The Knicks are not playing Knicks basketball: ‘It’s almost like we’re in the water’

5 days ago 2

With 20 seconds on the clock, Jalen Brunson has pushed the ball past half court. He finds Karl-Anthony Towns trailing, but Towns gives the ball right back. Brunson fakes the swing to the right corner, blows past VJ Edgecombe, gets both feet into the paint, draws two defenders and finds OG Anunoby in the left corner.

On Paul George’s early closeout, Anunoby swings the ball to Miles McBride, target-practice for a knockdown shooter in yet another breakout season in New York.

And because Philadelphia’s Dominic Barlow helped off of McBride to cheat on Brunson’s drive, there isn’t enough time for him to then recover when the ball zips from Brunson to Anunoby to the very shooter he left open.

Just like Mike Brown drew up during training camp in Tarrytown when he took the Knicks’ vacant head coaching job over the summer.

These are what Brown calls paint sprays and spray threes, two of Brown’s foundational principles of the new-look, high-octane Knicks offense. Yet as quality of a possession as this is for the Knicks, and as strong of a weapon as it’s been for the league-leader in 40-point quarters, it occurs at the 5:11 mark of the first quarter, nearly seven minutes of game time into opening tipoff.

It is the first spray three of the game for the Knicks.

And it’s the first time they’ve passed the ball more than three times in any non-transition possession in the game’s opening seven minutes. Conversely, they had five possessions with no passes, five possessions with one pass, two possessions with two passes and two more with three passes before they struck the note that solved Philadelphia’s aggressive defense — a note they wouldn’t hit with any relative frequency in a 130-119 loss to the 76ers.

The Knicks are now riding a three-game losing streak, a tie for their longest of the early season, with the East’s No. 1-seeded Detroit Pistons waiting at Little Caesars Arena on Monday. Yet spray threes and paint touches are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s gone wrong on 33rd and Seventh.

The Knicks are not playing Knicks basketball.

Their inability to stick to Brown’s offensive script is just one of a few glaring examples of new rights this team has wronged midway through what was beginning to look like a season worthy of its championship billing.

“It’s been a while — at least these last two games — our staples, our pace in full court, the front court. We want to space the floor correctly. We want to make quick decisions. We want to touch the paint, and we want the ball to get reversed, and we haven’t seen a lot of any of that,” Brown said. “It’s a lot of front-side actions that are happening, and if we don’t have anything on the front side, it’s almost like we’re in the water.

“We don’t know what’s next. We can’t get to the play after the play, and that’s something we have to figure out sooner than later.”

***

The rookie isn’t backing down from an All-Star assignment: Edgecombe is meeting Brunson at the moment.

There’s 8:59 left in the first quarter, and Edgecombe has planted his feet into Madison Square Garden’s hardwood floors. Mitchell Robinson hits the 2025 No. 3 overall pick with a stiff screen, but there he remains glued to Brunson’s hip, physical without fouling, falling neither for head fake nor stutter step, ultimately forcing a tough miss from the head of the Knicks’ snake.

It’s everything Brown wants from his defense: aggression, physicality, sheer will and determination in guarding the perimeter and the point of attack. Yet it’s everything the coach says is missing from a defense that’s cratered entering the new year.

After Saturday’s loss, the Knicks fell from 24th to 25th in defensive rating over their last eight games. They are allowing 120.1 points per 100 possessions, or — in layman’s terms — have given up 124 or more points in six of those eight games.

“It’s just the effort,” said Mikal Bridges. “And I think the initial effort might be there, but making plays after — the second effort — it’s not there.”

While Edgecombe is hounding Brunson on one end, Tyrese Maxey’s got 1,200 square feet of real estate at Madison Square Garden on the other. Because the Knicks are getting stuck on screens, and the Sixers are making it a point to make them pay.

It’s one thing, though, for the Knicks to get stuck on a Joel Embiid screen, like when Anunoby couldn’t pry himself free from a 7-1 behemoth’s body at the 5:34 mark of the third quarter, a sequence that left Maxey wide-open for a shot four feet behind the three-point line.

It’s another beast entirely when the players the Knicks have billed as perimeter stoppers and defensive irritants can’t clear backup big man Adem Bona in time to prevent Edgecombe from a wide-open, over-the-top three.

