Brunson dilemma has Knicks on the brink of elimination

In an Eastern Conference final that's been wildly unpredictable from game to game, quarter to quarter, and minute to minute, the one surety is that the Indiana Pacers will find ways to poke and prod at Jalen Brunson's defense whenever the New York Knicks' diminutive point guard is on the floor. It's a big part of the reason the Pacers are up 3-1 in the series, one win away from their first Finals appearance in 25 years.

It's notable that the Knicks' biggest runs in the series have come with Brunson on the bench. In Game 1, it was a 17-2 fourth-quarter stretch that would've won them the game if not for Aaron Nesmith's ungodly late-game heater. In Game 3, it was a 16-6 run spanning the last couple minutes of the third and the first couple minutes of the fourth, which gave the Knicks the lead in a game they'd once trailed by 20. In their nine-point Game 4 loss, they outscored the Pacers by seven in the 12 minutes Brunson sat.

Those runs were defined by lockdown defense, enabled by Deuce McBride (and, in Game 3, Delon Wright) stepping in for Brunson and doing all the things he doesn't or can't: applying intense ball pressure up and down the floor, peel switching with speed and precision, stunting aggressively in the gaps, and recovering out to shooters with great closeouts. New York has a 129 defensive rating with Brunson on the floor in the series. It's 98.3 with him on the bench.

It's a credit to Indiana's offense that it's managed to make New York's most important player a borderline liability. (It's also a credit to Tyrese Haliburton's vastly improved defense that New York hasn't been able to do the same to him.) Long story short: The Knicks can't win this series without a healthy dose of Brunson, but they also can't win unless they figure out how to minimize the damage the Pacers are inflicting by repeatedly attacking him.

Of course, there's a reason Brunson can't defend with the same energy as the team's other guards. He's carrying an enormous offensive workload, leading all players in the conference finals in usage rate (36.4%) and time of possession per game (8.6 minutes). He's averaging 33.3 points and 5.5 assists on 62% true shooting against the Pacers. The late-game exploits that earned him Clutch Player of the Year honors this season are a huge reason the Knicks are where they are right now.

Needless to say, they heavily rely on Brunson's on-ball orchestration and his ability to conjure buckets out of thin air in a myriad of ways. He's such a dangerous scoring threat with his back to the basket that the Pacers have occasionally hard-doubled him - a player measuring 6-foot-2 in shoes - in the post.

For as much as his defensive deficiencies have hurt the Knicks in this series, he's carried them for long stretches at the other end of the floor. Their Game 3 win was particularly illustrative of this push and pull. Brunson re-entered the game early in the fourth quarter after New York made its big push to take the lead, then exited 90 seconds later after picking up his fifth foul. Over the next six minutes, the Knicks allowed just 10 points but scored only nine. Brunson checked back in and immediately hit a tough runner that wound up being the game-winning bucket.

The Pacers aren't your typical mismatch-hunting offense. They aren't above doing it, but they usually try to find those opportunities organically in the flow of their quick-hitting offense, rather than clearing out for a one-on-one attack. Their aim in roping Brunson into screening actions is less about creating individual matchup advantages than about putting the whole Knicks defense in rotation.

If Brunson switches, it's a quick dribble attack to score or collapse New York's shell. Otherwise, it's a quick pass to beat the help layered behind him because the Knicks don't trust him enough to leave him on an island against the likes of Haliburton or Pascal Siakam. If he hedges to stay out of the switch, either the corner gets turned or the ball starts zipping and the blender gets turned on. Brunson is stout and strong, but he isn't especially quick laterally, and his hedges get lazier and more perfunctory as games go along. Indiana has gotten some of its best looks by attacking his show-and-recover coverage.

The Knicks tried a different approach in Game 4. On several occasions, particularly when the Pacers involved him in double-drag action, Brunson remained stapled to his man (mostly Nesmith) when that player screened for Haliburton. That's a tactic you'll see a lot of defenses deploy when Nikola Jokic sets ball screens. (Nesmith certainly isn't Jokic, but he is shooting 62% from 3-point range this series.) It hinges on the defenders on the back line stepping up to deter the ball-handler at the rim.

That didn't happen for New York, especially when Karl-Anthony Towns was the lone big man on the floor and pressed up on Myles Turner on the perimeter. The coverage directly led to four driving layups for Haliburton, along with a lay-down pass to Turner for an easy score. And that was far from the only way the Pacers exploited Brunson defensively.

Nesmith and Bennedict Mathurin both burned him on cuts from the slot. On one possession late in the third quarter, when Brunson ceded the switch onto Haliburton, Obi Toppin came up to set a ghost screen. That peeled Brunson (who was clearly anxious to switch back out of that matchup) far enough away to gift Haliburton a pull-up three. Toppin's game-sealing triple in the final minute materialized when Brunson and Mikal Bridges miscommunicated a switch on a baseline out-of-bounds play. Bridges made it clear who he felt was responsible for the mix-up, staring down and jawing at Brunson afterward.

There have been enough pops of self-creation from Towns, Bridges, and OG Anunoby to make you wonder if New York could stand to scale back Brunson's offensive responsibilities just a bit to preserve him. The Knicks need more effort from him defensively, and they also need to find ways to better protect him, which is much easier said than done. More pre-switching could help, but the Pacers make that difficult with how early they get into their actions.

It's a little late in the game to expect any major shifts in the Knicks' play style; they aren't suddenly going to start playing a ton of zone defense to hide Brunson, or run their offense through Towns in the high post. But coach Tom Thibodeau has at least shown a willingness to make tweaks to his lineups and sub patterns in this series. He'll likely have to showcase even more adaptability if he's to help his team climb out of this 3-1 hole.

Joe Wolfond writes about the NBA for theScore.