{"id":193093,"date":"2025-10-06T09:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T09:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193093\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T09:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T09:44:07","slug":"making-room-for-the-death-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193093\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Room for the Death Lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning! A few notes before we get to today\u2019s newsletter\u2026<\/p>\n

I did a write up<\/a> on New York\u2019s 112-104 win on Saturday afternoon ICYMI. As a reminder, I\u2019ll be doing postgame writeups on weekends now for all full subscribers.<\/p>\n

On that note, there\u2019s never been a better time to become a full subscriber than now:<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for a special announcement coming later this week. I know I don\u2019t tease things that often, but this one is big, so stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Keep getting your mailbag questions in to macri@knicksfilmschool.com<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it! Let\u2019s get to today\u2019s newsletter.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s question comes to us from Jordan Miller, who is wondering about how to fully unlock New York\u2019s All-Star big man:<\/p>\n

I am unsure of the numbers, but I imagine that last season the offense started to slowly deteriorate when teams started to place a smaller defender on KAT. My question is what can the Knicks do in order to still get the most from KAT & their offense when this situation occurs? Is it as simple as trying not to play him alongside Hart so that other teams can\u2019t stick a big man on Josh, or are there other ways you would like to see the Knicks counter these situations?<\/p>\n

I got this question early last week, but today seems like a perfect time to answer it.<\/p>\n

In the first half of New York\u2019s second second preseason game, we got a longer look a five-out offense than in any single game last season. <\/p>\n

Mitchell Robinson was on the court for 13:27. For the other 14:33, we got some combination of Jalen Brunson, Malcolm Brogdon, Jordan Clarkson, Deuce McBride, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Guerschon Yabusele and Karl-Anthony Towns, all of whom are credible threats from behind the arc. Notably absent from that list is Josh Hart, who missed yesterday\u2019s game with a sore lower back.<\/p>\n

With Precious Achiuwa taking his talents to South Beach and Tom Thibodeau palling around<\/a> with old friends in Minnesota, there was no one left to pee in the spacing punch bowl. As a result, the Knicks played much of the half five five shooters on the floor.<\/p>\n

So, to get back to Jordan\u2019s question, did we finally get some minutes with a center forced to guard KAT?<\/p>\n

Of course not!<\/p>\n

When Philly was first confronted with this situation, they slotted their center on Guerschon Yabusele, which was predictable enough. He has only one NBA season of above-average 3-point shooting under his belt, and it came on low volume. More than that, Yabu is a greater threat to post up than KAT if there\u2019s a mouse in the house. Slotting a center on him instead of Towns is sound strategy.<\/p>\n

After that, the Sixers really went rogue, playing with no center for the final stretch of the first half, including all of the minutes with Deuce plus the starters. Instead of deciding where to place the likes of Adem Bona and Andre Drummond, they simply took those guys off the floor altogether and rolled with forwards Dominick Barlow and Johni Broome to close the half. This was par for the course after Game 1, when Towns similarly didn\u2019t attempt a single shot with a center guarding him.<\/p>\n

Using this strategy, Philly largely did a good job limiting the four-time All-Star from the field. Here were the eight shots that Towns took over the course of the two games:<\/p>\n

A missed jump hook over 6’7″ Jabari Walker<\/p>\n

A missed trail three<\/p>\n

A made transition layup<\/p>\n

A dunk off of a deflected ball that wound up in his hands<\/p>\n

A made one-legged 13-foot fadeaway jumper on Barlow<\/p>\n

A missed DHO three when Barlow went under a screen<\/p>\n

A missed layup after a Brunson pick & roll that was stripped by Oubre helping off Bridges in the corner. Bona was also helping liberally off Yabusele in the weak side corner<\/p>\n

A missed fast break layup<\/p>\n

Yet, despite Nick Nurse picking up right where the rest of the league left off in how he covered KAT, Towns still scored 17 points on those eight shots over the two games. That\u2019s because Karl feasted at the charity stripe, where he went 11-for-12 from the line in 34 total minutes. That\u2019s an impressive number considering Towns took over a dozen free throws in a game only once last season, when he averaged just 5.7 attempts a night.<\/p>\n

A look at one of the fouls that preceded two of those attempts explains why we should expect KAT to vastly increase his average this season:<\/p>\n

