How the Knicks’ ‘sprays’ under Mike Brown have soaked the Spurs’ defense

SAN ANTONIO — The biggest upset through two games of the NBA Finals isn’t that the New York Knicks won both on the road against the 62-win San Antonio Spurs, or that New York’s Karl-Anthony Towns, thus far, has outplayed Spurs’ larger-than-life big man Victor Wembanyama, or that a guy who got cut by the freaking Washington Wizards has been a crunch-time hero on this stage.

Those are notable, but they do not take the crown. The biggest upset, by far, is that it took Knicks coach Mike Brown 1,276 words into his ebullient, borderline-ecstatic stream-of-consciousness news conference after his team’s Game 2 win before he finally blurted out the word “spray.”

“Sprays” — his word for plays on which a player inside the 3-point line kicks the ball out to a player beyond the arc, whether as a result of a drive, catch, offensive board or divine intervention — might be the defining term in the Brownian lexicon. While it took him a comparatively long time to get around to it after the game on Friday, he normally uses this term with the frequency you might expect from, say, a proprietor of specialty hoses, or perhaps the CEO of Aqua Net.

Sprays don’t have to result in an immediate 3-point shot, by the way. It’s the process that matters here, not the result. The idea is that they create an advantage for the player who receives the pass against a defender who has to reverse direction and close it to him. Maybe that sets up another drive, which maybe results in a layup or maybe leads to yet another spray. Rinse, lather and repeat.

In this case, late in the second quarter of Game 2, the “repeat” part went through four cycles before the Knicks finally achieved the desired result. At the four-minute mark, with San Antonio leading 48-44, the Knicks executed four sprays in the final eight seconds of the shot clock to yield a wide-open corner 3 for one of their best shooters, Mikal Bridges. He splashed it and cut the Spurs’ lead to one.

Bridges let it go after 23.8 seconds of New York ball and player movement. Some of that was relatively unexciting preamble, but it ended with a nine-second sequence of four sprays, five total passes and eight dribbles by four different players that broke the Spurs’ defense.

THIS BALL MOVEMENT FROM THE KNICKS 👏

Bridges sinks his 3rd three of Game 2! pic.twitter.com/2lWzvio0Zj

— NBA (@NBA) June 6, 2026

If you’re scoring at home, it went Jalen Brunson to Landry Shamet to Bridges to Brunson to OG Anunoby to Bridges. The ball hit the right corner three different times and the left one once, its pathway a Google Maps misadventure that took the most indirect route possible to its eventual destination.

By the end, every San Antonio defender was hopelessly out of position. Behind the play Wembanyama can be seen getting dragged from side to side until he’s finally marooned and exhausted, watching helplessly as the ball splashes through the net.

It was this exact moment that an inescapable feeling spread though Frost Bank Center: The Knicks had these guys. New York had already come back from 12 points down against a desperate Spurs team playing a must-win game. And now, they had a dominant Spurs defense chasing running in circles.

If the Knicks end up prevailing, that sequence will go down as the defining moment of the series. It was the Tinker to Evers to Chance of modern basketball, a sequence of both skill and teamwork so jaw-droppingly harmonious and beautiful that it conjured up memories of … well, of the Spurs, actually.

Remember the 2014 San Antonio champions, the “beautiful game” team whose tiki-taka passing sequences left the superstar-laden Miami Heat chasing their tails in the finals? This time, the role of the Spurs is being played by the Knicks, complete with Brown, Mr. Spray himself, who cut his coaching teeth in the San Antonio system.

Somehow, some way, his team is now out-Spursing the Spurs.

That play with Bridges perhaps was the pièce de résistance, but was hardly an outlier for these Knicks. Anyone who has watched this team’s stampede through its past 13 playoff games will recognize the familiar drives and kicks, the blend of individual dominance by Brunson and Towns melded with precision ball movement, and skillful play from secondary players.

After the game, I asked multiple Knicks about the sequence and what stood out was how utterly unremarkable the play seemed to them. They talked about a play with four sprays in eight seconds as if they were recounting a Tuesday-morning excursion to Wegmans.

“I mean, they were just reading and reacting,” said Brunson. “We were playing off each other. We saw the same thing you did.”

“Drive and kick, make the right read, share the ball,” said Shamet. “That’s our team. You know, if there’s a guy open, we’re gonna make that pass, make that play, trust each other and do that.”

And really, why would it seem remarkable for this group? This was just another play in another win for a Knicks team that has put up one of the most dominant playoff runs in NBA history … and spraying like Banksy while doing it.

Rewatching all 38 New York 3-point attempts in Game 2, that Bridges play was one of 14 I charted as the product of a “spray,” even using a fairly tight definition of the term. That kind of movement is a big reason New York prevailed despite an off night from Brunson (7 of 25), foul trouble for Towns and just 43.1 percent shooting inside the arc.

Needless to say, those sprays have been a huge part of New York’s magical run through the postseason, with four of the Knicks’ top eight players shooting better than 40 percent from 3 in the playoffs and Bridges at “just” 38 percent. In a related story, New York’s playoff offensive efficiency is a whopping 10 points per 100 possessions better than the league average.

Just to review, since New York “only” won by one on Friday for its 13th straight win: This is still the most dominant 13-game winning streak in NBA history, playoffs or regular season, with a plus-273 scoring margin.

If this sounds familiar, well, New York already had the best 12-game streak. The best 11-game streak. The best 10-, nine-game and the eight-game streaks. The Knicks’ run has been so dominant that, according to Stathead, they occupy multiple spots atop these leaderboards, using different parts of the same streak. New York, for instance, has the three best nine-game runs in league annals, depending on which endpoints you use within the 13-game streak.

To own the best 14-game streak, they’ll need to win Game 3 by at least 15 points, per Stathead. For those who dream bigger: New York would have to win the next two games by a combined total of at least 30 to finish the season with the most dominant 15-game run in NBA history.

To do that, they’ll need to keep the Spurs’ defense in the blender by giving Brown more of what he loves.

When he finally got around to using the S-word Friday night, he offered a simple game plan for Monday’s Game 3.

“We have to try to keep touching the paint, trying to spray it if Wemby comes,” he said. “If you’re open, let it fly.”

If his troops can use those sprays to maintain this magical run for two more games, the next thing they’ll be spraying is champagne.