Knicks counting on retooled roster to get past  Pistons

Last season in the playoffs, Jalen Brunson had league statisticians scrolling through the history books with every performance. He piled up numbers that put him in the rarefied air of the likes of Jerry West and Michael Jordan.

And maybe he could do it again if necessary.

“I mean, it’s always business as usual,” Brunson said. “The playoffs are a little bit different. You get more time to prepare, especially with this week, you’re watching all these games, the intensity, what’s at stake. You’re just ready to go. I don’t want to say I have a playoff mode. I just know it’s time to go.”

But as the Knicks ready for the start of the opening-round series against the Detroit Pistons, the hope is that the work the front office did in the offseason has taken that burden off his shoulders.

The 82-game ramp-up to this postseason included ups and downs, and an incomplete grade on the trades that brought Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges to the team.

Towns has delivered on the offensive end all season long. Bridges and OG Anunoby have had their moments, particularly during the month Brunson missed while recovering from a right ankle sprain.

For Brunson, the favorite to be named the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year and an All-NBA selection again, the difference this time is that he doesn’t have to do it all game long or every game.

“I just think that our team has done a great job of finding ways to win all year,” Towns said. “You don’t get 51 wins winning the same way every single night. So just continuing to utilize that experience, utilize the ebbs and flows of the regular season and cashing in on that experience in the postseason. Execute, execute, execute. It’s all about that.

“For us, we just wanted to come in here and help this team succeed and win. Obviously, the regular season, we found a way to get [51] wins and now we have to have that translate to the playoffs. So I think the regular season just gave the team an opportunity to see us in different ways where we can help our team win. And not just putting the ball in the basket, but maybe it’s different ways, whether it’s on the ball or off the ball.”

Now the Knicks open at Madison Square Garden with a team at full strength, healthy and rested and they hope in rhythm and able to jump on Detroit quickly and halt the talk of the physical Pistons.

The Pistons have a star in Cade Cunningham who in the regular season at least could be regarded as the equal of Brunson. But what Brunson did in the postseason, on the biggest stage, is a different level of production and one that Cunningham has not yet had the chance to demonstrate.

The difference now is the Pistons need that from Cunningham to have a chance. The Knicks, with a stacked starting lineup — four players had at least 40 points in a game this season and the one who didn’t, Josh Hart, posted nine triple-doubles — can go in different directions, at least until the fourth quarter, when Brunson will have the game in his hands.

“I think that’s the nature of our league is how quickly can you adapt to things?” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “So when you come into a new season, you always have some new faces, and how do you get everyone onto the same page? So you have to have everyone pulling together. And then, same thing, things happen during the course of a season and you can lose a guy for 10 games and then someone else comes in and their strengths are different than the guy they’re replacing. We said when Jalen went out that we knew we couldn’t replace him individually, that we’d have to do it collectively, and that’s what we did.”

“We’re here to help him,” Hart said. “We know that’s the thing with why we’re brought here. I think Coach realized that when JB went down, it let us grow a little bit more and gave confidence to all of us and gave confidence to them to know that we can [make plays] and help each other out to try to win a game. So definitely relieve pressure ’cause him getting blitzed all the time and all that stuff makes it easier for us because then we play four-on-three .  .  . It should make things so much easier for him.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.