[ESPN] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 15:29:00 GMT
Subtweets and trolling lead antics from the “Villanova Knicks”
[New York Post] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 03:11:15 GMT
- Knicks score fewest points since 2018 in loss to 76ers that’s blow to playoff positioning
- Knicks can’t let it get any lower this: ‘We played like s–t’
- Jalen Brunson’s Brutally Honest Statement After 76ers-Knicks Game
- Game Preview: New York Knicks vs Philadelphia 76ers, March 10, 2024
- Knicks vs. 76ers odds, line, spread: 2024 NBA picks, March 10 predictions from proven model
[Posting and Toasting] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 15:00:00 GMT
Knicks Bulletin: “He is the least athletic player in the NBA.”
[New York Post] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 11:51:00 GMT
- How Josh Hart will be impacted by OG Anunoby’s looming Knicks return
- OG Anunoby may return soon after missing 18th straight game
- Knicks Notes: How Isaiah Hartenstein is playing through injury, Josh Hart’s big minutes
- Knicks Notes: Anunoby, Hartenstein, Brunson, Achiuwa
- Knicks Bulletin: “We know it’s going to be a battle.”
[ESPN] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 01:55:20 GMT
76ers 79-73 Knicks (10 Mar, 2024) Game Recap
[Deadspin] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 20:20:00 GMT
Knicks’ Josh Hart is the hardest working man in the NBA
[New York Post] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 02:39:00 GMT
Donte DiVincenzo wrestles with Kelly Oubre and tempers flare in Knicks-76ers clash
[Basketball Network] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:42:43 GMT
“Might be the loudest moment I’ve ever heard in Madison Square Garden” – Clyde Frazier on John Starks’ ‘The Dunk’ on MJ and the Bulls
[Liberty Ballers] – Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:30:00 GMT
Sixers-Knicks: first half thread
[Daily Knicks] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 02:52:00 GMT
Knicks could sneakily turn fool’s gold into key piece this summer
[The Ringer] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 06:24:52 GMT
Knicks Cant Find a Bucket, Jets Offseason Spending, and Zach Braziller Talks Seton Hall-St. Johns
[Yahoo Sports] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 01:47:00 GMT
Top Plays from New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers
[Sports Illustrated] – Mon, 11 Mar 2024 06:48:04 GMT
New York Knicks Star Reportedly Misses Out On $1.3 Million Bonus
151 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.03.11)”
We could try playing our 5 best players together.
People love pointing out Bogey’s plus/minus but he’s consistently playing 18 minutes with Jericho Sims, Alec Burks, and Deuce McBride. How plus do you expect him to be?
Likewise they love to point out how many shots Brunson and DDV missed, as if having three nonshooters on the floor with you at all times doesn’t force your hand.
While I certainly will allow that this loss was a disgusting disgrace, I’m still not worried about the rest of the regular season. They really just need OG back, and when he’s back, they’ll be fine. Adding Randle and Mitch would be even better, but they really only “need” OG back (to make the 4th seed, that is. They obviously need Randle back to make any noise in the playoffs).
I still can’t believe Josh Hart played 42 minutes in the Magic game.
We should all agree to never discuss that atrocity again. It is kinda cool we play Philly again next
Think about the fact that even after that crazy awful loss, they’re still the fourth seed. They’ll be fine.
I get everyone’s frustration with playing Sims 23 minutes. You want to give those minutes to someone else. Precious is the only real choice if you want Bogey at the 4 next Precious. Precious already played 36 minutes. How many of Sims’ minutes are you giving him? But when you play Bogey exclusively at the 4, he can’t spell DDV and J Hart at the 3 and they already booked 43 and 36 minutes. So playing Sims less and Bogey exclusively at 4 means playing Burks more.
I think this is reasonably called a Hobson’s choice.
The position of some is Thibs is a pretty good coach, but his fatal flaw is he is too rigid in his thinking. He even looks the part of a middle aged guy screaming at kids to “Get off my lawn!” And maybe you fella are right.
Or maybe he is a very good but imperfect coach who is correct most of the time (benching Frenchy and Reddish, sticking with Randle doggedly while many wanted to throw in 1st round picks to dump a borderline all star) who has considered your option, and believes his path to maximize defence and rebounding for somewhat less offense is a better path.
A couple observations:
1. Grammatical/rhetorical — When you structure a sentence or thought thusly …
If you play Player A over Player B, you’re giving up rim protection, rebounding, and defense.
…
You are adopting Thibs’s shaky and faulty premises, and question-begging in the true sense.(*)
2. Management/basketball — While the Knicks aren’t as bad as the looked last night, nor are they as good as they looked in January. It isn’t a coincidence that their three major streaks of the last two seasons — the great run after replacing Fournier and Reddish with Sims and McBride; the nine (?) game winning streak after acquiring Josh Hart; and this year’s white-hot January after acquiring OG — came after trades or significant lineup changes. There’s an explanatory human dimension to this on at least two levels — (1) the injection of new people into the group in the middle of a long, boring association slog gives the group a frisson of new energy; and (2) when people in an organization are traded or demoted, the leftovers say to themselves something on the order of “shit, if they traded or fired Johnny, they can trade or fire me” and that also gives a quick jolt of stand-at-attention energy.
In basketball terms, Thibs is “excellent” at fixing short-term “issues” in the middle of Decembers and Januarys — the kind of stuff the Miamis of the association give zero fucks about.
You don’t go on long hot streaks because you give more minutes to Miles McBride and Jericho Sims. Correlation is not causation.
(*) As opposed to the colloquial version of the term wherein it’s used as a sloppy substitute for “raising a question.” Get on that one, Doogie.
Even the incredibly narrow things Jericho Sims does “well,” he doesn’t really do that well. He’s averaging 9 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per 36.
He has no business in the rotation.
He is the 11th player on roster forced into action via injury, but that is obvious. Most coaches play a 9-10 man rotation.
Jericho Sims has to play. That’s reality.
The issue for this entire month has always been
1. We only have a few good basketball players and one of them isn’t playing enough.
2. The few good players we have never play together. We stupidly stagger them like lines on a hockey team.
Everyone here who honestly pays attention could (and did) predict — the “national pundits” notwithstanding — that Thibs would not warm to Bojan Bogdanovic.
