Cut Down to Size

Without their All-Star center, the Knicks fall short on both ends of the court.

Good morning. Here’s a bonus newsletter for a weekend with no Knicks basketball .

Game 43: Wolves 116, Knicks 99

• The Knicks were again without Karl-Anthony Towns, who was a game-time decision but wasn’t able to give it a go.

• No KAT was no problem for New York in the first half thanks to 10 makes in 16 shots from deep, but then the well went dry, and the Knicks only mustered 40 points after halftime in the face of a stifling Wolves defense.

• After a slow start, Anthony Edward went nuclear, hitting 11 of his final 13 shots, including seven threes, several of the step-back variety.

• The Wolves took advantage of every late rotation, hitting 22-of-40 from deep.

• Naz Reid was 6-for-6 from behind the arc.

• New York generated 16 turnovers to help keep it close most of the way

• An 8-0 Minny run midway through the fourth helped put the game away

• Julius Randle didn’t have it from a scoring standpoint and he had a few rough turnovers in his return game, but his passing was a major, major plus.

Today’s bonus newsletter is going to be hyper-focused on one particular issue, because I think we can sum up the other key points of last night’s game pretty succinctly.

For one, Anthony Edwards was incredible, even by his lofty standards:

In the battle between two fringe MVP candidates, Edwards easily bested Jalen Brunson, who started off hot but was never able to bend Minnesota’s defense like Edwards did New York’s. Defensively, Ant was a major plus, while Brunson was a liability. There is a reason Edwards gets mentioned as a potential future top-five guy while Brunson will probably always be in the bottom half of the top 10, and this game showed it.

Second, while New York’s offense doesn’t quite fall off a cliff without KAT, their ability to generate quality looks against a strong defense becomes immensely compromised. That was clear as day in the second half when the Wolves dialed it up and the threes stopped falling.

According to NBA.com, the Knicks’ offensive rating drops from 120.8 with Towns (virtually tied with the first place Cavs) to 112.3 without him (about league average). One issue in particular is how New York’s spacing issues get exponentially worse without KAT and with a second non-shooter on the floor. According to Cleaning the Glass, when Josh Hart plays with Towns this season, the Knicks are scoring 122.6 points per 100 possessions and outscoring teams by 10.6 points per 100 - both elite numbers. Without Towns, Hart-led lineups are scoring just 114.3 points per 100 possessions and getting outscored by 5.6 points per 100 overall. Essentially, they become the Hornets.

In theory, removing a weak defensive center would have at least some tangible benefit on the other end, but in fact the opposite has been true, which leads us to the crux of this game. On the season, the Knicks are actually allowing fewer points per 100 possessions with Towns on the court than off. With Jericho Sims and Precious Achiuwa out there instead, New York’s defense has all the same issues it does with Towns.

With that said, my initial impression watching the game was that the result was more about an impressive offensive performance from Minnesota and less about a shoddy effort from the Knicks. That’s a tough claim to make when you give up 22 threes on 55 percent shooting - only the fourth time in franchise history an opponent has hit both of those marks in the same game - so I went back and rewatched every Minny made three and detailed exactly what, if anything, went wrong.

Here’s what I found, with plays that really bothered me in italics: