Ian Begley, who is not at all a Berman-style guy, so if he is reporting stuff like this, you know that there are some legit grumblings, reports:
Given the context, the Knicks just completed one of the worst five-day stretches in recent memory.
New York blew a 23-point lead in a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday. They lost at home on Monday to an Oklahoma City Thunder team that had lost 12 of 15 and was missing its top two players. Then on Wednesday, they blew an 18-point fourth quarter lead to a Nets team that didn’t have Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, or Ben Simmons.
It’s the kind of stretch that can lead to major changes in pro sports.
Which leads to the obvious question: is Tom Thibodeau’s job safe?
Only Knicks owner James Dolan, team president Leon Rose, and executive vice president William Wesley know the precise answer to that question.
What we know: Even before the brutal loss to the Nets, confidence in Thibodeau had diminished among some people of influence at Madison Square Garden.
Begley notes that Thibs’ benching of Walker was not well-received by his teammates, especially as others were looking at how the whole team was playing poorly and just Walker got singled out (Walker noted that Thibs also stopped talking to him after the benching which…weird) and that in general, the players didn’t feel like everyone is being held to the same standard (gotta be complaints about the Julius Randle double standard, right?).
Begley also quoted some more of Thibs’ increasingly indecipherable thoughts on the team, “You try to get some sort of rhythm and consistency and that’s what we’ve been lacking. Everything’s on the table now, it has to be. It’s got to be merit-based, it has to be. I’m not just going to give minutes to give minutes. You look at everything. What are you going to do, how are we going to manage this. It has to be merit-based. A guy is playing good, he plays. If the team is functioning well when he’s on the floor, he should play. That’s the most important thing. The team has to come first for everyone. This can’t be about what’s best for any one individual. It’s what’s best for the group. That’s the way it’s got to be. We have to do what we have to do. We got a chance to reset here. We all have to take a hard look at what’s going on and we got to figure out how we can do it better.”
I keep expecting Thibs to start muttering about the strawberries any day now.
The fascinating thing is that Begley went in much further detail in a tweet (which is weird, right?) noting that it is specifically Wes that is talking shit about Thibs to Dolan. On the one hand, I want Thibs gone as soon as possible, but on the other hand, I don’t know if I like knowing Wes has that much power with this team.
Another day, another LOLKnicks.
84 replies on “SNY.com: Confidence in Tom Thibodeau has diminished among some people of influence at Madison Square Garden”
From last thread:
We’re doing step 1, which is losing. Intentionally or unintentionally the last 3 losses have been great for us.
Step 2 is play the kids more needs to happen under Thibs or someone else.
The 3rd step is having somebody explain basketball to Cam Reddish. Putting the ball in the basket is good. Leaving opponents open is bad.
The rest is really offseason stuff. Draft whoever djphan says, assuming he comes back.
Use the MLE to bring Rokas over or on a reasonably priced young-ish player.
Re-sign Mitch. Move the vets and hope we get anything in return. Cut Taj. Decide if we should keep new Luka on the 15 man roster.
Decide what future Randle has with the team. Is the recent play a fluke or is the rest of the season a fluke?
Begley also reports that’s Aller & Wesley have a major say in moves
The thing I do not love is that it feels to a degree like Wes is trying to cover his own ass for how the off-season has turned out so poorly. Someone has to be blamed, so he is trying to put all of the blame on the coach to protect himself, so once again, it’s all the usual backstabbing at MSG to which we are long accustomed.
100%, Alan. Wes is right out of that old school Knick mentality. Very much “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” vibes.
Gee, who could have ever guessed that the CAA circle jerk would degenerate into a frenzy of backstabbing
Yeah, there’s more wrong with this team than Thibs.
I don’t like Wes having Dolan’s ear. In fact I don’t like Dolan being involved at all.
I’d much rather give Leon Rose the chance to sort things out than risk Dolan stepping in.
Two other juicy tidbits from Begley today:
and
Definitely leaves the impression that Thibs’ job could be in legit jeopardy. Don’t know how reliable all this is but taken in aggregate it at least offers some hope that the front office isn’t going to get suckered into run-it-back mode by whatever bump they get from D.Rose’s return.
***it feels to a degree like Wes is trying to cover his own ass for how the off-season has turned out so poorly.***
Did the off-season go poorly? Didn’t they just bring back the band that was #4 in the east? Was Bullock really the glue to that squad? Elfrid? Other than Fournier, what other big decision was even made?
Seems like the issues the team is facing now are in-season problems. Randle’s regression, the young players not really improving enough to make up for it, and a significant drop in defensive output. That’s on the coach, either for not doing a good job this year or for doing too good of a job last year.
Doesn’t that just speak to exactly why Thibs should not be the coach? He was pissed that they weren’t doing more to make a run at the play-in game. For crying out loud, Thibs!
The only thing you said about Thibs a million times is that he dragged this team to 41 wins and 100% of our success was bc of him. You also yelled “we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Thibs!” a million times whenever anyone criticized him.
The only thing you said a million times about Leon Rose is that he hasn’t made any big mistakes yet while you defended all the stupid mistakes he was making.
It is pathetic that you are now starting comments with “like I said from the beginning, I’m skeptical of Leon Rose and Thibs was a bad hire.”
You died on a losing hill in front of everyone and now you’re acting like no one saw it. Come on, dude, just take the L or stand by your guns.
These people all suck at everything. Dolan is the worst owner in the NBA, World Wide Wes has no business having any role here whatsoever, Leon Rose is not a real NBA GM and Tom Thibodeau is an outdated coach who was always deeply flawed even in his heyday. And now that it’s all going to shit they’re all pointing figures at each other.
This is not the group of basketball minds that is going to turn this around.
Incredibly, this group has gotten all of 13 minutes together. Spread across 4 games.
Christ, that’s a fireable offense right there.
Honestly a very good question and I was wondering about it myself. Like, this team is definitely bad, but you wouldn’t necessarily think it was “back-to-back losses to the hollowed out Thunder and Nets” bad. It was easier to explain when Randle was playing like the worst player in the NBA, but he’s gotten past that and we’re still taking massive Ls.
My eye-test based read on the situation is that players, and Randle in particular, get absolutely exhausted in the 2nd half and it leads to malaise on both ends. There might be some confirmation bias in there though, so maybe the team is just truly that bad.
1) Keep Thibs & give him carte blanche to carry on doing whatever it is he’s been doing.
2) Continue to lose to the league’s bottom feeders in humiliating fashion.
3) Maintain the status quo until the Knicks brand becomes so toxic that all CAA musical acts eventually refuse to appear on the same bill as JD & the Straight Shot, thereby ending Leon Rose’s usefulness to Dolan and hastening his removal as POBO.
4) Replace Rose with yet another Dolan toady who will, in turn, replace Thibs with his own preferred “win now” coach. Wait for the cycle to begin anew.
5) Rinse and repeat as many times as needed until the situation becomes so untenable that even a halfwit like James Dolan recognizes that his only remaining viable options are a) selling the team; or b) handing control of the team to a POBO who knows how to build a team from the ground up and then stay the fuck out of his way.
There’s a lot going on here but all I know is I want as little James Dolan involvement as humanly possible and Thibs should have no say whatsoever over personnel. Leon Rose should do whatever it takes to secure those two things.
He should do other things too, like “operate a normal front office wherein one smart basketball person has final say” but, uh, I won’t get greedy I guess.
Here is why the offseason went poorly:
1)Leon and company were seduced into believing that last year’s success was sustainable with only minor tweaks. I’m not saying they should have pivoted to a full rebuild right after earning the fourth seed, but better executives would have had a more clear-eyed view on what was real and what was fluky, and on how far the team truly had to go. Instead, they opted to mostly keep the band together, swapping out Bullock and Elf for Fournier and Kemba, and were unprepared for Randle’s regression — just as dramatic as his improvement a year ago — Quickley hitting a wall, Rose getting hurt, etc. Some of those things couldn’t have been predicted, but their plan seemed to leave little room for error.
2)In keeping the band together, they assumed that they wouldn’t be hurt by signing the vets to short contracts hovering roughly around market value. Then when all of these guys underperformed and/or got hurt, they became unmoveable at the trade deadline.
3)From what Katz and others have written, it does not seem that they did a whole lot of research into Fournier, who is the same maddeningly inconsistent player he was throughout his time in Orlando and during his brief stint in Boston. You can’t blame them as much for Kemba, because he made sense as a relatively low-cost flier, but they were also banking on a team where both pure PGs were old and had injury histories. Again, no safety net.
4)They did this in belief that they would stay good and thus be able to trade surplus depth/youth/picks for a star, but the vet depth stinks, the kids have been iffy, and they lit a pick on fire. Etc.
There were some statistically inclined folks on this very blog (I was not one of them) who made a pretty sound argument that both Julius Randle’s 2020-2021 play and the performance of the ISM were both statistical anomalies that were probably not very sustainable.
Nobody in the Knicks FO realized this, I guess, because, as I said, they all suck at everything.
I have a benign comment in moderation so I’ll try it again:
There’s a lot going on here but all I know is I want as little James Dolan involvement as humanly possible and Thibs should have no say whatsoever over personnel. Leon Rose should do whatever it takes to secure those two things. He should do other things too, like “operate a normal front office wherein one smart basketball person has final say” but, uh, I won’t get greedy I guess.
Wow, MLB is adopting the “teams choose their playoff opponent”’ gimmick, among other stupid decisions that render 162 games even more meaningless (e.g. 47% of the league makes the playoffs now).
Wes and Leon are in lockstep on this, I assume, given how all the coverage of Leon suggests that it is hard to tell where his influence has ended and Wes’s has begun throughout their long partnership.
https://sny.tv/articles/william-wesley-tom-thibodeau-knicks
I mean this does not paint a pretty picture:
“Since he came on as coach, Thibodeau has been consulted on personnel moves. Some people who have done business with the team in the past year believe Wesley and Brock Aller – the club’s vice president of basketball and strategic planning — have significant input on team decisions. Thibodeau’s opinion is considered, they say, but management has made several significant personnel decisions that didn’t align with Thibodeau’s thinking.”
Obviously there’s plenty of room for healthy disagreement in decision making, but this doesn’t sound like that. This sounds like dysfunction and a lack of alignment on anything resembling a long-term vision. This sounds like how you wind up with a team that fits the go-to example of where you don’t want to be like a glove.
I don’t believe that that format has been accepted just yet. The union seems willing to add another team to the playoffs in each league (making it 12 teams total), but not the 14 “pick your opponent” setup just yet.
This all couldn’t be any more “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
It’s still a CAA snakepit with various idiots backstabbing each other and the team winning 33 games and drafting 9th.
Never change, Knicks! Never ever change.
Again, this is total nonsense, but I’ll leave it to everyone else to judge my positions for themselves.
My sources are telling me that Dolan is paying Thibs $4.37M a YEAR to lose games.
Thanks for the good wishes, everybody!
Alan, I like your take.
TNFH, don’t disagree with you, but the problem is they’re not ‘that bad.’ I mean they are, but only for stretches, and for other stretches (at least lately) they’re really good. Just the weirdest thing.
And finally, I’m praying that Thibs going on and on about playing time and merit is to have his ass covered when he starts yanking and sitting Julus down. I doubt that’s what he means (probably means ‘play the kids even less’), but until the next game I’m going with the dream…
My initial reaction to the hiring of Rose was negative. I think you need good basketball people (as in people that actually understand the game, player contribution to winning, and team building at a very high level) and good financial people (cap and asset management). Rose is neither. He’s an agent.
I softened my position a little as he did some hiring. But I never softened on Wesley. I don’t care who he knows, who likes him etc… He’s another snake oil salesman. I feel the same way about Perry, So if they want to blow up this front office, I’d be all for it.
Thibs didn’t ask management to swap Bullock/Payton/Frank for Kemba/Fournier. I can guarantee that. He’s a stubborn mule, but he’s not an idiot. He obviously didn’t ask for Cam either. So if you want to criticize that move, that’s also on management. These guys are another variation on Isiah, Mills, and the other losers that have been here before. They don’t know how to value players or build winning teams PERIOD.
100%
This is tough for me because I’ve long been a huge fan of Coach Thibs. How could I not be? He’s the closest thing to JVG that we’ve seen. That said..He’s gone and screwed the pooch. The team probably needs a new voice, but I don’t like it one bit. But I’m no fool. I can clearly see has lost the team. I don’t think he’s lost his ability as a coach. But the downward slope (steep too btw) started with the way he handled Kemba. And I believed Kemba when he said he hadn’t really spoken with Thibs afterwards. I just didn’t think Thibs would stop communication with him in a way that feels like avoidance. This is bad, and it suddenly explains the inexplicable God-awfulness of the team since then.
This is terrible. I don’t want to lose a coach like Thibs, but he’s clearly not a fit for the energy of this team. He’s doing a bad coaching job- but he’s not a bad coach. Sad part is..all he has to do to fit is experiment with ways of putting the talent in position to do what they do best. Why would you even have a Kemba Walker just to have him bring the ball past half court, pass it to Julius then run to the corner? His Chicago offense was NOTHING like this, and neither was his Minnesota offense. Traditionally he’s let guards who can create do what they do, but he has never allowed Kemba to do it.
Mind-boggling.
So..unfortunately Thibs is likely gone in the offseason. It has to get way worse for the team to make a move in-season, as they are trying to restore their image
“Obviously there’s plenty of room for healthy disagreement in decision making, but this doesn’t sound like that. This sounds like dysfunction and a lack of alignment on anything resembling a long-term vision. This sounds like how you wind up with a team that fits the go-to example of where you don’t want to be like a glove.”
100%
Set aside any disagreements you and I may have about team building or individual players.
With virtually every coach, you know what you are getting. There has to be a meeting of the minds between the front office and the coach. If they have completely different views on how to value players and how to build teams it’s going to blow up in their faces.
We know what Thibs wants.
He wants hard working players that defend for every minute they are on the court.
He wants a PG than can penetrate and finish or dish.
He wants a C that protects the paint.
He allocates minutes based on merit and on the belief that young players have to earn their minutes to replace veterans. He will play rookies and young players (he plays Grimes now, played Quick last year etc..) but not just for development. They have to earn it.
If that’s not what you want, he shouldn’t be the coach any more than MDA should be the coach if you want to focus on defense or Hornacek should be the coach if you want to teach the triangle.
The thing is, IMO the Thibs formula of defense first is THE winning one we should be adopting. The Isiah, Mills, Perry, Rose, Wesley formula of Kemba, Fournier and even Cam etc.. is a loser (and I’m not negative on Cam yet).
I for one am really tired of red faced, “old-school”, toughness, play the game the right way coaches.
I don’t think that plays particularly well with modern NBA players. These are professional athletes that have worked extremely hard to get where they are and are millionaires. They don’t need some guy yelling in their face to work harder.
I want us to hire a younger, modern, analytics minded coach, that draws up good plays and puts players in places to succeed based on data and modern basketball theory.
These are professionals and they will work hard whether you yell at them or not and if they don’t get rid of them. This isn’t college or high school these are grown men who are elite in their field.
Can you imagine a hospital boss that just yells at his doctors to work harder while refusing to buy MRIs and cat scans. That is what coaches like Thibs and Skiles represent.
I think Thibs is a basically average NBA coach with some extremely annoying bad habits, so I don’t really care if he stays or gets fired, but Worldwide Wes is just going to recommend we hire Calipari
Yeah, Alan once again provides an insightful recap. I appreciate that Leon was in a difficult position and I don’t blame him for wanting to run it back. But he could have run it back without extending Randle, without giving a big contract to Fournier, and without fucking up the draft.
Hubert, I think we probably had to extend Randle. Yes, it was an outlier season in his career, but if he duplicated his 2021 numbers, he was gonna get a max this summer. As it is, the extension he signed is non-terrible, especially given that his production has gotten significantly better of late. Provided he doesn’t start shitting the bed again on the regular, he should be movable down the road, even if he’s a more complicated fit with some rosters than others.
My reading of that was “I didn’t want Kemba Walker, Evan Fournier, and Cam Reddish to begin with, so don’t yell at me when I sit their ass down.” If he’s going down, he’s going down with his guys.
I can see how Thibs feels hard done by. He went 41-31 with a certain style of play, and then the front office went out and got him guys who could never conceivably fit that style.
I concede that it would have taken balls of steel to trade him after that season or play wait-and-see. I would love to have a GM that understood statistics well enough to explore the option of cashing in on him. But I know there are very few out there.
And you’re also right about his contract. If we revamp the offense next year, he could conceivably be worth the $30mm.
I’d be fine with firing Thibs after the season but at the back of my mind I cant help imagining he plays one of our assets into the ground and has them sustain a serious injury.
I think popovich is the last of the “bobby knight” disciple type coach to succeed in the NBA…thibs appears to be stuck in that mold….and maybe he is not refusing to change but doesn’t have the ability to change and is just punching in the dark right now with his old muscle memory and just doesn’t have the roster to make it work…he knows the game (or at least he talks like he understands the modern game) but this roster and his approach is a lost cause…its all about threading the needle on surgical moves right now…and at least we have the braintrust in the front office to do the right thing….doh!
I think DRed’s take is spot on. Most nba coaches don’t move the needle much in either direction. And let’s face it: We all knew these free agent signing were garbage. The Celtics couldn’t pack their bags fast enough. The guys we resigned — Burks, Noel, Rose, Taj — have been decent enough when not injured.
But Kemba was a bad gamble at 2 years and Fournier’s contract was way too long. They should’ve stuck to their guns: then they would’ve gotten Schröder and Oubre instead on 1 or 2 year deals that aren’t crippling.
The draft went “ok” I guess, we but we really need to see what those guys can do. Apparently, we are the only bottom feeder whose lineup is too tough for rookies to crack… because?
If William Wesley has James Dolan’s ear on basketball matters outside the presence of his org chart superior, Leon Rose, that’s a huge problem. Begley’s tweet doesn’t totally clear that up — WWW may have said the things he leaked saying in a meeting with a bunch of other people — but more likely it was one-on-one.
That’s the problem with the structure Leon has set up. Who’s responsible, and therefore accountable, for what? Management 101 stuff. There’s no way this ragged gaggle of voices are going to compete with Pat Riley’s hoop ops group or any similar, properly organized one.
And that’s just on the organization part. There’s also a talent deficiency, certainly at the senior levels. Rose, WWW, Scott Perry are not competitive talent-wise. They’re not even close.
As I see it, there were two major big picture “planning” issues coming out of last season:
1. How much of 20-21 was repeatable, and how much would naturally revert to the mean? This goes to things like ISM and the standard-issue analytic stuff that’s second nature to most association hoop ops teams at this late date. Anyone with a brain knew that ISM was a complete fluke and would revert. Player performance, particularly JR’s, is a more challenging analysis and I don’t think we can be overly critical of what they came up with on that front.
2. Can the roster win anything with Julius Randle in his current role? They fucked that one up completely and totally. It continues to this day to be the number one issue they have to resolve. The roster can’t win anything with Julius Randle in his current role. Then it’s a matter of tactical to-dos to alleviate the problem. That’s not to say that the tactical workout from under that problem is easy — it isn’t — but it first has to be identified as a problem, and they’ve fucked that part up badly.
Has anyone ever wondered aloud how can Thibs make it work with Nate Robinson and DJ Augustin, but not Kemba? And you can’t say it’s because he didn’t choose him. He supposedly NEVER chooses small guards. He’s handled Kemba as if he has a vendetta. Thibs never struck me as the “I’ll show you that was a bad decision” type of coach. Again we’ve seen him make it work with smaller, less accomplished guards before.
Sometimes the player is collateral damage in the process and gets caught in the middle, and there isn’t much if any substance involved. Tom Thibodeau may not like Kemba Walker solely because of the fact that he told the FO he didn’t want Kemba Walker and he, Tom Thibodeau didn’t get his way.
That’s how people in ego professions and pursuits often operate.
@BenRitholtzNBA
There are 243 NBA players who have taken over 90 3-pointers this season.
Obi Toppin ranks 243rd in 3-point percentage.
Yeah Kevin, I think that every time he takes a 3. I also think, “Could there be another way to use the skills he does have?”
And if you’re using Cam Reddish as a catch-and-shoot corner 3-baller — as it appears is being done because pretty much all he does is goes and stands in the corner — you’re kind of going about this all wrong.
Last season Thibs received a trash roster and managed to win COTY award by turning it to a highly rootable nonstop D machine.
Could he do it again?
With new kind of “trash” this time?
Looks like he didn’t even tried.
His way of coaching this season never yelled “Win or Die trying”…
Same Page malfunction ain’t so easy to fix
– Start Rant –
I’m not surprised that we have quarters of good to great basketball, this is a team with a lot of potential and depth was once considered one of its strenght.
Unfortunately what could have been assets in the hands of more flexible and open minded coaches weren’t right for our.
I praised him last year and still think he deserved his COTY, despite playoffs showing his unability to stray from the path even in the direst circumstances.
But this year he’s undefendable and in 2021-22 with Covid, special rules for 10-days contracts and teams missing stars and superstars left and right for long stretches of games, the injuries excuse is just that, an excuse.
He was unable to harness Randle when his ego started to veer away, blatantly used a double standard with him (still in place) enraging and distancing the other players, went back to his idiotic Automatic Sostitution Pattern after trying timidly to distance from it, he exiled Kemba and then run him to the ground with an irresponsible amount of minutes, continued to punish Obi from every little error, endlessly uses players out of position or doesn’t maximize their skills, blindly refuses to try anything new (how many minutes did Randle and Obi play together? And RJ with the younger and quicker second unit?), he confined Grimes to insulting appearences until evidence was so blatant he was forced to change, did ignore Deuce…
I can go on and on and on.
Then he injured RJ. Yes he, Tom Thibodeau, injured RJ. And lost me forever. From that moment firing him become the only way to go for me. He’s dangerous.
With the way the season is going Brian’s 56-wins prediction was lovingly mocked by many, but give this team to Eric Spoelstra or Nick Nurse and there’s probably a 50 wins team here.
For the record: I hate WWW trying to distance himself from this mess and throwing Thibs under the bus. Fire him too.
– End Rant –
I’m with you, Max. Thibs has to go, but WWW has to go too. You can’t have a guy like that undermining the team when it suits him.
Well, the best plan would be to fire everybody, but is there a good GM that we can hire? Last time Dolan was stupid, why in hell did he sign Leon so fast, when Ujiri would be an option in the summer?
No way Dolan just cleans house right now. But I can imagine him saying to Rose, “There’s a problem between these two guys and it’s making us look bad in the media and on the court, so fix it NOW.”
The easiest guy to let go is Thibs. Let a young interim take over and tell him that certain young guys have to play a certain amount but beyond that the coach can do whatever the coach wants.
I’ve never been a WWW fan, he’s the kind of guy who brings a “club” feel to the workplace. Even if he’s right on the Thibs issue, having this leak out is exactly the kind of thing that made last year refreshing beyond the 4th seed. Now we’re in the news again for all the wrong reasons. Unless the article is BS (not faulting Ian Begley, just suggesting that his source may have a vendetta against one or both of Wes and Thibs) it seems like one or both of them have to go, and Thibs would be the more likely one.
We’ll have to agree to disagree here. Maybe we’re a couple of games over .500, but this team has a shitty roster right now. It’s actually pretty surprising that we built the big leads that we have blown recently. I could easily see another coach presiding over any more blowout losses a la Denver with this same bunch.
Maybe hiring a samepageologist?
Guys, we just hired Rosas. Everything’s going to be fine. He’s known for his ability to get everyone in an organization to trust each other.
It’s really a good question why the team is collapsing at the end of games. Maybe it’s being tired, but the actual total minutes being played by different players isn’t that extreme. To me it seems more mental than anything. The team is relaxed mentally at the beginning of games and tight at the end. I don’t know how to fix that, especially with the NYC press, fans, and maybe certain basketball blogs micromanaging every move.
On the subject of incinerating picks, the root debate is more about taste in players than incineration. If you like Reddish a lot or at least like him as much as a middling draft pick, then the pick wasn’t incinerated. The team essentially got four players for three draft picks. On the other hand, if you like the players we could have drafted but hate Reddish then the pick was wasted. I don’t like any of the players we’ve discussed here in this context, but I think that’s because many picks in the twenty range don’t do much in the pros. Reddish reflects the front office’s taste for athletic players with flaws (see Obi for an example). I don’t see Reddish’s age as a black mark against him. He’s the same age as Obi was when we drafted him. That’s older than some rookies but still plenty young enough to improve.
Perhaps you have heard of this little rock group called The Eagles
So one report says Zion might need another foot surgery and another report says he’ll be back after the all star break. If its the former then I will probably give up on that dream of him and Rj(and Cam I guess) teaming up again.
I agree that now it’s too late and I expected more blowouts too,
but I don’t think we had a shitty roster at the start of the year, before Kemba and Rose were used “un-carefully”, RJ was killed and so on.
My opinion is that some other coaches, not named Fizdale ;-), would have used it better.
The 5-1 start had his flaws (that later became disasters) but wasn’t a total fluke.
Anyway it’s totally fine and reasonable to view this argument differently… it’s not the 19th pick 🙂
I think it’s both.
The mental side is real, close losses and collapses are mounting and players are losing confidence*.
