Knicks Pulse Check: Easter Conference Finals Review

The curtain has finally closed on the New York Knicks 2024-2025 season. Exit stage left. It’s over. The Knicks are out of the playoffs.

By now you’ve also heard that Leon Rose has fired head coach Tom Thibodeau after five seasons at the helm of the orange and blue, sending a seismic shockwave through the fanbase. And although the signs of discontent were there, it appears that the ECF loss was the final straw.

For the second straight year, the Knicks season has ended at the hands of the rival Indiana Pacers. And although one wants to admit it - the better team won. Truth be told, until proven otherwise, the Pacers are currently in “Who’s your Daddy?” territory. I’ll never forget when Pedro Martinez uttered those words about the Yankees, and it took a historic 3-0 comeback for both, Pedro, and the Boston Red Sox to shift that narrative.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. The Knicks finished the regular season with their highest win total in a decade (51 wins), and reached the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years. Of course Thibodeau deserves credit for those accomplishments. On top of that, both Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns received All-NBA honors, and you can make a strong case that even without any roster changes, this version of the Knicks will be contending at a high level for years to come.

Of course then the question becomes: how did the Knicks lose this series? And how do they eventually get to the NBA Finals?

By the Numbers

Taking a look at how close this series was, both teams were separated by just 11 points. The Pacers finished with 701 points and the Knicks finished with 690 points. The Knicks had the edge in rebounding - 41.8 boards per game to the Pacers’ 36.3 rebounds per game.

But the Pacers demonstrated an advantage in field goal percentage (49.1%), three-point percentage (39%), and turnovers (12.5 TO’s per game). For their part, the Knicks shot 47.8% from the field, 33.2% from the three-point line, and turned the ball over 15.5 times per game.

Compared to the regular season, the orange and blue ranked within the top-ten in protecting the ball, and while it is true that the Pacers deserve credit for picking Jalen Brunson up for 94 feet, making things difficult on him, and targeting the Knicks’ weaknesses, there is also no excuse for plays like this:

According to NBA.com, during the postseason, the Knicks’ most regularly-used starting lineup, which included Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Karl-Anthony Towns, was a -6.2 net rating over the course of a 335 minutes. Conversely, after Mitchell Robinson was inserted into the starting lineup in favor of Hart, that lineup posted a -3.7 net rating over the course of 65 minutes.

While I don’t think anyone is going to say that an earlier lineup change would’ve altered the result of the series, it’s reasonable to question why a move wasn’t made sooner, given the sample size of data at hand.

Blame Game

Of course after a difficult result, everyone’s knee jerk reaction is to find a scapegoat to blame for the loss to the Pacers. The fact of the matter is that credit and blame are shared by the players and coaching staff. That being said, I do think there were some consistent patterns throughout the playoffs/regular season that led to the Knicks ultimately coming up short of the an NBA Finals birth.

I truly believe that the Knicks had better top-end talent. However, the Pacers were a team with more depth, and a team that consistently executed their game plan at a higher level. Rick Carlisle seemed to have a counter for everything the Knicks threw at him, and Thibs, while he did try to adjust, appeared to make decisions without the benefit of knowing how certain players would react in certain situations.

What I mean by that is: Josh Hart playing with the second unit should’ve been tested way earlier in the season. The demotion clearly messed with his head, and it probably contributed to him having one of his worst playoff series since becoming a Knick. Thibs inserting Mitch into the starting lineup was still the correct move, but there should’ve been more practice with the double-big lineup after Robinson returned from his ankle injury. You could also make an argument that Deuce McBride should have seen some run in the starting lineup (earlier in the season) as well.

Aside from that, the defensive pairing of Towns and Brunson was a problem all season long. Everyone and their mother knew the Pacers would target KAT and Jalen in pick-and-rolls, and they did just that. Could inserting Mitch into the starting lineup earlier in the postseason have limited that damage? Possibly.

On the offensive end of the ball, it’s also reasonable to wonder why weren’t there more pick-and-roll possessions involving KAT and Jalen. Back in December SNY’s Ian Begley reported that KAT and Brunson were producing 1.23 points per possession in the pick-and-roll, according to SportRadar’s player tracking data. This was the best mark in the league at the time, and yet it appeared that the two players did not have the same chemistry in the postseason, and specifically against the Pacers.

Where do we go from here?

Over the course of this summer, there are going to be many rumors regarding who the new coach should be and who the Knicks should target via trades and free agency. You’ve already heard names like Johnnie Bryant, Jay Wright, Jason Kidd, and Ime Udoka connected with the Knicks. Of course, there’s also the massive cloud of Giannis Antetokounmpo hanging over the NBA and whether he will be traded from the Milwaukee Bucks.

While I don’t have any strong opinions on who the coach should be, I do think it should be someone with head coaching experience. The Knicks roster (with minor tweaks here and there) is set to compete for a championship now. I think it would be difficult to hire a first-time head coach who will have some growing pains, especially when it comes to late-game execution. I’m not sure that the team or fanbase is ready to deal with that.

Regarding the roster, of course you have to look at what it would take to deal for a player like Giannis, but I’m more partial to building out the bench and increasing this team’s depth. Players like Dennis Schroder and Bobby Portis come to mind. We need a strong eight-to-nine players in a rotation. If we’re going to learn anything from the Pacers series, it’s that extending our bench leads to positive results. If we had given more time to the bench and experimented more earlier in the season, those results may have been even more positive.