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58 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.03.09)”
New York vs Orlando W 98-74 Record 37-26
The Little General is back and the vibes were totally different while the Knicks, sparked by the Hart Foundation, took an 8-0 lead to start the game and hit 8 of their first 9 threes to put the Magic to sleep early.
The last time this two teams met was february 15th in Orlando, when the Knicks weren’t just missing long-term patients Julius, OG and Mitch, but I-Hart, DDV and Bojan to boot.
In that game, after a very good 1st quarter the Knicks weren’t able to keep pace and I vividly remember the Magic players laughing and giggling as they walk into an 18-points win.
I was eager for revenge* then, so I’m very happy about the ass-kicking we delivered them yesterday.
Anyway, Miami, Milwaukee and Philly all lost and while the Cavs barely survived (thanks in part to Gobert and much more to bad referees, who must really be in the bookies’ books**), the fight for Home Field Advantage is open and the next three games, two at home against the Embiid-less 76ers and one away against the lousy Blazers, are huge as we try to climb the 50-wins mark.
We need to go 13-6, it’s hard but doable especially if OG could be back soon.
* Orlando isn’t the only team on my revenge list from this period of bad health, there still time… 😉
** The Wolver miss KAT a lot but down the stretch every whistle went the Cavs’ way, Jarrett Allen shot 21 FTs!
THE GOOD
– The Knicks defense kept the Magic at the lowest points output of the season… in the entire league (!) and the lowest scoring output by a Knicks opponent… since april 2012 (!!).
Hart and Hart, Achiuwa, Tasmanian Deuce and Donte the Mind Reader have a lot to do with it.
Quick hands, good reads and great protection at the rim, keep it going fellas!
– Jaleeeen Bruuuuuuunsooooooon!
The refs hate him (ZERO free throws is unbelievable***) and the assists total is too low (2) but he scored timely and efficiently, rested more than usual (29 minutes played) and his sheer presence changes the equation.
– J-Hart
19/7/4, the first 5 points of the game, 3-5 from long range, a couple of his trademarked coast to coast. Only bad spot, he needs to stop yapping like a mad dog, the refs are targeting him (he got another tech).
– I-Hart
A couple days of rest made for a sparkling start, he was everywhere and did everything in the first 6 minutes of the game.
Still on a minutes restriction and with a lingering issue that will not go away until the offseason, Thibs was right in using him with a grain of salt in a game that was never in doubt.
– Precious
The full experience, sometime ugly, sometime surprisingly good.
Filled up the whole boxscore (15/14/4, 2-4 3FG, 2 STLs, 5 BLKs, 3 TOs). Nobody can ever question the commitment or the energy and he loves to play in New York, he could be a useful and relatively cheap option for the bench next season.
– Deuce
I love the kid and I’m very happy his work is paying off. His improvements on offense are really remarkable (14 points with 3-3 3FG and 3 assists yesterday)
– Thibs
I’m a little surprised by DDV’s minutes, but he used JB and I-Hart smartly enough in a game where Orlando never threatened.
And he perma-benched Burks in the second half, good job.
*** Honestly, he must try to reduce the times he fall to the ground while/after shooting, it doesn’t help him with the refs…
THE BAD
– DDV
Just a little bit better, or maybe less worse, than the Hawks game (whom he basically lost for us).
I think he’s tired, bruised and needs some little rest (42 minutes yesterday!). He’s losing clarity as 9 turnovers in the last 2 games attests (some of them very ugly) …
– Bojan’s been better than his former Pistons teammate, but it doesn’t mean a lot, because I’ve been better than his former Pistons teammate too.
I still view him as a useful tactical weapon from now on, but I want to see more badness.
– The first 2 minutes of the 3rd quarter were one of the ugliest basketball I’ve seen in a while.
THE UGLY
– The NBA has a referees problem. I know they know, but I want to write it anyway… 🙂
– I wasn’t happy with the Burks trade (I watched too many Pistons games), but he has much worse than my most pessimistic fears.
