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79 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.01.20)”
You’re acting like the coach not having shooters on the roster is some grand coincidence. It isn’t.
To wit…
Donte DiVicenzo is having one of the best shooting seasons in the entire NBA and he is ninth on the Knicks in mpg! He is averaging the least amount of minutes played since his rookie season.
Meanwhile Josh Hart is stinking up the joint to the tune of a 50.7 eFG and he is third on the team in minutes played.
Two players at the same position. Same height. And the guy who is demonstrably superior in nearly every category is averaging 6 minutes less per game than the guy deemed “physical”.
You give Thibs a shooter who isn’t “physical” he will either bury him (like Evan) or criminally underplay him (IQ, DDV) in favor of someone who is.
That is a Tom Thibodeau specific problem. Ain’t no other coach in the league right now prioritizing rebounds over shooting at the wing.
Prioritizing rebounds over shooting got the Knicks one of the top offenses in the league.
The last two games were very good for the standings but confirmed the issues everyone knows.
To make definitive judgement now it’s not useful, this team will probably (hopefully) change in the next three weeks.
The move(s) need to be meaningful, because we’re close (if not already at) to our top gear with the current roster, we’re playing our starters playoffs minutes in january.
I still think 47-50 wins and a top-6 spot are well within our reach even with this roster, but with a great and riskier energy expenditure for our top players.
Speaking of trade targets, maybe Atlanta should think about trading The Rat instead of DJM, it look like they’re a better team without him…
Maybe thibs is playing the starters more now cause he knows reinforcements are on the way soon. This is supposed to be a somewhat easier stretch of games we should win so banking these w’s now is important. Then we get some bench help and have the all star break coming up. So he might be cool with this knowing it’s only temporary.
Thanks, Portland!
I don’t get the interest in Bruce Brown at all. Isn’t he a carbon copy of Josh Hart?
Hart’s questionable again for the Raptors game. Should mean more minutes for DDV and/or Grimes. Hopefully, one or both is hot from downtown.
I suspect IQ and RJ are both going to want to ball out against us. Question is whether they’re going to try too hard or not. I assume OG will be on Barnes most of the time.
Hubert, Donte & Josh are the same height but they don’t play the same position on the Knicks. They are usually playing together.
I have to slow my roll on Deuce, I guess. I thought he’d step more easily into the Quickly role. I thought the money bag meant they were making a commitment to having him in the rotation. Now I’m not so sure that lasts beyond the trade deadline. It would be great to see the bench give us more pop based on internal improvements rather than tapping resources for someone Thibs may not end up trusting anyway. I think he only really trusts six players right now. That’s the problem. We do need one more player.
This is incredibly disingenuous. Hart has averaged 28 mpg, and Donte has averaged 22. Up until 2 weeks ago, Donte had to split minutes at the SG spot with Grimes (the starter) and Quickley. Hart has never played SG on this team. He has had to cover for RJ repeatedly shitting the bad AND handle the backup minutes at PF, so he got a lot of minutes, particularly in light of how well he shot last year.
Of course, everyone here knows all of this, but a certain poster always loves to posit a fiery argument based on one half-baked idea he came up with 3 seconds before.
Thibs has his minor issues, but JFC, he’s generally playing the right players as much as he can and — lo and behold — winning games while he does it.
Underutilizing IQ was a crime against basketball regardless of whether he was the ultimate solution at SG or not.
Continuing with Payton after several medical doctors fans diagnosed him as in a permanent coma was a crime against basketball.
Fournier can still shoot. 3s are notoriously volatile to begin with, but it’s blatantly obvious that on the rare occasion he gets in now he throws up trash because he pressing so hard to get back into the rotation and salvage his career in the NBA. If he had a steady role and wasn’t expecting to get yanked, his shot quality would rise and he’d eventually make 3s at his normal rate.
Second, when he was pulled last year in favor of Grimes, it wasn’t because he got off to a slow start shooting. It was because the defensive combination with Brunson sucked. Brunson is obviously not going anywhere and is going to play a lot of minutes. That leaves Fournier in a bad spot on a team that still has several better alternatives at that SG/SF position.
