the Knicks fell to the Hawks<\/a>, 107-106, in a game that saw New York get outscored by seven points in the minutes that both Brunson and Towns sat at the same time.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d Brown said when asked if he thought that was where the game got away from the Knicks. \u201cWe played that lineup quite a bit since the end of the season, and that lineup has been pretty good. We weren\u2019t good tonight, and we turned the ball over too many times during that period, but we had opportunities where our starters were in and we were up eight-to-10 points and Atlanta closed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t just say that specific lineup caused it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown is correct. The Knicks didn\u2019t just lose the game because of the minutes without both Brunson and KAT. They missed 10 free throws \u2014 Mitchell Robinson, the team\u2019s worst free-throw shooter, only had two attempts and made one of them. The Knicks had 14 turnovers for 18 Atlanta points. Mikal Bridges made just three of his 10 shots in the game. Brunson fouled a lot and was 10-for-26 from the floor. OG Anunoby had four of the missed free throws. Towns, too, fouled a lot and disappeared late, as the Knicks struggled to generate offense while he was guarded by a wing. The starters weren\u2019t good to close the game.<\/p>\n
There is a ton of blame to go around for the defeat, but Brown deserves a large portion of the finger-pointing.<\/p>\n
Brown was good around the margins during the regular season. He pushed the right buttons more often than not when it came to rotations and lineups. Yet, even if the numbers late in the season suggested otherwise, trotting out lineups without his two star players always felt like a recipe for disaster if it continued into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Brown started this new rotation with both Towns and Brunson sitting to start the second and fourth quarters around the final month of the regular season. It wasn\u2019t always pleasant, but it did work \u2026 sort of. Those lineups did have a positive net rating from March 1 on, but it should be noted that the Knicks played a lot of lesser teams in that span, too. On the season overall, lineups without Brunson and Towns had a minus-5.9 net rating in 290 minutes, per databallr.<\/p>\n
From a coaching standpoint, the playoffs are all about minimizing risk as much as possible. There is no world, in this setting, against a solid opponent, where the Knicks should be expected to excel offensively when both Brunson and Towns sit for as long as they did Monday night.<\/p>\n
The lineup to start the second quarter was Miles McBride, Landry Shamet, Jordan Clarkson, Anunoby and Robinson. There isn\u2019t a point guard in that group, let alone a natural ballhandler or guard\/wing with playmaking ability dangerous enough that a defense requires extra resources. That group was such a disaster that not only did a nine-point first-quarter lead evaporate in four minutes, Brown had to dust off Jose Alvarado after he\u2019d been out of the rotation.<\/p>\n
The Knicks were better after Brown made an adjustment, but those initial minutes without Brunson or Towns, two players through whom the offense can be run to create advantages for others, basically undid all of the good work done in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
But Brown then doubled down in the fourth quarter. The Knicks lead by 12 after three quarters, and while he adjusted the lineup to start the fourth, it still didn\u2019t feature Brunson or Towns. With a chance to build on a double-digit lead and put the game away early, New York instead led by only nine with about eight minutes left when Brunson and Towns checked back in. From here, it was the starters who muffed the game, but there\u2019s a world where the Knicks are up comfortably without those stints in the second and fourth quarters.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s rough night, though, didn\u2019t stop there. His last blunder came late in the game, with his team on the ropes. Brown elected not to use his \u201cuse-it-or-lose-it\u201d timeout before the final three minutes. For those unfamiliar, teams are limited to just two timeouts in the final three minutes. If they have more at that point, they lose them. New York used its second-to-last timeout of the game with 2:43 left as Brunson was charging toward the basket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a few possessions that weren\u2019t fluid,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI wanted to make sure we had something we wanted to get to, or set something up offensively, because we had whiffed on the last couple of possessions. It just didn\u2019t look right or didn\u2019t feel right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final timeout came with 10.2 seconds left after a Jalen Johnson dunk that put the Hawks up by four.<\/p>\n
New York had a chance to win on the game\u2019s final possession as CJ McCollum missed two free throws with a chance to put the Hawks up by three with 5.6 seconds left. Josh Hart got the ball and tossed it up to Bridges who missed a mid-range jumper in transition to seal the loss.<\/p>\n
Brown, though, said he isn\u2019t sure if he would have used a timeout in that situation if he had one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually like to go so they can\u2019t put in their best defenders and all that other stuff,\u201d Brown said. \u201cFive-to-seven seconds is close. It would have a been a gut feel. There is a chance I would have taken a timeout if I had one. Then there is a chance I wouldn\u2019t have. I thought Mikal got a good shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks pointed a rocket launcher at their foot with the missed free throws, missed open shots and turnovers. Brown pulled the trigger with his rotation decisions and not managing his timeouts correctly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s nights like Monday that are why people can be dismissive of the Knicks, despite the talent they possess. They\u2019re likely going to beat the Hawks because they just have better players. Yet, anyone who is honest with themselves and watched this team throughout the regular season knew that the Knicks would get in their own way at least once. It only took two games.<\/p>\n
New York, from top to bottom, has got to do better. Plain and simple. The Knicks aren\u2019t good enough to play against their opponent and themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 For 11 minutes and 22 seconds in Monday night\u2019s Game 2 matchup against the Atlanta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,2901,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-618697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-new-york-knicks","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}