NEW YORK -- It's Friday night in Philadelphia. The New York Knicks are down by 18 with about 25 seconds to play in yet another blowout loss.

Langston Galloway dribbles around a Quincy Acy screen to his left. Acy takes a few steps toward the basket as Galloway pulls up for an open jump shot. The shot clangs off the rim, ending what on the surface is a nondescript play in a season full of them for the Knicks.

But that sequence -- which came in garbage time during the Knicks’ loss to the 76ers -- is an example of one of the few relevant on-court developments for New York this season; a slight but significant modernization of the triangle offense.

Derek Fisher’s Knicks are using the pick-and-roll to generate offense nearly twice as often as Phil Jackson’s Los Angeles Lakers teams did.

Fewer than 10 percent of the plays run by Jackson’s Lakers used screens between 2006 and 2011, per Synergy Sports.

Entering play Sunday, the Knicks had used the pick-and-roll on 18 percent of their plays, per Synergy. And they've done so with greater frequency over the course of the season.

Fisher, predictably, downplayed this development when asked about it last week. But it’s fair to view it as an example of the first-year coach putting his stamp on the offense that Jackson made famous.

“That wasn't something that we relied on to be successful [in Los Angeles]. That’s not something we will rely on [in New York], either," Fisher said. "But I think over time the game has evolved and some things have changed. Based on who your team is you have to find ways to get penetration. So you try and tweak and adjust and adapt.”

Hence, we may see more pick and roll for New York.

In the first five games of the season, the Knicks used pick-and-rolls on 12.7 percent of their plays. Over a five-game stretch in early January, the club used the pick-and-roll in 19.8 percent of their plays.

In the five games preceding Sunday’s game against Toronto, the play was used 23.5 percent of the time.

“When it's getting late in the shot clock, that's when we try to use it to our advantage,” Galloway said.

Added Shane Larkin: “You've got to learn the basics, you've got to learn the automatic [reads] and once you do that, Coach can start showing you where the pick-and-rolls can be effective in the offense.

"Once the basics are taken away, the pick-and-roll stuff is what we’re going to get into.”

Larkin says that added dimension has helped the Knicks create offense late in the shot clock.

“I think early in the year a lot of our offensive struggles were because we were just set on running the basic stuff in the triangle," he said. "And when something was taken away we were just kind out there looking like, now what?”

Now, the Knicks turn to the pick-and-roll.

None of this is being pointed out to suggest that the pick-and-roll is a cure-all for New York’s offense. Far from it.

Entering Thursday’s game against the San Antonio Spurs, the Knicks had the second-lowest per-game point total off of pick-and-rolls in the NBA. They also ranked in the bottom three in overall offensive efficiency.

Also, the Knicks aren't running a ton of pick-and-roll relative to the rest of the league.

Entering play Thursday, they’d run the second-lowest percentage of pick-and-roll plays in the NBA (defined as plays that finish either with a foul, shot or turnover).

But the idea that Fisher is running the pick-and-roll with more frequency than Jackson is significant.

For one, it’s an example of Fisher tweaking Jackson’s offense to fit his personnel, something both men have said Fisher has the freedom to do.

Secondly, it could indicate that Fisher is open to morphing the triangle into an offense that’s more in line with the pick-and-roll-heavy attacks of today’s NBA.

“That's my job to do that,” Fisher said of tweaking the offense during an interview last month.

“I'm not trying to duplicate or carbon copy exactly what [Jackson] did. The same way he didn't do that to Tex Winter [a Chicago Bulls assistant under Jackson], the same way Tex didn't do that to the coach and the folks that he developed it from and how he added the innovation and his own ideas. So it's my job to do that now.

"He hired me to coach the team, so I have to do what I think is best for these guys, and we're going to continue to evolve in that fashion."

Could that mean more pick-and-roll plays next season for the Knicks? Stay tuned.