It cannot have been fun being a Knicks fan during the past couple of years. So let me take you back to a time when Knicks basketball was fun and exciting. Let me take you back to 1973. There has possibly never been a team that could match the talent of the ’73 Knicks. The roster included six future Hall of Fame inductees — Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere, Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas and Bill Bradley — five of them could’ve made it on individual merits alone. In addition to that, bench player Phil Jackson and coach Red Holzman would both make the Hall as coaches. After losing the ’72 Finals to the record-breaking 69–13 Lakers, the Knicks regrouped and played a much better 72/73 season, even though “The Captain” Willis Reed was already slowed down by injuries at that point. Nevertheless, they beat the Lakers 4–1 in the Finals and won the Knicks’ last title to this day. Because of the interesting team construction, I wanted to analyze their offensive system, but there are two problems. Firstly, my understanding of X’s and O’s is limited — I’m doing this exercise to improve it — and the analysis therefore won’t be perfect, and secondly, there’s less than four full games of this team available on YouTube, which decreases accuracy as well. Still, I tried my best.
The Three Pillars of the Knicks’ Offense
- Ball Movement
- Floor Spacing
- Read & React
Ball Movement
Dave DeBusschere wrote a book about the championship season of the ’70 New York Knicks. It is accurately titled “The Open Man”. The offense of the ’70 Knicks was based on finding the open man, and that didn’t change after the acquisition of All-Stars Earl “The Pearl” Monroe (traded for Mike Riordan, Dave Stallworth and cash) and Jerry Lucas (traded for Cazzie Russell) in 1971. The system relied on unselfishness, sacrificing individual goals for the greater good. Monroe and Lucas bought into an egalitarian system even though they were used to being first or second options on their previous teams. There was initial skepticism whether Frazier and Monroe could co-exist, but it worked just fine. In addition to ball movement, constant player movement and great shooting from the whole roster, made the offense effective, as we’ll see in the following clips.
In the play below, the Celtics double Reed in the post, leaving Art Williams and Paul Silas to defend three Knicks. Two of them cut to the rim, Phil Jackson down the middle and Dean Meminger (?) along the baseline, occupying Silas and Williams, which opens up Bill Bradley for the jump shot.
The Knicks were patient in finding the open man, but once somebody had an open shot, he could take it, no matter who he was. There was no ego connected to the players’ shot selection. In this play, Phil Jackson first takes the open shot, drawing Wes Unseld out of the paint, which increases the likelihood of an offensive rebound. After the Knicks secure it, Earl Monroe, a score-first guard, drives and shows off his individual class with a great dump-off-pass to the open Willis Reed.
The ball movement of the Knicks was also so effective because their forwards were perfectly capable of handling the ball, which allowed them to run actions that other teams weren’t able to run. In the following play, we have a 4/5 pick-and-roll with DeBusschere and Reed. The Celtics cut off the pass to Reed, so DeBusschere hits Frazier in the corner, initiating another action. Frazier uses a hesitation to go by his defender and hooks a pass over (the players in) the paint to an open Bill Bradley.
The offense of a team from the ’70s couldn’t possibly look as good as that of the “Beautiful Game” Spurs because there was far less live-dribble-passing back then, but the Knicks were still a great watch because all players were capable on the ball, which allowed them to run unusual (for the time) actions and transition seamlessly into another play if the defense prevented the initial attack — more examples of that will follow later. It was a group of players that sacrificed some of their individual numbers for the greater good, the epitome of a team sport. Monroe, for example, attempted 13.5 FGs per game during that season. His career high is 23. Jerry Lucas was down from 19.3 FGAs at his peak to 8.6, but still efficient as he’d always been (+4.2 rTS%).
Floor Spacing
The three-point shot has taken over the modern game. The main benefit of the shot, however, is not that it’s a pretty efficient shot, its main benefit is that having 4+ shooters standing 24ft away from the rim opens up the paint for teams to create the two shots that are (and were in 1973) the most efficient in basketball: Layups and Free Throws. James Harden-esque penetrations from the top of the key to the paint were seldom in the ’60s and ’70s because the inside was always crowded. These Knicks were different, though. EVERYBODY could shoot. The Top-6 of the rotation — Frazier, DeBusschere, Bradley, Monroe, Lucas and Reed — were all serviceable to great shooters. DeBusschere, Bradley and Lucas were even capable of pulling up from 25ft. This team would for sure have benefited from playing with a three-point line, but it still worked well without one.
