The NBA Finals are finally here! Here are some of the things I'm thinking about as we head into tonight's Game 1.
How do the Knicks deal with Victor Wembanyama?
We can't really start anywhere else, can we? The best player in the world is about to play in the NBA Finals, and how on Earth the Knicks plan to counter-act him on both ends of the floor is going to be the single-biggest factor in determining who wins the series.
We'll start on offense, because so many of the Knicks-related questions we have below are going to touch on Wemby's defense, and we'll thoroughly examine his defensive impact through those answers.
There's been a whole lot of talk about the Knicks guarding Wemby with OG Anunoby, and that is surely going to happen quite a bit during this series; I'm just not sure it's going to be the primary matchup from jump street. New York mixed things up on Wemby during the regular season, using each of Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Mitchell Robinson with near-equal frequency. Some of that matchup data is skewed by the fact that Wemby came off the bench for the NBA Cup Finals and that he was still on a minutes limit for the December 31 matchup, but it's instructive in that it didn't feel like the Knicks were afraid to have someone other than their best defender match up with the 7-foot-4 monster.
There are positives and negatives to each of the different matchups.
Using Anunoby on Wemby obviously means your best defender is guarding the opposing team's best player, and that's comforting. Many teams have preferred to defend Wemby with a wing, and Anunoby is probably the wing best-suited in the entire league to the job of slowing him down, if not stopping him. He's wing-sized in terms of height but he is built like a mack truck, which enables him to force big men off their spot on the block and make their post touches more difficult. He can do this to Wemby and then stick with him everywhere he goes.
He obviously can't single-handedly prevent the pick-and-roll lobs from happening, but that's another benefit of playing Wemby with a wing — it allows your center to roam away from someone else and provide help on the back line. The issue there is that Harrison Barnes was a much more convenient hiding spot for Towns than are either Julian Champagnie or Devin Vassell, who are more likely to make you pay for that strategy with either corner threes or pump-and-drive attacks, to which Towns can still be susceptible even in his improved defensive state.
Using Anunoby on Wemby also removes the Knicks' best help defender from help position, where he is often able to wreak havoc on entire offenses by himself. Anunoby is one of the best in the world at darting into and out of the paint depending on where the ball is and where it might be going at any given moment, and his ability to mess things up away from the ball is one of the keys to the Knicks' defense.
So, do you just use Towns on Wemby? He has the size and bulk to be physical with him in a similar manner to how Isaiah Hartenstein was during the previous series, but do you really want Towns doing that? His fouls are much more valuable than Hartenstein's, because Towns is arguably the key to the Knicks' offense in this series as well. He needs to be on the floor as often as possible (especially with Robinson injured; more on that later), and grappling with Wemby on defense probably makes him more likely to pick up fouls and thus sit on the bench for extended stretches that the Knicks can't afford.
Robinson will also get his chances on Wemby if and when he's in the game, and he's actually the more likely analogue for Hartenstein, if we're being honest. Mitch is probably only going to get 12-20 minutes a night even in his best games, so he can be much more physical with the big man than you want Towns being. His length is also more likely to bother Spurs passers when they try to throw Wemby those lobs, though I'm not sure anybody really has enough length to prevent them entirely because Wemby is just that big and that long and because the guards have gotten so good at finding the right loft angle. (And because nobody can prevent them alone, you have to send multiple defenders toward those rolls, which opens up the threes for everyone else.)
The Knicks are going to have to find a way to keep Wemby from totally dominating the entire series in the paint. They have several options to run through, and might even be comfortable cycling through a few more if they decide to switch ball screens and just provide a ton of help if and when Wemby gets post position out of those switches. None of those options is guaranteed to work, obviously, but it's important to have a rolodex rather than merely one way to guard such a singular force. How they choose to match up at the start won't necessarily be how they choose to match up at the end, either. I would expect more Anunoby late in games/the series as opposed to early, I think.
How do the Spurs deal with Karl-Anthony Towns?
I don't expect Wembanyama to be the primary matchup on Towns. I think he's going to do the thing where he "guards" Josh Hart and plays a one-man zone. That's what most teams like to do against the Knicks these days to begin with, and that's how the Spurs would prefer to use Wemby anyway.
That means San Antonio is going to have to defend Towns with one of Stephon Castle, Vassell, or Champagnie. (De'Aaron Fox obviously is not an option. One of the matchups I'm most confident we'll see is Fox on Mikal Bridges, and probably Bridges on Fox as well.) Again, there are merits to all three options, each of which also brings drawbacks.
