[ESPN] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 21:32:00 GMT
- Knicks’ protest of Feb. 12 loss denied by NBA
- NBA denies Knicks’ protest of last-second loss to Rockets despite ref admitting call was a mistake
- Knicks’ Protest of Loss to Rockets over Jalen Brunson Foul Denied by NBA
- NBA denies Knicks’ protest despite league, ref admitting call was wrong
- Knicks denied protest to loss despite NBA, refs admitting wrong call in final seconds
[sny.tv] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 17:18:41 GMT
- Knicks injury updates, including OG Anunoby’s possible return date
- Knicks Rumors: Latest Buzz on Julius Randle, OG Anunoby Injury Return Timelines
- Are Knicks settling in to life without injured All-Star?
- Julius Randle doesn’t rule out surgery in alarming Knicks update
- Knicks star Julius Randle’s pregame workout a cause for optimism
[New York Post] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 22:27:00 GMT
- The Knicks were a ‘monumental part’ of Richard Lewis’ life
- Richard Lewis, Comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm Star, Dies at 76
- ‘A Buckeye for life’: Richard Lewis remembered as an Ohio State football fan
- Richard Lewis, Comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm Actor, Dies at 76
- Richard Lewis Said He Was ‘Doing Quite Well’ amid Parkinson’s Less Than 3 Weeks Before His Death (Exclusive)
[NBC Sports Bay Area] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:01:08 GMT
- Wiggins remains out for Warriors-Knicks game for personal reasons
- Warriors’ Steve Kerr says Andrew Wiggins will be out indefinitely due to ‘personal matter’
- Watch: Moses Moody drops Landry Shamet
- Wiggins ruled out for Warriors-Wizards game for personal reasons
- Golden State Warriors Player Out Indefinitely Due To Personal Reasons
[hoopsrumors.com] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 22:00:00 GMT
- Knicks Notes: DiVincenzo, Anunoby, Randle, Injuries
- Meet the mastermind behind Donte DiVincenzo’s shooting success: Stephen Curry
- Stephen Curry helped advise Donte DiVincenzo on signing with Knicks over Timberwolves
- Top team in West was ‘serious suitor’ for Knicks’ Donte DiVincenzo in free agency
- Donte DiVincenzo credits Steph Curry for shooting success
[BasketNews.com] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:44:00 GMT
Mario Hezonja talks about his future next season, labels Knicks move as a mistake
[The Mercury News] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:37:35 GMT
Warriors’ games vs. Knicks, Celtics, Bucks will show playoff prognosis
[Daily Knicks] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 21:18:47 GMT
- Possibility of New York Knicks trading for star guard called into question
- Donovan Mitchell to Knicks no longer really a possibility?
- NBA insider doesnt think Donovan Mitchell joining New York Knicks is realistic anymore
- The Utah Jazz may not benefit as much from another Donovan Mitchell trade
- NBA Insider: I Dont Know If The Donovan Mitchell Knicks Thing Is Really Still A Possibility
[The Knicks Wall] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 14:42:14 GMT
Bojan Bogdanovic is Key as the Knicks Weather the Injury Storm
[New York Post] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:48:00 GMT
Knicks’ Donte DiVincenzo making good on Steve Kerr’s prediction as game blossoms
[Winners and Whiners] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:54:16 GMT
Golden State Warriors vs. New York Knicks Prediction, Preview, and Odds – 2-29-2024
[Hoops Hype] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:58:29 GMT
Warriors vs. Knicks: Start time, where to watch, what’s the latest
[Heavy.com] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 20:56:42 GMT
Knicks Again Linked to Arguably the Best Player in NBA History in Free Agency
[New York Post] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 12:45:00 GMT
- Knicks will be in NBA star trade rumors unless they win
- One person who is impressed with what he’s seen from Leon Rose so far is none other than Knicks lege
- Carmelo Anthony’s ringing endorsement of Leon Rose’s Knicks tenure
- Leon Rose’s Knicks have come very far, but there’s still room to grow
[Pick Dawgz] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:42:38 GMT
Warriors vs Knicks Prediction NBA Picks 2/29/24
[Sportsgambler.com] – Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:33:08 GMT
Golden State Warriors vs New York Knicks Prediction, Bet Builder Tips & Odds
[New York Post] – Wed, 28 Feb 2024 12:00:00 GMT
- Zion Williamson’s MSG moment was a bit anti-climactic
- Pelicans star Zion Williamson’s latest statement is music to New Orleans’ ears
- Zion Williamson Drops Interesting Comment After Beating Knicks
- Zion Williamson scores 21 points Tuesday
- Should Knicks Read Anything Into Zion Williamson’s ‘Dope’ MSG Comments?
136 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.02.29)”
Macri was snorting some high end Copium today saying that he might not consider the season a failure if they lose in the first round. Come on, dude.
Even if the failure was due to injuries, it is still a failure. As he points out, failure in one season doesn’t mean the next season will be a failure, but there’s no way losing in the first round this year isn’t a failure.
Reading this morning that the Bulls beat the Cavs last night is kinda like learning someone else found a hundred dollar bill.
Macri is definitely veering wildly between glass half-empty (we might fall to the play-in) and glass half-full (the injuries give us an excuse if we bomb out of the playoffs).
