[New York Post] – Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:19:00 GMT
- Knicks officially sign Shake Milton to create backcourt logjam
- BREAKING: New York Knicks Reportedly Signing 6-Year NBA Player
- Knicks pad roster depth by signing veteran guard after Jalen Brunson injury
- Shake Milton Signs With Knicks
- Sources – Shake Milton planning to sign with New York Knicks
[New York Post] – Wed, 06 Mar 2024 01:20:00 GMT
- Paul Pierce derisively compares Knicks to ‘an Instagram model’
- Celtics Legend Makes Wild Comparison of Knicks to an ‘Instagram Model’
- Paul Pierce: ‘The Knicks is like an Instagram model’
- Celtics Legend Paul Pierce Oddly Likens Knicks To Instagram Model
- Celtics Legend Drops ‘IG Model’ Hot Take on Knicks
[New York Post] – Wed, 06 Mar 2024 03:18:00 GMT
- Depleted Knicks no match for Hawks, lose eighth game in last 11
- Atlanta Hawks vs. New York Knicks Prediction, Preview, and Odds – 3-5-2024
- Knicks vs. Hawks odds, spread, score prediction, time: 2024 NBA picks for March 5 by proven model
- Game Thread: New York Knicks vs Atlanta Hawks, March 5, 2024
- Hawks at Knicks: start time, TV, streaming, radio, game thread
[SFGATE] – Wed, 06 Mar 2024 03:26:01 GMT
Jalen Johnson scores 26 to lead Hawks over Knicks 116-100
[Posting and Toasting] – Tue, 05 Mar 2024 12:00:00 GMT
Knicks re-sign Jacob Toppin to a two-way deal, add Shake Milton
132 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.03.06)”
From yesterday:
I get your thoughts, but disagree a bit with the conclusions. Prior to the injury plague of locusts, they were something like 13-2 and looked like a very tough out. Were they perfectly constructed, no. Do the Celtics have firepower off the bench and are they too dependent on their top six, we will see.
You pointed out their major flaw was the lack of a top back-up pg. Well Brunson is playing at least 41 minutes in the playoffs so there is about seven minutes left for Deuce which shouldn’t kill us.
As to firepower off the bench, that is Bogey’s role.
They came to the conclusion that they liked IQ a bunch, but not nearly as much as he was asking for in an extension.
Grimes was a complete flop this year. They handed him the starting 2 guard role and he literally was afraid to shoot other than totally uncontested 3s and he shit the bed. This is also the second serious knee injury he’s had, so good luck to him.
If this group as currently structured gets healthy and 10 games to get fit, they can be a very tough out that still has enormously flexible options moving forward.
Modern NBA offense? Last night?
One guard chucking 20 shots does not make an offense modern.
Donte didn’t get a bunch of good shots and randomly miss. He chucked every time he got a little bit of daylight even if it was 35 feet out bc the 20% chance he has of hitting a bad shot is the best shot our Paleolithic offense can generate.
Modern offense would have been putting some shooters around Precious, who was having a great game.
Instead the simpleton subbed him out for Jericho Sims 5 mins into the half and left him on the bench until garbage time, much to the delight of Atlanta. Why? Probably bc he wrote the script before the game and wasn’t going to deviate from it no matter what happened.
Re: Bojan, how many times have we seen him kill it in the second quarter then sit on the bench for nearly the entire 3rd then struggle to find a rhythm the rest of the game? Maybe sitting an old shooter for 45 real minutes isn’t the best idea. Whatever let’s do it again Friday and expect a different result.
Thibs is following the same script every game no matter what happens and it’s a bad script. I’m not suggesting we would have won every game with a better approach, but the principle is a problem. The principle of repeating a losing method with more effort instead of making an adjustment is why people have a problem with Thibs. It’s real. It’s valid. And you coming on here telling us the sky’s actually green is the real tedium.
For what’s worth I agree with you Hubie, it was bad process-bad results.
Obviously “good process” doesn’t mean we would have won the game (not with the way our shooters were treating the rims yesterday) but, as I’ve already said, you can “lose better” instead of adding insult to injury with “bad process” decisions…
Of course god forbid anyone suggest that playing 47 mpg had anything to do with Deuce and Hart looking ragged last night. We’re just haters out here finding flaws in a perfect world.
Re: Bojan
This is a situation we’ve seen many times in the past and to me (as a former “streaky shooter”), no matter who is the coach, you never sub for a shooter when he’s on a hot streak, you wait until he misses one shot (or better two: the heat check and the next one) unless he asks for a breather.*
If you’ve ever been in the situation you know the feeling, how frustrating it is and how many times your game is never the same after it.
* I dare to extend the concept: you never sub a player after a made basket or a good defensive play.
The Knicks outscored Atlanta by 6 with Precious on the court in the second half and by 4 when Sims was in. (There’s a little overlap because Precious was subbed out for Bojan, not Jericho) We went to a one center lineup the rest of the 4th and got outscored by 11.
Priors undisturbed — in both strategic roster construction and tactical coaching/man management.
One comment, then I’m ceding the floor for the day.(*)
The Knicks are up to 30-1 in Vegas to win the chip. As with the cat insurance and reinsurance industries, it’s always way better to try to figure out what the people with actual skin in the game are doing and thinking, so I’m wondering if this is a vote of no or little confidence in the injuries rectifying themselves. It’s too big a jump from 15-1 to be just the worse seeding with which they’re going to go into the playoffs.
