Here's how the Knicks get baseline screen action in the Triangle

Hi! Before the Knicks tip off against the Hornets, I want to show you a little Triangle wrinkle the Knicks messed around with during the loss moral victory against the Cavaliers. This is inspired by petevenkman's comment on last night's recap. Watch first, then we'll talk:

So, some of those actions didn't amount to anything, but what they had in common was the Knicks peeling away from the usual Triangle set-up to run motion typical of pretty much every other pro offense. They run baseline screen stuff for their shooters -- the "single double" and "floppy" sets you hear of from offenses like the Spurs'.

Here's how the Knicks build that out of the Triangle offense. In this case, the lead guard (Jose Calderon) is also the guard in motion, but you can see above how an off-guard could move the same way. So:

Calderon makes the initial pass to the strong-side wing (Quincy Acy here. INTERCHANGEABLE POSITIONS Y'ALL.) Typically, Calderon would fill the corner to form the strong-side triangle. He does not.

Now, Knick guards do what Calderon did all the time. The Triangle has a whole set of "solo" options, wherein the play goes directly into the two-man game on the strong side and the weak side loads up with the triangle-y stuff. And to be honest, some Acy-Dalembert pick-and-roll fun would have been entertaining.

Calderon doesn't wander to the weak side, though, and Acy doesn't hold the ball. The ball finds Shumpert in the center of the floor while Calderon chooses to either use Carmelo Anthony as a screener or curl over two screens from Samuel Dalembert and Acy. That's the "single double" to keep the D guessing...

...although Calderon's clearly thinking double the whole way. He uses the two screens to create what would have been an open shot if Kevin Love didn't help:

The help leaves an opening, and Jose makes a gorgeous feed into Dalembert for a dunk:

That was the first play in the video. In the second play, you can see Shumpert give more serious consideration to using the single screen, only to do the same thing Calderon did (it doesn't amount to anything). In the third play, Shump is the off guard, but follows the same route while Calderon hangs up top. In the fourth play in the video, some sloppy screening for Claderon and poor spacing by Shumpert breaks the play, but you can see the idea. In the fifth play, the Knicks go straight into some baseline screening stuff for J.R. Smith on what I believe was an inbound play.

Anyway, something to keep an eye out for tonight. Even while they lose games, the Knicks are learning how to manipulate their offense to create new looks, and it can be fun sometimes!