Disengaged, sleepy, slow, deep in an awful shooting slump (11 games with NY: 34% 2FG, 29.2% 3FG, 64.7% FT, 38.8 eFG%, 41.2 TS%, 1:1 AST/TO).
Now let’s take the half-full glass POV: first of all Thibs knows it (5 minutes of play yesterday), second we have Milton now so we don’t need Burks, third he’s going to have one of his 20-points games and everyone will say “see, that’s why we got him…”.
But if there’s the smallest chance of re-signing him in the offseason I’m ready to go full Tonya Harding and pay someone to break his knees…
Nice to wake up to a Max recap after a win.
Last night was WEIRD. Weird in the sense that Thibs managed his rotation superbly. I don’t think he made a mistake at all. What stood out for me was the fact that he sat guys who were not playing well (Burks and Bogey), and still was able to get Hartenstein and Brunson rest. The fact that Orlando’s starting backcourt were out helped, I’m sure. But that was a masterclass by Thibs. Honestly, I think that even with his warts, he’s done a great job this season. Look at the strides guys like Achiuwa, DiVincenzo, Hart, and Deuce have made under his watch. The fact that they are “Thibs guys” types helps alot as well. I really can’t wait to see what this team looks like once Randle, Anunoby, and Mitch are back. If they come back with enough time to jell..you know what- I’m not gonna say what I want to say because I don’t wanna jinx it. But..I think this roster matches the coach who is in perfect alignment with the FO. As good as those Bulls teams were, this might be the best top to bottom roster Thibs has had because there’s not a player in the rotation that doesn’t fit what Thibs needs- even with Bogey’s defensive shortcomings. Everyone down to Shake and Sims are guys Thibs likes to coach. This is a VERY deep and disciplined team
Max!! Thx for the re-cap. KB’s own little general is back, too 😉
Thank you Max. I somehow fell asleep at 8. Long week. Brunson appears to make a difference.
Some Brunson, some defense, some shooting luck all made for a nice easy win before (hopefully) we start getting some guys back
Wow, Rudy actually talked after the game about the refs taking money from gamblers, his ass is getting fined. Obviously I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not but the players thinking that is not good for the league.
Good for Rudy. The Scott Foster thing is becoming a problem I can’t imagine the league office will be able to ignore much longer.
His ass might get a serious suspension for that. I don’t see how the league can tolerate players openly talking that Refs are taking ‘envelopes’, whether it is true or not.
Check out the Scott Foster Wikipedia before it gets taken down:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Foster_(basketball)
I didn’t watch the game, but Jaret Allen had 21 FTAs and 19 FGAs. Kind of insane.
The Wolves were killed.
Monica McNutt was one of the ESPN’s announcers for the game (the other two were Beth Mowins and Katie George).
I don’t know which of the three during the overtime said something like “I understand why the Wolves players are so disappointed, but they must try to keep their composure”, while respected veteran Mike Conley was particularly incensed.
That said, Gobert’s gesture during the game was stupid and maybe cost his team the win, but his comments were spot on.
The League’s synergies with the gambling industry and the “suspect” quality of refereeing are muddy and that’s not good.
JK47-
That Wikipedia page is wild. Wow! That’s definitely getting taken down.
I’m on my annual trip to to India. Headed back tomorrow. After 2 weeks. Feels good (fingers crossed), that I’m coming back to a Knicks team that is slowly getting healthy. I’ll be in San Antonio March 29th to see Knicks vs Wemby. Im very excited about that. Hopefully we can be back at full strength by then. I’m getting ahead of myself, but the thought of a full strength Knicks, with 10 games or so to gel- that has to be scary for opposing teams. I don’t think anyone wants to face a healthy, ornery, hungry, and physical, thibs led knicks in the playoffs.
If Maxey isnt back tomorrow (he’s in concussion protocol) I suppose it might be smart to let OG pracitce a little longer because Philly without Embiid and Maxey is pretty bad
Okay, llcoolbp, I’ll bite (as it were) — see any tigers?
That was kind of a flawless game yesterday (despite a few people being cranky that we couldn’t keep piling it on once we got the lead to 20…). I love winning on the back of near-perfect D. Although our offense was pretty impressive, too.