At the same time our most tired player at the end of games is always Randle and while his minutes are lower than last year, the pace of play is higher and he tends to lose steam fast, especially when used for full quarters. That’s another reason why Obi must play more.
* The FTs-Itis that cost us so many games is another symptom.
Thibs’s plan to “find the right guys and ride them into the ground” flies directly in the face of so much current sports theory. My hobby is distance running, and, in that sport, there are numerous studies in which top marathoners actually gain speed by reducing overall mileage. Some of you are no doubt familiar with the book “Peak Performance” which basically advocates for coaches and athletes to prioritize rest and recovery at least as much as threshold training.
Of course we have some lesser quality athletes, but some things, like mental breakdowns, missed free throws, even injuries, are exactly the kind of mistakes that result from overtraining. By now MLB teams routinely have guys on pitch counts, and NBA coaches like Kerr and Pop purposefully stagger minutes during a season to keep their rosters fresh. It seems Thibs is way out of step with the times.
As someone pointed out in a previous thread, Thibs’s loyalty may actually be setting up his favorite warriors to fail due to overuse. If instead he gave regular minutes to some of the lesser guys (in his mind anyway) he might actually get better results from his favorites. Maybe Julius doesn’t throw the ball into the stands. Maybe playing Kemba every other game by design might be a good thing (isn’t Klay doing that right now?). Doesn’t Kemba basically drop forty every time he takes a week off?
Gee, who could have ever guessed that the CAA circle jerk would degenerate into a frenzy of backstabbing
this is just so incredibly funny…yes, things certainly do seem to be trending strongly in this direction 🙂
just when you thought the IOC couldn’t go any lower…
that shit with kamila valieva sure seems like some kind of child abuse…my first thought is just what a scumbag putin is, but, shit look how evil our own US gymnastics organization was/is…
if the front office has any confidence in johnnie bryant (to basically play the players they want to evaluate more completely, and who knows maybe even have the team perform better) – he needs to become the interim coach pronto…
thibs’ joe judge presser moment should be his last…as others have said – he has zero credibility with that “earned” court time bullshit…i got to imagine at least 90% of the locker room heard that and laughed…
yeah, no doubt thibs is pinning a whole bunch of this bullshit on him having to play kemba and evian…
johnnie’s been an assistant coach since 2014 – i’d bet the farm if he takes over we play much better…
the players told you loudly and clearly this last week what they think of having thibs as their coach…
I know that endless arguments about incompetence are a big part of what we do here, but go to YouTube and watch the last several years of Demar Derozan highlights. I’m ashamed to say I had let him fly under my radar. What an exquisite game he plays. If you miss the craftiness of Andre Miller but want to see it with a mod-career Kobe’s athleticism, you are in for a treat.
Last week all the bad decisions the FO made over the past 20 years were outlined and discussed. There were a lot of bad trades recalled, but the worst decision may have actually been a trade that Dolan DIDN’T allow. Lowry for Iman Shumpert and the pick that became Kevin Knox. Lowry went on to make 6 straight allstar teams, win a championship, is playing highly productive basketball 8 years later, and would have solved our PG problem that has plagued us all these years. But Dolan hired a consultant who said “don’t trade anymore draft picks”, which, ironically, turned out to be franchise crippling. #dolansrazor.
Good line in the Ringer about Obi in the slam dunk contest:
… honestly, at this point, I’d probably be fine with him just using his allotted court time to handle the ball, dribble into pull-up jumpers and floaters, and generally just enjoy the feeling of security that Tom Thibodeau won’t be yanking him out after five minutes to let Taj Gibson dunk in his place.
Fuck you, Charlotte, fuck you so much.
Great game between Bucks and Sixers
Embiid is sooooo good
Giannis just lifted Korkmaz off the ground on a jump ball
The fact that Scott Perry argued for signing DeRozan this summer has made me question so many things. Could it be that he is the smart one who has been surrounded by idiots this whole time? All I need is a rumor that he wanted to draft SGA but was overruled by Mills, and I’d be sold.
The NBA’s crazy. The same Sixers team that got spanked by Boston just beat the Bucks.
But one constant is that the Hornets and Hawks will keep on losing.
Embiid is just putting up video game numbers out there, 42/14/5 on 21 shots and it’s not even his best line this season… right after Jokic was unbelievable last night too. This MVP race is really damn fun.
What did Charlotte do?
