“The three-ball problem the Knicks are having is not an aberration. It’s chronic. They play a good team, they give up a lot of threes, they play a poor team…and tonight they’re not denying threes again”.
That was Walt Clyde Frazier, the color commentator for the Knicks, during Thursday night’s loss to the Hornets. And Frazier, who has long been known for his honesty, was pretty accurate in summing up one of the few weaknesses this otherwise very good team has. It’s been a sentiment lamented by many of the fans for some time now. And as his colleague, Mike Breen, mentioned, the Knicks have cleaned up some of this, but the team still struggles with limiting three-point opportunities overall.
As of Friday afternoon, the Knicks rank 19th in the opponent three-point percentage, and worse off, 22nd in the three-point attempts given up per game. Why is this? Some of it by choice. Similar to his predecessor, Tom Thibodeau, current head coach Mike Brown has opted to protect the paint and limit easy opportunities within the arc. That can lead to overhelping, which then creates a situation in which the defense is left in a constant state of recovery. For much of the last couple of months, the Knicks have found a good balance of defending the paint, while still getting back out to shooters, thanks in large part to good communication and solid effort. But, so long as that remains a core philosophy of this coaching staff, the Knicks will continue to have problems in that department.
But why is this a choice this team has made? Some of it boils down to simple philosophical preference. Some of it, though, is also linked to personnel issues. Not only are the Knicks not a very athletic team, but New York has the unenviable task of finding who to hide Jalen Brunson on defensively. Brunson, to his credit, has upped his defensive effort over the last few weeks, and there’s an argument to be made that he has played some of his best defense as a Knick during that stretch. Yet effort, anticipation, and smarts can only do so much. Brunson’s lack of size and athleticism puts a cap on just how effective he can be as a defender.
With that being the case, it has become clear that he’s now a focal point of teams’ game plans on both ends. While teams have been keying in on how to slow down his scoring, they’ve also started to single him out and attack him more and more on the other end. Take last night’s game against the Hornets as an example. Against big, athletic teams like Charlotte, the Knicks must pick between having Brunson exert energy running through screens or guarding someone bigger. Thursday night, they chose the latter.
Now, having the undersized Brunson defend a much bigger Miles Bridges is far from ideal (see above). But if that’s the decision Brown goes with, he must stick to that plan, and trust Brunson to hold his own and make it tough on Bridges. Earlier this season, Brown spoke glowingly about Brunson’s defense, explaining how he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. If Brown really does trust Brunson’s one-on-one defense that much, he has to let him defend and live with the results.
Instead, though, the Knicks, after purposefully opting into that matchup repeatedly, compounded their transgression by doubling him in the post. The Hornets were already getting a lot of good looks from deep with their dribble penetration, as well as their offensive rebounding. But by ultimately choosing to start defensive possessions playing four-on-five, the Knicks allowed a team that likes to shoot threes an easy avenue to finding more of them.
The Hornets entered last night second in the league in three-point attempts at 42.8 attempts per game, shooting it at a 38.2% clip, which is good for third in the league. And chances are, when you allow a great shooting team like the Hornets to easily find threes, you are going to pay the price, which the Knicks very much did.
There are two sides to this problem right now. The bad news is that this problem is unlikely to go away. They can continue to clean some things up. But it’s unlikely that they will completely change their philosophy or find a better way to hide Brunson defensively, given the makeup of the roster. The good news, though, is that not every team the Knicks are going to play is as good as the Hornets at finding, taking, and making threes. How many teams have guys that can hit shots like the one below? You could argue Charlotte has three in LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller, and Kon Knuepell. Most teams have maybe one?
The Heat, 76ers, Raptors, Pistons, and Magic, all of whom the Knicks may end up playing in the playoffs, all rank in the bottom half of the league in three-point percentage, with the last four ranking 21st or lower. Meanwhile, the Hawks, Celtics, and Cavaliers, who could also eventually match up with the Knicks in the playoffs, rank in the top half, but only the Hawks rank in the top 10. And in terms of attempts per game, the Celtics, Cavaliers, and Hawks are the only teams that rank higher than 15th in the league, with the 76ers, Magic, Raptors, and Pistons all being in the bottom 10.
That may point to this issue not being quite as detrimental as it may seem. Another interesting note is that of the four teams in the league that currently hold a better defensive rating than the Knicks (Thunder, Pistons, Spurs, Celtics), three of those teams rank in the bottom half of the league in three-pointers given up per game. The Pistons, the only one of those four teams not in the bottom half, barely rank in the top half, coming in at 14th. That may seem like a good thing. But quality always matters.
And in this case, the numbers suggest that it’s not that the Knicks give up too many threes, it’s that they give up too many open threes. New York currently ranks 10th in the league in wide-open threes (no defender within six feet) given up per game. Of the top five defensive teams, only the Celtics give up more per game. This is also reflected in the fact that the Thunder is the only one of those top five defensive teams that give up a higher percentage from three than the Knicks.
So what does this all mean ultimately? The Knicks do struggle with giving up a lot of threes. They also happen to give up a lot of wide-open ones. But it’s not a backbreaker. And it doesn’t automatically make them a bad defensive team. Evident by the team’s recent success and the success of some of the best defenses in the league, giving up a lot of threes does not inherently mean you can’t defend. As stated earlier, how you give up said threes and what kind of threes you give up tend to matter more.
The Knicks can, and if they want to reach their goals, should continue to try and improve there, even if it’s on the margins. There are still plays like the ones above that have nothing to do with personnel or philosophy, and can be fixed with better communication and focus. But shooting is one of the more volatile things. On any given night, a good shooting team can shoot badly, and a good shooting team can shoot well. We’ve seen both happen to and against the Knicks. Will they lose games in the playoffs because of it? Likely. But not every potential playoff opponent is a great shooting team. If New York can continue to take care of business and execute in other areas of the game, their three-point defense may not end up being as detrimental as it sometimes seems.