Steve Popper: Knicks' simple two-man game with Brunson, KAT proves effective

On paper, it’s so simple.

In an NBA landscape that requires more than one star to contend for a title, the Knicks worked to put two in place while grabbing Jalen Brunson and then adding Karl-Anthony Towns, pairing two of the best scorers at their positions, a 6-2 guard who is unstoppable in the paint and a 7-foot sharpshooter who might be the smoothest shooting big man in NBA history.

Simple.

But for two seasons, with two accomplished and heralded coaches at the helm, the Knicks have tried to figure out how to make them work together and met mixed results, moments of brilliance countered by nights of frustration.

This season has seemed particularly puzzling with Towns spending much of it wondering aloud about his role in Mike Brown’s system, shifting between center and power forward, being told to run to the corner at times and then planted in the post at others.

It’s not modern analytics though, rather old dusty proverbs that tell you desperation or necessity is the mother of invention. So rather than invent, with the season winding down to its final days and panic understandably setting in, Brown simplified.

Monday night in Atlanta, facing a red-hot Hawks squad and facing their own crisis of confidence without a win over a team with a winning record in a month, Brown took his two best offensive weapons and put them into the simplest, oldest of NBA tropes, a two-man game, and dared the Hawks to try to solve it.

“Going down the stretch, KAT and Jalen did what they were supposed to do,” Brown said. “It’s no secret we put them in a two-man game. And those guys delivered on the offensive end of the floor while everybody else tried to get stops.”

“I thought we did a great job [Monday] of utilizing it,” Towns said. “When the game got dicey, the coaching staff and our teammates leaned on us to have that two-man game show up when we needed it the most. And it worked.

“We have a good rapport where I think that, what you saw at the end of the game with me and JB allows him not to have so much pressure on him and allows me to help him out and do what I do best . . . It gave us a chance for him to play ones and also get a step on the defender and give him some of the best looks of the night.”

Brown said Monday that there have been conversations about switching up the starting lineup, although he said he is not inclined to do it. And you could put out a poll on what change should be made and probably get more folks to show up to vote than a presidential election.

Start Mitchell Robinson. Start Deuce McBride. Start Landry Shamet. Pull Josh Hart out of the lineup or make Mikal Bridges a sixth man. But the reality has been all along that the players who start alongside Brunson and Towns were put in place not to be every night stars, but to fit in roles behind those two stars. So making Brunson and Towns work together polishes the appearance of the entire lineup.

It’s not like the two of them have not performed. Both players were All-NBA selections last season, their first together. And this year both were All-Stars and with the NBA’s 65-game eligibility requirement, even in an uneven season, the two could be All-NBA picks again.

Last week after a loss in Oklahoma City, Towns was asked about what the best version of the Knicks looks like. “I don’t think we’ve seen it yet.,” Towns said. But he added, “It could come randomly in Game 80, Game 81.”

In Game 79 Monday we understandably looked at Brunson’s 17 points in just over six minutes down the stretch, but he also handed out 13 assists and Towns had 21 points, six assists and countless screens to spring Brunson or create opportunities for others. Out of these sets Towns found Bridges for dunks twice early in the game and OG Anunoby was shooting open threes from the corner.

While Brown and offensive coordinator Chris Jent can plot out all sorts of schemes, sometimes the simplest way is the best: refining a two-man game with dangerous weapons and working out of that to help everyone.

“I’ll be honest, it’s all about how you respond,” Brunson said. “Things are not going to be perfect. You’re going to have bad stretches, obviously me included. You’re going to have things that don’t go your way. You’re going to do things that seem easy and then don’t go your way. It’s all about how you respond."

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.