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?It?s all love?: Ryan Arcidiacono, the original ?Nova Knick, has no hard feelings about missing out on their NBA rise – The Philadelphia Inquirer
12/26/2024 10:00:00
Victor Wembanyama Makes Honest Statement After Spurs-Knicks Game – Sports Illustrated
12/26/2024 07:46:31
Spurs? Victor Wembanyama dazzles in Christmas debut, but Knicks escape with win – The Washington Post
12/26/2024 07:12:44
Knicks edge Spurs – Eagle-Tribune
12/26/2024 06:05:42
NBA: Knicks edge Spurs in Christmas thriller – telegraphherald.com
12/26/2024 06:30:00
NBA roundup: Knicks edge Spurs on Christmas Day slate – Herald and News
12/26/2024 06:05:00
San Antonio Spurs vs. New York Knicks: live game updates, stats, play-by-play – Yahoo Sports
12/26/2024 06:31:13
NBA on Christmas Day live results, updates, highlights, analysis: Lakers win wild one to turn back furious Steph Curry rally – Yahoo Sports
12/26/2024 06:02:00
Knicks edge Spurs – Thehour.com
12/26/2024 06:00:00
Christmas Glee, Bridges Leads Knicks Past Wemby and Spurs in Holiday Festival – NY Sports Day
12/26/2024 04:47:54
NBA highlights on Christmas: 76ers, Timberwolves, Knicks, Lakers, Suns win – USA TODAY
12/26/2024 05:19:13
Mikal Bridges helps Knicks hold off Spurs 117-114 – Reuters
12/26/2024 02:50:00
Mikal Bridges, Knicks Stifle Spurs In Christmas Thriller – Sports Illustrated
12/26/2024 03:00:39
OG Anunoby uses special ?gift? to shut down Victor Wembanyama in crunch time for Knicks – New York Post
12/26/2024 03:31:00
Chris Paul hits Spurs with reality check after close loss to Knicks – ClutchPoints
12/26/2024 02:53:00
Knicks 117, Spurs 114: The baseline & the bump – The Strickland
12/26/2024 01:44:55
Knicks edge Spurs – Idaho State Journal
12/26/2024 02:10:00
Knicks edge Spurs – The Caledonian-Record
12/26/2024 02:10:00
Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama has blunt explanation for loss to Knicks – ClutchPoints
12/26/2024 02:08:00
Knicks 117, Spurs 114: “Hell of a game to start off Christmas.” – Posting and Toasting
12/26/2024 01:40:46
61 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.12.26)”
Nice win, Mikal Bridges had a huge game, Wemby’s going to dominate the League an it’s a nice sign to win games when so many of our players have a bad-to-mediocre day.
20-10 is a nice record for a brand new team, and it looks like we’re trending in the right direction, now we should prepare for another dogfight in Orlando and a couple of games in Washington to close out the calendar year.
Adam Silver must be happy, it was a great day of basketball, all the games were tight, the League’s future shined under MSG’s bright lights and the established stars keep it going.
Hell of a group of games yesterday, starting with the Mikal Masterpiece for us. The NBA is… good?
Re yesterday’s convo about Victor and his shot profile – hilarious quote from him yesterday
Honestly – I know he wanted the game badly and that he’s only 20, but this feels like a worrisome quote to me. By all accounts he’s supposed to be about all the right stuff, but it feels just a little like he thinks basketball is about pointzzzz and 30 foot 3s and not about all the little stuff that goes into winning basketball. The dude is literally an alien and is already a top 5 player in the league (if not top 3) but it’s not a great quote, even if just from a player who lost a heartbreaker.
Anyway – that game was really fun.
Wonder if Brunson is nursing an injury – did not seem to have his usual pop yesterday. He’s had a bunch of stinkers lately other than that one explosion game against New Orleans.
Meanwhile not sure how many of you guys are on Bluesky but Ben Stiller basically live blue-sky-ing Knicks games is really fantastic. (what is the proper term for tweeting on Bluesky?)
Also – Chris Paul is still really really really good at basketball. I feel like his the Spurs just spammed the CP3/Wemby PNR they would score 150 points/game.
Blueing
I’d have to go back and actually rewatch the 4th quarter – but from start of 4Q to 6:34 left, Victor went 5/5 from the field with 4 alley-oops/layups and one 3 pointer. At 6:34, Thibs took KAT out and replaced him with Precious, and from memory it was mostly OG and Precious guarding Victor from right around then.
Then in the last 6:34 – Victor went 0/3 with 2 missed 3’s and a missed pull-up 16 footer, not to mention 4 offensive rebounds given up by the Spurs in the last 3.5 minutes. I’m not sure whether it was great defense by OG/Precious (I do remember two great contests by OG) or whether he just ran out of steam – he did end up playing the entire 4th quarter.
