Knicks Morning News (2024.05.15)

“Brian and Bruno were on it, but the Pacers have the weakest makeup of any team I can remember. Even their coach knows it, otherwise he would not have used 3 timeouts in 2 minutes. He knows that they can just fall apart if the other team has 3 good sequences. It’s incredible.”

I dunno, this seems overstated to me. The first two games were nip and tuck, and we eked out a couple of wins. They came from behind and fended us off in crunch time in game 3, then utterly destroyed us in game 4. Thibs made some adjustments, Brunson had an MVP-level game, and all the role players stepped up in game 5.

They knocked off a wounded but still solid Bucks team and haven’t lost a home game yet.

I don’t get why posters would disrespect them just because we did to them in game 5 what they did to us in game 4. My guess is that we will have our hands full in closing them out. Hope I’m wrong!

“But compared to how even the Sixers, a team long talked about as mentally weak, fought incredibly hard on their series against us, the Pacers feel like a step down in intensity.”

Again, I don’t really agree with this. We went up 3-1 on the Sixers and might have swept them if it weren’t for a 50-point effort from a hobbled Embiid gettijg away with murder, or won in 5 if it weren’t for two utterly ridiculous shots by Maxey. Harris is the softest max player who ever played, and Oubre Jr. is the ultimate punk who disappeared in some big moments. Lowry mostly didn’t show up after game 1. Reed was awful off the bench. Nurse whined his ass off. Embiid played extremely dirty and talked trash unnecessarily. We beat them twice on their home court. And Philly didn’t have the “untested young team” excuse. Now granted, we had OG, who made a huge difference, but it’s not like we ran away with the one game he fully played in vs. IND.

I just think that too much emphasis is being placed on game 5 in characterizing Indiana. The first three games could have gone either way, and they utterly destroyed us in game 4.

Tell you what, though. If we go into Indy and the Pacers go down without a fight, I’ll jump on the pile.

One thing is for certain: As the Tyreses go, Maxey is 1000X more likable than Hali.

“I think they only have 5”

Sorry, I counted Obi by mistake. The point about having a young, inexperienced rotation remains, and they also have a promising player in Mathurin, and whatever Walker and Smith are, and at least some draft capital and a decent cap situation, so I would expect for them to both benefit from this playoff run and to make a move or two. It will be interesting to see what they do with Siakam.

“The Wing/PG splits exist and put a major dent in this.”

I totally agree that Burks is in no way, shape, or form a PG and it was a mistake to ever count on him in that role except maybe for spot duty. He is 100% a small wing, and best suited for being off the ball with limited creation.

The problem is, McBride is also pretty much a small wing, or at best a defensive combo guard with very limited PG skills. I don’t think that Burks was the PG in his minutes as much as Burks and Deuce were sort of interchangeable. But Deuce was not capable of creating his own shot. Burks could sort of create, but was putting his head down and taking dumb shots without even looking to pass, and also missing every shot he created, so when they were both on the floor the team just couldn’t score. Maybe the shoulder had something to do with it, but I agree that a lot had to do with him being a round peg in a square hole.

“I agree that Burks is not a PG, and should not be used as one. But based on this, why do we have the idea that Thibs tried to use him as one?”

As I said, he wasn’t used as a PG per se, but had PG-type responsibilities because he was out there with Deuce, who is not really a PG either. It’s less about being a PG in the traditional sense and more about being on the ball rather than off.

“Let us say that Burks thrives in the playoffs moving forward. Does his production along with Bog’s production before the injury make the Grimes/two 2nd rounder trade worth it in your eyes?”

Well at least it makes it a discussion. I assumed we were getting this version of Burks when I initially liked the trade, i.e. a version far better than the one Ben R was describing. But I also assumed a much better version of Bojan than what we saw. So in the sense that Burks is delivering what I initially expected at a critical time, if it continues I’d say it was definitely worth it, but would hardly call it the steal that all the pundits and analysts said it was at the time.

“The nice happy middle ground here is that no, Burks did not belong in the dungeon. He should have been the next man up after Bojan went down instead of pushing OG.

However, we all know OG could have gotten injured on that sprint even if he hadn’t been averaging 46 mpg.