It’s not. Because…
Since the trade (excluding the game Hart missed to injury)… guess what? Hart is still averaging 28 mpg. Donte is only averaging 24, which is the 6th most on the Knicks. This despite the fact that Donte is figuratively on fire.
What position is he playing when he’s on the court with Brunson, OG, Randle, and iHart?
Guys, there’s no such thing as “shooting guard” anymore. On any given night you can’t tell the difference between a shooting guard and a small forward. There’s point guards, wings, and bigs.
The argument here is simply that Tom Thibodeau prefers physical players who can’t shoot over talented offensive players who aren’t physical.
If you want to take the other side of that, be my guest, but you don’t have a leg to stand on.
Underutilizing IQ was a crime against basketball regardless of whether he was the ultimate solution at SG or not.
I am not sure; frequently had the feeling we may be missing something behind the scenes. And I say this as someone who loved IQ on the team. But I always found it strange that IQ was seriously being shopped each of the last 2 seasons before this one and Leon’s track record of agreeing extensions (whether warranted or not and I include Mitch in this even though not technically an extension) failed to get IQ over the line.
I am not implying that Thibs or Leon had a valid reason for this, just that the pattern suggests there was a reason. And if they both knew/decided IQ would be traded, paring his minutes this season to find the correct allocation when he is gone seems logical.
Today’s NY Post:
Yes, you can never have too many “defenders” who do the “little things.” It’s the “little things” that lead to wins.
Dude’s obsessed.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/19/sports/knicks-among-teams-with-bruce-brown-trade-interest/
From the same article:
“They only could offer the midlevel exception at about $12.4 million annually, and Brown took a two-year, $45 million offer from the Pacers (next season is a team option at $23 million).
A source said Brown was the Knicks’ second choice for their mid-level exception after Max Strus, who signed with the Cavaliers for more than New York could offer.”
Clearly Thibs preferred hyperphysical non-shooter Max Strus but alas…
Lakers lost at home to the Nets? lol, Bron is going to trade everyone.
In other words, the team that desperately needed shooting prioritized the guy coming off a 40% season from three last behind the two more physical wings who can’t shoot nearly as well.
To the surprise of many, Brown is represented by CAA…
My recollection is that there was ample skepticism about whether DDV’s shooting with the GSW was for real…and that some here voiced concerns that the inferior DDV would cannibalize minutes away from the superior IQ and Grimes, and that we were overpaying for the 8th or 9th guy off the bench. Could be wrong, though…
Hubert, you were mad when we signed DDV, now you are mad we didn’t prioritize signing him over 2 guys we didn’t sign. You were annoyed at the time that we didn’t have a big wing and wanted us to trade some of our smaller wings for a big wing with a similar skillset. We did that and won 8 out of 10 games and you’re still mad because we’re not playing a smaller guy more. Maybe this is a bit of a you problem?
“My recollection is that there was ample skepticism about whether DDV’s shooting with the GSW was for real…and that some here voiced concerns that the inferior DDV would cannibalize minutes away from the superior IQ and Grimes, and that we were overpaying for the 8th or 9th guy off the bench. Could be wrong, though…”
That was definitely my thought. Obviously, any money or minutes that went to Div0 would come at the expense of IQ and Grimes. It has worked out much better than I expected as Div0 is having a career year, and they were able to use Quickley to get a premier 3 and D wing and off load RJ. Somehow that has been twisted into “some people thought adding more shooting was redundant”. I think the next move will be to add some playmaking to the rotation to replace Grimes and/or Deuce. After that, I think we are basically done until the big one.
“After that, I think we are basically done until the big one“
So, two trades are coming? Brogdon or Murray? Then a big one? A starter goes? Julius? Really interested to know how it could play out and whether we have the resources.
I don’t recall being mad when we signed DDV and I don’t see any anger in the post you pulled.
I said it would be difficult to make a consolidation trade. And when Leon pulled it off I gave him all the credit in the world for doing it.
