[New York Post] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 20:58:00 GMT
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[CBS Sports] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:01:30 GMT
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[New York Post] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 06:07:00 GMT
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[TMZ] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:47:08 GMT
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[New York Post] – Fri, 29 Mar 2024 01:23:00 GMT
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[Posting and Toasting] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:09:17 GMT
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[Pounding The Rock] – Fri, 29 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
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[UPROXX] – Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:35:58 GMT
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[Hoops Hype] – Fri, 29 Mar 2024 07:33:37 GMT
Knicks vs. Spurs: Start time, where to watch, what’s the latest
107 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.03.29)”
So your argument is:
A) once your seeding is determined, games no longer have any meaning; load mgmt precautions should go into immediate effect and remain in place, even if it means you spend 2-3 months conditioning your players to carry small loads.
B) this blog would collectively lose its mind if Thibs didn’t obey the mandate you just made up.
I don’t know fellas. Seems like you’re trying to do your best E impression.
The assumption is that if a player is made available to a coach, that player can play anywhere from 0-48 minutes, or more in an OT game. It is not a coach’s job to monitor minutes, it’s the medical staff’s job.
Thibs was clearly told that iHart needed to be on a minutes restriction and has abided by it. Same is probably true with Mitch.
OTOH, DDV, JHart, Deuce, and Precious are available for 48.
Then there’s Brunson, Burks, and Bojan. Those guys might have a “soft” minutes restriction but on a given night might play extended minutes.
Randle and OG will probably be managed by medical when they return.
Thibs is among a group of coaches who will push the envelope. I doubt that he stands out from the crowd very much. He’s pushing the minutes envelope largely due to injuries, none of which are confirmed to be linked to playing excessive minutes.
The Celtics have coaxed one of the best seasons of Porzingis’ career and their load management across the whole roster this year has been flawless.
We’ve been the walking dead for two months after Thibs treated the whole month of January like it was the NBA Finals.
It’s pretty clear the lack of criticism for Boston and the criticism of Thibs are both highly merited.
Maybe Mazzie thinks his guys need to prepare for playoff minutes or playing tight games? Idk…
I’ll also throw-in Jamal Murray getting injured in the last ~1 minute against us when Denver was up a dozen points against a depleted, undersized Knicks team. That’s was stupid.
I would like to know how many minutes is too many
It’s different for different players.
Then use common sense.
For example, every single minute you play Mitch in December when he has a foot injury is too many.
The common sense answer is don’t play guys too many minutes, but if nobody knows how many minutes is too many then. . .well what are we arguing about?
The iHart being Black bit on the Roommates podcast is pretty funny for those who haven’t seen it yet.
Wilt says 48.5 is child’s play. Red on Roundball and Red Holtzman both agree. The trivia question about Walt Frazier playing 48 minutes 15 times in one season and he seemed to have an OK career. And don’t tell me chasing around Jerry West, Oscar, Pearl and Hondo was an easier task than today’s players face.
Like anything else there are trade offs and reason must be employed. Thibs clearly values being in the top half of the playoff bracket and avoiding Boston and to a lesser extent Giannis and with three starters out for half the season he played J Hart, DDV and Deuce (recently) more minutes than he’d probably like.
It is easier to load manage when you have a clear open lead all season. KP is a specific case, because his long history of fragility had to be respected to have any chance of him being functional in the playoffs.
Even with Horford out, it’s not like their other centers are terrible. A couple more minutes for Kornet or Tillman won’t kill them.
Everyone knows, DRed.
This was Porzingis’ first 40 minute game of the entire season, and it was an overtime game.
No one would kill Thibs if he played his center 40 minutes once a year. You know that, Marechal knows that. You’re both just trolling.
That is an issue with the medical staff. If the player is cleared to play by the medical staff and the player says he is good to go, blaming the coach seems unreasonable.
This isn’t 1970 and nobody plays 48 minutes per game any more the same way pitchers don’t throw 40 complete games in a season anymore. I know that the game was truly greatest in our minds when we were young and beautiful, and the players of our youth were golden gods while the players of today are pampered sissy babies, but there are some good goddamn reasons why players don’t play 48 minutes per game anymore.
I watched some of a Finals Game 7 from the early 70’s a couple of weeks ago, I’m not sure exactly what year but it was Lakers vs Celtics and all of the legends you’d expect to see were playing. The quality of play was high. Skill level was high. It was fun to watch. But you can’t help but notice when watching the game was played largely under the rim, and that there was a lot less verticality in general, a lot less speed, a lot less physical play. Far fewer hard fouls.
I’m not shitting on these guys as they were great players, but it’s rather obvious to me that the players of that era were putting far less stress on their bodies than the players of today. This is the same in every sport— the players ask more of their bodies and thus are more likely to get injured. This shouldn’t be even remotely controversial.
But Mitch injured his foot during a game and kept playing with a noticeable limp before the medical staff could examine him.
OG Anunoby same thing. Reinjured his elbow, screamed in pain, started chucking airballs, stayed in the game.
Hell Julius Randle probably would’ve stayed in the game, too, if he didn’t run himself to the locker room.
