The Knicks are shooting well on wide-open threes. They just aren’t generating enough of them.
And they aren’t making their shots over late contests, either, two factors directly contributing to the defensive woes of a team that has been terrible in transition during their skid of nine losses in the last 11 games.
It’s the shot they made with far more regularity leading up to their NBA Cup Final victory over the San Antonio Spurs.
The Knicks have fallen off of a cliff ever since, a 2-9 record beginning with their New Year’s Eve loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.
And missed shots are largely to blame for the Knicks’ $209 million offense, the one allegedly capable of compensating for the flaws of a roster whose two-best players struggle on the defensive end.
The scoring punch has flatlined. And so has the pulse at Madison Square Garden.
The Knicks can help themselves generate more wide-open looks if they run Mike Brown’s offense. But instead of prioritizing touching the paint then spraying the ball out to an open shooter, the Knicks have spiraled into iso-ball, over-dribbling and tough shots.
They are shooting 40% on wide-open threes but are generating a league-low 14.6 over their last 11 games, 10 fewer than the top-three teams creating 25 or more a night.
Which naturally introduces the second issue: The players the Knicks have paid to make shots have not been carrying their weight. Good players should be making shots over late contests.
The NBA defines a wide-open three-point attempt as a shot taken behind the arc with a defender six or more feet away. It defines an open three-point attempt as a shot taken with a defender four-to-six feet away from the shooter.
The Knicks rank fourth in open threes attempted over their last 11 games. They are bottom-six in efficiency (30.4%) on those shots during that stretch and are second-to-last ahead of only the Orlando Magic over their last five games.
To make matters worse, Jalen Brunson is the only player consistently converting on jump shots in the 2026 Knicks calendar year.
Brunson entered Wednesday’s must-win matchup against the Brooklyn Nets shooting 44.1% on open threes over the Knicks’ last 11 games and 50% over his team’s last five.
The same cannot be said of his teammates. During the life of the Knicks’ 11-game funk, Miles McBride, Josh Hart, Tyler Kolek and Mikal Bridges are all shooting 30-34% on open threes while Karl-Anthony Towns, Jordan Clarkson and OG Anunoby are each shooting worse than 25% with defenders four-to-six feet away. And over their last five games, Towns is at 27.3%, McBride is shooting 20%, and both Anunoby (12.5%) and Clarkson (10%) have percentages in the gutter.
And when the Knicks won the NBA Cup? When they looked the part of championship contenders through the first leg and a half of Brown’s time in New York? McBride was shooting 48% on open threes, Towns 42% and Bridges, Anunoby and Landry Shamet were in the high 30s.
It’s a make-or-miss league, and the Knicks have been missing a ton of shots, the same kind of shots they made to start the year.
Except now, the ball is carrying the weight of championship expectations under New York City’s bright lights in a season falling off the rails.
