3 Knicks lineup trends to watch in second half of season

Yahoo

29-01-2025

As the NBA season nears All-Star Weekend, enough games have transpired to dive into what's worked and what hasn't this year.
For the Knicks, this self-reflection is crucial in analyzing their still relatively new team before they enter the postseason.
Let's take a look at New York's lineup data after 47 games to identify trends worth watching down the stretch...
The Knicks' starting five of Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns is the most-played lineup in the entire league by a huge margin. They've played 777 minutes together, with the next most-played lineup in the NBA coming in at 515 minutes.
New York has been healthy enough to allow these starters to appear in 40 games, while only four other lineups in the league have even hit 30. This should be a major boon to chemistry for a five-man unit assembled just this past summer.
The results have yet to reflect the dominance fans are hoping for out of this group. They're scoring 118.3 points per 100 possessions and allowing 112.7, which would rank top five and middle of the road, respectively, compared to the league at large.
They've been better since Dec. 1, with a stiffer defense that allowed them to outscore opponents by 7.5 points per 100 possessions. However, there are much stronger performing units across the NBA with contenders and even lower-level playoff teams boasting lineups with +10 to +20 differentials.
These numbers don't provide much nuance, and if these five starters played half the minutes they'd likely produce a better output. It will be interesting to see how their minutes and performance together continue to move as the season rolls on.
Lineups that include all four starters with a backup center in place of Towns are getting routinely smoked. New York's second-and third-most played lineups are four starters with Jericho Sims or Precious Achiuwa, and they are both getting outscored by over four points per 100 possessions.
It's unclear why this is. Perhaps losing Towns' spacing while trying to cover up for Brunson's defense is a bad combination, or having two non-shooters in (Hart and Sims or Achiuwa) is mucking things up. But after spending a good portion of the season subbing Towns out first, head coach Tom Thibodeau is shifting away from this rotation pattern, getting Miles McBride in as the initial change alone or in tandem with Achiuwa.
This should happen with some improved bench minutes. McBride and the starters are all big positive numbers in decent sample sizes, and though he hasn't played much with the three wings and Achiuwa, on paper it has the potential to be New York's best defensive lineup.
Thibs can still have Towns lead bench units in the first half with this change. We'll likely see some more experimentation between now and the playoffs, but this small adjustment is a great start.
Coming into the season, the prospect of pairing Towns at center with a four who can aid him in the bruising, glue-guy stuff like rebounding, screening, and protecting the rim wasn't just enticing, but appeared key to making this experiment work in the long term. While it was evident Hart would start and fulfill that role in the starting five, the hope was that we could see Achiuwa and Towns get some productive minutes together as well.
We're now seeing this come together in real time. The two are up to 153 minutes played together, with an impressive +9.8 points per 100 possessions net differential.
It's a natural fit that maximizes both players in lineups that desperately need synergy and positive play. It also alleviates some minutes from a wing who would normally be in that four spot.
While it's a challenge to get many of these minutes when Achiuwa is supposed to be Towns' backup and relief, Mitchell Robinson's return could help. In the meantime, they can limit a much less effective pairing: Achiuwa and Hart.
The Knicks can stick to lineups with only one to zero non-shooters, but putting Hart and Achiuwa together stretches that rule to some middling results. In the aggregate they're still positive on the floor together, but not by a large margin -- and the eye test doesn't tell a great tale.
With the wing depth available to them, Thibodeau should be able to avoid this combination and get better minutes with Towns off the floor. We've seen less of it in the past two games, so perhaps things are trending in that direction already.