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ATLANTA — New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown has doubled down on considering a starting lineup change ahead of Saturday’s Game 4 matchup against the Atlanta Hawks.
“That’ll be a game-time decision,” Brown said Friday, a day after the Hawks took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference playoff series. “Like I said (Thursday) night, at this point in the year, anything is on the table — what we do offensively, what we do defensively, what our rotations are, who starts, what we come out with. Everything is on the table.”
The topic garnered significant steam after the Game 3 loss to Atlanta. It was yet another disappointing showing for Mikal Bridges on the offensive end. He missed his three shot attempts and was benched for all but two minutes in the second half. Bridges has made just eight of his 22 shots through the first three games of the series. He also had four turnovers in Game 3.
“I just got to be better so I can be out there,” Bridges said Thursday night.
The Knicks gave themselves a chance to pull out the comeback victory when Brown replaced Bridges with Miles McBride alongside the four other starters (Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns). That five-man unit was a plus-24 in just 14 minutes of a game that New York lost by one point, 109-108.
McBride provides more confident shooting and better on-ball defense than Bridges right now, even though he gives up several inches in height. The 6-foot-2 McBride also isn’t shy to get shots up, which makes defenses honest and gives them someone else to worry about.
Swapping McBride for Bridges feels like the change Brown will make if he does tweak the starting lineup.
The Knicks’ starters have been together for two seasons and have been noticeably underwhelming as a collective despite all of the resources invested in acquiring the talent. The group — Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby, Hart and Towns — posted a blah 2.3 net rating this season in 541 minutes together. It was the second-most-used lineup in the NBA during the regular season. In the playoffs, that starting lineup has played more than any other five-man lineup and has a minus-7.4 net rating.
This would be the first tweak to the starters since the beginning of the season, when Brown started Mitchell Robinson over Hart. Former head coach Tom Thibodeau replaced Robinson with Hart, who approached Thibodeau and suggested the change during last season’s Eastern Conference finals.
New York will go into a critical Game 4 with more questions than answers.
