From Marc Berman:
While five of the Knicks’ 11 coaching candidates are in the Orlando bubble game-planning for the NBA restart, others such as Tom Thibodeau are waiting on Knicks president Leon Rose’s decision a different way.
Thibodeau, considered the leading candidate, is passing away the time poring over Knicks game film as he awaits a possible job offer, according to an NBA source.
It is characteristic of Thibodeau, known for having his teams as well-prepared as any coach.
It’s known one of the things that most intrigues Thibodeau about coaching the Knicks roster is molding young shot-blocking center Mitchell Robinson into an even better defensive player.
A decision probably will come next week as interviews have been completed, but owner James Dolan still must be consulted and sign off on it. It has been six weeks — and countless hours of interviews — since the Knicks began the search.
Thibodeau’s second interview lasted three hours as did those of many others. That’s plenty of time to talk philosophy — as the 62-year-old did on a recent podcast hosted by ex-Bull and current player agent B.J. Armstrong.
How weird is this story? So, the dude’s studying Knick game tape? What the what? How is he not the coach then? And with so many good coaching gigs either definitely available this offseason or very possibly available, why in the world would he want the Knicks job so badly?
But if the guy is studying Knick game tape, then I would imagine that he wants this job for some reason. It’s so darn weird.
But whatever, I can live with Thibs. He’s no Jason Kidd.
And hey, if famed coaching expert, BJ Armstrong, recommends him, then he must be good, right (seriously, how hard up are you for a story when it’s “Hey, what does BJ Armstrong think about the Knicks coaching options?”?).
381 replies on “NY Post: Tom Thibodeau doing deep dive into Knicks as coach decision looms”
I’ve reached the acceptance stage on Thibs. Kidd would just be so bad.
He really would be so, so bad.
So yeah, I’m all in on, “At least it’s not Kidd!”
The story likely means that Thibs won’t leave the Knicks at the altar and embarrass Rose and WWW. I’ll leave it to those more expert than I to answer the question of why the drawn-out narrative. ( Trying to pull a Lucy to Charlie Brown kicking the football vis a vis the fans??)
I think you could argue that the extra interviews allowed Rose to get some insights into how other, more competent teams are run. Why the continued delay in the hire even after the interviews are all finished? I got nuthin’.
Remember when Thibs was regarded as a top 5 coach? Not of all time of course. That being said, while he’s not my preference, I can live with Thibs if he ends up HC. The question for me is, how good is Miller at coaching offense? I feel like the team will be doing him a disservice by not retaining him on the staff. Bottom line is if Thibs is HC, he will need a really good offensive mind on the staff. Maybe Miller becomes that if we can get him a legit PG and a couple shooters. I would say we definitely should spring for Bertans and Harris if Thibs is coach. I’m just glad the speculation seems to be nearing its end and the team can finally get some forward momentum going on the offseason with a whole staff.
It appears the Knicks are finally going to do something smart on the coaching front.
Selecting the “right” coach was the easy part. He wanted to come and already has a relationship with management, We have to get this off season right! It’s a shame we have all these picks and the draft is weak, but that’s part of the risk of the draft. We can always trade picks for players if that’s where the better value is. The key is getting the “right” players. That’s where my “doubts” are about this management team. Prove me wrong!
My new theory about the latest press run is that is a done deal with Thibs but Rose et al. want to make the decision look better in the press. “Hey let’s run Kidd’s name out there a bunch and tell everyone that Thibs is watching film and will turn Mitch into Noah”.
I wonder what Thibs thinks about Mitch’s perimeter game
It would not shock me if what’s going on right now is contract negotiations and negotiations over staff. The press has been saying that the Knicks want to keep Miller (that would be a good move) and that Mike Woodson is desperate to come back even if it’s as an assistant. You can’t dictate to Thib’s who is going to be on his staff. He would have to agree to one or both of those moves and then still have the freedom to hire some of his own people. So he may be interviewing one or both now.
I’m not worried about the offense. The offense is a long term project that will require a couple of stars. No stars are coming to NY yet and our young players are years away from reaching their peaks, A reasonable goal for next year might be to try to become a top 10 defense and just start improving the offense a little.
Everyone (which may not include some of our management team) knows this team needs shooters and defenders. IMO, the goal should be to get a 3&d PF and either move RJ to SF and get a 3&D SG or keep RJ at SG and get a 3&d SF, Thibs can decide where RJ should be playing. It would also help if one of them could make some plays and create a little, but beggars can’t be choosy. (Paging Mikal Bridges)
What they need is much better spacing for RJ and Robinson.
That puts Randle on the bench where he belongs and not along side Robinson and RJ clogging up the middle.
PG will be problematical since we really need someone that can shoot a little given that RJ and Robinson can’t. But that doesn’t mean we should draft any old PG just because he’ll probably be better than Frank, Payton, and DSjr. I’d just as soon keep Payton/Frank for another year and focus on defeeense if we can add quality 3&d players at the wing and PF.
In fact, if we executed that plan well and got the right two-way players for wing and PF I’d be over the moon happy looking forward to good defense and better spacing. Baby steps,
Tom thibodeau is like the human embodiment of anti-rebuilding. You’ve got the running players into the ground for meaningless wins. He was ordered by the bulls to rest players and rebuild after Rose’s injury and instead decided to destroy Joakim Noah’s career for a first-round exit. Then we all know his track record is GM in Minnesota.
Thibodeaux is Ahab, and his white whale is winning each game no matter the cost and no matter the significance.
Jason Kidd is maybe worse at motivating players and worse at creating and implementing offensive and defensive schemes, but he’s not Ahab. He at least has some history of player development. He at least has shown some awareness of how the NBA has changed over the last 10 years. He at least has participated in player development and been patient.
On the other hand, if you look at this symbolically, kidd would be the most cynical hire since the team would probably only be doing it to try to substantiate the fantasy that giannis is coming, an undeniable continuation of previous fantasies about stars and an undeniable continuation of a focus on appearances over systematic and sustainable improvement.
Miller had the Knicks at roughly a 32 win pace, and kept that pace up after the Morris trade (6-9). The question for me is whether management is going to say “Hey, we’re only a veteran player or two away from being a playoff team!” or whether they will embrace a slow rebuild centered on younger players. I’m guessing that they do the former…perhaps in a smarter way than prior regimes, but I don’t see them embracing another 20-win season.
Let’s look at the rotation. Mitch, RJ, Frank, Knox Randle will be there for sure. After that, ?????
I doubt that we find a better PG outside the draft than Payton for $8 mill, so I guess keeping him should depend on draft luck. Portis and Ellington should be gone for sure. Bullock is a value contract, so I could see them keeping him around. Gibson is a gross overpay but Thibs will probably want to keep him around. Then there’s Harkless, who I like but at what price? Then there’s Dotson, Iggy, DSjr, Wooten, Harper and Pinson. And 3 draft picks.
Clearly if we bring on a FA like Bertans of Harris, there will have to be some roster clean-up, just too many bodies. Such an interesting, wide-open scenario for Rose et. al. to come in to.
I’m not even sure if mikal bridges is good, but I do sometimes wish I lived in the alternate reality where our core is Barrett-Bridges-Porzingis-Robinson and we’re just a PG away from a decent young team.
latke, I don’t agree with your assessment of Thibs. Sure, he tried to win every game. But he was a damn good coach. I don’t know what you mean by meaningless wins, he never won less that 45 games in Chicago and had 50, 50, and 62 win seasons. The only guys he consistently played big minutes were Deng and Butler. Rose averaged 37 and 35 minutes before blowing out his knee….hardly huge minutes for a 22-23yo. Noah played around 36 mph at most. I think the “he doesn’t rest guys” narrative is a bit overblown. Rose could have blown out his knee anywhere, and Noah clearly had off-court routines that were not consistent with a long, healthy career.
Thibs’ track record in Minny was not good, but neither was the situation. He had two lazy young players on max deals that didn’t buy into his defensive approach. Jimmy Butler called them out on it…not that it was right for him to do that, but it says something about Towns and Wiggins.
Look, the guy has warts, but if he didn’t he wouldn’t be available. The question is, has he learned anything from his extensive benching? Will Rose hold him accountable, and even fire him if he goes rogue?
I’m not going to act like Tom Thibodeau is a bad head coach. I trust him to get the best out of his players and I’m comfortable enough with the work he did on defense with the Bulls and then allowing Derrick Rose and Karl Anthony Towns to reach their ceilings as offensive superstars, which is way more than I can say about Jason Kidd and Mark Jackson. His teams have also had success developing late round draft picks like Taj Gibson, Jimmy Butler, and Tyus Jones and get coached Nate Robinson to the best season of his career.
Ultimately, Tom Thibodeau teams don’t fire him and get better. He gets the most out of his players and won’t undo the good work of a smart GM, which is ultimately the name of the game. Get somebody in here who will bring in the right players and let Tom Thibodeau coach them up. You could argue either way for Thibs or Atkinson as the best coach on the market, so I’d be happy to have a guy who won 60 games with a Bulls team nobody saw coming and then coached the Timberwolves to their first playoff appearance in 14 years.
Fisher
Rambis
Hornacek
Fizzzzz…dale
Miller
nuff said…how many of those dudes got another (or will get another job) after they left/leave…
Thibs isn’t ideal but there is something to be said for having some credibility walking the sidelines….
That would practically be my dream team. Frank is going to develop a better 3 pointer over the next couple of years also and fit fine with RJ/Bridges. Then if you just keep adding smart two way pieces you’ll have a very good young team with some flexibility. People don’t quite comprehend how despicably horrible Mill/Perry/Fizdale were. They set the rebuild back many years by trading KP for trash, adding terrible players, and adding players that don’t fit. Contract issues are important. But it’s not as important as understanding basketball and getting the right pieces. All the bad contracts would be gone now. We should have a very good young core that would be ready to start coming into their own with plenty of flexibility to add veterans that would WANT to play with that core.
If you are smart you can do both and maximize the speed and quality of the rebuild. The real question is not what approach they take but whether they are smart about it and get good players that fit together at fair prices. You cans screw up anything if you aren’t smart.
What exactly does “turn Mitchell Robinson into Joakim Noah” mean? Because the only thing those two seem to have in common is that neither one has ever made a 3 pointer in the NBA.
That’s a good point about the assistants. I don’t see both Woodson and Miller as assistant coaches. They both would be candidates for lead assistant and they can’t both be that. I hoping for Miller to be lead assistant. I think he earned it. He’s the only one from Pepper’s list I can see getting hired by another team.
Contract negotiations are almost certainly the hold-up at this point, with the matter of assistants also a potential factor. I’d just like to get on with it, if only because the hire would have to require Rose to do a presser.
geo, I responded on the previous thread before I knew about this one, so the answer is there!
It’s funny, when I first read this:
I interpreted that to mean “Thibs is studying Knicks tape cause he figures that’s his gig next year but he’s delaying officially taking the job because he’s still waiting for an offer from a different team.” Could go either way really.
It could also be that Rose is making it clear that Thibs has competition for the job and is not going to get overpaid. It would be surprising but not shocking if Thibs threatens to balk unless he gets paid. If he does that, it will be a good test for Rose. Personally, I’d let him walk.
Clearly the Knicks want to destroy the restart ratings with their head coaching announcement….
damn, why didn’t I think of that?
I just think that if you grossly overpay for a coach, it’s that much more likely that you are a bad negotiator and will eventually get fleeced in a trade. There is literally no good reason to overpay for a coach on a rebuilding team.
I agree…but what is “overpaying” here…i.e., what is Thibs’ market value…definitely not Pop level but is he in the 3-6 million a year and if he is…how do you say what end of the range is over or under?
$3-5 mill sounds right, 3+1 year team/player option? $6 is high.
Derek Fisher, who had never coached a game in his life, and was the fall back option after Kerr reneged, and who was terrible in almost every way, got 5/$25,000,000. Isn’t that the starting point for negotiations with Dolan?
Man, Fisher got paid.I’d love to know what the conversation was like about locking him into a 5 year deal.
I think we can all agree we’d rather have Thibs
yeah…I don’t see Thibs going south of 5 million…scottie brooks makes more than that I think…I think 5 is his floor…
And despite getting paid out the ass, Derek Fisher still went on to be a loan shark for broke athletes.
Royce Young, who is probably the most plugged in OKC beat writer, confirmed on Zach Lowe’s podcast that under no circumstances are the Thunder dumping Chris Paul with sweetener so I hope we can permanently retire that conversation now.
The impression I got is obviously they’ll look for assets initially but would probably settle for an asset neutral trade if it came to that, and there would be takers.
In order to not be dreading Thibodeau, you really have to buy the idea that he’s been doing all of this self-teaching regarding analytics, etc.
To me that stuff just comes off as a PR offensive and his very recent Minnesota tenure, in which he did all the same shit he did with the Bulls, is a lot more important.
In what’s becoming a pattern among Knicks coaching hires, the best thing you can say about him is “at least he’s not Mark Jackson.”
Well, the hope is that they’ve learned from the foibles of strat’s idol, who along with Mills made a habit of negotiating against himself. Under these market conditions, hard to see other teams offering more than $5, but I guess it doesn’t matter much beyond getting a small window into Rose’s negotiation skills.
if he isn’t and/or Rose hasn’t had these discussions with him on go forward philosophy then shame on both of them and we’ll continue the front office carousel in 2-3 years…
To be fair, what he did in Chicago worked. There was no reason to change his mindset going in to Minny, and his acquisition of every available old Bull sort of confirms that. But some of what he did in Minny ultimately did not work, and he’s had a couple of years to think about why. So even though he did mostly the same shit, the result was different and there is more reason to believe that he might consider modifying his approach.
Thing is, Thibs really isn’t an unimaginative “system” coach. He was an assistant for a long time and has had a bunch of mentors. We’re not talking about D’Antoni here. He’s got some quirks, but I sincerely doubt that he’s got his head as far up his ass as Mr. How’s It Goink did re: 3-point shooting. I don’t particularly care for his incessant screaming from the sidelines in that annoying hoarse voice, but the guy can definitely coach, whether in this or any other era.
Honestly, I’m curious to see what a Thibs/Miller pairing looks like. They both are pretty sharp, basketball lifers. But like I said earlier, if Thibs is the guy- we must go after Bertans and Harris. Cap space be damned! The floor needs to be spread for Barrett and Mitch, regardless of who the PG is. Preferably in a scenario where we’re able to land both Bertans and Harris, we’d better draft a PG who plays D, gets in the lane, and has an honest jumper. Kira Lewis Jr yal. Unless Ntilikina develops in the offseason into a more aggressive player on offense.