But also, what else are we gonna say? We can argue — and have argued, repeatedly — about the Detroit trade. But when a team loses its entire starting front line for a long stretch of the season, when the league’s best backup center is also nursing an injury that’s limited his time and effectiveness on the court, when their superstar point guard misses games here and there because he’s had to carry much too big a usage burden, etc., it’s hard to imagine any realistic move that would have compensated for it. (Maybe Brogdon might have, but all the reporting prior to the deadline said that Portland wanted to wait til the summer to deal him, since they thought they could do better once various teams had access to more draft picks.)
So on the whole, the current circumstance absolutely sucks. But very little of it can be blamed on anyone. And I would argue that includes our maniac of a coach.
Has RJ ever put together such a longish string of efficient play, or is it a Toronto effect?
I wouldn’t call losing in the first round a failure, given all the injuries. Maybe more of a lost year, which sucks enough.
Failure is all relative. If the Knicks go out in the first round because of injuries this year but the team comes back healthy next year and more motivated, we learn what we have in dudes like McBride, Precious, Bojan, etc…and we end up winning a championship…then it was all worth it and this season’s “failure” will just be part of the larger narrative, a setback that was necessary in order to reach the final goal.
However, if we lose in the first round and OG decides to split, Leon trades every first for Mitchel and all this work caps us out next season as a perrennial first round exit, then it will indeed be a failure.
Meanwhile the Heat are rising fast despite working through their own rash of injuries. They won a game on the road in Sacramento this week missing 4 of their 5 starters. Maybe my plus 1400 bet on them to win the East isn’t worthless after all.
They have a very easy schedule this month, notwithstanding the two games they have against Denver. But no one has an easier schedule than the Magic. The league apparently saved all the cupcakes for their final 2 months.
My interpretation of that has always been that Portland wanted to get a first for Brogdon but couldn’t because the teams that were interested in Brogdon couldn’t wrangle one up until this summer.
If accurate, it seems like we could have gotten him but Leon is hoarding firsts for a bigger move.
My only (small) issue with Thibs right now is that, no matter how bad you think they are, you should use your 12th to 15th guys (who in our case have become 8th to 10th because of injuries) just a little when your roster is a MASH unit, instead of using them only in garbage time, even if just to give the remaining players a breather…
RJ is scoring really efficiently in Toronto. It’s kind of impressive. He is hitting 40% from three. Hitting from 2 also. His usage is actually down to 24 from 27 in NYC.
And yet, his overall line is still pretty anemic. And still playing no defense apparently. I don’t have any regrets.
Personally, I don’t think this team is ready to compete for a championship yet even when/if we get healthy.
I think the Toronto trade left a hole at backup PG, reduced the bench defense and made scoring a bit of an issue.
I already didn’t like the Detroit trade long term. I like it less and less each day short short term given the remining hole at backup PG is making things tougher for the new players on offense and the loss of Grimes’s further hurt the bench defense.
I think at 100% we have a very good team that’s tough enough to give anyone a battle, but we have to fix the backup PG situation in the off season and maybe draft some new young blood to get back some of the long term upside and defense we lost in the trades (and start preparing for the even longer term).
No matter what happens, I won’t consider this season a failure unless they lose to an inferior team. I’ll consider it another step forward albeit with one step I don’t like much.
And for some reason his FT% declined from 83.1% with the Knicks to 59.1% with Toronto 🙂
P.S. I would have lost my mind if he had shot under 60% on free throws during his Knicks days… 😉
Ironically, the one area besides defense that he’s struggling at is FT shooting, which was the one glimmer of hope he was giving us in NY.
I haven’t watched enough to know who he’s been getting matched up against, but maybe it’s against smaller players on average and it’s making it easier for him on offense. At SF in NY he was often guarded by tough taller defenders. There may also be more ball movement and less ISO in Toronto.
He’s probably going to wind up being a good player, but unless he can defend well, he’s never going to be a player we are going to cry about not having. We’ll just have to see how he develops.
I still miss Quickley. IMO, if the team we have now was 100% healthy and still had Quickley, we’d be serious contenders.
It’s a bummer that I went from “hell yeah the Knicks play tonight” in January to “oh jesus they play again today?” in February.
At least this god forsaken month of basketball ends tonight.
When’s the next all-star break?
Re the Detroit trade:
If Leon knew all the injuries would likely linger, he made a mistake. This was a lost season, and there was no need for an incremental “win now” move. We could just as easily lose to the Pelicans with Grimes and Flynn and keep our picks.
If, instead, Leon really did think Randle and OG would come back strong, and he had no idea iHart would be ailing this badly, then I applaud his attempt to get us a championship in a weird season where no one but the Celtics looks unbeatable.
I’m an optimist. We were all clamoring for some bench help, either way, so let’s see what happens.
I’m going to the game tonight. Even if Brunson doesn’t play, at least I get to watch the greatest shooter of all time light up MSG, that should be fun! )-:
at least I get to watch the greatest shooter of all time light up MSG,
bit premature to anoint DDV
Strat, you don’t lose in the playoffs because you don’t have a good backup point guard. Teams just play their top players all the minutes. We absolutely need one, but it’s not gonna be the difference in the playoffs. Far more meaningful in the regular season, when you can’t play your top players more than 40 or you burn them out.
Much as I didn’t like the trade, I don’t think it affects us in the playoffs – maybe we lose a defensive option with Grimes, but if everyone is healthy, it won’t matter.
I think we’d really see the benefit of having Bojan if he eventually gets to play in lineups with OG or Randle.
I’d really love to see him worked more into the main lineup period. They’ve been using him pretty much solely as a Vinnie Johnson role, and I think he’s better than that on offense (Burks is more like the Vinnie Johnson type of player…only one who can’t hit a three as a Knick for some reason).