But he created a major problem when he did it, and this discussion is about the role his coach’s stylistic preferences played in creating that problem.
Whatever you think is in that giant nothing burger of a quote, it’s got nothing to do with the coach’s preferences, preferences which are clear as day.
You’re denying the obvious because E presented the idea. How many more times does he need to bring Taj Gibson out of retirement for you to admit that Coach has a type?
If E said there were two T’s in Tom Thibodeau I think at least three of you would probably fight him on that, too. That’s what a “you problem” is.
Thibs’s conversation with Bruce Brown should be rightly considered a confession.
Someone definitely is
Not going to continue with this, but Hart shot .372 from three last year, which is Donte’s career average.
If you want to play Monday morning QB and nitpick 5-game samples, go for it… just don’t expect anyone to care.
You shouldn’t bc you’re making no sense.
At some point you have to realize that you’re so eager to disagree with me that you’re actually arguing that Tom Thibodeau doesn’t prefer physical players over offensively talented ones.
If we can pull off The Star Trade — and I will believe it when it happens — it feels like Randle will wind up being the most significant player traded (along with a lot of draft picks). There’s maybe a circumstance where it’s OG, if the star in question is primarily a wing (like Kawhi if the Clippers implode, and once he’s tradeable under his new deal). But cap-wise, it doesn’t seem tenable to have OG on whatever his new contract is, Brunson on whatever his next deal will be, and Randle on whatever his next deal will be. And whether the Star is a big or a wing, it’s probably easiest to make a Brunson/OG/Star TBD lineup work. While Randle now has enough of a track record under Thibs that the other team can sell their fans on the idea that they’re getting a multiple time All-Star/All-NBA player, in addition to a boatload of picks.
““After that, I think we are basically done until the big one“
So, two trades are coming? Brogdon or Murray? Then a big one? A starter goes? Julius? Really interested to know how it could play out and whether we have the resources.”
That’s how I see it Dan. I think you and I are two of the few that enjoyed having a young homegrown team and watching them develop, but that’s not our coach or front office’s preference. Who the big one is will depend on how this group performs and who becomes available in the future. I think having all of our picks plus some surplus means we will still have the ammo for a big trade if we want to.
Thibs played Randle, Brunson and RJ more than anyone because they are physical, defense first players who don’t shoot much?
DRed, I figured you’d go looking for what I said after we signed DDV so I saved you the trouble :
Wow, look at the rage. I could just kill a man.
Question for the blog: Do you prefer Hubert’s “physical” posting or the “talented” posters who also occupy this thread?
Bruce Brown shot 37% from 3 over the past 2 seasons
Bruce Brown has also played PG in the league and been the emergency PG for multiple organizations. He has averaged over 5asts a game since Hali got injured
A day later I pushed back on some people who thought Donte was “a steal.” Now that Donte has moved into the starting lineup and is playing like Klay Thompson, it does seem that, in fact, he was a steal.
But to say that I was angry we signed DDV? That’s just a lie.
Isn’t the proper question whether Tom Thibodeau is playing the best players, holistically? There are of course “physical players” whatever that means, that are better at basketball than “offensively talented players.”
The evidence that Thibs has a distinct “does not play the best players” problem is not strong. I mean E really tried to make hay out of Elfrid Payton getting eight (8) minutes in an individual game, which seems telling.
I think he should’ve played Quickley more while he was here, but the case that this was some obvious, egregious error is total revisionism. Last season Quickley played 32 MPG in the 52 game stretch in which he wasn’t sucking. This year was its own can of worms, but let’s not pretend it was super obvious that Donte DiVincenzo, currently sporting a 62 TS% on nearly 20% USG, should’ve been playing less.
Man all I know is we better have a convincing wire to wire victory tonight where the bench does well and OG, Randle and Brunson all play under 35 minutes or the blog tomorrow is gonna be wild!
It’s a big game Swifty. I will definitely have my popcorn ready, but big picture wise it won’t tell us much.
Coaches maximize wins, not shooting
Very KBsy thread. Our summer signing is having a career shooting year. We find out that he was 3rd choice. Choice number 2 had a different set of skills. Pretty mundane stuff but let’s have a heated argument over what it could possibly mean.
If we were just grading Thibs as a coach, that would be the right question.
But what I’ve been discussing is whether or not a player acquisition strategy based on Thibs’ stylistic preferences (and his extreme unwillingness to deviate from them) has contribted to our current problem whereby we lack offensive punch beyond our top two scorers.
In the context of that particular discussion, I don’t think yours is the most pertinent question.
But where is the evidence that we are passing on better players for worse ones in deference to Thibs? Reasonable minds can differ on the OG trade, but if the idea is that we obviously got fleeced because Thibs was too obsessed with OG…I mean, that is just fringe nonsense.
The most egregious example of Thibs giving minutes to a bad player is of course RJ Barrett, which is not being brought up because it doesn’t fit any of the conspiratorial narratives being spouted.
Oh yeah big picture it means very little but it is an important game. We lose and the media is going to go nuts.
Ghenkman I think that’s true. Last year’s team is always going to have a special place in my heart, with Obi leaking out, etc. I would have been ready to accept another full run from that roster. But at the time of the trade it was 17-14 so I was ready for a change. Now, I’m ready to accept an all imported line up, but I just hope they don’t mess it up. Keep your powder dry, Leon
I’ll go ahead and suggest that we should also aim to acquire the best players and not just the best shooters. Seems like we’ve done that.
This is a different question than the one involving shooting.
Before January we had plenty of offensive punch. We then traded a lot of that offensive punch for OG Anunoby because our defense was among the worst in the league in December. Now it is not.
whether or not a player acquisition strategy based on Thibs’ stylistic preferences
Hubert, I think what you are asking is a good question. But knowing that the off season targets were Strus, Brown, and DDV indicates that it was not all based on Thib’s preferences.
That is not the idea at all. I am very pro-OG trade.
But I have considered whether Thibs’ stubborn refusal to play IQ more minutes is what made Leon want to put Quickley in the OG trade in the first place. That’s far from the crux of the argument, but it’s definitely part of it.
My question is does Miles McBride fit the “physical” player profile (excellent defense) or the talented one (shooting.435 from three)? And why tf is he only playing 9 minutes per game?!
https://knickerblogger.net/2023/07/02/knicks-morning-news-2023-07-02/
This thread probably is the best documentation of how folks felt about the team at the time of the last move of any consequence made before the OG trade. Mostly a fun thread to read! (and hopefully folks have noticed that I’ve mostly toned down my rhetoric since then, even towards E!)
I’m genuinely kind of confused as to why we’re comparing hart and DDV’s minutes.
Hart plays SF and started this season as our back up PF. DDV exclusively plays the 2, a position that was had a glut until recently.
Pair A:
RJ Barrett (47.8 eFG, -0.7 OBPM)
Josh Hart (50.7 eFG, -2.1 OBPM)
58 mpg
Pair B:
Immanuel Quickley (54.9 eFG, 2.3 OBPM)
Donte DiVicenzo (61 eFG, 2.2 OBPM)
46 mpg
Why, Sway? Because Pair A is bigger and stronger. Period. End of discussion.
And please don’t give me any of this shooting guard vs small forward nonsense. It’s the modern NBA. If you’ve got Randle and Mitch or iHart on the court, you can play as many small guards as you want if you’re name isn’t Thibs.
Hubert, you can put all the small guards on the court that you want but it will affect your defense against bigger teams if these are the guys defending the three or the four. If “playing physical” players is code for being able to defend certain opposing players, then I kind of agree that Thibs likes that. But I don’t agree it’s a fault that he wants a decent defense.
And in terms of simple W-L after the big trade, Toronto’s record is much worse than ours even though they got the better offensive players and those said players seem to be lighting it up on offense too.