Precious has fulfilled about 85% of my man-crush on Naz Reid. His chase down block on Pancho was awesome.
The thing that shows the value/semi-greatness of Brunson is there are 450 players in the NBA. 150 start. Brunson is clearly a top 20 player. The knicks without Randle, OG and Robinson have been a .500 team when Brunson plays. Is there another rotation player currently playing that is in the top 100?
To mix metaphors, Brunson makes chicken salad out of a pupu platter of ok rotation players on a nightly basis sans three starters.
The beauty of it is Cuban must vomit every time the thinks how he blew that one.
The good version of Good Donte?
Either Hartenstein or Donte should be in the top-100 this season.
Hart has been bad this year but when he plays well he’s a starting quality player, I’d think top-100ish, probably a bit below.
Donte’s probably a top 40 player this year. Carrying an offense by himself is outside his ability, though, and trying to has dropped his bpm all the way down to… 3.4. That’s still second on the team by a country mile, and in range with the likes of Ant Edwards, Jamal Murray, Tyrese Maxey.
Big Hart is probably top 100 when he’s healthy. so not now but at points in the season
Raven- no tigers this time. I was in my ancestral home state of Gujarat and visited a buddy from queens who lives in Mumbai now. Hope to visit the sunderbands and other wildlife preserves in the future. Including the great rift valley in Africa.
Feels like this was a really important win for the team morale wise. Having this tough stretch with everyone out, even the games we’ve won have been hard fought and we’ve really struggled. Then Brunson goes down and for a moment it looks like this season is completely over. But turns out he’s ok and he comes back and plays well, the team plays well and easily beats a pretty good playoff team right before dudes are going to start coming back. I don’t know. It’s easy to read into this things and see what you want to see but I feel like that was a huge win for us.
Swift, I gotta say, I was balanced precariously on the knife-edge of “This is over” versus “They’ll come back and this’ll be great,” with the very real possibility of us all periodically saying “Remember January 2024” the way we’ve spent a decade wistfully talking about Linsanity…
But I’ve now got one foot clearly in the “They’ll come back and this’ll be great” camp.
And llcoolbp — Gujarat lions!
It was also a huge win for us. The seas were getting choppy around here.
Speaking of tigers. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68499209
Pacers just lost Mathurin for the rest of the year
Mathurin is out for the season with a labrum issue. Tough for Pacers.
I don’t want to get into a long back and forth with this but DDV has had a 40 game stretch in the middle of the year that was very good. His BPM which you quote has been terrific this year, but it is such an outlier when compared to the rest of his career (even when playing with Giannis and Curry) one must wonder if it an aberration. Or if playing with Brunson helps him alot. You mentioned he faltered when asked to ‘carry’ the team, but a top 40 played shouldn’t fold when asked to be the lead guy for a couple of games. Other advanced efficiency metrics like TS% don’t like him anywhere near as much. 7 months ago the league valued him at $12 M/year, so either 29 GM’s and DDV’s management are stupid or one is a genius. And I’m fairly sure Rose would pull the trigger on DDV for Maxey, Edwards or Murray in an instant. Those are all guys that can legit carry an offense. Upon further review, his play this season rates top 100 status easily, but not for his career.
They should try to buy low on Matheson.
Fair as he had only played a total of 3900 minutes coming into this season.
Donte’s shooting numbers are almost identical to his numbers from last year in Golden State, but he’s more valuable this year because he’s doing it at higher usage and turning the ball over far less often.
This probably makes them better, he’s been terrible so far
Agreed. But the Knick fanbase is a little irrational at times. One could not expect DDV, Precious, JHart, a partially injured IHart led by McBride and backed up by Bogey, Burks, Sims and Toppin to be anything but a bad lottery team even if was coached by a troika of Red on Roundball, Pat Riley and Big Chief Triangle coming out of a sweat lodge after being mentored by don Juan Matus and Mescalito.
