Mike D'Antoni is known to be loyal when it comes to rotations.
He doesn't like it when players start looking over their shoulders to see whether a sub is waiting to come in. It can dent their confidence. So when the patient Knicks coach shook up the starting lineup on Sunday against Denver, it was a likely sign of utter frustration. D'Antoni put leading scorer Al Harrington and Nate Robinson on the bench.
He switched Tim Thomas and Jared Jeffries into the starting lineup in hopes of improving the defense and encouraging ball movement. There were improvements on both fronts, but the Knicks still lost 117-110 to the Nuggets.
The latest skid is now six games.
"Great teams stay together," Robinson said. "Whoever starts is who coach wants (to start)."
Of course, the Knicks aren't even good at this point.
"You don't keep going on and on with your head in the sand," D'Antoni said of the changes, hinting there could be more in the future. "You've got to find better combinations."
NUGGETS 117, KNICKS 110: A new starting lineup allowed the Knicks to hang around until they fell victim to bad habits in the last five minutes at Madison Square Garden, extending a frustrating losing streak to six games.
Denver pulled ahead by a dozen in the third quarter, but Chris Duhon connected from behind the arc with 5:38 to play in the game and put the Knicks on top 104-103. It was the last field goal of the game for the home team, and the Nuggets pulled further away with each bad possession.
With 2:36 remaining, Nate Robinson forced up a three-pointer and missed, but David Lee snared the offensive rebound. The ball eventually found Wilson Chandler, who missed a three-pointer from the corner with the shot clock winding down.
"I think we ended up taking bad shots at the end of the game, tough shots with our shot clock winding down," Duhon said. "You can't beat a good team that way."