Re: 3PTAr, the range this year is from .311 (Pacers) to .488 (Rockets). The Knicks were next to last at .318. There are playoff teams at both ends of the range. Thibs’ T’wolves had a league lowest rate at .261, but were 4th in offensive rating and 9th in TS%, and 13th in eFG%. Offense wasn’t the problem in Minny.
Thibs was also responsible for bringing in his boys….Taj, Butler, Rose, Deng….which was just stupid. I doubt that he would be allowed to influence personnel decisions very much here, at least not like that. Maybe keeping Taj (who is overpaid but still a solid rotation player) but that’s about it.
I would think that they’d possibly go after either Bertans or Harris, but not both.
You’re probably right, Z. But it doesn’t stop me from salivating at the thought of a Mitch/Bertans/RJ/Harris/Lewis Jr starting 5, but I’ll settle for Mitch/Bertans/RJ/Dot/Lewis Jr lineup too lol
I agree, although some of that depends on what happens with the cap. There may not actually be any takers.
It wouldn’t be an awful signing but at the likely price I’m probably anti-Bertans. He’s a great player to have on a good team, but it’s a little hard for me to see what he does for, well, our team.
He’s very one-dimensional, and while he’s great at that dimension I don’t see how an awful team like the Knicks can justify pouring significant resources into a player who really only helps with one facet of the game (albeit a very important one hence why it wouldn’t be an awful signing).
I’m much more interested in Wood, who is both significantly younger and, if we trust his ~1300 minute sample from this season, more well-rounded.
The uneasiness with Wood is that you have to really trust a half-season of very good play on a very bad team as being representative of what to expect going forward. You’re trusting 140 3PTA. He’s a good scorer inside the arc and can rebound, but isn’t much of a defender or passer.
So what do you want to offer him? The Pistons can’t offer more than $10 mill so is he worth Randle money? Anything above that is committing to him being a major piece. Do you think he’s worth that investment?
I’d have to know a lot more about him before signing him, starting with: is he a smart player? I mean, if we’re stuck with Randle for another year, do we really need Wood?
Bertans is a totally known commodity. He doesn’t do much more than hit 3’s but isn’t a total zero on defense like Novak was. He also has has a couple of ACL surgeries. But yeah, he makes more sense on a contender or a team like Minnesota that’s a piece or 2 away.
Wood comes with substantial risk but the opportunity to add a 24 year old fresh off a 3+ BPM (nice little example of a time it’s just easier to say that than list all of the different factors that went into accruing it) season for money alone is really quite rare. When you factor in that the money is almost certain to be sub-max level, I think it would be negligent to not kick the tires.
It’s a little like the D’Lo debate we had last offseason.
So you’d give him like $20 Mill X 3?
Mets lineup could be nice:
McNeil 3B
Nimmo CF
Alonso 1B
Cespedes LF
Conforto RF
JD Davis/Dom Smith DH
Ramos C
Rosario SS
Cano 2B
They’re down to about one and a half good starting pitchers, but that lineup could be pretty saucy
I agree but also boy does it make me sad to watch Cano these days
I think I’ve said I’d start getting nervous about Wood if 4/$64M didn’t get it done. I think higher than that could be justified but I’d also understand passing on it.
You can do worse than Christian Wood at ~$15M a year. And he’s the right age to gamble for. Would I do it? Not sure. Depends on what else is out there. If they land Halliburton, yeah–
Halliburton
Ntilikina
Barrett
Wood
Robinson
Would be a very fun starting lineup. Frank should initiate offense exactly 0% of the time, with Halliburton and Barrett splitting the role about 70/30.
We can argue over the value of rebounding till we are blue in the face – we have! – but I am still a believer.
Chris Herring just tweeted this, which sums up why.
As a Yankees fan I don’t really find the Mets lineup that scary 🙂
I’d be intrigued by a Halliburton, Frank, RJ perimeter-none of them has the skill to be a primary initiator (I guess who knows with Halliburton, and RJ or Frank could have taken a leap), but you’d think they could run enough pick and roll with Mitch to get a defense moving and have 3 capable ball handlers/passers to figure out something. Frank is still too bad on offense for it to work, I guess, but I’d at least want to watch it.
Wood would be an interesting roll of the dice. But very much a roll of the dice.
Wood and Mitch with a decent PG would make a formidable PnR dunk machine.
I’d gamble on Wood it’s not like we have anything else to do with our money. The only non-rookie salaries we have for 2021 are a 4 million dollar option on Randle and 6 million for Jo Noah.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that rebounding is important, especially offensive rebounding. Only that shooting is considerably more essential and that rebounding is noisy, especially when valuing individual players. And that there are workarounds to rebounding. See: Houston Rockets.
I think the Yankees lineup is kinda scary.
If this Yankees lineup stays healthy they might put up numbers that have people thinking this was a full season
I would surely kick the tires on Wood, but as the only good young, available player, he will probably get a lot of attention and might even find a spot on a legit playoff contender, although idk who exactly has the cap space.
God knows we could use a real stretch 4, but maybe Rose will grab Toppin? Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Would he rather have Wood/Haliburton or Toppin/VanVleet?
Not a Toppin fan, he’s got a high floor but has lots of holes in his game for a 23 yo prospect. If we’re gonna go big I’d rather take a chance on Wiseman, Okongwu or Precious. So probably Haliburton and Wood.
I think Fred is going to get too much money, and unless you have the #1 pick you can’t plan on drafting a specific player
The Yankees will probably have the top offense in MLB again.
The Mets should have a top 5 NL offense but they’re not gonna be able to get anybody out
I think Wood’s going to be surprisingly expensive and I don’t see how Detroit doesn’t go all in on him, but yeah, if it’s reasonable, he’s just the sort of player the Knicks should take a risk on. And find some way to trade Randle. 😉
hey grocer, thanks, I was curious on the answer, I would have guess the business side…you seem pretty pragmatic, which I don’t necessarily equate to folks with an artistic inclination…to be honest though, I don’t know many artistic folks at all…so, what do I know…
been thinking of what it would be like to work where there is a high technical skill requirement that goes along with a substantial creative need…
closet I ever come to making art is – pretty much never…
Sign and trade Wood for Randal?
🙂 I know…no way Detroit would do that.
Mets look like they will once again feature shoddy defense and lousy relief pitching.
And in other news, we found out tonight that 2 of our neighbors have Covid-19. Our youngest son is good friends with their son…
That is worrisome clash fan. Best of luck.
Christian Wood has played a total of 1800 minutes in his career, spread over 5 different teams. I can think of no comp for him that got paid big $$ in free agency. It’s a real roll of the dice, I’m guessing it won’t payoff, but prove me wrong.
wood is a pretty decent gamble… he comes from a good pedigree as a number of draft projections were really high on him…. he fell because of a poor work ethic….
he’s always had the talent and he finally put it together… the question is whether or not it continues…. is he the type of guy that will disappear when he gets paid? from what it sounds like he’s matured a bit so i don’t think it’s a terrible bet…. the talent is very much there and guys like him aren’t growing on trees… i’m not sure if he’s the guy you would build around but he is definitely could be a big piece on a contending team….
Not to re-litigate various old Knickerblogger arguments, but on the one end of the spectrum, we had people suggesting David Lee and Enes Kanter’s rebounds weren’t as valuable because those guys sacrificed defensive positioning (among other things on the floor) for the sake of chasing boards at all costs. And on the other, we had Robin Lopez, whose individual rebounding numbers were mediocre because he focused on boxing out to ensure that the team got the board, even if it wasn’t him specifically. So, yes, not all rebounding averages are created — or, at least, viewed — equally.
Tom Thibodeau wouldn’t be my first choice but the sense of dread some of you have about the guy seems uncalled for.
I’m not convinced Thibs is a done deal, but I agree he is not so bad. I’d rather have him than many other candidates.
I seem to remember Thibs in Boston told the team not to go for offensive rebounds so everyone could get back on defense because he thought they weren’t worth it.
“I seem to remember Thibs in Boston told the team not to go for offensive rebounds so everyone could get back on defense because he thought they weren’t worth it.”
That team went 66-16 and won the NBA Championship.
I’m not always a results-based guy, but I think in this case his thought process was vindicated.
All this anti-Thibs stuff reeks of “it’s hip to be smarter than all the commoners”.
He’s not just better than the other shitty candidates. He’s actually a very good coach. We’ve had two guys of his caliber in the last 25 years (Van Gundy and D’Antoni).
The lack of 3 pointers is a reasonable concern, but it’s not like he’s Phil Jackson and has life-long ideals about mid range jumpers and pinch posts. He strikes me as a pragmatist who will be willing to adjust.
The Spurs are known for not going for offensive rebounds also. Or were.
Look, if Thibs comes in but they make a good draft pick and don’t do anything dumb in the FO, it won’t be that bad. The aesthetics of the whole situation will be ugly and you would think there would be substantial tension between the win now and win later crowd, which seems sub-optimal. But in the long run, is it the biggest deal? No
I just think Atkinson would be better on all counts.
I like Atkinson better, too, but it’s a choice between two good coaches. It’s not like when the final two were Budenholzer and Fizdale.
***“I seem to remember Thibs in Boston told the team not to go for offensive rebounds so everyone could get back on defense because he thought they weren’t worth it.”***
1. As an assistant in Boston he may have suggested it, but like Hubert says, they won the championship one year, and lost in the finals another year. They were dead last in offensive rebounding, but made it to the finals. (As suggested earlier in the thread, isn’t it possible that rebounds are overrated, especially offensive ones, which pretty much correlate to the inverse of your eFg%?)
2a. As head coach in Minnesota his teams ranked #6, #7, and #6 respectively in offensive rebounding.
2b. As head coach in Chicago, his team was in the top-ten in offensive rebounding every year and even led the entire league in offensive rebounding one year.
Conclusion: It’s either fake news, or, if it’s not fake news, it may actually show that he’s ahead on the analytic curve, not behind it.
I largely agree with this.
Hmmm…it could be argued either way. I’m fine with either guy….or just retaining Miller….or trying out a newbie. Just keep us away from the Kidds, Jacksons and Woodsons of the world and I’m pretty much good.
Jonathan Macri has an interesting deep dive in his newsletter today about the things Thibs’ defenses were and weren’t good at in Chicago and Minnesota. I think it’ll really depend on how much he’s genuinely learned about the failure with the Wolves, as opposed to just writing it off as the fault of KAT and Wiggins being too immature to play the Thibs way.
I don’t think Thibs is against shooting 3’s. His recent interview is illuminating.
I can’t find the quote but he basically said that the goal of the offensive system is to make it easier for the players to do what they do well and to hide what they don’t do well. So with like Elfrid or Randle, having them jack up more 3’s wouldn’t necessarily be good even if its wiser overall to shoot more 3’s as a team. So to me that speaks to our front office getting him the players that can shoot well and developing the players to get better at shooting, not just making the team shoot more cause that’s the modern NBA.
And I think if you look at The Bulls and Minny, the offenses were catered around their best offensive players and what they did well. So I don’t think Thibs is this guy who is super strict with a set offensive system/style.
Thibs is not going to start with a system and force players into that system. He’s not a system coach. He’s going to evaluate each player and try to get the most out of them using them correctly given their skill sets. You can’t look at his record and say his offense didn’t stress 3 pointers or some other stat enough. It shouldn’t have unless he actually had a lot of good 3 point shooters. If Thibs coached the peak Warriors they would have shot a ton of 3s. If he coached the Knicks last year they would have shot very few. The idea is to give him a balanced team and then for him to maximize their individual talents and the team output. It’s not to simply mimic some idealistic notion of what works best with players that lack the skills to do it.
I just don’t think Thibs is automatically a “win now” coach. If that was the case, why would he have gone to Minny? Just because his Bulls were successful and were contenders at one point doesn’t mean he’s a “win now” coach. Its like if a coach is so succcessful the team is a contender, they are now not a development coach but a win now coach? Its a weird logic that people don’t seem to question.
>>> Jonathan Macri has an interesting deep dive in his newsletter today about the things Thibs’ defenses were and weren’t good at in Chicago and Minnesota <<<
^ There is also a **New York Knicks “Will Smith Face” Bracket** posted in section 2 here that I will now spend the next 15 minutes working on. Thanks, Al.
My comment about Thibs in Boston was a pro Thibs one, not an anti-Thibs one. A few of the comments seem to think I was saying that as a knock on him. I wasn’t.
Let me know what you pick, Hubert. I can’t afford to go down that rabbit hole today.
Tyrese Halliburton is not the guy I’d be looking into. He’s basically a less athletic and shorter Lonzo Ball, and Lonzo’s struggles have been pretty well documented despite being an All-NBA level defender. Get into Grant Riller, senior guard at Charleston. He’s much older but his numbers are awesome, he can handle and he gets to the basket at will.
But yeah, Halliburton? No thanks. I don’t like point guards who don’t have a good ball handle, and we already drafted a point guard who is better off playing shooting guard.
My Sweet 16:
1. The Charles Smith game
16. Joakim Noah signing
9. Hibbert blocks Melo
8. Lin to Houston
28. Glen Rice for Anderson & Eisley
12. The Eddy Curry trade
20. Letting Phil run a draft before firing him
4. The finger roll
3. June 30, 2019 (this must mean the Durant/Irving decision, right?)
14. TH Jr offer sheet
22. McDyess Injury
6. 2-for-18
7. 8 points in 9 seconds
23. Melo gets a NTC
18. Reggie’s 25 pt 4Q
31. The Jared Jefferies signing (knocks off the #2 seed… The Decision… a moment that didn’t really upset me)
Which will happen first; the Knicks selecting a new coach, or the Wilpons finally coming to a deal with a new owner(s)?
I’m fine with Atkinson (my choice) or Thibs. As for the Mets, it looks like J-Rod is out, but who knows, Cohen was in, then out, now back in…
Ehhhh, I’ll continue to be cautiously pessimistic about the coach who thought that giving a bunch of minutes to an old, washed-up Jamal Crawford would help his team win. A ‘smart’ coach should know better.
Is anybody here really vehemently anti-Thibs? I think at most, people are saying he’s not their top choice but that it would at least be a reasonable hire. People are justifiably horrified at a potential Jason Kidd hire but I don’t think there’d be a collective freakout over Thibs.
