Knicks' Jalen Brunson reportedly called players-only meeting as New York tries to reverse miserable slide

The New York Knicks have hit rock bottom. They were blown out Monday night by a Dallas Mavericks team that had seven players on the injury list, but still managed to cruise to a 114-97 win at Madison Square Garden. Fans rained down boos once again as the Knicks put together another pitiful performance, and coach Mike Brown said after the game that he understood the sentiment of the fans.

"I'm OK with the boos. If we're playing crappy, boo," Brown said. "If I was in the stands, I'd probably boo, too. You pay hard money to come to the game."

Following the loss -- the ninth in the Knicks' last 11 outings -- star guard Jalen Brunson called for a players-only meeting to talk about the struggles, per ESPN. Brunson reportedly urged his teammates to "find answers" instead of looking to the coaching staff to fix their problems.

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John Gonzalez

Josh Hart told reporters after the game that the team needs to do some "soul searching" amid a stretch of "embarrassing basketball."

"I think we all need to do some soul searching, some looking in the mirror and figuring out what we're going to do individually, what we're going to do as a team, what our identity is right now," Hart said. "Right now we're playing embarrassing basketball. We're not executing on the offensive end and defensively we've been abysmal. We've really been terrible defensively all year. At some point we have to look in the mirror and realize no one out here is feeling sorry for us. We have enough. We've shown that, we have to figure out how to get that sense of urgency."

Brunson echoed Hart's sentiments after the loss, but said the soul searching "should've started a couple weeks ago."

"We got to start tomorrow. We've got to figure this out fast," Brunson said. 

The Knicks have been abysmal since the calendar flipped, and if things don't get figured out quickly, you can forget an NBA championship, they might not even make the Eastern Conference finals with the way they've been playing. Some of their losses have been against tough opponents, sure. The San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons have been better than New York all season. But losing to the Sacramento Kings? Allowing 75 points in the first half to a Mavericks team that has no real offensive identity outside of giving Cooper Flagg the ball and seeing what happens? That's just embarrassing.

The Knicks have relied too much on their offense to win games. Through the first two months of the season, that was enough. They had a 21-9 record after a close win against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Christmas. Since then, it's just been open season for any team they're playing against.

Since the start of January, only the Utah Jazz, Brooklyn Nets and New Orleans Pelicans -- teams with a combined 36-93 record -- have been worse defensively than the Knicks. If the Knicks want to be taken seriously as a championship contender, they have to show more effort on the defensive end.

Hart says the team has enough to right the ship, and maybe that's true, but if not this could prove to be the perfect moment for a trade to be made ahead of the Feb. 5 deadline. Things can't keep going in this direction. At 25-18, the Knicks are sitting third in the East, but things can go south in a hurry even in an inferior conference.

The Knicks need to find answers fast, otherwise this team will fall short of expectations yet again when the playoffs start.