The Knicks Are Riding Brunson and Towns — But Are They a One-Trick Pony?
New York depends on its starters (and main stars) more than any team. We dive into how they might build a more sustainable model.
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The New York Knicks always come packaged with guarded optimism. The franchise hasn’t won an NBA title in more than a half-century, finding ways to mess it all up whenever they get especially close, but there’s also a palpable sense of excitement in New York City whenever the Knicks are on the upswing.
And this year definitely qualifies: New York currently sits third in the Eastern Conference and fourth in the leaguewide Elo power ratings, with their fourth-best rating ever through the first 38 games of a season. Based on early returns, they seem to have won the Karl-Anthony Towns trade that shipped Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to Minnesota, with KAT helping to form one of the best starting fives in the league so far. In some ways, this is the most formidable the Knicks have looked since at least the heyday of Patrick Ewing and John Starks — if not longer.
But as promising as this season seems, the very factors fueling New York’s success could also be what makes the team vulnerable come playoff time.
Let’s explain that a bit more. We mentioned that the Knicks have one of the most effective starting lineups in the league, with a net rating that trails only those of the Thunder, Cavaliers and Celtics. (Good company to be in!) But New York also relies on its starters more than those other teams. According to data from PBPStats.com, coach Tom Thibodeau is using his starters — a group that almost always includes OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Towns — for 18.9 minutes per night. Not only does that lead all teams this season (Denver is second at 18.0), but it’s tracking to make New York the 22nd-most heavily reliant NBA team on starters since 2000-01:
Even putting aside Thibs’ long-running tendency to max out minutes for his veteran starters, it makes sense for these Knicks to be so focused on keeping their best players on the court. New York’s core group of starters from above also happens to be synonymous with its Top 5 players by Estimated RAPTOR Wins Above Replacement this year, generating a combined total of 19.6 WAR — the most of any team’s Top 5 in the entire league so far. (Boston is No. 2 with 19.1 WAR from its Top 5 players.) The Knicks’ core is playing a lot, and it’s paying a lot of dividends in the standings.
Furthermore, this Knicks starting lineup has a lot of depth to it in terms of contributions. While Brunson and KAT are far and away the team leaders in Usage Rate — carrying nearly 60 percent of team possessions together while on the court — the overall value provided by the Knicks’ Top 5 is quite balanced in a historical sense. Here’s a plot of every pre-2025 team since 2000-01 (plus the ‘25 Knicks) whose 5 best players produced at a pace of at least 40.0 WAR per 82 games, along with the WAR per 82 of their No. 1 player:
With the lowest team-leading figure of any team in the sample, this year’s Knicks are tracking for the most spread-out value from Nos. 1-5 on their roster of any team with a dominant five-player core since 2000-01. It’s a testament to how suited each player is to their role, plus how well they’ve been able to execute them early this season.
And the power of a strong Top 5 for a title contender is undeniable. One of the biggest differences between regular season and playoff basketball is that rotations shorten in the postseason, downplaying the value of a deep bench and emphasizing the importance of a team’s star players. (How many times have we seen a team that accrues regular-season wins on superior depth — but little star power — flame out in the postseason?) In that sense, the Knicks are playing playoff-style basketball earlier than anybody else, and proving that they can win with it.
But there are downsides to taking such an approach, too.
As part of their tendency to roll with the same 5-man unit far more than any other team in the league, the Knicks have been spamming the NBA with one action above anything else: The Brunson and Towns Pick-and-Roll (PnR).
It’s a play they’re built for. New York is a slow-paced team who loves to grind things out in the halfcourt — they rank 26th in possessions per 48 minutes (96.9) and second-slowest in average seconds per possession (15.4). Brunson and KAT are the team’s best offensive players by far, and they’re two of the league’s foremost experts in the art of the PnR. So it should be no surprise that, according to Second Spectrum, the duo has run 545 PnR actions this season, the most of any combination in the NBA. They are running a whopping 31.9 PnRs per 100 possessions.
