CHICAGO — The Knicks could easily be 4–0 to open Mike Brown’s first season in New York. Instead, they’re 2–2 — victims of their own cold shooting. They went just 15-of-54 from three in Sunday’s loss to Miami, then 13-of-40 two nights later in Milwaukee.
Brown’s new pace-and-space offense is doing its job, generating clean catch-and-shoot opportunities across the board. The belief inside the locker room is simple — keep trusting the process, and the math will correct itself.
“We’re getting really good looks, and I think they’re going to fall. I know they’re going to fall,” said sixth man Miles McBride. “We’ve got to take our time, shoot it with confidence, trust the process, keep making the right plays.”
In short: the looks are there, the shots just aren’t falling, and the numbers back it up.
The Knicks are the NBA’s third-most trigger-happy three-point team, averaging 44.8 attempts per game — trailing only last year’s league-leading Boston Celtics and the Phoenix Suns. New York leads the league in catch-and-shoot threes attempted (34.5 per game) but rank bottom-10 in efficiency on those shots. And they’re generating the fourth-most open threes (18.3 per game), defined by the league as attempts with a defender four-to-six feet away.
The system is working. The shots are clean. Now they just have to fall — and eventually, they will.
Part of it is simply adjusting to the new tempo Brown is asking his team to play.
“It’s the process to get the shot. We haven’t had a ton of contested threes, which is a tough shot. I don’t care who is taking it,” Brown said after practice Thursday. “We’re pushing guys to play at a pace that they’re probably a little bit unfamiliar with, so the shot is a little different. Because your conditioning — not just mentally, but physically — has to be there because you’re going take an open shot.
“There’s a level of comfort they have to reach before the shots start going in,” he continued. “You can see they’re starting to go in a little bit. And we have the right guys taking the shots. If you’re that wide open, you’ve got to let it fly, because we’ll get a worse shot later in the clock.”
Yet another piece of the equation is the natural ebb and flow of an 82-game season. Every team hits shooting slumps. The Knicks just happened to hit theirs early.
Brown isn’t worried about the percentages. He’s encouraged by the process — the constant creation of clean looks born from paint touches and “spray” threes, or quick snap-drives that either produce open layups or restart the cycle with another kick-out. It sounds similar to Tom Thibodeau’s old drive-and-kick system, but the difference is volume. Brown’s Knicks are averaging 10 more threes per game than they did a season ago.
“I think they’re great threes obviously,” said McBride, who’s shooting 40% from deep to start the year, second only to Mikal Bridges’ blistering 48%. “We’re drawing the defense and kicking out. It’s still finding the spots, still finding the rhythm. You’re playing with different guys. You’re going to be — just calm yourself down and shoot it with confidence.”
The Knicks, however, aren’t blaming their slow start solely on missed threes.
“It’s a make-or-miss league,” said team captain Jalen Brunson, who’s opened the year shooting 32% from three. “But at the same time, we’ve gotta play better defense.”
Brown agrees. He’s seen stretches of elite basketball — the Knicks were up 14 against Milwaukee in a first half he called “remarkable” — but just as many lapses. They unraveled in the second half of that 10-point loss and let Miami pull away late two nights earlier.
The goal now is to sustain what’s working.
“I want to win. More than anything else, I want to play the right way and get a little bit better every time,” Brown said. “So offensively we were good. And defensively we did a lot of things we talked about in the second. We just didn’t sustain it. We didn’t do it for 48 minutes, and that’s what I talked to the guys about more than anything else.”
