Familiarity breeds contempt.
And it breeds downright frustration when the same darn thing keeps occurring over and over. Look at the Knicks at the start of games.
It has been a recurring problem. The ball goes up, the Knicks decide it's nap time. They have come back a lot. But sometimes, they don't. Last night against Chicago was one of those nights when they started the game with their shoelaces tied together, then fell down and couldn't get up.
Against the Bulls, the Knicks repeated their Dec. 21 defeat — in that one, they were down 13 in the first quarter. Last night was better, but not by much. The Knicks were down nine less than six minutes into the game and finished the first quarter down 11.
AP
NO GO: The Knicks' J.R. Smith can't get past the Bulls' Luol Deng during last night's 108-101 defeat.
"Our starts," Tyson Chandler said flatly when asked what has been the biggest problem for the Knicks, whose 108-101 loss to Chicago last night at the Garden was their fifth defeat in seven games. "It's been too up and down, too inconsistent."
The Knicks felt that same inconsistency offensively Thursday at Indiana. Only difference there was they defended. Last night, not so much. The Bulls shot 57.9 percent in the first quarter.
"I don't like the way we're starting ball games because that's been an indication of how we've played throughout the course of the game," coach Mike Woodson said. "They built the lead and it was an uphill climb all the way."
And like in the Dec. 21 loss to the Bulls, the Knicks awoke from sleepy time late. In December, they scored 45 fourth quarter points. Once down 25 last night, the Knicks made a mad rush late. A too-little mad rush late as they got no closer than five.
"We waited too long to fight back," Amar'e Stoudemire said.
"At the end of the game, it's [relatively close] and it feels so much worse because we got off to a slow start," Steve Novak said. "We haven't found a fix for it yet."
Last night, the Knicks couldn't find anything to fix the offense for most of the game. Carmelo Anthony missed his first seven shots. J.R. Smith finished 4-of-17. Add it all together, and bingo, 0-3 record against Chicago.
"We picked it up the second half," Woodson said. "Melo started slow and J.R. never got out of his shooting slump and they were the two that were taking the bulk of the shots.
"We were a step slow to start and then when we couldn't make shots, we compounded the problem."
Anthony has had a bizarre week (see: Garnett, Kevin and Suspension, NBA).
"He missed some good shots," Woodson said.
Smith missed, period. For the second time in 24 hours, he couldn't buy a shooting rhythm with a fistful of $50s. In two games, Smith was 14-of-46. But he was not alone.
"We miss a shot, we put our heads down," Chandler said. "We've got to definitely address that."
fred.kerber@nypost.com
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