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But the real issue, a growing concern about performances against tougher competition as the postseason nears, is expanding itself at a rapid rate. Earlier this month, the Knicks were riding the highs of a seven-game winning streak \u2014 including convincing wins over Denver and San Antonio at the beginning of March. But their third straight loss to a playoff team (New York also lost back-to-back games to the Lakers and Clippers and twice to the Thunder in March) is loud enough to raise concerns, especially this close to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
From the 50,000-foot view, the Knicks, much like New Yorkers, are a confident, arrogant bunch. And why shouldn\u2019t they be? On paper, they\u2019re an easy sell as a contender: An uber-efficient offensive hub in Brunson; aggressive, switchable, lengthy point-of-attack defenders in OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart; a generational second-chance opportunist in Mitchell Robinson in an era predicated on winning the possession battle; and an elite floor-spacing unit with nine rotational players shooting 36% or better from deep, with six of them essentially at or beyond the 40% mark.<\/p>\n
![\"Houston](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5ba71360-2d91-11f1-97fb-dd72e825174e.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Rockets center Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn fouls Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns (32) during the first half Tuesday in Houston.<\/p>\n
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)<\/p>\n
Need more? New York is fifth in points scored per-100-possessions against top 10 defenses and sixth in points allowed per-100-possessions against top-10 offenses, according to Cleaning the Glass. It\u2019s everything you should desire in a team built to win at the highest level.<\/p>\n
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The problems, the more you dig, are worrisome. The Knicks\u2019 3-point defense is essentially non-existent, 27th in opponent attempt rate and 21st in conversion rate, numbers that won\u2019t get better after allowing Houston \u2014 which takes the fourth fewest 3s per game \u2014 to knock down 15-of-35 from deep, a 43% clip. But that\u2019s not even scratching the surface of where their defensive issues reside.<\/p>\n
The pairing of Brunson and Towns, which of course has a plethora of offensive perks, has become increasingly difficult to construct a Finals-worthy scheme to sustain them for 48 minutes. Houston repeatedly ran actions that involved either Brunson, Towns or both of them in pick-and-roll scenarios, extracting the worst attributes of both time and time again. Oklahoma City forced Towns to attempt to cover ample ground, which he\u2019s clearly unable to do, exposing his backside for cuts, lobs and easy finishes at the rim. Brown bemoaned his team\u2019s inability to contain the Rockets\u2019 offensively, which is saying something considering Houston has hovered around the bottom five in half-court efficiency since October.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur pick-and-roll defense was not good tonight,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe tried a lot of different things. We tried to blitz, we tried to switch the matchups, we went to a little zone, too. But it was to no avail, and we have to do a better job in that area going forward, because it was really bad tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks are 16th in defensive rating over the last two weeks, they\u2019re 16th in defensive rating since March 1 and \u2026 they\u2019re 16th in defensive rating since the All-Star break. New York\u2019s biggest strength (Brunson\u2019s offense) is also their biggest weakness (Brunson\u2019s defense). Its offense simply falls apart with him off the floor, 7.2 points per 100 possessions better in his minutes, 93rd percentile, per Cleaning the Glass. But the Knicks are surrendering nearly six more points defensively at the same time. (Hart, Jordan Clarkson and Robinson have all been net negatives at that end of the floor, too.)<\/p>\n
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\u201cMental lapses,\u201d Brunson said. \u201cAnd things that shouldn\u2019t be happening in game 75 or 76 in the season. We got a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge for Brown between now and when the playoffs commence will be figuring out if there\u2019s a way to make all of this work. In the postseason, teams will take pages from Houston\u2019s book, consistently hunting Brunson and Towns either separately or in tandem. Figuring out rotations might be an issue too, especially considering some of New York\u2019s issues with double-big lineups and finding anyone who can actually initiate offense outside of Brunson, etc. Consider this: Towns, according to Synergy tracking data, is allowing opponents to shoot 62.5% on shots he directly defended. For context, former teammate Donte DiVincenzo, close in quantity of shots defended, has fared better.<\/p>\n
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Could this mean Brown puts more trust in his bench lineups? Prior to Tuesday, New York was outscoring opponents by nearly 18 points per 100 possessions when Jose Alvarado and Clarkson shared the floor, per PBP Stats. So far, however, Brown has been hesitant to play, say, Alvarado and Miles McBride together, likely because of the lack of size. He has, however, loved pairing Brunson with either of those \u2014 which has produced a +16<\/a> and +15.9<\/a> efficiency advantage, respectively, on a sizable sample size.<\/p>\n Still, context matters. We\u2019re talking about a top-four seed in the East heading into the playoffs with arguably the deepest roster in basketball and three elite players, according to advanced analytics \u2014 Brunson 12th in Estimated Offensive Plus-Minus<\/a>, Anunoby 17th in DARKO<\/a> and Towns 26th in Estimated Plus-Minus<\/a>. History tells us that teams with impactful players of this frequency \u2014 combined with above-average coaching \u2014 do well in playoff settings. But time is running out for the Knicks to find their groove.<\/p>\n \u201cOvercommunication and holding each other accountable,\u201d Brunson said. \u201cJust not getting discouraged. This is obviously a bump in the road, but we can\u2019t let outside noise mess us up internally. Just have to continue to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe last few games, we haven\u2019t had [a rhythm] and teams go through stretches like that,\u201d Brown added. \u201cWe got seven more games to try to find it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly before New York\u2019s prime-time loss in Oklahoma City, Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns was asked about his assimilation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,6115,10225,3897,71863,5145,20455,19696,94993,87780,20449,12845,2873,12834,15566,177382,16104,1025,9275,5673,12837,85],"class_list":["post-578133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-cleveland","tag-clippers","tag-denver","tag-donte-divincenzo","tag-houston","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-jordan-clarkson","tag-jose-alvarado","tag-josh-hart","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-knicks","tag-lakers","tag-mikal-bridges","tag-mike-brown","tag-miles-mcbride","tag-mitchell-robinson","tag-new-york","tag-og-anunoby","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-san-antonio","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578133","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=578133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}