I really think Occam’s razor is the right tool to use here (not Dolan’s). Coaches value wins above all else. Thibs has consistently shown he’ll shape his strategy around what he believes will give him the best chance to win. Early on that was defense, so he became known as a defensively minded coach. But in Minny he had KAT, and those teams were top 5 on offense and bad on defense. Here he’s had very different teams, and those teams have had very different profiles. When all we had was Randle, he made it work one way. When we acquired better offensive options (such as an actual point guard), he made that work a different way. Now we have more complete options, at least in the starting lineup, and he’s making that work. I’m not saying he’s the best, but he’s damn good. More to the point, he does not have a “type” – he mostly maximizes what he has available.
He has many flaws. For one, he isn’t a great in-game coach; that’s why Spoelstra will always be better. He also can be petty; I thought what he did to Kemba was unconscionable. He can value wins so much in the short term that he can make medium-term outcomes less positive – e.g. by playing his starters too many minutes, or too late in a game that’s decided, or by not giving burn to the Fourniers of the world so that they’re more prepared for exigencies.
But the only “type” he seems to have is a tough player that will do their job. “Tough” is not “unskilled;” Jalen Brunson is clearly pretty skilled. So was DRose. So was Noah. But those players also show up for their team in ways that Kemba wouldn’t or couldn’t. And by showing up, they give Thom Thibodeau his best chance to win.
You’re going to have a very hard time convincing me, KFNNINJ and rama, that our defense or our wins would have been worse if we had given more of RJ’s minutes to Quickley.
And the funny thing is that I’m pretty sure everyone agreed on that until it became part of this conversation.
I got lost here, between RJ and Quickley, who is stylistically Thibs?
PS: Also, I think everyone still agrees to this
Hubie, everyone here does agree with that perspective. Obviously Thibs saw it differently, and I think he was wrong, but my point is that it wasn’t about skill or toughness. Something else was up.
One of the things that has been correctly pointed out here is that the Knicks have a terrible field goal percentage on 2 pt attempts. That actually IS a flaw of Thibs’ offense. We get almost no scoring from centers, and have the 29th ranked assist percentage on 2 point baskets. This unfortunately does not seem to be all that fixable given our scheme and personnel. We don’t have a pass-first PG on the roster, have no center who gets easy assisted buckets, and rely heavily on low-percentage iso attempts.
Last year it worked because we kept turnovers low and crashed the offensive boards, but this year we’re turning it over around the league average and the offense has declined.
Defense looks great though! We may have finally found our inner 90’s Knicks. I honestly believe we’re a top 5 defense now.
Don’t have any larger point here, just observing the trends.
Last night a full strength Indiana lost at Portland who didn’t have Simmons. A full strength Miami lost at home to Atlanta without Trae Young.
Appreciate every win the Knicks get against weaker teams, it’s not always as easy as it should be…
Thibs isn’t perfect but I still think he’s better than most of the options to replace him. Chances are the next coach is worse.
Unless Pop, Spo, Kerr, or Udoka become available I’d stick with Thibs over the rest of the league. Maybe Rick Carlisle and Nick Nurse are on the same level or slightly higher.
Anyone else we should add to the list? I’m not great at following coaches.
RJ over IQ is a notable and sizable demerit
Thibs has his preference in players, but I don’t consider Donte over Hart one of them.
JK, I agree – the turnovers have been killing us. I think that’s why our offense has fallen off. I’m hoping it will be corrected as guys get used to each other and get comfortable playing in the system.
According to basketball reference Knicks are 11th in both offense and defense rating. Only other teams top 11 in both categories are Boston, Philly, OKC and surprisingly New Orleans.
Our offensive rating has stayed pretty much the same since the trade (ticked up ever so slightly) but our defensive rating has gone from mediocre to elite.
Our defense was flat out terrible in the period between Mitch’s injury and the acquisition of OG Anunoby. We had a truly awful 123.5 defensive rating in those 11 games. In the 10 games since that’s down to 105.5.
Don’t sleep on Johnnie Bryant being the next Knicks coach. He is beloved by the players and I always seem talking with Thibs and others about plays/strategy. Quinn Synder loved him in Utah when they had those good Mitchell/Gobert/Conley teams so hiring an in-house coach is not out of the question.