(*) Geo, thanks for the good wishes on my back; I’ll put some details here soon.
First of all I want to apologize for recommending you take a Valium yesterday. It was uncalled for. I’m a ‘growed ass man’ and have been told to fuck off many times. I should have let it go.
That being said criticism of his usage of Precious last night is completely valid as well as curious, since he has ridden Precious like Ron Turcotte on Secretariat in the Belmont previously. Precious was even doing his poor man’s Kevin McHale impersonation in the post and Thibs disappeared him. Did anyone ask that question in the post game. I’m guessing there was a reason, and I’d sure be curious to what it was.
I want Max as offensive coordinator 😉
I’s funny that Thibs’s post-game mantra is something like, “Win or learn from it” when you consider our complaints about his rigidity.
But — I don’t really wanna pile on Thibs today. Maybe the minutes are poorly allocated. Maybe he has no plan. Either way, last night all our guys basically said, “I got this” whenever they touched the ball. Devo and Bobo were chucking. Deuce was deucing. Even all of Precious’s genius was basically him going for goal on every possession. Maybe iHart was looking to pass? More of that, please.
To me, however, all of that just signals fatigue and lack of familiarity/success with this particular group. Things will turn around if/when our heavy hitters return. We will be happy. If no one returns this season, then let’s “lose better” — every game and re-group.
I think that is fairly easy to explain. As time passes the probability of Randle, OG and at least one of the injured centers being 100% is fading. That condition is necessary, yet maybe not even sufficient for this team to make a title run. OG at 100%, Randle at 75% and Hart at 60% this team could easily, reasonable and justifiably lose any first round match-up. The odds are indicating perception of reality at this point in time. What the actual reality IS will be found in the fullness of time.
No, you were probably right, BPL, I needed one. And likewise my apologies for telling you to fuck off.
At the end of the day, disagreement won’t cause tiresome threads but invalidation will. And I don’t understand why a group exists to invalidate all criticism of Thibs. The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword were less devout in their protection of the holy grail.
We don’t all have to like each other’s opinions but when you’ll go so far as to suggest our offense was modern last night or to deny that this team has had offensive problems in the playoffs, IMO you’re going to great length to keep up a fight.
As an experienced viewer of bad Knicks teams if you are wondering after a 16 point loss ‘why didn’t we play Precious Achiuwa more, we needed his offense’ the answer doesn’t really matter much. Thibs is too rigid with his positional roles-Precious wasn’t playing because he was the PF, and the other PF (Bojan) was playing. It’s not crazy to play Bojan Bogdanovic when you’re having trouble scoring, because he’s maybe our best available offensive player. And that right there is the problem, when your best offensive player is Bojan Bogdanovic you have a bad basketball team that is going to lose a lot of games.
There was definitely a strong argument for playing Precious more last night. Then again, the cold-hearted, ruthless empiricist might say the best approach was in fact to bank his strong play to that point and not pin your hopes on it continuing.
I don’t have a strong opinion other than the current state of the roster makes me very forgiving when any given choice doesn’t work out. As DRed said, if Precious Achiuwa’s minutes are determining your fate, you probably don’t just have the horses.
Also, while I am sympathetic to the fact that waiting to issue an Official Take is no fun and have certainly jumped the gun myself, this is a truly ridiculous time to be drawing conclusions about recent trades and the roster writ large. Please stop doing it.
Because (1) the type of people who populate message boards tend to have invalidating personalities; and (2) because the features of the medium itself naturally steer the proceedings toward invalidation and groupthink. (For a number of reasons I won’t go into now.)
And now I am indeed done for the day. Hubert’s was an important question, asked in good faith, came from a good place, and warranted a response.
Good post, DRed. Just understand some of us rail against that rigidity bc we see it as the consistent architect of our demise.
Losing a Brunson-less game because the Hawks shot well is no big deal. But the process concerns me because bad process foreshadows future loss.
You don’t have to be in this camp. Just stop invalidating it.
Our margin of error is indeed very small, I’d say minuscule, with all the big guns out.
To me J-Hart’s answer confirms that we don’t need “self inflicted wounds” given how narrow our way to winning games is until the wounded are back, but that’s just my opinion and I have no issues with anyone who thinks differently.
P.S. Aaron Boone, scrutinized and criticized for every pinch hitting or reliever usage decision, is applying to become an NBA coach 😉
Everyone please read this and post accordingly. Thank you
The only starter left on this team is a mid level exception overachiever, who wasn’t starting at the beginning of the year. Definitely let’s debate the coach’s use of Bojdanovirtous vs. Magnus Prektcious.
Nice try Hubie… 😉
Hubert if you’re going to complain that dummy Thibs subbed out Precious for Sims I’m going to push back on that, not because I love Thibs so much, but because that is something that didn’t actually happen.
Taj Gibson is signing a 10-day contract with…
The Detroit Pistons (AKA The Motor City Knicks)…
P.S. No, it’s not a joke, the source is a Woj tweet.
“And I don’t understand why a group exists to invalidate all criticism of Thibs.”
Actually this flies in the face of ‘facts’ and while it may have been asked in good faith from a good place, it is absurd and ignores reality. Virtually everyone on this board is critical of Thibs. It’s a spectrum, with Hubert living at the distant far end, but nobody thinks Thibs is perfect. Virtually everyone has been critical, especially of his peculiar playing time decisions. But also about various other aspects of his coaching.