This is the sort of thing we didn\u2019t see nearly enough of last year, and is a great example of how the Knicks can leverage KAT\u2019s shooting ability to put him in advantageous situations. <\/p>\n

When Towns jab steps after he passes the ball to Mitch, Walker has to honor that movement to prevent a possible open three. After he commits, Towns wastes no time pivoting and driving down the middle of the lane, after which Robinson drops in a perfectly placed pass that hits KAT in stride. This is a great example of how the KAT\/Mitch pairing can work wonders on offense, where teams will have to deal with a lot of size that can hurt them in different ways.<\/p>\n

(It\u2019s also great to see Robinson get to do some stuff, which I know has been an object of curiosity for many.)<\/p>\n

The other way that Towns came across a lot of his free throw attempts in Abu Dhabi was in transition, when he was running early and often. This could be another benefit of playing alongside Mitch, since KAT will now be guarding perimeter players far more often and should be able to leak out in transition more frequently. This strategy depends a lot on Robinson being able to clean up anything and everything around the rim, but with a two-game average of – ahem – 27.3 rebounds per 36 minutes, my guess is that he\u2019s more than up to the task. Don\u2019t mind me while I bet the over on every single-game Mitch rebounding total until Vegas starts to wise up.<\/p>\n

On top of the above, we know KAT will start taking and making threes (he\u2019s attempted only two so far, missing both). We\u2019ve seen him space to the corner on several possessions thus far but hasn\u2019t yet gotten an opportunity to fire away. If Mike Brown drills one thing into the heads of his new roster, it\u2019s going to be that spray threes<\/a> to the corners will be the lifeblood of this offense.<\/p>\n

This is all to say that we may be entering an era where having a center guard KAT is no longer a prerequisite to unlocking his many skills. That\u2019s great news if it can actually come to pass, but the only evidence we have so far has come against the corpse of one of the NBA\u2019s saddest franchises. Better defenses will have far higher levels of resistance.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to Jordan\u2019s premise. He\u2019s right that New York\u2019s offensive rating suffered after teams began putting their centers on Josh Hart, and the eye test was even worse than the numbers. Even with Mike Brown\u2019s revamped offense, it sets up a potentially uncomfortable question: are there enough minutes to go around for all three of Mitch, Hart and a five-out offense? To get even more specific, can we get enough time with Deuce in a five-out look alongside KAT, Jalen, Mikal and OG?<\/p>\n

I made the point on the postgame show that Brown would probably be best served using this grouping sparingly, as Steve Kerr did with the death lineup for all those years. Even so, can we get to the point where this is a nightly staple, or will it once again be like spotting Bigfoot? Now that fans have had a taste, you know they\u2019re going to want more.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

My guess is that the answer lies with pairing Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson as a regular duo moving forward. If the Knicks truly want to max out the spacing with one grouping, they\u2019ll need to pay for it someplace else.<\/p>\n

The good news: I think those guys will work out just fine together. In the playoffs last season, the Robinson\/Hart duo was one of New York\u2019s most successful pairings, outscoring opponents by 7.9 points per 100 possessions in 182 minutes. That was the second best Knick tandem among the 26 duos that played at least 50 postseason minutes, trailing only Jalen Brunson and Deuce McBride.<\/p>\n

Their success shouldn\u2019t be that hard to believe. Pairing two tenacious rebound-gobblers against opposing backups is a good recipe for success, especially if they can get out in transition as often as they did in the playoffs, when they sported one of New York\u2019s top pace figures. In an offense predicated on movement, having two non-shooters shouldn\u2019t be the death knell it might other wise be.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still much to be learned about Mike Brown\u2019s exact rotation patterns, but I can envision a scenario where Brunson pairs with these two and two shooters for a few minutes per half. That would be the way to keep Hart and Robinson around 25 minutes a game while still opening up enough time for what Brown hopes will be his version of the death lineup.<\/p>\n

And I do think that should be a priority. With all due respect to Philly\u2019s Barlow\/Broome Killer B\u2019s strategy, there is no good way to guard that grouping, and teams will wind up either playing without a true five or slotting their center on someone like OG, which this new offense should be able to exploit.<\/p>\n

All things to look forward to as we get to know this old dog with new tricks. The preseason continues on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0<\/p>\n

\u201cInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning! A few notes before we get to today\u2019s newsletter\u2026 I did a write up on New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-193093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}