The problem with hand waving away failure due to injury is the net effect of injuries this year has actually been beneficial to the Knicks.
A cursory look at our competition reveals that most have them have been hit much harder than us.
– Boston has been blessed.
– So has Milwaukee to some degree (assuming you bake in Middleton’s absence).
– Miami has undoubtedly suffered more due to injuries than any team in the East. They’ve lost 122 man games to their top 8, including Butler for nearly 1/3 the year. They’ve spent the entire season playing like we have the last month.
– Philadelphia has had the single most devastating injury of the year.
– Cleveland has also suffered much more than us; their top 3 players missed 57 games of the year already. Our top 4 have only missed 31.
The next All-Star break will be in February 2025, if all goes according to plan.
I agree that Embiid’s injury is the worst of them all, but I think the Knicks are on par with the other teams. The Knicks have also had Mitch out for most of the season.
Not that Thibs would ever want him, but the Hawks just released Patty Mills, who, last I checked, is a veteran backup point guard.
Kevin Love has sneakily been terrific for the Heat this season
You certainly can’t hand wave the Mitch injury away even though it might have actually helped us, but look at our top 6 guys this year:
– Brunson has missed 4 games
– Randle has missed 13 games
– Donte has missed 1 game
– OG has missed 13 games (out of 27)
– Hart has missed 1 game
– Hartenstein has missed 6 gamess
^ this is what good luck looks like!
Conversely…
Miami:
– Butler has missed 19 games
– Bam has missed 10
– Herro has missed 22
– Martin has missed 17
– Love (who is clocking a 4.0 bpm btw) has missed 11
– The Lowry/Rozier PG combo missed 10
– Jacquez has missed 6
Cleveland:
– Mitchell has missed 11 games
– Garland has missed 24
– Strus has missed 0
– Mobley has missed 23
– Allen has missed 5
– Okoro has missed 9
The story here is not, IMO, that we’ve had bad injury luck. We’ve had a normal NBA season’s worth of injuries.
The story is the roster construction issues that Noble and Ben R have been talking about.
The story here is not, IMO, that we’ve had bad injury luck. We’ve had a normal NBA season’s worth of injuries.
Agree as to how it shakes out with seeding but I look at injury luck almost exclusively as to what the post 82 game rosters look like. And not just who can play but who is hobbled. The wild card for me is iHart because he is the only one that what we do with him for the rest of the season may make a difference. Everything else seems more or less out of our control (either a healing process or a freak accident) assuming the medical staff are competent and Thibs’ tendencies are reined in.
The story is timing…how many of those other teams have those dudes still out….sure, it looks equal and the records to date show that…but those teams are at full strength now…us…..not so much…
Hubert if we’ve just had a normal NBA season’s worth of injuries than you owe our beautiful coach an apology.
Also Mitch getting hurt pretty clearly did not help the Knicks.
I think the issue is how consolidated the Knicks injuries have been. We could survive and thrive with only Randle missing or only 1 of iHart/Mitch missing or only OG missing. We can’t survive with all those guys missing at the same time.
Cleveland was excellent during a stretch when Garland and Mobley were out because they’re largely redundant with Donovan and Allen.
Philly is doomed without Embiid, but that’s an actual roster construction issue. They need another star. They had one in Harden and moved him (not necessarily wrong but they could use him right now).
The Heat desperately need Butler, but again that’s something of a roster construction issue. They have talented roleplayers and a phenomenal coach, but not a ton of star power.
The Knicks have a deep team, we can easily weather a couple injuries, but missing this many players at once can’t be overcome by almost any team.
I don’t know how you can say our starting center is not one of our top 6 players. A list without him is completely misleading.
Hubert, it’s not the games missed so far that make us unluckier than Miami. Right here and now, we obviously do have a better record than them.
We’re unluckier because they’re at close to full strength now. The only regulars missing are Love, an 18 MPG guy with a role comparable to Precious’ role with us, and Herro, who is basically their RJ Barret (they generally haven’t been better when he’s played, and missed him not at all in last year’s postseason).
Conversely, our entire starting front line is still out for the foreseeable future, likely to miss another sixty or so combined games. Our two best players outside of that, Brunson and iHart, figure to be banged up all season battling nagging injuries that either keep them out or diminish their effectiveness.
By the end of season the impact of these injuries will be far more apparent because MIA will have passed us in the standings and likely eliminated us in another uncompetitive playoff series, if we even make the first round.
I think the reason they were excellent is because they filled out their roster with shooters like Georges Nieng, Sam Merrill, and Dean Wade. That and they had a coach willing to play them even though they might be the best defenders in the NBA.
* might not be the best defenders.
They just beat Sacramento three days ago without four starters.
You can’t project everyone else’s injury count to be static.
Our best center this year has been Hartenstein by a very wide margin.
Thank you, rama.
Hubs, our games missed by Randle and OG are going to end up being much higher than what Butler, Bam, etc…have missed this season when it’s all said and done. OG has missed 14 games so far (about to be 15). He’s out for at least a few more weeks, so that’s like another 10 games. Randle will be out more games so his total is going to be like 25 games missed. Mitch too. All 3 of those dudes are missing AT LEAST 20 games this season, if not more.
Also, we’re experiencing OG, Randle and Mitch being out AT THE SAME TIME. It’s not like we had Randle go down for a month early and then later OG went down. They both went down at the same time and are missing games at the same time Mitch is missing games.