I watched the highlights. There weren’t any.
At least last night we added the bench guys one by one. Jericho, a few minuets later McBride, a few minutes after that Bojan and then last off the bench was Burks. iHart and maybe JB were on minutes restrictions, so maybe that’s why
There is definitely something seriously wrong with me.
As I read this sentence I had a visual image of Hubie as Christopher Walken bursting through the studio door in the famous SNL skit as “Bruce Dickenson” screaming, “I got a fever…. and the only prescription…. is more Bojan!”
The Heat have lost 3 games in a row, including to the worst in the league Wizards. What is that moron Eric Spoelstra doing?
The Sixers lost 3 in a row before last night, including two games to the Griz and Nets, and scored 79 points last night. What is that moron Nick Nurse doing?
The Warriors just lost to the Bulls and Spurs. What is that moron Steve Kerr doing?
This Knicks team is running on fumes right now and is still won two of its last 4, in games that have huge implications in the standings. Philly defended their ass off last night. Even without Embiid and Maxey, they’re not a bunch of scrubs, certainly not any more than we are w/o Randle, OG and Mitch. Brunson (with Philly’s help) played like garbage and the ‘Nova boys were a combined 16-52. We had 26 made FGs, 19 TOVs and 19 ASTs. Bojan could hardly get a shot off and was a horror show on D. He had 1 rebound, 0 assists, 0 steals and 0 blocks, and o FTAs in 18 minutes. He had 10 points on 8 shots, compared to Precious who had 8 points on 8 shots but had 9 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 steals.
With this roster, this is a .500 team at best. It’s just a matter of who we lose to. We are vulnerable right now to every team in the NBA, especially when Brunson is either out or cold. As far as lineup-minutes distributions go, it’s pretty much pick your poison and pray right now.
Agreed, Z–Man.
It is very hard at the moment to identify how we as ‘coach’ could improve things. I’m still very much against putting Hart and Precious in the corners, regardless of whether you play them together or not. Bojan is wet kleenex on the floor when he’s not hoisting threes. He might keep the other team’s defense a bit more honest if he’s in the corner instead, but can you hide him when we play D? Pretty shitty choices.
Also don’t remember seeing much of Brunson and Deuce out there together, which seemed to create some nice chaos in earlier games. Then again, Deuce was also hot garbage last night (0-5).
Looking forward to the (hoped-for) revenge game tomorrow.
We were 1-10 from the right corner last night, I think Precious was the only one who made a shot.
I have said many times over the past few weeks that I think a whole lot of grace is in order for coaching decisions made right now.
There was absolutely no excuse for Bogey playing 18 minutes on a night in which we were putting up the worst offensive performance in the NBA this season.
Precious and Bogey obviously have very different skill sets such that different situations call for them to be deployed differently. “You are scoring like a G-League team against a team with no ability to exploit weak defenders” is the polar example of when to ride with Bogey that is so extreme you would only say it to articulate the point, without thinking a game situation that would make the decision so obvious would ever actually arise.
Yet there we were last night, unable to hit the ocean from the beach, playing a team with basically no ability to exploit Bogey’s deficiencies…playing Precious Achiuwa instead of the second best scorer on the team.
“playing a team with basically no ability to exploit Bogey’s deficiencies…”
This is false.
Z-Man if you’re going to score 73 points in an NBA game in 2024, sorry, but you need to suck up the defensive deficiencies your second best scorer. Rarely are coaching decisions in the NBA so simple, but this one was.
If Tobias Harris and Kelly Oubre make you pay, whatever. You weren’t going to win scoring 73 anyway.
That some people go way overboard criticizing Thibs and see his fingerprints all over every bad thing that happens to the Knicks is no reason to not concede this obvious point.
I’ll put it this way—if 18 minutes for Bogey in a game like last night’s is truly optimal, then that trade fucking sucked.
I don’t believe 18 minutes was optimal and think the trade made sense if we use Bogey as the bona fide offensive force he’s been for years, but if we’re just not gonna do that, then yeah, the trade fucking sucked.
Is it really “going overboard,” though, if his presence makes it such that you can’t even trade peanuts for a 20 PPG/60% TS guy without a bunch of controversy, obstacles, and issues?
I’d do a premise re-examination there.
Is it really “going overboard,” though, if his presence makes it that you can’t even trade peanuts for a 20 PPG/60% TS guy without some people making up a bunch of controversy, obstacles, and issues?
Corrected the sentence. And as corrected the answer is yes.
That said, am with noble that Bogey should have played more.
Keeping him fresh for the play-ins?
Playing Bogey 18 minutes so you can play Precious Achiuwa 36 while he goes 2-8 from the floor and your team scores 73 points is inherently controversial. (Thus TNFH’s comments.)
See, the thing is that there’s always drama and controversy around Thibs. It’s hard to deal with drama and controversy, no one wants to; we’d all prefer calm and smooth function — and so the way some people cope is to deflect the cause of the drama and controversy to forces external to the actual cause, thereby diffusing it.
If you play Bojan more we probably just lose 86-80.
When Bogey actually did play, it was usually in a bullshit lineup, alongside the worst players in the rotation. Hubert is correct here— play all of your best players at the same time! You’re not fooling anybody with Precious Achiuwa and Josh Hart standing in the corners. It’s obvious you don’t need to guard those guys.
I’m a Thibs agnostic for the most part, don’t consider myself a h8ter. Last night was a terrible, inexplicable coaching performance.
Playing Bogey 18 minutes so you can play Precious Achiuwa 36 while he goes 2-8 from the floor and your team scores 73 points is inherently controversial. (Thus TNFH’s comments.)
Bogey was not limited to 18 minutes because he wanted to play Precious 36. You needed to make up the causality so it could become controversial in your own mind.
Fake drama on Knickerblogger is not real drama.
“Why, I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it, felt I … owed it to them.”
Sadly ghenman was on the mark last night about today’s thread.
We blew out the Magic 2 games ago doing that.
Well as someone who paid to watch what actually happened in-person, this would’ve been preferable.
