How the 76ers Cracked the Knicks’ Pick-and-Roll Code With a 39-Year-Old Point Forward

NEW YORK — The Knicks’ championship banner ceremony lasted 22 minutes. The tactical adjustment that spoiled it took Nick Nurse about three possessions to implement.

Philadelphia’s 106-100 win at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday will show up in the standings as a season-opening road victory. Inside the league’s coaching circles, it will be studied as a masterclass in neutralizing the NBA’s most destructive two-man game without relying on traditional rim protection.

Nurse deployed LeBron James as the primary defender on Karl-Anthony Towns to start the third quarter, a move that forced New York’s offense into uncomfortable territory. The Knicks entered the night having weaponized the Towns-Jalen Brunson pick-and-roll all preseason, with Towns popping to the perimeter and Brunson manipulating defenses in the pocket. James, at 39, lacks the lateral quickness to stay in front of Brunson on the perimeter. He possesses something rarer: the basketball IQ to disrupt the action before it develops.

“It’s kind of common to put a forward on KAT, ’cause there’s so many pick-and-rolls with him and Brunson,” Nurse said postgame. “It gives you some versatility to play some other coverages, right?”

The adjustment surrendered two early Josh Hart three-pointers — the tax for selling out on the primary action. Then the math flipped. Philadelphia outscored New York 52-42 after halftime, including a 29-18 third quarter that turned a four-point deficit into a seven-point lead. Brunson finished 6-of-19 from the field. Towns battled foul trouble and managed 19 points on 17 shots.

What makes the James-on-Towns deployment significant isn’t the result. It’s the precedent. For two decades, the league has operated on a simple premise: you defend the pick-and-roll with your best perimeter defender on the ball-handler and your best rim protector on the screener. Nurse inverted that. He put a 6-foot-9, 250-pound forward with 21 seasons of pattern recognition on the screener, daring the Knicks to beat them with secondary actions.

They couldn’t. Hart’s two triples represented the sum total of New York’s counter-punching.

James finished with 14 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in his 76ers debut — the first winning franchise debut of his career after four previous attempts. Tyrese Maxey scored 28. Jaylen Brown added 19 points, eight rebounds and six assists. But the box score obscures the strategic signal: Philadelphia has a defensive chess piece that allows Nurse to attack opposing offenses at their structural weak point.

The Knicks’ ring night became a case study. The 76ers host Cleveland on Thursday. The rest of the league has 80 games to develop an answer.