You can’t ignore the culmulative effect of having 3 starters out at the same time (while also the back up Center and staring PG are also missing games or on minutes restrictions).
Butler, Rozier, and Herro (who sucks) were out. Who’s the 4th starter?
Worth noting that Butler was not injured this game, he was suspended for an altercation, which was entirely within his control.
Don’t worry, the way things are going he’ll be out for the season by April 1.
Bojan, Burks (though he hasn’t shown it as a Knick), Donte, Deuce, and OG are all shooters.
Grimes & IQ before them were shooters.
Donte, Bojan, and Burks might be the most efficient, high volume shooting trio in the league.
But those guys don’t anchor a defense, Mitch & Hartenstein do. We’ve had a 122 DRTG in February, it’d be worst in the league over the entire season.* Our 115 ORTG in that span isn’t good, but it’s around average.
*The real split is before/after the trade, though the schedule was also much easier. We probably should’ve kept Grimes.
They traded a bunch of assets for a guy with a pre-existing injury. To then say they aren’t accountable for the year’s performance because of injuries seems like way too low a grading curve.
Who *is* our staring PG, anyway?
Not having filled out the #10 – 15 spots on our roster is our biggest problem right now.
ha marechal, that is exactly it right there…
Our starting PG now is Deuce.
So now we’re just making shit up. Cool.
This is a big piece of the despair. We’d be fine if all or most of our guys came back today — we’re still in 4th place — the problem is that most aren’t coming back today or anytime soon.
Only looking backwards misses the point.
Hartenstein has only missed 6 games but has been on a minutes limit another 4 and didn’t look remotely himself. If we had Mitch during that stretch it wouldn’t even be a big deal.
Mitchell Robinson was said by espn.com to have “suffered a stress fracture in his ankle” against the Celtics on December 8. You don’t suffer stress fractures in a single game or with a single event — they’re overuse, repetitive force injuries.
There was no management of that injury. Commentary during the game that night right from the start was that he was struggling with the injury, yet he played normal minutes before finally giving up and immediately going under the knife.
Prior to the Celtics game, the Knicks played five games between November 26 and December 5. Mitch played 34, 32, 31, 32, and 27 minutes.
Anunoby’s elbow, iHart’s achilles, Mitch’s ankle, probably Brunson’s neck spasms — all repetitive stress injuries. These are the type of injuries your players get (and worsen) through overuse and failure to load manage.
I want to push back on the “iHart is way better” narrative. I think we were all delighted to discover how very good iHart is/has become, and I think saying he’s equivalent to Mitch is accurate (although they bring somewhat different skill sets, such as iHart’s passing and floater).
And it’s perfectly reasonable to like/value those different skill sets such that you’d rather have iHart than Mitch if you had to choose.
But Mitch was an unholy terror on defense to start the season, and before Julius fully recovered and before Brunson went from borderline All Star to All NBA MVP candidate, there were actually people here wondering if he was our best player. That’s absurd in hindsight, but some here have already forgotten how often very good NBA players would shy away from the paint and reverse directions when dribbling when they saw Mitch in there. Total domination. He was a real DPOY candidate for a bit.
If we lose because we’re not healthy in the playoffs, that’s one thing.
But you guys are lining up the excuse that if a perfectly healthy Knicks team loses in the first round it can be ignored because we would have had a higher seed without injuries.
That’s what I’m saying you can’t do. You can’t judge us on a benchmark that assumes we have perfect health and everyone else doesn’t.
At the end of the year, our final seed is going to be reasonably fair.
https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/luol-deng-and-the-cruel-tutelage-of-tom-thibodeau
This has been going on for like 13 straight years now. The original incident was of course Derrick Rose blowing out his ACL with like two minutes to go in a playoff game blowout.
It will be extremely interesting to see how he manages Julius’s ready-to-pop shoulder. Most likely the same way he’s managed all this stuff his entire career.
I’m most curious to see Mitch with OG and Randle. I love iHart, but I want the other team to score below 80/game 😉
This is exactly it. Every team has built in redundancies to survive when one or two players are out. Their ability to do so depends on what those redundancies are (the Heat tend to be pretty good at that) or which players are out (you can’t build redundancies around missing Embiid).
Nobody has redundancies for 3/5 of the starting lineup (and in some cases more) missing a significant chunk of games together. This is the kind of stuff that ends seasons from even the best teams (see the 2019-20 Warriors).
Several of you are strangely suggesting that only our injuries happened simultaneously, that the Miami Heat starters spaced out their injuries so that two of them were never out at the same time.
And another group of you is suggesting that while our injury count will continue, the Heat and the Cavs are officially done having injuries for the year.
LOL you are ridiculous.
Of course their players could get injured again. But currently they are not injured while ours are. So your games missed totals are meaningless when we know for a fact OG, Randle and Mitch are out for at least the next 2 to 3 weeks, which will push their games missed totals past those other dudes if they don’t get hurt.
And please, show me where any of those teams had their entire starting front court out at the same time for a 15 game stretch (and more like 20 to 25 when it’s all said and done).
iHart has done a great job and has been fantastic but the defense took a huge step back when Mitch first went down. It was only after OG joined that iHart really took his play to the next level. We have no idea what a healthy Mitch with OG would look like.
To be clear…that was not what I was saying. I’m saying if we lose in the first round because we still have major injuries, then the season is not a failure (but more of a lost season, which sucks just as hard).
If we get healthy and lose in the first round to anyone, it will be a failure of a season. I guess if we take Boston to 7 games as the 8th seed, I would be ok with that all things considered.
