NEW YORK — The New York Knicks force-fed their scorers all the way down to the last possession.
With only the slightest sliver of a chance at victory, a team that hadn’t lost a game in a month and a half readied to inbound the basketball. Josh Hart stood on the right sideline, the Knicks down 4 points to the San Antonio Spurs. Only a few seconds remained in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. New York required a miracle to poof into existence. It did not.
The team’s top dog, Jalen Brunson, began the play on the opposite side of the court, ready to cut through the paint and receive a pass, which could lead to a quick shot. The Knicks could not afford to waste time, but Brunson could not free himself. Draped all over him was Spurs guard Stephon Castle, the same man who ruined the Western Conference finals for two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Brunson sprinted into the lane. Castle acted as if he were glued to his opponent. Brunson extended an arm, trying to shimmy away. Daylight did not even show between Brunson’s hand and Castle’s chest. Castle stood in his way, blocking the route toward the 3-point arc.
As OG Anunoby cut in the opposite direction, a move that could have impeded the path of a worse defender than Castle, Brunson veered off course. Castle had shifted the Knicks’ geography — and he had caused an earthquake.
Brunson wasn’t open. Anunoby’s back was to the play. Hart could not get the Knicks’ captain the basketball and panned his eyes upcourt, turning his head to Mikal Bridges, who was posting up outside the arc on the right wing. Bridges fielded a pass, spun around and heaved an errant 3-pointer.
Just when it seemed the Knicks would never lose again, they did — for the first time in 45 days. Though Bridges’ clank to conclude the evening was hardly the reason for the defeat, the possession was exemplary of a rare issue for New York, one of the league’s cleverest and most unselfish squads.
The Knicks locked in on specific targets Monday, when the Spurs shrank their series lead to 2-1. If the first option was cut off, they could not find a viable alternative. A dynamic half-court attack, one that thrives with a read-and-react philosophy, could not strike nearly as often as it normally does.
“We were about as stagnant as I’ve seen us all year,” head coach Mike Brown said.
Part of the reason for Brown’s evaluation was the turnovers. The Knicks coughed up the ball 13 times, sometimes unforced. If a pass sailed too high or too wide, San Antonio would dart the other way for a bucket.
If the Knicks can’t get into their sets early, then they won’t create as many transition 3-pointers, and they will go up against a San Antonio defense, one of the league’s stingiest, that is already set. They can’t slide behind two Spurs trying to correct a frantic moment that forced a big guy to guard a smaller one or vice versa. Those ping-pong possessions when one Knick dishes to another who pops the ball to another who finds one more all in a span of five seconds weren’t so prominent in Game 3. The team settled for 18 assists, its second-lowest total out of 99 regular-season and playoff games.
These did not look like the Knicks who entered Monday victors of 13 consecutive games, the second-longest winning streak in playoff history. Of course, the Spurs had something to do with that.
Castle, in particular, jostled through various matchups. At times, the 6-foot-6 guard manned Brunson. At others, he took Hart. He squared off with center Karl-Anthony Towns, who struggled more against tinier defenders Monday — such as Castle or Keldon Johnson — than Towns has since the beginning of the Knicks’ heater, which sparked in large part because Towns took over game after game.
During one stretch of the second quarter, the Knicks tried to lob the ball into Towns, who was being guarded by the smaller Johnson. The Knicks had a size advantage, but Johnson pushed the 7-footer out beyond the paint. It was the opposite of what Towns showed when the Spurs manned him with smalls during his miraculous Game 2, when he annihilated San Antonio down low, especially in the first half.
“We’d get the first screen, and then we literally just stood and watched,” Brown said.
It wasn’t so easy to flow freely.
Towns failing to punish shorter opponents meant the Spurs weren’t as pressured to put Victor Wembanyama on him, which allowed the planet’s greatest protector of the paint to roam around the rim. He didn’t just cut off driving lanes; he also blocked areas to cut.
It was reminiscent of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Cleveland Cavaliers placed their center, Jarrett Allen, on Hart, an inconsistent 3-point shooter, which allowed Allen to sag into the paint. New York’s movement dissipated. The Knicks went down 22 points before inserting an extra shooter, Landry Shamet, who spread the court and sparked a historic comeback.
“(It was) too much ball watching, standing around,” Bridges said of Monday’s loss. “We just got to keep moving. I think they do a great job defensively with the guards. Then Wemby staying low, it can draw confusion sometimes. I think if we keep moving, it’s going to help us.”
Monday, the Knicks got away from what worked over the first two games of the finals.
Ball movement, which was pristine much of the first two games in San Antonio, tightened. Cutting wasn’t as sharp. The targets they identified were teammates to whom they wanted to get the ball, not opponents or areas of the court.
During Games 1 and 2, the Knicks zeroed in on a counterintuitive mark: Wembanyama. They placed the Defensive Player of the Year in pick-and-rolls aplenty, which pulled him away from the hoop and made him run more, possibly contributing to his heavy breathing during those fourth quarters. But they got away from that move in Game 3.
After guarding 48 pick-and-rolls over Games 1 and 2, Wembanyama defended only 14 in Game 3, according to Second Spectrum.
Wembanyama attached himself to the Knicks’ centers less, and the Knicks detached themselves from him. Of those 14 pick-and-rolls, Hart was the screener on only one of them. The rest came with the 7-foot-4 center manning Towns or Mitchell Robinson.
San Antonio changed its alignment, and the Knicks steered away from what was working. Come Game 4, they must return to their identity.
“The little things, the attention to detail, the stuff that we pride ourselves on, we didn’t do it,” Brunson said. “So, regardless of whatever shots we were getting, the little things could make or break a game.”
