TARRYTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 Before the New York Knicks had even wiped out the Atlanta Hawks, their coach was discussing lessons learned.<\/p>\n
The Knicks had switched up their offense, and thus their identity, after falling down two games to one earlier in the series. Now, they were just one win away from moving on to the second round. In the process, they found out a new way to maximize themselves. Head coach Mike Brown called their reinvention \u201cholistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team had won an impressive 53 games during the regular season, but did not always operate like a juggernaut. On one night, the Knicks would destruct an elite squad. On the next, they would obstruct themselves. Over the final three Hawks games, they had gotten out of their own way. The offensive style they deployed early in the season, the strategy that appeared messy enough for the Knicks to veer in another direction by the winter, made a grand return, and it was crisper than ever. Each screen had purpose<\/a>; each cut was sharp.<\/p>\n The Knicks took a 3-2 series lead. In the process, they had evolved. And, as Brown stated 90 minutes before his team would turn the Hawks to dust, external circumstances spurred their improvement.<\/p>\n Quin Snyder\u2019s coaching staff in Atlanta, Brown said, had made the Knicks better, cornered them into a situation that presented them only two choices: Mature or get lost.<\/p>\n The first option seemed more enticing. During the first three games against Atlanta, which included two Knicks losses, Brown had leaned on funky lineup combinations. Mikal Bridges had floated into oblivion. Karl-Anthony Towns hadn\u2019t dominated with the volume he was capable of against a smaller Hawks roster.<\/p>\n By Games 4, 5 and 6, when the Knicks pulverized the Hawks three consecutive times, earning each victory with an even more throttling punch, a previous, yet unfamiliar offense had emerged. The Knicks were running off-ball actions they tried earlier in the season. But back in November, they didn\u2019t deploy them nearly as effectively. They were placing Towns in the high post, funneling the attack through him and allowing an All-Star who spent most of this season feeling \u201cuncomfortable\u201d in his role, to use his terminology, to find the coziest spots on the court.<\/p>\n Towns churned out two triple-doubles over the final three games of the series. The Knicks won Game 4 by 16, then Game 5 by 29 and then a historic Game 6 by 51. This was not the group that had crumbled in Games 2 and 3. It was something new.<\/p>\n \u201cI gotta give Atlanta credit and Quinn Snyder,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey forced us to put our thinking caps on, and they forced us to play different, find ways to make the game easier for our players while putting them in their strengths, while trying not to hinder them. So, we changed what we\u2019d done offensively, but again, it was because we were pushed to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments sounded familiar, not because Brown had repeated them but because they echoed a sentiment from last season\u2019s Knicks, the ones who took the franchise to its first Eastern Conference finals appearance in 25 years. Despite 51 regular-season wins, that group was also thought of as inconsistent (and deservedly so) heading into the playoffs. It was a combined 0-10 against the teams with the NBA\u2019s three best records: the Oklahoma City Thunder, Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers. It was flawed, easily exposed on defense with Towns and Jalen Brunson sharing the floor, and too vulnerable on offense.<\/p>\n Worries, at least on the outside, didn\u2019t dissipate after a first-round playoff victory over the 44-win Detroit Pistons, a young collection of scrappers who made the series too close for comfort, mostly because of their physicality. But a similar thought process to Brown\u2019s current one bubbled inside the Knicks. The Pistons had jabbed a fist to the Knicks\u2019 grills, and with two missing teeth, a bloody tongue and a chipped cheekbone, the Knicks won the fight anyway. They believed.<\/p>\n They believed when then-head coach Tom Thibodeau revamped their defensive schemes in the next round against the defending champion Celtics, a similar shift to Brown\u2019s offensive demands against Atlanta. They believed when they fell 20 points behind during Game 1 in Boston, then won anyway. They believed when they plummeted to the same deficit in Game 2, only to speed to another win.<\/p>\n