Yeah I don’t sense a Thibs freakout. I mean the only coaches really worth freaking out about are the Jackson/Kidd types who are both bad at the Xs and Os and come with all kinds of other problems.
We’ll still be good if we get good players and we’ll still be bad if we don’t.
My Final 4 features a pair of excruciating last second losses and a pair of mind-boggling front office decisions.
The FO decisions made it this far because both of them were the first decisions of a GM’s tenure. When the first thing they do is a blunder, it’s so soul crushing because you just know the next 3-6 years are going to be a waste of time.
The Charles Smith game vs. The Finger Roll
The TH Jr offer sheet vs. The Melo NTC
Hubert – no Bargs trade?
TNFH it was actually a quote from you that gave me the sense of Thib’s dread:
>>>In what’s becoming a pattern among Knicks coaching hires, the best thing you can say about him is “at least he’s not Mark Jackson.” <<<
The Bargs trade was bad but do you remember watching Reggie score 25 in the 4th? The only reason that isn’t in the final 4 is because we won the series.
Hubert – my most excruciating Knicks memory (of the recent variety) was standing in a bar watching the draft lottery, hearing them announce that the Lakers got the #4 pick and realizing we had a great shot at 1 or 2 and then hearing “the 3rd pick goes to…..”
Getting 1 or 2 would have completely changed the future of this cursed team.
Hubert, I know 2-18 is more infamous, but Starks’ potential game winner in the previous game grazing Olajuwon’s fingertip hurts me more.
d-mar that’s a great call and I was in the same shoes.
alsep – I agree. After game 5 I had all the confidence in the world the Knicks were going to be champs and was stunned when that shot got blocked. Then I thought we were dead men walking in game 7, so it didn’t hurt as much.
Karl-Anthony Towns went from 3.5 3PA/36 under Thibs to 8.4 3PA/36 this season with a negligible drop off in efficiency.
Yeah I standby that, but most non-Mark Jackson hires fall into the category of “guys who will do well if they have good players and vice-versa.”
I’m not giving Thibs a free pass on Minny’s failures. He has some control over personnel moves and lobbied to bring in players who brought him success in a league that had changed dramatically. He couldn’t find more than 20 minutes a game for Bjelica, and had Towns shooting only three 3’s a game even though he was hitting 42% of them. Granted, he got them to the playoffs, but at what cost? The Butler deal backfired and set the franchise back. All the Bulls he brought in are long gone. That hasn’t gone unnoticed, or else he wouldn’t still be available.
The hope is that he’s had to eat some humble pie and has figured out why things went so poorly for him and his team. The article makes it pretty clear that he was very slow to react to the league-wide changes that made his Chicago strategy somewhat obsolete.
Anyway, don’t wait for there to be a winner to my bracket. The Charles Smith game vs. The Finger roll is in infinite overtime since neither team can convert the game winning bucket.
8 points in 9 seconds was about as bad as it gets for me.
One glaring omission: Tyson Chandler dunking it off his own head.
I didn’t look that carefully…is the game 1 loss to the Celts in there? (Melo offensive foul, Garnett no-call on push-off, Allen hits a dagger)
Or Amare cutting his hand, or hurting his back on a practice dunk…
One time I helped a friend decide to leave her shitty boyfriend by having her write a list of things she liked and things she didn’t like about him. Seeing his shittiness all out on the page in one place was pretty persuasive to her. Having similar thoughts today.
It’s never that easy.
He shot more 3s, but his OREBs and OREB% both went down as a result. In the case of his OREB% it was the worst of his career and in the case of OREBs per 36 tied for worst. So it seems there was a trade off.
When people used to argue that Dirk (and later KP) didn’t rebound well enough at the stretch PF position and other people used to point out that was partly because they shoot and defend a lot of 3s at that position, there was resistance to that obvious fact,
Thibs may not like his C shooting 3s because he wants them to get back on defense to protect the rim instead. That doesn’t mean he’s resistant to 3s from players like Durant, Curry, and Thompson at the wing. He also may just prefer corner 3s as mentioned recently. I don’t know. But he’s shown no resistance to 3s in any of his comments and has repeatedly said you have to run an offense that fits the skills of the players.
Phil used to argue that the efficiency of 3s was overrated by stats guys because of the extra OREBs you get if you shoot mid range from the right locations and send rebounders to the right spots. So his teams got extra possessions.
D’Antoni used to argue that defensive rebounds are overrated because if you leak out you may give up extra OREBs to the other team, but when you leak out you get so many extra easy fast break points it makes up for giving up a few exatra possessions and points on defense.
I am arguing “it all depends on the players” and I think Thibs gets that much based on everything he’s said.
Berman:
Again, no great loss, but just putting this here in a futile attempt to pre-empt any “We should just re-sign Kadeem” comments in the coming months.
Should go without saying, but
volume shooting 3PAs 17%+ league average at 15% better efficiency >>>>>> an extra 0.8 ORB per 36
I didn’t see enough of Kadeem Allen to have a strong opinion though I liked the little I did see for NY. I didn’t think it was a significant move and apparently neither did the rest of the NBA or someone would have picked him up. I’ve never seen Jared Harper play at all, but I’m going to guess he’s a non event also.
Harper is young, Allen is old. no reason to waste a 2-way spot on an older player with zero upside.
I don’t like point guards who don’t have a good ball handle,
Glass, to refute this I give you a quote from a recent draft report:
‘Truth be told, that ability to pass the ball is maybe his greatest strength.’
He’s Lonzo Ball but starting off with a deadly catch-and-shoot. He can’t shoot off the dribble for shit (yet), but if that’s the main thing he needs to build on, I’d take him in a heartbeat.
“No high-major guard has posted a 63.1 true-shooting percentage while averaging 15 points and 6.5 assists in the last decade.” “According to Synergy, he ranks in the 99th percentile in spot-up shooting and in the 98th percentile in catch-and-shoot situations, checking it at 1.493 points-per-possession (PPP).”
I’d take him just to see smart passing again from someone (anyone) on the Knicks. But plugging part of the glaring shooting hole, too?
KAT takes the vast majority of his 3’s from the top of the key. That would put him in a better position to get back on D compared to him being under the basket or whatever.
Edit: here’s the shot chart I looked at
the more i think of it…i’d much rather we bring in an experienced point guard, even if we overpay…bringing in a rookie to run the show is going to be painful to watch…worse even than watching elf and frank run the point…
there just aren’t too many ja’s or luka’s out there…it’s takes years for a fred vanvleet to become what he is now…i understand we’re not pressed for time, but, things could definitely get worse rather than better at the point for us…
Hey Jowles, is the stuff going on in Portland affecting you at all?
Again, IMO it’s never that simple.
You can maximize whatever you want on offense or defense, but there are always offsets to other players or other stats. That’s why even great coaches disagree.
Basically, there are coaches that try to maximize what they want to do by targeting the players that fit their system and there are coaches that look at the players they have and try to maximize the team based on the skills the players they have.
Thibs falls into the latter category.
It would interesting to ask him why KAT did not shoot more 3s given he’s very good at it,
I’m not sure what the answer will be, but I guarantee it won’t be “because I don’t like shooting 3s”.
It will be some well thought out reason for wanting KAT closer to the basket more often, the “team” (not just KAT) getting more OREBs, KAT focusing on getting back on defense, or some combination of players/plays that he felt worked better without KAT on the perimeter shooting 3s as much etc.. To a large extent, it’s probably too complicated to understand except via the results. Are they getting better results?
I’d be willing to bet Thibs would have won more games with this Knicks team than Miller (and I like Miller a lot) and it wouldn’t have been because he shot more 3s. We would probably have shot fewer 3s. Give him some top marksmen this off season and we’ll shoot 3s.
If the answer was anything other than “I screwed up” it would be a dumb, self-serving one. When you have a guy consistently shooting over 40% from 3, you do whatever you can to set him up for that shot as much as possible no matter what position he plays. You’re just being purposely obtuse, as usual.
The answer might not relate to Thibs’ offensive choices. It could relate to opponents adjusting to KAT and taking some three pointers away or making them difficult enough that he chose different shots.
If Thibs had Marcus Morris shooting fewer 3’s, he’d be a moron. Nobody else on the team was all that good of a 3-pt shooter. It’s not just shooting more 3’s, it’s about getting quality looks for good shooters. When Thibs had personnel influence over personnel during a 3-pt heavy era, did he use it to acquire more shooting? No. Did he maximize the 3-pt shooting of the guys that were good at it? No.
Thibs’ teams were usually in the bottom 5-6 in 3PAr nearly every season. It’s a consistent pattern, and considering that he had lots of influence over personnel moves, he made no effort at all to get on board with where the league was headed. No one is saying he has to be D’Antoni, but there is plenty of evidence that he’s a rigid old-school coach. That doesn’t mean that he can’t win, or that he can’t change. He’s very good at other things. But an old-fashioned approach to 3’s is a lot to overcome, being that it’s the single most notable development of the last decade.
Yeah, I have no idea what Strat’s point is now that we’ve established “it was only because he didn’t have good 3PT shooters” is empirically false.
I mean are we really arguing about whether a guy who let Jamal Crawford and Andrew Wiggins have higher usage rates than Karl-Anthony Towns demonstrated a sound understanding of modern offensive principles? Is there any hill some of y’all won’t die on?
Like I said I don’t think he’s going to doom us, but if you’re hoping he’ll be an affirmatively good coach you pretty much have to hope he’s learned from his mistakes and changed accordingly. Is it possible? Sure. Am I holding my breath? No, I am not.
Lonzo Ball’s TS% in college was a ridiculous .673 and he’s struggled to be be league average in his 3 seasons. Where Halliburton has Lonzo beat by a mile is his FT% and that’s definitely encouraging. I do think individual passing is overrated in the era of motion offenses where everybody more or less chips in on moving the ball, but I can see why that is a plus. The Knicks, though, more than anything need a guy who can dribble and create out of the P&R. Halliburton is not that guy, and profiles as an off guard with a funky shot. Maybe he’s a better passing version of Kevin Martin, or maybe he’s a poor man’s Lonzo Ball. I do not believe there is a circumstance where we pick in the top 10 and he’s the BPA over Ball, Hayes, Wiseman, Vassell, Avdija, Edwards, Toppin, Okongwu, Kira Lewis, or Nesmith.
This Jamal Crawford stuff is very disingenuous.
Towns, Wiggins, and Butler averaged 36 minutes a game, mostly which each other.
Crawford averaged 20 minutes a game off the bench and his role was to carry an offense while the stars rested.
Tom Thibodeau butchered the Minnesota Timberwolves, there is no arguing that. In particular, he was a terrible GM who constructed a misfit roster. And he deserves grief for pairing Towns with ball dominant wings who liked to shoot more than pass. But that does account for the USG difference between Towns and Crawford, and it’s a poor manipulation of data to declare that respective USG rates imply he was incapable of knowing that Towns was a better offensive player than Crawford.
It was also misleading to throw the stat about his 3PA out without mentioning that there were suddenly 15 shots per game available after Butler was traded.
I’m not going to sit here and defend anything about Thibs’ time in Minnesota, but this has not been an optimal use of data.
I do remember Reggie doing that but the consequence of it was minimal since we won the series. Whereas some of the other things you mentioned really F’d up our franchise long term.
Also, as far as the 54 win team goes, I’d argue that JR’s elbow shot to Terry screwed us in those playoffs more than Hibbert blocking Melo. That elbow turned a sweep into a 6 game series. I believe it was game 5 or 6 against the Celts when Garnett hurt Melo’s shoulder. And that elbow also seemed to put JR in a head funk that made him go clubbing instead of focus on the playoffs. I also remember we were working back Amare into the rotation and if we’d swept the Celtics, we could’ve had a few practices with him before the Pacers series. Plus, Chandler was still hurt, Kidd was gassed. I’d argue that an old veteran team like ours would have benefited from sweeping the Celts and having almost a week to prepare/rest for the Pacers.
This is…not exculpatory. If Thibs really gave a guy with a .519 TS% the role of “carrying an offense” we might be in more trouble than I thought. I’m perfectly willing to admit there’s a complicated relationship between usage and efficiency but at that point you’re just hurting your team, full-stop.
This isn’t an optimal use of data because Towns’ 3PA as a percentage of his total FGA went from .243 to .445.
Thibs made a massive blunder signing Jamal Crawford to be his 6th man even after Crawford had a horrible previous season. He compounded that mistake by increasing Crawford’s minutes as the season went on despite playing like garbage.
That doesn’t look like a guy who learns from his errors.
Good points, swift.
I could probably do a whole bracket of moments from the 2013 playoffs that made me furious. But without a doubt, the winner would be Woodson benching Pablo Prigioni for Kenyon Martin before game 4.
>>>This isn’t an optimal use of data because Towns’ 3PA as a percentage of his total FGA went from .243 to .445.<<<
You spoke of it as if it happened in a vacuum, as if merely switching coaches unlocked him. Jimmy Butler being traded is arguably a bigger factor for this change than Thibs.
As I said, none of this is exculpatory. Thibs is the guy who acquired Butler and the guy who decided run the offense through Butler. But Jimmy Butler is really fucking good. It's not the craziest thing in the world to run your offense through Butler instead of a 22 year old Towns, even if that means moving Towns closer to the basket on offense.
The PJ Brown/Ward fight should be much hire than 13th, that fight cost us the series and a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals vs the Bulls. Even though the numbers don’t agree that 1997 team is generally considered the best Knicks team of that decade and it would’ve been another epic series vs the Bulls we missed out on.
On 2nd thought maybe it was good we didn’t get to see that matchup again, I’m sure it would’ve ended in another heartbreaking fashion although it could never be as bad as the correct 1st pick the Charles Smith game.
>>>I could probably do a whole bracket of moments from the 2013 playoffs that made me furious. But without a doubt, the winner would be Woodson benching Pablo Prigioni for Kenyon Martin before game 4.<<<
Actually, hold on, no…
It would be the word "verticality."
alright, if we must 🙂 talk basketball…my votes for the season:
mvp: lebron
rookie: ja
coach: budz
defense: giannis
6th man: montrez
most improved: BAM!!!
Not the 8 points game, we lost that series.
How about JR’s elbow that woke the Celts up in game 4?
>>> Not the 8 points game, we lost that series. <<<
Yeah, I decided to only pick one from that series, and the missed finger roll was more devastating for me. Even losing game 1, we should have won that series.
I feel like I’m constantly dismissing Thibs time in Minny and its not my intention to do so.
