2026 NBA Playoffs: Styles Make Fights

Index:

1. Intro: STYLES MAKE FIGHTS

2. THE KAT ATTACK

3. PLAY STYLES AND TALENT GAPS

STYLES MAKE FIGHTS:

a commonly-used boxing adage that suggests that how two fighters match up stylistically matters more than their respective rank, record or reputation.

It’s also the concept that’s defined this year’s NBA Playoffs.

It doesn’t take a quantum physics-rich education to see it, either. The one-trick-pony type teams have already been sent home on early summer vacation. The strong teams have survived, to this point. The most adaptable teams are advancing; thriving while doing so.

The New York Knicks and the defending NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder are the first two teams out of 4 to advance to the conference finals; both teams are enjoying historic postseason runs thus far.

The most adaptable team in the NBA this season, in the purest sense of the word, has been the New York Knicks. Their latest adaptation has led them to a 2nd consecutive Conference Finals berth, a 7-game postseason winning streak and an NBA record point-differential through the first 10 games of a postseason at +194. I mean, my God: they surpassed the 2017 Warriors superteam in that category. Pinch me, because I must be fucking dreaming.

So, I've watched every single Knicks game this year. I even observed them up close at Madison Square Garden for 10 games. Their profile (outside of their NBA Cup victory and current playoff win streak) may appear unremarkable to most to the naked eye. But I implore you to take a deeper look.

I don't know if I've ever seen a team navigate a season quite like the New York Knicks have this year. You quite literally have to break it down into thirds; three is the number of the different styles of play they've rolled out this season.

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / GETTY IMAGES

When the Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau last summer, many people were upset. I'm talking a large number of Knicks fans and well beyond. In a vacuum, you could understand why. "Thibs" had pioneered the much-needed turnaround of the franchise after taking over the reins in 2020. He had just led the Knicks to their first Conference Finals appearance in a quarter-century.

I don't have the time to go back and collect all of the media personalities' takes shitting on the Knicks for their firing & hiring practices last summer. Just know that a LOT of takes flew along that "Same Old Knicks" vein. In hindsight, however, it appears that far too many focused on the "what" without bothering to look into the "why" when it came to the Knicks' decision to make a coaching change.

The Knicks' firing of Tom Thibodeau exposed the Knicks to a lot of media criticism. It's taken many until now to see the light on New York's decision to hire Mike Brown to replace him.

The Knicks really only knew one speed with Thibs at the helm: all gas, no brakes. He played his starters heavy minutes and played only a 8-to-9 rotation for the duration of his regular seasons as coach; sometimes cutting the rotation to as short as 7 guys at times. He believed in packing the paint defensively and allowing teams to shoot threes in surplus to beat them (and if they made them, they certainly would). And he never really installed an offensive system past a bunch of ISO and pick-and-roll.

In other words, Thibs elevated the Knicks' floor at a time when that floor desperately needed raising. The problem was that the teams' ceiling under Thibs wasn't that much higher from where the floor now was, and with a roster with more than enough talent to compete for a championship. that wasn't going to cut it for team president Leon Rose and the front office any longer.

Enter Mike Brown — as we cycle back to my earlier point about the Knicks' season in thirds.

FROM MID-OCTOBER TO MID-JANUARY,

the Knicks unveiled a completely new style of play that significantly contrasted from Thibs' ways. It was a high-tempo, high-octane style of play that led to a lot of offensive excellence (Mike Brown's self-proclaimed read & react offense, he has spoken throughout the year about a non-willingness to call plays) but also yielded defensive slippage. This was the style of play that led them to their NBA Cup victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Dec. 16, an impressive accomplishment in the midst of a sparkling 23-9 start to the year.

Unfortunately for New York, their biggest slump of the season followed up that NBA Cup title, as they proceeded to lose 9 of their next 11 and owned only the 10th-best record in the NBA (25-18) more than halfway through the season.

