All throughout Mike Brown's first year as the head coach of the New York Knicks, he staggered the minutes of All-Stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
While the offensively prolific duo started and finished games together, the coach played plenty of lineups in between that involved just one of the team's stars accompanying a group of mostly – or entirely – reserves.
Late in the regular season, though, Brown made a change that's carried into the playoffs. The reason for the experiment is unknown, but it definitely didn't deliver a boost overall to New York's chances of winning.
It's time to end it. Whether the Knicks go back to playing Towns with reserves in those minutes, or try something new, is irrelevant. In the NBA Playoffs, they just can't afford for it to be this lineup, in these moments, any longer.
Knicks' new lineup leaves several players out of position at wrong time
In the Knicks' loss to the Atlanta Hawks in Monday night's Game 2, Brown started both the second and fourth quarters with four of his reserves alongside OG Anunoby.
The lineup struggled immensely to score, turning the ball over several times with Miles McBride and Landry Shamet tasked with penetrating Atlanta's defense and creating advantages for teammates. Even Anunoby, who can single-handedly impact games on both sides of the court to incredible extents with his physicality, isn't typically given the responsibility of being a lineup's sole star creator.
In part as a result, the Hawks started the second quarter on an 11-3 run. It was then that Brown called a timeout and replaced Anunoby with Josh Hart. The Knicks immediately committed a turnover out of that timeout.
Knicks' reserves not entirely to blame for Game 2 collapse vs. Hawks
That giveaway led directly to two of the Hawks' 18 points off of turnovers. Brown swapped the struggling Landry Shamet out for Jose Alvarado, who gave the team a much-needed shock of energy and helped them go on a 6-0 run before Brunson and Towns returned.
But when they started the fourth quarter with the same lineup, they obviously didn't end up getting as lucky. The Knicks were still up by eight points when Brunson and Towns came back in the game in its final period; the team's group of reserves weren't entirely at fault for New York's collapse.
But, in an ironic twist following the coaching tenure of Tom Thibodeau in the Big Apple, fans of the team might be left longing for the days when their starters would play too many minutes in games that seemed out of reach, in one way or the other.
The Knicks have plenty of time to correct this, though. Last year's team didn't change the struggling starting lineup until the third round of the postseason. This fix might be a bit more urgent, though. If they lose more games like they did on Monday, they'll be watching the Conference Finals from home this time.
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