James Harden scored a season-high 32 points on Wednesday and everyone wants to talk about his jumper. Fine. He earned it. But somebody has to ask why Mike Brown kept making his night easier. The answer starts with a lineup card he won't change and a defensive plan that kept backfiring.
Mikal Bridges started again. He's been averaging around six points a game on roughly 40 percent true shooting for most of this season, and this game wasn't an outlier: two points on one made shot in limited minutes. This is who Bridges is right now, and Brown keeps writing his name in pen anyway. There's a version of this roster where Bridges comes off the bench against a hungry opponent and gives the Knicks instant scoring punch, rather than a starter who has to be hidden on defense. Brown had that option and passed on it.
Then there's the Mitchell problem, and this one's on Brown directly. New York leaned on doubling and trapping Donovan Mitchell, especially down the stretch, and Mitchell is too smart a player to let that sit there. He got the ball out of his hands into space, and Cleveland's role players, Tyrese Proctor and Meleek Thomas among them, made the Knicks pay for the extra attention. You don't trap a scorer of Mitchell's caliber over and over unless you've got a plan for what happens the instant he finds the open man. New York didn't, and it cost them a fourth quarter they needed.
Rating
RatingThis roster still produced. Jalen Brunson scored 27, Karl-Anthony Towns posted a monster double-double, and Deuce McBride caught fire from three off the bench. Towns tied Willis Reed's franchise mark for consecutive double-doubles to begin a season. A team getting that kind of production from its best players doesn't lose a home game by eight just because the box score says they played badly. They lost because the coach kept making decisions that handed Cleveland outs it hadn't earned.
Cleveland came into Wednesday having dropped five straight to this exact Knicks team going back to the conference finals. That skid is over now, and it's over because Brown gift-wrapped it. New York's four-game winning streak is gone too, and the season series between these two sits tied. None of that happens if the starting five and the defensive calls reflect what's actually happening on the floor instead of what Brown already decided in his head.
RTGThis is about a coach who watched Bridges struggle for weeks and Mitchell torch the double team in real time and still changed nothing.
