Knicks Head Coach Mike Brown Believes in His All-Star Point Guard Jalen Brunson should be in the MVP conversation.
“Obviously he's an All-Star, he's a guy that should definitely be talked about as player of the year,” Brown said before Friday's game against the Milwaukee Bucks. “It's not surprising. If you're around the guy and you see his work ethic and you know his persistence and all that, it's definitely not a surprise.”
Brunson entered Friday's game averaging 30.3 points on 51.6 percent shooting over his last five games. On the season, he is averaging 28.6 points on 48.3% shooting while playing one less minute per game than last year.
Brunson ranks seventh in the NBA in scoring behind Luka Doncic (35.2), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (32.6), Tyrese Maxey (32.2), Giannis Antetokounmpo (31.2), Donovan Mitchell (29.9) and Nikola Jokic (29.6). Of this group, Brunson ranks third in shots per game (21.3) and second in attempts (22.8) over the last five games.
Brown is happiest with Brunson's scoring.
“The most important thing is whether you are willing to do this in an environment where he does not spend many minutes recording and/or does not work very hard to get [his points]”We like the way he scores – he scores in different ways: he has the catch and shoot, he gets to the rim, he comes off the ball.” [dribble hand-offs]he plays some pick-and-roll, he plays some iso. We're really trying to focus on continuing to try to move him around, watching his minutes, and not eating him up and not relying on him to get us home all the time.”
Brunson's isolation rate has dropped from 17.3% of his at-bats last season to 13.5% under Brown, and his triples have skyrocketed. He averages 3.1 per game and shoots 46.8 percent, best on the team and fourth in the league among players averaging 30+ minutes. Under Tom Thibodeau, he averaged just 1.9 per game despite shooting 42.2%.
CHANGE OF ATTACK
Bucks Head coach Doc Rivers says the Knicks look significantly different than they did when the two teams met on Oct. 28.
“They're not playing like they were at the beginning of the year,” Rivers said before Friday's game at Madison Square Garden. “Earlier this year they were all drive-and-kicks, very few pick-and-rolls.”
In that October meeting, Milwaukee beat the Knicks 121-111, the second of five straight road losses to start the season in New York. Rivers said the biggest shift is how much more the Knicks rely on the Brunson-Karl-Anthony Towns partnership.
“Now they're back to the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll — which makes a lot of sense — and yet they're still trying to move the ball, play downhill and play the basketball,” Rivers said. “But I think the biggest change they've made since we played them is they've definitely added more pick-and-rolls since then than when we played them the first game.”
Brunson ranks fifth in the NBA in scoring in the pick-and-roll with 9.7 points on 9.8 possessions per game. Towns ranks 10th among players with 3.6 points per possession.
NO-SAN FOR TOSAN
Brown also praised Tosan EvbuomwanThe 6-7 forward signed a two-way contract this offseason, although he hasn't taken on a larger role, while O.G. Anunoby (hamstring) and Landry Shamet (shoulder) remain out.
“[Tosan is] a big striker, he can defend a lot of different positions, he's got some attacking skills and he played well for us at the start of pre-season when we threw him in there. I mean, we threw him in there (in the regular season) in one of those early games and he was a big player. I know he was important for us a couple of times in pre-season. You like his physicality. You love the way he moves his legs. You like the way he picks up some other things and he could potentially get some minutes for us,” Brown said. “Because O.G. and Landry are also out, we wanted another big forward. He's a young guy who could fit what we're looking for in the future. I'm excited about it and we'll see what happens over time.”