Some here think that despite his annoying aspects he’s a still a top-flight coach (which may say more about the group he’s in). Nobody thinks he’s on par with Spo or Pops. Nor do most think he’s Fizdale.
So no, not a good question. A false question. People push back at Hubert’s all-out diatribes because they don’t share the “kill Thibs now” position, not because they can’t stand critiques of Thibs.
For the record, I’m agnostic. He makes me as angry as any of the players for stupid decisions; I also think he’s brought a great culture to NY, which is something I guess. Can we win a chip with him? Most coaches don’t, and Doc Rivers did. I do think that’s as much the horses you bring to the race as anything.
Very weird that we are swapping role players with the Pistons
So we swap role players with the Pistons, and draft picks with the Thunder. Got it.
If the spectrum is 1 to 100, with 100 being pro Thibs, I’m probably at about 75-80.
I’m vocal about the two things I don’t like: excessive minutes and tactical rigidity.
But no one picks a fight when I give him credit for building a culture or for his excellent player development record, so you don’t remember those things.
I would say E is by far our most vehemently anti-Thibs poster, FWIW.
The Orlando game feels big, seeding-wise. But I appreciate Thibs saying before last night’s game that they don’t want to rush Brunson back before he’s fully ready. That sounds like a big evolution from a maniac like him. Though whenever Brunson does return, I expect he’ll play, like, 41 minutes in that first game back.
Take 4 starters out of any NBA team, and it’s virtually impossible for them to win against a competitive team, especially when they shoot poorly from 3. Yes, even Miami. Spo is amazing but is not a wizard. It’s not all the coach. Swapping a flawed player for another flawed player is not going to make a huge difference.
Maybe Orlando will be the Shake Milton game
Of course when you agree with other’s world view they don’t disagree.
However; when you use terms like “simpleton” describing a coach who has a long track record of success, high dudgeon and lols, ensue.
No coach is immune to criticism, even the deity Pop. LaMarcus Aldrich on the “All the Smoke” podcast said Pop cost them the title one year by (and I paraphrase) resting the players too much during the regular season. He said when they got punched in the nose in the playoffs, they weren’t physically fit enough to log the big minutes they needed to win. No coach is above criticism.
What frustrates me is that when Precious and Bojan are both having good games and it would make a ton of sense to try them together, we can’t do it bc Coach has predetermined that they are both power forwards and acts as if there is a rule preventing you from playing two power forwards together.
The fact that one has been a SF most of his career and the other has been a C just makes it even more mind boggling.
It has nothing to do with losing to the Hawks. Inevitably at full strength someone will figure us out and we’ll have to make an adjustment, and being stuck in this self-imposed prison will likely be our undoing, as it has been before.
Though whenever Brunson does return, I expect he’ll play, like, 41 minutes in that first game back.
Knowing now that an alternative scenario is playing just 47 seconds, that may be a welcome relief!
I still think this team is very good, can make some noise if Randle is close to 100% and has the flexibility to become a serious contender next year.
I simply think if you are going to trade away your 6th man of the year prospect who also happens to be your backup PG and a plus defender for OG (imo good move), you also need a plan to replace that backup PG, the lost scoring, and the lost bench defense or you just turned one of the best benches in the league into a weakness.
Their plan was to play Deuce at PG.
I like Deuce, but he’s not a PG and not enough of a scorer to come close to replacing Quickley. That should have been obvious to them before they got a chance to see it on the court.
So their next idea was to trade for two 3 point shooters to improve the offense. That might have been a good idea IF they had a PG to get them the ball in good spots. Instead they have both guys trying to create their own offense and becoming less efficient. And to do that, they weakened the bench defense even more by giving up Grimes.
They left the team vulnerable to these current issues by not having a well thought out plan already in place (I said they needed another PG in PRE SEASON) or one available at the deadline to replace Quickley. And IMO, they compounded the error with the Grimes trade by weakening the bench defense.
If they get healthy they’ll probably stagger Brunson/Randle and give them some time with the 2nd unit and maybe even do some of that with OG for defense to get through the playoffs. But imo that’s NOT ideal.
We have more than enough resources to fix these problems in the off season. But we have problems to fix that we probably shouldn’t have and are getting worse results in the short term than we should be getting.
“Actually this flies in the face of ‘facts’ and while it may have been asked in good faith from a good place, it is absurd and ignores reality. Virtually everyone on this board is critical of Thibs.”
Exactly, Raven. You summed things up perfectly.
The Mavericks pick is looking juicy at 15 right now.
Mavs somehow are sub .500 when Kyrie & Luka are available
I know it’s too early but Devin Carter of Providence and Isaiah Collier of USC look like intriguing replacement candidates for IQ.
Wait a second… did I just fall in love with 19 year old PG Juan Nunez from Ulm after 3 mins of youtube videos? Oh I think I did.
“excessive minutes and tactical rigidity.”
Fair point, Hubert, and most of us are in the same boat as you are. Even Macri in today’s notes mentioned how odd it was not to play Precious more, although he did provide both sides of the argument. Perhaps it is just the vehemence with which you make your arguments. Probably not helped by E defending you — not a good look for anyone…
I share your frustration with this, but when ultimately when our argument revolves around these two players being on the floor together in crunch time, it’s probably a losing proposition anyway.
The great thing about OG is that he is so flexible defensively that it allows Thibs to do things he normally hates to do. He’s an antidote to Thibs’ rigidity. I think it’s part of why he’s so valuable to the Knicks.
