The door has swung wide-open in the Eastern Conference.
After the Orlando Magic took a 3-1 lead over the Detroit Pistons with their Game 4 win on Monday night, the New York Knicks are staring at a golden opportunity. If they can survive their first-round series with the Atlanta Hawks, they may have a path to the NBA Finals without the lone Eastern foe that swept New York in the regular season.
First things first, though. Before the Knicks can think about the Magic, the Boston Celtics, or anybody else in the East, they have to deal with Gotham City supervillain C.J. McCollum and the Atlanta Hawks.
Here are the Knicks’ three keys to winning Game 5 at Madison Square Garden, starting with the biggest, which belongs to Karl-Anthony Towns.
1. Keep using Karl-Anthony Towns as a hub
As we discussed on Monday, the New York Knicks are an incredibly dangerous team when they run their offense through Karl-Anthony Towns’ gifted passing skills.
In New York’s Game 4 triumph, Towns dished 10 assists that led to 25 Knicks points. Coupled with the regular season, it marked his 14th game of the season with at least five assists, and in those games, the Knicks are 12-2 with an average point differential of +12.4. This is with eight of the 12 wins on the road, and six of those eight against playoff teams.
This wasn’t just a random occurrence; head coach Mike Brown made a concerted effort to run the offense through Towns. After throwing 31.9 passes per 36 minutes in Games 1-3, Towns threw 45.5 passes per 36 minutes in Game 4. It was obvious that the Knicks wanted to leverage Towns’ gravity into high-percentage looks for his teammates, and it worked beautifully—just like it has all year.
Quin Snyder and the Hawks will certainly try to adjust, but the Knicks control their own destiny here. There is nothing Atlanta can do to stop New York from continuously feeding Towns the ball in the high post and allowing him to play quarterback. The only option is to double him, and from there, Towns’ passing will become even more dangerous, while Jalen Brunson and others will receive more room to work.
Will the Knicks keep rolling with what works? Or will this frustratingly erratic team once again go away from a proven formula?
2. Do what it takes to keep Jalen Brunson off C.J. McCollum
When it comes to the Hawks’ offense, the only player who has consistently caused trouble for New York is C.J. McCollum. He’s averaging 24.5 points per game in the series, while shooting 51.3% from the field.
Most of McCollum’s success has come against Jalen Brunson. According to Databallr, McCollum has scored 34 points on 85% effective shooting when guarded by Brunson.
The Hawks have aggressively hunted down McCollum-versus-Brunson matchups. McCollum has played 61 possessions against Brunson, the most of any Knick defender.
But as long as the Knicks get someone other than Brunson on McCollum, they are doing a fantastic job of silencing him.
Against Brunson, McCollum is scoring 0.554 points per possession, but against any other Knick, he’s at 0.353, a major difference. McCollum is also turning it over on 6.4% of possessions against non-Brunson defenders, compared to 4.9% against him.
New York has had success hiding Brunson on Dyson McDaniels. Across 71 possessions against Daniels, Brunson has only allowed Daniels to score six points.
Brunson has even been successful in a size mismatch against Jonathan Kuminga, holding him to four points in 46 possessions while making 1 of 5 field goal attempts and turning it over twice.
The Knicks’ captain is not a total zero on defense. He just happens to be a very poor matchup for McCollum. Otherwise, though, he has found ways to add value defensively.
It’s up to the coaching staff to build a scheme that does everything in its power to prevent Atlanta from hunting down one-on-one matchups between McCollum and Brunson. Make the Hawks rely on just about anything else, and the Knicks should enjoy solid results.
3. Avoid lineups without Brunson or Towns on the floor
Mike Brown received well-deserved heat from Knicks fans for his lineup construction in Game 2, when the team spent extensive minutes without either Karl-Anthony Towns or Jalen Brunson on the floor. The All-Star-less stretches in the early second quarter and early fourth quarter (the latter lasting 5:54 of game clock) saw the Knicks outscored by seven points, proving costly in a one-point loss.
Brown did slightly better in this regard during Game 3, but there was still a 2:33 stretch to open the fourth quarter without either star on the court. The Knicks were outscored by two points in that time, which again proved to be the difference in a one-point loss.
In Game 4, Brown mostly eliminated these crushing lineups. Outside of garbage time and a measly 1:30 of game clock in the first half (most of that in the first quarter), the Knicks always had one or both of Towns or Brunson on the court.
This should be a simple equation for Brown. The Knicks are lucky enough to have two elite offensive players who each offer enough gravity to carry an offense on their own. It’s malpractice to never have at least one of them on the court at all times in a playoff game, when they should be expected to play a minimum of 36-38 minutes each night, if not 40 or more.
It was excusable in the regular season, when the Knicks were carefully marching through the year to stay prepared for the playoffs. Now that we’re here, though, it is absurd that Brown ever thought it was acceptable to go nearly six consecutive minutes in the second half of a close playoff game without one of his two 20-point scorers on the floor.
Brown’s baffling lineup choices have already cost the Knicks two games that should have never been squandered, but the past is the past. The good news is that he showed promising signs of getting his lineup management on track in Game 4.
The hope is that Brown will sustain this in Game 5, but as Knicks fans know, there were many times throughout the regular season when it seemed like New York had achieved a eureka moment, only for it to slip away in due time.
For Brown, the regular season was defined by experimentation. The purpose of that experimentation was supposed to be that New York would reach the playoffs with enough information to understand what works best for them, sparing them wasted playoff minutes. Instead, it seems as if Brown is still experimenting.
Let’s hope for the sake of Knicks fans’ sanity that the experimentation is finally over, and that Brown has, at last, settled on a consistent formula that unlocks the best version of the team on a nightly basis.
