Knicks Fall in Derek's Garden Debut · The Official Web Site of Derek Fisher . Analyst . Coach . Five-Time NBA World Champion

Monday night was a special night for New York Knicks coach Derek Fisher, as after two games on the road to start the preseason, Coach Fisher made his Madison Square Garden coaching debut.

Before the game, Derek noted the uniqueness of the evening and how it felt to be member of the home team in the Garden after coming there as a visiting player each year of his 18-year NBA career.

“The Garden is a special place,” D-Fish said told the media in a pre-game interview. “Whether you come here as a visitor, or now this being home and thinking about doing this hundreds of times per season hopefully for many years. To think about this being one of the many first steps in my career as a coach, to have this opportunity is very special.”

But once the game got underway, Coach Fish had to move on from those feelings and work with his team as they continued to hammer through some growing pains in the triangle offense.

The Knicks put forth a strong defensive effort on Monday night, but didn’t have the same offensive rhythm they possessed on Saturday against the Celtics and lost 81-76 to the Toronto Raptors.

Derek gave the bulk of playing time to his players on the bench, rotating 14 players in the game, and distributing 15 or more minutes to seven reserve players. As a result starters like Carmelo Anthony saw limited time.Anthony played just 15 minutes in the game and tallied nine points, but afterward he spoke highly of Coach Fisher’s efforts to get everyone involved so that they had experience running New York’s new system in games.

“I think it’s just a matter of some people knowing (the offense) better than others,” Anthony said. “We’re just trying to get to the point where everybody is on the same page, and Coach Fisher made a point that we’ve only been doing this for maybe 12 or 13 days. We’re not going to have it right, right away so it’s going to take some time.”

With that in mind, Derek involved several key role players in his triangle offense, in the game plan for Monday night. Leading the way was Quincy Acy, who received a starting nod and played a team high 29 minutes.

Derek said afterward that he likes Acy’s intensity, and wanted to give him time to run with the starters over proven veteran Amar’e Stoudemire, to see what Acy might be able to give the team during the regular season. Like Anthony, Stoudemire played 15 minutes, though his came off the bench. In those minutes, the veteran tallied four points and eight rebounds.

“Obviously Amar’e is more of a known entity in terms of, when he’s healthy, what he can do for us,” Derek said. “So there aren’t as many questions.”

The Knicks’ starters set the tone early and helped New York jump out to an 8-0 lead in the first three minutes.

Anthony kicked it off with an old-school three-point play and point guard Jose Calderon followed with a trifecta off a feed from Iman Shumpert to give the Knicks a 6-0 advantage less than two minutes into the contest.

After another stop by New York on defense, Calderon made a great play in tandem with Samuel Dalembert by working outside the triangle offense. Calderon gave a quick dump-off to Dalembert, who quickly gifted it right back to Calderon and set up a nice screen for an easy jump shot that Calderon sank to make it 8-0.

However Toronto scored seven of the next nine points to pull back within three and then both squads went cold offensively through the midway point of the first quarter. From the 6:33 mark until DeMar DeRozan’s layup with 1:57 left in the frame, neither team scored a point and the Knicks managed just two points in the final 6:53 of the first, on a jumper by Shane Larkin. With both teams struggling to find the bottom of the net, the quarter ended in a 12-12 tie.

Much like the first quarter, New York mounted a quick 8-0 run to pull ahead early in the second. But the Raptors continued to fight behind strong play from Amir Johnson and cut the New York lead to five points by the end of the frame.

After the break, Anthony went back in for another quick stint, and made an immediate impact for New York.

The Knicks star scorer knocked down a tough jumper early in the quarter, then set up a 3-pointer with his passing. New York was ahead by six just two-and-a-half minutes into the second half when Melo sent a quick jump pass to Iman Shumpert. Shumpert made the extra pass to a wide-open Calderon, who canned a three to give the Knicks a 44-35 lead.

New York followed the trey with another stop on defense, Acy knocked down a jumper to make it an 11-point N.Y. advantage forcing Toronto to call a timeout, at which point Anthony took a seat on the bench, his work for the evening complete.

Following the timeout, the Raptors mounted a tremendous rally and outscored the home team 25-8 over the final 8:55 of the third quarter. Toronto’s third quarter run was capped by back-to-back threes from and Lou Williams and Bruno Caboclo that put the Raptors up six heading into the fourth.

Toronto stayed hot early in the fourth and built their lead to 15 points before one of New York’s veterans, J.R. Smith, sparked a comeback. Smith went on an individual 6-0 run and scored 10 points in the final frame.

Rookie Cleanthony Early added five points in the fourth, including a three, but it wasn’t quite enough. In the end, the cold shooting night—37.8 percent from the field and 3-of-23 from three—doomed the Knicks, even though they held Toronto to just 40.3 percent shooting.

Despite the final result, Calderon, who had eight points and four assists in 17 minutes, said he likes what he sees in the team going forward.

“In every area of the game, I think we’re improving,” Calderon said in a postgame interview. “We didn’t score (a lot) in the third or fourth quarter, but (we held Toronto) to 81 points.”

Acy was the only member of the starting five to play more than 19 minutes and according to Derek, with the triangle offense still a work in progress, spreading the minutes among the team is key in this early phase of the NBA calendar.

“We’re still trying our best to keep minutes in a reasonable area and not load guys too much,” Fisher said.

NEXT UP

Another reason for keeping the minutes down on Monday was that Coach Fisher’s Knicks have a quick turnaround from their loss as they head up to Syracuse to take on the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night.

The Sixers finished last in the Atlantic Division and second-to-last in the Eastern Conference last year at 19-63. The Knicks went 3-1 against Philly last season, losing just one game at MSG.

The two teams will meet at 7 p.m. ET Tuesday at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse and the game can be seen on MSG 2.