Kristaps missed six games this month with leg injuries but we know he can’t reinjure his legs playing a season high number of minutes in a meaningless game because common sense? I am not so sure about that
I mean good for KP and The Celtics that he’s been healthy all year. But do we know this is because of anything specific the Celtics have done? I’ve looked at KP’s minutes this year. It’s a little under 30 minutes a game which says oh the celtics are so smart but it’s really about what he’s always averaged. He’s averaged anywhere from 28 to 32 minutes a game.
Plus Celtics have the highest point differential in the league, so they’ve blown out enough teams that he hasn’t had to play much in the 4th in many games. That’s just great roster construction, not necessarily smart coaching.
My point is that KP himself seems to be less injury prone and less fragile than he was earlier in his career. He had a relatively injury free season last year too with the Wizards.
It’s easy to manage minutes when your team is destroying everyone. Yes, we were kicking ass in January but we were also barely over 500 when we got OG. If our team came storming out of the gate early in the season and was blowing teams out on a semi-regular basis, Thibs would sit players more.
It’s NOT just about minutes.
It’s about playing big minutes through injuries.
All players get banged up throughout the season. Some are worse than others and some are more vulnerable to reinjury or getting worse if you play a lot of minutes. Many (but not all) players have a warrior mentality. They want to play even when they are hurt and will play as many minutes as need be. Others take a longer term view of the season and their career and don’t push the envelop.
The problem with playing guys like I-Hart, OG, J-Hart, Brunson, RJ, Mitch, Grimes and others while they were injured was that we were clearly delaying the healing process and also risking reinjury, potentially making the injury worse, and potentially causing injury elsewhere if player started compensating.
If a player is healthy and his body withstands a lot of minutes without acting up, he should big minutes when required.
If a guy gets hurt in the first half and you bring him back in in the 2nd half before you really know what the issue is, you are a moron.
If I guy is wincing in pain and you keep playing him you are a moron.
If you bring a guy back from injury prematurely and start talking about pain tolerance you are a moron.
We have obviously done some dumb ass things this year in terms minutes/injuries to win games that don’t matter as much as getting to the playoffs healthy and fresh and not doing serious damage.
Mitch injured his foot during a game and continued to play before the medical staff could examine him.
You’re obfuscating, DRed.
You and Marechal are arguing that this board would kill Tom Thibodeau for doing what Mazzulla did last night.
I think if Tom Thibodeau load managed an injury prone player flawlessly from game 1 of the year to game 72, and game 73 went to overtime, that he’s entitled to play his best lineup for that 5 minute overtime period.
I suggested you two were doing an E impression but honestly E would have to be concussed and inebriated to come up with something like this.
We can ask the board, though. Would anyone here want to crucify Tom Thibodeau for 150 posts today if after a season of perfect load management he let Porzingis play in OT?
Indeed. And well played, Bob. My recollection of this incident appears to have been wrong.
Boston has played 73 games, KP has played 51. He’s going to miss the award cutoff by at least 5 games.
Last year in Washington he played 65 in 3 more mpg. And that’s with him getting shut down at the end of the season, which may have been more for tanking purposes than health.
I’m not sure Boston did anything special for him load management-wise.
Sure, it’s KPs only time playing 40min this season but every unnecessary minute on the court is another minute he can get injured. This close to the playoffs, having clinched the #1 seed, why take that chance.
Randle got injured last year with something like 6 games left in the season and it quite possibly was the root cause of our playoff exit. Heck, KP himself got injured in the first round while playing for Dallas didn’t he? You need to be cautious with players.
“but it’s rather obvious to me that the players of that era were putting far less stress on their bodies than the players of today.”
I tend to agree with this. Anyone remember Wilbur Wood? Four years straight of 320+ innings pitched and over 20 complete games a year. He also played for 17 seasons.
It seems from evidence that Thibs has a ‘winning by 30 or more’ point where he’ll sit starters outside of his ‘normal’ rotation. At least based on our last game, and almost all previous games, where someone like Brunson sits when there’s less than two minutes left, regardless of score.
It’s not my favorite part of Thibs’ behaviors, including that it inhibits players like Deuce from getting some in-game experience (outside of hoisting one random three in the closing seconds).
Then again, I don’t have much problem with playing rubberband man and the steel ball kid 40+. So perhaps I’m a hypocrite.
If Thibs didn’t play Hart, Deuce, etc…so many minutes during this time when Randle and OG were out, we would not be one game out of the 2nd seed. We could be in the play-in or even on the outside. Shit was rough there for awhile. We barely beat a depleted 76’ers team, the Pistons, etc. It wasn’t until the Sacramento game that we seemingly turned some corner and we’ve played some incredibly easy teams the last 3 games.
There’s no way to now this but if we had lost 5 or 6 or more games during this short handed stretch, and we were like the 7th seed or something right now, would people be cool with that?
Brunson has sat out games for rest and healing purposes. We’ve pretty much lost all of those games.
Was Mitch a mistake. for sure. But beyond that, I don’t really see where Thibs fucked up here. We’re the 3rd seed. Randle and OG will most likely come back. If anything they’re being held back right now for extra rest and recovery and precaution.