The stretch-5 might seem like a modern concept, but there was definitely some understanding of the concept of floor spacing during the early ’70s. A 1970 broadcast mentioned that it was beneficial for the Knicks to have Reed shoot from midrange since it took Lew Alcindor away from the basket. The Knicks used the shooting ability of their bigger players to their advantage. Here, Unseld stays with the pick-and-pop ballhandler to contain penetration, leaving Reed wide open for a jump shot. Again, they move the ball until the open man is found. Reed’s shooting ability forced teams to make tough decisions. Protect the paint and leave him open or defend him in the midrange and lose your best rim protector? Keep in mind that rim protection was even more important at that time than it is today because there was no three-point shot.
Another possible set is having one player trail the play when bringing the ball up. This occurred only twice or thrice in the limited footage available, but it worked very well in the following play. In this case, it’s Dave DeBusschere who appears in the frame very late and pulls up immediately. A second after the clip ends, one of the announcer describes the play: “I don’t know how you defend that.”
The Knicks also did a really good job screening their shooters open. Their most frequent scoring action was a pull-up jump shot by a guard, mostly Walt Frazier, and that could be facilitated by a ball screen, which shields the defender away from Frazier, allowing him to pull-up behind it. Another frequently used option was a baseline pin screen to open a shooter. In the following clip, you get the idea — although you can’t see it, because the cameras at that time were more ball-focused than they are today — that DeBusschere sprinted along the baseline before Reed screens his defender to get him the open baseline jump shot. The Knicks also had multiple counters when this play was well-defended. We’ll get to them in the next section.
The following clip then shows not only how well the floor of these Knicks could be spaced, it also shows how they took advantage of it. At the beginning of the play, none of the ten players is even close to the middle of the paint, an unusual sight in ’70s basketball. According to Justin Jacobs, the league average FG% from midrange at the time was around 36%, and since the Knicks were a great shooting team, you were in danger of giving up decent shots if you left any of their players open 12ft from the basket. Reed takes full advantage of the spaced floor here and cuts to the paint to draw a foul and two free throws.
Read & React
While there are some recurring plays/actions/sets like Willis Reed ball-screens, pull-up jump shots by guards, “perimeter” hand-offs and baseline pin screens, a lot of the Knicks’ offense seems to have been predicated on reading the defense and reacting quickly and intelligently. Here are some examples of reading & reacting from the limited footage available:
One move Bill Bradley utilized multiple times is a fake backdoor cut in behind one of his teammates. He starts by sprinting towards his teammate (and the basket) and then steps back for a corner jump shot as soon as his defender commits to going under Bradley’s teammate. In this case, it’s Willis Reed, who then screens Bradley’s defender to give him time to get the shot off.
Having smart players like Bradley and DeBusschere, who can punish the overplaying defense, is a great luxury. In the upcoming play, DeBusschere sells to his defender that he’ll receive a dribble handoff (DHO). The defender presumably expected DeBusschere to dribble towards the top of the key. At the last second, however, Dave cuts in behind the unsuspecting defender for a floating layup.
Whatever skill I’m talking about with this Knicks is never limited to one or two players. Whether it’s shooting, passing, handling the ball or making smart reads, everyone can do everything. This time, it’s Willis Reed who makes the correct decision. The Knicks set a stagger screen for Bill Bradley to receive a pass or DHO at the sideline. Cowens switches onto Bradley, but Bradley’s man recognizes too late that he needs to cover Reed, who makes himself available for an layup. A very nice Reed! It also again shows how much defensive attention the shooters of the Knicks drew.
Here, Walt Frazier recognizes that his defender steps up to DeBusschere on the catch and slips away from both defenders to get open. I would love to tell you that the Knicks ran pick-and-rolls with their point guard as the role man, who slips the screen in this case, 50 years ago, but that’s not quite what happened here. Just another smart play by a smart player.
Lastly, this play looks rather unintentional, but it worked really well. Bradley and Frazier cross paths in the paint — if this was an intentional play for both to run these paths at the same time, I would expect one or both to receive a screen. That’s what you’d expect in the modern game at least — and sprint to the free throw line and corner respectively, giving Meminger two passing options. The two Celtics defenders involved miscommunicate, leaving Frazier open for a jump shot.
All in all, the ’73 Knicks were a fantastic team, made up of very smart and skilled players. Their offense was based on very modern principles like ball movement, body movement and reacting to the defense as opposed to running plays every single possession. It’s also important to mention that these Knicks teams were just as good, at times better, defensively as they were offensively, but that wasn’t my focus here.
Note: The titles is based on THIS book about the Knicks teams of the early ’70s, which I haven’t read yet, but am planning to read.
