Jalen Brunson has beaten his defender.
It’s early in Sunday’s “rivalry” matchup between the Knicks and Nets, and New York is pushing off a Brooklyn miss.
Brunson shifts Terance Mann with quick in-and-out crossover, gets both feet in the paint, and draws two defenders. He has a clean look at a floater — the kind he’s made in his sleep for most of his career.
But Brunson doesn’t shoot it. He doesn’t force contact to get to the line, either.
Instead, he does exactly what new head coach Mike Brown has preached since his first press conference in Tarrytown back in September: He touches the paint, then kicks.
One pass becomes two — Brunson to Karl-Anthony Towns, who swings it to Mikal Bridges in the corner. Bridges drills the three. Brunson doesn’t get the assist. Towns doesn’t take the shot. But the sequence sets the tone: quick decisions, selfless play, and a shot that unlocks the flow of the offense.
That three puts five points on the board. The Knicks go on to drop 40 in the opening quarter — a number that’s becoming all too familiar in orange and blue — as part of a 134–98 blowout of the Nets at Madison Square Garden.
“We’re talented. No matter what we do on the floor, we’re going to have the ability to score,” Brown said after the game. “But I do think we can be better. And that’s what we should all be striving for is to be better. There’s still a lot of room for us to grow.”
No team has more 40-point quarters than the New York Knicks.
It’s the most straightforward — and perhaps most convincing — sign that Brown’s offense is headed in the right direction.
The advanced stats back it up: the Knicks rank second in offensive rating, second in threes made, top-10 in assists, and bottom-three in turnovers.
But at its core, the simplest metric tells the story best: No team is erupting for big quarters as often as the Knicks, who scored 83 points in the second half against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday before blowing the Nets out of the water with a 40-point first quarter at home on Sunday.
Brown sees the offensive outbursts as encouraging.
“It is, but we’re still learning. I truly believe we can still play better, we can still mix it up,” he said after the Knicks advanced to a 6-0 home record with Sunday’s 134-98 blowout of the Nets.
“What we have to get cautious of is not settling. We’re moving a lot of bodies around, and we want to keep moving bodies around and make it hard on the defense.
“And if we do, and it becomes just second nature to us, then we’ll have a chance to be a pretty good offensive team.”
The Knicks now lead the NBA with six 40-point quarters, three of which have come in their last two games.
As of Monday afternoon, only five other teams — Cleveland, Miami, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Memphis — had four 40-point quarters this season. Portland and Milwaukee have three. The other 22 teams? Two or fewer.
“It has to mean that we’re shooting at a good percentage, and we’re getting some good looks,” said Towns. “Guys are getting stops, getting layups. I feel if I looked back at those 40-point quarters, I think about 10 of them are translated from our defense. So that’s about us finding ways to get stops and running.”
It’s even more impressive considering Brown completely overhauled the offense during training camp.
The Knicks of old leaned heavily on isolation basketball — trusting Brunson and Towns to generate points in the half court. Now, under Brown’s system, the ball is moving, shooters are letting it fly, and the Knicks are running in transition to create easier looks early in the shot clock.
They’re attempting nine more threes per game (42.9) than last season (34.1) but are converting those looks at a 38.3% clip.
“We always talk about offensively, touch the paint and spray, touch the paint and spray,” Brown said after the game. “We had 18 sprays, which wasn’t bad. I thought we could have had more.”
Another clear sign the offense is trending upward? More scoring balance — and more players in double figures.
OG Anunoby (18.2 points per game) is on pace to surpass last season’s career-best year, while Bridges, now the starting lineup’s secondary ball-handler, is averaging a career-high 5.2 assists per game.
The Knicks have had six or more players score in double figures in each of their last four games — including seven with 10 or more points in their win over the Wizards.
“A lot of talented guys playing the right way,” said backup point guard Miles McBride.
“I feel like anybody on our team could go out there and look to get their own, but we have such a great group of guys that are playing the right way and playing for each other.”
The Knicks, however, gave it right back.
Immediately after their own 40-point outburst, they allowed the one-win Nets to hang 40 in the second quarter on Sunday, the only 40-point quarter the Knicks have surrendered so far this season.
Still, the cracks have shown: New York has already given up seven 35-point quarters in the early going
“We’re able to put the ball in the basket now, but we’ve gotta limit those 40-point quarters,” said Brunson, who’s averaging 8.6 assists over his last three games. “We can’t just trade baskets. We’ve gotta continue to play the defensive side of the ball.”
Brown said the team should be more concerned with the process than the point total.
“You take the regular season, and you prepare yourself for the postseason,” Brown said. “If you just go out there and play the wrong way and win, we’re still probably going to score — because we’re talented, and we’ve got a lot of guys that can score.
“But it’s not going to help us later on. There are things that we have to continue to try to get better at.”