Ultimately, if Randle is not 100 percent, the team is not going to get past Boston I think. But the foundation is set for next year. We should haev a team next year that will blow out plenty of shitty teams and our best players should be load managed better. I don;’t think Thibs opposes it. I just don’t think he’s going to load manage and give up W’s when we’re fighthing for a playoff spot.
Okay, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong.
Players today are maxed out in their strength and speed, and with a bit of chemical help, probably then some. The more muscle your body has and the more speed your muscles can generate, the more strain on your body.
I’m also guessing defensive 3 second violations cause more injuries. Now you have a 250lb behemoth flying across the lane or sliding under you at the last second instead of that same player at a standstill because they’re already in position to defend the play.
One of the other factors that players cite is the increased shooting around the league. Maybe there was more movement back in the day, but they weren’t pulling up for 3s. If you fell a step behind, you weren’t getting punished. There’s a whole lot of strain on your ankles and other joints making sharp cuts to try and stifle Donte at the 3pt line curling around a screen. Ten years ago you could sit back and let most of the league run around those same screens, ceding the long 2 or a 33% shooter the 3.
Perhaps we’d be the 2 seed today if Thibs hadn’t needlessly overextended his players in the first place.
Isaiah Hartenstein played 40 minutes a night in back-to-back nights, including the entire second half of both games. The very next game he left with the achilles injury we’re still managing right now.
OG Anunoby is one of the most important Knicks and one of the most injury-riddled players in the NBA. He averaged 45 minutes a night 3 times in four days. We still don’t have him back.
We’ve been ravaged by injury for nearly two months. You cannot sit here today and say our complaints were unwarranted.
There’s a lot about the great load management debate I don’t feel qualified to weigh in on as a lot of the empirics seem inconclusive, but one thing I can say with confidence about Thibs is there are plenty of times he leaves essential players in games they have absolutely no business being in.
I can pull specific examples if people really need me to, but come on, we all know what I’m talking about. Up 20, down 20, etc.
To be clear, I’m not saying I can say with certainty that the mere minutes themselves make future injury more likely. That’s the unsettled science I was referring to above.
But what I do know for sure is that any player can get injured at anytime, such that when a game’s outcome is fully decided it’s very hard to justify leaving in e.g. Brunson and iHart.
Hubs, you are not wrong. Just trying to offer a different POV about it. Yes, we were kicking ass in January but we were 2 games over 500 when we acquired OG.
That is a much different position than Boston, who has been 1st in the Eastern Conference since the first month of the season and has the highest point differential in the league. It’s pretty easy to load manage your best players when you have a complete team and are blowing out teams on the regular.
I think there is definitely something to be said for The Celtics playing KP so much last night because it was a close game against a team they might face in the playoffs and the Celtics have been so good this year they actually haven’t had a lot of tests like that (and have not done great in close games bc of that).
Just sayin’ if we jumped out of the gate first 20 games and were like 16-4 or something crazy like that, Thibs would probably pull guys a little earlier with smaller leads than he has when we’ve been battling for a playoff spot.
Absolutely. It’s the same thing to me as playing Kristaps or Tatum 40+ minutes trying to beat the Hawks after you have the one seed sewn up. There’s probably not a great increase in risk of injury but there’s absolutely no benefit to running that risk
I tend to give Thibs more leniency on that front, Noble, because “fully decided” is so subjective.
There are some, for instance, who criticized him for leaving Randle in the game when he got injured against Miami. I thought it was completely ok.
I thought the Randle situation was perfectly justified too. IIRC it was something like a 12 point difference with 3 minutes to go, more or less. I think most coaches would leave in the starters under those circumstances.
But there are plenty of more egregious examples involving literal 20+ point leads that are genuinely anomalous among NBA coaches. I also tend to think his minutes loads are just too high in general and it’s somewhat intuitive to me that could make future injury more likely, but again, I tread a lot more lightly on that front.
I like Thibs, think he correctly identifies the most productive players and plays them a lot (sometimes to a fault…), think he’s instilled an admittedly intangible culture that has benefitted the team a lot, and would be happy to extend him. But it’s a real blindspot.
I mean you have a 0% chance of getting injured while sitting on a bench. I would think that the odds go somewhere above 0% when you step on an NBA floor, even in garbage time.
For a guy who is so obsessed with every W, you’d think Thibs might have figured out by now that the correct play in terms of game theory is to sit your indispensable superstar guard when you have an insurmountable lead late in a game, but alas.
At the risk of sounding like I’m discounting folks’ minutes under Thibs theories…
I don’t fully buy the “he runs them too hard” bit. I think guys are just built to handle certain levels of activity. I believe what’s important is the connection between coach and medical, and the thoroughness of the medical department’s knowledge of the athletes they manage. Case(or cases) in point- damn near everybody in the 90’s were ironmen, and Deuce, Hart, and DiVincenzo are handling heavy minutes pretty well. Play style factors in as well. A guy like Derrick Rose probably couldn’t handle heavy minutes because he was consistently uber-explosive and didn’t really change speeds often enough. That’s when it’s up to medical to be thorough and honest(athletes too) with the info they give to the staff. As a 47 year old, it’s easy for me to say sometimes these guys have to listen to their bodies more- but it’s the truth. This isn’t the NFL where the contracts aren’t guaranteed. They can sit from time to time and work on a weak muscle or sore ligament. The coach’s job is to get wins by nearly any means necessary, so if Thibs plays someone 38mpg- he’s technically not doing anything wrong unless he’s ignoring info from medical and the player.
