During the New York Knicks’ run up to and through the first four games of the conference finals, stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns have played pivotal roles in the team’s success.
It was Brunson, for example, who hit an iconic game winner against the Detroit Pistons in Game 4 of the first round. And it was Towns who scored 20 points in the fourth quarter to lead a comeback victory against the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of their current series.
While the players have both provided flashpoint moments individually, their partnership has faltered in one very important area during the playoffs, and in particular the conference finals. And it’s the biggest reason the Knicks face a 3-1 deficit — and elimination — against the Pacers: New York can’t defend when Brunson and Towns share the floor.
In the 91 minutes Brunson and Towns been on the court during the conference finals, the Knicks have a 130.2 defensive rating. For context, the league-worst Utah Jazz finished with a 119.4 defensive rating in the regular season. Indiana’s offense essentially becomes one of the best in NBA history when Brunson and Towns are on defense.
In those 91 Brunson-Towns minutes, the Pacers are shooting 51.8% from the field and 39.4% from 3-point range. In that time, Indiana also has 51 assists compared with only 10 turnovers, and it has outscored New York by 24 points.
Brunson is allowing opposing players to shoot 57.1% when he’s the primary defender, while Towns is allowing a conversion rate of 47.5%.
The Pacers have been relentless in hunting Brunson and Towns when either is on the floor, frequently calling them into screens. Indiana is especially forcing Brunson to switch onto more difficult matchups, such as point guard Tyrese Haliburton.
“Not good enough,” Brunson said after Game 4 when he was asked about the Haliburton matchup. “I could sit here and be very detail-oriented about certain things, but obviously not good enough. There has to be a difference on my part when it comes to that.”
Towns said: “It’s not just him. It’s all of us. We all gotta do a better job of making it difficult for each one of them to score.”
The hunting has put the Knicks in the difficult position of either having Brunson and Towns guard one on one or scrambling their defense against an Indiana offense that happily moves the ball around.
“I think it’s difficult for any team [to stop]. You can stop one action, but then it’s the next action and the next action,” New York’s Josh Hart said about trying to slow down the Pacers. “If one domino falls … that one person’s mess-up is messing up the whole possession. Obviously they’re running good stuff, but we have to make sure that we’re physical and locked in and just make it tough for them.”
The Knicks don’t have easy answers to make up for Brunson’s (size) and Towns’s (lateral quickness) limitations.
Head coach Tom Thibodeau tried to tweak the starting lineup after Game 3, inserting center Mitchell Robinson in place of Hart to add a presence at the rim. But while that group has been an improvement defensively (116.7 defensive rating), it has been bad offensively, and it was ultimately outscored by seven points in 24 minutes.
In the short term, separating Brunson and Towns for as much as possible could be an option.
So far in the playoffs, New York has a minus-4.6 net rating when Brunson and Towns share the court.
When Brunson plays without Towns, the Knicks’ net rating improves to 5.7.
When Towns plays without Brunson? The net rating improves to 10.8 — including a sub-100 defensive rating.
It feels notable that when New York went on a big run to come back in Game 3 — and Towns had one of the best quarters of his playoff life — Brunson was on the bench for a large chunk of the fourth because of foul trouble.
The short-term answer could create a long-term conundrum, however. How good can the Knicks be if their two best players can’t co-exist?
For now, New York is focused on keeping its season alive.
“We’ve been a team that has found a way to do the impossible,” Towns said Tuesday. “Now we have to be in one of the biggest fights of our lives and of our season. And it starts with next game.”
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