I just think one bad stop (that wasn’t THAT bad) shouldn’t discredit a coach who previously has a pretty good career. Every coach should be allowed a mulligan. I’m sure at some point in his coaching career Atkinson will have a tenure that won’t go well. It happens.
I also don’t think you can hate on a coach for the end of their tenure at any place. Just to give the example of The Bulls under Thibs…they were contenders. Once they had injuries and they weren’t really contenders, that tension between management, the coach and players is going to increase because the coach is going to want to do whatever it takes to win games/extend the window but the management may want to tear it down and start over and some of the players might be losing faith. I think this is a pretty common phenomenon in coaching in the NBA, so I don’t ever really count “it didn’t end well” against a coach especially if that coach had success with that team just a few years earlier.
***But Jimmy Butler is really fucking good. It’s not the craziest thing in the world to run your offense through Butler***
Butler isn’t just good. He’s probably one of the top shooting guards in the history of the league. There’s Jordan, and then there’s a tier of players beneath him that includes Drexler, Kobe, Wade, Ginobili, Harden, and Butler.
This Jamal Crawford stuff is very disingenuous.
jamal crawford play 596 minutes with towns and butler on the bench and the wolves were -13.5 per 100 on those minutes. he was the worst defender on the court at all times and played 2/3 of his minutes with kat, butler or both on the court. it was mistake to play crawford 1100 worthless minutes with his stars and it was a mistake to use him as your no defense 49.7 ts usage soaker without them (his ts in the 596 minutes w/out them). it was bad coaching and it was obvious at the time from way the fuck back in the cheap seats.
I disagree with this. He’s very, very good but not all-time great good. In my opinion, he’s nowhere near West, Kobe or Wade, and definitely below Drexler, Manu, and Harden. I’d put him in the Reggie Miller/Ray Allen/Joe Dumars group.
>>> it was bad coaching and it was obvious at the time from way the fuck back in the cheap seats. <<<
Yes. I said as much in the post you are quoting. Like, 40 words after the quote you posted, I said: "Tom Thibodeau butchered the Minnesota Timberwolves, there is no arguing that."
But I contend that it is disingenuous to do what TNFH did. which was to cite raw USG numbers as evidence that Tom Thibodeau is so fundamentally unsound that he thinks Jamal Crawford is a better offensive player than KAT.
That is… impressive.
Actually I didn’t speculate as to what he was thinking I just made the obvious point that you’re fucking up if you allow that usage distribution to happen.
No, I don’t live downtown. Everyone I know in Portland is like, “What the actual fuck?” but I don’t know anyone who’s been scooped up by the William Barr Gestapo.
Holy shit what if they just let Scott Perry’s contract expire and make Tom Thibodeau the GM and Head Coach next year?
I don’t think that would be worse than Kidd, but damn wouldn’t that suck?
I hated Kobe but Kobe was a lot better than Jimmy Butler
And don’t start with Manu
ewwww, now that was a good statement to stir some shit up with…
i would just like to add:
Roll another one,
Just like the other one.
You been holding onto it,
And I sure would like a hit!
Don’t bogart that joint my friend,
Pass it over to me!
jimmy butler ain’t even sniffing on that list…
I think Thibs did alright as coach in Minnesota, despite playing Crawford too much. My impression is that on many teams if you choose to emphasize offense your defense will suffer and vice versa. This is not just in choosing which players to play, but also that different offensive schemes affect your ability to rebound and to play defense. I don’t know enough about that team to talk about its defense and offense trade offs, but it seems like Thibs made choices to emphasize offense. It also seems his choices were good overall choices because their record improved under him and also their record was about as good as I would expect you could do given their personnel.
Of course, there were some problems with the toster construction, and those were also Thibs’ responsibility, but we’re considering hiring him only as coach, not as GM.
if thibs becomes coach – let’s just agree we shouldn’t sign jamal…cuz if we do – he’s probably playing, a lot…
You know what? I think if Wiseman is the BPA when we pick, you draft him regardless of fit and trade whoever loses the battle. I don’t think Wiseman will beat Mitch out in year 1, but come year 2- the “lesser” of the two will have to be traded. Mitch is so valuable defensively that Wiseman could be the one traded. Now if Wiseman displays true 20-10 ability to go along with his movement on defense, then obviously you trade Mitch. If we’re developing, what do we have to lose?
Even if I agree, the question is, where does he stack up in terms of Best Player Available? I like him a lot in the top 3, but it’s mostly on faith in his development. I honestly can’t see him being anything less than a solid rotation player and his ceiling is franchise big. Some think his bust potential is higher but I just don’t see it.
Right now I have LaMelo and Wiseman 1-2. Long way to go but if I have a top-2 pick I’m either picking one of these 2 or trading down.
I remember Mike K doing the GOTME cycle back in 2010 (http://knickerblogger.net/gotme-part-iii-shooting-guard/)
I don’t see what metric Butler doesn’t get into that 2nd tier under. He’s basically Wade through age 30, but with less assists (and also a lot less turnovers). Plus, he’s a defensive beast, so he can’t be dismissed as being one-sided like some of the stat-whoring players (looking at you, Harden). I feel like, objectively, there’s no way Dumars (and Reggie Miller too, though his shooting efficiency is more valuable than the rebounding and assisting that pads the other two-guard stat profiles, so I get the case for him), gets put above Butler. Regardless, the player pool of all-time great modern era shooting guards is small, and Butler is in it.
I dunno Z. This draft is..weird. It seems like it’s Lamely then everybody else, but guys like Deni and Wiseman are very deserving. Edwards too. I’m with you on Wiseman as a top 2 or 3 guy, but he has a really low sample size- too low for me to be confident about drafting him top 3. Then again, Kyrie turned out pretty well. I wanna believe that in a league that doesn’t have many quality centers of his ilk, that he has a good shot at being successful. Outside of landing with the Dubs, our Knicks are probably the best landing spot for him considering he’d be neck deep in a battle with Mitch. Truthfully, the possibility of those 2 as a 1-2 punch in the middle is kinda intriguing- at least for a season
i’m leaning towards deni…i think the point guard draft class is super iffy (i do like the kid from alabama though), the last thing we “need” is more power forwards and centers – in terms of roster value they are literally the running backs of the nba now…
mostly though because i just don’t think RJ is tall enough to play as a small forward…RJ needs to learn how to shoot and distribute better…otherwise he’s dotson 2.0…
i think deni fills the slot for small forward, mitch at the five, over pay for fvv (call it for leadership – cuz elf and julius are not the right leaders, fvv is impressive on the floor) – and then we got work to do…
who knows, maybe fvv can even bring more out of julius’ game…
Butler belongs in the Hall of Very Good
It’s hardly a slight to be in the same class as Dumars, Miller or Allen. All 3 are legit HOFers in my book.
Unless they move up, the Knicks will probably be picking one of Okongwu, Okoro, Haliburton, and Toppin.
Of those, I think Okongwu is best, but after that, it’s probably pretty even. I don’t think any of the other guys will fall that far.
Hayes, Demi and Okoro worry me most of the chalk top-10 guys. Toppin worries me too. Haliburton seems like a student of the game who will figure things out. Okongwu is an athletic monster with some touch. I’d really give Precious a long look, he could be a solid 2-way guy.
Seems like Cole Anthony’s stock has dropped.
***It’s hardly a slight to be in the same class as Dumars, Miller or Allen. All 3 are legit HOFers in my book.***
Oh, for sure. If the top ten of the modern era is some grouping of:
Jordan
Kobe
Harden
Wade
Manu
Moncrief
Miller
Dumars
Allen
Butler
It’s the top ten, which is, out of the hundreds of players to play at that position over the past 40 years, by definition, an all-time great.
But, statistically, I feel like it’s easier to argue that he belongs on the list than it is to argue that he doesn’t. Now, if you want to say that everybody on the list played into their mid-to-late 30s while maintaining their level of greatness, then, yes, I agree, he still has work to do. But he’s as good as most of these players through their 20s. He’s one of the better defenders of the bunch too. I feel like his greatness is slightly underrated for various reasons. Like if he played with Duncan and Parker, would there be any questioning it? If he played with Shaq and/or LeBron? If he won back-to-back titles with The Bad Boys? He’s been under the radar, but his production on both ends of the floor can’t really be questioned.
Steve Smith and Mitch Richmond should also be in the discussion for best SG’s in the modern era.
Steve Smith was really good. Smooth player who I think never reached his full potential due to injury and being the consummate teammate. If he was just a little more selfish at times, he could have dominated 2 guards. Steve Smith was one of my favorite players to watch.
Curiouser and curiouser: Jonathan Macri says the Knicks interviewed Kenny Atkinson again yesterday, which he believes would be his third interview. The beat writers have all said each candidate got two interviews, though Macri isn’t sure if anyone besides Atkinson would have gotten a third.
Either Rose is really waffling, or he’s trying to pressure Thibs to stop negotiating and sign the deal he’s been offered.
(FWIW, I would guess it’s Rose trying to pressure Thibs — or, at least, to firm up Plan B if Thibs decides to wait for a better gig — rather than Atkinson or anyone else overtaking Thibs as Rose’s favorite.)
Maybe they are considering Atkinson as an assistant? That makes more sense than another interview for head coach.
I thought of that, too. Though would either Atkinson or Thibs want that? I know sometimes coaching candidate runners-up will take the assistant job, but that usually strikes me as awkward, and you would think Atkinson would have a decent shot at another job if more open up post-bubble.
Those are definitely reasons it seems unlikely. But nothing seems likely at this point. All I can say is that my experience in the corporate world with personnel stuff is that it almost always takes longer to hire, promote, reassign or whatever than you expect or want it to because complications almost always come up.
It does seem like Miller is losing out, which is a shame.
As long as Kidd is also losing out.
I don’t think Miller is a huge loss, though I also wouldn’t hate it if he got the job. Admittedly he had a bad roster and no time to install his own schemes, but he also struck me as an average-ish coach — better than most of what we’ve had in recent years but not drastically better than Woodson.
I don’t want Thibs to get the gig over Atkinson, but at least I can see the argument for it. Miller over Atkinson, though, would just be bonkers.
No Klay Thompson?
Definitely no Klay Thompson. Big Game kind of guy, and should have his number retired by GSW, but not in the top or even second tier of SGs. Have you ever seen that dude dribble? It’s a rare thing, but it reminds me of my own dribbling, and that’s not a compliment.
Why would Atkinson want to be Thibs assistant? Money, and media exposure for a year or so?
ahhhhhh, good point…
yeah, that’s a good point too…
butler > thompson???
A day later, I’m still shocked that they made it through a testing cycle without a single person in the bubble testing positive for the virus. Obviously, it’s only one cycle, but it suggests that even with housekeepers and such entering and exiting the bubble, the system as a whole may be working.
I remain much more concerned about how baseball and, especially, football will be able to function in the midst of all this.
Yes, pretty impressive. Baseball looks feasible. Football, not so much. Too many guys.
Too many guys, and too close together on every play. Whereas baseball players are for the most part much more spread out.
We’ve reached the phase of mock drafts where the three players I covet most (in no particular order… Ball, Halliburton, Hayes) are projected to be taken right in front of us and we are left with suboptimal choices:
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/2020-nba-mock-draft-james-wiseman-too-good-to-pass-up-at-no-1-tyrese-haliburton-jumps-into-top-five/
The new normal seems a lot like the old one.
It boggles my mind that the NBA took painstaking precautions that no one is sure will be sufficient, while just about every other league seems to be going with the YOLO approach.
I agree with the list, I just think that Butler is at the very bottom of that list, and is clearly not in the class with Kobe, Wade, Harden, Manu and Drexler. Manu had a BPM of 6 or above seven times. Wade had a BPM of 6 or above six times. Same for Drexler. Kobe was over 7 twice and over 5 nine times. Harden has been over 8 the last 5 seasons.
Butler had one season over 7, then a 5.8 and a 5.2 (current.)
So sure, you can cite teammates, situation, undervaluation of defense to try to build a case for Butler, but I still think he falls short. Being relatively low usage compared to some of the others hurts his case, and some of his issues are a result of his own petulance. Kobe, Wade and Clyde were very strong defenders. Manu and especially Harden are in their own league offensively.
Atkinson called in for another interview?
Maybe to talk him into an assistant’s job?
Berman:
So, yeah, it’s entirely possible this was just Atkinson’s second interview. News is even vaguer than usual when reporters can’t physically hang around the facility.
Put me in the Klay Thompson camp for the best shooting guards of all time.
The guy along with Curry revolutionised the game.
He’s the Definition of SHOOTING Guard and one of the most exciting/game changing shooters of all time.
That’s the problem with stats in general., They get misused by people that either don’t understand or want to admit to themselves that the game is more complex that we can capture with counting stats. It’s a complex mess of roles, fit, strategies, counters strategies, matchups, etc… The stats are one part related to skill/talents of the players and one part related to all the things impacting them. The consistency we tend to see in them from year to year is that coaches are generally smart enough to use players fairly well, but when there are significant changes in those other factors or in style the numbers will change more significantly. The idea is to try to get past the counting stats and to understand the underlying skills contributing to them and why they are what they are. Then maybe you can find the underrated or overrated player. No easy task.
Yeah, football seems problematic with 22 players on the field at any one time and many of them locked in blocking and tackling situations. It’ll be interesting to see what the NFL tries to do.
Re: Thibs. It’s not that I think he’s a bad coach. It’s that I think the Knicks’ only consideration should be player development, and Thibs is notoriously short sighted and impatient. Moreover, Thibs feels like a continuation of Knicks as usual where the person who gets hired is almost always the one who is A) available and B) the most famous in the brain of a person like James Dolan.
Hope for me would involve hiring a coach who fit the team’s needs rather than fit the self-conscious, convoluted logic of James Dolan, where sacrificing competitiveness so as to appear more competitive (short term talent, fancy name players, coaches and front office names) is necessary to I guess trick superstars into coming here?
I don’t rate him as highly as you, but he’s underrated by many people. When he’s healthy and focused he’s a big plus player on both sides. He can’t be the #1 option because he can’t create for himself well enough, but that’s one hell of a 2nd option or on the Warriors with Durant an insane 3rd option.
>>> That’s the problem with stats in general., They get misused by people that either don’t understand or want to admit to themselves that the game is more complex that we can capture in counting stats. <<<
No, generally speaking, everyone here understands how to use stats in context and is aware of their limitations.
This was a rare case of misuse, IMO. I don't think you can ignore a host of factors and use two players USG as proof that a coach doesn't understand modern offensive principles.