And you’re right, Raven, you guys don’t invalidate all criticism of Thibs. It’s more like there’s a club that thinks it’s allowed to determine which criticisms are allowed and which are not.
That’s exactly what invalidation is.
And it’s in the nature of invalidating types not to see themselves as that.
Did we actually see Thibs use OG as anything other than a 3? I honestly don’t recall.
Josh Hart is really the only guy he seems to use flexibly.
And, of course… it must be a psychological flaw in anyone who disagrees with you…. not a possibility they might have a valid argument.
Duly noted.
“I deserve to invalidate you” is never a “valid argument.” It’s always and everywhere, invalid.
BB Ref has OG with the Knicks as 69% sf and 31% pf…
He used OG as the 4 with the 2nd unit. In addition to BPL’s BRef numbers, PBP Stats says he played 215 minutes with Hart which almost certainly means he played the 4. That’s about 15mpg.
But Hubert is correct, Thibs wasn’t showing real flexibility, it was out of necessity like Woodson using 2 PGs. It’s probably the same thing with Hart playing the 4.
Of course, that ends now that we have Bojan and Thibs fell madly in love with Precious.
Precious: 71% pf 29% C …w/Toronto 3% pf 97% C
What position did Precious play in Toronto is not easy to answer, they often played him in lineups with like 3 or 4 positionally interchangeable forwards. They would run shit like Van Vleet/OG/Precious/Siakim/Boucher.
That actually makes sense to me if they keep him on as a vet presence.
They already have 400 prospects of varying talent, don’t really give a shit about their record, and presumably he’s behind Duren, Wiseman, and Isaiah Stewart on the depth chart. They don’t need another prospect and he’ll never touch the floor.
hi Brunson Peroneus Longus, I hope your day is well…
where you posting under a previous moniker?
it’s driving me crazy trying to figure out who’s writing style you have 🙂
Normally I would assume they have a valid argument but when it gets to “the knicks ran a modern offense” and “the coach’s philosophy and lineup choices have got nothing to do with 16 games of offensive playoff failure”, I’m sorry I just can’t believe these are sincere takes.
Where on BBF does it give a positional breakdown for a given player in percentage terms?
And that’s with Randle being healthy for most of his time in New York. I think he played virtually all of the non-Randle PF minutes.
Under Play-By-Play. There’s definitely some cases it gets wrong, and Toronto’s position-less defense is probably one of them, but in the majority of cases it seems correct.
I think Taj’s a great idea by the Pistons management to mentor their young big men (Duren, Wiseman), maybe they’ll add him to their coaching staff next year.
But the sheer number of players who switched between these two teams in the last few years is funny (DRose, Burks, Noel, Knox and now Fournier, Bojan, Grimes, Flynn, Gibson… I’m probably missing someone, plus a bunch of picks).
Thanks, EBW! That’s a pretty interesting stat (at least to me) in this era of positionless basketball.
And an unnamed national newspaper is saying that the Spurs should chase Anunoby as a perfect player next to Wemby should he become available in free agency. However, it is difficult for me to put much stock into an article entitled “OG Anunoby listed as idieal Spurs free agency target this summer.”
Happy 29th Hustlebunny Birthday to Josh Hart!
the Knicks made like 29% of their open 3 point attempts in the playoffs last year. What strategy or philosophy led to that?
I suspect OG is a perfect complement to almost anyone, anywhere, so throw a dart at a list of teams and rewrite that story. It’s why I’m so happy he’s a Knick, and so sad he’s not playing right now.
Let me try and give some rational thoughts. I’m not sure what you mean by a “modern” offense. For perspective during the last 82 game season under Fizdale the Knicks shot 2,421 3s. The first 82 game season under Thibs they shot 3,029 fully 600 more! Last year they shot 2,960 which ranked 8th in the league with the 3rd best offensive rating in the league. I really don’t get the complaining about a non-modern offense. I also believe they had the #1 offensive rating for the games OG played.
I fully understand their offense is iso-based primarily. But they don’t have Curry, Thompson and an all time bigman savant passer like Green to make their offense go. Their two best players are iso players primarily and that is not really in dispute. Brunson is just an OK passer for a PG but he is an elite scorer with Hakeem-like foot work around the basket. Randle similarly. A good coach coaches to his player’s strengths. Thibs literally begged Grimes to hoist up 3s and he wouldn’t.
As to their offensive ‘failures’ in the playoffs, vs Atlanta they got more milage than expected out of a limited Randle-centric offense during the regular season and didn’t have the players to fill the void when Randle was doubled. Barrett’s ts% was 48.9 and IQ’s was 40.2% Vs Miami Randle’s surgical ankles, Brunson’s injuries and IQ shitting the bed were far more responsible than Thibs lack of coaching acumen.
E has been doing the “modern offense” thing for a while, but he’s never been able to say what it means when confronted with the reality that the Knicks actually have a pretty pace-and-space friendly shot chart under Thibs. Best left ignored unless he provides a definition that can be falsified, as usual.
Total 3PAs is not a stand in for modernity.
You can’t just have three guys chuck 40 3s and call it modern.
It’s the number of players on the court who can shoot that determines a modern offense because that spacing is what creates the easy baskets at the rim.
We didn’t get any easy looks at the rim because we took 52 3PAs. We took 52 3PAs because the lane was full of defenders sagging off all the players who couldn’t shoot.