How effective has it been? The duo is producing at a clip of 1.081 points per direct action, which ranks eighth among the top 20 most-used PnR combos this year and in the 62th percentile of the NBA overall. The 62th percentile is nothing to scoff at; it’s a solid night out with the boys having Maine Lunch IPAs and wings; it’s not a night you’ll never forget, but it’s quality.
However, dig deeper, and those sweet Maine Lunch IPAs start to look slightly more like PBRs. For one thing, the Brunson and Towns PnR has seen its points per direct action decrease in every month of the season:
With the benefit of more film and data, opposing teams have learned to run coverage schemes that force Towns into a spot where he is asked to be a playmaker rather than a play finisher, where he is best.
Two solutions have emerged to slow down the Brunson/Towns PnR:
Primary Matchups:
At the beginning of the year, teams were guarding Towns with their five-man. This matchup put the two defenders on the PnR action in hell: Do you switch and leave your five on an island with Brunson? No thanks. Play drop coverage and hope you can get a late contest on a Towns pick-and-pop 3-pointer after stopping the ball? Pass.
Now, teams are putting their five-man on someone other than Towns and using a more switchable defender instead, someone that they wouldn't mind switching onto Brunson. The move allows for a simple switch each time the screening action happens.
After these switches, Towns and New York aren’t hunting the subsequent matchups as post-ups for him, even though he’s been pretty efficient this season in the post, scoring at 1.208 points per direct action. Indeed, he’s only attempting about five post-ups per 100 possessions.
Early Rotations from First Tag Man:
Another change has been early rotations from the backside to Towns when teams blitz the ball out of Brunson’s hands.
This coverage turns Towns into a playmaker — not his forte — rather than a finisher. Towns averages about 0.77 dribbles per touch (40th percentile), even while scoring 1.210 points per direct touch (94th). He’s a natural-born scorer, but teams are forcing him to become a passer.
The predictability of the Knicks’ scheme has allowed teams to funnel the basketball to lower-yield actions such as Towns’ playmaking opportunities or Bridges/Hart threes, none of which are considered strengths for this offense.
The problem is, there aren’t other options to initiate offense that allow the NYK to play from an advantage with their starting 5 (which, again, has played seven times as much as any other lineup) aside from Brunson.
Getting the offense playing from an advantage is all about cracking the defensive shell, aka getting them in rotation. The best players in the world at this have a combination of two strengths that they use in tandem to create fear:
Shooting + Ballhandling: Steph Curry, Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, Trae Young and James Harden.
Strength + Ballhandling: Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Domantas Sabonis.
Speed + Ballhandling: Ja Morant and De’Aaron Fox.
The NYK have one player in the starting five that can fit this description: Brunson, and that’s it. This makes it incredibly difficult to take the load off of JB. Just look at how few of the other Knicks’ starters can even attempt off-the-dribble 3-pointers — a critical ability for initiators, whose job is to instill fear in defenses, forcing them to bring two players to the ball and get other defenders in rotation — much less turn them into efficient plays:
Thus, the Knicks have a $200 million roster with no depth that plays its starters more than anyone else but only has one consistently dangerous initiator within that group. (Every other contender has two such players.)
So what should the Knicks do with their problem of overreliance on certain plays and players? Spread the wealth — but maybe not in the way you think.
The idea of letting someone on the New York roster other than Brunson initiate the offense seems silly, so suggesting anyone else as an offensive hub is like throwing sand through a screen door.
(Whispers… wouldn’t it be nice if they still had a 7-foot playmaking hub for who could quickly transition the ball from one side to the other and run efficient dribble handoff, split, or PnR actions?)
Anyway, Brunson currently leads the league in a plethora of categories related to “touches”:
If you don’t get the point, it’s Brunson’s show; he’s the center of the wheel, and everyone else is just a spoke.
One idea to diversify New York’s offense might be for Bridges to run more PnR as the ballhandler. He’s currently running 6.9 PnR’s per 100 (40th percentile) and scores 1.008 points per direct action (68th percentile).
