With the NBA Cup heading to Las Vegas this weekend for its semifinal and championship rounds, we’re diving into the noteworthy trends bolstering and hindering some of the teams that have factored heavily into the tournament.
Well, sort of. The New York Knicks had a dominant tournament run but then collapsed in the second half at home against the Atlanta Hawks Wednesday, meaning they’ll be watching the Cup semifinals from home. The shorthanded Orlando Magic also dropped its quarterfinal matchup, losing to the Milwaukee Bucks in the final minute.
Nonetheless, the NBA Cup has showcased New York’s most consistent player, who leads the league in an impressive defensive stat. Orlando, meanwhile, has managed to thrive despite missing its two best players and ranking last in the league in a key metric. Lastly, we’ll explain why last season’s NBA Cup darling was nowhere to be found this time around.
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The Knicks wing blocking more 3s than Wemby
A deeper dive into Haliburton’s early issues
How is Orlando still winning without its stars?
OG is everywhere for New York’s slumping defense
Late in the third quarter of last week’s Hornets-Knicks matchup at Madison Square Garden, Charlotte forward KJ Simpson tracked down a loose ball in the right corner and, seemingly having ample space, uncorked a 3-point try.
But as the ball was leaving his fingertips, Knicks wing OG Anunoby came flying in from the paint and swatted the shot into the sixth row.
On the next play, Anunoby chased down Hornets forward Cody Martin, who had generated a sliver of room in the left corner to launch a stepback 3. Anunoby darted toward Martin, rising up to send that shot into the crowd and the Garden crowd into a frenzy.
OG Anunoby with a block, another block, and a triple 🔥pic.twitter.com/v8ChmABWmu
— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) December 6, 2024
The dominant sequence, wrapped up in about 10 seconds of game time, isn’t outside the norm for Anunoby. The 6-foot-8 disruptive stopper has blocked a league-leading nine shots from deep this season. (For comparison, San Antonio Spurs 7-3 big man and NBA blocks leader Victor Wembanyama has five.)
On Monday, with New York leading the Toronto Raptors by two points with just 30 seconds left, Anunoby got taken out of the play briefly on a screen by Jakob Poeltl. But he hustled back into the mix and caught up to former Knick RJ Barrett — one of the players he was traded for last season — to block his close-range shot and seal the victory for New York.
Those sorts of game-changing defensive efforts, in addition to Anunoby’s career-best scoring numbers, have made him arguably the team’s most consistent player. Those moments mean even more as the Knicks’ defense seeks a return to the top 10, where it has been for a good portion of coach Tom Thibodeau’s tenure.
Anunoby’s block rate is the highest of his career, which is a byproduct of the Knicks seeking to help Karl-Anthony Towns, who has struggled with rim protection as a full-time center. Similarly, teams have found a surprising amount of success attacking Mikal Bridges, the 2022 runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year, by putting him in pick-and-rolls.
So as a free safety of sorts, Anunoby has triaged the defense, tending to whatever issue he sees as most urgent. He’s been successful in that regard, deflecting 93 passes (second most in the NBA) while also helping lift the Knicks to a 1.7% forced-turnover rate when he’s on the floor against a 1.2% rate when he’s off it. The difference between the two percentages might not seem like much, but the former would rank New York near the middle of the pack in turnovers forced, while the latter would rank last.
Asked about his experience defending with Toronto — a team that utilized an unorthodox, switching, all-forwards style of defense under coach Nick Nurse — Anunoby said it was synchronization. “Being on a string, and scrambling so that the next man can cover the next man, and so on,” said Anunoby, who signed a five-year, $210 million deal to stay with the Knicks this past offseason.
“Our Toronto team was great defensively. Kawhi [Leonard]. Marc [Gasol]. Kyle [Lowry]. Serge [Ibaka]. The whole team was full of defenders. Seeing how they communicated and moved, I grew from that.”
The Knicks reached the NBA Cup knockout round, unlike the Pacers, who went 0-4 in tournament play after finishing runner-up to the Los Angeles Lakers in last year’s inaugural in-season tournament. Indiana joins the lowly Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets and Utah Jazz as the only winless teams in group play. But unlike that lottery-bound trio, the Pacers are six months removed from playing in the Eastern Conference finals. More was expected of them in 2024-25, and much of that belief stemmed from the leaguewide respect for franchise player Tyrese Haliburton.
