NBA Stats Notebook: Why the Knicks' low-passing offense works so well

The NBA schedule naturally lends itself to several checkpointsthroughout the season that serve as frames of reference to check ateam's pulse. The trade deadline and All-Star break are typicallyviewed as the midseason opportunities to evaluate performance.

However, for some teams, there's a specific date when theirseason drastically changed. For this year's New York Knicks, thatdate is December 4, 2022.

That night, in a 92-81 win against the Cleveland Cavaliers, TomThibodeau trimmed New York's rotation to nine players. Since makingthe tweak, the Knicks are 27-14 and one of three squads with top-10offensive and defensive ratings, per Cleaning the Glass.

New York has bounced up to the fifth seed in a strong EasternConference and only gotten better since acquiring Josh Hart priorto the trade deadline. His addition, marking another importantseason benchmark, has coincided with a seven-game winning streakthat has given this young squad a glow in the nationalspotlight.

The Knicks are fun because they don't have one cure-all playerresponsible for the surge. Sure, Jalen Brunson's off-dribble juicehas changed the game, and Hart has been a seamless fit so far, butthis squad really jells because of collective improvement andsynergy across the rotation.

New York owns the second-best offensive rating innon-garbage-time minutes since Dec. 4, and they are No. 1 since thewin streak began. But interestingly, their scoring distributionlooks nothing like the pass-heavy green flags we associate with"good" offense. Look at some of these ball-movement numbers fromthe league's stats database since Dec. 4:

StatValue (sinceDec. 4)NBARankOffensive Rating116.25thPasses per game265.525thAssists per game21.630thPotential assists pergame38.930thAssist-to-passratio9.6%29th% of makes that wereassisted52.3%30th