Knicks have plenty to improve on entering second half

The Knicks hit the midway point of the 82-game season with the third-best record in the Eastern Conference and the fifth-best in the entire NBA. Tom Thibodeau often says — and reiterated as much following Monday’s home loss to the Pistons — that he is striving for daily improvement, with the goal to peak at the end of the season in time for the start of the playoffs. “There’s a lot of challenges throughout the course of the season, so there’s ups and downs, and you have to handle that,” Thibodeau said after the Knicks lost for the fifth time in seven games following a nine-game winning streak.“You’ve got to get through things together, but you never can lose sight of how important it is to improve every day, and then hopefully at the end you’re playing your best basketball. “There’s still a lot of things that we can do better that we have to lock into.” Here are five areas in which the Knicks (26-15) most need to improve over the final 41 regular-season games, beginning with Wednesday’s road game against the banged-up 76ers: With two 3-pointers converted in the final minute by Detroit’s Malik Beasley the latest examples, the Knick own the sixth-worst defensive percentage from beyond the arc in the league at 37.3 percent.

This should not be the case with strong perimeter defenders such as OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and reserve Miles McBride in the rotation. The Knicks already have played 10 games in which they converted fewer than 10 3-pointers, and they lost seven of those games.Jalen Brunson is in a 13-for-62 outside funk (21.0 percent) over his past 12 appearances, including six of seven misses from deep Monday night.

But that number drops to 15.4 percent if you take out a 5-for-10 showing in his 44-point performance against the Bucks on Sunday. With center Karl-Anthony Towns playing 34.7 minutes per game — his most since 2017-18 in Minnesota — the Knicks rank 12th in the NBA in points allowed in the paint at 48...