Jekyll & Hyde: the Knicks won the NBA Cup in mid-December, and then almost immediately dipped into their biggest funk of the season, losing 9 out of 11 games.

I was in attendance for perhaps New York's most disappointing loss of the season: a 114-97 drubbing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the hands of the lottery-bound Dallas Mavericks. The final score makes the game seem closer than it actually was; the Mavs led by 30 in the first half. Jalen Brunson was yelling in a team huddle mid-game, Karl-Anthony Towns got booed off the court, and the Knicks' players reportedly held a tense closed-door meeting to air everything out.

Mike Brown and the coaches convened as well, and they were able to pinpoint a problem. In Brown's postgame press conference following the Mavs loss, he openly discussed whether or not the Knicks' breakneck style of play was best maximizing the team's personnel. In the very next game, changes in philosophy and approach were made.

FROM MID-JANUARY TO LATE-APRIL,

the Knicks slowed their pace down, shifting back towards more of a familiar "Thibs" style, but not completely. Brown still didn't call any plays, but the pace slowed and the team's contender profile improved.

From the aforementioned first Knicks "third" of this season, the team ranked 4th in offensive rating, but were a very "mid" 18th in defensive rating. In a "defense wins championships" reality, that wasn't ever going to cut it.

The pace slowed, and New York saw immediate payoff in the win/loss column. In their first game since the tweak, they manhandled the Brooklyn Nets, holding them to only 66 points in a 54-point victory. That kicked off a run of 9 consecutive wins.

New York closed the regular season at 53 wins, a 2-game improvement from the previous regular season. Similarly to last season, they entered the postseason as the #3 seed in the East, despite not looking overly "dominant" at any point.

Knicks' 2026 All-Stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, alongside Knicks legend Allan Houston after winning the Shooting Stars competition in February.

In the first "third" of this season, the Knicks went 25-18. THIS third of the year saw them go 28-14, ranking 7th in offensive rating and an stifling 2nd in defensive rating, trailing only the defending champion Thunder in that metric. Mike Brown credits a switch in the Knicks' defensive philosophy that now forced and funneled ball-handlers towards the sideline as opposed to the middle of the floor.

Now that's what a real contender looks like!

The team still had its flaws though. Despite their good close to the season, the 1st-seeded Detroit Pistons (who pounded the Knicks in all three matchups this year), the 2nd-seeded Boston Celtics with Jayson Tatum back, and even the 4th-seeded Cavaliers with James Harden in the fold all emerged as threats in the East.

FROM LATE-APRIL TO PRESENT,

the Knicks left the regular season behind and embarked on what is the franchise's most important postseason run since Ewing, Starks and the 90s. Legacies and jobs were on the line from the top-down, especially thanks to owner James Dolan's mid-season words.

New York drew the 6th-seeded Atlanta Hawks in the first round, and after winning Game 1, they inconceivably dropped the next two games by a combined 2 points to trail the series 2-1. The New York pressure cooker promptly turned up the heat on the Knicks.

Knicks fans began calling the team soft and not good enough, among other things. Mainstream sports media began to dub them paper tiger contenders (if they even had the Knicks as real, legitimate contenders in the first place — a lot of them didn't to begin with).

The Hawks were completely keyed in on Jalen Brunson on both ends of the floor. The offense looked stale and low-energy vs a Hawks team that had athletic advantages at several positions. Mike Brown and the Knicks were forced to get back into the lab yet again. What they emerged with this time around is something that may have broken the entire NBA.

Karl-Anthony Towns searches for a passing angle vs Joel Embiid in Game 1 of the 2026 East Semis; Towns is averaging a postseason career-high 6.6 assists per game in 2026.

THE KAT ATTACK

When the Knicks acquired Karl-Anthony Towns in September of 2024, the move was almost universally lauded. It was easy to see the vision. Towns is the self-proclaimed greatest shooting big-man of all time, and with his body of work, it's hard to disagree.

