Jalen Brunson may not have turned in the most efficient preseason from beyond the arc, but the methods by which he got his threes are further proof the New York Knicks are visibly evolving under head coach Mike Brown.
Through four exhibition tilts, Brunson went just 8-of-25 from downtown. It goes without saying that the Knicks need him to make those triples at a higher clip. Still, preseason is a time for evaluating the process just as much as results. And the the process by which JB’s long-range attempts are coming verge on night-and-day compared to last season.
Last season, in then-head coach Tom Thibodeau’s offense, close to 54 percent of Brunson’s made threes went unassisted. During this year’s preseason games (with tracking data available), he didn’t hit a single three that went unassisted.
To be fair, this is to some extent misleading. The sample size is small, and again, the NBA’s website doesn’t have tracking data for some of the Knicks’ preseason possessions. Even so, if you go back and watch every one of Brunson’s three-point attempts, you can see a material difference in how his treys are being generated.
The majority of Brunson’s looks from downtown, including the misses, originated off movement (hand-offs, coming around off-ball screens) or flat-out off the catch. Given that under 10 percent of his field-goal attempts last year came off screens or via hand-offs, this could be the start of a pretty significant change.
Jalen Brunson is also taking more threes
Brown grabbed the reins of the Knicks looking for them to take more threes. They are. That includes Jalen Brunson.
Over roughly 95 minutes of preseason basketball,the two-time All-NBA star has uncorked 25 three-point attempts. That comes out to about 9.4 attempts per 36 minutes, which is noticeably higher than the 6.2 he averaged last season. It is even substantially more than his career-high 6.9 attempts per 36 minutes from 2023-24.
This volume is not etched in stone. But the Knicks seem bent on launching more triples. It’s better if their best shooters are the ones taking them.
We already know Karl-Anthony Towns isn’t going to dramatically increase his three-point volume. He isn’t hard-wired that way. The share of his attempts coming from deep may actually go down with smaller players spending more time on him during his extra reps at power forward.
Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby have room to nudge up their volume, but they cannot fly around away from the ball, and then into above-the-break and wing threes like Brunson. In that way, his three-point volume isn’t just a harbinger of New York’s recalibrated offense. Much like his willingness to adapt and be used in different ways, it’s paramount to the Knicks actualizing the best version of themselves.