Knicks’ revamped roster tests Mike Brown’s fast-paced plan in season’s first weeks
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NEW YORK — Seven games into the 2025-26 campaign, the New York Knicks are still sorting through a whirlwind of change that began with Karl-Anthony Towns’ arrival and continued with Mike Brown replacing Tom Thibodeau on the bench.
Opening statement but uneven start
Brown’s debut produced a 109-102 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Oct. 29, a notable breakthrough after New York went 0-8 last year against the East’s top two seeds. Since then, the club has stumbled to a 4-3 record and owns the league’s 12th-ranked offense despite a dramatic stylistic shift.
Threes now define the attack
Under Thibodeau, New York ranked 28th in three-point attempt rate; Brown’s Knicks sit fifth, with 48% of their shots coming from beyond the arc. The heavier volume has pushed the club from 24th to a tie for third in made threes, though accuracy is nearly unchanged at 36.5%.
Spacing is built largely around the supporting cast. Towns has taken 35% of his attempts from deep and Jalen Brunson 37%, the two lowest rates among the team’s rotation players.
Defense giving back long-range gains
The same perimeter emphasis has surfaced on the other end. Opponents are launching 46% of their shots from three, fourth-highest in the NBA, and converting 39.6%, second only to Utah. Early matchups with the Cavaliers and Boston Celtics—first and second in three-point frequency—have inflated those figures, but scouts say New York must tighten its closeouts.
Towns, Brunson adjusting to new roles
Towns erupted for 33 points Monday in Washington yet is shooting 40.8% overall, nearly eight percentage points below any season in his 10-year career. The All-Star publicly admitted before opening night he was still searching for his place in Brown’s motion scheme.
Brunson’s ball dominance has receded by design. GeniusIQ tracking shows his dribbles per game have fallen from a league-high 524 last season to 431, while pick-and-rolls have dropped from 55 to 43 per 100 possessions. Hand-offs, a Brown hallmark in Sacramento, have soared from 23 to a league-leading 43 per 100, pushing New York from 18th to fifth in passes per game.
Health remains the wild card
Josh Hart, once a 40-minutes-a-night staple, is navigating a full-time bench assignment and a nerve issue in his right hand. Center Mitchell Robinson, limited to 50 appearances since the start of 2023-24, is already on a load-management plan and briefly left Sunday’s win over Chicago after tweaking an ankle. Rival scouts believe the Knicks’ ceiling hinges on those two staying on the floor.
Luck—and the East—could swing things
Analysts at GeniusIQ calculate New York has underperformed its expected scoring by 47 points while opponents have overperformed by 45, producing a league-worst 92-point gap attributable to shooting variance. Even with that drag, executives around the league struggle to identify an Eastern Conference favorite clearly ahead of New York, citing Cleveland’s injury list and slow starts by Orlando and Atlanta.
The Knicks host Julius Randle and the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night, another early test for a group still learning Brown’s playbook—and for a franchise trying to prove its overhaul can finally push it past the conference hurdle.
Source: ESPN
