Knicks changes the starting line -up, while Tom Thibodeau goes into play 3 with Mitchell Robinson over Josh 3

The prevailing story of the 2025 Eastern Conference was how much the New York Knicks occurred With your starting line -up in the game. The five-member group of Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns led the regular season with 940 overall tips and leads the playoffs with 308, but their effectiveness decreased in the course of the months, and in the playoffs it was bad.

In these 308 after -season minutes, New York's starter was exceeded with 50 points. The group was exceeded in two digits in six of the 14 Knicks Playoff games. In the previous final of the Eastern Conference, it was exceeded by 29 points in 43 minutes. Since the Knicks follow the Pacers with an NBA final trip on the line with 0: 2, this group simply does not cut them. So the Knicks change.

For game 3, Mitchell Robinson will start hard over Josh. Robinson played 273 minutes in this post and the Knicks won these minutes with 41 points. In this series you are in its 50 minutes plus-6. The five-man line-up by Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby, Towns and Robinson only played for seven minutes in this off-season and was exceeded with seven points.

Tom Thibodeau's dogmatic commitment to his starting line -up could cost the Knicks a trip to the NBA final

Sam Quinn

On paper, the decision to start Robinson for hard makes sense on several levels:

• New York's biggest advantage in this series is on the glass. The Knicks took ninth place in the back bumper rate in the NBA, and they mainly did their best rebounder without Robinson. The Pacers took 28th place. In this series, the Knicks pull 58.8% of the available rebounds with Robinson on the floor. When Robinson and Towns shared the floor in this post, the Knicks packed 57.6% of the available rebounds. Both numbers had put each other team in the shade in the regular season.
• Robinson, who missed most of this season due to an injury, is currently not conditioned that they play a typical start load of a typical starter. He only achieved an average of 17.1 minutes per game. In the playoffs, he had played no more than 25 minutes and eight seconds before game 2 of this series. But Tom Thibodeau played him 29 minutes and 20 seconds in game 2. The problem is that far fewer minutes were available during the game to rest. In the first half of game 1 he played about 16 minutes in a row and was visibly tired in the second half. By starting Robinson, the Knicks were able to give him more minutes, but spread them enough to find him adequately that rest in the game.
• If at the beginning of every quarter Robinson, on which the downward risk of deliberately polluted a player to send it into the line, its entire team is put into the bonus. This is far less tasty with, for example, nine minutes in a quarter than three or four. The Knicks would probably like to accept Indiana at the beginning of a district of Robinson because they could then simply remove it from the game and play an entire quarter in the bonus.
• Robinson's start opens the door for the Knicks to re -host your defensive games in an interesting way. For example: New York's best defender OG Anunoby usually defends Pascal Siakam in this matchup. However, Siakam dropped 2 39 points on the Knicks in game. If Robinson is not an ideal matchup on the this, but remember that the cities kept Kevin Durant in a series last year, so it is feasible. The advantage of this approach is that Anunoby can guard Haliburton. Sure, he could try to switch his way back to his preferred matchup with cities, as he often did in games 1 and 2, but this would mean to drive with Siakam, not with gymnast, pick-and roll. This is just one way of how Robinson could realign the matchups in this series, but there are others.
• Hart's best quality is its energy. The Pacers have one of the best benches in the NBA. If you bring him fresh in the face, a little more momentum can give him a little more wish. It may also be reinterpreted by bank benches in New York. The kinks need more ball handling on the floor when Brunson sits, for example. Therefore, it is a way for the Knicks to play hard next to Deice McBride to cut their rotation to seven (sorry cam payne) in the now undoubtedly -free games.

Darting creation changes are an anthema for Thibodeau. No coach in the latest NBA history has rely on a small number of players than he. Despite the injuries taken into account, New York used only 12 starting rates in 96 games this season. That is the least in the NBA. But losing two home games in a series with seven games breeds despair. New York Starter just doesn't work, so the Knicks take a worthwhile game in a new start group with the season on the line.