Dan DevineSenior writerMon, April 20, 2026 at 5:10 PM UTC·12 min readNEW YORK — Teams can spend months, years, lifetimes searching for that one perfect possession: the play where everything the front office envisioned in the offseason, everything the coaches drew up on the whiteboard, and everything the players run through in the install comes together to create the high-percentage scoring chance that everybody’s hunting for at this time of year.
For a New York Knicks team that has moved heaven and earth — not to mention Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, a handful of first-round draft picks and about $820 million — over the past two years, the wait ended about five minutes into Saturday’s Game 1.
With the Knicks leading the visiting Atlanta Hawks 14-13 in the early going, Jalen Brunson dribbled across half-court and around a high ball screen from Karl-Anthony Towns. Two Atlanta Hawks defenders — Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker — tracked Brunson as he dribbled to his left, unwilling to give the All-NBA point guard any daylight after he’d already made his first five shots of the 2026 NBA playoffs.
That left Towns, who had slid to his right after setting the screen, wide open above the break of the 3-point arc — an area where the 7-foot marksman has routinely knocked down more than 40% of his attempts over the course of his career. The Hawks didn’t want to give him any daylight, either; when Brunson calmly made a behind-the-back pass to Towns, Atlanta guard CJ McCollum, the nearest defender, quickly shifted over, closing out to prevent a clean 3-point look.
“Those closeout situations — if they're long, you know, you think you're on him, and he’s 7 feet tall, and you’re not,” Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said before Game 1. “Then, you think you've done a good job of that, and he makes a quick read.”
On this play, Towns read McCollum, who was guarding Josh Hart, who was reading everything.
As soon as Brunson threw that behind-the-back pass, Hart saw the dominoes falling; knowing that McCollum’s going to have to rotate to KAT, he began to cut from the slot. With only one Hawks defender left on the weak side of the floor, Hart knew his cut would force center Onyeka Okongwu into a choice: stay at home on Mikal Bridges in the corner and potentially give Hart an open layup, or rotate to pick up Hart and leave Bridges — who made the third-most corner 3s in the NBA this season — wide open to catch and shoot.
McCollum shifted. Hart cut. Towns passed. Okongwu rotated. Hart immediately kicked it to the corner. And Bridges cashed out.
That’s something close to the Platonic ideal of an offensive possession for these Knicks: one that leverages the threat of the offensive firepower and collective playmaking IQ they bring to bear across the starting lineup to create a no-muss, no-fuss three points. And it all started with the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll — an action that looked devastating in the early stages of their partnership last season, and that wound up largely mothballed as defenses shifted their coverages to put their centers on Hart and wings on Towns.
As the Knicks neared the end of their first regular season under Brown, they started placing a greater emphasis on reviving the Brunson-Towns two-man game. Sometimes, that’s meant Towns operating from the top of the floor while Brunson runs off the ball, like a quarterback waiting for his receiver to get open; the Knicks got several buckets out of that look in Game 1, but also committed several turnovers.
Primarily, though, it’s meant Brunson more frequently looking for Towns. With a renewed focus on finding him, and the big man shooting a scorching 62.5% on those feeds after the All-Star break, their pick-and-roll pairing became one of the NBA’s most potent offensive actions over the final two months of the season.
“The situations that [Towns is] in are a little different — especially pick-and-roll with Brunson,” Snyder said after the game. “That's a layer that you really … it’s hard to deal with, when you have two players that are that gifted individually, and, then, you know, when they're connected, as well. It presents more problems.
The Hawks had their fair share of problems with it in Game 1, as the Knicks scored 1.46 points per possession on 15 possessions that saw Towns set a screen for Brunson, according to Second Spectrum tracking data — a monster number that helped propel New York to a 113-102 win.
“I’ve said this before, but the longer, obviously, we’re on the court together, our chemistry is better,” Brunson said after the win. “I think we’ve grown as teammates, we’ve grown as friends, and it’s contributing to the way we’re playing.”
(At this, Towns joked that he’s “not at the Josh [Hart] level [of friend] yet, but we’re working.” To which Brunson quickly deadpanned, “Josh is not a friend.”)
Brunson said at Knicks practice on Sunday that, after nearly two full seasons together, finding his flow with Towns has “just become easier.” One thing that made it easier in Game 1: the Hawks continuing their regular-season trend of spending the bulk of the game defending Towns with their centers, Okongwu and Mouhamed Gueye.
In the final four minutes of Game 1, though, Snyder dialed up an adjustment we covered in our series preview, switching the matchups by putting Daniels on Towns, sliding Okongwu over to Hart, and having Alexander-Walker check Brunson. The cross-match paid immediate dividends.
Brunson mostly chose to bring Hart and Bridges into the action to set the screen while Towns spaced the floor. The result was a hail of missed jumpers, as the Knicks scored just seven points on 1-for-5 shooting with a turnover over those final four minutes.
Those misses allowed the Hawks to push the pace in transition, make some 3-pointers and rip off an 11-0 run to make it an eight-point game heading into the final minute.
The main benefit of the cross-match? New York didn’t run a single Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll down the stretch, and Towns did not attempt a shot when Daniels was guarding him, according to NBA Advanced Stats matchup data. Until a runout layup after New York broke an Atlanta press with 48 seconds left, he barely touched the ball down the stretch.