NEW YORK — Tom Thibodeau expected a furious charge from a Detroit Pistons team with its collective back against the wall in Game 5, but — and you’re not going to believe this — he insisted that neither he nor his New York Knicks were going to change their approach.
Yes, Thibs allowed before tipoff on Tuesday, the closeout game is the hardest one in any series — with all due respect to Andrew Bynum — because “you know you’re going to get great intensity in the game.” And that kind of challenge demands a redoubling of your own efforts: more intensity, more intelligence, more togetherness. Forty-eight minutes of hell: nothing more, nothing less.
“The way we have to look at it is, ‘What is it going to take to win the game?’” Thibodeau said during his pregame news conference.
You’d presume his keys to victory did not include “committing a 24-second violation on the first possession of the game, and another one on the first possession of the third quarter.” Those were two of the four times New York has allowed the entire shot clock to dwindle without getting a shot on the rim in its first-round matchup with Detroit. The Knicks have also turned the ball over twice in five games by failing to get the ball across half-court within eight seconds of inbounding it; the entire rest of the postseason field has combined for three such violations.
Those half-dozen possessions by themselves don’t constitute the difference between the Knicks having already closed the series out and leaving the job unfinished, with the Pistons staving off elimination on Tuesday to force a Game 6 in Detroit on Thursday. They do, however, highlight an issue that has plagued Thibodeau’s team at times throughout the series: The Knicks are playing slow, and it’s costing them.
New York’s average offensive possession in the first round has lasted 15.84 seconds, according to PBP Stats — about a half-second slower than its average offensive pace during the regular season, which was already the NBA’s third-slowest. The Pistons, by comparison: 14.37 seconds per offensive possession, nearly a second and a half faster, and No. 2 in the postseason, behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“We’re at our best when we’re able to play early in the clock,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said before Game 5. “You go back and look at our early actions, and they’ve been our best, most efficient offense.”
The numbers bear that out. The Pistons have averaged 119.2 points per 100 plays in transition in this series, compared to just 89.6 points-per-100 in the half-court, according to Cleaning the Glass, and their effective field-goal percentage (which accounts for 3-pointers being worth more than 2-pointers) in the first six seconds of a possession is dramatically higher than it’s been late in the clock.
What’s true for Bickerstaff’s team is generally true for most; whether you’re running a restaurant hunting for a Michelin star or an NBA offense hunting for points, every second counts. That’s not, however, the way the Knicks typically play.
During the regular season, 15.5% of New York’s offensive possessions ended with four or fewer seconds left on the shot clock, according to Synergy — the second-highest share in the NBA. Against Detroit, that has ballooned to 20.7% — the second straight postseason in which the Knicks have led the league in late-clock possessions.
To some degree, that is the residue of design.
New York’s pilot, Jalen Brunson, is one of the NBA’s premier pick-and-roll and isolation shot creators, most comfortable working to manipulate the defense to try to pick a preferred matchup and angle of approach that he can exploit to generate a good look — or, failing that, to create enough space for a tough one that he can make. Given Brunson’s sure-handed control of the ball, leaning into that sort of one-on-one attacking also tends to be a good way to avoid turnovers — a critical component of Thibodeau’s offensive philosophy. And in this matchup specifically, with the Pistons being the younger, more athletic and less experienced team, forcing them to remain on point for the duration of a 24-second possession would in theory create more opportunities for them to make a mistake that Brunson and the rest of the Knicks’ offensive skill players can exploit.
In practice, though, New York’s much ballyhooed starting five hasn’t exploited very much, carrying over its underwhelming final few months of the regular season by getting outscored by 13 points in 118 minutes through five games. Detroit’s starters, on the contrary: plus-43 in 71 minutes, the best
Leave a Reply