My point is not that Thibs shouldn’t have played Bojan more, or played him in different lineups, it’s that more Bojan is probably not a simple solution to us being short good players.
You should absolutely try to get a refund for that ticket
It was so bad I am thinking of trying to get a partial refund on my LeaguePass
We haven’t put our five best players on the court together for over a month.
“Z-Man if you’re going to score 73 points in an NBA game in 2024, sorry, but you need to suck up the defensive deficiencies your second best scorer. Rarely are coaching decisions in the NBA so simple, but this one was.”
Last I checked, you win games by having the other team score less points than you do. Bojan sucked ass in his 18 minutes. We were a -12 with him on the floor, even with his 10 points. His horrific defense and inability to do anything at all with the ball was part of the reason why.
“If Tobias Harris and Kelly Oubre make you pay, whatever. You weren’t going to win scoring 73 anyway.”
They were in position to win until the last few minutes because their defense kept them in the game. That would not have been the case if Bojan played 36 minutes of ass rather than 18. In other words, we weren’t going to win by scoring 83 points if the opponents scored 101, which is the pace we were on when Bojan was in the game.
“That some people go way overboard criticizing Thibs and see his fingerprints all over every bad thing that happens to the Knicks is no reason to not concede this obvious point.”
I don’t have a problem with post-mortems per se when there are expressed as opinions. But saying that Bojan should have played more is ignoring the actual reasons why we lost, which among them was that Bojan sucked ass in his minutes, as did the ‘Nova boys, Deuce and Burks. Last night was truly a pick your poison situation. To say that it was obvious, well, is obviously wrong. It’s okay to think that Bojan *might” have gone off and that Nurse’s strategy to hunt Bojan at every opportunity *might* have not worked, but his 18 minutes of dogshit strongly suggest that it would not have helped and probably have made things worse.
“I don’t believe 18 minutes was optimal and think the trade made sense if we use Bogey as the bona fide offensive force he’s been for years, but if we’re just not gonna do that, then yeah, the trade fucking sucked.”
It may very well be the case that the trade fucking sucked. So far, everything that Ben R has said about Bojan and Burks has been spot-on (although Grimes has sucked as well, so there’s that). But you have said yourself that the trade was made largely with the vision of them Bojan and Burks having appropriately small bench roles on a largely healthy team, so it is not really possible to confidently judge the trade until that happens. But the early returns are not good, and I shudder at the thought of either of them having “expanded” roles.
Three coaches were mentioned earlier because, apparently, they aren’t going 82-0 with their current teams.
Let’s look deeper.
Regular season/Playoff winning percentage:
Steve Kerr — Regular season .654, Playoffs .707 (140 games)
Erik Spoelstra — Regular season .587, Playoffs .592 (194 games)
Nick Nurse — Regular season .579, Playoffs .610 (41 games)
Tom Thibodeau — Regular season .572, Playoffs .431 (72 games)
His “rim protection, rebounding, and defense” thing really isn’t working when it counts. (As well as other things, which there’s no need to belabor here.)
It’s an extremely fair statement, not a remotely unfair one, to say that the best coaches get their teams ready for the playoffs and do their best work there … and Tom Thibodeau does not do that. (*) That’s the problem.
(*) Rest assured that Steve Kerr and Erik Spoelstra aren’t obsessing about a handful of slow defensive games by their teams in December.
Let’s look deeper.
Demonstrates that it really pays to have the single best player on your team in the play-offs.
That Bogey not playing enough isn’t the only reason we lost is hardly a reason to not criticize the decision. Of course the bigger culprit was Brunson et al. sucking, but it’s always going to be the case that the performance of your best players will be the most determinative factor in a game’s outcome. That doesn’t mean you can’t point to the factors the coach can actually control.
Sorry, but when you score the fewest points in a given NBA season and your second-best scorer is largely glued to the bench, yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say it was obvious that should not have happened.
I don’t buy that Bogey is so woeful on defense we inevitably would’ve let the game get out of hand against Tobias Harris and waiver wire guys, but at a minimum it was a risk we obviously should have taken last night.
Also for the love of god can we drop the Bogey raw +/- nonsense? The guy has played 170 of his 259 minutes without Brunson. It’s an utterly meaningless number, even more so than usual.
Grimes has not only sucked since the trade but he’s also been unavailable the majority of the time.
For as disappointing as the trade has been Bojan’s big games in wins at Philly and Cleveland were pretty vital and at least gives us some proof that he can still be useful. Burks on the other hand I dunno what to say, at this point Shake should probably get a look instead of Burks.
What are the odds of repeating the January performance when Randle and OG come back? – Go something like 12:2 in last 14 games while blowing everyone out?
I think Bojan is on the team right now because he’s supposed to score for the bench unit, which is why he generally doesn’t play with Brunson. Last 4 games Bojan played 30 minutes in a win, 30 minutes in a loss, 11 mintues in a win and 18 minutes in a loss. If it was a simple as play Bojan more =win I think even Thibs would be able to figure that out.
But last night, sure I think it would have been reasonable to put him in the last say 6 or 7 minutes for either Precious or big Hart
Are we going to ignore the fact that Precious had 3 blocks and 2 steals and Bogey had…well, I probably don’t need to check
As D Red said, switch their minutes and we probably lose a higher scoring game
I’m certainly not; in fact, I’ve already commented on it — Thibs’ fetish for “rim protection, rebounding, and defense” has caused him to significantly underperform his coaching peers in the playoffs.
“Precious over Bogey” isn’t very important on it’s own, but here it’s a stand-in for a bigger and more important truth.
lol
“I don’t buy that Bogey is so woeful on defense…”
Well there’s the issue right there.
“Also for the love of god can we drop the Bogey raw +/- nonsense?”
The point is that Bojan played 18 minutes and it clearly didn’t help…in fact, it made things worse. Are you actually disputing that? What individual stat do you want to point to that refutes that Bojan had a significant hand in that -12? Rebounding? Nope. Passing? Nope. Stocks? Nope. Ball-handling? Nope. Scoring efficiency? Nope. Intangibles? Nope.