But you can certainly say it was a mistake to let Jamal Crawford shoot as much as he did.
Football has some build-in advantages. There’s only one game a week. Of the 45 or so players, all play either offense or defense or special teams, and some players almost never contact others in a COVID-spreading way. Some are only in for a few plays. Players can put shields in their helmets. Many players can wear gloves. Sidelines are spread out. It’s outdoors on a big field. Maybe you can use electronics to spread out the huddle.
The big problem is lack of a bubble. of the 100+ people required to make a team work, travel to and from cities, dealing with injuries at medical facilities, etc, it seems very hard to keep control. Not to mention the social lives of these 20-30yo’s, if you know what I’m saying.
I just don’t get this narrative that Thibs is a win now coach. The Bulls were a 500 team when he took over. Just bc Derrick Rose was the first pick in the draft doesn’t mean he was predestined to be the youngest MVP of all time. Noah was the 9th pick in his draft, which is not a spot where you are guaranteed to pick a superstar. He turned into a DPOY. People act like that was a given. Butler was a second round pick and turned into an all star under Thibs. I’m not saying Thibs was solely the reason these players were good, but they were all pretty young when Thibs took over and he took them to new heights as players.
Also, if he was not a development coach, why would he have taken the job in Minny? Just because they had KAT doesn’t mean they were primed for competing, especially in the West.
I think Thibs has shown that he likes to develop young players.
>>> Yeah, football seems problematic with 22 players on the field at any one time and many of them locked in blocking and tackling situations. It’ll be interesting to see what the NFL tries to do. <<<
It's not the natures of the sport that pose the danger. It's the tightness of the bubble and the compliance of the players. 22 players without covid could swap gatorade bottles all game and be fine.
The NBA bubble is something like 8-10 weeks. The number of people within the bubble will be decreasing as teams get eliminated, and the teams that stay longer should be highly motivated to follow the rules because they're close to a title.
Baseball and football are going to have many months of games, a lot of them meaningless. People are going to get bored, break the rules, and contagions will be introduced.
Also football has the problem of needing a week off between games. You can't expect people to stay in a bubble for an entire season. They need to go home.
Its called SHOOTING guard, Jowles, not DRIBBLING guard.
Seriously, I don’t know where Klay would rank but I think he’s gotta be top 20 SG’s of all time because he is one of the best shooters in the game (and also a plus defender or at least was).
Steph’s and Klay’s GSW showed the whole bball world that you can win an nba title, create a dynasty and change the way the game is played for over a century by being a TOP SHOOTER from long distances. ( Without forgetting to play TOP D also)
KD came to an Already championship environment to show that he’s a TOP player? To win rings ? To do what ?
Earn more money ?
I can relate to the latest ONLY.
KD IS a Top player but Not already Immortal in my book. Till he gets a chip by his own balls.
When KD went down on Tor- GSW finals were the warriors finished ? According to my memory Klay had them right there chasing the ring before he went down too.
Klay Not the #1 option ? Next to a healthy KD and to a hot Klay Definitely not.
If it’s needed ?
This kid is a bad motherfucker imo.
Game 6 of last year’s finals is a good reminder.
And if i were a gm and had to choose between him and buttler I’d take Klay every mfkn time!
Klay is very good and mostly underrated. He’s a 42% career 3-pt shooter on high volume (better than Ray Allen!) and never had a season under 40%. He’s one of the top defensive guards in the league. Maybe he’s not statistically as strong as others on the list (very low FT rate) but if you took one of the other guys and gave me him, I wouldn’t consider my team to be at a disadvantage.
sigh
I don’t get how you can clearly acknowledge the latter but not the former. Allowing a player with a Ricky Davis-esque TS% to shoot as much as he did demonstrates a lack of understanding of modern offensive principles. How is this disputable?
Klay is 100000x more likable than Durant, and that’s where the favorable comparison ends.
Durant is a top-10 player of the modern era. Klay is arguably not in the top 10 of SGs.
Word
Is it possible that Steph-Klay tandem’s supremacy is taken for granted and underappreciated ?
Being TOP in this highly competitive West for so many years and going to the Finals so many times is it really reflected on the stats ?
Jimmy B don’t know the logo of the Finals yet…
I chimed in with Steve Smith and Mitch Richmond before but even though analytically speaking he is nowhere near a top SG of all time I have to also add my personal favorite Allan Houston into the mix. We’ve talked about him before about how his shot chart distribution would be much better and efficient if he played in today’s NBA but he was awesome to watch, still to this day the sweetest looking jumpshot I’ve ever seen.
It was also eye opening to watch him play after he signed with the Knicks, under Riley they never had a perimeter player who could score one-on-one at his size to take the pressure off Ewing. He was also a better defender than I remembered, watching old Knick playoff games he did a much better job on Reggie MIller than Starks ever did, granted Houston’s size helped alot. Steve Smith mentioned on one of those NBA TV Open Court episodes about rival players that Houston was one of his toughest SG matchups during his time which obviously included MJ and Miller.
Hey, I could use some hivemind/research health on today’s distraction: Macri on Twitter mentioned the Sprewell/Keith Van Horn trade from the summer of 2003, and it sent me down a rabbit hole trying to remember the period of the 03-04 season, either right before the Starbury trade or right before KVH got traded again for Tim Thomas, when the team was actually playing pretty well with a lineup that included Van Horn, Mutombo, Houston, and… I wanna say Frank Williams? I’m sure I’m overinflating that group’s success in my memory, because that team was mediocre at best even before Isiah took over and started making trades, but I’m not even sure how I would look that up. What’s the best way to look through 5 or 10-game stretches, and/or to figure out what lineup combos played well together over certain periods?
And, no, this is not important at all. I just have writer’s block, and this is how I deal with it.
When the stats don’t really do justice to one of GOAT named Bill is it possible that underappreciate another guy called Klay ?
Why isn’t one of the most significant stats of winning basketball Basic Member of a team with “trips to the finals” and “rings” since that’s the ultimate goal ?
Well, this is going to be a fun afternoon on Knickerblogger Dot Net, I see.
it’s like every other play someone is punching someone else in the nuts and/or spitting on them…obviously, safety is not too near their list of important stuff in life…
>>> Allowing a player with a Ricky Davis-esque TS% to shoot as much as he did demonstrates a lack of understanding of modern offensive principles. How is this disputable? <<<
For one thing, you need to isolate Crawford and Town's USG by lineup for it to be meaningful in the context you're using.
For another thing, it doesn't necessarily say anything about Thibs. It could merely be proof that 22 year old Karl-Anthony Towns was too timid that year. Or it could be proof that Jimmy Butler hated passing to Towns.
On the contrary, that T-Wolves team had the 4th highest ORtg in the NBA that season. A team with Andrew Wiggins and Jamal Crawford among its top 4 players was within 0.2 of the Kevin Durant-Steph Curry-Klay Thompson Warriors. And their TS% was 9th in the league at .566.
That says a lot more about its coach than a pair of juxtaposed numbers with no context or attribution analysis.
Houston never had a statistically dominant season. Top WS48 = .130. Top BPM = 1.7. I remember him as being too passive for a player of his talent and far from deserving of a max contract even when healthy. Brandon Roy had a similar skillset and was a much more aggressive player. It is really a shame that Roy got hurt, he was on his way to the HOF.
Richmond was a stud but a step down from the “list” statistically. Steve Smith is a step down as well. Those guys are at the Jeff Hornacek level, really good players but far from all-time great level. Houston is a step below those guys, imho (and statistically).
I agree that bashing Thibs for using Jamal Crawford in the role of low-cost 20mpg bench scorer on a 47-win team with a top-4 offense is silly nitpicking.
Come on dude. It means Thibs either did not tell him to stop shooting the damn ball, or continued to play him major minutes despite him doing so, or both.
This was not some Melo situation in which Crawford had too much clout to be told to stop. He was 37 and on a one-year, $4M contact. We are talking about someone who was a season away from being out of the league.
I didn’t watch a lot of T-Wolves games, but Crawford is a 6th man. Almost by definition that means his job is to be one of the primary scorers when a couple of the starting scoring options are not on the court.
His usage in Minny was similar to his long term career average and below his peak years. He wasn’t taking a lot of shots away from better players. He was taking shots that a 6th man should be taking when he’s on the court with bench players that can’t create for themselves. If he was a starter playing with the Towns, Wiggins, and Butler and still had a very high usage, that would be an indictment on the coaching.
But he probably played very few minutes with Towns, Wiggins and Butler on the court at the same time and not a lot of minutes with 2 of the 3. So it kind of is a misuse of stats to look at his usage and suggest he was shooting too much. It depends who he was on the court with. In some cases he was probably the best option and in others 2nd best.
If you want to argue that Crawford is an overrated 6th man, that’s a different story.
That’s why I wanted to keep Trier. Trier is not a starter that should be taking shots away from high quality starting scorers, but if you let him loose off the bench he’s a pretty good option.
NFL — easy solution: flag football, with disinfectant wipes as the flags. “Tackle” and wipe, simultaneously.
Since I’m on a roll with good ideas, Jowles, how about you go downtown and tell the folks in the protests to link arms and as soon as the feds move in start singing the National Anthem over and over. Bashing people singing that would make kneeling during the anthem look like a Betsy Ross memorial.
I know, it’s a bitch of a tune to sing. But people can shout it. The key is to get a lot of folks filming what comes next. Talk about a viral moment.
That team had the 4th best ORtg in the NBA and a top 10 TS%, and you’re trying to say its coach knew nothing about modern NBA offense.
The point I am willing to concede is that Thibs was one of those coaches that gave veterans too long of a leash, and that’s problematic. But those are two very distinct weaknesses.
Brilliant idea!
I remember the Knicks shortly after the Marbury trade played really well with Marbury having excellent chemistry with the PnR with Kurt Thomas, Van Horn and Doleac. The trade happened during the All-Star break and I hated it. They also added Nazr Mohammed which was a good move but they should’ve never traded Van Horn and Doleac in the Tim Thomas trade.
They struggled big time after that trade before getting hot to grab a playoff spot, I remember a huge win in Milwaukee when they came back from 26 pts. Unfortunately Houston got hurt and wasn’t available in the playoffs vs the Nets and they got swept easily.
Okay, so it was Marbury and not Frank Williams responsible? Fair enough. It definitely seemed to me like the Van Horn/Thomas trade was the one deal too many of that season, though in hindsight, there were other problems. Like the pick we sent out in the Marbury trade eventually turning into Gordon Heyward.
Let’s use another one of your misleading arguments:
>>> Karl-Anthony Towns went from 3.5 3PA/36 under Thibs to 8.4 3PA/36 this season with a negligible drop off in efficiency. <<<
In your mind, this proves something about Thibodeau, and the fact that Jimmy Butler left the team isn't worth mentioning. (And neither was the fact that this team performed considerably worse on offense than it did the year before)
Meanwhile, Chris Bosh went from 0.6 3PA/36 to 3.9 3PA/36 with an increase in efficiency. Does this indicate Spoelstra finally discovered modern basketball the year after LeBron James left the team?
Sorry, this is just not how you use stats genuinely. Everyone here knows it, including you.
Yeah Frank Williams had a nice run right before the Marbury trade, I remember he played well in a win at Memphis where Hubie Brown praised him after the game. I think Frank got hurt shortly after though. The Tim Thomas trade was definitely overkill, after the Marbury trade they should’ve stopped making trades although the Mohammed pickup was good although not sure what they gave up for him.
I actually liked Van Horn in his short time with the Knicks, having him and Houston on the perimeter with Kurt and Doleac really opened the court for Marbury. They were fun to watch for a bit after the trade.
is there some super cognitive cocktail some of you all our on…how in the heck do you all remember stuff like this…
that’s just madness man…some of you all are cursed: never to forget…
yeah, i’m slightly jealous…
I both hated the Tim Thomas trade and conceded that it really couldn’t be passed up. Van Horn for Mohammed and Thomas? Too much value.
Wasn’t the Mohammad trade separate though? Tim Thomas was basically for Van Horn and Doleac. I gotta check basketball reference, I’ll be back in a few mins…
David Eckstein > ARod
In positive news, the draft lottery is moved up to Aug 20.
Shit you’re right Brian. 3 team trade with Milwaukee and Atlanta. It was Van Horn, Doleac and a 2nd rd pick for Tim Thomas and Mohammed. 2nd rd pick wound up being Ronny Turiaf!
Following trade deadline Knicks trades Mohammed to Spurs for Malik Rose and 1st rd picks in 2005 and 2006. Drafted David Lee and Mardy Collins with those picks.
Forgetting, then, is perhaps better thought of as the temporary or permanent inability to retrieve a piece of information or memory that had previously been recorded in the brain. Forgetting typically follows a logarithmic curve, so that information loss is quite rapid at the start, but becomes slower as time goes on.
think of all those poor patterned neurons you’ve polluted with these old knicks’ memories…you probably could have cataloged like a favorite bands music or something… no visual data, so who knows – maybe takes up about the same amount of energy and space…
okay so, i’m gonna leave this alone after this…i’ve said too much already…
so, i’m in the shower poring through knick memories, what i’m getting back is physical characteristics, on/off court…some personality things, again on/off…in some cases i’m getting audio soundbites for players/coaches…
i can’t really put together knick teams by year…just individual player stuff…
and some of you are getting like live streamed game footage by year and series…seriously, i’m not really sensing equity here…
okay, okay, so like i apologize…i didn’t mean to try to brain shame anyone who does have this remarkable ability of recall…i think i can sort of, almost, nearly touch my tongue to my nose…that’s some pretty amazing stuff there too…
let me ask though – is this stuff coming to you in color, black and white, can you hear people talking on the court, smell the popcorn…
oh, i remember, a bunch of you were actually at these games growing up…that makes sense now…
geo, maybe u need to ratchet down a bit on the chronic…
Sadly I’ve never attended a Knicks game at MSG. I moved out of NY when I was 10 and my dad was a huge Yankees fan so he took me to a bunch of Yankee games and even some Mets games but he didn’t care at all about basketball so he never took me to a Knicks game. I only started watching Knicks games during the 1989-90 season cause thats when we finally got cable in our neighborhood, I distinctly remember the awesome promos MSG Network did that season for the NBA playoffs. I had a baseball game during Game 5 vs Boston and one of my coaches kept having players go to the stands to get updates of the game cause a parent was watching it on a portable TV. A bunch of us saw when Ewing hit that crazy 3pter to seal the win and we all cheered like crazy lol.
