Every few years, the New York Knicks seem to have a new guiding principle, a new mastermind, a new star or a new direction. But if there is a near constant in the never-ending remaking of one of the NBA’s original franchises, it is that the team goes at its own pace, and that pace is fairly slow.
Whether it is a result of the team’s talent (or lack thereof) or strategy, the Knicks have consistently slowed the game down. And in an era when the Golden State Warriors are setting the league on fire in terms of pace and fast-break points, and most teams are doing everything they can to keep up, the Knicks, while sharpening the angles of their triangle offense, have stayed slow and steady. But does that matter?
The team has improved drastically from last season, but it still finds itself in the midst of its fourth consecutive season ranking last in fast-break points. In the 20 seasons the statistic has been tracked, the Knicks have never finished better than 19th, and they have finished in the bottom five 15 times. In terms of possessions per 48 minutes, they were the 25th-fastest team entering the weekend, a few steps up from last year’s ranking of 28th.
A lot of Knicks fans, and NBA fans in general, would point the finger at Pat Riley for the team’s trudging along while others glide, but while Riley’s teams may have been synonymous with the brutal slowed-down style of the 1990s, the Knicks were playing this way long before he arrived.
In fact, Riley used a slowed-down strategy only when his personnel called for it. Before he had Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and a cast of blue-collar bruisers making their way to an appearance in the NBA finals, he was the slick-haired strategist behind the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers that were encouraged by Jerry Buss, the team’s owner, to reflect the extravagant side of life in Los Angeles.
Leading a team that was heavy on star power, style and fast breaks, Riley’s Lakers won four championships. In New York, however, he seemingly ground things to a halt, a strategy that left some enthralled by the Knicks’ bludgeoning style and others accusing him of ruining basketball. Through it all, Riley held true to the tenets of the game that he had described in his book “The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players,” which was published early in his tenure with the Knicks.
“The biggest battle on a pro court is the one between style and efficiency,” Riley wrote. “A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player’s personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.”
For the Knicks, efficiency has nearly always come before style or speed. Joe Lapchick’s squads in the 1950s were among the fleetest in the game, but since then only a handful of Knicks team could reasonably be described as using an up-tempo offense. Even Red Holzman’s celebrated championship teams in 1969-70 and 1972-73 moved at a sluggish pace for their era. The latter squad in particular was methodical, rating as the second-slowest Knicks team in franchise history relative to the league average, according to Basketball-Reference.com.
But as Phil Jackson, the team’s current president, knows better than perhaps anyone, speed does not always kill.
For proof, look no further than Jackson’s championship teams. His Lakers were typically near the bottom of the league in fast-break points, and his Chicago Bulls played at a pace slower than the league average in each of their six championship seasons.
For Jackson’s complicated offense to thrive, it will probably never rely on the fast break. But trying to follow in the footsteps of the Warriors is hardly necessary. With their uncanny ability to steal the ball, block shots, rebound, run and shoot, Golden State had generated an NBA-high 21.4 fast-break points a game entering the weekend, and yet the San Antonio Spurs had the second-best record despite averaging just 10.7 fast-break points, which ranked 25th.
Further proof that speed is not everything comes in the form of the Sacramento Kings, who ranked third in the NBA in fast-break points and first in pace. All they had to show for it was a 12-20 record.
Jackson took some abuse last season when he seemingly mocked the 3-point-heavy strategy of some playoff teams, and he looked out of touch when the Warriors cruised to a championship. But as he continues the long process of building a team from the ruins of the failed experiments of other executives, Jackson does not have to emulate Golden State or the league’s other run-and-gun teams. His offense, which helped him to 11 championships as a coach, will never be fast, and that probably does not matter. In fact, for the Knicks, it would just be business as usual.
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