Bojan is playing at a -3.7 BPM since arriving, and that has been inflated by his awesome first game as a Knick when he scored 22 points on 13 shots and went 6-6 from 3. Beyond that he’s been an ever so slightly better version of Evan Fournier (who [gulp!] has put up better numbers for DET than Bojan is putting up here.)
Fair criticism… let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. You want more (alot) minutes for Bogey at the four with Sims not on the floor at 5. Staring 5 Bogey, IHart, Jhart, DDV and Brunson. You now have one more shooter (still 2 non-3 ball threats), 2 sieves on defense (instead of one) backstopped by a good defensive center whose mobility is limited by his tendonitis. You’ve weakened the defense, rebounding and rim protection playing Bogey bigger minutes. I Hart can only play 24 minutes, so….
6 minutes in, Precious subs in for I Hart and plays next to Bogey (what you want) now you have weakened the offense (I Hart’s superior passing) for Precious’ marginally better rim protection. 10 minutes into the game Bogey must come out (he can’t play 40 minutes). Now what do you do?
You’ve played all of Bogey’s minutes with J Hart and DDV , they can’t play 48 minutes so you need more Burks.
This is why there are really no good answers. Bogey wasn’t brought here to play big minutes. He was brought here for the salary counterbalance in a trade and for 12 minutes or so that Randle sits during the playoffs to have a bomber in the corner (across from OG) so when they try to double the ball out of Brunson’s hands they will have 3 dead eye shooters to make the defense pay. They believe small doses of Bogey with Mitch/I hart along with OG backstopping him allows him to play this limited (yet important) role. With Precious and J hart… not so much.
“But last night, sure I think it would have been reasonable to put him in the last say 6 or 7 minutes for either Precious or big Hart”
As reasonable as it would have been to put him in for Brunson or DDV. After all, he shot way better than they did…
Thibs plays guy he doesn’t like marginal bench minutes with garbage, unit doesn’t play well, Thibs shills blame guy Thibs doesn’t like.
We’ve heard it since the days Thibs started Elfrid Payton.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
This is not how ellipses work, at least not when used in good faith. Where’s Droolie when you really need him?
We were obviously having trouble scoring last night, at the end of the game I think it’s fine to say fuck it I’m putting in Bojan to see if he can hit some 3s.
As for why doesn’t Thibs just play his best 5 players together-even with our injuries I don’t think it’s at all clear Bojan is one of our 5 best players.
Meanwhile, in news of ghosts of the Knicks past and future, Obi was 17-8 on an efficient 9 shots in 25 minutes last night, while future Knick Mikal Bridges was 25-5-5 on an efficient 14 shots.
And now back to your regularly scheduled arguments…
I wonder if Pacerblogger is complaining that Carlisle is holding Obi back considering how well he has shot this season.
“Wash, rinse, repeat”
Dead-on description of E’s entire posting repertoire.
Bogey was a Tier 4C in The Athletic’s preseason tiering, with LaVine, Smart, Ayton, Jerami Grant, Collins, Herro, Cunningham, KCP, Caruso, Bruce Brown, Jalen Williams, and Keegan Murray.
Tier 4B, the subtier just above, was guys like KAT, Randle, Myles Turner, Maxey, DJM, etc.
While no rating system is perfect, we really shouldn’t be litigating whether he’s a better basketball player than Precious Achiuwa. The contra case is a laughable proposition.
What does this even mean? Most of the great teams were built on defense and rebounding:the Red on Roundball Celtics, Phil’s Bulls, The Pistons, POP’s SA teams, even showtime Riley’s most famous coaching saw is “no rebounds, no rings!” Even the great 3 ball bombing GS Warriors were 1st, 1st and 2nd in defensive rating for 3 of their 4 championships
It means he can’t properly judge and balance the importance of “rim protection, rebounding, and defense” against other important, winning basketball skills.
Better coaches can and do. Those better coaches have far better playoff records as a result.
I would have thought it was clear the first time, but happy to clarify.
Bojan seriously has looked like one of the NBA’s very worst defenders among rotation players on good teams. Maybe he adapts and improves, but his lack of speed and athleticism hardly makes me optimistic.
“I would have thought it was clear the first 10,000 times, but happy to clarify, whether you are asking me to or not.”
fify
Tier 4 C Numbers over impact
Jerami Grant, Tyler Herro, Bojan Bogdanović, Zach LaVine, Deandre Ayton, John Collins
In general, I’m less enamored with guys who profile as moderately efficient scorers without offering much else. While this doesn’t perfectly fit this group of players — especially in the case of LaVine, who possibly deserves to be higher, but four playoff games in nine years, the last five of which have seen him operate as a primary option, certainly raise questions about his overall impact — it doesn’t not do so. If there is another commonality here, it’s questionable defense, though neither Grant nor Ayton is awful on that end.
I mentioned in the Tier 5/Intro installment that, while the tiers are meant to be as contract agnostic as possible, this is the group for which it becomes most difficult to completely ignore cap implications, as “Yay, Points!” players tend to get paid too much to be easily fit into roles where they might most help a title team.
This is a good description of Bojan, a one dimensional scorer. I’m glad to see you’re back relying on Seth Partnow again though, I like his work. I’m surprised though that you’re so mad the Knicks traded a Tier 5A (the same Tier as Jordan Poole) scrub like IQ though, it’s ludicous that anyone who watches playoff basketball would care about a player like that.
I’m not really “relying” on Parnow; I mean, it’s obvious that Bogey is a better player than Precious but rather than just blurt that out (*), I thought I’d cite a third-party source instead.
(*) I should clarify that “better” means better. It might not necessarily mean “better on a team coached by Tom Thibodeau.”
Since the Detroit trade, we are -51 in 140 minutes with Bojan on the floor and Sims off the floor, and +27 in 150 minutes with Bojan off and Sims on, per pbpstats.com
The comment is half tongue-in-cheek, but Bojan should do better even if his teammates are bad.
It’s not obvious to me, they’re both so mediocre in different ways I’m not sure how you can be so certain.
You kind of have to pick your poison here.
Either Leon Rose traded for two genuinely terrible players, or Tom Thibodeau stubbornly refuses to use the one useful player that was acquired in an optimal way.
