With 2:45 left in the third quarter of the Knicks’ Sunday night victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, their sixth in a row to offset a 2-9 skid to kickoff 2026, Luka Doncic threw an errant pass that put the ball in Karl-Anthony Towns’ hands with both Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby well ahead of the pack.
Towns rifled the ball upcourt to Brunson. On a cold-shooting night–with a clear path to the rim—the Knicks captain could have used the easy layup to find his own scoring rhythm. Instead, Brunson gave the ball up to Anunoby, whose dunk tied the game at 77 apiece. And on the very next possession–almost like clockwork–Anunoby denied a pass to Doncic, the Lakers’ perennial MVP candidate, and took the ball coast-to-coast to give the Knicks a two-point lead.
“This is why you make plays like that, to get other guys going,” Reggie Miller said on the Peacock broadcast, to which former Knick Jamal Crawford responded: “That was so unselfish. I know another No. 11 that used to play here that would have kept [the shot].”
Crawford was referring to himself, a score-first fixture for the Knicks of yesteryear, but in many ways, his words held true for Brunson, whose team’s performance has vacillated with his willingness to move the ball in Year 1 of Mike Brown’s democratic offense. In many ways, Brunson’s selflessness–the true measure of his MVP candidacy–is the swing factor in whether the Knicks’ championship goals boom or bust this season.
“It’s gonna be somebody different every night. We know that. Our group has bought into that,” Landry Shamet said after the victory. “It’s about all of us buying in, doing what we can on a night-to-night basis. We’ve got a locker room full of guys who want to win and are willing to sacrifice for one another.”
On the very next possession, Brunson sprinted–yes, sprinted–down a loose ball and, instead of trying his hand at a kill-shot transition three, threw an alley-oop to Shamet streaking into the paint.
Shamet was one of three Knicks to score 20 or more in Sunday’s win over the Lakers. None of those three players are headed to All-Star Weekend in two weeks time.
***
There were two magic numbers in play on Sunday. Lucky number six was the first.
Sunday, in the face of longer odds, marked Karl-Anthony Towns’ sixth-career All-Star nod. The victory over the Lakers tied a season-best sixth straight Knicks win (seven if the NBA counted the Cup Final towards its stats and record). Shamet hit six 3s — for the second time in six games. Sunday night’s victory left six games on the schedule until the NBA All-Star break begins on Feb. 12.
Josh Hart hit 20 points for the third consecutive game against the Lakers on Sunday, and the Knicks have a 6-0 record in games Hart has hit the mark season. The Knicks’ winning streak also began six weeks after their NBA Cup Final victory, which–close enough–occurred on Dec. 16.
Brunson had six assists when he found Anunoby for the Good Samaritan play of the game in the third quarter. He went on to record six more assists for 13 on the night–his sixth game with 10 or more assists of the season.
And now for the other number, a series of sobering statistics detailing what’s gone right and wrong with the Knicks this season.
The number is 20. The Knicks are 6-0 when Hart scores 20 or more and 12-3 when Anunoby hits the mark or better.
But they are 18-2 when Brunson takes 20 or fewer shots in a game compared to just 12-12 when he shoots the ball 21 or more times. Those numbers skewed nearly beyond repair as the Knicks fell into poor habits leading into and coming out of their NBA Cup run. No player in all of basketball averaged more field goal attempts (24) than Brunson from the NBA Cup Semifinal victory over the Orlando Magic through the Knicks’ embarrassing 31-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Jan. 5.
The Knicks owned a 17-7 record entering that matchup against the Magic. Of those 17 wins, 10 came with Brunson shooting the ball 20 or fewer times, and he’s taken 20 or fewer shots in four of the Knicks’ last six games, all wins, which has allowed for his teammates to step up in the scoring column.
“That’s what we’re capable of. We have great depth. We have guys that can knock down shots, guys that can play-make. It’s not always going to be JB or KAT’s night,” said Hart, who had 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting on Sunday. “We rely on those guys obviously to score points, but it shows that we don’t have to force anything.”
The Knicks are passing the ball an average of 14 more times per game over the life of their six-game winning streak than they did during their 2-9 skid, which amounts to four more times per game than during their 13-4 stretch near the beginning of the season. They are tied with the Indiana Pacers for first in secondary, or hockey, assists per game (5.6) during this stretch, up from less than four a game during their 2-9 skid.
In short, the Knicks are back to playing winning basketball — because Brunson is back to playing winning basketball. And as New York’s captain goes, his team follows. When he moves the ball, they do.
And when he shoots the ball, they do, too.
“It’s a byproduct of us playing the right way. We talk about trying to get the dominoes to start falling. It’s all about getting the first one to fall and making the reads from right there,” said Shamet. “It could be anybody. It’s never premeditated. When we’re the best offensively, it’s not premeditated. It’s just reads and guys playing to their strengths, so [OG and Josh] have been the beneficiaries of the ball moving, and they’re taking advantage of their opportunities.”
“If your shot is not falling, you have to impact the game somewhere else. I kept seeing two people, so I was just trying to make the right play at the right time,” Brunson added. “We were getting good looks. Just going to play the defense how they are playing. [My teammates] were knocking shots down, and the way we were moving the ball is great.”
***
With 2:15 left until halftime on Sunday, a miscommunication between New York’s two All-Stars led to LeBron’s trademark push-ahead fading elbow two. Yet hidden beneath the miscue is a satisfying development at Madison Square Garden: Towns and Brunson are trying to play off of one another in ways that weren’t apparent earlier in the season.
On this possession, Brunson hit Towns with an entry pass on the left elbow, then cut off of his play-making big man in the direction of the rim. Both made errors resulting in a turnover: Brunson abandoned the play altogether and set an off-ball screen for Hart, while Towns, a beat late, flung a wrap-around pass off Deandre Ayton’s foot, a dime designated for Brunson failing to reach its intended target.
To the naked eye, Brown’s solution for these Knicks has come through significant staggering of the minutes Brunson and Towns share on the floor. The best, championship-worthy version of this team, however, needs its two-best players to do more than co-exist.
Brunson and Towns need to form a symbiotic relationship.
It could be Brown’s biggest challenge yet, because a year-and-a-half into their relationship, New York’s All-Star duo more closely resemble coworkers than teammates on the court, though Towns was quick to bury his own accomplishment to magnify Brunson’s recent 10,000-point milestone.
In a season-and-a-half in New York, Towns has more games with 20 rebounds (7) than any Knick this century.
“Why talk about rebounds when we can talk about 10,000 points?” he said with a smile.
Towns is half-right. There’s no need to discuss either. Points and rebounds pale in comparison to the plays that don’t show on a stat sheet, and the kinds of plays the Knicks are steadily stringing together have shown themselves in the win-loss column.
It’s why Brunson’s got to pass the ball, even when there’s a scoring opportunity right in front of him, because a bucket for someone else can become a 6-0 run that blows a game wide-open when the All-Star duo doesn’t have the touch.