But the All-Star guard has been one of the least consistent players, let alone stars, in the league this season. In more ways than one.
The 24-year-old’s scoring numbers are scattershot. Over Haliburton’s past five games, he’s logged eight, 30, 17, 23 and nine points, respectively. Similarly, the first time he faced the Knicks in late October, he finished the game scoreless and 0-for-8 from the field before going off for a season-high 35 points on 11-for-18 shooting against New York two and a half weeks later.
That puzzling dichotomy exists in a couple of other areas. Most noticeably, he has been far less effective when playing on the road. His scoreless game against the Knicks was at the Garden, and he has finished with fewer than 10 points six times, already matching last season’s total through just 25 games this season. Five of those outings have taken place away from Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
His home-road splits — 48% shooting in Indianapolis but 37% elsewhere, with a 14% drop in 3-point shooting between the two — are among the most jarring in the league. Haliburton’s 7.1 point-per-game dropoff on the road is among the 10 largest in the league so far.
And Haliburton hasn’t gotten to the basket as effectively. His dunk and layup attempts are down considerably, from nearly six per game last season to just 3.5 currently, according to Second Spectrum tracking. He attempted shots on more than 36% of his drives to the basket last season, whereas the number this season is just 27.5%.
The numbers are even more drastic when Haliburton drives to his left: 34% of those plays ended with him taking a shot last season (and he averaged 1.15 points per direct drive). This season, the number is just 19% (and 0.92 points per direct drive).
The other thing to monitor is the Pacers’ rotten perimeter shooting when Haliburton drives left, then kicks the ball out to a shooter. That play has created a minuscule 0.67 points per drive, down from 1.11 last season, leaving defenses better positioned to load up on Haliburton when he drives.
It’s fair to wonder whether last season’s hamstring injury is still a factor. He did, after all, play with Team USA this summer after going deep into the postseason. And Haliburton has found ways to give defenses problems. He ranks second in assists, and the increased number of on-ball screens he’s set this season has generated a massive 1.25 points per possession, the fourth-highest rate in the league among players with at least 100 set screens.
Orlando had a brief wobble after losing 22-year-old Paolo Banchero to an injured oblique, dropping its first four games without the All-Star forward. The Magic have won 14 of their past 18 since, even after also losing rising young star Franz Wagner and ranking last in 3-point shooting. (Wagner tore his oblique, while wings Gary Harris and Jonathan Isaac each have hamstring injuries that have forced them to miss time recently.)
A third of the way through the season, the Magic are 17-10. To win at that clip despite the dismal 3-point shooting is no small accomplishment. The 2016-17 season, when Russell Westbrook won league MVP with the Oklahoma City Thunder, was the last time a team ranked at the bottom of the league in 3-point percentage won at least 25 games. Since 2000, just three teams — Westbrook’s Thunder, the 2008-09 Philadelphia 76ers and the 2005-06 Denver Nuggets — have gone at least .500 while finishing last in 3s. And none has come close to Orlando’s current 51-win pace.
How are the Magic doing this? Simply put, they have dominated in the margins. The Magic boast a top-3 defense that gives up the fewest second-chance points and 3-point attempts in the NBA. Orlando’s offense, meanwhile, gets to the line more per shot attempt than anyone in the league.
For a team playing an extremely gritty brand of basketball right now, those plays add up. Orlando hung around until the final minute in Tuesday’s NBA Cup loss to Milwaukee after Jalen Suggs left the game in the third quarter with a hand injury but returned with 18 points in the fourth.) Suggs, normally a third option behind Banchero and Wagner, had a team-high 32 points against Milwaukee, one game after posting 26 in a win over Phoenix without either star.)
Under Jamahl Mosley, currently a Coach of the Year front-runner along with Cleveland Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson, Orlando has a clear identity, even as it rises out of this stretch of injuries.
ESPN Research’s Matt Williams contributed to this report.
Source: espn.com