Towns essentially had free reign last season under Thibs to search for his offense whenever he had the ball. And Towns delivered one of his best offensive seasons ever.

Towns' regular season this year under Mike Brown was full of irony. KAT made waves in the media day preseason presser when he expressed confusion about his role in Brown's new offense. Honestly speaking, I don't think KAT ever looked truly comfortable offensively this season, though he did close the season on an uptick. The irony lies in KAT's defensive prowess this year. It's like within his overall impact as a player, he sacrificed some of his offense to feed into his defense, resulting in what may have been the best defensive season of his career.

Towns may have been frustrated with Brown to some level this season, but what I believe to be Towns' biggest strength as an athlete has nothing to do with his play on the court. It's his personality off of it.

Imagine telling a NBA star in the middle of his prime that, despite finding a wealth of success playing one way his entire career, to change his entire approach up on the fly because "that's what it takes to win". And oh yeah, you haven't formally known each other but for a handful of weeks. That is what Mike Brown asked of KAT at the start of the year.

If you know the general ego-laden disposition of an NBA star, you can understand how risky a proposition this is. It's a great credit to KAT's adaptability in his willingness to do what's best for the team at all times that he decided to put his head down and work towards Brown's vision for himself.

KAT's stats were down across the board to start the season, but he enjoyed a steady progression as the regular season closed. When the postseason arrived and the Knicks found themselves down 2-1 in the first round, it was Brown and the coaching staff's decision to run the offense through Towns that changed everything for the team. New York hasn't just not lost a game since; they've been absolutely dominant. A 7-game winning streak in the middle of the playoffs with an average margin of victory of 26 points. That's never been done before.

I mentioned at the start of the piece that these Knicks surpassed the 2017 Warriors' mark for the highest point differential through 10 playoff games in NBA history. Mike Brown served as the top assistant on Steve Kerr's coaching staff of those 2017 Warriors. (Brown served in this role until 2022 when he left to accept the Sacramento Kings' head coaching gig)

I had the opportunity to chat with Newsday Sports veteran writer Barbara Barker on TRB's weekly radio show, The Recess Bell: On Air yesterday. She wrote to Newsday yesterday about a phone call she had with the aforementioned Steve Kerr with the topic of conversation being Mike Brown and the job he's done in Year 1 with the Knicks:

It's not a difficult task to understand why Kerr finds himself so enamored with the Knicks' recent play of late. New York's offense has been using some of the same principles that made the Golden State dynasty's offense generationally great under Kerr. In the same fashion that Draymond Green's ability to pass from the top of the key and from the pinch post completely unlocked Steph Curry as a transcendent offensive force, we're now seeing in live time how KAT's long-dormant ability to be an elite passing big has made the game remarkably easier for Jalen Brunson.

There is no adaptability without accountability. Shared accountability. Jalen Brunson, as I've wrote about before, has turned himself from a second-round pick into a perennial All-Star and an all-time great postseason performer by playing a particular style. Brunson is one of the great ISO scorers of this generation. He might just be the best ISO scorer in the game today considering his height disadvantage at "only" 6'2" tall.

To run this latest iteration of Mike Brown's offense, it didn't just take buy-in from Towns. It required the same from Brunson as well. Thankfully for New York, the Captain capitulated, sacrificing the ball and the primary playmaking duties to Towns. I personally believe that that's the essence of leadership: self-sacrifice for the betterment of the group.

This sacrifice paid immediate dividends for Brunson. If you don't believe me, numbers never lie:

[JALEN BRUNSON • FIRST 3 PLAYOFF GAMES • PRE KAT HUB] — 27.7 PPG, 6 AST, 42% FG, 37% 3PT

[JALEN BRUNSON • LAST 7 PLAYOFF GAMES • POST KAT HUB] — 27.3 PPG, 6.1 AST, 52% FG, 43% 3PT

Jalen Brunson vs Philadelphia enjoyed perhaps his most dominant postseason series to date: 29 PPG, 6 AST on 51/45/92 shooting splits in a 4-game sweep. JESSE D. GARRABRANT / GETTY

Brunson is a skilled enough scorer to get his numbers no matter what the style of play is. But note the spike in Jalen's efficiency since "giving up the ball." It's eerily reminiscent of the large-scale efficiency spike that Steph Curry saw in his first couple of seasons under Steve Kerr.