I have been to Knicks games at Miami Arena and AAA but not in a long time. Best game I attended was a regular season loss in 1999, Houston hit a shot to send game in OT but then Ewing missed at the buzzer and Knicks lost by 1 pt. But yeah I have a very vivid memory of all those teams from 1992-2000 especially playoff games, I have a bunch of them saved on my laptop that I’ve downloaded throughout the years.
But if you think my memory of Knicks games and teams is great that’s nothing compared to my memory of Yankees stuff…..
You haven’t explained what Butler leaving the team has to do with KAT substantially increasing his threes as a percentage of his total FGAs.
Obviously it makes sense that Towns’ usage would increase with Butler’s departure, but the idea that his shot distribution would also naturally be radically different makes doesn’t logically follow. That screams coaching.
No he didn’t. LeBron’s last year in Miami he was at 3.1 3PA/36. His 3PA as a percentage of his total FGAs didn’t budge when LeBron left (.229 vs .226). Not much more to say about this one other than you were just wrong.
He started taking more threes as per the general trend in the NBA with LeBron on the team and continued to do so when he left. What is this supposed to say about Towns?
You and Strat’s entire premise re: Crawford is also empirically wrong, just so you know. Crawford played 960 of his 1653 with Towns on the floor. So yeah, Thibodeau actually let him take a lot of shots directly from Towns. You can look this stuff up before just throwing it against the wall!
TIL that in at least one way I am a more experienced Knicks fan than BBA
Ha there you go TNFH! Problem is every time I have gone back and visited NY its been during the summer so Ive been able to go a couple of times to the new Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees play but not MSG. I was gonna do a tour of MSG once but didn’t get around to it, the Yankee Stadium tours are pretty awesome though.
I’ve been to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-300 games, starting with the opening season of the new MSG. I also worked as a soda vendor when I was like 16. I only go to one or two a year these days, mostly due to expense.
The thing is that the experience of going to a game has changed dramatically. It used to be a “native New Yorkers talk basketball during timeouts” kind of experience. Season ticket holders would get to know each other and even go our together after games. Nowadays it’s full corporate and non-stop loud promotion barrage.
I miss the good ol’ days!
The renovated MSG is pretty cool, especially the food courts. Back in the day it was pretty much a dog and a beer. Then again, middling seats were under $30 face and a beer and dog cost like $7.
I know alot of fans hate the new Yankee Stadium but I liked it, definitely a better experience in terms of food options and being able to watch the game while not in your seat. But shit tickets are expensive, I didn’t want to go cheap since I only go once ever few years so I always get seats in the 200 section which are pretty awesome but still $100 and Im sure they are more expensive now, havent been back since Jeter’s last season in 2014. Even with that they still get 40,000 people a game, first time I went was a random Tuesday night in July of 2011 against the Brewers and it was still sold out even though Jeter was hurt and didnt play while still chasing 3000 hits at that time.
But when I used to go as a kid with my dad to old Yankee Stadium we always sat a few rows behind the Yankees dugout or behind home plate, no chance of that ever happening again.
My wife still resents Melo for the fact that they really started jacking the prices up when he got here and they never looked back.
latke basically summed up my thoughts on a new coach, but in defense of Thibs..
He’s a good coach. He’s gets more out of an (updated) old school offense than anybody else out there. This is inherently limited because threes are more efficient and range shooting let’s you get back on defense quicker. However, the Knicks don’t have any good three point shooters. Maybe they’ll draft some, eventually. The near term FA market is thin in that respect as well. For now, assuming a more aggressive win now stance as opposed to a rebuild stance, Thibs is probably the coach that fits Dolan’s ideal best. If I ignore my preferences for the next phase of the Knicks, they probably can’t do better than him.
My dad used to take me to the Old Garden in the days of Kenny Sears, Johnny Green, and Willie Naulls. The NBA had not really gotten traction in those days and my dad and his friends would slip Ed the ticket guy( damn Geo, I remember that) a five-spot and get to sit in Ned Irish’s box.
At the new Garden, I used to go early and chat with Marv Albert before the games. He was really accessible. Z-Man, I agree with you. The old fan base was really invested in the team and you really got to know the regulars. When the Knicks finally won their first chip it was really an emotional thing for those who had endured the lean years.
BBA The park across from the new Yankee Stadium has the infield diamond from the old one, so next time you visit the Bronx ( and are allowed to attend a game), you can run the basepaths.
i’m better now actually…got to work and bitched to someone who has a job that’s worse than my own, after venting – i listened to what he had to say…i’m not angry anymore, i have ceased to be upset…always good to share with someone who’s plight is worse than your own…
luv ya big beautiful blue al, that’s a very cool ewing story…for those of you whom saw it very young – the garden must have seemed huge…
RE: Atkinson’s interview, maybe it was his second. Maybe it’s due diligence because Thibs is waiting on an offer from a better organization.
My family had season tickets for a spell, back in the 80s. I was in grade school, and I’d get a contact high from all the weed wafting through the corridors. A minimum of 3 fights a game would break out in the stands every night. And those fights were the most entertaining matchup in the building, for the most part. I remember rooting for the visiting team most games.
Then Pitino arrived, and Mark Jackson and Oak, and suddenly it got really fun really fast.
I’ve been to hundreds of games at MSG, most of which I’d gladly exchange for better memories. But I was at the finals in ‘94 and watched the Spurs celebrate on the garden court in 1999. I was in the building for LJ’s 4 point play. I was there when they beat the ‘96 Bulls by 32 points. I was there when Ewing scored 50. I was there when Houston scored 50.
I’ve seen the Knicks play in Boston, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Utah, Los Angeles, and Atlanta (that I can recall). Can’t say MSG does it better than the others nowadays, but back in the 90s, yeah, it was the best place to go for a game.
I’ve only been to a handful of games at the Garden, fortunately most of them in cheap seats during the Riley years, the last time during the 54-win season as guest of a friend who had pretty good season tickets. (I’m pretty sure it was this game, when Copeland and Novak went nuts off the bench and Shump had one of his occasional high-scoring games.)
The closest I’ve ever sat to the team, though, was at the Spectrum in Philly when I was an undergrad at Penn and the Knicks were in town early in the Shawn Bradley era. Seats were not hard to come by, especially for a party of one, and I wound up in maybe the 4th or 5th row. I remember little of the game, save that the Knicks played well, that Bradley was shockingly tall and shockingly thin, and that I caught a t-shirt that was tossed into the stands at one point, and the middle-aged female Sixers fan sitting next to me said, almost pleadingly, “Now you have to root for the home team for the rest of the night, right?”
Those were some awful 76ers teams between the time they traded Barkley then drafted Iverson.
>>> You and Strat’s entire premise re: Crawford is also empirically wrong, just so you know. Crawford played 960 of his 1653 with Towns on the floor. So yeah, Thibodeau actually let him take a lot of shots directly from Towns. You can look this stuff up before just throwing it against the wall!<<<
You're smarter than this, man. Come on. Like I said twice already, you need to isolate the USG by lineup.
If Player A's USG over 1,400 mins is marginally greater than Player B's USG over 2,900 mins, it does not mean that in the 900 minutes they played together, Player A had a greater USG than player B.
I'm not going to look it up bc I don't have that kind of data and it's not my argument. But if you're going to make it, you need to look it up and present it (or wait for ptmilo to drop it on my head like a hammer). Without doing that, it's you who is throwing stuff up against the wall.
And don't lump my argument in with strat's. I already disagreed with his take. All I'm saying is that the statistics you are using do not support your argument.
You haven't even touched that team's #4 ORtg all day, either.
Oh, man, tell me about it.
I remember the slow crawl, too. They introduced all the noise on the weekend matinee games. The first one I went to, I was with an Aussie friend attending his first game and he was laughing at us. I was like, “it’s not always like this, usually it’s quiet between action.”
Also I miss the darkness of the upper deck.
Just to chime in a bit on this Jamal Crawford Minnesota debate, he only averaged 20 mins per game that season. In the previous couple of years in LA he averaged 27 mins per game and before that regularly averaged 30 mins per game despite always coming off the bench.
Crawford still had a reputation for being a great scorer off the bench even if it wasn’t necessarily warranted but Thibs significantly reduced Crawford’s minutes compared to what he had been averaging so while maybe he should’ve cut his minutes even more if not DNP him he did recognize the drop in Crawford’s game and didn’t continue to play him as if he was still the 6th man of the Year Crawford.
Didn’t ptmilo run down that two thirds of Crawford’s minutes were with other, better scorers? If his high usage was out of just second unit that’s one thing but Thibs doesn’t swap lineups that way to my knowledge. Plus hiring Rose et al, there are legit questions there.
Remember also Butler missed close to 20 games that season so maybe Crawford’s minutes with Towns came during those games when Butler was out. I dont know the breakdown but that might be something to keep in mind.
One thing I noticed is that Crawford was significantly better before the all-star break than after, yet he played more minutes after. Was someone hurt in the latter part of the season?
Is it possible that Jamal’s 90,3% on FTs kept him more time In the games during clutch minutes?
Yeah that’s what I was referring to, Butler got hurt I believe the 1st game following the All-Star break and he missed close to the next 20 games, think it was like 17 games.
Probably not, he shot very few FTs.
Portable TV? I had forgotten those existed, lord.
I was at the Charles Smith game in a really good seat. It’s a very painful memory and I can absolutely roll the tape in my head at any time.
At least that, as exquisitely painful as it was, was a noble demise, as opposed to all the bullshit we have been through in the 21st century.
Also, Donnie, I suddenly got a little Blade Runner Tears in Rain vibe there. I am surprised people don’t meme that speech more often but maybe it’s too amazing.
Checking on his first 20-25 MIN games “one by one'” tho i see that he plays in most 4quarters and in many of them significant minutes.
His very efficient FT percentage and his ability to create and make his own “tough circus” shot give him an opportunity to be a potential ideal closer.
Unfortunately for him efficiency ain’t his middle name…
belated edit:
…in most 4TH Quarters…
What if GM Thibs made a deal with Crawford, coming off of 26 mins/game and scoring 24 pts per possession season in LA, and promised him 20 minutes per game to come to Minnesota? Shouldn’t coach Thibs honor that agreement? It’s not like Minnesota was going to win the championship. They were still a good team, in an extremely competitive conference, winning almost 50 games. I feel that there’s more at play than just simply “Thibs is dumb”.
Jamal seems more like a Mike Woodson’s type of player:
“Take the ball, Do whatever you want, let me sleep”
Calling Thibs a bad and dated coach tho cause of his 1year gamble on Jamal’s quick fix-roulette seems not so strong on the “knickerblogger court”
I just finished No Country for Old Men. What in heck was that ending??!
My favorite memory of that era — which I’m willing to admit could be a Mandela effect — was that the Sixers had the #2 pick in the 1993 draft. In the days leading up to the draft, it became clear that Orlando wanted Hardaway but didn’t want to take him 1st. Golden State, meanwhile, apparently desperately wanted Shawn Bradley, who Don Nelson saw as the perfect high post passing big man complement to Mullin and Hardaway. Orlando was going to take Bradley first, then everyone assumed the Sixers would take Webber second, Golden State would take Penny third, and then trade Penny and several first-rounders to Orlando for Bradley. Only the Sixers also desperately wanted Bradley, and told the Magic and the Warriors that they would draft Hardaway second just to spite them both if their Mormon savior was off the board. So the other two teams reconfigured the deal around Webber instead. So the Sixers could have had either Penny or Webber, depending on the scenario, and they very angrily made sure they got the pipe cleaner instead.
Or, at least, that’s what I vaguely recall as happening.
No country for old men
My “archives” say that i watched it 5 years ago and rated it with 4/5stars.
My memory remembers only JBardem as extremely cruel killing machine with a funny haircut.
Need to give it one more spin…
After all Coen movies are highly rewatchable
So we all acknowledge that Thibs was a terrible GM, but it’s somehow out of the question that he could also make the occasional dumb mistake as a coach? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The Big3 Movies i can watch again and again….
Pulp Fiction
Good Fellas
Big Lebowski
I love No Country For Old Men. An American classic, up there with Psycho in form.
it’s all about what’s going on on the 13th floor…
just kidding, read the book a few years ago wanting to know more about anton chigurh, and, to be honest – what the hell was going on with the 13th floor of that building (most likely it was just carson wells being a smart ass)…
the movie is a fairly close adaption of the book though…are you wondering what happened with carla jean, anton or the sheriff?
***So we all acknowledge that Thibs was a terrible GM, but it’s somehow out of the question that he could also make the occasional dumb mistake as a coach? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.***
Is it terrible to want Crawford, coming off a not horrible season, to play on your team but in a reduced role?
Definitely a good 3.
Ha, all of the above. What a great movie – acting, script, scenery. Someone here recommended the movie a while back and just got round to it. I figured I could just google it but there’s no fun in that. I’m guessing the sheriff’s ending is that there is no ending to the white hat cowboy’s tale, and Chigurh’s ending is that there is no ending to the bad man’s tale. I’m guessing Carla Jean was killed since Chigurh checked his boots for blood on his way out, the way he always does. Don’t get what the point of the car accident was. What an odd ending.
So when will the coaching announcement be made? What are the betting odds?
i don’t know exactly, but, i think the character anton chigurh was used by mccarthy to illustrate the changing world and how things change around us as we (sheriff bell) age…
anton walking away from the chaos of a car accident after doing what he did is pretty fitting…if we’re lucky, we end up sitting around the kitchen table most the day reading a paper with our mate discussing how much the world has changed…while the world, it’s increasing brutality, and its chaos just keep moving on…
For some reason, they seem to be wanting to wait until the end of the month, so I think the announcement will be on the 29th, but I bet we basically learn who it is before then (well, I mean, we basically know who it is now, but you know what I mean, something more definitive). The odds have to be, like, 1-5 for Thibs and perhaps 20-1 for Atkinson and 30-1 for Kidd, with everyone else off the table.
Favorite Movies (when my wife is looking)
Under he Tuscan Sun
Nights in Rodanth
Sex and the City
Steel Magnolias
When Harry Met Sally
Favorite Movies (when she isn’t looking)
Road House
The Dirty Dozen
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Bloodsport
Goodfellas
That’s fair, I might shorten the odds to 10-1 for Atkinson. It is a bit curious that they interviewed him last…
“while the world, it’s increasing brutality“
One of the things which defines NCFOM as great is how it deftly deflates the idea that things are worse now than they were in the past. We’ve got it easy compared to our grandfathers, let alone our great-great grandfathers.
