Coming into the season, nobody believed that the Knicks defense would be great. But even then, a roster that consists of OG Anunoby, an elite defender capable of defending all five positions, Mitchell Robinson, a premier shot altering big man, and Deuce McBride, one of the best point-of-attack defenders in the league, along with Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart should’ve been enough to carry the Knicks to an average, if not good, defense. And while the season started with New York having a serviceable
defense, things went south quickly.
They were back to their old ways of allowing role players to have career nights, and they routinely gave up 120+ points, even to subpar teams like the Pelicans. But after their embarrassing Martin Luther King Jr. Day performance against the Mavericks, they’ve looked like a completely different team.
They’ve yet to fully materialize into the most optimized version of themselves. The starting lineup is still bad, Karl-Anthony Towns hasn’t gone over 20 points in two weeks, and they still need a few more wins against good teams to undo the damage they’ve done to their reputation.
As winners of six straight, though, they look like they are well on their way to reverting to the team they were supposed to be. And to the surprise of many, it hasn’t been their offense that has driven their recent success. While Jalen Brunson is taking fewer shots, and Anunoby and Bridges regaining their shots has improved both the process and the results of their offense greatly during their winning streak, it’s been their defense prowess that turned their season around.
But what exactly has changed? Some of it has simply been the players taking more accountability, increasing effort, being more physical, having more discipline, and becoming more connected. As Ian Begley of SNY reported on Monday, players repeated the sentiment that having a clearer game plan, being on the same page, and just wanting it more has been key.
But that hasn’t been the entire story. Over the last few days, players have also openly spoken about a simple, but meaningful change to how the team defends pick-and-rolls. Head coach Mike Brown started off the season asking his players to send the ball handler towards the middle of the floor. This is not only somewhat rare to see as a default strategy in the league, but it also doesn’t make the most sense with the Knicks’ personnel. Outside of Anunoby, Bridges, Robinson, and McBride, the Knicks don’t have great help defenders. So when a player can get to the middle of the floor, they’ve had a difficult time containing the initial drive. And even if they were able to do that, they didn’t have the athleticism or size to be able to recover from outside shooters.
What they’ve started doing instead is icing screens. And for those of you who don’t know what that is, it essentially means that the defense now funnels the ball handler towards the sidelines (video above). This allows the initial defender to know which side the help is coming from, and with that comes everybody else being more aligned on when, where, and how to rotate. As seen below, this has now become their de facto way of defending in general.
On the new changes, which were implemented by defensive coordinator Brendan O’Connor and assistant coach Darren Erman, Bridges revealed that he and his teammates were “a little bit more comfortable” with the new coverage tactic.
As an interesting side note, the peculiar part about all this is that this is returning to a defense that was partly developed and popularized by former Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. As seen below, this was a strategy he deployed long before he took the Knicks job.
This new-look defense has led the way and has gotten the Knicks to make some history along the way. After Sunday’s 12-point win over the Lakers, the Knicks became the first team to hold opponents to 100 points or less in four straight games this season. And they now boast the best defensive rating (95.2) in the league over that span, and have catapulted all the way up to the 12th-best defensive rating on the season.
Only time will tell if this level of defense, or anything even remotely close to it, is sustainable. But, if the Knicks can maintain this level of effort and cohesiveness on defense, then it will go a long way toward improving their chances of making the kind of deep playoff run this organization considers necessary.