The lineups we’ve been playing recently aren’t “modern,” but that’s because we’re missing 3-4 starters. Our preferred starting lineup is 3 good-to-great shooters in Brunson/DDV/OG, an average-ish and willing shooter in Randle, and a non-shooter at center.
I am aware E would probably say the presence of the non-shooting center is because Tom Thibodeau loves centers who can’t shoot and has thus banned the front office from acquiring a center who can shoot, but I would counter that there are just not very many centers who can shoot and don’t give way too much back on the glass and/or on defense.
Our 3PT frequency is 10th in the league, our corner 3PT frequency is 5th, and our long-mid range frequency is 22nd (all per CTG). There really is not much more meat left on the “modernize” bone given our personnel.
NBA.com’s shot tracker characterizes Donte’s 3s as follows:
– wide open 3/10
– open 1/6
– tight 0/0
– very tight 1/1
– C&S 3/12
– Pull-up 2/5
That’s not a scheme issue, that’s a player missing shots. It happens.
For reference, Donte has shot 43% on wide open shots & 39% on open shots this season. He shoots over 40% on both pull-ups and C&S opportunities.
if this is related to last night (and to some extent last few games)….it’s easy to get “open” shots when you’re chucking from 30 ft…which it appeared that he did frequently…so I think to use this data to support the position…it probably needs to either (a) be accompanied by a chart to show where he took them from or (b) NBA needs a stat like NHL where they adjust for probability of scoring the goal given location of the shot or something like that….just because it was deemed “open” with no context of where or how likely he was to make that open shot given it was launched from Siberia..is not that compelling…I think it kind of supports Hubert’s or Strat’s contention that the offense is not in and of itself generating “good looks”….
but as I said last week…any analysis of what’s going on with the squad/roster we have now (even more so without Brunson) is really meaningless..
Now you are just being argumentative and unserious. Of course 3 guys chucking 40 3s a piece isn’t “modern” (whatever that is). I listed actual data showing Thibs oked the shooting of a bunch of 3s last year (far, far more than his predecessor) that resulted in the 3rd BEST OR in the league. That is pretty much the common definition of an excellent modern offense (lots of 3s and bunnies, few long 2s)
Now you are cherry picking a game where our best offensive players Brunson, Randle and OG were missing (as well as MR) and complaining there wasn’t anyone who could break down the defense to get easy shots. That’s like the Menendez brothers complaining they are orphans after they gave mom and pop both barrels with the shotgun. Yes we concede the line up of Deuce, Ragu, Hart and Hart and Precious doesn’t instill fear in the opposition. Bogey played 31 minutes which is a fair allocation. It wasn’t like Thibs was hiding Dame and Larry Bird on the bench somewhere? Hartenstein is on a minutes restriction. You think a frontline of J Hart, Precious and Bogey fro 30 minutes are stopping anything? J Johnson was 12-17 as it was.
I don’t think anyone suggested Donte missed his shots because of the scheme, EB.
I’m not the one who cherry picked last night’s game and told everyone to stop crying because it was the epitome of modern NBA basketball.
These stats aren’t necessarily great either, but it’s the best I can find—
Last night:
20-24ft he shot 2-6
25-29ft he shot 3-11
Season:
20-24ft he shot 42.1% on 178 attempts
25-29ft he shot 39.9% on 296 attempts
The % of attempts from 20-24ft is about 2 percentage points lower last night than the whole season, not a big difference.
There could be some other factor affecting his percentages and I think the NBA’s characterizations can be misleading, but the most reasonable inference from the data is that Donte was just cold.
Donte said in an interview a couple weeks ago that he’s started shooting longer 3s because he thinks it opens up more space on the court, it’s not something he just started doing because nobody is healthy
Methinks you are mixing posters here. I don’ think I said everyone should stop crying because last night’s game was the epitome of modern basketball. I did say generally the Knick play a reasonable form of modern basketball when healthy with lots threes, bunnies and few long 2s.
However, someone who shall go nameless did write:
I do think it is unreasonable to criticize Thibs as a coach because of the results and the way he allocated the minutes when only his 5th, 6th, 7th (partially) and 8th through 14th players were available.
The 73-win Warriors started notorious 3-pt shooters Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green.
Their 4 most used bench players included: one player with 0 3PAs (Ezeli), one player who shot 16% from 3 (Livingston), and two players who shot about 35% (Iguodala and Barbosa).
It’s almost as though there are multiple ways to a good offense.
This is what I’m referring to, perhaps I misspoke.
Based on the numbers (and I checked Deuce & Bojan too) it doesn’t strike me as chucking or only taking 3s because the paint is clogged, it looks like shooters taking and missing open 3s.
We should expect last night’s team to shoot a lot of 3s anyway as modern offenses conform to their players’ talents. Boston launches 3s at a high rate because they employ a lot of shooters, the Knicks go for offensive rebounds because iHart & Mitch are good at hitting the boards. Last night the Knicks’ most talented offensive players were Donte, Bojan, and Deuce—a team you expect to take more 3s than 2s.
This doesn’t mean the rotation decisions and spacing were sound, e.g. our 2p% wasn’t great either, but lacking more detailed shot data, I don’t think it affected our 3pt shooting last night.
And I think you’re right.
But most offenses get figured out eventually. This isn’t the Warriors Death Lineup, you know?
I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen: we’re going to get to the playoffs, and even the best version of our team is going to get figured out. And we’re going to need to make an adjustment. And you know what the excuse for not making one is gonna be?
We never tried it during the regular season.
It’s never about the result with me. It’s always the process.
Down 11 to the Hawks at halftime without Brunson… to be unwilling to experiment or deviate when the option to do so was so obvious… I find that foreboding.
Hubert is probably right in his assesment that Thibs is not a championship caliber coach.
However, I think it has more to do with lack of playoff matchup versatilty and adjustments instead of past playoffs experiece where Thibs lost to better teams and his best players were either injured or shit the bed. Especially, his in game adjustments. He really sucks at quick decision making….see his challenge call decisions as an example. They have to be made in real time and that seems to be too fast for him.
Hubert is not wrong in his overall assemnent of Thibs though. End result is the same.
Hope this helps.
LOL I don’t actually think that.
If we were actually unstoppable, like say the Celtics are, then Thibs’ consistent approach would be perfect. The Celtics are probably going to deviate from what they do best when they shouldn’t. Put Thibs on that team and I have no doubt they win the title.
We don’t have a stretch-5 like KP, though. And all NBA teams who play 4-on-5 offense eventually get fucked in the playoffs. I don’t expect us to cast our C’s aside all year but we have to prepare for that inevitable series where we need to drop a C for maybe 20 minutes a game so we can score.
It’s path-dependent, though, and the chance that Thibs would ever permit a Celtics-type roster to be put together under his watch, which he would then properly deploy, is extremely low.
Thibs isn’t left playing Josh Hart and Quentin Grimes, or Reggie Bullock and Alec Burks, a bunch of minutes in the playoffs by accident. There’s a reason that happens every single year and projects to happen again this year.
Surely you don’t think the Warriors were afraid to go small that year, do you?
Draymond shot 39% on over 3 attempts per game that year, btw. He is probably the greatest small ball 5 of all time.
The idea is not “you must go small all the time”. It’s “you can’t be afraid to.”
Thibs’s centers made 0 three-pointers in five playoff springs with the Bulls, out of 14 attempts. Thibs’s centers shot 0 three-pointers in the 2021 playoffs. Thibs’s centers shot 0 three-pointers in the 2023 playoffs.
Thibs’s kind of center who’s listed as a center on BBRef, KAT, did shoot 11 three-pointers in the 2018 playoffs, making three, but of course KAT was oil to Thibs’s water the entire time in Minnesota most likely to a significant degree because he was stretch-y and that drove Thibs nuts.
Georges Niang made two threes in the 2018 playoffs.
So in 72 playoff games, Thibs’s centers have made a grand total of five three-point shots and the one who made the most, and the one who was by far the most modern, gave Thibs a terminal case of the howling fantods.
This is not modern. It’s hunter-gatherer primitive.
It’s true. There have been multiple centers who can hit threes and made sense for us to acquire, but Tom Thibodeau vetoes Leon Rose every time!
Wake up, sheeple.
I’m fairly certain Thibs would prefer Porzingis to Mitch. I can’t prove it but 7 foot plus guys who can defend the rim and stretch the floor as well as elite ft shooters are fairly rare commodities world wide. I’m also guessing he wouldn’t give Jokic the Fournier experience, either.
KAT was also oil to Jimmy Butler’s water (one of the gamest players in league history) and KAT’s immaturity at the time was the primary reason Jimmy “shot his way out of Dodge City”
From NBA.com
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Wonder where those “reports” came from?
The “mysteries” abound.
Bam has taken 6 playoff 3s. He missed all 6.
Kevon Looney has taken 2 playoff 3s. He missed both.
Bogut took 3, missed all 3.
It’s good we’ve got two days off before Orlando, hopefully JB will be good to go.
But we’ve had the solution on our roster the whole time. Julius Randle played approximately 25% of his NBA minutes at C before joining the Knicks. Restricting him to PF is a self-imposed prison of rigidity.
They went small by playing Iguodala and his 35% 3pt rate at the 4.
C’mon on Draymond. He had a minuscule 3PAs that season – 3 per game – and a .320 career percentage. He was not providing the spacing you think he did at the 4 because of his shooting. It was his passing that did it. And their centers still played like 2/3 of the game by the way.
In a nutshell: those Warriors epitomized a modern offense and did it by playing two non-shooting threats on the floor most of the time.
one of those things that shows you how much the game has changed in a relatively short time is the 2023 knicks shot 3s more frequently than the 67 win warriors superteam
Marechal, we weren’t the 2016 Warriors last night.
Draymond Green and Precious Achiuwa ain’t the same.
And it’s the minutes GS played without Bogey and Ezeli that epitomized modern basketball, not the ones they played with them.
OMG This is the reason you hate Thibs… because, wait for it… he thinks using Randle as a small ball 5 with his great interior defense, shot blocking, weak side help defense and 33% lifetime 3 point shooting is a shitty idea? Did you look at the records of the teams where he played > 25% of his minutes at the 5?
17 – 65
26 -56
35 – 47
33 – 49 Playing with Jrue Holiday and Anthony Davis
Hubert, this is what you argued:
And I pointed out that the 73-win Warriors actually did play a modern offense with two non-shooting players on the floor. How bad those two non-shooters depended on whether they were going big or small, but a lineup with Steph-Klay-Barnes-Iguodala-Draymond had two bad 3pt shooters in Iguodala and Dray. Dray’s career percentage is only marginally higher than Achiuwa’s; Iguodala’s is lower than Hart’s.
