'Attacking Harden': Mike Brown unveils Knicks' offensive strategy to win vs. Cavs
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'Attacking Harden': Mike Brown unveils Knicks' offensive strategy to win vs. Cavs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The New York Knicks mounted a very unlikely comeback against the Cleveland Cavaliers that has only ever happened four times in NBA Playoffs history. Coach Mike Brown got Jalen Brunson into spots that would make him succeed offensively and it resulted into a massive 115-104 overtime win in Game 1. How did they pull it off? Well, it was all because they chose to attack the Cavs where it would hurt the most — James Harden.
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Knicks led by Brown and Brunson always planned to attack Cavs' Harden
Going down 22 points usually means a grand adjustment needs to be made by the Knicks to survive the Cavs onslaught. Other teams try to employ a mix of schemes to distribute the offense in this scenario too. Coach Mike Brown and the Knicks were different. They had always schemed around making James Harden play defense in isolation to tire him out so that he's unproductive on offense, via SNY TV.
"Sometimes, you got to do what the game dictates. They were trying to do the same thing with Jalen. We said, 'okay, we feel like we can play that game.' We try not to play that game much, but we feel like we have a guy that we can play that game with in Jalen... It is no secret that we were attacking Harden," Coach Brown said.
Only one player came out victorious between Jalen Brunson and Harden. The Knicks superstar ended up scoring a game-high 38 points as he knocked down 15 of his 29 shots from the field while also dropping six assists and grabbing three steals.
Meanwhile, the only statistic that Harden led the Cavs in was playing time because he was on the floor for 42 minutes. Other than that, he only managed to knock down field goals after 16 attempts to score 15 points. Harden also had six turnovers which was more than his buckets due to the Knicks defense.
There will be adjustments from the Cavs side so that Harden does not get targeted like this again in the clutch. Can the Knicks led by Coach Brown and Brunson prove that they are two steps ahead of the Cavs in Game 2?