Jason Timp

Cat had three double-digit assist games in this postseason run so far.

He never had a single one in his career before that.

Jalen Brunson...

71% of his made field goals as a Nick last year in the postseason were on the ball, like pick and rolls, isos, post-ups, everything like one-on-one handling the ball.

Whereas this season, that number's dropped from 71 down to 55.

And he is doing a ton of work off the ball as a screener and running off of off-ball action to get a catch instead of dribbling into the action.

And what it's done is it's turned him into this –

Steph Curry mixed with Jalen Brunson kind of thing where Steph Curry had all this value off ball as a screener because guys would stay glued to him and other people would get open and Jalen Brunson's constantly getting his teammates open now screening using his threat off the ball and cat is doing a wonderful job.

orchestrating things at the top.

And so they're just a fundamentally different team than they've really ever been in this era.

Like even just compared to the regular season, Cat is averaging well over twice as many assists as he did in the big Cavs win that they had post deadline.

Cat only had two assists like they were.

I watched the film from that game in prep for that series, and it just doesn't look like what the Knicks are playing like right now.

And on one hand, that makes it kind of hard to evaluate them because they're basically a new basketball team with the way they're playing.

But on the other hand, I would say that that is the far better version of this team.

because everyone is involved and there is much more in the way of like flow and rhythm in their offense.

And instead of just McHale bridges and OGN and nobody functioning as spot up players off the ball, they're getting in and out of screens off the ball.

They're getting catches and opportunities to attack with the ball.

Like there's just so much more variety.

It's making it so that Brunson doesn't run out of gas.