You want another easy example? The 2012-13 Heat, another team that revolutionized offense and went small before the Warriors did. It again had two terrible 3pt shooters in its starting lineup in Bosh (a 28% shooter that year) and Wade (25%). And they made it work, because they had players that attacked the rim and created mismatches (not unlike your Knicks).
Your argument that a modern offense means having shooters everywhere is just not true. You are suffering of recency bias watching the Celtics.
I never said shooters have to be everywhere. I said the number of players who can shoot counts more than the number of 3PAs. It’s about spacing not chucking.
Meanwhile you guys are seriously contending that deuce McBride, Donte, Josh hart, Precious, and iHart is the epitome of modern basketball. The Brotherhood indeed.
Another one. Long live the Brotherhood.
Jesus, now the Death Lineup couldn’t shoot. Man, the things you guys come up with to avoid admitting you were wrong is remarkable.
Draymond hit 39% of his threes. Iggy hit 35%. Yeah, it’s the same as having Precious and iHart out there. Good lord.
Dude you have completely lost the plot, we just shot a lot of 3s last night, which was fine given the guys we have available.
This is a perfectly reasonable summary of what we did yesterday.
Tune in to the Brotherhood tomorrow for…
“Josh Hart. Magic Johnson. Are they really that different?”
Josh hustles more than Magic did.
Let’s drop it. You are clearly cherry picking to find a way to make your argument work. Let’s just play Randle at the 5. Brilliant idea. Nobody has thought about this before. The only reason it won’t happen is the stubbornness of our coach.
This has been fun. Where can I join the Brotherhood?
Dude. You know that was also their record with him playing 75% of his minutes at the 4, right?
Guys these are the worst arguments ever. I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul.
Lol you’ve always been in it, Raven!
I still love you, though 😉
That’s a nice throwaway line, but it is clear you don’t want to engage on the points raised.
You claim Thibs isn’t flexible in his thinking as to players playing flexible roles. Jhart, Precious, and OG are players Thibs has played at multiple positions. You bring up but Thibs won’t use poor deep shooting, poor shot blocking/rim protecting and help defending Randle as a stretch 5 so Thibs is inflexible. An alternate postulate is raised that Randle is known to suck as a 5 and a form of data/proof is presented that Randle played 4 seasons as a significant 5 and the data team wise is “unimpressive”. Rather than say, “Hey… there might be something to that or here’s the reason why you might be wrong, Hubert says “Another member of the Brotherhood.” Seems weak.
Thibs played Randle at center some in 21 and it didn’t work very well, Randle is a shit rim protector. You could probably make it work if we played him with no JB and all our good defenders but then our offense would probably be a mess.
Yeah, my crazy argument that Deuce-Donte-Josh-Precious-iHart is actually NOT the epitome of modern basketball. You wouldn’t believe the cherries I had to pick to make that work. Crazy-ass cherries like “39% from 3 is good not bad.”
The points have all been shit.
You know who else is known to suck at the 5? Jericho Sims.
Actually he played 36% of his 4 years in LAL at the 5 and 26% of his year in NOLA at the 5. The point being Randle had ample run as a 5 for two franchises and neither of them went anywhere out of their way to resign him let alone make him their starting center. Thibs got his hands on Randle and made him his hammer playing a 95%/5% split, Randle blossomed into a 3 time all-star and “inflexible” Thibs is a fucking idiot for not seeing the obvious cosmic synergy and elegance of stretch 5 Randle… This is why Thibs is a moron. Totally inflexible.
Which is exactly why he is the break glass in emergency center. If you want to argue Thibs should have played Precious 8 minutes more last night, I can’t argue against that, but your complaint with Thibs isn’t “Jesus he plays Sims way too much…”
Thibs’s offenses with Randle as his “hammer” suck ass in the playoffs. His offenses always have.
But don’t think for a moment that his obsessive personality and fetish about “rim protection” and offensive rebounding and “flexibility” with players like Josh Hart and Precious Achiuwa, bear any relationship to his offenses’ playoff … cough … underperformance.
They are unrelated.
Without question.
Absolutely unrelated.
Unrelated.
Without question.
I’m not seeing any causal link between his position and his performance. You seem to be implying that playing him more at PF unlocked him without cause.
Brunson-DDV-OG-Bojan-Randle and profit, somehow. They would lose games 160-140.
At this point, honestly, my complaint is with you and your cohorts who will go to such extraordinary lengths to fight other posters that you will deny Thibs’ Knicks’ teams can’t score in the playoffs one day and then come back the next day and say we played the epitome of modern basketball with Deuce McBride Josh Hart and Precious Achiuwa. You’ll even throw in a “actually the Warriors’ death lineup couldn’t shoot” for good measure.
Anyway I do think you gave me good advice about the valium.
It’s time for me to join the growing legion of people that have been driven away from this site by the Brotherhood. Farewell. Maybe I’ll see you in the playoffs.
I would like to apologize to the community for making a joke about us shooting 51 3s in the game thread last night
I need to memorize the Challenging Beliefs Worksheet from the cognitive processing therapy stuff…
most of the body control (breathing, counting, flexing) is fairly autonomous now…
re-wiring the brain is a lot more difficult…but very very useful…
the two areas I need to get down are:
– Challenging Thoughts
– Problematic Patterns
I’ve known for a very long time that you need to be careful trusting your own mind and conclusions…
very easy for your own mind to lead you in the wrong direction…
Okay, so from memory- Problematic Patterns:
– jumping to conclusions
– exaggerating or minimizing
– ignoring important facts
– oversimplifying
– overgeneralizing
– mind reading
– emotional reasoning
it’s soooooo flipping easy to let your mind get caught up in problematic patterns…
before examining/questioning whether you may be falling in to problematic thinking patterns you have to challenge your thoughts:
– evidence for?
