A formerly familiar friend returned to the New York Knicks just before the All-Star break.
With the team already mashing the Philadelphia 76ers, Jose Alvarado raced down the court. He dribbled into traffic and pitched the ball back to Josh Hart, who recognized the man behind him.
All five Philly defenders had retreated, but Karl-Anthony Towns was about to cross half court. And that meant there would be space for one of the league’s sweetest-shooting big men. Hart underhanded the ball back to Towns. The six-time All-Star released a jumper from as close to the Sixers’ logo as he was to the 3-point arc. Naturally, it swished through the net.
Two games later, a facsimile materialized. Hart zipped upcourt, then pitched an identical toss to Towns. The big man rose from the same spot. Cash, again.
Those trailer 3s in transition tend to go well for Towns. And for much of the season, they came often, an asset inside an offense that has insisted it wants to move faster but has slowed some since October. But until that moment, the one when Towns sank a seemingly unimportant bucket during what turned into a 49-point decimation of the 76ers, those types of shots had evaporated.
The trailer 3-point attempt in Philadelphia was Towns’ first in more than two weeks, a symbol of both what can be so enticing and also so confounding about the Knicks. This team is capable of beauty, such as during the destruction of the Sixers. Or during the second game after the All-Star break, when it roared back from an 18-point, fourth-quarter deficit to topple the Houston Rockets. And then it is also capable of collapses, such as the three against the first-place Detroit Pistons or the most recent hiccup, a deflating defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are now tied with New York in the standings.
The Knicks are inconsistent in their results, as The Athletic’s James Edwards chronicled after the loss to the Cavs. But behind the hot-and-cold production is an on-and-off process.
Sometimes, Hart finds Towns in transition. And sometimes, after receiving a pass, Towns acts with purpose, hoisting a shot in an instant. But sometimes, the Knicks forget that Towns exists. Or Towns doesn’t look at the hoop, despite touch so soft he is incapable of taking a bad catch-and-shoot 3.
Sometimes, Towns catches fire not just in a scoring fashion but also in a decision-making one. During the fourth-quarter comeback against the Rockets, his movements were quick. He cut with gusto on an inbounds, then dunked on Jabari Smith Jr. He caught a pass in the corner as he stepped behind the arc and popped a jumper. He spun into the post and finished a hook shot deep in the paint. He fired an over-the-head dime to OG Anunoby for a dunk.
And sometimes, Towns shoots only four times during the first half, as he did against the Cavaliers, and then attempts one more field goal for the rest of the game.
In moments, it’s because of Towns. For example, during the first half of the Pistons game, not one time did Towns pop to the 3-point arc after setting a ball-screen for Jalen Brunson. But he wasn’t rushing to the paint, either. The plays looked less like pick-and-rolls and more like pick-and-strolls, ones where he would meander into spots that weren’t ideal for getting him the basketball.
Every on-court movement should have purpose, to get yourself or someone else open. Lingering in the middle of the court doesn’t help with that. It’s why Towns took only three shots over the first two quarters of that loss. And it’s why he made an obvious effort to adjust at halftime.
On the first possession of the third quarter against Detroit, he popped to the 3-point arc with oomph. A minute later, he and Hart laid picks on either side of Brunson. Hart dove to the basket. Towns retreated to the wing on the opposite side of the court. And Brunson found him for a four-point play.
The Knicks are capable of exquisite basketball. For whatever reason, they get away from it, too. And that’s when results zigzag.
But while Towns’ situation — considering his star status and various comments about trying to ease into a role under new head coach Mike Brown — might be the most interesting talking point, he isn’t the only person contributing to the Knicks’ up-and-down behavior.
This is an organization with aspirations of playing into June. And to last so long, the rest of the core has to iron out its wrinkles.
There is Brunson, who needs more consistency on defense. His quality on that end cratered for the first half of this season, though it’s been more encouraging for the past few weeks. Especially for the first 40 or so games, he was one of the Knicks’ worst off-ball culprits, one reason why the team’s 3-point defense has been vulnerable.
There is Mikal Bridges, who needs consistency in sheer presence. Bridges’ form of poor play is less in your face and more in his ghosting. He’ll vanish for extended portions of a game, whether because he stops disrupting drives and passing lanes or veers so far from contact that he removes himself from the plot.
There is Anunoby, who needs consistency in his approach. For stretches this season, Anunoby could convince anyone he is a top-five defender. Then come the down periods, which often overlap with ones when he’s not hitting jumpers, when he doesn’t maintain the same verve. (Maybe on a related note, Anunoby’s jump shooting has never been so inconsistent, not just nightly but also from area to area. He’s shooting an impressive 42 percent on corner 3s but worse than 27 percent on looks from above the break.)
There is Robinson, who needs (maybe not now but by April) consistency in his nightly rim protection and pick-and-roll defense.
The Knicks have their backup center on a regimented resting plan, and because of that, people within the team don’t seem worried about the drop-off in Robinson’s defensive output thus far. He’s shown as recently as last spring’s playoffs that he has an on-switch. And considering his injury history, it’s not worth his throttling into regular-season drivers the way he would with playoff ones. Those people might be correct. Robinson deserves the benefit of the doubt. But there’s no question this group requires his best version to accomplish its goal — and it might need the best version of him to play next to Towns, a pairing that hasn’t been as common or as effective as anticipated.
There is Hart, who needs to consistently believe in his jump shot. Hart is nailing 40 percent of his 3-pointers this season, a fabulous progression, but too often it seems he’s the last person buying into himself. As long as he hesitates to shoot, even if he’s hitting a high percentage of 3s, defenses will continue to help off him. On some nights, he puts up shots like it’s no problem. On others, he misses a couple from the wing and then gets shy, which cramps spacing.
“I think we’re still figuring out the style we want to play, the identity we want to play,” Hart told reporters Tuesday, via Edwards.
It’s late in the season for quotes like these. And yet, during Brown’s first year in New York, some amount of inconsistency is baked into how the Knicks will operate.
Former coach Tom Thibodeau obsessed over routine, which his detractors argued led to inflexibility and his supporters insisted offered structure.
Brown is detail-oriented similarly, yet experimental in others, which leads to the opposite brand of a double-edged sword. Over the past couple of months, he’s attempted to simplify an offense more based on concepts than set plays, an effort to help Towns and others. Many of the lineups he’s using won’t be around in the postseason. During the Cavs game, he played Robinson, Mohamed Diawara and Jeremy Sochan together, as if he were trying to scrunch the court for Brunson.
Certainly, he’s considered schematic adjustments that he’s held back from trying. The Knicks never sent aggressive help at Detroit’s Cade Cunningham when the MVP candidate torched them last week. If it were a playoff game, they might have handled it differently.
They have spit out zone defense, which Brown typically doesn’t love, just to test it. The first time they used a zone this season was in a mid-November game against the Miami Heat.
Not during a practice. Not during a shootaround.
During a game.
The zone wasn’t pretty, but the Knicks won. And in the process, they gathered some data about a defensive strategy they haven’t deployed much.
Conversely, Thibodeau started rehearsing a zone during practices after the All-Star break last season. He didn’t love how the Knicks executed it, so he waited to implement it. Weeks later, the Knicks deployed the zone for one possession and allowed a basket. And they never ran zone again for the rest of the season.
That brings us back to Brown’s double-edged sword, an element any coach has.
The optimists will say inconsistency is a product of experimentation. The pessimists will declare that jostling players around makes it more difficult to get comfortable.
Both sides are correct. Execution is dependent on people. But now, the people in the Knicks’ locker room have to straighten themselves out, because winning three or four playoff series becomes a far more daunting task if you can’t stay consistent.