New York Knicks searching for identity amid 3-game skid

NEW YORK — After the New York Knicks lost their third straight game, and for the fourth time in their last five, against the Denver Nuggets Saturday afternoon, All-Star forward Julius Randle said it’s up to him and his teammates to decide what kind of season they want to have.

“I have to be better. Everybody has to be better,” Randle said after New York’s 113-99 loss to Denver, a deceiving scoreline from a game that saw the Knicks trail by 30 with eight minutes to go. “I’ll take responsibility for the team. I’ll take responsibility for myself. That doesn’t bother me. At the end of the day, I just wanna win. I think everybody … well, I know everybody in that locker room wants to win, too.

“We gotta look ourselves in the mirror and decide what we want the season to be. I know what I want it to be. I know what the guys want it to be. But we have to commit to it, and that’s just really what it is.”

Last season, New York was one of the NBA’s biggest surprises in Tom Thibodeau’s first season coaching the team. Randle had a breakout season and became an All-Star for the first time, while Thibodeau won his second NBA Coach of the Year award on the back of a team that ground out wins behind an elite defense.

Both Randle and Thibodeau said Saturday that this is a different team than last season. It is certainly playing like one. New York has slipped from fourth in defense last season to 19th after Saturday’s loss, and the offense improving from 22nd last year to 15th this season hasn’t been enough to make up for that slippage.

And as Randle, Thibodeau and Knicks forward R.J. Barrett addressed the media Saturday afternoon, each — not surprisingly — harped on the defense as the thing that has to get better after Denver shot 52% from the field and made 20 3-pointers.

“I think just our effort,” Barrett said, when asked what it will take to fix it. “That’s really what defense is, is just effort. Thibs is a great defensive mind, so it’s really…