They say defense wins championships, and it definitely is true that you need to be able to defend, but defense does not only win championships.
The Knicks, through six games and the end of October, are a perfectly normal 10th in defensive rating. It’s slightly down from last year, but it’s more in line with everything they’ve done as a team for the last few years.
The reason they’re 2-4 is not their defense; it’s their offense. In all four of their losses, they’ve scored 103 or fewer points.
They’re
22nd in offensive rating. They’re shooting abhorrently bad at the rim. Jalen Brunson, a floater maestro, has been extremely bad at it. They’ve been uncharacteristically bad at the free-throw line. While they’ve actually been great at making wide-open threes, they go through puzzling cold stretches from some of their best shooters.
All of that stuff isn’t sticky in small samples. A team this talented will not continue to shoot sub-60% at the rim. The craftiest point guard in basketball didn’t lose his touch (although the wrist surgery may cause this slump to last longer than we want), the good shooters will eventually start making their shots.
There is one thing, though, that is a matter of execution, not hoping for luck to even out.
The Knicks, as of now, have not played structurally sound offensive basketball. They haven’t deserved much better outcomes than what they’re currently getting on a possession-by-possession basis.
In the 2025-26 season, the Knicks averaged 2.01 assists per turnover (27.4 assists, 13.6 turnovers), which ranked eighth in basketball
So far this season? Just 1.69 assists per turnover (26.2 assists, 15.5 turnovers), down to 15th.
While it’s just one stat, the assist-to-turnover ratio is something that separates the wheat from the chaff. Of the top seven offenses last season, six of them had an AST/TO ratio above two, something only eight teams did. It’s very rare for teams to have a good offense and a low AST/TO ratio, the Knicks are not one of those teams that can do that.
Looking player-by-player, there isn’t any issue with the team’s primary playmakers. Instead, it’s their secondary playmakers.
Jalen Brunson, Tyler Kolek, and Jose Alvarado have combined for 61 assists to 19 turnovers.
Everyone else? 96 assists to 68 turnovers. While you might expect some drop-off, this is a bit bizarre.
To spell it out in AST/TO and compare it to last year:
2025-26:
Brunson/Kolek/Alvarado: 2.99
Everyone else: 1.85
2026-27:
Brunson/Kolek/Alvarado: 3.21
Everyone else: 1.41
That “everyone else” drop-off is concentrated in the rest of the starters, mainly Josh Hart, OG Anunoby, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Hart was arguably the team’s most efficient playmaker with a staggering 2.48 AST/TO ratio. So far this season, he’s at 20 assists to 11 turnovers. This is a guy who averaged nearly five assists last year, second on the team, and it’s down to 3.3 so far.
What’s up with that? He seems to be touching the ball a lot less offensively. Obviously, Brunson gets the lion’s share of on-ball reps, but the evolution to a KAT-centric offense and the desire to let Anunoby build on last year’s on-ball success in the postseason have turned him into someone he isn’t: a catch-and-shoot perimeter threat. That’s for Deuce McBride, not for Hart.
For Anunoby, his numbers are similar in the playmaking aspect, but he’s on ball significantly more than he was last year. He’s averaging more touches; he’s averaging more dribbles per touch, and there are more plays being run for him.
Visually, some of these touches and plays just look… bad. They’re affecting not only the increased turnovers but also the lower shooting numbers. If things don’t level off soon, you might see Mike Brown rein in these touches and go back to having Anunoby as an off-ball player to simplify the offense.
Stunningly, is the biggest issue Towns? The same guy whose playmaking evolved to such a degree in the postseason that it was the adjustment that led to a title?
It very well may be.
Karl-Anthony Towns AST/TO:
2025-26: 1.21
2026 postseason: 1.88
2026-27: 0.76
The Knicks haven’t fully leaned into the KAT-centric offense as they did in the postseason, but they’ve spent a lot more time working through him than they did during the regular season last year. Brunson is spending significantly less time with the ball in his hands, and KAT is the biggest beneficiary.
Really, it seems he’s just trying to do too much. There have been multiple plays
The Knicks have gotten burned to a crisp on plays like these. Live-ball turnovers. Here, Towns is trying to hit an outlet and just throws it into no-man’s land. It’s high-risk, high-reward, as we saw last postseason, but the risk is rearing its ugly head.
The live ball turnovers aren’t just a KAT issue; everyone is culpable.
These are just live-ball, bad-pass turnovers. There are a bunch more where the player just loses the ball, stumbles, or gets stripped in a bad position, which leads to a fast break.
A staple of Knicks basketball in the Brunson era has been being toward the bottom in turnovers. In three of the first four seasons, the Knicks were top-six in least turnovers per game. This season so far? 13th.
Mike Brown brought about more ball movement and less standing around doing nothing. At least so far, it’s looking a lot more like standing around and doing nothing.
