Derrick Rose urges Jeff Hornacek to 'be on us hard' about defense

GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- In a conversation after practice on Saturday, New York Knicks point guard Derrick Rose had a request for coach Jeff Hornacek: Demand more from us on defense.

"Our defense triggers a lot of things," Rose said. "And I told him he has to be on us hard about defense every day. Like, beat it in our heads where we get tired of hearing him talking about it."

The Knicks have dropped nine of their past 11 and have struggled to get stops for much of the season. They ranked 25th in defensive efficiency entering play Saturday.

What exactly is ailing the Knicks on that end of the floor?

"It's not just one element," Rose said. "It's all of it -- effort, schemes, decision-making, personnel, communication. It's everything.

"You can tell when we're out there. You have some games where we have everything clicking. It's no middle ground with us," Rose added. "It's either we look good, or we look quite different than that. I wanted to say another word, but quite different than that. We got to have an in-between. Then right when we're slipping, we got to be able to let everybody be aware of that and try to fix it -- not after the game, but during the game."

It's worth noting that at least one advanced statistic shows that Rose has been subpar on defense this season. Rose ranks 73rd among 85 eligible point guards in ESPN's Defensive Real Plus-Minus, which measures a player's on-court impact on the team's defensive performance.

Hornacek said that the players asked coaches last month to practice more defense, and the coaches adjusted.

"We do defensive situations every day. Try to go live. It's a case of continuing to work on it," Hornacek said. "At times, it's pretty decent and other times we kind of revert back. Again, we have to do a better job of just keeping harping on them about it and putting them in different situations in practice, and they'll have to do better at doing it more consistently, so we all have to be better at it."

League sources told ESPN last week that some veterans had expressed frustration over the Knicks' defensive schemes earlier this month. The club tried to address its defensive issues in early November when it put associate head coach Kurt Rambis in charge of the defense. But their struggles continued. The Knicks gave up at least 100 points over an eight-game stretch recently. Players mentioned scheme and overall effort as two issues during that slide.

Joakim Noah said on Thursday that the Knicks recently simplified their defensive schemes. Perhaps not coincidentally, the club had one of their best defensive performances of the season in a win over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday.

Hornacek seemed to be picking Rose's brain about the club's defense after practice when Rose asked the coach to "get on" the players more often.

"We were just talking about defensive schemes, what I see with our defense, what he thinks our problems are," Rose said.