With the Knicks facing their most important moment of the season, former NBA star Blake Griffin hated what Mike Brown drew up at the end of Game 3.
With a chance to win the game while trailing by one point, the Knicks’ final play call unraveled with 12.5 seconds remaining as Jalen Brunson dribbled under the basket before making an errant pass that resulted in a turnover and sealed a 109-108 loss to put the team in a 2-1 series hole.
“That didn’t look like a broken play,” Griffin said postgame on Amazon Prime Video. “That’s not the play I would’ve drawn up … In that situation, take a page out of (Hawks coach) Quin Snyder’s book. Get the ball right to your guy and go immediately score. It’s so much harder when you’re running multiple action. You give the defense time … If that was the designed play – I don’t know – their spacing is also terrible.”
The possession before — Snyder isolated CJ McCollum against Deuce McBride and the veteran buried a mid-range jumper to give the Hawks the lead.
When diving into the actual playcall, NBA legend Steve Nash pointed out that Karl-Anthony Towns’ ineffective screen on Dyson Daniels may have set the play up for failure.
“I think they tried to get KAT to go and screen for Brunson,” Nash said. “He probably didn’t set up Dyson enough here. He needs to set Dyson up just one more step. Instead, he kind of bails and goes long. Once [Brunson] goes on the side, he gets doubled … He’s kind of left there, double-teamed with no allies.”
Knicks coach Mike Brown told reporters they wanted to give Brunson plenty of open space.
“We cleared the side of the floor for him,” Brown said. “That’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to zipper on the top of the floor and clear that right side of the floor for him ’cause that’s what he’s comfortable doing, and told him to go win it.”
Nash, the former coach of the Brooklyn Nets team that had James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, added that sometimes it’s easier to only make one pass rather than multiple.
“Unfortunately, bad execution down the stretch,” Nash said. “But some of that is when you run plays at the end of the game, there’s a risk when there is more than one pass involved.”
NBA legend Dirk Nowitzki, a former teammate of Nash, added further commentary.
“People always complain that you give the ball to your best player and he holds it and they just dribble it, but it is easier sometimes to have court vision and not, you know, scramble to the ball,” Nowitzki said. “I am kind of shocked the Knicks lost these two close games.”
Meanwhile, Heat legend Udonis Haslem slammed the Knicks for “empty possessions” when Brunson is on the bench, and criticized Towns “not winning that matchup” when guarded by Jonathan Kuminga at the top of the key.
“Do they really execute?” Halsem asked.
“The Knicks could not catch the ball in their spot for most of the night,” Griffin added.
The alarm bells are sounding, and panic time is nearing for the Knicks as they hope to reverse course in Game 4 on Saturday in Atlanta.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