I love Mitch, too, but it’s not a narrative; it’s an overwhelming statistical reality that this year Hartenstein is our best center.
https://stathead.com/tiny/bweJp
We know our guys will miss time because they’re currently injured.
I don’t follow the other teams closely, but as far as I know they aren’t currently injured and there’s no reason to assume they’ll be injured. If they do get injured, we can reevaluate.
Bam has missed 1 game that Jimmy also missed. Love missed 2 games that Jimmy missed and 2 games that Bam missed. Rozier has missed 3 games Jimmy missed.
OG has missed 13 games Randle has missed.
Hartenstein & Mitch have missed nearly as many games together (6) as all the significant Heat players combined.
This is right, iHart has been better.
If Mitch comes back and tandems with OG for the greatest defense of all-time, then I’ll happily change my mind, but I don’t see it.
Mitch is a negative on offense with his poor finishing this year. iHart had a near identical DEPM to Mitch prior to acquiring OG anyway.
There’s definitely some injuries that aren’t Thibs fault, like Randle, but should we consider firing Thibs after the season for this reason?
He has a track record of heavily injured teams that is difficult to overlook. I can’t imagine Leon will, and I don’t know of any coach that has been fired for a similar question, but I think you at least have the discussion.
And when they miss the time that we expect, then we will have caught up to the other teams, because right now they’re way ahead of us in the lost games count.
At the current rate, we won’t end up being any more or less unlucky with injuries. We’re just having our bad luck now. They already had it.
When you are talking about winning a title, you can’t have a dysfunctional offense in the second unit that also can’t defend a lick. That’s what we have right now without Quickley and Grimes.
It may be less important in the playoffs because of the minutes distribution, but close games can and will sometimes still be decided in small part by those minutes. Not only that, if Brunson misses any games, those go from tough games where maybe someone else can step up to auto losses.
Assuming everyone is back, Thibs is going to wind up playing OG 40+ minutes to get some more defense in the 2nd unit and either Randle or Brunson 40+ minutes to get more playmaking in the 2nd unit by staggering them. That’s not ideal at all.
We’re not going to catch up. We’re going to surpass them, probably by a pretty significant number, unless they also have injuries.
OG and Randle are missing at least the next 3 weeks. That’s 10 more games (was actually surprised it was only 10 games). That puts them at 23 missed games each and that’s if they came back 3 weeks from today. Mitch will have missed significantly more than that and its very weird you don’t include him because even if you think iHart is better, not having Mitch means not having a good back up center.
We shouldn’t still be having this debate.
The MORON put both Robinson and Grimes back in the game in the 2nd half on the very days they were injured and went to the locker room. Both were ultimately forced to miss significant time after that.
On one level he’s a great coach, but if you can’t see how he’s contributing to the injury problem on another level, then you have blinders on. Whether it’s all him or the culture he encourages, he’s killing these guys. Some of it is random. All teams have injuries. But it’s not all random!
Mitch played under 30mpg this season. A stress fracture is an overuse injury but something else must’ve happened or Mitch is just physically unable to play as an NBA starter.
Doesn’t make what Thibs did smart, but it’s a big red flag for Mitch
Every single coach in the league puts guys back into games after they get hurt. It happens all the time.
As others have said, the problem isn’t the number of games missed; it’s that all of these absences are happening at the same time. We could weather the storm much more easily without all this overlap.
Re: Mitch…playing and training hard…injuries
The die hard… always keep fighting till the end culture and “dawg” mentality has these specific side effects. This is not unique to Thibs. It’s the ideology…same things happens in Miami all the time, we just dont hear about them.
Lol no we’re not! I gave you the numbers, man. Randle and OG could both miss the whole year and we’ll still be behind.
We’ve had an overwhelming advantage so far. Things are just evening out now.
Cleveland and Miami dealt with this overlap, too, and no less than us.
The Garland and Mobley injuries were largely concurrent. And the Heat have had too many games missing two or more guys to count.
Another obvious thing is that games missed by your best player are far more difficult to overcome.
And again, we’ve had an overwhelming advantage there:
Brunson – 4
Mitchell – 11
Halliburton – 12
Butler – 19
Embiid – 24
You’re counting guys who are easily replaceable.
Are we really counting Miami missing Caleb Martin, Kyle Lowry, Herro, and Jaquez as equal to missing any Knick starter or iHart?
Or Cleveland missing Okoro?
They may be starters, but they’re barely the level of Knick backups, if that.
This is an arbitrary cutoff.
We’ve missed an all-star/all-NBA player for 13 games and will miss him for at least 10 more. I’d guess more.
We’ve missed DPOY candidate OG Anunobys for 13 games and will miss ~10 more.
We’ve missed Mitchell Robinson who is just a bit under an All-Defense level for 38 games. Do we even have a timeline for him yet?
Randle is a 3 time all-star and 2 time all-nba player. Brunson might be our best player but Randle is not far behind him.
That’s “starting,” not “staring.”
Garland has been bad this year, to the point that him missing games has actually allowed the Cavs to put together a better lineup. Unsurprisingly they have not been as good since his return.
I’ll grant though that the Cavs are the other plausible candidate in the East for bad injury luck. And yet they never had 3 of their starters out for a long period, and have had their two best players healthy most of the time (Mobley hasn’t been as good as Allen).
Joel Embiid (24 games) is the MVP.
Donovan Mitchell (11 games) is second team all NBA.
Jimmy Butler (19 games) is one of the greatest players of all time.
