Elite Bulls defender Coby White had a unique way of describing Jalen Brunson after the Knicks’ All-Star point guard hung 45 points in a near wire-to-wire victory in Chicago on April 9.
White called Brunson a ‘motherf–ker.’
Brunson is that good. He’s proven it against each of the NBA’s premier individual and team defenses:
- 39 points on 65 percent shooting in a win over the Boston Celtics
- 30 points and seven assists in a buzzer-beating loss to the West’s No. 1 Oklahoma City Thunder
- 33 points against a stingy Orlando Magic defense
- 28.7 points on 48.7 percent shooting on the season
There is no answer for the star Knicks guard whose undeniable ascent places him in both MVP and First Team All-NBA conversations.
He has a counter for every move the defense attempts to take away — and a combination of IQ, footwork and sheer willpower gives him an advantage when he gets a step on a defender.
The step is inevitable — regardless of the length, Nick Nurse will deploy at the point of attack to combat the 6-foot-1 Knicks star.
Which is why the Knicks are planning on the Sixers sending more than just one defender in Brunson’s direction — the only assured path to get the ball out of an elite scorer’s hands.
And when the ball leaves his hands, it will go to one of a number of Knicks whose job it will be to step up when a Sixers defense attempts to cut off the head of the snake.
The Knicks, of course, have been working at this all season.
They are ready, as is Brunson, for the different defensive tactics the Sixers will vault their way.
“It won’t be the first time a longer wing has been on him,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said after practice in Tarrytown on Thursday.
“Jalen’s just — he finds a way,” added OG Anunoby. “So he’ll continue to find a way.”
HOW IT COULD WORK
Isaiah Hartenstein is in the dunker’s spot. Anunoby and Donte DiVincenzo are in opposite corners. Josh Hart is setting a screen.
Brunson is methodically calculating the defense’s every move.
If he takes Hart’s screen, the defense has an option. Blitz is the frequent poison of choice.
When a defense blitzes the pick and roll, both the screener’s man and the ball-handler’s man “blitz” the ball-handler.
This forces the ball out of the ball-handlers hands, normally to the screener: in the Knicks’ case — from Brunson to Hart, or Hartenstein, heading towards the rim with favorable numbers.
After all, oftentimes the screener’s man is still with the ball-handler after the dump-off pass — or if he’s smart, he’s attempting to pre-determine which Knick will soon be open.
Hart now has a line drive to the rim, which means either Hartenstein’s, Anunoby’s or DiVincenzo’s man must rotate over to help, otherwise, Hart gets an easy layup at the rim.
Leave Hartenstein, or Mitchell Robinson, in the dunker’s spot to help on Hart, and it’s an automatic two points on a lob to the rim.
You can’t leave DiVincenzo or Anunoby, either: DiVincenzo is shooting 46 percent from the corner (51.9 percent from the right pocket), Anunoby is converting at a 43.9 percent clip from the corner, and their substitutions — Miles McBride and Bojan Bogdanovic — are also shooting better than 40 percent from the corner on the season.
The Sixers will move fast defensively once the ball leaves Brunson’s hands. Their reigning MVP is both an eraser at the rim and a deterrent in the paint. Their lanky wings can both help on drives and recover back to the three-point line. Their head coach, Nick Nurse, will do more than just give Brunson a blitz defense he’s seen all season.
The Knicks are banking on it.
“I know they’ll be very well prepared. He’s very creative,” said Anunoby, who played for Nurse on the championship-winning Toronto Raptors team of 2019, after practice on Thursday. “He’s a great coach. They’ll be well coached for sure.”
WALK THE WALK
You can’t take any opponent for granted — especially not an opponent that has confidence.
The Sixers have irrational confidence for a team who not only lost the season series, 3-1, but also boasts an average margin of defeat of 26 points in those losses.
Twenty-five-point-six for those keeping score.
Yet their confidence is rooted in reality: The Sixers held the Knicks to just 73 points in a March 10 stunner at Madison Square Garden. It was the Knicks’ fewest points scored in a game since 2018, and the fewest points any team scored in a game this season.
The 6-foot-7 Kelly Oubre Jr. served as Brunson’s primary defender. The Sixers also used the 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum and the 6-foot-8 Tobias Harris as lanky options to defend the star Knicks guard in space. And if he gets healthy, they’ll likely deploy De’Anthony Melton — who is a game-time decision recovering from a back injury — as a point-of-attack defender against Brunson, too.
Melton did not play on March 10 against the Knicks, but Oubre proclaimed he was “glued” to Brunson “all night” after handing the Knicks a disappointing loss at The Garden.
On this night, Philly’s size and length on the wing got the best of Brunson.
“They’re a great team. JB [Jalen Brunson] is a great player,” Oubre said after his Sixers beat the Heat on Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, it’s gonna be Philadelphia vs. New York. We’ve just got to come ready to play and stop them.”
The numbers suggest Brunson doesn’t fare as well against size at the point of attack as Thibodeau’s answer — “it won’t be the first time a longer wing has on him” — would suggest
On March 10, Brunson shot just 6-of-22 against the Sixers for 19 points.
In a Feb. 22 victory — yes a victory — he finished with 21 points and 12 assists but shot just 5-of-18 from the field and turned the ball over seven times.
His two other outings against the Sixers were in line with his season averages: 29 points on 11-of-20 shooting in a 36-point blowout on Jan. 5, and 20 points and nine assists to just one turnover on 7-of-12 shooting in another blowout on March 12.
Thibodeau likes the numbers, and here they are: 29-of-72 (40.2 percent) from the field, 9-of-30 (30 percent) shooting from three-point range, and a 3-1 record against the Sixers, with Embiid only playing once, albeit in the 36-point window-washing.
The individual numbers, in this case, don’t stack at all against a 3-1 record the Knicks hope to one-up to advance past the first round of the playoffs.
Against a “creative” Sixers defense, rest assured the offense will flow through Brunson — but New York is prepared for the ball to be both in his hands against an opponent with a size advantage, or out of his hands, into his teammates’, who’ve made the right play more often than not on a Knicks team securing the East’s No. 2 seed.
“I think the beautiful thing about our offense and about the way our team is built is Jalen is gonna make the right read,” said DiVincenzo. “If it’s to get off the ball, he’ll get off the ball.
“You have to know that first and foremost, Thibs and Jalen are gonna be on the same page about whatever needs to be done and then the confidence that both of them have when Jalen gets off the ball. We have a lot of guys around him that can make plays, one for themselves but two, to get the ball back to Jalen to get easy shots, to get easy ones, and that’s gonna be the challenging part for them to lock in on.
“You can throw anything at Jalen but he’s not the type of player that you throw something, he’s gonna make mistakes. You can throw something at him and he’s gonna adjust accordingly, and the guys around him can all make plays, so that’s the benefit for us.”