I will paraphrase the great philosopher Inigo Montoya when I saw, “I do no think you know what that word means!”
https://youtu.be/dTRKCXC0JFg
Like I said earlier…
Because Precious’s obvious limitations make it unthinkable to believe he could possibly be as good as a guy who can play starters’ minutes and average 20 PPG on 60% TS/24.5 USG.
We have two defensive centers and instead of playing one of them with Bojan coach consistently plays them together, leaving the pogo stick to play with our worst perimeter defender. In one fell swoop he kills the offense of the first unit and the defense of the second.
These +/- numbers don’t exonerate Thibs, they incriminate him.
To me, it is pretty clear that we traded for two genuinely terrible players. One of the worst players in one of the worst teams in the league, even with a clear role such as the shooting specialist in a pretty bad shooting team. Also, being his worst season at 34 years old.
To me it was obvious that if Thibs refused to play Fournier in his prime, it would not take long until he takes the same route with Bojan. We are being forced to play him (and Burks) for the injuries, but hopefully they wont play come playoff time.
I guess their contracts make it worth for the alleged superstar trade, but Grimes at least gave us another player in the bench (come playoffs, because he also has been injured lately).
It’s possible Thibs just goes through the coaching motions when Leon gives him another player of the archetype he can’t stand.
Or worse, he’s acting out. But it’s probably not that.
But there’s a good chance he’s just counting the days until he doesn’t have to play Bogey at all.
Which raises the chances of another playoff series being lost to hustlebunny obsession to “far higher than they should be.” After all, Josh Hart also still looms.
Precious and Sims are +39 in their minutes together since the Bojan trade.
Exactly, who should be sharing the court with Bojan? all the lineups seem to perform poorly with him.
Bojan is an atrocious defender. I knew he was bad, but he’s so much worse than I thought. He chugs while trying, and utterly failing, to make rotations or close out on shooters. You can measure his failure in meters, not feet or inches.
He also turns the ball over a lot for a guy who mostly fires from 3 and rarely passes, except to a wide open Hart who does absolutely nothing.
Idk what happened to Burks’s shooting stroke but he’s completely useless. He loses his handle constantly, hopefully it’s a cold streak but no idea how he’s fell off so hard between Detroit and here.
Bojan is impossible to hide & Burks is useless. I legitimately don’t know if he’s better than Precious, even when paired with Hart. I’d rather have Grimes miss every game and play Jefferies, Toppin, and Peanuts, Jr.
We may have only scored 73, but we also held them to 79. The defense, even against a neutered team, was great and could’ve led to a win.
We smothered them a couple times down the stretch just to have our shooters airball or blow the fast break.
After the way my body feels today after weekend warrior-ing I’m no stranger to the effects of Father Time, but the Jazz were 4th and 9th in defensive rating in Bogey’s final two years there … so it’s at least theoretically possible to effectively hide him.(*)
Thibs perpetually looks at the Fourniers and the Kembas and the Reddishes and the Bogeys like someone farted in church, so prima facie you always have to wonder exactly what’s going on.
(*) If Quin Snyder can construct an effective defense with Bogey playing starters’ minutes, then why can’t Tom Thibodeau?
Yeah I think Bojan might work if we had something like Mitch-Bojan-Josh-DDV-Deuce out there, but we don’t.
To Hubert’s point, the theory is sound. Bojan’s second most used lineup has been Brunson-DDV-Hart-Bojan-Achiuwa and it’s been a -12. Only 24 minutes, so that’s pretty meaningless, but he has played 80 or 90 minues with Precious and no other big, so it’s not like it’s something Thibs is just refusing to do.
Sure there is, put him on the floor with the DPOY, and plus defenders like Royce O’Neale, Derrick Favors, Mike Conley with a gunner like Donavan Mitchell and make him 4 years younger and quicker… works every time. 2024…. not so much. But that kinda is their plan for him in the playoffs when OG, Mitch/I Hart get healthy in limited quantities.
Is this a trick question? Maybe he evaluates the talent he sees in front of him with dispassionate accuracy and not what they were like 5 years ago or what they might be in a separate reality?? All those players sucked for him and with their next team. His evaluation of them were all pretty spot on.
I love it, by the time I’m even thinking of getting out of bed – y’all are going hard at it…
on a monday morning no less…well done, well done indeed…
wake and bake…
He wasn’t 4 years younger, he was 2. Which means you’re starting to not play it straight with the data. (*) The better alternative is to look at it objectively and adjust priors if necessary. (I’m not quite entirely sure how someone’s priors could be “Thibs is an open-minded coach and a solid playoff coach” but you don’t appear to be alone around here.)
Here would be a test: Can you look in the proverbial mirror and say to yourself without qualification that a really good team built a really good defense two years ago with Bogey playing starters’ minutes? If you can’t, that’s a you issue.
(Derrick Favors???? Come on, man. And Royce O’Neale is 6-4. They were a short, small team with a great shot blocker in the back. Bogey at 6-7 was their second tallest starter.)
had a wonderful weekend with the boys over the house…
seems I’ve found a sort of solution towards being such a dick to my family lately – about 200 milligrams of THC mixed with 300 or so milligrams of Gabapentin (some sort of neural inhibitor) each day…
a bomb could have gone off in the house, while aliens were knocking on the door, and I’d have barely registered it…
better parenting through becoming a zombie…oh well, it’s working, who cares…
oh, and the major stuck point that seems to never want to leave my head: I don’t need anyone. In fact I’m happier and better off by myself.
yeah, really really hard to convince myself otherwise…oh well…
Saquon got a nice payday, good for him. Surprised he got that much from the Eagles.
At least the Giants took care of Daniel Jones last year…..
Looks like Saquon won in the end…
They were like 5 points per 100 possesions worse on defense with him on the court (and 2 points per 100 possesions better on offense)
They were a great defense because they had great defenders, not because Bojan was contributing to it.
Maybe, but that’s a different question.
This is literally make believe.
Last night was real, and it was worse than any performance any team had this year.
Enough already. Try the alternative. Fan fiction be damned.
Maxey is back tomorrow so Knicks gonna have to score more than 79 pts to win.
“Yeah I think Bojan might work if we had something like Mitch-Bojan-Josh-DDV-Deuce out there, but we don’t.”
