Oh Mike Brown, how you have toyed with my emotions across this playoff run. Four games, that's all it's been. Yet these games have packed enough ups and downs to make it feel like a deep run. Game 1 flushed the nerves out: Towns took over (33% scoring rate, 48% true usage), the sets hummed at 1.11 PPP, and everything clicked. Games 2 and 3 arrived and all of it seemingly fell apart. Atlanta's defense suffocated New York’s offense, star-less lineups lost minutes at record speed, and Towns watched on the margins, collecting just a 25% true usage in both games. So what did they need to right the ship? A rotation shake-up and schematic adjustments…that was Game 4.
More Towns, Thank You
True Usage captures a player's full offensive involvement, scoring rate, passing rate, turnovers, potential assists, and passes that generate free throws, filling the gaps that traditional usage% leaves behind. Games 2 and 3 saw Towns' involvement crater, producing wild swings that made for an unnecessarily erratic series. The inconsistency is hard to justify against a team that simply lacks the personnel to contain him, either as a scorer or a creator. Game 4 changed that. Towns' true usage skyrocketed to a season high, the triple-double that followed was no accident, capping it off by posting his highest passing rate of the season at 33%.
One of the primary ways the Knicks unlocked Towns was through the pinch post and reintroducing motion offense, specifically the weave, or 4-out 1-in alignment series. Brown and his staff had largely phased this out in favor of set play offense, which has generated its own share of success for Towns to simplify his game. But Game 4 made a compelling case that he can thrive in both systems. Towns looks comfortable operating across varying offensive structures, and that versatility should give the coaching staff confidence heading into the rest of this series and beyond. Watch the action breakdown for how they assisted in his dominance:
Game 1 of this series actually proves the point, Towns didn't need the motion offense to be effective and involved. The set plays installed to simplify his reads had a similar effect, steadily lifting his usage as a passer as the season wound down:
Towns' overall involvement doesn't hinge on any single offensive system. Whether he's operating out of the pinch post in the motion offense, or functioning as a screener and working the top of the key in Delay sets, his usage can be generated from multiple corners of the system.
Where there’s still room to grow is Towns’ ability to exploit mismatches when a guard or wing is tasked with guarding him. The Knicks need to hunt post-up opportunities more deliberately and consistently. Or, as they showed in Game 4, they can manufacture a similar advantage by routing him from the block into the pinch post area.
Rotational Changes
Despite the absence of a double-big lineup, which Brown has cut entirely in the series citing matchup factors, the most glaring issue that needed to be addressed was the star-less minutes. When both Towns and Brunson sit, the half-court offense suffers badly. Across 52 possessions without either star on the floor, the Knicks are scoring just 0.83 PPP, compared to 0.97 PPP when at least one of them is on the court. The possession quality gap is just as damning, 1.05 ePPP with a star on, dropping to 0.91 ePPP without one. Brown needs to find a way to keep those minutes to a minimum, and he did in Game 4 only logging two half court possessions.
Worth noting too is how little Mikal Bridges saw the floor in the second half of Game 4. Brown made a deliberate choice to lean on better ball handlers in McBride and Clarkson, and in McBride's case, a far more reliable three-point shooter from above the break. There's also a strong argument for McBride's point-of-attack defense fitting more naturally alongside Anunoby and Hart than Bridges does right now.
A lineup the Knicks need to explore more is McBride slotting in for Bridges alongside the rest of the starters. Surprisingly, we barely saw it in Game 4 despite Bridges taking a back seat in the rotation. The sample is small, just 14 minutes together on the season. However, in game 3 that unit helped claw the Knicks back into the game.
Defense
New York moved away from the Towns-on-Daniels cross-match, not because it was failing, but because the trickle-down effect created some uncomfortable matchups, most notably Brunson drawing CJ McCollum. The half-court defense was never the series' biggest problem, but McCollum's scoring outbursts came too frequently and too easily. Flipping the assignment, throwing better defenders at McCollum while letting Brunson sit on Daniels, should slow things down. Even more so if the Knicks pair that with aggressive coverage on ball-screens, forcing Atlanta's weaker shooters to beat them from the perimeter.
Other factors work in New York's favor too. Atlanta regularly deploys lineups carrying one or two unreliable shooters, which means aggressive coverage on handlers like McCollum and Nickeil Alexander-Walker becomes almost automatic. Make the rest of Atlanta's roster beat you from three.
Jonathon Kuminga launched six threes in Game 4 and converted none. Jalen Johnson took five and made one. That won't happen every night, but when those two are combining for eleven attempts while McCollum is held to four, the Knicks are winning that battle. The clip illustrates that best, Robinson playing high coverage against NAW, Brunson tagging the roller from the weak side, Clarkson from the strong side, with Daniels and Kuminga on the floor. That's the kind of defense New York has been allowed to play.
New York also played with a different level of urgency in Game 4, holding Atlanta to zero fast break points in the first half, just the third time all season that's happened. The Knicks were disciplined getting back on defense and clean enough offensively to largely eliminate transition opportunities. Taking away Atlanta's greatest weapon changes the entire game, and if New York can carry that discipline into Game 5, it becomes a significant problem for the Hawks.