Mike
Bloodsport is definitely a classic, Chong Li was a badass.
Amusingly, that was exactly what I wrote at first. I just figured with the 1-5 odds for Thibs, it wouldn’t really fit, so I pushed it back a bit. But yeah, 10-1 is fair, as well.
on a grand scale, that is the reality; however, our personal perception as we ourselves age – seems for many to not coincide with that reality though…
plus, to be honest, kind of all depends where on earth you happen to be and who on earth you happen to be…
hell, if twitter and instagram ain’t the sign of end days, I don’t know what is…
I remember trying to get my father, who grew up during the depression, to move into a better apartment. He would go on about how good he had it…running hot and cold water, heat, air conditioning…
Knicks news, regarding the most universally-revered player on Knickerblogger! From Berman:
Meanwhile, Macri’s film school deep dive on Thibs’ defensive schemes continues. He makes the argument that the scheme is still relevant with a better defensive roster than Thibs helped assemble in Minnesota, but also expresses concern about Thibs’ fondness for playing lineups with two big men as much as possible in the modern NBA.
It appears that Frank is leveraging his most revered status as the article also states:
Let me guess the title: Je Suckez a le Basket-ball
I don’t think anyone here thinks Crawford is a good player.
Here’s the basketball issue.
You need at least 3 guys on the court that can create shots for themselves and score to have a semi functioning offense. Every 6th man (good or bad) gets minutes with 1-2 of the star players because not everyone has the ability to create and score. That’s why you have a 6th man on the bench. He’s a guy that can create and score when one or more of your stars are resting.
If your hired 6th man is Crawford and much of the rest of bench is made up of guys that are low usage scorers or that overlap with other players on the court you are going to play Jamal Crawford.
I’m still waiting for anyone here to say that Crawford is a good player.
Still waiting
Still waiting
No one thinks that.
The Knicks occasionally need a backup PG. Sometimes Miller looked down the bench and the only guy sitting there that could do the job was DSJr. That didn’t make Miller a bad coach.
Thibs occasionally needed a guard scorer. He looked down the bench searching for Lou Williams, but all he had was Jamal Crawford.
All due respect for Macri. He’s a passionate and knowledgeable Knicks fan, but he’s not the guy I’d go to for expertise on X’s and O’s anymore than I am. I think the defense will be in good hands with Thibs and he’ll adjust to the game.
Escape from Advanctraz – A Frank autobiography
I have no idea if Frank has been able to get to the gym and work on his handle and shot all these months, but it’s a good idea for him to go to France and play with professional level players to further his development.
I don’t know what the Knicks plans are for him, but if Thibs is the coach there’s at least some chance he’ll have a coach that will value his defense highly and find the right role for him on offense as they do in France. If not Thibs, then he should probably be traded to Detroit. Orlando or one of the other teams that started expressing interest last year. If I was him, I would have asked for a trade as soon as Mudiay was brought in and put ahead of him in a tank year, let alone going after Payton, DSjr etc..
the writing style is normalizing
Yup.
definitely…Chong stole the show…I always wondered how Forrest Whitaker feels about that appearance looking back on his storied career…
>>> Didn’t ptmilo run down that two thirds of Crawford’s minutes were with other, better scorers? <<<
Yes, he did. But minutes does not equal USG. What % of Crawford's USG was in those minutes is what is important. Without that number, the conversation shouldn't have even begun.
Even with that number, the case is far from closed because there are a host of other factors that need examination.
It's just a blatant misuse of statistics that I'm not used to seeing here from the regulars.
The T'Wolves 2017-18 team had the 4th highest ORtg in the NBA and was 9th in shooting efficiency. If you want to assert that its coach was an offensive imbecile that season, you need do bring more than "lol Jamal Crawford shot too much.":
Who would read an autobiography by a 20 year old? Sounds like it would be missing, oh, I don’t know, about 12 or 13 chapters.
But, that said, when I was 12 I read the book Born To Coach by Rick Pitino. Pitino was 35 years old, had coached in the NBA for one season, and had never won anything of any significance as a coach. But 12 year old Knick fans were buying his book! Cause they were convinced that, though self-proclaimed, the man was born to coach.
>>> Meanwhile, Macri’s film school deep dive on Thibs’ defensive schemes continues. He makes the argument that the scheme is still relevant with a better defensive roster than Thibs helped assemble in Minnesota, but also expresses concern about Thibs’ fondness for playing lineups with two big men as much as possible in the modern NBA. <<<
This has been my biggest concern of Thibs. He could be the coaching equivalent of Roy Hibbert.
Mitch, though, could be the elixir Thibs needs. He can step out and guard the perimeter as well as he can protect the rim. In fact, I would not be shocked if Thibs designs a brand new defensive style that deploys Mitch not as a rim protector, but a 3 pt line protector.
(That is why I am pro-Thibs. It is my opinion – and I know I could be wrong – that he is pragmatic and innovative. Rather than being someone who will try to run what worked in 2008, I see him as someone who can take Mitchell Robinson and create something the game has not seen… something that effectively counters this 3 point barrage and is a new as SSOL was.)
I will go to my grave believing that we should not have signed Porzingis to a max contract, but dear god it would have been nice to give Porzingis and Robinson to Tom Thibodeau.
Begley says the Knicks are likely to hire one of the runners-up to be an assistant coach, and specifically says, “There is some internal support at the Garden to adding Miller and/or Woodson on the next coaching staff, regardless of who the head coach is.”
Assuming Thibs (or Atkinson, but probably Thibs) is okay with this, I wouldn’t mind either. Miller deserves to stay in the organization if he’s wanted, and neither he nor Woodson seem like they’d undermine the actual head coach, whether through action or perception of the front office and fanbase. Whereas if they try to make Kidd the lead assistant, things would get ugly in a damn hurry.
If you’re hiring an established coach, isn’t it expected that the coach would choose his own assistants?
didn’t the lakers kind of do that with Vogel…i.e, told him who his assistants were going to be?
Coach X’s priorities
Offense:
Shoot 3’s
Get to the line
Shoot layups and dunks
Get offensive rebounds
Defense:
Defend the 3-pt line
Protect the rim
Disrupt the high PnR
Get defensive rebounds
GM’s priorities:
Build a team of players who can do as many of the things above as possible. Hire a coach who values these things in the proper order
If you force assistants on a guy, it always feels like it’s an interim coach waiting to happen, no?
As a lurker, I wondered what the boards take on this scene is. The other night I was out late, nine thirty. And there’s twenty five or thirty young fellas playing basketball under the lights. Is this common around the country. I’m thinking super spreader event.
ball is life, and also possibly death
yes, it’s a bad idea to play basketball in an unknown COVID environment.
The Begley piece suggests this is becoming a more common practice, though all the examples he gives are from the Knicks organization. Vogel working with Kidd is another, and it feels like we’ve seen a few other situations like that in recent years, though none instantly come to mind.
Well, its outside, which makes it better than being inside. But still…probably not wise.
I just don’t get all these people who are acting like this thing isn’t real.
The reopened public pools here in Omaha. My wife and I drove by our local park the other weekend around 4pm and the pool was packed! I mean to the gills there were probably over 120 people in the pool or sitting beside the pool on their beach towels. Everyone in swim suits, people swimming and laughing and just generally not giving a fuck at all.
My wife and I looked at each other like are these people insane?
I love the idea of keeping Miller on board. I feel like personality wise, he’s pretty no nonsense and also low drama and would get along well with Thibs and continuity for the young players could be useful. Miller was making strides with RJ, Mitch, Frank and even Knox so he would have good insight for the new HC.
Woodson…I’m less enthused by that idea and while having Atkinson on the staff would be dope (he could be the offensive coach and has shown a good ability to develop players), I worry about the perception. The team will not be good to start and it would suck for speculation to start after the Knicks first 3 game winning streak.
But these are all professionals and while it might seem like a step back for Atkinson to go from head coach to assistant, if he was part of the turn around, it would be a pretty high profile look for him.
I guess for me it would all be about how comfortable Thibs is with one or more of these guys on his staff. But from what I have read about Thibs, he isn’t some rigid dude as far as thinking he always knows what is best and is open minded to other coaches/philosophies/etc.
>>> As a lurker, I wondered what the boards take on this scene is. <<<
I have observed (mostly from a safe distance) super spreader events constantly over the last two months in New York City and eastern Long Island. I mean literally every day.
Just a couple of examples:
1. I ride my bike in a circuit over all the east river bridges 3-4 times a week. Every time I go through Williamsburgh & LIC I see the same thing: large crowds drinking in very close proximity to each other, masks off, mostly outside but often inside. And not just during the day (where the sun seems to be a real spread-stopper), but all night, as well.
2. My instagram feed includes a fair amount of young people (ages 25-35) out in the hamptons. The towns and businesses out there are doing an outstanding job. But the house party scene can't be regulated, and every weekend what I see would make you sick.
There are so many people here doing everything wrong all the time and it isn't spreading at the rate you would expect. I'm no epidemiologist, so I won't speculate on what this means. But I can say with absolute certainty that the virus has not been contained in NY because everyone is abiding by the rules. There is a large population of NY behaving egregiously all day and all week with impunity.
I drove down to SC in May with my son for a golf trip. We were very good about social distancing and masks, but when I saw what was going on, I told him it was only a matter of time before things exploded. Bars and restaurants and pools were literally hopping, masks were few and far between. The funny thing is that we were supposed to go in April, but SC had banned NYers. They went from that to opening things up completely. Just unbelievable.
Also, the 14 day quarantine we have in place here is just political grandstanding. It’s not enforced at all. You can take a three legged trip to Miami, Austin, and Phoenix, fly into JFK, and take a taxi straight to a nursing home. The only thing being checked is temperature. Everything else is the honor system.
so much of interpreting the journey depends on the view from your seat…turns out, so much of that view is determined by genetics and environment…a real crap shoot…
there’s just no certain path towards joy, passion, purpose, fulfillment…i do know, folks like your dad – help provide a steady guidepost towards the path…
i remember as a kid dad had this book called Man’s Search for Meaning by victor frankl,,,incredible story…i didn’t get the meaning when i read it…hell, i hadn’t even heard of existentialism before, or, hadn’t much yet considered the whys of life…my dad struggled with finding meaning and making wise choices…
when i was younger i had this health thing, afterwards re-upped heavy with jesus, attended a retreat, after that served (laundry, dishes and stuff) on the another retreat…sometime during that event heard that you can’t make yourself happy…you have to serve, not just yourself…
with so much loss (balance, strength, endurance, hair, emotional fortitude) in life…it’s easy to become a bit untethered at times from those solid guideposts we spend a life putting in place…
Man’s Search for Meaning is one of my favorite books of all time.
tell me then swift – what is the purpose…
This is such a pedantic distinction. You’re smarter than this.
Yeah, it’s possible that in their shared minutes Crawford had a marginally lower usage rate than KAT. What you don’t seem to understand is the little factoid of Crawford’s higher overall usage is just a symptom of what we’re really talking about which is the fact that he let a horribly inefficient chucker like Crawford take a fuck ton of shots.
You don’t think Minnesota’s offense would’ve been better if he didn’t allow this to happen? Or if he told them not to be dead last in the league in 3PA despite having capable shooters?
Pointing to Minnesota’s overall ORtg reminds me of the way people used to deflect criticism of Mark Jackson’s coaching in Golden State by pointing out that they were generally a successful team, only to watch a legitimately good coach improve their record by 15 games and win the championship with minimal roster differences.
Minnesota’s offense was good because no coach could stand in the way of prime-age Karl-Anthony Towns and Jimmy Butler. Are we trying to argue Tom Thibodeau is some kind of offensive wizard now? Because that’s pretty badly belied by his Chicago tenure.
At this point I’ve spent way more time on this than it’s worth–Thibodeau won’t be so disastrous that he stands in the way of us being good if we get some good players. But it’s worth noting he/his PR people did this same “relearning” shtick prior to being hired by Minnesota, only to fallback on every single one of his bad habits.
You know how you can’t waltz into your boss’ office and demand a promotion if you don’t have any competing offers and your job performance has been bad?
Demanding a trade in the NBA is kind of like that.
Well that’s the thing. You have to find it for yourself! Its different for every person but if you have a sense of purpose and if you can find the meaning behind the things that happen to you, even the horrible, traumatic things, you will be more likely to live a happy and fulfilled life.
I’m not even making a Thibodeau argument with you, TNFH. This was about using stats correctly.
As you know I live around the area as well and agree with some of what you said but disagree with other parts.
There is definitely a lot of socialization going on. Far more than there was when things were really bad in NYC and on some nights the streets, parks, etc. look downright indistinguishable from the normal times besides the masks.
However, I’m not sure what you mean by “often inside” because I don’t know of any indoor socialization that is even allowed to take place in NYC right now outside of people hosting things in their apartments.
Everything I’m talking about is outside, and my armchair epidemiologist theory re: the lack of a spike is simply that being outside can forgive a multitude of social distancing sins.
I can’t speak to house parties in the Hamptons, or in NYC for that matter, but while having/attending them is wildly irresponsible at the end of the day one-off, invite only events just aren’t going to register in the numbers the same way public indoor dining and bars will.
Remember what happened the last time Woodson was hired by the Knicks as an assistant coach….
Better erase the previous one BC
If Ron Baker had a NTC and DSJ can still enter an NBA court and get paid by a team why Frank couldn’t demand for a trade?
>>> I can’t speak to house parties in the Hamptons, or in NYC for that matter, but while having/attending them is wildly irresponsible at the end of the day one-off, invite only events just aren’t going to register in the numbers the same way public indoor dining and bars will. <<<
There are thousands of people attending these parties every weekend and they travel back to NYC. If Covid existed in these groups, it would register city-wide and out east. My guess is that the spread of Covid has become segregated by socioeconomic class in NYC. But that is just a guess.
>>> However, I’m not sure what you mean by “often inside” because I don’t know of any indoor socialization that is even allowed to take place in NYC right now outside of people hosting things in their apartments.<<<
I mean apartment parties, parties in those multi-family houses in brooklyn that have all kids in them, and the numerous prohibition-style parties that are illegally taking place in bars and clubs all over NYC right now.
thank you very much swift, i really appreciate your words…
too funny, hell no, they can’t have him 🙂
This is crazy: in the bubble, the Nuggets are rolling out a lineup with Jokic at point guard, Jerami Grant at the 2, and a frontline of Milsap, Plumlee, and Bol Bol.
