers on Tuesday. The last time he sounded such an alert, after a loss to the Cavs, didn't produce good results in the rematch. Maybe the Knicks will be better this time around, but the key will be the ability to maintain focus and show more signs of team play on both ends, instead of trusting that the two stars going off and a few threes from other teammates will be enough to overwhelm the opposition.

Note: A wonderful dissection of the Knick defensive gaffes in last night's game from the indispensable NBA Playbook can be seen here.