Three Things NBA Preview: New York Knicks
As I detailed a couple weeks ago, I’m once again re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2025-26 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows:
- Sept. 1-5: Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR)
- Sept. 8-12: Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
- Sept. 15-19: Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS)
- Sept. 22-26: Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC)
- Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
- Oct. 6-10: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS)
So without further ado, let's get to the New York Knicks, who made a run to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years but were eliminated for the second year in a row by the Indiana Pacers.
Coaching, ch-ch-ch-changes
I'm very excited to see what kind of things Mike Brown does differently from Tom Thibodeau. Most of the conversation here has centered on the offense, and rightfully so, but he should be at least willing to make some changes and try some new things on defense as well.
First and foremost, Brown has to get the Knicks to play faster. If his recent history is any indication, he will. A couple years ago, I wrote a story for FiveThirtyEight about the value of time on the shot clock, and I hinged it on Brown's Sacramento Kings team that at the time had the best offense in NBA history.
All of which brings us to this season’s underdog darlings: the Sacramento Kings. This season, no team has a better offense than Sacramento, which is leading the league in offensive rating by more than a full point per 100 possessions and is on track to set a new league record for scoring efficiency. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Kings are also among the league’s fastest teams at getting into their half-court offense. According to Second Spectrum, only the Indiana Pacers have run their initial offensive action faster on average than the Kings, and even they have done so by a margin of just 0.007 seconds.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Several years ago, Kings coach Mike Brown took part in a coaching training session for Basketball Fundamentals, where he explained his three offensive staples. The very first one was pace: “Getting into your offense with 21 or 20 seconds on the shot clock,” Brown said, noting exactly the range where the drop-off has been steepest. “You need to get into your offense by then so you can get to your third and fourth option, if you need to."
Jalen Brunson obviously isn't De'Aaron Fox and Karl-Anthony Towns isn't Domantas Sabonis, so I don't imagine that the Knicks will play anywhere near as fast as those Kings teams. But they should play quite a bit faster than the Knicks of recent vintage — at least in terms of how they operate in the halfcourt, if not how often they get out on the break.
Brown also has to get the Knicks playing a more egalitarian style. Guys like Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby can't be bystanders as often as they were last year. Karl-Anthony Towns can't turn into one whenever the opponent decides to defend him with a wing rather than a big, which could still happen quite often. This team has too much talent to operate like Jalen Brunson and the Brunsonnaires.
More dribble hand-offs, more off-ball screens, more cuts, more player movement in general. Brown needs to be bringing somewhere between some and (preferably) all of this to the table.
On the other end, you just have to be willing to venture outside of your base schemes more often. Nail what you want to be good at, of course, but try to be good at multiple things instead of just one thing. When you know you're going to be as good as the Knicks are, and when your only true goal is deep playoff success, you have to use the regular season as a lab experiment so that you can find out what works and what doesn't, what you can do and what you cannot.
That means more switching. That means more blitzing. That means being willing to play zone defense at all, ever. When you have Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns on your team and play single-digit possessions of zone through an entire year, that is not being creative enough as a defensive coach — especially when you consider that it's not like the defense was world-beating. It would be one thing if you refused to consider other schemes beyond one that was anchoring a top-10 unit, but that wasn't the case here. Brown can't afford to be quite so stubborn.
