Knicks Spurs Preview Part 1: Knicks Offense vs Spurs Defense
How will the Knicks attack Goliath? I pulled 13 clips that lay the roadmap to success.
Good morning! No new news on Mitch, so our fingers remain crossed that his fingers remain functional. Let’s get to part one of our in depth series preview.
Knicks Spurs Preview Part 1: Knicks Offense vs Spurs Defense
Styles make fights.
If you’ve ever watched an episode of KFS After School or NBA Takedown, you’ve probably heard my illustrious colleague Jeff Johnson utter this phrase.
It’s his way of saying that matchups are everything in the NBA, and some teams are just better suited to play certain opponents more than others.
Here’s the thing about the playoffs though: at some point, if you want to win the title, you’re probably going to have to beat every type of opposition. That’s why the last team standing is often the most versatile in addition to being the best. In many cases, their versatility is their greatest strength.
There are no shortage of ways to think about this concept. Which team forces the most questions while having the most answers? Which team leaves the most on the table while taking the least off of it? Which team forces the most adjustments while being able to stick with their preferred style for the longest?
In the very best playoff matchups, all the questions, answers, compromises and re-calibrations are over midway through the series, and the guesswork gives way to your best versus my best with everything on the line. If that’s the case, I like New York’s chances. While the Knicks don’t enter this series as the favorite, they have undoubtedly been the preeminent shape shifter of the 2026 postseason thus far.
Just think about all the ways they’ve won these dozen games. We’ve seen Brunson-centric and KAT-centric. We’ve seen Hart wreaking havoc and five-out majesty. We’ve seen Towns at the five, Mitch at the five, and then both at the same time. They’ve switched, they’ve doubled and they’ve hedged. Through it all, they’ve dominated.
To win one more round though, they may need to save their best David Blaine impersonation for last. On the other side of the bracket awaits an opponent who specializes at taking away the thing that has defined them the most.
If there is one thing that has characterized New York’s run through the East, it has been their ability to generate easy looks at the basket.
According to Cleaning the Glass, no team in the postseason is taking a higher rate of their shots at the rim than the Knicks, and only the Hawks and Celtics converted a higher percentage of those attempts (and Atlanta and Boston were 10th and 15th among 16 teams in rim frequency, respectively). Thanks to an offense that is operating at peak capacity, no defense has been able to take away or stymie these high percentage looks, and that’s helped New York be on pace for the highest playoff efficiency in league history.
But every unstoppable force eventually comes across an immovable object, and the Knicks are about to meet one in the form of 7'4" extraterrestrial who has single-handedly dominated the western conference playoffs - and that’s without even looking at what he’s done on offense.
Thanks in large part to Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs are allowing teams to shoot just 55.5 percent at the rim in the postseason. That’s not only the lowest mark in the league, but it’s four percentage points below the next closest team (Detroit, at 59.4 percent).
And that isn’t even the best stat to showcase the Wembanyama effect. Overall, the Spurs are allowing the seventh lowest rate of shots at the rim among the 16 playoff teams, and the second lowest among the eight semifinalists. That’s pretty good. When Wemby is on the court though, the opposition’s rim attempt rate drops by 14.1 percent, which is the highest drop of any player in the postseason and the second highest dip in the last eight playoffs.
It’s not hyperbole to say that no player since Bill Russell has had this level of impact on the defensive end. That is the puzzle the Knicks will be tasked with solving, and we can start to uncover some answers by looking back at the tape of the three previous matchups this season.
Watching the start of the NBA Cup, the San Antonio lineup we see is almost unrecognizable from what we’re going to get on Wednesday night. Not only is Victor Wembanyama not starting because he was still working his way back from an injury, but Harrison Barnes is still in the first five1. Even more than that, Luke Kornet is guarding Karl-Anthony Towns.
Sure enough, New York’s first basket of the game is a Towns triple:
Putting a traditional five on KAT not only activates Towns as both a playmaker and a pick & pop / driving threat, but it also makes life easier for everyone around him.
For instance, this play would never happen if a center is helping off Josh Hart as opposed to hugging KAT, regardless of whether or not that center is Victor Wembanyama:
Needless to say that the geometry of the court instantly changes when Wembanyama enters the game, which is where we’ll now focus our attention.