Still though- I’d love to see Thibs not use his deep bench more in games we have in hand. Work on the other shit you see from the sideline in practice is probably the best way to handle in-game things you don’t like in those situations. He gets too comfortable extending minutes sometimes.
Stay with me for a second, Swifty…
1) We had a full roster in January.
2) We were blowing out teams on the regular.
3) And that’s when Thibs fucked it all up.
February and March, IMO, whatever. I haven’t killed him for relying on Josh Hart and Deuce McBride when no one else is available, and I’m not going to.
But in January, our bench was Deuce McBride, Quentin Grimes, Josh Hart, and Precious Achiuwa.
Jericho Sims, Malachi Flynn, and Evan Fournier were our 10th through 12th guys.
Why in god’s name we were pushing the starters night after night in January with that roster?
Even with unsettled science the risk completely outweighed the reward. We had a good bench and he wouldn’t use it.
That’s exactly it. I can’t prove a counterfactual, but there is no question in my mind that if Thibs had played Brunson that amount of time in a meaningless game Hubbie would be screaming about his inability to rest player. The point here is not that Thibs doesn’t play guys too many minutes, but that almost all coaches end up playing their players more than most fans feel is safe.
It’s the selectivity that is bothersome and ends up sounding like bad faith arguments. Somehow we talk about back to back games IHart played 2 months ago when half of the team was injured, and not about how Brunson seems to be playing fewer minutes than any top 15 player (I haven’t checked so correct me if I’m wrong) since his scare in Cleveland.
There are false narratives on both sides of this petty argument. It is dumb to blame Mitch’s foot, or iHart’s achilles, or OG’s elbow on Thibs. It is equally dumb to fault Mazzulla for playing KP 40 minutes in an OT game.
I think that the suggestion that playing starters when you are up 20 with 3 minutes left is somehow akin to engaging in self-harm is not worth discussing. No one wants his players healthy for the playoffs more than Thibs. The risks we are talking about are minimal.
Jayson Tatum is averaging 36mpg (8th) and has thus far played 2,445 total minutes (7th). This is despite the Celts leading the league in blowouts and never having their hold on 1st overall seed challenged. The closest Knick is Brunson, who is 19th in both total minutes and mpg. Above him in both categories are: Old Man Durant, injury-prone AD, franchise cornerstones Luka Doncic and Domantis Sabonis, playing for nothing Demar DeRozan and Coby White, iron man Mikal Bridges. Brunson has played over 40 minutes 6 times, same as Dame Lillard and LeBron James, and less than Kevin Durant (11 times), Dejounte Murray (8 times).
Thibs is hardly the outlier that he’s being portrayed to be. Whatever aggressiveness he has with minutes is well within the mainstream of coaching decisions around the NBA.
And honestly, in the 3pt era, this is not an insurmountable lead. Maybe a 25 pt lead with 2 minutes left in the game would be.
Thibs coaches like a man with anxiety. That’s not without its upsides, to be honest. But it’s also not without its downsides. We were smashing Toronto by like 40 points the other night and half the guys Toronto were playing looked like they’d have trouble cracking the rotation of the Washington Generals, yet Hartenstein and Brunson were both out there playing meaningless minutes in the 4th quarter.
I mean surely there are SOME situations where its okay to take your foot off the gas pedal.
Brunson – 35.5 m/g (which was less than he played in Nov and Dec)
Randle – 35.0 m/g (which was less than he played in Nov and Dec)
I Hart – 31.8 m/g (up from 29.2 in Dec when he took over from MR)
DDV – 26.8m/g
OG – 35.7 (OG played 34.8 m/g in Dec in Toronto)
I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing the abusive minutes you are describing….
If Derrick Rose didn’t have that injury that basically derailed his hall of fame career, no one would ever talk about Thibs’ minutes distribution. This is where all of this started.
I’m not even saying he couldn’t be better sometimes. He probably could. But if Derrick Rose didn’t get hurt like that, no one would ever talk about this with Thibs.
While this is certainly true, you can’t wrap athletes in bubble wrap. Brunson played 28 that game and I Hart 18. He also knows teams that avoid the play in get a full five day rest before game one of the playoffs.
LaMarcus Aldridge mentioned on the All the Smoke podcast that in his opinion SA lost one year because Pop rested his troops too much toward the end of the regular season and they weren’t fit enough to respond when they had to play big minutes in the playoffs (maybe 15-16).
Instead of regurgitating the same stupid debate how about discussing a real dilemma, Yankees and Knicks both play at 8pm tonight! Which game should I pay the most attention to in the first couple of hours?!?
The Yankees are on apple TV, which may help you make a choice.
