How the Sixers held the Knicks to 73 Points
How the Sixers held the Knicks to 73 Points
Nick Nurse cooked up one heck of a game plan and had New York in absolute hell on Sunday night.
If you watched that disgusting basketball game on Sunday, there’s probably one big question on your mind — how on earth did this Sixers team actually win a game in which they scored a mere 79 points?
The answer is some brilliant defensive game planning from Nick Nurse, and pristine execution from his injury-riddled roster.
In fairness, New York’s offense entered Sunday’s game in a major slog. The Knicks are one of the few teams as ravaged by injuries as the Sixers, and since Feb. 9, they’ve had just the 24th ranked offense in the NBA, per Cleaning The Glass. But the Hospital Sixers have been pretty underwhelming defensively themselves, even against decrepit offenses: Entering Sunday’s game, the team had the 17th ranked defense in the NBA over the past month (i.e. since Jonathan Kuminga landed on Joel Embiid’s knee). Not to mention, the Knicks already dropped 128 and 110 points on the Sixers in their two previous meetings in Philly, both of which ended in dominant road wins for New York.
A lazy NBA analyst might reduce the whole affair down to shooting variance. It certainly played a part, as the Knicks shot 9-for-40 (23%) from three, which was a steep drop-off from the combined 33-for-75 (44%) they shot from three during their two prior victories over the Sixers. But there was a bigger driving force at play – with their backs against the wall, Nick Nurse and the Hospital Sixers used all the spit and duct tape they could find to put together a defensive game plan that bordered on the extreme, and one that held the Knicks to the fewest points scored by any NBA team in a single game this season.
Here’s how they pulled it off.
Weak/Ice Defense against the Pick and Roll
Turn up the volume and listen closely to what the Sixers bench is shouting here on this defensive possession.
The word they’re shouting is “Weak,” indicating to both Paul Reed and Buddy Hield what pick-and-roll coverage they’re running. For those unaware, a “Weak” coverage is when the defense forces the ball handler to reject the screen, specifically forcing them toward their “weak,” non-dominant hand.
The Knicks only trusted five players to run ball screens yesterday — Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo, Alec Burks, Bojan Bogdanovic and occasionally Miles McBride. For the latter four, “Weak” pick and roll coverage meant the Sixers were constantly forcing them left. For the lefty Brunson, the Sixers were always funneling him to his right hand.
It’s a very static coverage, and one where every NBA offense knows the counters – but it allows the defense to dictate what is going to happen on each possession. The Sixers banked on the idea that the injury-depleted Knicks couldn’t execute the counters well enough to hurt them, and they were proven immensely correct in that department.
Here’s the very cruel irony for the Knicks — ”Weak” coverage is just a more specific version of the “Ice'' pick and roll defense that Tom Thibodeau pioneered in the NBA. He first was heard shouting it as the defensive mastermind behind the 2008 Boston Celtics, and his early Chicago Bulls teams dominated with “Ice” defense so much that it’s become commonplace in the NBA for the past 15 years. Watching his team get sent to the shadow realm yesterday by the same defense he popularized had to give him extreme “I’ve won, but at what cost?” vibes.
Disrespecting Precious Achiuwa and Josh Hart
The Sixers option for “Weak” coverage makes sense on the surface level. Brunson is very good at going to his left so force him right, vice versa for all the other players — not exactly rocket science. But the Knicks aren’t stupid. They knew they were getting the same ball screen coverage over and over again, but their primary ball handlers couldn’t take advantage of it because of what the Sixers thought of their tertiary players.
The nice way to say what happened yesterday is that the Sixers dared the Knicks’ lesser offensive players to beat them by playing very aggressive help defense. The mean way to say it? The Sixers openly told Josh Hart and Precious Achiuwa that they’re trash shooters who couldn’t score in an open gym.
Watch that Brunson pick and roll from before once more, and look at how KJ Martin is “guarding” Precious Achiuwa:
Add in the fact that Achiuwa isn’t even playing the center position for New York, but instead the 4 next to Isaiah Hartenstein, and it becomes an even bigger problem for the Knicks that he can’t score when given this much space. For the game, Achiuwa shot 1-for-3 from deep, which is decent enough in terms of accuracy — but it’s the frequency that was the problem for New York. You can’t have a guy purposefully left open from three for 36 minutes of play and have him only attempt three triples (stares in 2022-23 P.J. Tucker). More often than not, Achiuwa either dribbled out of his open looks, or simply wasn’t given the ball due to his teammates losing faith in him.