Castle was actually the most common halfcourt matchup for Towns in the three regular-season matchups, according to tracking data on GeniusIQ, though again that is skewed by Wemby's minutes. He has the strength to be the type of wing matchup that teams like to use on Towns, and he obviously has the ability to switch on Jalen Brunson in pick and rolls. The Knicks like to use whomever is being guarded by the opposing center as their primary screener more often than not, but they're not just going to abandon Brunson-Towns action, so that switchability is an important factor. (It's what makes me think Champagnie is unlikely to be the guy guarding Towns, even though he was there on occasion during the regular season. He held up occasionally when switched onto Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the previous series, but the Spurs were able to load up to SGA much more than they will be able to load up to Brunson in this series because the Knicks have a lot more secondary threats than the Thunder did in their injured state.) But having Castle on Towns means that he's not on Brunson for most of the series, and that gives Brunson more of an opportunity to cook than he would otherwise have.
Vassell didn't guard Towns a ton during the regular season, but I think I expect him to get the first shot here. He's a wing with size and length, and he can be more physical than he looks. He would still allow Wemby to roam away from Hart, and he can switch onto Brunson in a pinch while Castle could then switch onto Towns. Especially late in the shot clock, I think the Spurs would be just fine with those matchups.
Wemby will also spend plenty of time on Towns, and might have to when the Knicks go to their Hart-less lineups with either Landry Shamet or Deuce McBride in his place as an additional shooter. Maybe the Spurs use Wemby on Anunoby or Bridges in those configurations, but that's much more dangerous than having him defend Hart. If and when he's on Towns, I'd expect that the Knicks will run a lot of pick-and-pop action at him to raise him out of the paint. The Spurs obviously know that, though, and will work to keep him out of those situations.
No matter who's guarding him, Towns is going to have to be ultra-aggressive in this series, and in different ways. Depending on how he's guarded, he's going to have to be a shooter, a passer, a driver, and a post-up hub. His decisions have to be quick and decisive — especially on the perimeter, where he can't afford to hesitate before making a shoot-pass-drive decision (see: Holmgren, Chet) and when he gets the ball at the elbow extended or the top of the key, whether in pick-and-pop situations or when the Knicks try to run their weave and flex actions through him. He's also going to have to dominate the offensive glass when the Spurs defend him with smaller guys, which he's obviously capable of doing as well. He's the skeleton key to unlock so much of what the Knicks want to do. The Spurs don't have ideal matchups for him, necessarily, and if he asserts himself in the right ways it could be the key to the series. Especially if he does so well enough that the Spurs feel like they have to switch Wemby onto him. That would be a series-changing development.
How much of the new offense can/will the Knicks run?
Because Wemby will likely be "guarding" Hart and roaming away from him to take away the paint, a lot of the off-ball actions that have been designed to get cutters free looks in the lane that the Knicks have been using during their 11-0 sprint through the Eastern Conference are going to be much more complicated. How much of that stuff will we actually see when Wemby can just sit in the middle and make those cutters think two or three times about even entering the paint for a cut, let alone shooting it once they get there? How effective will it be when they do run it?
That's why it's good for the Knicks that they don't only run that offense. They have the Brunson-heavy isolation and pick-and-roll stuff they can run, and that's been pretty damn difficult for everybody in the league to stop. More on that in a minute.
No matter what type of offense the Knicks run, it's clear that Hart is going to have to shoot and make threes, make plays in short roll situations, hit the offensive glass, and do everything as quickly as possible because if you hesitate, you risk letting Wemby rotate himself back into the play and you force yourself to reset the offense and create an advantage again. If he can't and/or won't shoot or starts record-scratching in space, he's going to be watching Shamet and/or McBride. And while those guys bring their own strengths to the game, not having Hart for extended stretches would hurt the Knicks in other ways.
Can the Spurs' guards go matchup-hunting?
Fox, Castle, and Dylan Harper are all capable of beating pretty much anybody one on one, but they undoubtedly will want to target Brunson. (And, to a lesser extent, Towns.) Brunson is likely going to defend Champagnie to start games, and the Spurs will want to run a bunch of small-small screens to get what they deem a mismatch in isolation.
The Knicks have done a really good job of preventing opponents from hunting Brunson during the playoffs, though. The effort has started with Brunson himself, who has made it extremely difficult for opponents to even get those matchups in the first place by hedging hard on ball-handlers and aggressively recovering to his man. This is also a series where they can more comfortably go under screens against the Spurs' ball-handlers, because none of Fox, Castle, and Harper is a high-level shooter in the mold of Tyrese Maxey or even Donovan Mitchell.
