{"id":716409,"date":"2026-04-23T04:39:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T04:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/716409\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T04:39:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T04:39:25","slug":"jalen-brunson-at-center-of-knicks-offensive-stagnancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/716409\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson at center of Knicks’ offensive stagnancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA \u2014 This wasn\u2019t supposed to be part of the script.<\/p>\n

Karl-Anthony Towns\u2019 usage was expected to be a question mark. Mike Brown\u2019s rotations were bound to cause a bit of a stir. It\u2019s not a shock that the Knicks defense has been inconsistent.<\/p>\n

But Jalen Brunson was supposed to be a known quantity. Brunson was supposed to be the bona fide best player on the floor.<\/p>\n

Brunson was supposed to be \u2026 well, the Brunson everyone has come to expect.<\/p>\n

But through two games of this first-round series against the Hawks \u2014 which is tied 1-1 with Games 3 and 4 in Atlanta \u2014 the best player on the floor hasn\u2019t been Brunson<\/a>. It has been CJ McCollum.<\/p>\n

Brunson shot a combined 19-for-48 (39.6 percent) through the first two games. And that includes his 8-for-11 start in Game 1. Since then, Brunson has shot 11-for-37 \u2014 a woeful 29.7 percent \u2014 from the field across the past seven quarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just gotta keep trying to move him around,\u201d coach Mike Brown said of Brunson after practice Wednesday. \u201cAnd give him different looks throughout the course of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker have been Brunson\u2019s primary defenders for the Hawks through two games. Lengthy, athletic perimeter defenders like those two have been the physical profile that has revealed itself to be the one thing that can potentially throw Brunson off his game.<\/p>\n

They have not shied away from being physical with Brunson. And Brown believes they\u2019re getting away with a little too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still trying to figure out what\u2019s a bump and what\u2019s not a bump,\u201d Brown said after Game 2. \u201cYou see a guy like CJ, he gets a drive and if you chest him, it\u2019s a foul. And I even asked the officials about it \u2014 Jalen\u2019s driving and he\u2019s getting the same bump. Now, he\u2019s not as light or as quick as CJ, so the speed might not be the same, but when he\u2019s going, he\u2019s getting hit and he\u2019s getting knocked away from the bucket. So, trying to figure that out a little bit better is something I need to do.<\/p>\n

\"NewJalen Brunson call s a play during the fourth quarter of the Knicks\u2019 Game 2 loss to the Hawks. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I thought Jalen got to his spots. I thought he could have gotten to the free-throw line a couple more times that sometimes [he didn\u2019t] throughout the course of the game, especially with how aggressive he is. But it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just his shooting, either. Brunson has turned the ball over in a few key spots.<\/p>\n

The Knicks trailed by two with under 20 seconds left of their 107-106 Game 2 loss Monday<\/a> \u2014 with a chance to tie the game or take the lead. Brunson tried to take a turnaround jumper against Alexander-Walker. But Alexander-Walker read it perfectly, stripped Brunson, led a fast break down the other end and perfectly assisted a Jalen Johnson dunk, which extended the Hawks lead to four points with just over 10 seconds left.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, I can control what I can control,\u201d Brunson said. \u201cPoor decision-making on my part. A couple possessions, they played great defense and knocked the ball out of my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HawksDyson Daniels collides with Jalen Brunson during the first quarter of the Knicks\u2019 Game 2 loss to the Hawks. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

What has been noticeable is that the Knicks offense has reverted to Brunson isolation ball in the playoffs \u2014 not the harmonious two-man game that he and Karl-Anthony Towns revealed at the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n

Brunson\u2019s ball dominance has suddenly made the Knicks offense stagnant. And his shooting struggles mean the Knicks offense has been inefficient. It\u2019s also a self-fulfilling prophecy \u2014 his shot quality is worse when he is so isolation-heavy, rather than allowing his teammates to create openings for him. It\u2019s not necessarily that he is taking too many shots, but rather how he is getting those shots.<\/p>\n

Brunson had the ball in his hands an average of 10.3 seconds per possession the first two games \u2014 by far the most of any player in the postseason entering Wednesday\u2019s games, per the league\u2019s official tracking stats.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It has limited the production of his supporting cast, particularly Towns<\/a>. Flash back to last year, when the Knicks were tied 1-1 in the first round with the Pistons, heading to Detroit, after Towns was uninvolved in a Game 2 loss. Here is what Brunson said at the time:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one ball and we have a lot of great players on this team,\u201d Brunson said. \u201cDefinitely, it\u2019s on my shoulders. I\u2019m not gonna point the finger and say some people need to do that and this. It\u2019s on me to try to set the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

One year later, Brunson and the Knicks offense seem to be in the exact same spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 This wasn\u2019t supposed to be part of the script. Karl-Anthony Towns\u2019 usage was expected to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[208,7,288,6,11,56381,191,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-716409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-jalen-brunson","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-playoffs","13":"tag-nba-playoffs-2026","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116452181683902267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}