Another fucking loss. They’re now tied with the Hawks and both are only 3.5 games up on the Knicks, who also lose every game, thus making “hey, let’s go for the play-in game!” still feasible.
The upside is our next four games are almost for sure losses and charlotte losing maybe keeps Washington in the chase. Plus Indiana is about to win 4 out of 5 (orl twice, okc and det) so that puts them possibly within reach. If things break just right we could move all the way up to 5th. In 10 games I’m betting we are within 2 games of the 5th pick and so far out of the play in we’ll have no choice but to tank.
I have never heard that Lowry story.
Derozan must be juicing. I have always been down on his game but he has made me a believer.
Always been a believer in Luka. 49 points is a good night.
The East playoffs are gonna be so awesome this year if everyone stays healthy. 5 really good teams that could realistically make the Finals – Bucks, Sixers, Heat, Bulls, Nets (yuck). And then you have Cleveland and Toronto lurking out there as a spoilers.
Should be the most compelling NBA playoffs in years, can’t wait.
It also looks really unlikely that Charlotte is conveying their pick this year.
The irony of bad Knicks executives is that they always execute bad ideas well. For instance, Leon wanted to preserve the image that he had a first round pick to trade for as long as possible. It was a dumb idea, but damn if it he didn’t figure out a way to do it. That thing’s gonna be floating around for a while.
Another example of this is when Isaiah Thomas invented pick swaps to circumvent the Stepien Rule. Great execution of a terrible idea.
No one should have expected the pick to convey this year, which would be at it’s second-lowest possible value (barring CHA becoming a top-11 team in the next 3 years). It would ideally transmit as a 15-18 pick in the 3 years after this one. So that pick will continue to have value as a likely non-lottery first round pick for at least another two years. What a shame we burned it on Reddish.
It was December 2013, the Knicks would receive Kyle Lowry by sending Metta World Peace, Iman Shumpert and a future first-round draft pick (it was rumored to be the 2018 one… our very own 3-on-3 GOAT).
Until Dolan heard that Ujiri wanted to make the deal, which after being fleeced by Ujiri on the Melo and Bargnani (that summer) deals, he must have thought would happen again. That deal probably proved it wasn’t Ujiri fleecing the Knicks on all those deals, it was Dolan screwing us with his awful basketball knowledge.
Getting back to the depressing state of affairs, it occurs to me that this may not just be a case of Wes and other FO guys trying to cover their own asses, though I’m sure that’s part of it. It’s that they are genuinely blaming Thibs for one of two things, if not both:
1)They really believe this team should be substantially better than it is — that the offseason plan was the correct approach, rather than a modest gamble that didn’t pay off at all — and are mad that he has done so poorly with what they think is a good roster. (They may also feel that Cam was that “significant roster upgrade” Thibs so badly wanted, and are thus exasperated that he won’t play the kid much.)
or
2)They are realistic enough to recognize that they miscalculated, and want Thibs to pivot towards development/tanking, but he refuses to do so. (You could also put the treatment of Reddish into this bucket, though the fact they considered re-routing him at the deadline may be yet another sign of them recognizing a mistake and trying to get out of it.)
2 is okay, and seems to be the page most of us are on. 1 would mean more of this bullshit for years on end. So that’s fun.
Alan, i think it’s probably 1, unfortunately. If they had recognized the mistake on Cam, they wouldn’t be so adamant in receiving a first on that deal. Getting the cap space of Burks, Noel and Reddish would be it. They could have even called Reddish the sweetener to get rid of the other contracts, to save face. But no, they thought Burks AND Reddish were each worth a first, being that one of these was subtracted as sweetener to dump Noel’s contract. They clearly overvalue our team and contracts. But maybe they’ll have more luck in the summer, as it’ll be easier to shop guys on 1+1 team option.
There is no way that anyone should feel Cam was a significant roster upgrade. At best you could think he would replace someone coming off the bench. They probably know they miscalculated, just like at least half the posters here thought we had a better team than this but have realized we don’t. That doesn’t mean they don’t get angry about the situation and lash out for some one to blame. If they are blaming Thibs, it’s normal in situations like this to blame the coach. A lot of posters here don’t think it’s totally Thibs fault we are so bad but they also want a new coach.
Like the Stoudemire amnesty thing, the Lowry trade thing and the ddr signing thing are like 95% retrospective thinking. Sometimes people do things that are stupid but still work out anyway. Sometimes the future reveals new and unexpected info.