The West is big, man.
Except that last year when he came back from France teams were calling.
You thinks he sucks. You would have been happy to get a 2nd rounder and expiring trash for him. To me, the fact that he hasn’t asked for a trade makes me wonder if he has good management in place or is too naive and weak to call “BS” and ask for one.
what happened to murray?
Even if we grant this is true (you’ve never convincingly sourced it), do you have any reason to believe they were offering anything other than being willing to take him off our hands besides your blind loyalty to all things Phil Jackson?
I must have a higher opinion of Frank Ntilikina’s mental makeup than you, because I think it has nothing to do with him being “weak” and everything to do with him correctly recognizing he has nowhere close to the amount of leverage required to request a trade.
I mean, it doesn’t exactly sound like we were asking for the moon!
What you don’t understand (except when it’s convenient like when it comes to Frank) is that you can’t just give any player the ball and say take more shots. Players have limited skill sets. Crawford is not especially efficient, but he has a number of skills necessary to create and make a variety of shots at a reasonable efficiency for a 6th man coming off the bench. His usage can be high without a catastrophic decline in efficiency as would happen to many other plays on the bench.
The idea would be to limit his usage if he’s on the court with a combination of players that can get enough good shots on their own to be more efficient than Crawford is creating for himself. But when he’s on the court and asked to score because the players on the court can’t do enough, you have to live with his efficiency. If you don’t like it, you try to trade for Lou Williams or a better 6th man.
Non-Thibs coaches gave Karl-Anthony Towns the ball and said “take more shots” and his efficiency actually improved. Obviously, the context for the idea that Crawford should’ve shot less is that Thibs had guys on the roster that could’ve absorbed the extra usage.
So yeah, he should’ve had those Crawford shots.
things you didn’t know before that you will know shortly:
1. age 37 jamal crawford sucked in general but sucked even more in the context of his particular deployment
2. most coaching analysis is inherently bullshit because typically wins are determined by 1. talent 2. luck 18. coaching
3. for example the 17-18 twolves might be coached by one of the most ballyhooed defensive wizards the nba gum flapping universe while sporting a 2nd team all nba defender and still end up a bottom 4 nba defense bc they have other shitty defenders
4a. this means that putatively marginal coaching decisions are more important than they look for two reasons
4b. they may be the only predictable thing about a coach that actually matters: don’t do patently dumb shit
4c. 1650 minutes on a 47 win team actually does matter. it could easily be mean a couple of wins in equilibrium.
37 year old jamal crawford play 960 minutes with 22 karl-anthony towns in 17-18. that’s 59% of the total minutes that 37 year old jamal crawford played in 2017-18. in those minutes minny gave up 117/100 vs 108/100 in KAT’s mins without crawford. this is real simple: playing a 37 yr old low efficiency shot creator 1000 mins with your offensive juggernaut center is batshit crazy when both players’ biggest weakness is terrible defense.
37 year old crawford played only 596 mins with neither KAT or Butler. minny was fucking abysmal in those 596 minutes at -13.5/100 and crawford sported a TS of 49.7%. the worst team in the nba in 17-18 was -9.3/100. the plan to play a defender significantly worse than bad who could no longer create shots at average efficiency was an obvious mistake. there were literally only two 3-man lineups in the entire nba in 17-18 who played 500+ minutes with a net rating worse than -12.1/100 (hello DSJr).
some point to the doc rivers playing 36 year old jamal crawford 2157 mins on a 51 win clipper team …as evidence that thibs was hardly out on a limb. this is an old syllogistic fallacy known as an argument from the wrong authority. acute nba observers already knew that 36 jamal crawford was washed
https://knickerblogger.net/knicks-morning-news-2016-06-30/#comment-535917https://knickerblogger.net/knicks-morning-news-2016-06-30/#comment-535917
and note that according to at least 3 sloan papers, 37 is several months older than 36. someone suggested that perhaps thibs had to promise 20 mpg to 37 yr old jamal crawford to get him to sign for $4m. if so, that would would turn his misdemeanor into felony murder. the clippers had to give a 1st to get the hawks to take the last year ($10.9m) of crawford’s deal. anyone who made such a promise to 37 year old jamal crawford in the aftermath of that should not be seen as a particularly redeeming fact about a person’s overall basetball acumen.
i am a jamal crawford fan. i believe that shot creators with middling efficiency and not very good defense can be useful in certain contexts, even very useful. i do not believe that 37 year old jc could be useful in all but the most extreme contexts, and he was an absolutely horrendous choice for the particular 1650 minutes he was deployed to occupy. and while this doesn’t mean that thibs is a dummy or can’t be a good coach, it does matter. and it probably matters a lot more than most the out-of-your-ass speculation about whether derrick rose and noah would have developed without him.
I don’t know what the offers were, but I saw a news report from Orlando that said management thought he fit perfectly into what they were trying to do. It made some sense at the time because Fournier plays for Orlando and they played well together.
Then I saw a similar report out of Detroit mid season or so.
Anyone can ask for a trade at any time. The team may not pull the trigger if they don’t like the return, but you can express your unhappiness with your role and position within the team and let it be known you want out. That what I would have done if I was him. I would not do if if Thibs is coming on board. I’d give it a chance.
I’ve done my part and now it’s time to sit back and watch ptmilo finish the job
Side note: one exhibition game in and I’m already ready to declare it was an enormous mistake (for everyone, not just us) to let a historically good NCAA player like Bol Bol fall to pick 44, as many here said at the time.
Don’t care how injury prone you think he is, you take the guy before random dudes who will never see the floor and enjoy the games you get from him.
bubble basketball seems fine! Has like a summer league ambiance so far.
Hasn’t there always been a fetish in some quarters for shot takers rather than shot makers?
Towns was already a very good and improving player going into the 2nd season for Thibs. Then he was fired. The T-Wolves team itself was made up of different players and had new scoring options off the bench or to be on the court with him. They added Derek Rose for example which helps both scoring and play making etc…
I find this debate preposterous.
Everyone here agrees that Crawford is well over the hill and not a good option. He simply was THE option Thibs had as 6th man for that season.
If that’s you best case against Thibs, you have no case or don’t understand the game. Go back to “he breaks players down”. lol
There are legitimate reasons for preferring Atkinson, especially if you want the team to continue rebuilding primarily via the draft over the next 5 years as Robinson, RJ, Frank, Knox, and our future draft picks take advantage of Atkinson supposed expertise at player development. He’ll also ges more experience being a playoff caliber coach that can make adjustments game to game. I’d be happy with Atkinson too.
But you sort of have to be an insane loony bird and bat shit crazy to think Thibs is a bad coach just because he played Crawford when that was his 6th man.
State your preference, make your case, but if you think Thibs is a bad coach imo you are clueless.
17-18 Jamal Crawford is a worse player than current Allonzo Trier. Allonzo Triers are a dime a dozen. Doesn’t say much about Thib’s basketball acumen that he found himself in a situation where he HAD to play Crawford.
Should’ve had a discussion with his GM before the signing, lol
I think Crawford’s performance in Minnesota reflects more on Thibs the GM than Thibs the coach.
I am also having fun imagining DSJ defending Jokic at the 1.
Frank vs Skinny Jokic, on the other hand, would be kinda fascinating.
Arguably it was dumb to let him drop past 4, after Zion, Ja, and Clarke.
I’m pretty sure Thibs brought Crawford in and gave him an option year.
I think Crawford rejected it to take a ton more money in Phoenix the following year. IMO, signing him was not a good move. He already looked like he was “done” for a couple of years at that stage, I’m not sure why, but coaches seem to like Crawford more than the data does.
However, despite protestations to the contrary, playing him was a function of the players on the team and what he needed on the court. In fact, he probably realized fairly quickly he had a problem which is why he signed Derick Rose at the end of that season to be a scorer off the bench. He could use Rose in some situations instead and get the scoring plus more he needed off the bench.
Is Bol Bol a thing again? I am seeing some twitter heat. I feel like I was strongly in the Bol Bol 2nd round flyer camp but can’t really remember 90% of my old takes.
I’m pretty sure Thibs brought Crawford in and gave him an option year.
I think Crawford rejected it to take a ton more money in Phoenix the following year.
if anyone ever accuses you of using the internet to cheat they are a fucking liar
One issue with being both coach and GM is that you don’t have time as GM to scour the bushes for unknown players with potential. So you end up with guys you remember, like Crawford, instead of unknowns like Trier.
Imagine a player as bad as Frank asking for a trade lol.
Frank got a lot of playing time on the Knicks and got better last year. I think he was wise not to push for a trade. Consider Hernangomez, he asked for a trade, got traded, and it did him no good at all. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
This is honestly something I kind of admire about Strat. Despite having access to all the information in the world, he clearly just spouts stuff off without the most cursory research. It takes a certain audacity that I can’t help but respect.
i’m intrigued by the prospect of socially distanced huddles…
do we know yet if they’re going to pump in crowd noise? i wonder if they’ll use curtains…too bad they couldn’t get the hornets cheerleaders to cheer for each game…maybe put red panda in the bubble too…
It just isn’t the NBA without Red Panda doing the halftime shows
pt is funny!
I agree that Jamal was a bad roster move. But he actually wasn’t terrible (.534 TS%) until after the all-star break, when top-10 in modern era shooting guard Butler got hurt. They were 37-26 at the time and then basically went .500 with a lineup of KAT, Wiggins, Tyus Jones, Taj, Bjelica, Crawford, Dieng, with Aaron Brooks, and still bad Derrick Rose spotting in. Playing .500 in the stacked WC with that horrendous lineup is pretty impressive. He must have been doing something right.
Ahh, the Hernangomez trade….good memories!
He played fewer than 300 minutes in college!
No excuse, always have to draft talent especially once you hit the end of the 1st round. Hell, Michael Porter Jr only played 53 minutes and he was drafted in the 1st; Kyrie only played 303 minutes in college and he was drafted 1st overall.
We could have taken a flyer on Bol Bol with the pick that Phil Jackson set on fire because he wanted to have the Wear Bear on the roster without it costing James Dolan a few bucks.
Thanks, Phil!
Commentary about Bol Bol I enjoyed…
https://twitter.com/AndrewJClaudio_/status/1286094916716814342
How excited do you think Woodson was when he saw the Nuggets roll out the Jokic-Grant-Bol-MIlsap-Plumlee lineup? The West is huge man!
Marcus Stroman likely out for the year with a torn calf.
12 combined seasons of Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson for a whopping 11 Marcus Stroman starts.
Would like to punch Brodie Van Halen in the dick
Mutha… wait, I’m not seeing out for the season, at least not yet. Mets saying he’s out “week to week.” But this is the Mets, so “days” = “weeks” and “weeks” = “months.”
I’ll hold him down for you whilst you work on your free kick form.
Let’s hope that Leon Rose is not the disaster that Brodie Van Whatever has been so far…
I don’t think he was disputing taking Bol, but rather the idea that he was a “historically good NCAA player” since he only played 300 minutes.
I wanted Bol a lot, but I, too, think it’s probably a stretch to call him a historically good NCAA player.
Berman says Thibs is entirely on board with the front office picking out one or more members of his coaching staff (his phrasing suggests both Miller AND Woodson could be on board), but that he’d also be bringing some of his own guys:
And every piece of the article makes clear it remains Thibs’ job if he wants it.
Whoa, let’s not anoint Bol Bol based on 300 college minutes and a nice preseason game.
Mets wtf?
watching the clips and magic scrimmage…I really hope they go forward with some background noise…the sound of sneakers squeaking is deafening…
So as a Knicks-Jets-Mets fan, there’s a possibility that the three teams that hooked me for life in the ’60’s will be owned by James Dolan, Woody Johnson and Sheldon Adelson.
Did I really sell my fan-soul to the devil in ’69-’70?
If so, then I have you to blame.
Here is one of the best Wilt compilation videos I’ve seen.
It was more not getting a second rounder to grab him that confused me at the time. Counting Bol Bol himself, three of the first fourteen picks of the second round were traded on Draft Day. I thought it was a mistake then (and obviously still agree now) that the Knicks didn’t trade for any one of those three picks and grab Bol. I thought it even made some sense to trade into the late first round to get him, but when he lasted until the second round, I definitely thought it made a lot of sense.
I agree that I don’t think he’s some sure thing, but I think that he was more than worth the risk once they got into the second round. I mean, think about it, the Knicks traded up to #47 to get Iggy who doesn’t seem to have a future here, why not #44 to get Bol, who also might not have a future here, but sure had a lot more of a chance of one.
Wilt Chamberlain was big.
Wilt Chamberlain also no longer holds the record for FG% in a season.
Ptmilo has not once offered anything on what you and I disagree on.
He’s arguing a point that is largely agreed upon by everyone except strat:
it was a bad idea to play Jamal Crawford as much as he did in the 2017-18 season.
I personally conceded that from the get go.
The fact that you’re arguing with two people does not mean those two people have the same argument.
Mitch needs to work on that Wilt one-legged fadeaway bank shot
The jury is still out on Iggy, he’s young and did well in G-League.
Who do you think has a brighter upside? Iggy or Bol?
Kuring yakin éta bakal Bol Bol…no offense to Iggy
I don’t know Bol at all, but I will say that lack NCAA playing time was no bar to us drafting Robinson, so I doubt it was a deciding factor in not going after Bol.
Good question. Personally, I don’t see Bol as anything beyond a dime-a-dozen bench big with a high probability of being out of the league with leg injuries as soon as he gets serious minutes. Iggy has an outside chance to become a very dynamic scoring wing. He’s smart, athletic, can shoot and is ambidextrous. But I get that others see him differently. I agree that he should have been drafted earlier, but I don’t see Bol as a Mitch-level oversight.
I mean, the guy put up 16 and 10 with 6 blocks in a scrimmage. He obviously could have been our Porzingis replacement. The guy is 7’2 and went 13-25 from three in his college career.
I kid, sort of. There was no reason not to take a flyer on him even if he has an injury riddled future likely ahead.
Brian, is this Begley update enough to merit a new thread?
We could have drafted Bol Bol , then next year draft Makur Maker and talk God Shammgod out of retirement.
Oh yeah, honestly, it’s one of those things where I forgot about it a week later, so I can’t say that I’m some huge Bol Bol devotee, but I still think that A. some team should have grabbed Bol in the 30s and B. the Knicks should have been one of those teams once it was evident that you could grab one of those second round picks pretty easily.
Sure.