There has been no player more indispensable to the Knicks, especially during their recent rash of injuries, than Jalen Brunson.
Without him, even for one game, their margin for error is almost infinitesimal.
With the All-Star point guard unable to go Tuesday night with what the team listed as cervical spasms in his neck, the injury-riddled Knicks only hung around for so long before falling short for the seventh time in 10 games in a 115-92 loss to the Pelicans at the Garden.
“We’re not going to complain about injuries. … Whenever you go through adversity, you got two choices,” Josh Hart said after the game. “You got the first one to kind of face it head on. And don’t complain, just work.
“And then you have the other one that’s just go into a ball and complain and cry about it. So I don’t think that’s what anyone in this locker room is doing. And for us, it’s good to go out there and continue to get reps, but I’d rather the win.”
Isaiah Hartenstein also was back out of the lineup with recurring Achilles soreness for the Knicks (35-24), barely two weeks after he’d also missed three games before the All-Star break with the same injury.
With Tom Thibodeau reducing his rotation to seven players until garbage time, Donte DiVincenzo scored 23 points and Bojan Bogdanovic had 20 off the bench.
Hart finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in 40 minutes for the Knicks, who also remained without Mitchell Robinson (ankle), Julius Randle (shoulder) and OG Anunoby (elbow).
“I thought everyone gave everything they had,” Thibodeau said. “We knew we were gonna have to have volume 3s and we were gonna have to make [them] to have a chance.”
Indeed, DiVincenzo finished 7-for-18 from 3-point range — hoisting the second-most shots from beyond the arc in one game in franchise history, behind J.R. Smith’s 22 in 2014.
“We scored 92 points or something like that. I wasn’t going into the game like, ‘Oh, Jalen’s not playing. Just get them up,’ ” DiVincenzo said. “I’m within our offense, trying to be aggressive, trying to just get to spots where I felt comfortable and just ended up with that’s the number.
“I wasn’t going into tonight like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna try to get 20 up.’ That’s never my mindset. But when it’s open, I’m gonna let it fly.”
Trey Murphy III made six 3-pointers and scored 26 points, Brandon Ingram contributed 24 points and Zion Williamson added 21 before fouling out for the Pelicans (35-24).
Hart remained in the game after getting smashed across the face on a rejection by Williamson in the early minutes, but Ingram briefly departed midway through the opening quarter for the Pelicans with a foot injury.
DiVincenzo missed four of his first five attempts from 3-point range, and the Knicks shot 31.8 percent from the field overall to trail 26-19 through one quarter.
Murphy flushed a dunk and sank a 3-pointer to help boost the New Orleans cushion to 10 in the opening minutes of the second, but Bogdanovic netted five straight with a right-corner trey and two free throws and Alec Burks drove the lane for a layup to pull the Knicks back within two.
Bogdanovic finished the half with a team-high 14 points, and Hart added 11 with seven rebounds as the Knicks were within one, 48-47, at intermission.
Williamson accounted for half of the Pelicans’ points in a 10-0 spurt to open the third quarter, and Herb Jones’ corner 3 put the Knicks in a 63-52 hole midway through the period.
DiVincenzo connected on a 3-pointer to pull the Knicks within seven with three minutes remaining, and they trailed by that margin, 74-67, entering the final quarter.
But the Knicks would get no closer, with Matt Ryan knocking down an early 3-pointer and Williamson converting a traditional three-point play to help the Pelicans push the lead back 15 with a 16-8 run en route to a 41-25 pull-away in the quarter.
“We’re not going to complain about injuries. We’re gonna go out there and put our best foot forward with the guys that we have, and we did that,” Hart said. “We had a bad spurt to start that third [quarter], and then the fourth, we let it get away.”
