NBA

Knicks coach tells Fields to give Amar’e room

With Landry Fields, Mike D’Antoni explained that the rookie’s instinct is to be forever cutting on the offensive end. Fields is always moving.

That probably seems good. But it’s not.

“He needs to cut sometimes. But he’s cutting all the time. You have to understand when it is to cut and when you don’t,” D’Antoni said yesterday. “Because otherwise you cut right into Amar’e [Stoudemire] and you mess Amar’e up.”

In looking at film of his struggling Knicks, D’Antoni sees one major issue in particular on the offensive end and one on the defensive end.

Defensively, there’s a lack of verbal communication among the players. Actually, D’Antoni doesn’t care if not everyone speaks English on the court— which is something he stressed to Russian rookie center Timofey Mozgov.

“Even if you talk in Russian, they know what you’re talking about,” D’Antoni said he told Mozgov. “Just talk. It doesn’t matter.”

On the offensive end, according to D’Antoni and Stoudemire, the major issue is bad spacing. The Knicks, who have dropped three straight and face the 2-7 Timberwolves tonight in Minnesota, put up 117 points in losing to the Warriors on Wednesday night at the Garden, and that total is perfectly fine. But the Knicks also committed 20 turnovers for the second straight game and are not always scoring consistently.

Against Golden State, the Knicks poured in 32 points in the first quarter and 36 in the fourth. But they managed only 24 in the second quarter and 25 in the third. Against the Bucks the night before, they scored only 80 points for the game.

“Offensively, our spacing’s not quite what it should be,” Stoudemire said. “I think that’s what kind of throws us off offensively.”

Added D’Antoni, “Offensively, the biggest thing that we don’t do is we don’t keep our spacing and we’re jamming everything up. That’s why Amar’e has turnovers. That’s why Raymond [Felton] can’t do the pick-and-roll — because we’ve got guys clogging the lane.”

Felton has 10 turnovers the last two games, and D’Antoni said his new point guard is struggling with getting the ball to certain spots.

“There’s a couple of areas that we want to get the ball to that he’s not quite getting in there,” the coach explained. “He’s cutting things short a little bit. And then when he gets into an actual play, a little bit the crowd [of players] is getting him and we need better spacing so we have outlet passes. And also we’ve got to knock down some shots. We do it and we miss, then the defense doesn’t react to it.”

The Knicks’ current 10-man rotation has six players who weren’t on the team last year, including two rookies (Fields and Mozgov), so the transformation into a strong team figures to be gradual.

“We just have to keep getting better at it,” D’Antoni said. “If their attitude is the way it is, then we will get better and we’ll start winning. I don’t have a doubt about that.”

mark.hale@nypost.com