NEW YORK — After Mike Brown vented about the questionable officiating in the Knicks’ 115-111 loss in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday night, he zeroed in on his offense, which continued to struggle with the San Antonio Spurs’ on-ball pressure.
“We were about as stagnant as I’ve seen us all year,” Brown admitted.
There were significant stretches throughout Game 3 when the Knicks could not break down San Antonio’s layered, resolute system.
The majority of the time, Spurs defenders were picking up a Knicks ball carrier, usually point guard Jalen Brunson, the second he took it over center court. Considering the immense physicality that San Antonio has doled out over the first two games of the series, even with both ending in New York wins, the Knicks started to show signs of wear and tear. They were unsure in their off-ball movement and sluggish when it came time to give Brunson an option.
It resulted in the Knicks’ captain holding possession for the first 10, even 15 seconds of the shot clock before making a move, and subsequently forcing the attack to rush into bad looks.
“We just wanted to stand and watch one guy dribble all the time, and when the ball got passed, there were no quick decisions by the guy receiving the basketball,” Brown said. “So we have actions we can get into that we didn’t do a good job of getting into, first of all, but it’s OK because you’re not going to be able to run plays all the time, especially with how physical they are playing defensively. Sometimes you’ve just got to go by guys.
“But you’ve got to be smart. You have to take care of the basketball. You have to space right. You have to move the ball. You have to move bodies. We’ve done that quite a bit, and we didn’t do a good job of it [in Game 3].”
With it came turnovers. They gave it up 13 times, which resulted in 21 San Antonio points and constant momentum stoppers.
“They played a good defense, and we weren’t as clean as we’d like to be,” forward OG Anunoby, who scored 28 points in the loss, said. “It was a whole team effort, and we weren’t on the same page. All we can do is review the film and try to improve and just be better.”
What makes the Spurs’ system so difficult to attack is the ability to put multiple athletic, physical guards on the floor like Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, and Devin Vassell to hound the likes of Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Mikal Bridges, all while keeping a pseudo-zone intact that allows Wembanyama to stay out by the three-point lines in one of the corners, then cut down toward the basket to help repel any driving Knicks. With a wingspan of over eight feet, the Frenchman can cover that ground quickly.
It also neutralizes Towns that much more. The Atlanta Hawks ran a similar scheme to take a 2-1 series lead in the first round before Brown figured out that his star big man could be used as the facilitator to pick apart the opposition.
The Spurs run this system so much better, though, and Towns was taken out in almost every type of scenario in Game 3 on Monday night. Bodies were on him in an instant on the perimeter, and if he decided to cut to the hoop, the unanimous Defensive Player of the Year was there to disrupt him. Towns shot just 4-of-10 from the field for 11 points and one assist after averaging 19.4 points and four assists over the first two games of the Finals.
“Sometimes KAT has to flash to the elbow. Sometimes he’s got to post up,” Brown said. “They are junking the game up by just putting [Wembanyama] in one of the two corners. You’re going to have to just move and cut and pass the ball quicker and drive the ball quicker, because it’s almost a zone that they are in to a certain degree, and we didn’t do a good job of attacking it.”
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