As I always say, sports is a metaphor for life. In the same way that a corporate office is doomed to fail without good & effective communication, sports teams attempting to win a championship need to be on the same page across the board to give themselves the best chance to turn those title dreams into reality.

The most talented team does NOT win the championship year in and year out. We've seen countless "superteams" fall flat on their collective faces. Why? Talent alone can not overcome poor habits and a disjointed group.

The reason why I'm not completely surprised by the Knicks' recent prosperity is because Mike Brown has emphasized the need for consistent collaboration and shared input between the coaches and the players from his very first day on the job. Brunson, Josh Hart and other Knicks players made comment about how Brown reached out to each player on the roster via phone call shortly after he was officially hired as the next Knicks head coach. Brunson alluded to Brown's communication-centric approach during yesterday's post-practice media session:

The off-ball movement, the sharp cutting, the motion offense, the offensive skill and shotmaking, and the suffocating defense that the Knicks have put on display has put the NBA on notice. Neither the Hawks or the 76ers (the latter of which saw a good number of people pick them to upset the Knicks following their 3-1 comeback vs Boston) had come anywhere close to "figuring out" the Knicks on either end of the floor. New York's Conference Finals opponent, which will be either Detroit or Cleveland, will each present bigger, different challenges to the Knicks.

But New York is heavily favored to make it to the NBA Finals regardless of who they'll face next for a reason. What makes great teams like the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder so difficult to beat 4 times in a 7-game series is that they can beat you in a myriad of ways.

They can overwhelm you offensively and they can suffocate you defensively. They can beat you in a high-scoring shootout or they can emerge victorious in a low-scoring slugfest. The less predictable a team and their style is from game-to-game, the less likely you are to figure a way to take them down. I believe the Knicks now have this quality in full-force.

Deuce McBride and Mikal Bridges have both overcome slow starts to the postseason and have been major contributors for NYK during their current win streak; Josh Hart and OG Anunoby have been two of NYK's best postseason performers thus far.

When a contender demonstrates this high a ceiling of play for an extended string of games in THIS dominant a fashion, it becomes to apparent to fans, media and opposing teams alike that only that team can get in the way of their own goals and aspirations more than any other team can.

PLAY STYLES AND TALENT GAPS

"Styles making fights" is a trend I've seen throughout the 2026 NBA playoffs to this point, and this theory has been most evident with the only 3 teams that won 60+ games during the regular season: the Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Detroit Pistons.

Each of these three teams have lived up to this idea in 3 vastly differing directions.

We've already discussed OKC's

wide range of abilities at their arsenal to beat teams with. That's been put on full display even more so since the playoffs began; the champs are a perfect 8-0 ahead of the Western Conference Finals. Their competition hasn't exactly been the toughest to this point (the 8th-seeded Suns and the Lakers without Luka Doncic), but make no mistake — they've still demonstrated excellence and top-tier versatility. They've been without their second-best player, Jalen Williams for the bulk of the run and the bulk of the entire season, but they haven't missed a beat, largely due to the emergence of 2nd-year guard Ajay Mitchell.

Ajay Mitchell is now a household name after his prowess in the West Semis; Mitchell averaged 22.5/6/3 on 56% from the floor in OKC's 4-game sweep of LAL.

That's just a small example of what makes OKC so great. Their play style is whatever it takes to win on any given day.

This quality is also what makes them maddening to play against (well, aside from all the flopping, grifting, and free-throw shooting they do).