Darius Garland (23 games) is an all star.
Evan Mobley (24 games) is first team all NBA defense and finished 3rd in DPOY.
Bam Adebayo (10 games) is second team all NBA defense and finished 5th.
Come on, man. I counted the top 6 players on each time. You’re welcome to slice it up anyway you like it.
You want to weight it by an AIO? Be my guest. 56 games of Mitchell, Garland, and Mobley is gonna dwarf our number. And we won’t come close to missing 39 games of Butler, Bam, and Love, either.
There’s no way to cut this, man. We’ve had some bad luck. So have everyone else. Ours ain’t any better or worse.
The hunter has become the hunted.
and our record isnt any better or worse…give or take a few games…so what’s your point?
Has there been any research into whether Thibs teams actually do have more/worse injuries than an average NBA team over the years?
I feel like it’s just accepted as true but no one has actually looked into it.
The D Rose injury was so awful that I think it immediately set up that narrative. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but I wish there was an actual study about this instead of just people’s gut feelings. I tried to google it but didn’t really find anything except random reddit threads where people argued about it with no real facts or data to back it up.
That’s less than 20 games each. OG, Randle and Mitch are easily missing more than 20 games each by the time this is done. OG and Mitch are missing at least 23 if they come back 3 weeks from today. Mitch is going to miss like 30 games (possibly even more). The total number of games those 3 are going to miss is going to be over 60 and probably closer to 70.
Edit – jus saw the above comment about Mitch missing 38 games. That puts our total with our starting front court all ready at 64 games (13 and 13 for OG and Randle, 38 for mitch). OG and Randle are missing at least 10 more games (3 weeks from today). That’s going to put it at like 84 games.
That if everyone is healthy in the playoffs and we lose in the first round, it can’t be hand waved away because we went through a rough patch of injuries during the season.
And that this wave of injuries is not some unprecedented run of bad luck, but rather something most teams go through and prepare for by using their bottom third roster spots more effectively than we do.
agree on the first point…but I think you need a little more research to prove that 2nd point..i would say it is an outlier data point if some team effectively does that…not the mean
Nice try, rama and ess-dog, but the hunter has definitely *not* become the hunted. “staring PG” originated with walkerandbendercornerstones, not with me.
walkerandbendercornerstones says:
February 29, 2024 at 12:09
“You can’t ignore the culmulative effect of having 3 starters out at the same time (while also the back up Center and staring PG are also missing games or on minutes restrictions).”
Hunt me all you like—I enjoy it, and I actually enjoy errors of mine being pointed out…….when I actually make them! You’ll have to try much harder than that, though! 🙂
[jokegoingoverhead.gif]
hopefully jalen sits the next two games (warriors, cavs) and comes back against the hawks on march 5th…
hopefully number 2 – any opportunity for thibs to further injury players is controlled better by the front office/medical staff…
finally:
– Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer.
– I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the
12th of January 1992.
– My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song.
– If you’d like to hear it, I could sing it for you.
– It’s called “Daisy”.
1). A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2). A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3). A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
good luck with that…
No, rama, it just wasn’t a good joke.
Hubert, your fundamental assertion isn’t really being argued here – if we lose in the first round at full health, it will be a disappointment.
Nor is anyone arguing your second assertion: that we could and should do more with the end of our bench. (Though hey, we traded Arcidiacono, so we got that going for us.)
But to couch it in “other teams have had similar injuries” is simplistic and incorrect. No other team has lost their entire starting front line for a quarter (or more) of the season. Even if they’ve lost players who are as good or better, they’ve been less duplicative, so that they were easier to cover for. The obvious exception is Embiid, who is the best player to miss time, and who is so central to that team’s success that his absence can’t be compensated for.
Had we lost Randle, or Mitch, or OG, we could get by fine. In fact we did. But losing all of them? That’s a big deal.
here you go geo
https://www.semafor.com/article/02/09/2024/ai-models-consistently-opt-for-nuclear-weapons-in-war-games
this is like Terminator…just need the time travel stuff…
howdy doogie…i hope your day is well…
if you don’t mind sir, how do you know the downtown freddie brown person?
Reasonable minds can disagree about Mitch.
I think the Knicks being down Mitch this year is like the Patriots being down Drew Bledsoe. I wouldn’t say they were shorthanded when Tom Brady came in for him.
Likewise, when Isaiah Hartenstein is available, I believe we’re fielding our best starting lineup.
Just to be clear- our self appointed guardian of typos requotes a typo he obviously missed. And not his fault. Second line of defense at its finest.
@geo: To be clear, I don’t actually *know* Fred Brown—I only know *of* him. I started paying attention to the NBA in 1978, and Brown was in his prime for the SuperSonics at that time. I got the nickname for my predilection to shoot 3-pointers, although not nearly as well as Brown did for a little while. Brown shot them at a 44.3 percent clip back in 1979-80, which was the first year of their existence. Chris Ford shot a lot of them for the Celtics.
We have more built in redundancy than most teams. People on here argued during the offseason that we shouldn’t spend so much money on our bench. So I’ll reiterate, the issue is missing all these guys at the same time.
As posted above, the Heat have played few games with more than 1 valuable player missing.
Mobley & Garland missed 17 games together. Garland & Donovan 5.
Randle & OG have nearly equaled that and will surpass it easily. On top of which, the Knicks are missing Mitch.
The bottom of Cleveland’s roster is Damian Jones (28) and Ty Jerome (26). They’ve played 165 minutes, the same number as Taj Gibson. So yeah, they really haven’t had to use the bottom of their roster.