I’m interested in seeing how we handle Wemby, we pushed him around the first matchup but I’ve been watching the Spurs a bit on league pass and he’s so much better than he was early in the year.
it can not, and should not be entirely the coaches choice who plays how much and when…
something I’ve been wondering a long time and keep bringing up – just how much access does a team have to a players biometrics?
can they take their blood? can they measure their sleep?
there’s individual privacy stuff going on, so I don’t know…
my point is though – you need an empowered medical/training staff…
sustained player availability has to be a team focus ..front office focus at least…
do not break the players…
granted he was already cooked at the time – I’ll never forget what thibs did to kemba…that was just evil and crazy…
I’m expecting a competitive game from the spurs…
most excited to watch deuce and mitch play tonight…
The Knicks/Yankees overlap period is brutal. I navigate it by prioritizing whichever team is playing in more important games, which for most of my life has been the Yankees, even in April, because the Knicks, well, you get it.
If the Knicks are going to make a habit of playing meaningful games in the Spring and Summer though I might just have to invest in a second living room TV.
use TV and computer at same time…
My complaint with Thibs has always been very specific: excessive minutes, for the wrong players, in congested time frames.
KP mentioned yesterday that he could have played in a lot of the games he missed this year, but Celtics management wanted to manage his injuries so nothing gets worse.
I’m sure he could/would have played more minutes per game also but the Celtics blew so many teams out he was an easy decision to take him out.
People were predicting Derrick Rose would get hurt like that, Swifty, because of what Thibs was doing. It was a hit everyone except Thibs saw coming, not unlike what happened to us this year.
Didn’t some dude tear something on the sidelines earlier this year?
So it’s not really a 0% chance of injury…
#pedant
This is what I currently do, with the lower priority team getting the smaller screen. It’s a bit of a hassle though so if the Knicks are going to make this more than a one-month phenomenon I might bite the bullet on another TV.
Macri’s newsletter today is a useful breakdown of all the East playoff possibilities. The long and short of it is we may well be rewarded for gutting out a series of brutal injuries and getting the 2 or 3 seed with the team that eliminated us last year, went to the finals, and has since improved their roster (at least on paper) in the first round.
If it happens, I’ll put on a brave face and if we’re reasonably healthy I do think we’ll win…but I’ll be scared.
Mitch was going to hurt his foot either way, but only a moron would have played him back in in the 2nd half unless they were 100% sure of the diagnosis given his history. There’s no way that helped and it may have made matters worse.
I-Hart has had almost chronic Achilles issues since being here. We obviously brought him back too quickly this year. He said that HIMSELF in an interview. That’s how he reinjured it and why he’s still on a minutes restriction now.
OG was screaming in pain on court and he kept playing. That’s not dumb. It’s a sign of mental health problems.
Grimes hurt his knee and Thibs put him back in. He’s still has that same knee issue that’s keeping him out for Detroit.
RJ had knee issues in NY. Almost as soon as he got to Toronto they put him in an injury management program that gave him games off for his knee.
Thibs is a butcher. It couldn’t be more obvious.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MINUTES.
IT’S ABOUT PLAYING GUYS THAT ARE HURT AND PUSHING THEM FOR EXTRA MINUTES EVEN WHILE THEY ARE HURT
Literally every single coach in the NBA plays guys that are hurt.
Wonderful example, Geo, of how focusing on the larger mpg sample can obfuscate Thibs’ foolishness.
“Kemba averaged 25 mpg,” Bob might say. “I don’t see the abuse you are referencing.”
Well in 4 games over 7 days he suddenly averaged 40 mpg!
That’s why it’s not the mpg. It’s excessive minutes (1) for the wrong player (2) over multiple games (3) in a congested time frame (4).
Capitalizing your point doesn’t make it any better just more annoying.
The east is a bit down this year but you can find reasons to worry about most probable first round matchups. Orlando has a nasty defense, Indy can win shootouts, Miami does devil magic, Donovan Mitchell could have one of his Donovan Mitchell can’t miss playoff series, Philly could have Embiid back
Raven…. Kind of a bad example…. Wilbur Wood was a knuckleballer who threw around 70 mph…
However, lots of pitchers threw big innings in the pre pitch count days. Tom Seaver threw between 290 and 236 innings his first 12 consecutive seasons. He threw 231 complete games!!! And don’t tell me the hitters are better now than Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson. Willie Mc Covey, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose etc.
Pitchers in the 60’s and 70’s were schooled under the influence of Johnny Sain who preached throw a lot, worry less about velocity than location and changing speeds. Namely, pitch…. don’t throw.
Leo Mazzoni, who had great success in the 90 and 2000’s preached the same thing plus throwing from the mound twice between starts vs. once. And his success wasn’t because he had Glavine, Smoltz and Maddux to coach, A study was done that showed that all the pitcher he coached in the big leagues on average improve their era by > than half a run from the year before he got them and they declined by the same the year after they left him.
No one is advocating letting Dallas Green have rookie Al Leiter throw 163 pitches, but the notion pitchers need to be wrapped in bubble wrap as do basketball players is silly.
