David Fizdale didn’t want to believe it was an effort issue. “I want to watch the film,” he said, “before I make that judgment.”

He’s not going to like what he sees a second time around.

We often parallel a lack of effort with apathy and in this case, it isn’t warranted. The Knicks looked a step slow at the start of this game because they simply were a step slow. This has been a bit of a concerning trend over the past week of games, which included a frustrating loss to the Bulls, a grinding win over the Hawks and back-to-back losses to the Raptors and Magic, two teams that employed length on defense to pressure the ball and buried the Knicks with relentless threes.

Fizdale has been preaching the virtues of being a hard-working team that will compete every night. For the most part, they have been that despite the 10 losses in the first 14 games of the season. But this was the second game — Miami was the other — where that fight just wasn’t in them.

The coach wouldn’t allow the excuse of the back-to-back. “For whatever reason,” he said, “we came out flat and they came out firing.”

The Magic built a 10-0 lead before anyone could decide whether or not they liked this year’s City Edition uniforms. The Knicks missed their first seven shots and had four turnovers. They were down 30-10 after the first quarter.

“I put that on me,” Tim Hardaway Jr. said of the sloppy and soft open to the game. “I just didn’t deliver.”

Tim Hardaway Jr. speaks to Rebecca Haarlow about the Knicks' 115-89 lost to the Orlando Magic.

Hardaway Jr. had been carrying the offense this season, but on this night he couldn’t get anything going against physical defense by Evan Fournier. He finished with just seven points on 2-of-12 shooting and missed all six of his three-point attempts.

Fournier seemed to bother Hardaway Jr. early by bodying him through screens. The Magic really got after it defensively and did what we’re seeing a lot of teams do against the Knicks: pressure the ball and look to get deflections off those perimeter handoffs. If the Knicks guards aren’t aggressive, those tactics can completely blow up their offense, which is already, by design, a very simple playbook.

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So when Frank Ntilikina started the game off missing his first three shots and looking intimidated by the likes of DJ Augustin — I mean it’s DJ Augustin — Fizdale put him on the bench and left him there to watch and, hopefully, learn.

Ntilikina played just 5:45 minutes. He was scoreless with two turnovers, which included a senseless offensive charge against the smaller Augustin on a post-up. All Ntilikina needed to do there was turn around and shoot over the smaller defender, but for some reason, he lowered his shoulder into him to draw the foul. But the bigger issue was Frank not looking to dominate his matchup on the defensive end. Augustin runs through a lot of screens and uses his quickness to disrupt a defense, which leads to switching and confusion.

It was clear to Fizdale that his second-year guard was not engaged in this game. So, he went to veteran Trey Burke (10 points, five assists), a DNP in recent games, to see if he could provide a spark.