The New York Knicks were under extreme pressure in their Game 3 matchup with the Detroit Pistons. The team had been heavily criticized for their lackluster performance in big spots all season, and played poorly in the first two home games of the playoffs. Although Detroit is a feisty team that had an excellent bounce-back season, New York has a massive talent advantage. That advantage hadn’t shown through two contests, sparking questions about everyone from the head coach to several underperforming players. Luckily, NY came out with their best performance of the series in a win on Detroit’s home floor. The final score would indicate it was a very close affair, but New York controlled the game throughout, outside of a few hiccups.<\/p>\n
Not only did the Knicks notch an all-important win to regain home-court and control of the series, but they laid the blueprint for reaching their true potential in this playoff run. Fans have been begging Tom Thibodeau<\/a> to shift towards a more team-based offensive attack rather than a Jalen Brunson<\/a>-led isolation offense. Last year, especially after the injury to Julius Randle<\/a>, it was necessary for Brunson to dominate the ball with historic usage. NY lacked secondary shot creators in 2023-24, causing their captain to go on a 2001 Allen Iverson<\/a>-esque run over the final 40 games of the campaign.<\/p>\n Now, however, after Leon Rose brought in Mikal Bridges<\/a> and Karl-Anthony Towns<\/a> last offseason, New York has a completely different roster makeup. Thibodeau has four competent offensive creators between Brunson, Towns, Bridges, and OG Anunoby<\/a>. Unfortunately, while the egalitarian five-out offense predicated on sharing the ball has worked wonders for his group this season, Thibodeau has gone away from that style in lieu of Brunson-ball once again. The same goes for the decreasing Brunson\/Towns pick-and-pops that made them so dynamic in the early season. Their offense has ground to a halt as a result, and Detroit has shown they can easily slow down Brunson’s isolation attack with elite defenders like Ausar Thompson<\/a> and Dennis Schroder<\/a>.<\/p>\n With their backs against the wall in a raucous Game 3 road environment in Detroit, New York went back to what made them great offensively. They had four players score 20-plus points, as Brunson (30), Towns (31), Anunoby (22), and Bridges (20) combined for 103 points on 33-68 shooting. Early on, NY ran every type of action they could, involving all four of their elite scorers. Brunson ran some isolations and pick-and-rolls, but didn’t allow his teammates to get cold. Towns had catch-and-shoot opportunities in transition, attacked closeouts, and was able to score in mismatches. Both Bridges and Anunoby received more on-ball reps than they had in Games 1 and 2 combined, to great results.<\/p>\n Once the game slowed down in the fourth quarter, Brunson went back to dominating the ball. However, because he hadn’t been carrying such a heavy load for three quarters, he appeared much fresher. He’s the Clutch Player of the Year<\/a> for a reason, and closed out the Pistons in the face of a road crowd that was showering him with boos and insults. Brunson<\/a> has now outscored Cade Cunningham<\/a> 14 to 4 in clutch situation<\/a>s this series. New York has found a formula: let everyone get ample opportunities throughout the game, then allow Brunson to finish the job if it’s close late.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photo credit: \u00a9 Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New York Knicks were under extreme pressure in their Game 3 matchup with the Detroit Pistons. The team had been heavily criticized for their lackluster performance in big spots all season, and played poorly in the first two home games of the playoffs. Although Detroit is a feisty team that had an excellent bounce-back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5412,"featured_media":136243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,12],"tags":[50041,1417,213],"class_list":["post-136232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-knicks","tag-2025-nba-playoffs","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-karl-anthony-towns"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136232"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136244,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136232\/revisions\/136244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New York Needs to Emulate Their Game 3 Offense\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n