Edit: i’m not going to bother
I didn’t miss walkerandbendercornerstones’ typographical error at all. In fact, I re-used it on purpose just to make fun of it a little bit, as you tried (unsuccessfully) to do to me much later in the day. 🙂 I wasn’t actually asking who our starting point guard is—the answer to that is pretty obvious.
I bet Archie was pretty good at staring
You just picked random combinations that supported your idea and ignored the ones that didn’t.
I can do that, too.
The Knicks have only played one game without Randle and Brunson. The Knicks have only played 1 game without Donte and OG. Etc etc.
We ended up having to get Taj Gibson of all people out of retirement because we had no centers.
Even if you accept the premise that Hartenstein > Mitch, you have to account for the fact that there are at least 20mpg (I-Hart’s average from last year) lost to sub-replacement level production. Not to mention the fact that I-Hart himself has been hurt, so they went from 48 minutes of great production at center to 48 minutes of sub-replacement level production a bunch of times.
Edit: if I-Hart were to play every remaining game and average 25 min/game, he would play about 275 minutes more in 2023-24 than he did last season. That’s like 3 min/game. So no, he did not replace Mitch’s production.
“I bet Archie was pretty good at staring.”
LOL
As I said in the post, they’re the “valuable” players.
Not all players are equal, you can’t compare missing Jaime Jaquez, a washed Lowry, or Caleb Martin to missing Randle, OG, or Mitch.
I left out the rest of the Heat because the difference between them and the average bench player is marginal.
Ok Doogie I get it. Apologies but geeze…
nice pepper…one thought is – all the technology will connect us better to ensure we maximize resources and improve quality of life for humans around the globe…
i hope so…what i tend to look at is the increased potential lethality of individuals…not so much anymore, but when i was younger i liked studying weapons…it’s amazing what one person can due in terms of causing damage…i’m not even thinking of guns..
also, the ease with which it’s become possible to spread propaganda/madness through pervasive communications technology – is something very unexpected – i never ever saw the danger of the media before the last decade or so…
i see it now…what a crazy radicalizing agent against populations of folks…AI is just a crazy accelerate for everything…
my dad thought the world was coming to an end as he aged…ma embraces the change…
i’m just thankful i live in an age where i can indulge myself to the extent that i do…
No disagreement on the general premise that ANY first round playoff exit better yet one with a team back at “full health” would be disappointing based on where we were in January. I’ve been preaching that Dolan’s Razor struck for a while now. Remember even when the Knicks were good in the 90’s we were still painfully cursed: Charles Smith, PJ Brown/Charlie Ward, Ewing’s wrist, Olajuwon blocking Starks in Game 6 etc. This team hasn’t just been cursed for 20 years. It’s been over 50!
That said, there is a huge difference between the healthy guys coming back for a few games before the playoffs start and trying to gel and generate momentum and players coming back now and through the next few weeks and having a month to do so. The latter is a huge advantage. So if we lose in Rd 1 with guys just coming back then it’s likely not indicative of the team’s true potential.
ditto
hold on, so downtown doogie brown is something you’ve had with you for a while now…very interesting…
i never played basketball much growing up…soccer was big out on long island (mid-island, going south) in the mid 70’s…i played that for a bunch of years…
i still remember going to these huge fields by the power lines…so many people out there playing…
one sport i missed that i wish i had played was lacrosse, that was another popular sport in the area…
Game Thread 2023-24 Knicks vs. Warriors (February comes to an End Opener, which is a good thing)
although, i’m starting to think march may get no better…
So Tyler Herro and Jaime Jacquez Jr — undoubtedly 2 of Miami’s most important players — don’t count because you said so.
That’s a compelling argument, EB. Can I have my shovel back now?
OAKAAK Marcus Morris is getting bought out by the Spurs. Time for a reunion?!?!?
No problem, BernieErnie. Have a great evening, all!
That’s how he got the refs to call all those 3 seconds
This is a much better scenario than missing multiple guys who play adjacent positions. If we were down DDV and Mitch, we’d be just fine with Hart and iHart filling in. Our front line situation is like the Cavs missing Mobley + Allen or Mitchell + Garland along with whoever their starting SF is. The level of redundancy needed to compensate for that is much greater.
The Luol Deng story I posted predates D-Rose’s blown ACL.
Jaquez has a -1.7 EPM
Herro is at +1.0
Herro has a bit of value but he’s still nowhere near Randle or OG. Mitch has a better EPM and missed nearly double the games.
If you have a metric that says these guys are incredible, I’ll accept it, but I don’t find a list of the top-6 guys on the depth chart compelling.
Hubert, Tyler Herro is good offense no defense guy, and Jacquez is good for a rookie but is not particularly productive. In terms of BPM that would be their 6th and 15th most productive players. You seem to be arguing just to argue. Thibs can’t have run the Knicks into the ground if we’re not particularly injured. At least pick one.
It’s funny to hear the same people ripping the Heat players that said (and will say) that Thibs lost (and could lose) to the Heat in the playoffs because the Heat have better players.
Pick a lane, boys.
Neither Herro nor Jacquez played against the Knicks last year in the playoffs big dog
Thibs lost to Gabe Vincent and Max Strus and Kevin Love and Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin last year. He could easily, and I mean easily, lose to Tyler Herro and Jaime Jacquez.
How many people said the Heat had better players?
Pretty sure it was zero. It sure as hell wasn’t because of those guys.