Pitchers today can’t throw more than 100 pitches because every major league club is infatuated with velocity and tries everything known to man to get a guy with a 94 mph fastball to throw consistent 97. And his elbow explodes and they say… Ah ha… too many pitches. Had they taught him to locate his 94 mph fastball, change speeds off of it and throw secondary pitches with location, he would be healthy and throwing 225 innings a year.
The notion that Walt Fraizer didn’t work as hard on the court as say Steph Curry is just absurd. Frazier always took the toughest backcourt assignment and was the focal point of the offense as Curry is today. Just because Curry is flying around screens don’t tell me he is working harder than bump and grinding with Oscar, Pearl, West etc 40 plus minutes a game.
Hey, at least be thankful that we now live in a time where making a choice between a late season Knicks game and a early season yankees game is a difficult one!
To your question of selectiveness, Marechal, it may seem random but that’s the criteria I use before I criticize the coach.
I wouldn’t have complained about Porzingis last night bc it only meets 2 of the 4 criteria.
And I haven’t complained about Hart or Deuce because they only meet 3 of 4, but I’m worried about Donte bc I don’t think he’s a rubber man.
Hartenstein and OG easily met all four.
I’m 46, so I’m hardly a young whipper snapper who doesn’t know any better, but players during Walt’s day smoked during half time. They did not work out the way athletes do now. I’m not saying they didn’t work hard. They did but players today are so much faster than they were back then. The game is stretched out to way past the 3 point line. The PG doesn’t just dump it into the paint to let the big man go to work while everyone else just guards their man.
I think there is some physicality as far as how soft fouls are called today but overall, I think the game is much tougher. And I generally hate the term load management but to act like the game was anywhere close back then to what it is today is absurd.
“Mitch was going to hurt his foot either way, but only a moron would have played him back in in the 2nd half unless they were 100% sure of the diagnosis given his history. There’s no way that helped and it may have made matters worse.”
But that’s not on Thibs. The medical staff cleared him. Players tweak their ankles all the time and return. Do you realistically think that any coach is going to sit a player who is cleared by medical in that situation?
“I-Hart has had almost chronic Achilles issues since being here. We obviously brought him back too quickly this year. He said that HIMSELF in an interview. That’s how he reinjured it and why he’s still on a minutes restriction now.”
Again, this is a call by the medical staff. Unless you can document for me a situation where the medical staff said “hey, watch this guy’s minutes…” then it 100% on them and 0% on Thibs.
“RJ had knee issues in NY. Almost as soon as he got to Toronto they put him in an injury management program that gave him games off for his knee.”
First, who us “they?” Second, what was Toronto playing for? Third, OG had the elbow issue in Toronto and still played 33 mpg, including the last 19 straight where he played 36+ minutes 8 times? Were “they” deliberately trying to hurt him before trading him?
“IT’S ABOUT PLAYING GUYS THAT ARE HURT AND PUSHING THEM FOR EXTRA MINUTES EVEN WHILE THEY ARE HURT”
Nearly every coach in a win-now situation does this. Again, it is the medical staff who determines how much a player should or shouldn’t play. Guys around the league are playing through injuries of one kind or another, and often playing big minutes situationally.
That said, it’s fair to criticize Thibs for pushing the envelope on situational minutes….but he hardly stands out in that regard. Many coaches do the same thing, it’s just that we don’t observe it on a nightly basis and don’t root for those teams. Geez, we saw ourselves how D’Antoni would grind players into dust by “riding them like Secretariat…” You think Pat Riley managed Ewing’s minutes to save his chronically balky knees?
I didn’t like what Thibs did with Kemba, but I also didn’t like the narrative that Kemba was a useful player and should have played more. He saw that the guy was completely cooked, and when push came to shove, he proved it. Still, the medical staff could have demanded that Kemba be on a minutes restriction, or made him unavailable.
Not that it mattered. Thibs permabenched Fournier and he was healthy and rested as fuck. He went to Detroit and demonstrated to all interested parties why Thibs was right for benching him. Same with Derrick Rose. Same with Cam Reddish.
Again, it’s 100% the medical staff’s responsibility to determine how much a guy should be able to play. If they clear a player, it should be assumed that that player might be played 48+ minutes in a double-OT game. It’s a decision that the medical staff should be making for all players every single night. That’s their job, not the coach’s.
Kemba was about as washed as a player can be when we got him.
BPL, stop being lazy and google old games and compare them to recent games. Otherwise you sound like you are going off of 60yo memories.
Or don’t, and trust that I have done the work for you. I would guess that I have watched as much film of the olden days of the NBA as anyone on this blog. The difference in the way the game is played is stark. The physical demands today are far, far greater than they were then. That is true in virtually every sport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sw3mJAHmq0
Here’s film from the 1964 NBA finals, where the intensity is at its max compared to regular season games. Most of the players on the court would get mercilessly targeted on defense in today’s game. Nearly all the action is below the rim and within 15 feet of the basket. Close-outs were not really a thing. Rebounds were left to the bigs, who usually trailed the play after passing to a guard. The legendary physicality that old timers like to talk up is hardly apparent…in fact, the game looks pretty soft even by today’s standards. And that’s in the finals!
You aren’t somehow blaming Thibs for Kemba Walker’s demise?
