Those damn stretch-fives. The Knicks can’t get away from them.
Joel Embiid flashed some long-range marksmanship for the Philadelphia 76ers against the Knicks in Game 3 of the first round, when he turned the series by making four threes in a row in a blowout third quarter.
Embiid is a far better player than Indiana Pacers starting center Myles Turner, but Turner is a more reliable three-point threat, to the dismay of a Knicks team that has struggled to guard perimeter-oriented bigs this season and now has a sniper at the five awaiting on a fast-paced Pacers team in Round 2.
“It’s the way of the league now. I think every team now has at least one center who can play away from the basket. What that does is it opens up the floor,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said after practice at the team’s Tarrytown training facility Sunday afternoon. “Now you’re cutting, dribbling penetration, you’re spread out more. The skill level of bigs has dramatically improved. You see guys shooting threes, putting it on the floor. A lot of offenses are inverted. And so you have to be able to guard. That’s why your individual fundamental defense is important, as well.”
Turner is just one of a number of stretch fives the Knicks have had difficulty guarding this season.
- Boston’s Kristaps Porzingis has made 16 of the 30 three-point attempts he’s taken against the Knicks since joining the Celtics. Al Horford is shooting 20-of-42 from downtown, or 47.6 percent, from three over his last 10 games against the Knicks, too. If the Knicks advance past Turner and the Pacers, they are likely to face the pair of Celtics stretch fives in the conference finals.
- Milwaukee’s Brook Lopez has attempted 55 threes in his last 10 games against the Knicks but has only converted on 15 of them
- Chicago’s Nikola Vucevic shot 6-of-9 from deep this season in the Bulls’ three matchups against the Knicks
Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren only shot 2-of-10 from downtown against the Knicks over two games in his rookie season - San Antonio Spurs rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama had 40 points in an overtime victory over the Knicks this season. He shot 4-of-9 from downtown on the night.
- Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns combined for 49 points on five-of-eight shooting from deep in two matchups against the Knicks this season. He has made 20 threes over his last nine games against the Knicks on 44 attempts from behind the arc.
And then, of course, there’s Turner, who is shooting 48 percent from three over his last 10 games against the Knicks, making 25 of his last 58 attempts from deep.
Turner averaged three made 3s per game in the Pacers’ first-round series victory over the Milwaukee Bucks and made seven 3s for 29 points in a Game 4 victory.
He is averaging 19.2 points per game in the playoffs, better than any single season of his nine-year NBA career and the second-most for the Pacers in their postseason run.
And he had 23 points on two-of-two shooting from downtown in Indiana’s Feb. 10 victory over the Knicks, the only game both teams played after the trade deadline, when the Knicks acquired Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks.
“Obviously the spacing offensively for the other team, everything is more open,” starting forward Josh Hart said after Knicks practice at the Tarrytown training facility Sunday afternoon. “So we have to be more disciplined in terms of on-ball defending. More disciplined in terms of our close-outs. Not letting them get the ability to put us in rotations.”
Turner is not the head of the snake for the Pacers’ offensive attack.
Things in Indiana begin and end with Tyrese Haliburton, the All-Star point guard recently named to Team USA’s 2024 Paris Olympic roster. Pascal Siakam is No. 2 and led the Pacers in scoring in their first-round series against the Bucks.
The attention paid to those two will inevitably create openings for Turner, who has feasted from deep against the Knicks over his career.
“It’s a collective effort. It doesn’t matter what they do. I think no matter what scheme they run, whatever play they run, you know what each player that they have on our team is capable of,” said Donte DiVincenzo. “So we know that. We have our schemes, we have our things that we want to do, and at the end of the day, they know that and we know what they run. So it’s going to come down to different adjustments, different tweaks throughout the series.
“But ultimately it just comes down to competing. If you compete hard enough on the ball, if you compete hard enough off the ball, you take some of their actions away, and you’re not relying on ‘if they run this play, this is what you have to take away.’ You can take away different things.”
For what it’s worth, Thibodeau appeared unfazed by the challenge posed by Turner’s ability to knock down threes at a high clip, even though history — against both Turner and other three-point-shooting bigs — suggests there should be a reason for the Knicks to be concerned.
“It doesn’t change the strengths of the team,” he said. “They’re gonna take 40-45 threes. So just know what their strengths are. He’s a stretch-five. He’s been that for awhile. So we have to be aware and alert.”