– evidence against?
– habit or fact?
– not including all information
– all-or-none (this is a big trap for me)?
– extreme or exaggerated
– focused on just one piece?
– source dependable?
– confusing possible with likely?
– based in feelings or facts?
– focused on unrelated parts?
oh yeah, so the genesis for this self questioning arises from having unpleasant emotions and/or unproductive thoughts…
“stuck points”…
questioning others is okay, probably much more important/productive though to question yourself…
I guess as long as it is neither causes harm nor injury, who gives a shit if other folks get stuff right…
it’s their problem really, or it’s not and it doesn’t even matter…
oh, and I owe you an apology z-man, I thought for a moment you might be the new poster name:
Brunson’s Long Bent Dick
I see you are not though, my bad…you’re so subdued these days z-man, the world must be right for you right now 😊
holy crap, the clippers came back…
Sengun doing a pretty good Jokic impression
sengun looks just a few years away from dominating games…
so smart of houston to bring in fred van fleet…
Nice of Memphis to beat the Sixers in Philly.
And the Hawks somehow beat the Cavs.
Cavs lose to us, beat the Celtics after being down 20 in the 4th and then lose to the Hawks is a wild sequence
Good chat, nice day everyone. Take a breather.
Looking at remaining schedules it’s gonna be tough to finish below Philly and Indiana, I think those 2 teams are destined for the 7th and 8th seeds.
But it also seems like Orlando has a cakewalk remaining to get the 4th or shit even 3rd seed if Cleveland collapses. Knicks Heat seems like a toss-up for 5th and 6th, at least Knicks have the tiebreaker vs Miami although finishing 6th would probably be preferable to 5th.
Either way just get relatively healthy come playoff time and avoid the play in.
Miami has a really easy schedule. WAS x2, DET x2, TOR x2, POR. It’ll be really hard to finish ahead of them.
A few things:
First I don’t think I said any of the things in the above paragraph Secondly, I don’t “fight” with anyone. I discuss opinions about the Knicks. I disagree with your pronouncements about Thibs. You are free to disagree with mine.
I believe in Bill Parcells, “You are what your record says you are theory.” But sometimes context and reason must be applied. Thibs has a long record of sustained success in the NBA. It isn’t because he is lucky, it is because he is a good coach. Red on roundball… no. A simpleton…. no.
The year before he took over the Knicks they were 21-45. His first year they were 41-31. That was pretty incredible. He did it by taking a similar roster (minus crazy eyes and morris and adding derek rose, rookie IQ and burks) and moving them from 26th to 3rd in D-rating. They still sucked offensively not because the scheme was bad but because stud Randle is limited as a good player, rose was ancient and ran out of gas and RJ is inefficient, butterstumps and Mitch are useless 3 feet from the basket. They were 23 in O rating. It was no real surprise once the playoffs hit and Atlanta doubled Randle there just weren’t offensive alternatives. I don’t think Pringles could have gotten that group to score. Last year injuries to their two best players and IQ platzing sealed their fate. You are certainly allowed to disagree, but please don’t condescend and say it is a “brotherhood” just because we disagree with your conclusions.
Unless your detoxing from alcohol, don’t take Valium. It is great for preventing Delerium Tremens. Self-medicating is usually a bad idea. 🙂
“oh, and I owe you an apology z-man, I thought for a moment you might be the new poster name:
Brunson’s Long Bent Dick
I see you are not though, my bad…you’re so subdued these days z-man, the world must be right for you right now 😊”
Lol, same ol’ same ol’! I just got tired of winning…
I think geo WAY won this thread. You da man, geo.
Okay, so from memory- Problematic Patterns:
– jumping to conclusions
– exaggerating or minimizing
– ignoring important facts
– oversimplifying
– overgeneralizing
– mind reading
– emotional reasoning
I love that z-man…a lifetime of trying to do right and grinding away will do that for you 😊
ugh raven, moving into year 3 of therapy, about a year of it was weekly…now thankfully just twice a month…a get a little bit of a break now…
I hate therapy so much, it’s just so hard…
I was pretty fucked up…felt like I was always in survival mode…total bunker mentality…
it would have been sooooooo easy for me to end up alone, with little love in my life…
I do indeed love me some me – but – really big butt here – that is not a successful recipe for aging well…
it’s just not…
first was getting control of my body, which isn’t really all that hard…
no secret to it, specific techniques that can be used for that…
next is getting control of your mind, that is soooooo much harder…
I literally have to stop all my thoughts and focus on changing how I think of and look at things…it’s a very manual process at this moment…
once you get your body under control, focus your mind along the best path – your emotions will follow suit…
although it’s no real medical condition – I used to get them maybe every 10 years or so – basically a nervous breakdown…
just losing good control of your mind, body and emotions, it is such a helpless, shitty feeling…scary stuff…
having that happen to me in back to back years (’22 and ’23) made me realize I had to try to fix this thing…
it’s one of the things that moves me here on occasion…reading someone’s words and feeling the confusion in their thoughts and feelings…
“I love that z-man…a lifetime of trying to do right and grinding away will do that for you 😊”
lol just trying not have any more self-incinerations on my hands….
Keep on pluggin’, geo. You are the salt of the KB earth.