For the second year in a row, the Knicks project to field one of the NBA’s most dangerous three-point shooting rosters.
And in Year 1 of the Mike Brown era, New York is expected to lean even harder into an identity molded by the sum of its parts.
If veterans Malcolm Brogdon and Landry Shamet make the opening night roster, Mitchell Robinson will be the lone member of a potential 11-man rotation without a season shooting above the league average from deep.
Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns? Elite shotmakers. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges? Lethal from the wings. Josh Hart, though dealing with a finger injury, has shown flashes of streaky shooting. Guerschon Yabusele hit 38% from downtown in Philly last season. Jordan Clarkson and Miles McBride can both heat up in a hurry. And both Shamet and Brogdon have long been respected as knockdown shooters when healthy.
Brown has made one thing clear: If it’s a good look, let it fly.
“I mean if we get 40 [threes] I’m cool with it. If we get 40-plus, I’m cool with it — but they’ve gotta be good threes,” Brown said after practice Friday at the team’s Tarrytown facility. “We’ve got a couple of guys that we’ll allow to dance with it and let it go, and they know who they are. But if we play like we’re capable of — with pace, especially spacing, and the paint touches — we should generate a lot of catch-and-shoot threes.”
That would be a sharp pivot from last season, when the Knicks finished bottom-five in three-point attempts per game despite an arsenal of capable shooters. This year, Madison Square Garden is home to an embarrassment of riches behind the arc — and Brown plans to cash in.
The Knicks averaged just 34.1 threes per game last season, the fourth-fewest in the NBA and a number that matched the league-wide average five years ago. Meanwhile, teams like the Celtics, Warriors and Bulls attempted threes at a historic pace. Boston led the league at 48.2 attempts per game — six more than than the second-ranked Warriors — and didn’t play a single game with fewer than 30 attempts. The Knicks, by contrast, played 26 games with 30 or fewer threes and went just 15–11 in those outings.
Even more telling: New York attempted 40 or more threes in just 20 games last season. Their record in those contests? 15–5.
It’s not about chasing a number, but the math is hard to ignore.
“If you’re open and your feet are set — especially if that ball hits the paint, or we’ve got a cut or roll that pulls the defense in, and now we get a spray to a three?” Brown said. “We better let it fly. We better let it fly.”
The league average last season was 37.6 attempted threes per game — the highest in NBA history and part of a decade-long climb toward a perimeter-oriented game. The Knicks were behind the curve.
That’s not to say their offense was broken. Far from it. New York won 51 games and reached the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years. They had a top-five offense and often bludgeoned opponents in the paint and on the glass.
But two things can be true: the Knicks thrived — and also left points on the table.
That’s likely to change under Brown, though he and his players are still calibrating the right balance between freedom and discipline.
“Generating good shots, yes. The volume, perhaps not yet,” said Brunson. “We’re still trying to understand concepts, understand where we need to be on the floor — our pace, spacing, and stuff like that. I think once we understand that and know where everyone’s going to be, whether we’re making plays for ourselves or for others, that’ll be a lot easier.”
Last season, the Knicks found success without volume from deep. This season, they’ve added more firepower — and a coach ready to weaponize it.
