The demand from the New York Knicks’ new head coach, Mike Brown, is as much about style as it is about results. After all, it will take months before we know whether he can surpass Tom Thibodeau’s achievement and lead the Knicks to the NBA Finals - or even to a championship.

For now, Brown’s task is to show broader use of his bench and an offensive system built on greater ball movement—less reliant on Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns and more on motion offense and collective effort.

So how’s that going so far?Based on the game against the Boston Celtics, it’s a mixed bag. The Knicks had a few well-designed possessions in which the ball moved freely and Brunson wasn’t ball-dominant - some of those came when Brunson was off the floor and Tyler Kolek replaced him. Towns, whose career average is 2.5 assists, already had three at the beginning of the second quarter. Unfortunately, Towns finished the game with the same number. Boston started chipping away at the Knicks’ lead when Brunson rested. Kolek committed three turnovers between the end of the third and start of the fourth quarters; when Brunson checked back in, he scored nine points down the stretch—primarily through isolation, transition, or second-chance plays, not structured offense.

The reason is twofold.First, basketball is a chaotic game. No matter how hard coaches try to impose structure, teams eventually revert to their habits under pressure. It takes more than two regular-season games to rewire the Knicks’ long-standing reliance on Brunson’s creation.Second - and more importantly - Brunson is the team’s only actual offensive creator. Deuce McBride can help, Mikal Bridges too, but the Knicks don’t have a classic secondary guard or a strong backup playmaker to take the load off Brunson. Unlike Oklahoma City, for example, they don’t have a Jalen Williams to ease the burden from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. That’s why I’m skeptical about Brown’s ability to trigger a full-on stylistic transformation.

That said, he’s clearly trying. To stay optimistic, here are three examples of offensive actions Brown has been implementing - sets designed to keep the ball moving through multiple hands. All of them come from the same family: the “Pitch Series,” a motion weave offense popularized years ago by the less-than-successful Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg.

In this Dribble Pitch variation, following two handoffs, OG Anunoby gets the ball back at the top of the key. Towns flashes to the elbow, and Anunoby cuts off him. It’s a movement straight out of the old Spurs playbook, think Duncan setting up Parker or Ginóbili on similar cuts. Towns feeds Anunoby inside, the defense collapses, and Anunoby kicks it back out to Towns for an open three.

Early in the second quarter, in another version of the Pitch Series, Kolek hands off, gets the ball back, and again Towns flashes to the elbow. Kolek passes to him, then joins McBride to set a stagger screen for Anunoby on the weak side. Only it’s a fake - Anunoby slips the screen (a “twirl”) and Towns hits him for a layup.

On the very next possession, Brown’s vision materializes again. Following a near turnover in the initial handoff, Bridges passes to Towns, another fake stagger, another Anunoby cut. This time, Kolek receives a handoff from Towns and swings the ball to Anunoby, who relocates to the corner off McBride’s screen and drills a three.

When it works, it looks good - clean, aesthetic, even elegant.The real test, though, will be running these actions in crunch time, not just at the start of quarters. And more importantly, late in the season, not just in late October.