TNT's Stan Van Gundy calls Knicks' late-game defense 'soft'
Indiana Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin shoots over the Knicks' OG Anunoby in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Stan Van Gundy stayed up late Wednesday night analyzing Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on national television for TNT.
Then he woke up at 5:30 Thursday to study video of the frantic final minutes of the Pacers’ 138-135 overtime victory over the Knicks before speaking to a small group of reporters at a Midtown Manhattan hotel on the morning after.
The review confirmed what he watched in real time – what he called “terrible” defense from both teams.
“If you wanted to put together a positive defensive edit to show your team,” Van Gundy said, “you would have a hard job trying to come up with 10 good defensive possessions where you really liked what you had.”
But he reserved his harshest criticism for the Knicks, whose late-game defense he called at various times “soft,” “very soft” and “super-soft.”
Van Gundy, an NBA head coach for 13 seasons with four teams, could not believe what he was watching at times – even from the Knicks’ top defenders.
He cited one ineffective switch from Karl-Anthony Towns, who is not known for his defense, and two from OG Anunoby, who is known for his, on Aaron Nesmith’s late, back-breaking run of three-point baskets.
“I was shocked by it,” Van Gundy said of Anunoby, “because he’s legitimately a great defender who has good attention to detail.”
The Knicks' defense also whiffed on a dunk late in overtime by former Knick Obi Toppin that put the Pacers up by three points with 15 seconds left.
It was Xs and Os of that sort, Van Gundy said, that would occupy the Knicks on Thursday, not emotional fallout from one of the worst collapses in playoff history.
“Players are pretty resilient,” he said. “There will not be a hangover. They’ll look at the mistakes and kick themselves and get ready to go.
“They've got to clean up their pick-and-roll coverages and being up and more aggressive. Their communication’s got to get a lot better on what they're doing.”
Van Gundy said as a coach he would focus on telling his players that the mistakes are “very correctable.”
“It drives you nuts as a coach,” he said, “but also players, coaches. I mean, that stuff's correctable, stuff that needs to be taken care of.”
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game, “[Nesmith] got too much airspace, and some of it is transition. Some of it is coming off pin-downs. Some of it is communication.”
As a coach, how would Van Gundy have handled a situation such as the one that faced the Pacers’ Rick Carlisle?
On one hand, Carlisle was not a fan of Tyrese Haliburton revisiting Reggie Miller’s 1994 choke gesture after he tied the score at the buzzer in regulation time. On the other hand, Carlisle said Haliburton has earned the right to do what he wants. (Haliburton thought he had made a game-winning three-pointer, not a game-tying two-pointer.)
“Rick's an old-school guy in a lot of ways, and I'm sure he would rather not see that,” Van Gundy said. “But at the same time, the emotion of the game, he also understands. He's been in a lot of big games. He's won a championship.
“I think they'll spend more time talking about rebounding and their own defense than anything else.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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