“The biggest thing is right now, we want to be physical defensively. You can see guys are up in us… they’re getting in our bodies and blowing up any dribble hand-off, even pick-and-roll situations, and we’re not able to come off a pick-and-roll and turn the corner and get downhill,” Brown explained. “So, defensively, we want to do the same [as them], but right now, we’re not as physical as we should be at the point of attack, we’re not navigating the ball screen like we should be at the point of attack a lot of times, and then when we do, we’re picking up a foul.”

***

Josh Hart’s availability shouldn’t be make-or-break for this Knicks team. Yet New York’s fifth highest-paid player missed his fifth straight game with an ankle sprain on Saturday. The Knicks fell to 2-3 in those games, a stark deviation from the 11-2 record they amassed after Brown’s decision to insert his versatile forward into the starting lineup in place of Robinson on Nov. 24.

Brown says the Knicks miss Landry Shamet, too. Shamet’s absence due to a shoulder sprain hurts the Knicks because the veteran sharpshooter plays with a pace New York has sorely missed.

“Right now our pace is not good,” Brown added. “We’re walking the ball up almost every time, and then almost everything is on the front side.”

Brunson, too, pointed to pace as an issue (though it’s fair to note he owns the team’s slowest individual pace, according to NBA.com), while Bridges solved the issue after the game.

“I think we’re not playing fast enough, and that’s on everybody. We’ve gotta know what we’ve gotta do spacing wise,” Bridges said. “I think we know what we should do, but we’re either not thinking or taking too long to think about what we have to get into, and that’s been our problem.”

Enter Hart, who acts first, asks questions later. It’s why he — quite literally — is the heartbeat of this Knicks team. He’s the glue that both ties the offense together and helps turn defense into transition opportunities.

And appropriately, the Knicks have begun to fall apart without their glue guy intact. Hart will be out at least another week, meaning his return is likely slated for some point during the team’s four-game West Coast road trip spanning Jan. 9-15.

“It’s a next-man-up mentality. Obviously we miss him, but there’s no excuse about what we should be doing out there,” said Brunson. “Obviously he’s a big part of what we do, but we need to step up.”

***

There’s still the elephant in the room: Towns is a gifted scoring big man who remains lost in the new Knicks offense shuffle. By the numbers, 23 points, 14 rebounds, two assists and two steals is a solid night at the office for a premier NBA big man. But Towns scored just two points in the first half and didn’t make his presence felt on the offensive end until he forced the issue in the third quarter.

“I got more shots,” Towns said. “So just trying to make shots.”

“I’ll watch the tape. I know in the third, I got more aggressive on the offensive end and made the most of those opportunities. I just shot more shots. That’s the only way you can make more points.”

It’s been a constant this season: As a byproduct of the new offense that’s required him to master the responsibilities of all five positions — and a team that isn’t seeking him out on offense consistently — Towns is enduring the least efficient shooting season of his career. He shot 6-of-16 from the field on Saturday and did virtually all of his damage at the foul line on an abysmal 0-of-5 shooting night from downtown.

Towns is the highest-paid player on the Knicks’ payroll, the chip New York brass moved Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and a coveted first-round pick to acquire two summers ago. And the Knicks hired Brown in part to help maximize his gifts on the offensive end of the floor.

So far, that hasn’t happened, though Towns’ propensity to pick up cheap fouls — and complain about no-calls on the other end — doesn’t help his case much, either.

Towns will complain about fouls, but not about shot attempts. At least not as long as the Knicks are winning ball games. The last time the Knicks lost three in a row, they responded with a five-game winning streak that set the tone for a glorious run to the NBA Cup championship.

It was also the last time the Knicks looked this disjointed on both ends of the floor. They were, as Brown says, in the water then, and they’re back in it now.

It’s time to see if these Knicks will sink or swim.

“I hope history repeats itself, and for history to repeat itself, we’ve gotta lock in and be ready for the next game,” said Towns. “And it’s not gonna get any easier for us with Detroit, a team that’s playing extremely well. We’ve gotta go out there and execute at a higher level and bring that energy and physicality that’s needed.”

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