Bojan and DDV would get faceguarded by a single defenders and blitzed, and the shooting would fall to the other four guys. Good luck with that!
The only lineups that Bojan makes sense in have two-way players like OG in the front line. It would possibly work with Mitch/iHart Julius and OG. Then you need a scoring combo guard who can play some D. Deuce is a poor man’s version of that player. Burks used to be that player but isn’t any more.
i know you’re not supposed to pay running backs, but for the time he is healthy and out on the field, saquon is worth the top price philly paid…
and good job for kirk cousins getting paid, again…
hopefully the giants can be over .500 next season…
You’re inventing again. There’s literally counter-evidence to this from two years ago. He played starters’ minutes for the team that was third highest in the association in both net rating and pythag wins.
He was a 20PPG/60 TS%/24.5 USG guy a month ago.
It might surprise some here but the biased eyes of a few random observers don’t outweigh the actual things that his actual team did on the actual court.
If Quin Snyder could use Bogey in that effective way, then why can’t Tom Thibodeau?
I’m sorry but if you’ve spent the last month defending Thibs’ lineup choices, last night was your Waterloo. You should not be arguing today. Kindly accept defeat and enjoy St Helena.
Damn, I really wanted to root for Saquon on his next team. He is a class act and the Giants wasted him. Oh well.
oh you got that right hubie – i will definitely not be rooting for barkley while playing for philly…
the g-men are a joke…sadly…
An interesting thing to consider…
We’ve played 18 games since OG and Randle went down. In many of those games, we had no chance based on who wasn’t available. But even shorthanded, Vegas considered us the favorite in 9 out the 18 games.
You guys are acting like it’s been David vs Goliath every night, but oddsmakers say we’ve had enough players on hand to go 9-9 (we’re 8-10; 6-3 in games we’re favored, 2-7 in games we’re not).
We absolutely should have been favored last night, that was a bad loss. Going 8-10 when you were favored to go 9-9 is completely unexceptional
If we had a good coach, we could have gone 14-4, 16-2 or something. Alas!
I present it merely as a counter to the narrative that several people have put forth recently crediting Thibs for keeping us afloat. We’re doing more or less what is expected. Less, technically, but not by any meaningful amount.
I mean if you’re going to defend glueing your second best scorer to the bench in favor of Precious Achiuwa on a night the team scored 73 points, I have to think you’ve already made the decision to defend any and all lineup decisions and are working backwards.
I really don’t understand the perspective of anyone who is defending that decision, but also defended the trade for Bogey. If he’s an 18 minute guy on the merits on a night we score 73 points and our front court depth is crippled, we shouldn’t have traded a single second-round pick for him, let alone Grimes. I don’t believe that to be the case, but some of you seem to.
I think our solidly above-average coach has some real blindspots, one of them being that it will always be a tall order to get him to sacrifice some defense, toughness, etc. for some offense. We got Bogey to help us make that sacrifice when it’s appropriate. There was no point in doing so if our position is going to be that that’s never appropriate.
BS
You distinctly said his “last two years at UTAH’ which the first was the 20-21 season. October 2020 to March 2024 is three and a half years, not 2. So much for that… the point is still true, In Utah he played with one of the greatest defenders of all time, two other (and more) very solid defenders and one other chucker. And he was 2.5-3.5 years quicker. If you can come close to duplicating those conditions today, you might be fine, but unfortunately, no one can do that. Not eevn your imagination.
I am pretty sure you’re the one who called us all imbeciles a week ago, suggested we’d be “drowning” if it weren’t for “Uncle Thibs stealing wins,” no?
And the last was 21-22, the season I’m talking about where they were third in net and pythag.
That was two seasons ago.
There’s no such thing as that as a natural development between 31.5 and 34. You’re making it up. More fan fiction.
Wow, it’s not even me pissing everyone off today. I’m sorry that everyone is pissed off, but I’m glad that I’m not the one causing it.
By the way, I’m firmly in the “I don’t hate Thibs, but there was definitely reason to give both Bogey *and* Shake some (more) time on the floor on a night when nothing was working offensively.”
Also firmly agree with the following: “If he (Bogey) is an 18 minute guy on the merits on a night we score 73 points and our front court depth is crippled, we shouldn’t have traded a single second-round pick for him, let alone Grimes.”
The shills are out in force today.
Evan Fournier has been significantly better on Detroit than Alec Burks. And he’s about even with Bojan.
That guy was a perfectly cromulent 10th man who could have been playing 18 minutes in a pinch. There was no need to perma bench him.
We traded Grimes just so we could put someone different in Thibs’ doghouse.
This is an ad hominem and besides the point. To your question, I am the one who avoids bitching and scapegoating each and every time we lose a game. I may have my disagreements, even with the coach’s decisions; I may even agree that perhaps Bogey could have played a bit more last night. Happy now? I am, however, mature enough to maintain a balanced look and not claim to understand more than a workaholic NBA coach with accomplishments and recognition that are beyond question. And now an ad hominem on my end: grow up, don’t be pathetic! It is a headache to read the same repetitive complaints from you day in and day out.
“Everyone who defended his (Fournier’s) perma-benching was wrong. That guy was a perfectly reasonable 10th man who could have played 18 minutes off the bench.”
1000 percent
I’m not a Thibs hater, either, but the “doghousing” of perfectly cromulent players is baffling, as is his practive of leaving starters in with insurmountable leads (or deficits) with only a few minutes left to play in a given game. He’s fine at Xs and Os, I think, especially on the defensive end. We need a better “offensive coordinator” who can influence Thibs to do things differently on that end of the floor (which is of course half of the game).
He perma frosted Fournier, and then played Hart and Grimes a bunch of minutes against Miami and they were awful.
Same thing shaping up this year. Dude just can’t balance offense and defense right.
“I present it merely as a counter to the narrative that several people have put forth recently crediting Thibs for keeping us afloat. We’re doing more or less what is expected. ”
Hubie, not to pick a fight, but couldn’t the odds also be based on the fact that the oddsmakers know a Thibs team is going to rock-fight even when down most of their starters?
If so, then saying we’re doing more or less what’s expected does not automatically denigrate, or even downplay, Thibs’ influence. It could even, you know, suggest he’s keeping the team afloat.
