as I wrote following Game 4<\/a>, but Towns\u2019 advancement is more than just schematic.<\/p>\nHe is looking to pass at every opportunity.<\/p>\n
Kickouts. Touch passes. Overhead passes. Twisting passes. Ones off drives. Ones from the post where he leans into his defender and holds the ball out backward. The basketball is a kumquat in Towns\u2019 hands. He\u2019s so large that it looks less like he\u2019s playing hoops and more like he\u2019s teasing a young child in a hapless game of keep-away.<\/p>\n
Check out this play from Game 4 of the Knicks\u2019 soul-sucking sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers. Towns receives the ball on the left side beyond the 3-point arc, actually a tad farther from the basket than New York would hope. The Knicks have turned to this action often over the seven-game heater. This area is called the \u201cpinch post,\u201d a cushy set for Towns, who stands in the high post as three players run an action on the opposite side of the court.<\/p>\n
Watch Jalen Brunson here. He gives the ball to Towns, then runs to the right side of the court to set a screen for Mikal Bridges. The Knicks regularly ran this action against the Sixers. Sometimes, it was Brunson setting the screen. In other moments, it was Bridges. Here, Philadelphia makes it easy.<\/p>\n
Towns is patient. He notices 76ers wing Kelly Oubre Jr. hung up on the screen, and he finds Bridges for a cutting layup.<\/p>\n
Towns is averaging 11 assists per 36 minutes over these seven games. For reference, the single-season record for a big man, held by three-time MVP Nikola Joki\u0107, is 11.1.<\/p>\n
The shots are down because Towns is choosing for them to be, not because the Knicks are failing to include him.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s never received the basketball this much since joining the Knicks, and he\u2019s revamped what he does next. During the regular season, Towns took a shot on 26 percent of his touches, according to Second Spectrum. During the seven-game winning streak, that rate is 15 percent. He\u2019s passing on 71 percent of his touches, compared to 61 percent during the regular season.<\/p>\n
In the best passing season of his career, 2022-23 with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Towns dished an assist on 8 percent of his touches. During the winning streak, he\u2019s more than doubled that number to a shade above 16 percent.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an assist on one in every six touches. Think about it like this: No player since Second Spectrum began tracking this stat in 2013-14 has ever come close to averaging an assist every six touches for a full season.<\/p>\n
Not Joki\u0107. Not Chris Paul. Not Rajon Rondo. No one.<\/p>\n
The Knicks have changed Towns\u2019 role. And he hasn\u2019t just embraced it. He has thrived in it.<\/p>\n
Getting in the way<\/p>\n
Following Wednesday\u2019s practice, Brunson made an in-character declaration. Towns handling the basketball more meant Brunson, normally the head of the offense, touching it less. He was asked why he seemed so willing to take a step back, given his star status.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne, I\u2019m not a star. Two, I wanna win,\u201d Brunson said.<\/p>\n
The All-NBA point guard is still scoring like someone famous enough to make commercials. He\u2019s still draining 3-pointers and cooking helpless defenders who are unfortunate enough to stand in his way. He\u2019s averaged 27.1 points on outlandish efficiency during these seven games. But he\u2019s also committing to grittier parts of basketball than your average undersized point guard might.<\/p>\n
Namely, Brunson is screening.<\/p>\n
Put Brown on truth serum, and he might admit that Brunson\u2019s screening, beyond all the highlights, turns him the most giddy. He\u2019s called Brunson \u201csecond to none\u201d as a pick setter. There is only one small guard in history to whom he would compare the Knicks captain \u2014 and no, it\u2019s not the greatest shooter of all time, someone who Brown coached for six years and also qualifies as an elite screening guard, Stephen Curry.<\/p>\n
Instead, Brown reached back decades to make his Brunson comparison: Hall of Famer John Stockton.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was tough,\u201d Brown said. \u201cYou have to have a toughness about you to screen, because if you are a point guard, you are probably screening somebody bigger than you every time you screen somebody. John had a toughness about him. And Jalen has a toughness about him.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the ball has found Towns more, Brunson has emerged not just as a cutter but also as a screener. He\u2019s laying those flex screens in the corners for Anunoby and Bridges, which opens lanes to the hoop. He\u2019s running the play like the one above, where Towns consistently finds Bridges for the assist. His screens have been effective \u2014 and they\u2019re getting Brunson open, too. When a defense jumbles its communication, Brunson can pop to the arc and hit a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer or cut to the hoop for a layup.<\/p>\n
During these seven games, Brunson is laying 12.3 off-ball screens per 100 possessions, according to Second Spectrum. At no point in his career has he screened this frequently. During the regular season, he averaged only 5.4.<\/p>\n
The Knicks lost two out of three games to begin the playoffs and transformed their offense afterward. Now, they\u2019ve never looked better.<\/p>\n
Rebuilding Bridges<\/p>\n
Bridges was merely on sabbatical. Those moments when he vanished in the Hawks series were him resting up for the main show, the second round of the playoffs and maybe beyond, when the greatest traits of Bridges have merged to create a monster.<\/p>\n
