2023-24 Game Thread: Knicks @ Raptors (December Opener, which is technically a thing)

How did we possibly win that game without Obi Toppin or Jalen Johnson?

“where’s the meaning of rekindling the flame of arguments over and over?

Taking victory laps after one win only means that others will take one after a loss.”

These players were specifically mentioned in yesterday’s discussion. Context is important.

And frankly, Max, it’s the constant re-hashing of opinions and narratives about spilt milk that rekindles those flames. I would strongly prefer for no one to ever bring up Obi Toppin and Jalen Johnson in a shoulda woulda coulda manner again. But as yesterday’s discussion showed, that doesn’t seem all that likely.

“I’m glad we won yesterday and I think the team is pretty good, but I still would like to have a 22 year-old guy averaging 17/9/3 per-36 with a .673 TS% who makes $2.8M on the team. I don’t view these thoughts as mutually exclusive.”

It’s fine to feel that way, but it’s spilt milk. You can safely assume that everyone knows how you feel about Jalen Johnson by now. Yet you keep reminding us in case we forgot. Why is that?

Maybe it would have been nice if Max asked his above questions when you did that yesterday. Timing is everything, right Max?

“For someone who claims to like Obi, be from the same area, etc, you seem to constantly deride him for some reason.”

I do like Obi and wish him well…liking him is different than missing him as a rotation player, or regretting (or even resenting) that management dumped him for whatever they could get, which was essentially a ham sandwich, so that they could free up cap space to sign DDV.

“He is what he is. He is a four, who in my opinion should be playing three.”

He would be even worse on defense if he was a 3. Part of the issue with Obi is that he is not switchable at all. PF is his least worst defensive position.

“He doesn’t rebound because he likes to leak out for fast breaks. He is very good at it. He leads the league in 2 pt %.”

He doesn’t rebound because he is a terrible rebounder for his size. There is no reason to sugar-coat that or make excuses for him. He’s a bad rebounder, full stop.

“When we traded for Hart, I thought that solved the problem. Thibs disagreed…”

As he should have. Thibs is who he is. He coaches a certain way. One of his quirks is that he likes PFs that play like PFs on both ends. By your own admission Obi “should be playing the three” but that makes no sense if we’re discussing our current needs for a competent backup 4, does it?

“…so I will enjoy watching Obi in Indiana. They are a young exciting team, but with an obvious weakness on the defensive side of the ball.”

Fine and agreed… but again, that’s different than believing that Leon and Thibs were wrong to essentially swap him out for DDV. Or believing that he would be a good answer to the question of “What happens if Julius goes down?”

“Our problem is not just that we traded Obi and we didn’t take any of the bigger wings that we could have in the draft, it’s that we didn’t replace him with anybody.”

We did replace him in that his former role is being filled by someone else. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a void at PF depth and flexibility. Eventually that will have to be addressed. I just don’t see the need to continually pine over losing Obi or not drafting JJ…one was not the answer and one is not available.

“Hart is already grumbling about having to play that role. At 6’5″ 215, he’s not suited for it, not for a whole season.”

Which role are we talking about, the backup PF role or the stand in the corner role? Because my take was more of the latter…and in the last couple of games he’s been more versatile and involved on offense. But I read no complaint about being a PF at all in his words.

“Julius has been an iron man, but will that last forever? If it doesn’t, we will have a serious problem.”

Any team that loses it’s only all-NBA player has a serious problem. But until that becomes a problem, why worry about it? Why assume that the roster is etched in stone and that a decent stopgap wouldn’t be available via trade, waiver wire, G-League, etc.? Or that Thibs wouldn’t figure out a way to use the current roster creatively? I guess because it’s more fun to cherry-pick players we didn’t draft 3 years ago? Or pine over guys we couldn’t trade in a pinch for anything but a ham sandwich?

“…lacks any sizzle. Maybe try something like, “Funny how we are winning with the league’s 4th best defense — and even without the help of ol’ stiff-hips Toppin!”

Or something like that.”

Fair. I’ll try harder!

“@ptmilo I basically agree with your assessment of Obi”

smh

“I think the 10-0 record against sub.500 teams doesn’t say that much. We are not 10-0 in games that we were expected to win–for example the Cavs home loss and the loss against the Durantless Suns. At the same time, the 10-0 includes wins against the Hawks and Clippers where we were underdogs.”

If your point is that we probably aren’t as good as our record suggests, I would respond by saying that I agree to the extent that we shouldn’t draw any conclusions beyond “we’re pretty damn good so far!” for now. But there are more reasons to believe that we will continue to be at least this good than there are for feeling otherwise. No one is really playing out of his mind thus far, nor are the shooting percentages as a team looking unsustainable. That’s the nice thing about having a deep team that is well coached. One guy goes into a funk, another guy picks it up. Last night IQ and RJ were in the shitter, but JHart and DDV stepped up. Brunson was a little off, Randle picked him up. The team synergy seems excellent. That bodes pretty well going forward.

“I think you are much more critical than pt, but whatever.”

In style perhaps but not in substance. pt was actually pretty harsh in his critique. He said the following:

“we aren’t actually missing obi and wouldn’t even miss him greatly if randle went down because obi isn’t really a 4 in any useful sense.”

“…but what he is has very limited value to a good team.”

“…just not that valuable to the vast majority of rotations when the stakes are higher.”

My continual refrain is that Obi is not a legit starting PF on a winning team and is best suited as a 15-20 minute energy guy off the bench. I don’t see much daylight between our opinions at all.

“And I really hope they don’t plan to trade another 1st for a backup by the deadline! Just break in an available guy who fits the backup PF profile.”

I agree but this regime’s MO is that they would not want to stand pat and throw away a season if a critical rotation player goes down and they start leaking oil. I doubt that they would see Isaiah Roby as the answer…they’d probably go with Sims first and tinker around that. Or maybe pull Taj out of mothballs…but who knows? Hopefully everyone stays healthy and we won’t have to find out.

“A Knicks regret deep cut: Phil should’ve drafted Sasha Vezenkov instead of Ognen Jaramaz.”

Not quite Cleanthony Early over Nikola Jokic, but sure.

“Strongly agree that since there was probably a binary choice between DiVo and Obi this year, DiVo was the correct move. Said so at the time.”

There might have been some other options to free up the space, such as trading iHart, who is sort of a luxury at backup C. Obviously the FO didn’t think enough of Obi to consider that, and Obi didn’t help his case for sticking around by cursing out Thibs during the playoffs. I think Obi wanted to leave and was accommodated. They might have traded him anyway given his contract situation but it became a no-brainer once he voiced his frustration.

And I don’t blame him for doing so. A player heading into a contract year wants an opportunity to show what he can do, and playing 15mpg was not in his best long-term interests.

It really was a win-win deal.

“The only reason we won last night was because the Raptors couldn’t hit a 3 into the ocean and DDV was a flame thrower. It wasn’t because we are better than them. The Raptors are a terrible matchup for NY. We were lucky to get that win.”

But that’s the way that TOR loses and often the way we win, isn’t it? Why is it lucky when two teams play to their tendencies? We’re tied for 6th in 3pt% and they are 29th. And can they count on our best offensive rebounder having an off night next time?

This was not a lucky win.

“Which is why I would never call iHart a luxury — not that Mitch is one of our two best players necessarily, but iHart a) gives us good minutes to keep Mitch fresh, and b) provides coverage should Mitch get dinged, which for a physical big is almost to be expected.”

Agreed but I think the dropoff from either Mitch or iHart to Sims is more recoverable than say from Julius and JHart to (whoever.)

But beyond that, there are a lot of ways to go for anyone other than our starting PF, including just rolling with an 8-man rotation for a while by bumping up minutes for guys like DDV, IQ, and Grimes.

As such, I don’t think the characterization of our depth being an inch deep is accurate beyond the PF position. Sims and Deuce can both play. Switchability is part of our depth. And you can even pluck a pretty good rotation guy like Fournier out of mothballs.