The Knicks brought in 2-time NBA Coach of the Year Mike Brown to take the reins after Tom Thibodeau's 5 seasons in New York.
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The New York Knicks could very easily have lost in the first round of the 2025 playoffs. They pulled off a couple of big comebacks and were fortunate that the Detroit Pistons frequently shot themselves in the foot with bad turnovers and untimely fouls.
The Knicks also could have reached the NBA Finals. They led Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals by 17 points in the fourth quarter, losing after Tyrese Haliburton sent it to overtime with a miracle shot.
It was a wild postseason in the East, and also the Knicks’ best postseason in 25 years. When 2025-26 opens, they’ll begin the season as one of the favorites to (at least) get back to the East Finals.
They’ll also begin the season with a new coach. Tom Thibodeau was fired after a successful five-year run, during which the Knicks ranked in the top 10 on both offense (10th) and defense (ninth). The Knicks eventually hired Mike Brown, who has also had success on both ends of the floor over his nine full seasons (and two partial seasons) with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings.
Though the Knicks have been one of the best teams in the league over the last few seasons, there’s still room for improvement. Their defense took a step backward last season, and while they had the league’s fifth-ranked offense overall, they ranked 10th (112.1 points scored per 100 possessions) on that end in games against the league’s top-10 defenses.
With that, they had the league’s second biggest differential between their record against the 16 teams that finished at or below .500 (39-9, .813, third best) and their record against the 14 teams that were above .500 (12-22, .353, 12th).
Here are some things that might change under Brown …
1. More ball and player movement
The Knicks ranked in the bottom eight in ball movement (passes per 24 minutes of possession) and in the bottom 11 in player movement (miles traveled per 24 minutes of possession) in each of Thibodeau’s five seasons. That includes two seasons before they acquired star guard Jalen Brunson, who’s led the league in time of possession (8.6 minutes per game over three years) since his arrival.
Knicks’ ball and player movement, last five seasons
| Season | Passes/24 | Rank | Miles/24 | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 307 | 27 | 10.8 | 23 |
| 2021-22 | 312 | 24 | 10.8 | 22 |
| 2022-23 | 300 | 25 | 10.8 | 20 |
| 2023-24 | 312 | 23 | 10.9 | 26 |
| 2024-25 | 309 | 25 | 10.7 | 27 |
Passes/24 = Passes per 24 minutes of possession
Miles/24 = Miles traveled on offense per 24 minutes of possession
via Second Spectrum tracking
The offense, even with Karl-Anthony Towns on board last season, has run through Brunson, who’s also led the league in average seconds and dribbles per touch in each of the last two seasons.
Thibodeau always preached making the right play, but when the opponent has blitzed a ball-screen, Brunson’s first instinct hasn’t always been to pass, so that his teammates could play four-on-three. He’s often preferred to back out, wait for the blitzing defender to retreat, and play one-on-one …
Brunson is a terrific isolation scorer and over the last three seasons, the Knicks have scored 1.05 points per chance when a Brunson isolation has led directly to a shot, turnover or trip to the line for him or his teammates. That rate ranks 28th among 109 players with 500 direct isolations over that stretch.
But Brown will surely like to get the ball moving more. The Pacers have proven that a more egalitarian offense can succeed against good teams and in the playoffs. While the Knicks had the second biggest differential between how efficiently they scored against the league’s bottom 20 defenses (120.1 points per 100 possessions, fifth) and how efficiently they scored against the top 10 (112.1, 10th), the Pacers had the second smallest differential (116.2 vs. 114.0).
The Knicks don’t need to turn into the Pacers, but we can expect Brown to get them to look a little more like his Kings …
More ball movement could make the Knicks tougher to defend, while also benefiting Brunson himself. He has shot 44.3% on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers over the last three seasons (including playoffs), compared to 36.1% on off-the-dribble 3-pointers, with 67% of his total 3-point attempts coming off the dribble.
2. Avoiding late-clock situations
The Knicks have also played slow, ranking in the bottom five in pace in each of Thibodeau’s five seasons. Part of that is their success on the offensive glass (extending possessions), but they’ve also been relatively slow when it comes to getting into their offense. According to Second Spectrum tracking, the Knicks took an average of 4.54 seconds to reach the frontcourt (the league’s fourth slowest rate).
Taking longer to get into the frontcourt leaves less time on the clock to find a good shot. The Knicks ranked fifth in the percentage of their shots (21.9%) that came in the last six seconds of the shot clock, with that rate much higher (26.7%) in the playoffs.
The Knicks have been relatively good in late-clock situations, but league-wide, efficiency is lowest in the last six seconds of the clock.
Over Brown’s tenure, the Kings took a league-low average of 3.99 seconds to cross into the frontcourt. It helped to have had De’Aaron Fox as his point guard, but playing with pace is also a team-wide mentality that Brown hopes to bring to New York.
Getting the ball up the floor more quickly can both get the Knicks’ guards and wings going downhill, but also force a recovering defense into tough matchups …
It can also help them avoid late-clock situations.
3. Play zone? Play big?
A fundamental issue for the Knicks is that their two best offensive players — Brunson and Towns — have been liabilities on defense. Both guys can be (and have been) attacked in the pick-and-roll …
One might wonder if Brown will have the Knicks playing some zone defense.
According to Second Spectrum tracking, the Knicks played a grand total of 16 possessions of zone over Thibodeau’s five seasons as coach. By comparison, every other team played more than 250 possessions of zone over that timeframe.
The Kings ranked 20th in total zone possessions in Brown’s tenure, but still played 34 times more zone than the Knicks over those two-plus years. Brown may decide that playing zone is the best way to protect Towns defensively, limiting his exposure in the pick-and-roll.
The Minnesota Timberwolves also played some zone (with Towns both at power forward and center) in his last season in Minnesota …
With Mitchell Robinson healthy to start the season, we’ll certainly see Towns playing the four more. The two bigs played just 47 regular-season minutes together last season, but were then on the floor together for 165 minutes in the playoffs. The Knicks weren’t great (plus-4.4 points per 100 possessions) in those playoff minutes, but they allowed just 105.2 per 100 and absolutely dominated the glass. The Knicks also allowed far fewer points per chance when Robinson was the screener’s defender on a ball-screen (0.89) than when Towns was (1.03).
The Knicks are bringing back their top seven players from last season, but they’ve added some depth and have the opportunity to make some changes that can benefit them, both in the regular season and in the playoffs.
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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