No OG tomorrow but Maxey is out too
True his shooting numbers are eerily similar to last year’s numbers, (even though he is shooting FTs at a lower rate 73% vs 82% he took less than 2 per 36 minutes) but he isn’t turning the ball over far less (2.1 vs 1.8 this year/36) and his assists are way down 4.8 vs 3.5 this year/36, so his assist/TO ration is worse this year. His usage is up considerably. It’s almost like playing next to Brunson in Thibs system is better for him (has more synergy with the team) than playing next to Curry in Kerr’s system. Curiouser and curiouser as we descend down the rabbit hole.
All this is true of OG, as well, except it was only a 12 game stretch instead of 40 and his 2.4 BPM (which is also an incredible outlier) is not nearly as high as Donte’s.
I know you didn’t mention, OG, but I mentioned him because I think we collectively overlooked Donte’s impact bc it was happening at the same time OG arrived. OG got 100% of the credit and I’d argue 35%-40% of that should have gone to Donte.
I consider Donte to be as valuable and irreplaceable as Randle and OG. Perhaps even moreso. I think we might take him for granted bc he’s played almost every game.
I don’t think your premise is true. Not all top 40 guys are lead players. Rudy Gobert is probably a top 40 player, for instance. If the offense ran through him for a month I doubt he could do it. When the prime Warriors lost Curry from time to time, Klay’s output dipped but no one ever doubted his all-star credentials.
Also wanted to mention a .594 TS is very good for SG on high volume.
Advanced stats are very high on Donte this year. It’s the public that hasn’t caught up.
I think it just means he’s massively outperformed expectations.
You’re 100% right about this but he’s still playing incredibly well this year.
DDV is playing very well, and not that it really matters at this point, but TOR RJ has him beat in virtually every offensive category — higher TS% on higher usage, higher AST/36, higher OREB/36. RJ has turned the ball over 1 more time per 36, but in percentage terms it’s only 11.4 (RJ) to 10 (DDV).
One of the reasons for the Knick’s explosion upon OG’s arrival was he was replacing RJ’s high volume 52 career TS% with OG’s 59% Ts% on lower volume while also replacing RJ horrid on the ball and help defense with an elite all around wing defender The difference in their DBPM this year on the Knicks was incredible. There was nothing OG did on the floor during his 14 games with the Knicks that look unsustainable. He defended as advertised and shot his corner 3’s well and didn’t stop the ball or disrupt continuity. The Knicks overall DRating increased markedly upon his arrival.
DDV has morphed from a 12M per year player (according to the recent marketplace) to a 25M/year player over the short haul. Nobody is happier about that than me. Will he stand the test of time… I hope so.
Donte is pretty much doing the same thing he did last year, he’s just shooting more often.
He spoke about his offseason work shooting with only his shoulders square—rather than waiting for his feet & shoulders to be square—that lets him shoot more often. It’s a technique he copied from Curry. Basically he’s open an extra half second, which lets him get a lot more shots off.
spending a season with curry is like spending a year in a cave with bodhidharma…
I don’t think it hurts that both Donte and Curry had a coach who is the leading three point shooter of all time
@DJAceNBA
Pretty wild. They have a 130 ORTG and a 30 net rating despite below average shooting. It’s last year’s offense on steroids, with a better defense.
Sims struggles on many things but I love to see him rebounding.
I think my favorite pointless statistic is that Donte is plus 67 this season, while RJ is minus 124.
Alec Burks’ BPM with the Knicks: -10.6.
He is the anti-Jokic.
And what I’m pointing out is that Donte, not OG, actually replaced RJ’s offense.
OG improved the defense and got the lion’s share of credit for improving the offense. But he only had a 16.5 USG.
It was actually replacing RJ’s shots w Donte shots that should be primarily credited for unlocking the offense.
The defense, of course, was mostly OG. But the offense IMO was 70% Donte, 30% OG, and Donte didn’t get enough credit for that bc it coincided with OG’s arrival.
I thin OG deserves more credit than that on offense. It’s hard to overstate how much he helped improve the spacing.
Chris Herring went into it in detail:
https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/insider/story/_/id/39445538/how-defensive-ace-og-anunoby-turbo-charged-new-york-knicks-offense
I love Donte, but he also benefited from OG’s presence. His shot quality was markedly better in January.