The Spurs do make it hard to use under coverage, though, because Fox and Castle are so fast and Castle and Harper are so strong and they can each thus use the extra space afforded to them as a runway to the paint. They'll also run the 45 action the NBC broadcast kept highlighting during the Thunder series, which makes it difficult to go under screens and defend both Wembanyama and Champagnie or Vassell, all at the same time.
Can Jalen Brunson do what Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn't?
Brunson and SGA, despite being built very differently, are pretty similar players. They will both cook you in pick and rolls and especially in isolation. Both will annihilate you from the mid-range, especially from 10-15 feet, though also from 16-20. Both have arguably the best footwork and pump-fake usage in the game, and it's only arguably because the other guy also exists. They want to do a lot of the same stuff, and they do it in very similar ways.
Because of the lack of secondary creation and lack of shooting OKC was able to put on the floor against the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, things were far more difficult for SGA than they were at any other point in the season. The Spurs, even once they stopped flat-out double-teaming him, were able to load up in his direction without fear that the other guys surrounding him would beat them from the perimeter or with shell-piercing drives.
That calculation won't be as simple against New York, which is shooting the hell out of the ball and has guys that can put it on the deck much more confidently than the ones the Thunder were putting out there without Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell. Because of that, it'll be harder to load quite as heavily toward Brunson, which will give him more of an opportunity to get to his spots in the mid-range, where he thrives.
Brunson's ability and willingness to fire away on pull-up threes is also a differentiator from Gilgeous-Alexander. The Spurs clearly didn't care about and/or respect SGA's off-the-dribble three-ball, and that allowed them to gear their defense around what to do when he got to the elbows or below. Brunson is more of a threat from farther out, so they'll have to lift up higher on the floor, which opens things up for the other guys to make their cuts and still have enough room to operate in front of Wemby.
If they're lifted up higher and Brunson goes by them, Wemby also has to step up in the paint earlier, opening up opportunities for dump-offs or lobs. Wemby is so freaky that he can recover to those anyway, so the Knicks have to be really quick with their interior decision-making to get off those layups and dunks before he's able to get back to the man under the rim. The more they can make him move around in general, though, the better, because that will open up opportunities elsewhere — even if the Knicks have to kick it out from under the basket and swing it around the perimeter to get a look.
I'm fascinated to see the split in who guards Brunson and how often. Castle will presumably get the first shot, but I expect to see a lot of Vassell and Harper as well, and if Fox is healthy, he could get some chances. (He guarded Brunson some during the regular season.) Teams usually want to try to overwhelm him with size and length, but he's also used to that by now. The strength that Castle has, to me, makes him the best matchup because he's not as likely to get bumped as hard on those pump fakes and shoulder dips that Brunson loves to use when he gets around the lane.
What happens in the non-Wemby and non-Brunson minutes?
San Antonio is plus-188 in 552 minutes with Wembanyama on the court during the postseason, and minus-3 in 322 minutes with him off it. In the Western Conference Finals, it was plus-62 with Wemby on and minus-36 with him off.
The Knicks need to win the non-Wemby minutes more than the 5 points per game the Thunder did if they want to win the series. They have to be entirely unafraid to attack Luke Kornet, whether at the rim or on the perimeter. They have to push the San Antonio offense far away from the basket and make it operate later in the shot clock than it had to against Oklahoma City.
New York typically has Brunson play the entire first and third quarters, rest at the beginning of the second and fourth, then come in for the rest of the game. Wemby's rest pattern is different, as he takes a break in the middle of the first and third quarters and then comes back in, so he can play against some of the bench units early in the second and fourth. That aligns some non-Brunson minutes with Wemby on the court, and that could be very dangerous for New York's offense.
The Knicks have been keenly aware of the possible effect on their offense, though, and have taken to playing Towns and one or both of Anunoby or Bridges in those minutes, along with Jose Alvarado and either Deuce McBride, Shamet, or Hart. They could also go double-big with Towns and Robinson to try to hammer the glass.
The Knicks are an incredible plus-226 in the Brunson minutes this postseason, but they're also plus-45 with him off the floor. None of those minutes came against an opponent of this caliber, obviously, and a lot of them came in extended garbage time, but it's worth noting that they've thus far handled those minutes better than the Spurs have handled those without Wemby.
How healthy are Mitchell Robinson and De'Aaron Fox?
We have absolutely zero idea about Robinson's status heading into Game 1, other than that he's questionable and there's been some reporting that he wants to try to play. The Knicks didn't make him available on media day, which didn't seem like the best sign in the world, but that could also just be gamesmanship. We really just don't know.
