Ugly stretch dooms Knicks in disappointing loss to Jazz

SALT LAKE CITY — It was ‘80s Night’ at the Delta Center and the Knicks paid homage to the forgettable days of Pat Cummings and Louis Orr.

In other words, they weren’t very good.

As Journey and Bruce Springsteen blasted during timeouts, the Knicks were pounded at the start of the fourth quarter in a 117-113 defeat to the Jazz, wasting another strong performance from Julius Randle and missing two open shots that could’ve tied the game in the final seconds.

“We want to play for a full 48 minutes, playing our style of basketball, the way we want to play,” Jalen Brunson said. “We can’t have lapses like that and lose a game.”

The killer stretch spanned the third and fourth quarters — with Brunson and Randle mostly on the bench — when the Jazz scored 16 straight points to take a 15-point advantage.

It started with a boneheaded foul from center Isaiah Hartenstein, who ran into Utah’s Lauri Markkanen as the forward took a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

From there, the Knicks went ice cold — going about 4 ½ minutes without a point — and the home team pounced. The Knicks (13-10) fought back to cut the deficit to three, but Josh Hart and Brunson misfired on consecutive treys in the same possession with under 30 seconds remaining.

“And that was sort of the story of the game. You’re going to have nights like that,” Thibodeau said about the Knicks going 9-for-39 from beyond the arc.

Immanuel Quickley rebounded Hart’s miss and dished it out to Brunson at the top of the key.

“If he’d have made it, we would have tied it. That’s how close it was,” Quickley said. “Just try to make a play. We live with that shot, J.B. taking that 3. Got to move on to the next game.”

The Jazz (8-16), a rebuilding team after trading Donovan Mitchell two summers ago, have struggled this season and entered Wednesday on a three-game losing streak.

But they returned All-Star Markkanen after a three-week absence because of a hamstring strain, and the Finnish forward needed just 25 minutes to drop 23 points.

Thibodeau’s team responded with a dud.

Almost every Knick struggled other than Randle, who scored 32 points on 14 of 23 shooting. None was worse than RJ Barrett.

The 23-year-old misfired on 13 of his shot 16 attempts, including 0-for-7 from beyond the arc. He was benched for most of the fourth quarter.

Hart was scoreless on five shots.

“When you go on the road obviously you have to be at your best. Your margin for error is tight,” Thibodeau said.

The night kicked off a five-game road trip and was arguably the easiest of the slate.

The Knicks next travel to Phoenix to face the Suns’ Big 3, then Los Angeles for games against LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard, then back to the East Coast for a matchup at Barclays Center.

It’s a daunting task without Mitchell Robinson, who missed the second of many more games after undergoing ankle surgery.

The Knicks compensated well for his absence in Monday’s victory over the Raptors, but were pounded on the glass by the Jazz.

The Knicks uncharacteristically gave up 15 offensive rebounds and were beaten overall on the boards, 38-32.

“Mitch is unique, [rebounding] is his strength,” Thibodeau said. “So we have to do this collectively, particularly since we’re not a big team but we’re a very good rebounding team. We’ve got to make sure that we’re putting our bodies on people and then we’ve got to go fight for the ball. We can’t allow missed shots to impact us in any negative way, because often times you can get going offensively, you get stops, you get out in the open floor, you get an easy shot, now all of the sudden you feel better and you can go on runs like that. You help yourself that way.

“The rebounding we’ve got to fix. … Had we rebounded, we probably would’ve won the game. We’ve got to learn from it.”