Also not to pick a fight, but I actually agree with everything Doogie just wrote.
So Bojan comes into the game in the first quarter towards the end of the period. The Knicks are leading at this point, 15-10. He winds up playing 10 minutes, roughly half the half. He shoots 2-6, gets one rebound and turns it over once. When he gets subbed out for big Hart the Knicks are trailng 33-24. The Knicks are outscored by 14 points in this stretch. If you want to know why he didn’t play more its probably because both he and the team sucked for that stretch.
I do think he should have played more in the second half, and I think there might be something to Hubert’s contention that he should be playing with a different mix of players, but from Thibs perspective last night he’s probably thinking he’s playing the guys who were better in the first half more
The shills are out in force today.
Excuse me? I thought this thread was engaging in a debate. Try a bit harder instead of insulting fellow posters.
He never holds his boys to that standard.
Thanks, DRed. That’s literally all I’m looking for. As a token of my gratitude, I will now be quiet about last night’s debacle 🙂
I think you understand it, you just don’t agree with it. I believe at the deadline Rose looked at the team and looked at the Knick’s weaknesses and evaluated what to do, if anything. They know they need both Randle and Brunson playing big minutes to be successful.
As long as they stagger Randle and Brunson’s off the court, they came to the conclusion with OG, Randle, Mitch/I Hart and DDV on the floor they would be OK with Deuce at the 1 (because he is a capable 3 ball shooter) to run the offense through Randle for 10 minutes and the offense wouldn’t collapse while the defense would improve.
But when Randle sits, they didn’t have an option at the four where the offense wouldn’t stagnate for the 10 minutes Randle is gone. Precious/J hart, no bueno. So they looked around the league for a shooting 4, who had a 20M contract where you could kick the contract can down the road for a year for trade purposes. Hence, Bogey. Knock down shooting floor spacer who is a very bad (insert your own adjective) defender to play limited minutes with at least 3 plus defenders to ameliorate his poor defensive play, Add Burks (who no one expected to be anywhere near this bad) to eat a few minutes 1-2-3 spots.
The cost… Grimes who lost his starting job after Thibs backed him to the hilt for a long time. He also sustained a second serious knee injury in 3 years which might have had something to do with the calculation. This ‘knee sprain” has limited him to 4 games in the last 6 weeks. The guy that likely held up the Donovan Mitchell trade became expendable (in the front office’s mind). Whether that was the correct move will be known in the fullness of time.
1. Some people believe the NBA has just given the refs some new guidance about how to call the games because the scoring was getting out of hand and they want more balance. We may seeing some of that in these Knicks games.
2. The major problem with Bojan’s minutes analysis is that he’s being overrated.
Yes, he can shoot the 3, get on a roll, and change a game.
Yes his TS% can be impressive on good volume if he’s getting quality looks.
I’m sure he’ll do some of that for NY along the way.
But overall he’s not a good basketball player and probably shouldn’t even be in our rotation let alone playing more minutes. He gives up too much on defense and by not doing enough other things besides scoring. Thibs can see that even if boxscore watchers can’t.
OG is questionable for tomorrow and looks like he might play.
Yes, I typed “practive” instead of “practice.” 🙂
imagine if you would – reading all the posts said aloud by the poster, simultaneously along with all the other posts in-between, spoken aloud by those folks…
it is hard for me not to imagine in any world, that – if we were all sitting down at a table together – people would pause pretty infrequently in order to allow others to speak…
the sound would be as a cacophony of crows…i would almost pay to experience it…i would pay, it would be hilarious to watch…maybe it should be recorded: KB Live…
i enjoy watching birds, crows too…
folks most likely would only take a momentary pause, to eat/drink/smoke/breathe, and then be back at it again…pulling tidbits of words from hours/days/weeks/years ago…ver-fucking-batim…
what kind of mental rolodex is that…mostly all a blend for me…
full disclosure up front – if someone ever tries to remind me of something somewhat unpleasant i said/did/may have thought from the past, i will vehemently and aggressively deny it…it’s all a process…
as least for a good 10 minutes or so, maybe another few days, or years/never, if it’s something really troublesome…
I don’t want to defend Thibs much because he’s annoying me lately, but imo he’s not thinking in terms of “do I need more offense or more defense on the court”. He’s thinking in terms of best NET RATING. Granted, that’s typically achieved with balanced sensible lineups. We have issues with offense without Quickley/RJ, no backup PG, and the injuries, but it depends on the player.
Until people come to terms with the fact that Bojan is not even close to a “net plus” player we are going to keep debating his minutes unnecessarily.
We got two old net negative players that shouldn’t be playing much for a young rotation player with upside that’s better than both of them on a NET basis and two 2nd round picks.
The only redeeming part of the trade was that Bojan is better than Fournier. So when we use him as contract filler maybe there will still be some team out there dumb enough to think he’s good because he can shoot. If they are, maybe we can include a hair less pick value.
Even the assertion that Bogey was acquired to play limited minutes is entirely unproven, and even if true is entirely a function of Thibs’s presence.
You mean not “net plus” under Thibs. The important question itself is being assumed away.
He played starters’ minutes for the team with the third-best net rating in the league two seasons ago.
Thibs’s job is to get the best out of the players he’s given, not the worst.
Well, any way you slice it, whether you believe Bogdanovic is playable or not, Thibs apparently doesn’t believe in him all that much, so we’re in the same position we were before the trade. Not enough quality offensive players. This isn’t going to change much when we are healthier either, unless Randle miraculously makes a comeback. Other than Randle, the other guys we’re waiting on to return are defense-oriented players. If Randle can’t play in the playoffs, we just don’t have enough firepower to compete offensively, especially when the bench is a barren wasteland in terms of scoring.
I think the trade at this point has to be looked at as a major whiff that came with significant opportunity cost. The players we got seem useless, we didn’t improve at all, and we burned an asset.
This is a really closed-minded and binary way of looking at a player that has positive attributes. You’re basing a lot of it on a very flawed methodology, concluding that Bojan has no value and can only hurt your basketball team if he plays because he has poor raw on/off numbers over less than a half season’s worth of games. Those are incredibly noisy numbers you are looking at and drawing definitive conclusions from.
