About This Play/Drill

Aside from having an extremely talented offensive player like Carmelo Anthony, the biggest reason that the Knicks rank third in the NBA in scoring efficiency is the beautiftul playbook that Mike Woodson has assembled. Granted, a lot of the stuff the Knicks run today comes straight out of Mike D'Antoni's scheme - in fact, I think New York runs more of D'Antoni's stuff than the Lakers do - but Woodson deserves a ton of credit for how he has handled the offense this season.

Here is a play that New York occasionally runs in semi-transition or in the half-court. It is a high staggered triple screen that takes advantage of New York's staple offensively: a stretch four. Usually, that player is Carmelo, but in this particular example, with Melo out with an injury, Steve Novak assumes the role of a stretch four.

The staggered triple screen action has a pair of pick-and-pops and a pick-and-roll to cap it off that can send the defense scrambling to find their assignments and put them in a poor position to defend in the case of a mismatch or good ball rotation. When the Knicks ran it against the Cavs a couple of days ago, Cleveland got all out of place following Novak at the three-point line and left Amare wide open on the roll for an easy dunk.