Liked the Athletic on how Jokic has locked up the MVP. Would be a shame if it went to anyone else. He is that good.
As for the Knicks, life is pretty good. We are a 500% team without three of our best players. That is pretty solid.
Been monitoring the nitpicking. I honestly have suffered enough. Just going to enjoy this all for what it is. My time in Curry’s cave was very helpful for achieving this enlightenment.
I recall that article, and I am suggesting Herring’s conclusion was premature. He gave OG credit for what Donte did.
OG has a 16% USG as a Knick with a 0.1 OBPM. How much do you really think that propelled us forward?
On the other hand, Donte’s USG exploded from ~16 to north of 22 and he had an OBPM of over 3. He’s the one who moved the offense foreward.
Think of it like this: OG took over the low USG role Donte had when RJ was here. That was about a wash. Donte replaced RJ, and that was the massive upgrade.
Donte took over the high USG role RJ had been occupying. And the differne
I guess Luka is doing his best. Five 35 point triple doubles is strong.
Swapping out RJ’s combo of high usage shit efficiency offense and bad defense with Donte & OG’s combo of high efficiency offense and good defense made the Knicks better. Its great RJ is making 3’s at what is probably an unsustainably high rate in Toronto while they miss the playoffs, I wish him nothing but the best.
“Its great RJ is making 3’s at what is probably an unsustainably high rate in Toronto”
This is misleading. RJ is taking 2 fewer 3’s per 36 with TOR and is only making 1.7 3’s per 36. His 3PAr is lower that it was at any point in his Knicks career. So even if his 3PT% was lower, it wouldn’t be making much difference. He’s also shooting below his career numbers (and way below his pre-trade numbers) from the FT line, so if both of those two things regress to the mean, they should balance out.
What is possibly unsustainable is his 2PT%. He’s shooting 60.4% from 2 since being traded. Looking more closely at the numbers, it’s mainly because he is taking 42% of his shots at the rim (vs. 32% before the trade) and hitting 73% of those (vs. 62%). Only two non bigs are shooting better than 60.4% from 2…Cory Kispert(3.6attempt per game) and OG Anunoby (was 60.8% in TOR and 60.2% with us).
Interesting take… DDV had a phenomenal month of December, playing with RJ and Randle where he had unbelievable offensive splits of ts% 74%(!!!) with a fabulous O Rating of 139, However his D rating was an abysmal 123 and the Knicks were 6-8 in December.
Enter OG December 30th. The Knicks played 16 games in January and OG played 14 of them until leaving for surgery 12/27. During January the knicks were 12-2 with OG playing and while DDVs TS% declined to an above league average of 60.6% (league average 58.1%), O Rating declined to a still healthy 123, his D rating mysteriously improved 16 points to 107 in the presence of OG for 14 of those 16 games.
In the absence of OG in February, DDVs Ts% plummeted to 55.3% his O rating to 112 and his D rating rose back to 120.
It sure looks like DDV had an MVP type offensive heater in 14 games in December and a below league average TS% the other 50 games he played this year. That still makes him a fine NBA player, just not a candidate for a true breakout.
The Knicks record this year is 12-2 with OG and 25 -24 without him.
Before OG went down (last played on 1/27) Donte had only played over 30 minutes twice, with a high of 37 minutes. he took over 20 shots once (21)
In the 16 games he has played since then, he has not played less than 30 minutes and has played over 38 minutes 11 times. He took over 20 shots in 10 of those games.
So I think you have to sort of discount the first 16 games that he didn’t start, and the last 16 games where he was playing in an expanded role.
I don’t think he is as good as his BPM says he is, but for the games where is in his proper role on a reasonably healthy version of this team (28-32 mpg high-volume catch and shoot 2 with solid D and limited playmaking/creation) he’s been exceptional and is clearly worth double his salary, if not more.
“…and a below league average TS% the other 50 games he played this year.”
His TS% was ,606 for the entire month of January (16 games).
Wow, Bennedict Mathurin is out for the season…
“Pacers just lost Mathurin for the rest of the year”
I see DRed beat me to it.