The vast majority of the league already operates on a talent disadvantage vs OKC. When you throw in the fact that they can beat you whichever way you want to play, it only extends that gap wider.

That's what play-styles can do in sports. Efficient play-styles can expand talent gaps, while rigid, one-dimensional play styles can shrink these talent gaps.

The San Antonio Spurs

benefitted from Victor Wembanyama's non-suspension in Game 5 following his fiercely-thrown elbow at Timberwolves' big man Naz Reid's neck on Sunday.

I have no interest in debating whether or not Wemby should have gotten suspended for this. Why would I bother when the NBA seems to make the rules up as they go anyway?

What I am here to do is speak about how dominant a player Wemby is as a two-way force already in just his third NBA season.

Wembanyama has raised the bar of statistical evidence so high (maybe even 7'5" high) that his Game 5 stat line doesn't even look that overly impressive on the surface: he went for 27 points, 17 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks in San Antonio's 126-97 triumph over Minnesota in Game 5 of that series on Tuesday.

The fact that the stat line above can already be construed as a "meh" game for Wembanyama already speaks to his generational-level impact as a player. It's frightening: the 22-year-old Wemby isn't even close to entering his prime yet, but he already might be the single-most impactful superstar in the association already. He chews up teams' opposing gameplans and approaches and spits them out right in their faces... and laughs while he does it.

Wemby IS the play-style of the Spurs, which is to say that their play-style is forcing you to adjust to & work around a springy 7'5" alien all game.

RONALD CORTES / GETTY

The Detroit Pistons

are in trouble yet again. Following Wednesday's collapse and 117-113 OT defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers to fall behind 3-2 in the East Semis, the Pistons, who went 60-22 in the regular season, are now just an even 6-6 in the playoffs.

They had to overcome a 3-1 deficit to the 8th-seeded Orlando Magic to escape out of that series (that included a 22-pt comeback in Game 6). Yes, the Magic's play-style was one well-equipped to compete with and almost take down Detroit, but if that didn't present enough red flags for people, their season is now on the brink yet again.

RICK OSENTOSKI / IMAGN IMAGES

All of their struggles; all of their losses in these playoffs have all revolved around the same core issue.

It seems silly to suggest that Detroit was a better team last year than they are currently. But take into account the playmakers they lost in the offseason: Tim Hardaway Jr., Malik Beasley, and most notably Dennis Schroder (who now is facing them in this series as a Cavalier).

They ushered in Duncan Robinson and Daniss Jenkins to replace those guys, and they've had fine seasons in doing so. But the clear step down in secondary playmaking ability around Cade Cunningham has been the key reason why (among many) why Detroit just hasn't posed the same threat offensively, despite their defense still at an elite level.

The offensive burden that rests on Cade Cunningham's shoulders is enormous, and while he has the requisite mindset to handle it mentally, he just is not where he needs to be in his career right now to handle it in a way that consistently leads to postseason victories.

Cade Cunningham has taken statistical leaps across the board in these playoffs. Unfortunately, that includes turnovers: Cunningham is averaging 5.8 turnovers per game in the postseason, up from 3.7 in the regular season. / GETTY

Detroit's play-style is similar to the "Thibs-ball" I mentioned earlier in this piece. I'm not going to repeat myself entirely; I've already spelled out how while that play-style can raise the hell out of a "floor", it does the players no favors in pursuit of a raised "ceiling." It's like the Pistons have just been bumping their heads against this proverbial ceiling all postseason, yelling "please raise! Raise, God damnit!!"

The Pistons are talented on paper, but when Jalen Duren goes from All-Star level production in the regular season to... this:

via STATMUSE

...yeah, you're going to struggle to score the ball.

Styles make fights. Some styles can shrink talent gaps and/or make seeding & rankings irrelevant. Some styles can expand talent gaps and serve towards domination. And some styles can threaten to end a season prematurely.

So the NBA Playoffs go.