This is from a nice new iHart profile here
nice to see Hart get some national attention but I wish they would shut up about him
I think a better debate is late 80’s/90’s bball vs. today. I think by the late 80’s, the conditioning had improved for all athletes in the NBA because of how popular Bird and Magic made the game. And it was definitely far more intense physically from a foul perspective. You could get away with a lot more and there was hand checking too. Plus no zone defense allowed. The game still wasn’t stretched out as far because 3 point shooting was relatively new, but I have no doubt dudes like Jordan, Reggie, etc…would still be great players in today’s game as they would have practiced 3 point shooting far more than they did back then.
But I think any discussion of the game being harder pre Magic and Bird is an absolute joke. Again, no disrespect to those guys because they were a million times better at basketball than I ever was. But the game has fundamentally changed.
I am liking that they are letting them play more and calling less fouls. I do think there is an argument to be made that they should let the game be closer to the 90’s physicality than it has been because the outside shooting is so much better it’s kind of ridiculous to then give offenses even more of an advantage by calling every little hand brush as a foul. I’d even allow some hand checking. And I think scoring doesn’t automatically make a game exciting. Seeing teams battle on defense, grab boards, etc…is also very exciting! It’s like when home runs went crazy in baseball. At first it was cool but if that’s all the game is, that’s super boring.
Also Bob Hayes could run just as fast as Usain Bolt
But you said so yourself – Randle wasn’t his fault. So he didn’t fuck it all up.
If you’re only referring to OG, I mean…sure? But if he and the medical staff had no indication that OG’s elbow needed surgery, how did he mess it up by playing him a lot of minutes in 3 games? It wasn’t like OG got injured in a game. When he first wasn’t playing we were literally told he just needed some rest on the elbow.
And if OG’s elbow was hurting but no one knew about it, that’s kind of on OG, isn’t it?
Also, OG being injury prone – one of his extended absences was because of an appendicitis!
Bob’s argument here is some standard issue old man shit. This has been going on forever. The old men of the 1920’s thought baseball players like Babe Ruth sucked compared to the players of the Cap Anson era who played without gloves, and that the game went into the shitter once pitchers learned how to make the ball curve. Then of course the players of the 50’s and 60’s sucked compared to Ruth and Gehrig.
Same old shit.
100%
But he had that one little stretch where he came back from the dead and lit up the Garden for a few days, including a 44 point game and a triple double on Christmas.
Thibs of course played him 40 minutes/night for a week and started him in both legs of a back-to-back. To the shock of no one except Thibs, Kemba exited the second game with knee soreness and that was all for him.
The point here is not that Thibs ruined Kemba. The point is average mpg doesn’t acquit him of mismanagement because it’s easy to hide within them the periods of egregious misuse that make Thibs insane.
The game used to be more physical, but I think that lowered the chance of injuries. Players don’t get injured, except minor bruises, bumping into another guy’s chest or arm. Players get injured when they collide in the air during an all-out sprint because the hand check rule gives them the runway to do so. It might’ve been exhausting, but it wasn’t the injury risk today’s basketball is.
Players in the NFL get injured more today because they’re sprinting around the field. Playing trench warfare and running the ball may have been “tougher” but your risk of significant injury drops because the acceleration isn’t there.
I would guess that I have watched as much film of the olden days of the NBA as anyone on this blog
To my regret suspect your guess is wrong. I need to get a hobby.
Also pitchers in MLB don’t have the luxury of pacing themselves because of the depth of MLB lineups. Modern teams send power threats to the plate every single at bat. You can’t “pace yourself” throwing with less velocity to the banjo hitting second basemen because that player doesn’t really exist any more. Most major leaguer hitters of today are going to thrash your 88 MPH “pacing yourself” fastballs into oblivion.
If pacing yourself was such an easy fix, then why has the 250 IP pitcher disappeared? Every single baseball coach and executive and manager is a complete idiot who just doesn’t understand things as well as Bob Neptune?
have we got a positive confirm that it is indeed Neptune?
Can’t Mike or Bc go behind the curtain to see if its the same IP address? I guess if Neptune, in addition to mellowing out…got more tech savvy…he could be using a VPN…
Conservatism, following the herd, people protecting their jobs.
And I think this is the crux of it. The old heads who swear the game was harder back in the day are talking about the fact that dudes sometimes left the game with black eyes or bloody noses. There was more pushing and shoving allowed. Fights broke out, lol. So it was “tougher” and the game was much more “physical” especially inside the paint.
But the risk for injuries to ankles and knees especially is much higher now because they jump higher, more often, run around more often, the game is stretched out so dudes have to close out more, etc. So from a cardio POV it is much harder now and if a player is exhausted from that they are more likely to land funny and tweak an ankle or hamstring or knee or whatever.
So the game is at the same time “softer” but also injuries are more likely.
Yeah, 100%. The modern game is completely different. You don’t get your nose broken, but your quads explode at any given moment.
Minor correction- Dick Barnett more often than not drew the tougher guard assignment (Oscar, West, Monroe when he was on the Bullets)allowing Clyde to free-lance and steal the ball. Clyde has stated this.
