Tom Thibodeau often has noted that most teams reduce their playing rotations in the playoffs, but the Knicks only used seven players in the final two games against the 76ers after veteran reserve Bojan Bogdanovic went down with a foot injury in Game 4.
Thibodeau has used his standard “we could” response when asked in the past few days if he expected to expand his rotation — most likely the addition of Precious Achiuwa — beginning in Monday’s series opener against the Pacers at the Garden.
Achiuwa played four minutes in the first half as the Knicks’ eighth man, but Thibodeau leaned heavily on his starters again in a 121-117 Game 1 victory.
Josh Hart played his third complete game of the playoffs, logging all 48 minutes, while Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby and Donte DiVincenzo each played 42 or more.
“You gotta look at who they’re playing, as well,” Thibodeau said about the Pacers before the series started. “They’ve cut back, too, so it’s all about matchups.”
The Knicks played their top seven players — their five starters, plus Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride — for 94.5 percent of their total minutes in the first round, according to the Ringer.
That’s the 13th-highest figure out of 400 playoff teams since 2000, the study stated, and above the league average of 88 percent so far during this year’s playoffs.
The Knicks’ number also represents the highest by any NBA team in one playoff year since the 2014 Bulls, who also were coached by Thibodeau.
They allotted 95.8 percent of their minutes to their top seven players in a first-round loss to the Wizards.
It should be noted, however, that the Nuggets relied on their top seven rotation players nearly as much last year — 93 percent — on their way to the first NBA championship in team history.
Veteran guard Alec Burks did not play at all against the Sixers after shooting just 30.7 percent from the field in 23 games for the Knicks follwing a February trade from the Pistons.
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Still, Achiuwa figures to to see some time against the Pacers, with center Miles Turner often playing on the perimeter as a stretch-5.
With Robinson sidelined and Isaiah Hartenstein in foul trouble in Game 4 in Philadelphia, Achiuwa contributed four blocked shots in 20 minutes but then didn’t get off the bench in the final two games of the series.
Hart played all 53 minutes in Game 5, and DiVincenzo was on the court for the entire 48 minutes in the Game 6 clincher — with Hart (46), Anunoby (45) and Brunson (43) also remaining in for the majority of the win. Robinson (18) and McBride (9) accounted for the lone minutes off the bench.
“It sounds like a line, but it really doesn’t [matter],” DiVincenzo said. “I think Thibs does a good job of staggering timeouts and doing certain things where you kind of forget the minutes sometimes.”
Added Hart: “I think the conditioning — we played a full season-plus, so the conditioning is there, but we’ve gotta make sure we give our bodies every chance to operate at a high level as much as we can.”
