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NBA Rival NBA coaches have seen the difference a year has made to the Knicks with the arrival of new head coach Mike Brown. Kenneth Richmond / Getty Images LAS VEGAS — At this point in the season, no one knows the New York Knicks better than Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley. His team has already faced New York four times, and it’s not even Christmas. The two sides have had some battles over the last two years, and while the players haven’t changed much from last season to this season, his counterpart on the sideline has. Advertisement Mike Brown is now in charge of the Knicks, who will play in the NBA Cup final Tuesday against the Spurs. He took over for Tom Thibodeau, who was fired after leading the Knicks to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years and helping bring respect back to Madison Square Garden. At the time of the move, New York’s decision-makers said their singular goal was to win championships, and they believed that moving on from Thibodeau was necessary to get over the hump. Brown came in with the idea of wanting the Knicks to play faster. He wanted more movement. He wanted to use his star player, Jalen Brunson, a bit differently. Mosley, while he still sees some similarities, has observed some of what Brown is trying to implement. “We talked about this from Game 1 — Jalen is getting off the ball a bit more, coming back to get it, ” Mosley said. “So, now, you’re playing against closeouts and playing against a shifted defense as opposed to being able to load up on him. ” Brunson is still very much the pick-and-roll maestro that he was under Thibodeau, but he is, in fact, being utilized off the ball more. Last season, per NBA. com, Brunson averaged 1. 9 catch-and-shoot shots per game. This season, that number is up to 3. 2 attempts. The time Brunson spends holding onto the ball is down, which helps further show how things have subtly changed. A year ago, Brunson held onto the ball for 6. 06 seconds per touch. This year, it’s down to 5. 18 seconds per touch. In 2024-25, Brunson averaged 6. 04 dribbles per touch. This season, that’s down to 4. 86 dribbles. By how the NBA defines pace, which is a bit of a flawed stat, the Knicks aren’t playing that much faster. They’re still bottom-five in that category. Their secondary assists and passes per game aren’t much improved, if at all. Advertisement However, there tends to be more motion and movement in the half-court, an effort to get defenses moving from side to side. It might not necessarily mean the Knicks are cutting more (they’re not) to get defenses off balance, but the ball is moving with a bit more frequency before they get into their actions. “It just seems like that (Villanova) action that they’re running with the DHOs and then all of a sudden they’re swinging it around, ” Hornets head coach Charles Lee said. “There’s still some of the similar tendencies, but maybe a little more pace and a little more early ball movement. ” As of late, Raptors coach Darko Rajaković sees New York getting away from its movement offense a little bit more. He feels like Brown, similarly to Thibodeau, is leaning more into the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll and simply utilizing his best offensive players with more frequency. Rajaković doesn’t see the slight shift back to what the Knicks did last year under Thibodeau as a bad thing. He sees it as smart. “The first 10 or 12 games, it felt like they were running more, ” Rajaković said. “Now, it seems like they’re settling into personnel. They’re playing a little bit more to the strengths of their main players, but at the same time try to implement ball movement and body movement. Obviously, they’re a very talented team, so it’s the right thing to do to focus on the strengths of those guys and let them be who they are. ” Jazz coach Will Hardy has similar sentiments when observing the Knicks’ offense. While statistically New York isn’t getting more paint touches than last year’s team, Hardy does feel like the drives to the basket from the likes of Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart are done more to generate 3s as opposed to getting to the rim. The Knicks rank third in the NBA in open 3-point attempts per game and 25th in wide-open 3-point attempts this year. Last season, New York ranked 10th and 29th, respectively. Advertisement A big reason the Knicks have been able to generate open 3s at a high frequency is their offensive rebounding. Mitchell Robinson is looking to kick out to the perimeter each time he swallows up an offensive board. “We spent all day talking about how much pressure they’re putting on the paint, but they’re doing it to generate catch-and-shoot 3s, ” Hardy said. “There are a lot of similarities because the players, ultimately, dictate the style. There is a lot of Jalen Brunson that looks very familiar to me, but I feel like the spacing that they’re playing with and the dribble-drive provides different looks. It allows their personnel to play off of closeouts. ” Defensively, Brown has hammered home a “shifting” defense, one where the main goal is to stop an opposing offense from getting to the rim, even if it means giving up clean looks from 3. Bridges spoke recently about how he always considered helping off the strong-side corner a sin throughout his basketball journey. However, to take away the drives to the basket, he and his teammates find themselves doing things that were and are a shock to their basketball core. Lee has taken notice, too. “Things that you thought were rules before have changed, ” the Hornets coach said.  “Some of that has had to change because offenses have gotten so much better and so much more creative. The talent level is so high right now. You have to honor everyone on the court. Everyone is shooting 3s. Now you’re just thinking about what shots you’re willing to give up, how you’re going to speed up the other team. “Helping from the strong corner, I feel like I saw it early on from Miami. It was a thing that was a sin almost, you don’t do it. But they did it at such a high level and I think teams have watched that and incorporate it a bit more. ” On the surface, this season’s Knicks team and last season’s team haven’t changed a lot. Both offenses ranked in the top five through 25 games last year and both defenses ranked in the top 15.  The pace hasn’t changed much. The 3-point volume is better but the paint touches are down. Advertisement However, New York is three games better at this point in the season than it was last year. A weaker Eastern Conference has helped with that, too, but so have some of the subtle changes Brown has made, like leaning into Brunson’s off-ball shooting, playing more spacing-friendly lineups and implementing a defense that perfectly suits his best defenders in OG Anunoby and Bridges. Talent wins in this league. The Knicks have a lot of it. The difference between good and great, though, is in the details, and Brown is still trying to unearth some that were hidden before. James L. Edwards III is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the New York Knicks. Previously, he covered the Detroit Pistons at The Athletic for seven seasons and, before that, was a reporter for the Lansing State Journal, where he covered Michigan State and high school sports. Follow James L. on Twitter @JLEdwards III