Edit-(old head eye test) The pace and athleticism of the players in the ’60’s and early 70’s was no where close to where it is today.
OG’s appendicitis occurred after the conclusion of the 2019 regular season. Other than a couple games he missed for Covid, the absences on his regular season record are injury related.
He also missed his sophomore year at Indiana with a knee injury, which is why he slipped in the draft.
His fragility is unfortunately on par with the likes of Kristaps and Embiid, and we should be a little concerned about signing him to a max contract. The front office will have to take steps to protect him from Thibs, who clearly sees Luol Deng in him.
Wow, Neptune and E, both smarter than every single person who works in baseball. Two of them in this one thread! Remarkable.
You guys missed your calling, you could have disrupted the sport of baseball entirely with your armies of low-velocity pitchers “pacing themselves” by soft tossing to modern day major league hitters who have a proper understanding of launch angle and who routinely average 90+ MPH exit velocity.
Y’all missed your calling
Perhaps Jowles can smoke him out 🙂
Here, let me try:
Just like I said he would, Daniel Jones sucks
Collateral damage, man.
There literally isn’t a stitch of evidence that a pitcher today couldn’t throw 250 innings. It’s all following the herd and junk science.
Pitchers got hurt all the time in the 70s and 80s. Pitchers get hurt all the time in the 10s and 20s. Throwing a baseball hard overhand is an anatomically dangerous motion — always has been, always will be. Some guys arms will blow after 100 easy innings; some guys arms won’t blow after 1,000 balls-out innings. Anything beyond that is pure guesswork.
Pitchers aren’t extended to 250 innings today because if one of them blew his arm, all the internet loudmouths would pretend it was the innings, and the pitching coach and manager would be in danger of being fired. Better to just follow the herd and keep your job.
On the other hand, you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.
Another reason that pitchers don’t throw 250 innings is that there are giant piles of evidence that prove beyond any doubt that they are far, FAR less effective when facing hitters a third and fourth time. Since major league managers don’t enjoy getting their asses kicked, they will often remove a starter rather than have him face hitters a third and fourth time in favor of a relief pitcher who will be facing them for the first time.
Keep up with your Skip Bayless-level hot takes though, they’re amusing.
Bullpens are also stocked with dudes who throw absolute heat now and are going to be more effective than a pitcher going through the order the 3rd time. Why would you leave your starter in when there’s a better option?
You’d leave your starters in instead of bringing in your high leverage pitchers because it would prove some hot take bullshit that pitchers could throw 250 innings if they wanted to.
You’d lose a lot more than you should, and you’d be the baseball equivalent of Phil Jackson trying to prove that the triangle is still the best way to play basketball, but at least you’d get to say “how’s it goink” on Twitter when a relief pitcher blows a lead in the 8th inning.
speaking of baseball the Mets honored a WWII vet named Seymour Weiner during their game today
It seems worth mentioning that the number of 200-250 IP guys fell off a cliff riiiiiiight around the time MLB got serious about PED testing.
There are probably some guys who could still do it who aren’t given the chance because of the overall data, but no MLB team is leaving points on the board. They put in fresh relievers for the 3rd/4th time through the lineup because that will usually be the right decision.
There are a surprising number of Seymour Wieners who have served. Plenty to see is what I am saying. Historically speaking.
Thibs plays guys too much sometimes but the vibes are immaculate and this team hasnt quit once all season. The work rate and belief has been palpable. You have to give Thibs some credit for the makeup of this team.
NBA players are way way more athletic and work way harder than they used to given the increase in skill and the amount of court you have to cover. You are also drawing on a massively larger population. It’s really not up for debate. It’s a world game and the players are better now.
I’ve given him enormous credit for this and a thousand other things. He’s a great coach. But great coaches make mistakes and have real blindspots.
Anyway we’re 8.5 pt favorites tonight, which is nice. The Spurs are frisky, though. I expect a challenge.
Game thread?
I will put one up if Brian doesn’t…
Doesn’t start till 8…..
its not Neptune…the Jones comment would have triggered him ASAP…
It’s 100% Neptune. He doesn’t even disguise it any more.
The Mara/Gettelman comment the other day was full blown out of the closet.
Mitchell’s back for the Cavs so that might be the end of our unexpected gifts in that department. That couldn’t have gone better for us. Their schedule gets rough now.
I can’t tell if this kid Edey will make it in the pros…i never thought Poetel would and he has done ok…they are very similar…
I don’t know if Edey will make it in the pros, but my guess is yes. I think his defense is under rated because Purdue relies on him so much for offense. I’d actually like to see the Knicks draft him.
I am reasonably pro-Edey, think he’ll be more than Boban. Probably still more of a change-of-pace sub than a starter, but if you can get him in the second-round that’s a steal.
I don’t know how we could justify drafting him though unless iHart is gone, and I hope iHart is not gone.
I agree we already have two good centers, but I’m still not sure we should draft for positional need instead of best player available.
Early foul trouble for one of our all-defense centers? Better put in the other
Game thread up now
It does feel like we’re just getting unlucky, hopefully it turns around
LFG!!!
Still not loving the non Brunson minutes, but glad Shake getting some run.