Any playoff exit short of a championship will be disappointing. The question is, what will is say about the team, the FO, and the coach, both in retrospect and moving forward?
In retrospect, if the team loses in the first round, there will be a lot of bluster as to why, just like there was after the 2021 loss to the Hawks and the 2023 loss to the Heat. Obviously, something will have not worked out according to plan. It is looking more and more like bad injury luck re: Mitch, Randle, and OG would be a major factor, but who knows? Shooting variance, a critical call or non-call, a questionable coaching decision, an untimely suspension, the emergence of a youngish player, e.g. Mobley, Mathurin, Jaquez…any or all of those things could materialize. I personally think that anyone who believes that these injuries were either predictable or due to coaching or traded for via a lack of due diligence by the FO shouldn’t be taken seriously. For those who want to dignify those takes, bless your kind souls! Randle himself was the freakiest injury of all, and he was playing at an all-NBA level when he got hurt. If he doesn’t come back at something near 100% physically, we’re in big trouble. Same with Mitch…it’s not that iHart isn’t as good, it’s that the dropoff is in having a 3rd stringer playing significant minutes instead of one of them…not to mention that ANY coach would be wearing the remaining rotation guys down trying to keep pace while they recovered.
Even if we win in the first round, there is very little chance that we get to the finals…Boston is playing at an historic level right now, and MIL, CLE, MIA, and even IND aren’t chopped liver. So then what? Will the FO’s decision-making be affected by when we exit and to whom, especially if injuries at least “can” be blamed?
I think it would be more about things like how individual players perform relative to their health status, and whether that health status is a long-term issue.
There are really only two “untouchable” players on this roster, Brunson and OG, and even those guys are expendable if someone like Jokic or Luka or SGA suddenly becomes available.
Beyond that, I hope the FO takes a page out of Brad Steven’s playbook this offseasonand upgrades the team by acquiring players like KP, Jrue and White. All of those guys could have been had, and the Celts pounced, giving up good players and picks to get them. OG is one of those kinds of guys. Now we need to find a couple more.
Sure, the Heat with Jimmy and Bam and Spo have proven they can beat almost anyone.
Maybe so but his JRMPG (Julius Randles Maimed Per Game) is outstanding.
Sorry but this is complete nonsense. I think there’s a pretty clear consensus here that making the ECF would constitute success and anything beyond that is the stuff of our dreams.
But can he do it in the playoffs? Bam’s playoff ISTIKPG (Illegal Screens that Injure Knicks per game) is way higher, Jaquez probably doesn’t get a chance to injure Randle before Bam tackles Randle’s bad shoulder without a whistle being blown.
Chris Herring had a column on ESPN+ today titled “2024 NBA trade deadline in review: Did your team make the right move?:
The first tier was: Yes, they made the right call(s)
and first team in that tier was:
New York Knicks
The Knicks didn’t even wait until the deadline to make their first move. Instead, five weeks beforehand, they dealt RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for OG Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa, which transformed New York’s offense just as much as it supercharged the defense. And the Knicks were the hottest team in the league for a few weeks afterward, until Anunoby left the lineup due to injury.
So, to make that move then to grab Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks from Detroit as bench players? All while not surrendering a single first-round pick in either deal?
It’s hard to see the downside, even if Bogdanovic and Burks still need to integrate with the second unit while the Knicks get back to full strength (and after the duo played for an abysmal Pistons club.) The short-handed Knicks have struggled lately, and opposing teams have outscored them by an average of minus-8.7 and minus-5.7 points per game, respectively, when Bogdanovic and Burks are on the floor thus far. Still, with Julius Randle still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, adding Burks and Bogdanovic gives New York added punch, a plus for a club that is sometimes too reliant on All-Star Jalen Brunson’s scoring and minutes. And that should help considerably down the line.
Randle has a bit of value but he’s still nowhere near Butler, and OG isn’t close to Bam yet, either. What is your point? Do we keep doing this until only Joel Embiid counts?
OG has been cleared to start non-contact court work
The Knicks are so funny that I can’t figure out whether this is good news (as in he will start to ramp up) or bad news (as in he can’t do contact work for some reason).
You can tell it’s good news because nobody here is responding to it
“Sorry but this is complete nonsense. I think there’s a pretty clear consensus here that making the ECF would constitute success and anything beyond that is the stuff of our dreams.”
Here’s what I wrote: “Any playoff exit short of a championship will be disappointing.”
Are you going to say with a straight face that you weren’t disappointed when we were eliminated last year, even though very few people predicted that we would make it to the second round, even at this point in the year? I sure was! And I will likely be disappointed again this year! It’s just a matter of degree.
You can have an objectively “successful” season and still be disappointed that it ended earlier than you had hoped.
Touché.
Winning the finals will be disappointing because then we’d have to do it again, which is almost always impossible.
Ideally we stop when the players hit a level when playing a league average next man up is no different than playing the missing player. And if you want to count every single game that every Heat player missed with every other Heat player, be my guest. I’m stopping at Bam, Butler, Rozier, & Love because the amount of value lost isn’t worth the effort for the remaining players.
OG +3.0 EPM
Bam +2.1 EPM
But again it’s about the volume and character of players missing time simultaneously.
Good to hear, but I think it’s also what we were expecting. But yeah, also nobody responds to good news
Both JB and I-Hart will play tonight, we’ll be at our “best worst”…
If you think quoting Taylor Snarr is an argument, I can just do this
Bam 2.0 BPM
Herro 0.6 BPM
OG 0.1 BPM