Mike Brown calls out Knicks lack of physicality amid ugly 0-2 start

BOSTON — The Knicks bricked too many shots in their first two games.Plenty of open ones, too.

But coach Mike Brown wasn’t concerned about the misfiring after his team was toppled Friday night by the Celtics. Those will eventually fall.Especially Jalen Brunson’s.

The Knicks aren’t going to shoot just 40.8 percent like the combined home and road openers. But Brown did identify a glaring issue because the championship hangover apparently hit the Knicks with laziness. “It was a physical ballgame and [the Celtics] had the advantage out there with the physicality,” Brown said. Brown reiterated, several times after Friday’s 107-103 defeat, the problem that has plagued the Knicks intermittently for years: the inability, or unwillingness, to fight through picks. It was exacerbated in Beantown because the refs were cooler than usual with moving screens, allowing the Celtics to hunt mismatches with weaker defenders like Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. “They set a screen, and we lay on the screen, don’t fight to get through it,” Brown said.“And then we have to switch and get the wrong matchup.

That’s why I bring up their physicality in screens, whether it’s the pick-and-roll or off the ball.If that is there from the other team and we’re not defending the screens the right way, communicating, and navigating them the right way instead of laying, laying, laying — it’s going to start the dominoes to fall.

If they’re illegal or not, it doesn’t matter.” Jayson Tatum cooked the Knicks for 36 points, three days after another star ball handler, Tyrese Maxey, filleted the Knicks for 28 points. The point-of-attack defense has been suspect and OG Anunoby’s rough start is a problematic factor.He’s supposed to be the Knicks’ top stopper and owns the worst defensive rating among the starters through two games. Mikal Bridges, the other defensive specialist, was benched for much of Friday’s game — including the final 8 ¹/₂ minutes...