A takeaway is always a must after beating a team in the NBA Playoffs. For Coach Mike Brown and the New York Knicks, they learned a lot about how their offense flows and what types of defensive philosophies they want to apply moving forward. They may have the personnel already because of how great Jalen Brunson and Co. are but a certain NBA coach may have just pushed them to win the Eastern Conference — Coach Quin Snyder of the Atlanta Hawks.
How Coach Snyder helped Knicks improve to probably win Eastern Conference Look, the Hawks are not at all an easy team to beat. They have great two-way stars in Jalen Johnson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker while also having a great veteran in CJ McCollum. While the Game 6 score of 140-89 may suggest otherwise, Coach Quin Snyder and the Hawks were throwing the kitchen sink at the Knicks. Coach Mike Brown saw this and posits that their learnings from Coach Snyder could be what pushes them to win the Eastern Conference, via James L. Edwards III of The Athletic.
“Quin Snyder and his staff helped us get better. I think they would say the same about us. Quin pushed a lot of the right buttons, and their team did, too. It kept making us figure out how we could help our guys be better. I appreciate that,” the Knicks head coach said.
Coach Brown is right in making that observation. In nearly all of the Knicks four factors, they improved in comparison to their regular season statistics. Once they had a 55.7% effective field goal percentage and a 113.3 defensive rating, during the Hawks series they went all the way up to a 56.9% effective field goal percentage and a 103.9 defensive rating.
The Knicks got physical with the Hawks due to Coach Snyder’s schemes. If Coach Brown and Jalen Brunson are able to retain all of this improvement once they face the winner of the series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers, they could very well win the Eastern Conference.
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