New York Knicks: 3 reasons they’ll win a playoff series
By Luke Duffy
Reason No. 2 the Knicks could win a playoff series: 3-point shooting
The entire NBA is 3-point crazy these days, and although everybody has players who can score from deep, it is harder for multiple players on a roster to do this consistently. To that end, the Knicks stand out, and the 39 percent they have shot from 3-point range as a whole is currently the second-best mark in the league.
By the time the regular season is finished, the Knicks will have landed as a top-five team in this category. It is not just the fact that they’ve made shots all year, it is who has been knocking them down as well. Randle (41.5), Rose (40.9), Bullock (40.6) and Alec Burks (40.5) have shot over 40 percent from deep, with a host of players just behind them on around 39 percent (Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox.
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Austin Rivers was at 36 percent before his not-entirely-clean exit from the franchise earlier in the year, and ironically Frank Ntilikina has the highest percentage of all (46.8), but he doesn’t qualify as he has been frozen out here. How insane would it be if they decided to dust him off for some minutes in the postseason, just to throw opponents who haven’t seen much of him off?
The belief used to be that you couldn’t win a championship with a jump-shooting team, but we know that’s not the case anymore. The thing is though, that with Randle and Mitchell Robinson and even Noel working inside, the ability for so many other players to stretch the floor will be invaluable come playoff time.
The Knicks aren’t blowing opponents away offensively either, and although they lag behind the Hawks in offensive rating (Hawks 114.2, Knicks 110.2), they are more than capable of getting into a shootout with them for portions of a game and holding their own. This would be crucial in any potential series against the Hawks because they would come out trying to pile up points early.
Interestingly, in the last 10 games, the difference between the two has been considerably less in this category (Hawks 114.1, Knicks 113.6), as both have hovered around league average. The Knicks aren’t quite getting hot at the right time, they just have a roster full of confident shooters, and that will be huge in the coming weeks.