If he's healthy, Robinson is going to be monstrously important. He's another body the Knicks can use against Wemby, obviously, and he's also just their best rim protector. He's also the best offensive rebounder in the league and an elite lob threat. The offensive rebounding was hugely important in the NBA Cup final specifically, and against a team as good on the defensive glass as the Spurs are, the ability to take one of their strengths and turn it into a potential weakness is huge. As is the ability to catch and finish lobs behind Wemby when he steps up to take away the paint from drivers, as mentioned in the Brunson section above. Can he catch the ball with a broken pinkie/hand? We'll find out.
Fox didn't look healthy at all for pretty much the entirety of the Thunder series... but looked electric in Game 7. Was that a return to full health, or was it a blip that he was able to summon for the biggest game of the season? If he's healthy and able to get downhill with his incredible speed, that changes a lot of things for the Spurs offensively. And if he's able to change directions quickly enough to hold up defensively, the Spurs don't have to be afraid to switch him onto Brunson when New York goes to the guard-guard screening action either on or off the ball.
Who wins the rebounding and transition battles?
As mentioned, the Spurs are an excellent rebounding team. In fact, they were the best defensive rebounding team in the NBA during the regular season, and the 10th-best offensive rebounding team. The Knicks, meanwhile, might be even better at rebounding. They checked in second in defensive rebounding and fifth in offensive rebounding during the regular season.
Both teams aren't afraid to send multiple crashers to the glass, though a lot of the offensive rebounding also comes courtesy of guys who just gobble up boards because they're huge (Wemby, Towns, Robinson) and/or have incredible instincts (Robinson, Hart, all of San Antonio's wings). Because those guys are all so good at hounding the boards, though, both teams will have to consider keeping their guys back on the defensive glass to prevent the offensive rebounds, and that could affect the transition game, which has been key to both teams' attacks during the playoffs.
The Spurs are first in transition frequency during the playoffs and the Knicks are fourth, per Cleaning the Glass, while New York is second in transition efficiency and San Antonio is fourth. (I'm not counting the teams that lost in the play-in tournament.) They're thus the top two teams (Knicks first, Spurs second) in transition points per game during the postseason. Because both teams are playing such high level half-court defense, it's going to be massively important to get out on the break and score before the other team can get set.
Who wins the corner three battle?
These two teams finished first (Knicks) and third (Spurs) in the league in corner threes made this year. They also finished first (Spurs) and second (Knicks) in the share of threes that came from the corners in the first place. (They also combined for four of the top five individual corner three leaders in Anunoby, Bridges, Barnes, and Champagnie.)
During the playoffs, the Knicks have replicated their regular-season mark by nailing 41.8% of their corner treys (they were at 41.6% during the regular season), while the Spurs have actually dipped from 39% in the regular season to just 32% in the postseason.
New York has shot the lights out on those looks despite having the second-lowest average defender distance on corner threes in the entire postseason, according to GeniusIQ tracking, with only the Suns being more closely defended. San Antonio has underperformed its expected corner three-point effective field goal percentage by a large margin (-7.4 percentage points) after meeting expectations on those shots nearly exactly during the regular season (plus-0.3 percentage points.)
Because of the way we can expect the two teams to defend each other, the corners are going to be one of the most important battle grounds, and whichever team can make the other pay from that area of the floor is going to have a much better chance to come out on top.
What else could matter here?
Bridges' mid-range game and defense on Fox and/or Castle and/or Harper. New York's ability to go five-out with Shamet or McBride, and whether those guys can hold up against the Spurs' guards defensively. New York's willingness to go small with neither Towns nor Robinson on the court, if the latter is either out injured or ineffective. (I ... do not trust Ariel Hukporti.) The Knicks' extra rest throughout the postseason and how it could factor into their willingness to play their guys additional minutes. Whether Alvarado can survive in the series offensively, and whether he can swing a few minutes in a game or two defensively. The absolutely raucous energy in The Garden.
Whether Fox can bother Bridges' shot. How Champagnie or Vassell holds up against Anunoby defensively and on the boards. How well Kornet can protect the rim and if he can hit the Knicks on the offensive glass. Whether either or both of Barnes and Carter Bryant have a role in the series, and what that role is. Whether the Spurs are either gassed or energized from the OKC series. Whether the experience gap actually matters in a way it hasn't yet. Vassell and Castle in transition defense. Harper's ability to get whatever he wants in tight spaces. And French Vanilla.