Those numbers are acceptable, albeit on low volume. But these plays are rare enough that they probably don’t make it to the top of the scouting report. Teams play whatever their base coverages are for PnR defense. If the volume ticked up and this action became a more central focus on the scouting report, you would see a lot of “under” actions, daring Bridges to shoot behind the screen.
While Bridges has had a much higher Usage Rate at times than his current 19.4 percent mark — he was, remarkably, a 30 percent Usage guy after being shipped to the Nets in 2022-23 — he didn’t exactly shine when he ran a higher volume as a PnR ballhandler. Over the past two seasons in Brooklyn, Bridges executed 1,950 PnR actions, ranking 59th in efficiency out of the top 79 PnR ballhandlers by volume during that period.
These aren’t exactly impressive numbers. As a primary ballhandler in the PnR, Bridges isn’t efficient; he’s limited as a playmaker and doesn’t score at a high or efficient enough clip.
However, the notion of switching up the PnR combination still might be on the right track. The key, though, is to insert new screeners as two-man partners for Brunson, not take the ball out of JB’s hands.
Hart and Bridges are naturally more creative and comfortable being playmakers in an advantageous situation than Towns. At the same time, Towns creates more gravity off the ball as a shooter than either Hart or Bridges. As a result, both the Brunson/Hart (No. 7 at 1.240 points/direct action) and Brunson/Bridges (No. 3 at 1.254) pick-and-roll combos rank among the league’s Top 10 most efficient PnR pairings this season, with a minimum of 100 total PnR plays.
Unlike Towns, Hart and Bridges are both natural-born playmakers. And once they set the screen, they are both creative cutters who see the open space within the defense and consistently exploit it to create a shot for themselves or a teammate.
The potency of these combinations lies in the matchups: Opposing teams have been using their five-man as the primary defender on Hart, not Towns, while Bridges is usually defended by the worst perimeter defender. Deploying Hart and/or Bridges as the screener takes away the opposing team’s option to switch the action: Leaving either a five-man or your worst perimeter defender on an island with JB is, as the kids would say, BBQ Chicken.
This means extra communication is needed on defense, and any time players need to communicate, it opens the opportunity for panicked thinking. These slight miscommunications can put the defense a half-step behind — and in the NBA, a half-step behind versus a smart veteran team like New York will almost always result in a quality shot.
Another side benefit would be to make the Knicks less dependent on just two players to handle the majority of the scoring and playmaking load. Because right now, the Brunson/KAT workload is historic: New York is tracking to be just the ninth team since 1977-78 with two players boasting a Usage Rate over 27 percent and no one else on the roster at 20 percent.
This, in turn, might make the Knicks a more unpredictable team that is harder to scheme up in a seven-game playoff series — and can more readily beat good opponents. Currently, the Knicks rank third-to-last in the quality of their victories, in terms of the average Elo rating of the teams they’ve beaten; only the Sixers (1428) and Wizards (1437) have won against teams with a lower quality than the Knicks’ 1438 mark.
All of this might sound like we’re down on the Knicks, or being unnecessarily harsh on a team that has a legitimate chance to win the title. But in many ways, New York’s problems would be the envy of other teams. They have a core with two high-scoring stars and a supporting cast of starters that can fit into multiple roles. Perhaps recognizing this, Thibodeau and the Knicks have leaned heavily on what came most naturally for that group right away.
But winning in the NBA is about more than talent or even money plays; it’s also about who can adapt and then counter-adapt from there. The rest of the league is beginning to figure out what New York does best, and the regular season isn’t even halfway over yet. It’s what the Knicks do from here that will determine whether they have the adaptability to finally cash in on their championship potential — or if this will be just another season of promise that goes unfulfilled in the Big Apple.
Filed under: NBA, Basketball
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"In some ways, this is the most formidable the Knicks have looked since at least the heyday of Patrick Ewing and John Starks — if not longer."
And David Stern, and Bennett Salvatore, and Hue Hollins, and . . .