The Sixers were extremely unabashed in their dismissal of Achiuwa and Hart as perimeter threats, and they combined to shoot 2-for-10 from three and 6-for-21 from the field. They occasionally made the Sixers pay by using the ample space to build up momentum and drive to the bucket, but the ruse still worked in the exact manner that Philly wanted it to.
It was like watching a middle school team play a 2-3 zone during a summer league game where the coach tells his players to just stay in the paint because none of those kids can shoot threes. It had to be maddening for Brunson to watch each of his forays into the paint thwarted by extra bodies, while also knowing that if he passed to his open teammates, they were only going to make things worse.
Perhaps to Mike’s chagrin, the Sixers’ strategic plan of over helping all game absolutely destroyed the Knicks’ entire offense in this one. Nurse and Co. correctly assessed that a) without Maxey and Embiid, the Sixers would need a bit of a funky gameplan to pull the upset off, and b) that forcing Achiuwa and Hart to attempt and make wide-open threes would be better than trusting his defenders to handle Brunson, DiVincenzo and Burks straight up.
Pressure, Pressure and More Pressure
But as great as “Weak” pick and roll coverage and dismissing two-fifths of the opposing starting lineup can be, it would mean nothing if the defenders assigned to the Knicks’ best perimeter players failed to pressure the ball.
That’s where guys like Nicolas Batum, Kelly Oubre, Kyle Lowry and even Buddy Hield stepped up big time. All game, they were up tight on the Knicks’ best shooters, forcing them to put the ball on the floor, creating chaotic turnovers, and taking away all their clean looks from three.
Just watch Batum and Hield for this entire possession. They’re communicating, they’re jump-switching every screen, they’re aggressively jabbing toward the ball and forcing the offensive players to retreat (with some help from BBall Paul). As a result, the Knicks go nowhere for the entire 24-second possession. It’s picture-perfect defense.
Everyone on the Philly roster was up to the challenge defensively (save for Mo Bamba, whose inability to secure rebounds was the Sixers’ biggest problem yesterday), but the star among them was once again Batum. Even in a game where he scored zero points, he clearly had a winning impact. The way he denies passes off-ball belongs in a museum. Guys like DiVincenzo and Brunson just have to give up on possessions once Batum locks them up.
There’s a reason Lowry lost his mind at BBall Paul in the first quarter after a DiVincenzo three. The Sixers’ entire plan hinged on taking away three-point looks from Brunson and DiVincenzo, the two most dangerous players on the New York roster. When he wasn’t up as high on the ball screen as he was supposed to be, it resulted in a comfortable look from deep that put the Sixers down five. Every ball screen that was run at Reed the rest of the game saw him up high and ready to contest. ‘
If you want the short philosophy behind what the Sixers’ defense did yesterday, you can boil it down to a few key points of emphasis:
Send the Knicks’ best shooters and ball handlers to their weak hands as much as possible to make it harder for them to score and pass.
Aggressively help off of all the Knicks’ worst shooters. Dare the best shooters to pass it to their worst shooters.
If you can’t force guys like Brunson, DiVincenzo, Burks and Bogdanovic to their weak hands, run them off the three-point line and force them into the paint. We think they are bad passers and not good at finishing in traffic, so just don’t let them tee off on open threes.
The Sixers succeeded in all three departments, and forced the Knicks into perhaps the ugliest offensive performance the 2020s have yet seen.
With Maxey set to return for Tuesday’s rematch in Madison Square Garden, Sunday’s victory was a massive win. The Sixers were absolutely reeling, having dropped three straight in increasingly discouraging fashion. All signs pointed toward the season completely spiraling out of control. They might still be on that path, but picking up a win on the team that’s now only a game ahead of them in the Eastern Conference standings without either of their two best players completely shifts the vibes.
The Sixers’ offense might finally have life again with No. 0 back on the court. If they add him to this defensive identity they found on Sunday, they could somehow leave the Big Apple tied for fourth in the East yet again – all thanks to a bluntly effective Nick Nurse game plan, and some admirable execution from this extremely wounded team.
Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.
“The Danny” is brought to you by the Official Realtor Of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Thanks coach Dan