And even though Thibs deserved criticism for going to Burks one injury later than he should have, he also deserves credit for going to Burks before it was too late.”

I would call these very reasonable and arguable perspectives, whether I share them or not.

“If 27-year-old Patrick Ewing was in the NBA in 2023-24, that dude would be taking, like, seven threes a game. It’s just a totally different offensive environment nowadays.”

Here’s some highlights from Patrick’s 27yo season (1989-90). He was pretty unguardable that year. He largely posted up but could play facing the basket as well. He had both a power and a finesse game, went across the lane in either direction and could finish with either hand on assorted hooks and up-and-under moves. He had a .599 TS% in a year when league average was .537. This year, Brunson had a .592 TS% when league average is .580.

Ewing’s TS+ of 111.5 that year was slightly higher than Embiid’s was this year. Jalen Brunson’s was 102.

In the playoffs, he utterly demolished the still formidable and highly intelligent Celtics in a 5 game series, shooting 57% from the field and averaging 32-11-4-2-2 in 42mpg. The champion Pistons slowed him down somewhat but hardly stopped him, he put up 27 and 10 on a .560 TS% against a great defensive team while the rest of his teammates struggled.

Ewing’s passing was admittedly never a thing. My biggest gripe against him was that he was not a player who made those around him better. Brunson is head and shoulders above him in that regard. He is also someone who can bring the ball up and score, i.e. isn’t reliant on the pass. Like Melo, his low turnover rate sort of offsets his pedestrian TS%, but unlike Melo, he actually passes! And also unlike Melo, I think he’d be happy to defer if he had another elite scorer on the team.

I loved that Mike Brown said something to the effect that the only other player he blitzes and doubles the way he did to Brunson when he scored 42 against the Kings is Steph. When a coach puts you in the same offensive category as the greatest shooter who ever lived, that says a lot about how good you are.

And like Ewing, he is sort of in a class by himself, so the opposing defense’s game plan starts with trying to keep Brunson from going off. Yet he keeps putting up 40-spots no matter what the defense does. Like Ewing, he does it from everywhere in many different ways, but he’s only 6’1″ and plays below the rim. He plays a different kind of power game, one that bumps defenders off balance so that his footwork will do the rest.

At the end of the day, we might be looking at the most skilled offensive player in Knicks history. I hesitate to fully anoint him because of my reverence for Bernard King and Patrick Ewing. But just to be in that conversation, as a former second round pick who didn’t even start in his first three years for his former team, who we acquired for virtually nothing on a non-superstar salary and who isn’t going anywhere, is pretty fucking awesome. It’s like the pipe dream of Linsanity actually came true, only even better!

“Ewing would have been good if he played today because he was a good shooter. But he was probably helped by his era because he wasn’t a very good passer, and he wasn’t a very good ball handler, and he was slow with his decision making a lot of the time. He certainly wouldn’t be dominating like Embiid today, Embiid is better at everything (when healthy).”

I disagree. If you watch game film from that Celtics-Knicks series in 1990, the entire game was played well inside the 3-pt arc. There was much less space to work in, double-teams come faster, and passing out of double-teams was to cutters, not to dead-eye 3pt shooters spotting up in the corner. It is harder to score with your back to the basket than facing up.

Embiid is not a great ball-handler or decision-maker. He only really started passing this year, and he has a career 1:1 AST/TO ratio. He’s a career 34% 3pt shooter, and 29% in the playoffs. He’s not an elite shot blocker. He’s only made 3 all-defense teams, never first team (same as Ewing). He has melted down in the playoffs in big spots and never gotten past the conference semi’s.

As to health, it’s not like it was easier to stay healthy back in Ewing’s day with the grit and grind, the level of competition, and the sports/medicine science, and the complete lack of load management. Despite chronic knee issues, Ewing played 79 games or more for 8 straight years, usually for 36mpg or more, and did so because he never was overweight or out of shape.

I don’t think Ewing would have had any problem adapting to today’s NBA, he’d be a top-5-7 player in the league just like he was back then, and probably closer to being an MVP.

I can deal with the others but the Craig Porter news really hurts…

I don’t know who Garland is, but I know who he ain’t…he ain’t Jalen Brunson.

These Celts seem vulnerable.