In the end it doesn’t matter though, because Bogdanovic isn’t going to get much of a chance to contribute here, so it was a waste of an asset. In different circumstances he could be a useful player here, but he’s already in the doghouse as many here have correctly observed.
We need a tall, rangy backup 4 who can hit 40% of his threes, almost 70% of his twos, and has a .668 TS%.
Oh wait, that’s Obi.
OG is finally QUESTIONABLE for tomorrow. He is back!
I’ll believe he’s back when he’s listed as being at least “probable.”
I think the Knicks tend to use questionable as the descriptor for players that are likely to play. They did just that with Brunson against Orlando.
I was on a plane returning to China and landed Monday morning at ten thirty China time , which was just after the game ended. When I first looked at the score, I couldn’t believe it. I’m still having trouble believing it. Assuming it’s real, it’s natural for fans to blame the coach. They always do. If only his rotations were different, if only he’d called different plays, or whatever. But sometimes it’s just that the players shot line sh*t. The team ran plays that got players open in reasonable shooting position and they didn’t hit. That seems to be the case here. We shot 33% and 22% overall and on three pointers, respectively. At a certain point, it’s the players, not the coach.
As for the Giants, the news about Barkley is depressing. I don’t pay that much attention to football, but I do like seeing the New York teams do well. I don’t know what he’s worth, but he’s clearly a useful player and we lost him for nothing. And it’s not only quarterbacks whose performance is affected when your offensive line is bad. He could end up looking great next year. It reminds me of the Mavericks and Brunson. I’d like someone to tell me the G-men are managed better than the Mavs, but unfortunately, I’m not sure anyone believes that.
The Randle updates are pretty concerning, aren’t they? He is still not cleared for contact, and a lot of questions on how he will feel when he does.
Not only is this a negligible difference, but Spoelstra has coached, what, six different 1st ballot hall of famers during this time? It’s a lot easier to win in the playoffs if you have all-time great players.
And it’s not like his former players have gone on to experience greatness once they were free of him. I think that Wiggins might be the o key player he has ever coached who has a ring.
Mike Malone was fired from his job in Sacramento because he was too rigid and not creative enough to unleash Demarcus Cousins. He had a losing playoff record up until the week he won the championship. Do you really think that if Thibs had a player like Jokic his record would still be bad?
In their first quarter, the Cavs scored 56% of the points the Knicks scored yesterday.
When did Spoelstra coach Wiggins? 🙂
Thibs had Jimmy Butler in Chicago and Minnesota. He had MVP Derrick Rose in Chicago.
KFNINJ, I love Saquon but he’s the cherry on top of a sundae and we don’t even have any ice cream.
And this Brian Burns trade… I don’t think I’ve liked a Giants transaction this much since we traded for Eli Manning. It’s about time we remembered who we are on defense.
They also picked up a tackle from JK’s Raiders and Jon Runyan to play guard. I don’t know what this means for Evan Neal, but it seems like we might have a good OL for once.
Assuming they pick up a stud WR with the 6th pick, this could be a banner offseason for Schoen.
Jokic wouldn’t have become Jokic if Thibs was the team’s coach the first couple years. Most likely, Thibs would have agitated that he be traded and a rim protector brought in.
Hubert, I sure hope you are correct.
I highly doubt that, E.
But you could probably sell me on Thibs playing Jokic at PF next to a traditional center.
Thibs had a similar stretch 5 in KAT, whose early years overlapped with Jokic’s. If anything KAT was more productive.
Thibs hated KAT’s guts. (And of course KAT said out loud Thibs had no clue how to handle young players and players like him. But that was KAT’s fault. It’s always the other guys’ fault.)
It’s extremely easy to envision something similar transpiring with Jokic.
“But you could probably sell me on Thibs playing Jokic at PF next to a traditional center.”
Which would have clogged the lane and made Jokic not Jokic.
the actual real life Nikola Jokic was playing with one of the Plumlees at center less than six years ago and he turned out pretty good. Denver had no idea what to do with him at first
Looks like Sengun might escape without surgery, which is nice for the league
Great news.
wemby looks like he’s cheating out there on the court…a standing finger roll to get the ball in the basket…
the spurs need to seriously overhaul that roster this off-season…
RJ currently leading the charge in a blowout of the defending champs
So much agenda-driven drivel being peddled by here today. It was refreshing to listen to Benji Ritholtz’s recap of the game. Of course, the usual suspect(s) here would paint him as an apologist or even a shill because he had the temerity to not be outraged at Thibs’ decision-making.
Z–Man — remember, we all kinda promised to skip certain posts. That was something of an epic fail today. As usual, in fact. Kind of embarrassing for the hive mind…
And here comes Denver, with Jokic’s usual triple-double with ten minutes to go, plus six steals… RJ’s been stuck at whatever since the half (it was a very nice half, good job RJ).
Raven, I haven’t always agreed with Benji’s takes, but he comes across as a nuts-and-bolts, X’s and O’s guy who studies film and calls ’em how he sees ’em. He backs up his premises with study of what’s actually going on, not hot-takes based on superficial preferences. Nothing about his takes comes across as agenda driven, or reactionary, or hyperbolic. Very refreshing.
14-26 35 points, 17 rb (6ord), 12 assists, 6 steals, 2 blocks and 2 TOs is pretty good for a nights work
This, conveniently, can’t be disproved because it exists in an alternate reality. But from what I’ve seen as a Knick fan over the years: Pat Riley had a better team in a weaker league in ‘94 and couldn’t win a championship in New York, Larry Brown, hot off a championship, couldn’t even make the playoffs in New York, Phil Jackson, with his 11 rings, couldn’t put a roster together that was even worth watching in New York. These are the best minds and most playoff-vetted coaches of their era. The lesson is: good management doesn’t matter if their players aren’t good enough. Playoff games are won by players, not coaches. Your obsession with Thib’s playoff record is senseless, low-hanging fruit that is only relevant until he wins. Like with Malone, Carlisle, Vogel, etc…
add don nelson and lenny wilkins in to the mix on “good” coaches underperforming here…
.