He drained his midrange shots against the 76ers. He attacked the hoop. He streaked in transition. When a pass was intuitive, he made it. And defensively, this was the man the Knicks believed they were trading for a couple of summers ago. Against Philly, he inspired a different kind of vanishing act. Throughout the series, Bridges\u2019 main assignment, Tyrese Maxey, was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
It could make one think back to the playoff series between these same two teams in 2024. The Knicks won that bout in six games, but not because they could contain Philadelphia\u2019s speedy point guard.<\/p>\n
The Knicks started that series with OG Anunoby defending Maxey, but Maxey was too quick for him. They tried other defenders on him. Miles \u201cDeuce\u201d McBride received time. By the decisive Game 6, Donte DiVincenzo was the sacrificial lamb, the best option but hardly an ideal one.<\/p>\n
New York survived the series with a lesson learned: If it wanted to contend, it had to use a point-of-attack stopper to disrupt smaller, quicker point guards. That was one of the reasons the Knicks traded five first-round picks for Bridges the ensuing summer. But Bridges then wasn\u2019t always what they figured he could be.<\/p>\n
Over the past two years, Bridges has manifested as a brilliant off-ball defender who isn\u2019t nearly as effective once opponents cycle him through pick-and-rolls. He pulls up short when he approaches ball screens. He can shy away from contact. Guys like Maxey can blow past him.<\/p>\n
During the regular season, he ranked an impressive 11th in the NBA in BBall Index\u2019s off-ball-chasing metric but was rated below league average at navigating pick-and-rolls.<\/p>\n
However, this was not always Bridges\u2019 identity \u2014 and it certainly wasn\u2019t who he was during the four games against the 76ers, when his defense on Maxey and the rest of the team was the most extraordinary development of the series.<\/p>\n
Maxey averaged less than a point every other minute against the Knicks. His shooting and assist numbers dropped. The Knicks trapped him routinely. After he gave up the ball in those scenarios, Bridges would take off with him as he darted to the corner. On a couple of plays, he used his length to bat away lobs and cause steals. Maxey could not even pass out of the double-team.<\/p>\n
Watch how Bridges handles the play below.<\/p>\n
The Knicks are not set up ideally. Bridges begins the possession on rookie guard VJ Edgecombe. Maxey recognizes that a big man is guarding him. The Knicks try to switch, moving Mitchell Robinson over to Edgecombe and Bridges to Maxey, but Robinson is late. Bridges must take Maxey while also paying mind to Edgecombe.<\/p>\n
One guy should be open, but he\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
This is where Bridges excels, defending not just players but areas. Somehow, he manages to cut off a lane for Maxey while also denying a pass to Edgecombe. Maxey tries to create an advantage but cannot, and Bridges, with those never-ending arms, deflects the bounce and gets the steal.<\/p>\n
We should have known a dominant performance was on the way from the start. On literally the first possession of the series, Bridges blew up each action the Sixers tried to run.<\/p>\n
If shot clock violations could be credited as steals, this would have tallied as one for Bridges.<\/p>\n
He begins the play on Maxey in the left corner. Philadelphia\u2019s goal is to get the ball to its fiery guard on the move. Once Maxey picks up full speed, no one \u2014 save for maybe Usain Bolt \u2014 can keep up with him. Place a couple of giants in the way of whoever is chasing him, and that person rarely stands a chance.<\/p>\n
Unless that player is Bridges.<\/p>\n
Maxey scrambles around one screen from Oubre, but Bridges bounces off it. He then receives the ball from Joel Embiid, who could not possibly be shorter than 25 feet tall. Embiid is waiting to impede Bridges, but Bridges doesn\u2019t even touch him, instead slithering around his left hip. In these three seconds, Bridges is no basketball player; he is a cat running an obstacle course.<\/p>\n
Maxey curls around the screen with a step on Bridges, then bounces a pass back to Embiid. Bridges must switch onto him. The size difference is notable, but Embiid doesn\u2019t create deep post positioning. He moves into one of his patented turnaround jumpers, but Bridges doesn\u2019t give him space, and a panicky pass goes back to Maxey on the right wing.<\/p>\n
Towns closes out intelligently, taking away the 3-pointer and having faith that the defenders behind him will react appropriately. His belief paid off.<\/p>\n
Anunoby lunges from the corner to hamper Maxey\u2019s drive to the hoop, and Bridges slides off Embiid to close off Maxey\u2019s other side. All that\u2019s left is a frantic kickout to Embiid, which flings wide left.<\/p>\n
On the first possession of the series, the Knicks forced a shot clock violation because Bridges and the rest of the crew would not let up.<\/p>\n
For all the deserved talk about the Knicks\u2019 dynamic offense, the defense has been far more stifling than their reputation suggests. Over the final 41 games of the regular season, they were third in the NBA in points allowed per possession.<\/p>\n
That was without their best rim protector, Robinson, playing every day. It was without Towns defending as well as he has during the playoff run. It was without Jordan Clarkson turning into an unhinged fanatic of the full-court press. And it was without Bridges guarding at the All-Defensive level, which he did against the 76ers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Knicks are disintegrating anyone in their path. They have won seven consecutive playoff games, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[21,9,24,55,54,1104,56],"class_list":["post-234172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}