After the New York Knicks’ series-clinching win over the Detroit Pistons on Thursday night, Mikal Bridges was asked about the challenge of guarding Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in their upcoming series against the Boston Celtics. He kept things very honest: “They’re hell of players,” Bridges said. “Got moves for days and physical. Yeah, definitely going to be a challenge. But it’s never one-on-one. You got four guys behind you. Your teammates. So, just team defense and just help each other out.”
Tatum and Brown are two of the best forwards in the NBA, and keeping them under wraps will be a massive challenge for Bridges and the Knicks.
But it's one they tried desperately to prepare for.
Knicks tried to build their roster to stop Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, but there are huge flaws
Over the last two years, the Knicks have loaded up their roster, and the way they’ve done it has made it seem like they’re trying to build a roster to beat the Celtics.
They made a deal with the Toronto Raptors to land OG Anunoby—one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA—and then, this past summer, they traded five first-round picks for Mikal Bridges—another elite perimeter defender. Both guys are built perfectly to stand up to Tatum and Brown.
But even with those two guys in place, guarding Tatum or Brown in a one-on-one situation is an extremely tough task. As Bridges noted, the Knicks will have to rely on their entire roster in order to defend the two Celtics stars.
Even though Anunoby and Bridges will almost undoubtedly take on the two matchups, they will need the other guys on the floor to help pick up the slack.
Unfortunately for the Knicks, Tatum and Brown have done a great job of picking on other matchups, using screens and off-ball movement to get Anunoby and Bridges off of them.
With Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns on the floor, the Celtics will almost always have two players on the court that they are comfortable picking on in a mismatch.
Tatum is elite at destroying bigs in space, and he loves to get a screen so he can get Towns on him. Meanwhile, one of Brown’s favorite situations is posting up guards, which means getting a screen from whoever Brunson is guarding would help put him in an ideal position.
The point is, both Tatum and Brown have ways to avoid having to attack Bridges and Anunoby one-on-one, and that (more than anything) is why the Knicks will have to rely on their entire roster to try to slow those guys down.