I think games like this expose our defense a little. Our perimeter defense is not that good, but Mitch covers up some of the mistakes in the middle. Against these stretch 5s, not only is it tough on Mitch, it leaves the paint open and exposes the problems on the perimeter.

Yeah, that’s it, exactly. It’s painful as fuck to watch, and it must drive Thibs, in particular, crazy. He can’t be used to having a group of defenders like this. You know what it reminds me a lot of? The 2011-12 Knicks vs. the 2012-13 Knicks, where Tyson Chandler was his awesome self in both seasons, but in 2011-12, he was playing with a bunch of good defenders and in 2012-13, he was not, so they went from a top five defense to the 18th best defense. 2012 Tyson Chandler is a better defender than 2023 Mitchell Robinson, but they have that similar “quarterbacking” defense skill (you know, directing the offense into defenders), only they just don’t have the personnel right now for it to work.

OG really would be the perfect guy to add for that very reason. It would transform things. Mitch is good enough (and iHart is a wonderful backup) that the team is still pretty good on defense, but boy, a guy like OG would be transformative.

But we kind of already knew that, didn’t we?

We have 12 games between now and January 1. It wouldn’t be a shock if we go 4-8 and are 16-17 by then. Anything below that and it might be time to start worrying about being a play-in team. Anything above that will be somewhat of a positive, being that the toughest part of the schedule will be behind us.

I’m taking the over, but not feeling confident about it.

Grimes is a better fit with the bench unit…

He did well but our starters did badly and gave up a lot of points. I don’t know if that was related to no Grimes, or it was just Boston being Boston. I guess time will tell.