So looking back at Knicks history as I love to do, last Knicks team to finish Top 10 in both offense and defense rating was Pitino’s 1989 team that won 52 games! Riley’s first Knicks team came close as they finished 12th offensively but the rest of the 90’s Knicks teams didn’t come close to having a Top 10 offense.
I would expect some regression on the defensive rating. They faced some truly terrible offenses in this 10 game stretch. I think only Philly and the Wolves were above average offenses.
Edit: Dallas too, but they didn’t have Doncic.
Oddly enough the 1993 team had the 35th ranked offense
Knicks have benefited from opponents struggling from 3pt range in these past 10 games but an encouraging sign is the Knicks since the trade have decreased the amount of 3pt FGA from their opponents, I believe they’re allowing about 4 less attempts per game which is pretty significant.
Makes sense because with OG now at the POA defensively the Knicks aren’t forced to help as much and don’t need to collapse the paint on defense as frequently which is cutting off some of the needless 3pters they used to frustratingly allow.
Well we ditched the guy shooting 48% on 10 2pt shots a night and it’s gone up a bit since
I’ve been avoiding a lot of this conversation, but this hits the nail on the head.
I think Thibs is a very good coach, but he has some quirks about minutes and lineups that IMO are a negative. I imagine my brother (who has Aspergers) as a basketball coach and I see Thibs.
I think the one thing we all agree on RJ.
I think everyone understood he was the weak link in the starting lineup except Thibs. He often played him more minutes than anyone else. To me personally, since I put a lot of weight on using the right combinations of players, that made even less sense because we had spacing issues that RJ was contributing to. We had too many players that wanted to take the ball inside that often found a wall of defenders waiting for them. Quickley should have gotten more minutes (next to Brunson), RJ less (maybe use J Hart more), and after that I didn’t have too much of a problem.
I was in the camp that questioned his shooting in GS.
DDV’s shooting last year was a career best. To me it was unclear whether that was sustainable. I thought there was a pretty good chance he’d regress at least a bit (kind of like J Hart did this year) but conceded it was possible he was just improving. Instead he’s been even better than last year. I’ll take it, however, I don’t it’s certain what we’ve seen so far this year is his new normal either.
I expect J-Hart to play better than he has so far unless that bum knee is going to be chronic problem all year. Then we have an injured player incapable of earning that contract.
I like him, but most coaches are meh to bad. If he’s also good, then we’re lucky.
Of course, he could also get poached in the meantime.
From the 7th game till end of December it was at 53.7%
In January it’s 54.3%
The problem is that the first 6 games were so atrocious that it sank our percentage to 51.7% overall in that handful of games.
The offense isn’t great at sinking 2s, but it’s not as bad as the season-long numbers indicate.
When do we get news on Mitch? Another month?
We have to get to past the point where criticizing Thibs leads to someone acting like his head was called for.
At no point did I suggest this is a fatal flaw. There are plenty of physical players with good offensive profiles. Leon just traded for a perfect one.
Josh Hart this year is every bit as egregious as RJ, if not moreso.
One out of every 7 or 8 games he’s a monster like he was against Philly but more often than not he’s taking valuable minutes away from a better player in Devo.
RJ was so bad with the Knicks you could feasibly argue Thibs giving him any number of minutes was a mistake. Personally I don’t find arguments to that effect all that compelling though. We had basically no other wing options, and we needed him to retain some level of trade value. It seems like we were at least able to keep him at “matching salary” status, so we were more or less successful at the latter.
I’m going to give you the nonsense because it’s not a figment of Tom Thibodeau’s imagination that putting a lot of small guys on the court poses some defensive challenges. SSS, but lineups with Quickley/DDV on and Hart/RJ off had a defensive rating of 131.5, good for the very first percentile.
How many minutes and who else was in the lineup?
As it stands it is too vague to support your argument.
So Danny Ainge wants Grimes and a first to “take on” Fournier in exchange for Clarkson. F#%* Danny Ainge. I hope the Knicks stay away from any Utah trade.
Also: Clarkson is not good. I would hate getting him, let alone for Grimes.