ATLANTA — This wasn’t supposed to be part of the script.
Karl-Anthony Towns’ usage was expected to be a question mark. Mike Brown’s rotations were bound to cause a bit of a stir. It’s not a shock that the Knicks defense has been inconsistent.
But Jalen Brunson was supposed to be a known quantity. Brunson was supposed to be the bona fide best player on the floor.
Brunson was supposed to be … well, the Brunson everyone has come to expect.
But through two games of this first-round series against the Hawks — which is tied 1-1 with Games 3 and 4 in Atlanta — the best player on the floor hasn’t been Brunson. It has been CJ McCollum.
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 — a woeful 29.7 percent — from the field across the past seven quarters.
“We just gotta keep trying to move him around,” coach Mike Brown said of Brunson after practice Wednesday. “And give him different looks throughout the course of the game.”
Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker have been Brunson’s 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.
They have not shied away from being physical with Brunson. And Brown believes they’re getting away with a little too much.
“I’m still trying to figure out what’s a bump and what’s not a bump,” Brown said after Game 2. “You see a guy like CJ, he gets a drive and if you chest him, it’s a foul. And I even asked the officials about it — Jalen’s driving and he’s getting the same bump. Now, he’s not as light or as quick as CJ, so the speed might not be the same, but when he’s going, he’s getting hit and he’s getting knocked away from the bucket. So, trying to figure that out a little bit better is something I need to do.
“But 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’t] throughout the course of the game, especially with how aggressive he is. But it is what it is.”
It’s not just his shooting, either. Brunson has turned the ball over in a few key spots.
The Knicks trailed by two with under 20 seconds left of their 107-106 Game 2 loss Monday — 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.
“Obviously, I can control what I can control,” Brunson said. “Poor decision-making on my part. A couple possessions, they played great defense and knocked the ball out of my hands.”
What has been noticeable is that the Knicks offense has reverted to Brunson isolation ball in the playoffs — not the harmonious two-man game that he and Karl-Anthony Towns revealed at the end of the regular season.
Brunson’s ball dominance has suddenly made the Knicks offense stagnant. And his shooting struggles mean the Knicks offense has been inefficient. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy — his shot quality is worse when he is so isolation-heavy, rather than allowing his teammates to create openings for him. It’s not necessarily that he is taking too many shots, but rather how he is getting those shots.
Brunson had the ball in his hands an average of 10.3 seconds per possession the first two games — by far the most of any player in the postseason entering Wednesday’s games, per the league’s official tracking stats.
It has limited the production of his supporting cast, particularly Towns. 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:
“There’s one ball and we have a lot of great players on this team,” Brunson said. “Definitely, it’s on my shoulders. I’m not gonna point the finger and say some people need to do that and this. It’s on me to try to set the table.”
One year later, Brunson and the Knicks offense seem to be in the exact same spot.