Mike Brown has vowed the New York Knicks will shoot way more threes now that he's at the helm. It took the team exactly 12 minutes of preseason basketball to prove that he wasn't kidding.
The Knicks fired up 13 triples in the first-quarter of their Abu Dhabi matchup against the Philadelphia 76ers. That comes out to about 39 attempts per 48 minutes. It just so happens Brown mentioned 40 long-range attempts as a potential target number days before opening tipoff.
“I mean if we get 40 [threes], I’m cool with it,” he told reporters, via Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News. “If we get 40-plus, I’m cool with it.”
Granted, the Knicks only made two of their 13 first-quarter three-point attempts, both of which came courtesy of Deuce McBride. But the value, right now, is in the volume.
The Knicks look ready to sustain this kind of volume
Teams tend to fire up more triples, while also playing faster, during preseason tilts. Still, the manner in which offenses operate can provide windows into squads’ intended identities. The Knicks are giving us a lot to work with here.
Those first 12 minutes against the Sixers saw New York chuck up a handful of triples early in the shot clock, and on the break. Nobody attempted more than two, because everybody had the green light. That includes resident kiddo on the chopping block Pacome Dadiet, who received the starting nod with OG Anunoby nursing a wrist injury.
Whether the Knicks can keep this up is the bigger question. The early returns suggest they can. New York continued uncorking threes in volume throughout the second quarter, courtesy of Mikal Bridges finding a little bit of a groove, and finished with 19 attempts for the half.
New York needs more of its threes to go in
Brown has been clear that he doesn’t just want the Knicks chucking threes for the sake of getting them up. “They’ve gotta be good threes,” is what he told reporters (via Bondy).
The quality of their looks against the Sixers varied. Their accuracy did not. They shot well under 25 percent from beyond the arc in the first half (4-of-19). That is also something to monitor.
To the Knicks’ credit, the core rotation did seem to emerge from their jet-lag stupor as they banked more reps. They were also clearly more focused on trying to get Jalen Brunson moving and grooving in actions away from the ball.
This says nothing of OG Anunoby’s absence. Without him, the Knicks couldn’t get to true five-out looks, which cramped their spacing, and made many of us long for McBride to land in the full-strength starting five.
The Knicks put up threes in mass despite all of that. While one half of basketball isn’t telltale of everything, in this case, given what we know about how Brown wants to play, it absolutely means something.