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The New York Knicks find themselves in a deep hole against the Indiana Pacers, down three games to one with a ticket to the NBA Finals on the line as they try to avoid the gentlemen’s sweep. The Knickerbockers haven’t made it to the Finals in this century, and they have an uphill battle to get back to the pinnacle of basketball, but all hope isn’t lost yet.
In order to fight through this adversity and make it back to the NBA Finals, though, the Knicks will have to make some serious improvements. Let’s take a closer look at what head coach Tom Thibodeau’s squad must do.
Slow down Tyrese Haliburton and fight over screens to protect Jalen Brunson defensively
Tyrese Haliburton has been absolutely killing the Knicks throughout this series. Haliburton is a tall, lengthy guard with plenty of size, as well as both playmaking and scoring aptitude. This makes him an absolute nightmare for the next to defend, and he creates all sorts of issues.
The solution for the Knicks is to force the issue by giving their best defender the assignment to slow down Haliburton. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges should have their minutes staggered so that one of them is always on the floor to match up with the Pacers breakout star point guard.
Regardless, Indiana has done a great job of pressing the issue by running continuous screens and forcing mismatches to target New York’s weaker defenders. The solution to this problem for the Knicks is to fight over screens instead of switching off of them.
Jalen Brunson might be the heartbeat of the Knicks offensively, but the simple fact of the matter is that he is a liability on defense and this reality is rearing it’s ugly head during this series in a way that nobody can ignore. This isn’t to say that Brunson isn’t trying defensively, and it’s not necessarily meant to be a sharp indictment of him as a player. The talented, scrappy guard does everything that his team can ask of him at the offensive end of the court, and then some. This doesn’t always leave a lot of room for energy to expend defensively. His effort isn’t even really the problem, though.
At the end of the day fans and their coaching staff must deal with the fact that Brunson is an undersized 6-foot-1 guard. With this height deficiency putting him into a mismatch in many situations, there are some things Brunson is just virtually powerless to stop.
Take a look at how he matches up against a player like Haliburton. The Pacers point guard is a solid four to five inches taller than Brunson and he has a longer wingspan. This means that Haliburton can simply just shoot over the top of Brunson’s outstretched arms. Even when Brunson is in an excellent defensive position, Haliburton is often open by virtue of being able to just shoot over the shorter defender.
Typically, what teams try to do in this circumstance is hide their weakest defender, who would in this case be Brunson, on somebody who isn’t the scoring threat.
The Pacers have incredible length and size across their lineup, which means there’s no great option for hiding Brunson. Indiana features an incredibly versatile and well-rounded roster full of athletic players with decent size. The other issue Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks are facing is that the Pacers have committed to aggressively targeting Brunson by running endless screens. This leads to the Knicks switching their assignments on defense, and the Pacers just run that cycle over and over again until they find a mismatch with Brunson in a one-on-one isolation situation.
There’s not much the Knicks can do in terms of finding a weak player to hide Brunson on, but there is something they can do to help mitigate the Pacers’ attempts to isolate him. What the Knicks should focus on is fighting over screens instead of switching. That will make it significantly harder for the Pacers to isolate Brunson.
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Get Deuce McBride more minutes
Deuce McBride has been a breath of fresh air for the Knicks as a sparkplug playmaker and microwave scorer with the second unit. In fact, it was largely his play that helped power the Knicks’ impressive surge in the fourth quarter of Game 3 that led to their only victory so far in the series. McBride has been excellent in this role, and the Knicks must make it a priority to find more playing time for him.
Tom Thibodeau’s a coach who historically loves to play starters heavy minutes and resists giving the bench unit anymore time on the court than absolutely necessary. However, McBride has earned these minutes, and he deserves them. If the Knicks can get him into the game for longer, they’ll certainly benefit from his dynamic scoring.
Clean up offensive mistakes
Despite the final score and the Pacers’ absurd shot-making and highly efficient offense, the Knicks were absolutely in position to win this game. They missed at least three easy layups, which would have given them six points. Despite his overall brilliant two-way performance, Anunoby missed two critical free throws midway through the fourth quarter. That’s eight points in total. Combine this with more than a dozen turnovers, including quite a few careless cough-ups, and the Knicks shot themselves in both feet many times.
That isn’t what championship teams do, but the good news is it’s uncharacteristic for a Thibodeau-coached squad. It’s entirely reasonable to expect that the Knicks will be able to clean up these issues and eliminate those mistakes moving forward. If they do so, they should have a good chance to win each remaining game and dig out of the hole they find themselves in.
The Knicks certainly have their work cut out for them, and history is not on their side. However, by cleaning up their offense and making a few adjustments on defense, the Blue and Orange could find themselves right back in this series.
