Thought this was a nice article:
Knicks finally find way to take down Celtics: Switch up their entire identity
Jared Weiss, Fred Katz
BOSTON — Karl-Anthony Towns had never played quite this way.
Not during the regular season. Not at the end of his run with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Not even before then, when Tom Thibodeau, who now leads the New York Knicks, was his head coach.
Monday evening, more than any other, was the night that Towns switched, jostling off his primary defensive assignments while guarding pick-and-rolls to take on the Boston Celtics’ nastiest perimeter threats.
These were not the Knicks — and not the Towns — that occasionally shook up coverages throughout the regular season but never went to this one so consistently, one that places the All-Star 7-footer front and center against perilous creators.
Now, a team that looks like the Knicks, smells like the Knicks and walks like the Knicks leads the defending-champion Celtics 1-0 in a second-round playoff series. Of course, in storming back from down 20 points during a Game 1 victory Monday, that group did not act like the Knicks.
From the onset of the Boston series, New York switched pick-and-rolls with more gumption than ever.
“(When) switching, (you’re) trying to take away some of their 3s: catch-and-shoot, pick-and-pop 3s,” Knicks wing Josh Hart said. “(We are) making sure when we do switch that the guy is not on an island. He has two, three (teammates) behind him ready to help, ready to step up, and just make it difficult for them. It was good for us to go out there and execute defensively for the game plan.”
The goal, as Hart explained, was explicit: Switching on pick-and-rolls could limit Boston’s intense 3-point barrage.
During the regular season, the Knicks switched on a shade below 15 percent of opponents’ pick-and-rolls, the second-lowest figure in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum. But something had to change to beat Boston for the first time this season. They switched on 38 percent of the Celtics’ pick-and-rolls in Game 1, the highest single-game rate of their season.
Towns kept finding himself at the center of it.
The five-time All-Star defended a screener on 28 pick-and-rolls. He switched on 13 of them, tying his career high, which came during a historic 2020 banger against the Sacramento Kings. How could any true basketball romantic forget the breathtaking evening half a decade ago when a middling Sacramento squad downed the 19-win Timberwolves?
Monday was extreme for Towns, even compared to that unforgettable night.
He switched 46 percent of the time he guarded the back end of a pick-and-roll in Game 1. Until then, his season high for a game was 15 percent. He hadn’t switched on more than four pick-and-rolls in a game since the Knicks acquired him in October.
Thibodeau mixed in different pick-and-roll coverages throughout the season, some more conservative for Towns and others more aggressive. Towns dabbled with a switch or two when the Knicks faced the Celtics late in the regular season, a hint of what was to come.
The Orlando Magic switched constantly against the Celtics in Round 1, limiting Boston to its three least voluminous 3-point performances of the season. This latest game was the Knicks’ bid to do the same. Boston tossed up a playoff-record 60 3-pointers in Game 1, but missed an unprecedented 45 of them in the process.
“It’s something that we’ve seen all year, and (the Knicks) haven’t done it,” Celtics big Al Horford said. “But I feel like it doesn’t matter who the opponent is. It’s just always we just kind of go to what happens if this happens or what happens if they go the other way.”
Switching on pick-and-rolls is a common basketball strategy that even New York will roll out when necessary during the regular season. Two defenders, one guarding the ballhandler and the other guarding the screener, will flip their assignments as opponents near each other, disrupting the action in the process. When two like-sized defenders are involved, such as Knicks wings OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, a switch is automatic.
But for Towns, it’s been anything but that.
Switching with Towns means sending his ever-floppy size 20s not just far from the basket but also onto facilitators who are well-equipped to score on him. It puts more pressure on a foul-prone defender not to judo chop drivers. It’s a tall task for Towns, who committed five hacks Monday, including one on a Jayson Tatum 3-point attempt that followed a switch.
Against the Celtics, the most gluttonous 3-point hunters in league history, the consequences of Towns’ defensive exuberance were worth the upside. The Knicks put him in all sorts of matchups, challenging him to handle a variety of tasks outside his typical role. Sometimes, he thrived; sometimes, he struggled. On occasion, such as on the below play, it took Anunoby literally pushing him in the right direction to make it work.
Switching on pick-and-rolls can slow down the Boston’s 3-point onslaught. The Celtics will drive and kick endlessly until they create open, stand-still 3-pointers. If only the two guys defending the action have to move, then the other Knicks aren’t as vulnerable.
Tatum and Jaylen Brown can create good looks for their teammates in crunch time, but not all of those 3s were the familiarly cushy Celtics jumpers.
Even when Tatum dragged Towns out of position and finagled by him, Hart and Anunoby were ready to to help into the paint, disrupt driving or passing lanes, then fly back to shooters on the perimeter. When Brown drove at Towns in overtime, Bridges helped from the corner, forcing Brown to halt and toss a pass into Bridges’ hands.
As long as Towns had his wings behind him, he was able to hold up his end of the bargain. But this wasn’t unique to Towns.
The Knicks primarily deployed three coverages on Tatum’s pick-and-rolls over the course of the evening. In the middle of the floor, New York most often switched screens for Tatum. When Jalen Brunson was brought into the action, he would show and recover, jumping out into Tatum’s path to reroute the Celtics star before trying to retreat back into the defensive formation.
Brunson’s pinballing opened up vulnerabilities when Towns was brought into the action, allowing Tatum to get deep enough into the paint to collapse the defense and open up quality 3s for his teammates.
The Knicks’ switching wasn’t just against dribblers, though. When the Celtics offense tried to impede Brunson away from the play at various points, the Knicks point guard would switch anyway and end up on Boston’s stars more often than usual.
Knicks center Mitchell Robinson would switch onto Tatum only if needed. During the first half, Robinson would guard up to the screen level. If a Tatum shot went up and he had to contest, Robinson would switch. In the fourth quarter, he switched more, leading to one of the Knicks’ key late-game stops.
This play exemplifies the gamble the Knicks nailed in Game 1. If the Knicks could switch length onto Tatum in isolation while rangy defenders — Anunoby, Bridges and Hart — sat in the driving lanes, a pull-up 3 appeared on the way.
The Knicks understand the Celtics will try to bury them under an avalanche of 3-pointers. It’s hard to take those shots away, so the goal is to channel Boston’s efforts into the shots the defense can live with. The Tatum 3 is typically fatal, but it’s less corrosive when shooting over a defender who is taller and ready to get their hand up to contest.
Tatum feasts on centers dragged out to the perimeter on a near-nightly basis. He will lull them into a stupor until he finds the angle to get past them, opening up the drive-and-kicks that won the Celtics a championship last season. But keeping him in front of you is a lot easier when Bridges and Anunoby have enough wingspan flooding the driving lanes to hold hands from 15 feet apart.
The narrative since the Knicks paired Bridges with Anunoby leading into this season has centered around matchups with Tatum and Brown. And the team’s prerogative remains for Anunoby to guard Tatum. But all the switching showed a new side, a willingness to attack the Celtics’ stars with their wing stoppers elsewhere.
Coaches across the league often say that the gameplan guarding Tatum, who can get hot and flip the game in an instant, is to keep him off the 3-point line. Often, he explodes in crunch time, when it’s too late to undo the damage. The Knicks played with fire and came out relatively unscathed. Their bet is their length can bother Boston just enough to dull the Celtics’ sharpest edge.
Boston’s adjustments for Game 2 could seek to move the Knicks’ wings away from those driving lanes, placing the Celtics’ shooters in less predictable spots.
This isn’t a novel problem for the Celtics to solve. But doing it against the Knicks? That’s certainly new.