I thought that was a bad quote by Wemby also, but he’s very young. Right now his focus is on developing his skills. In another couple of years he’ll be focusing on how to win games like Josh Hart. 😉
It will be interesting to watch how the Spurs build around him.
He’s so impactful on both sides already, they aren’t going to be bad enough to add star players via draft unless they get lucky. At the same time, I’m sure both the Spurs (seasoning) and NBA (ratings) want him in the playoffs ASAP. That’s why they brought in CP3 and Barnes even though the timelines are so different.
If I was CP3 I’d want to stick around another year or two. If they can add one more impactful piece via trade they might be able to make some noise and CP3 could get one last run.
Our 1 through 5 elite switchable defender that has no offense game and that we paid way too much for did a good job on him. 😉
Wemby is going to turn 21 next week. His stats are MVP-level. He takes a few bad shots but the suggestion that he’s possibly ingraining bad habits seems alarmist to me. He’ll figure it out, you can bet the farm on it.
He also hit a 30’er that was waived off at that time.
I’m sure that if the KB archive stretched back to 2004, we’d see people pointing to LeBron’s shot-selection and postgame quotes to try to convince ourselves we’d see the finals again within the next two decades. And if it stretched back to 1985, we’d see the same said about Jordan. The reality is, come next year, it’s basically over for everybody else.
Unfortunately, I would have enjoyed the game a lot more if KAT had shown up. He was a -13 and got benched in crunch time. I get that he put up decent efficiency stats, but the propensity for bad fouls is really bugging me. Especially since, unlike Wemby, he is not about to turn 21.
I guess you can say that at least for Christmas Day, it looked like we lost the trade ;-D
The game was a really good one. Josh Hart would be my favorite player in the league if he played for the Sixers.
It’s a weird quote because…is “getting key rebounds” somehow not part of playing “better basketball?” I think most players and spectators of the sport think it is, actually.
Nevertheless, Wemby is already a force to be reckoned with and could be the consensus best player in the NBA as soon as next season. There were times going up against him felt absolutely hopeless, but we did what we had to do by running up the score in the non-Wemby minutes and scoring in the ways he could only impact so much, which is to say “by letting Mikal Bridges cook like prime Michael Jordan.”
Also, he flies under the radar because *gestures at the basketball player created in a lab* but Sochan looks really solid. Had some great passes, finishes, and IIRC gave Brunson some serious trouble.
The Spurs are 8-1 when they make 40% or more of their 3s. We didn’t shoot that well and beat a decent team that did.
I was also impressed by Sochan, although as someone pointed out, he normally hits 25% of his 3’s so seeing him go 3-3 was a bit disorienting. But between the hair, gap toothed grin, one-handed FTs, and Josh Hart-like energy, he’s great for the game. Probably strained the AI generator for the alternate broadcast.
PS did anyone else get a kick out of KAT being played by Goofy? I wonder how he felt about it…
The proper term for posting on the other site is BS-ing
Sometimes your best player has a bad game. Sometimes your two best players have bad games. The fact that we actually have FOUR starters who have the ability to go for 30 points when hot is pretty spectacular.
Meanwhile, the Wolves suddenly played winning basketball when Ant took the bulk of their shots and Randle chose to contain himself… interesting.
i thought the players got to choose which character they were…
You know, since Randle and Ant scored about the same number of points I figured you were wrong and they each took a similar number of shots . . . But then I checked the box score. Randle scored 23 points and Ant scored 26 points. But Randle only took 13 shots and Ant took 24. Randle did get ten free throws and Ant had none. Weird. Randle also had 10 rebounds and 8 assists while Ant had 8 rebounds and 5 assists. I have to say, those two guys seem to be driving the team.
“The Spurs are 8-1 when they make 40% or more of their 3s. We didn’t shoot that well and beat a decent team that did.”
In looking at the Spurs stats page, seems like outside of Wemby they are not good at all. CP3 is a shell of who he was, Harrison Barnes sucks, and everyone else other than Sochan has a negative BPM. It would have been terribly embarrassing to lose that nationally televised game at home on Christmas, and we only won because of a sensational performance by Mikal.
Yet more evidence for me to believe that the real season starts in January. Looking at the schedule, it’s a great mix of tough (OKCx2, MIL, PHI, MEM, DEN), moderate (ORL w Banchero back, ATL, CHI, SAC), and easy-ish (UTA, DET, TOR, BKN) games. Assuming good health, anything less than 9-6 would suggest that we haven’t reached contender status, since we will no longer have the “we’re still gelling” excuse.
I still have vivid memories of the exceptional defense OG and Precious played on Joel Embiid & Tyrese Maxey in game 4. Those two have a dynamic connection and elite ability to switch between guards and bigs.
In both instances, Thibs only went to it because of foul trouble on his main center (iHart in game 4, Towns yesterday). I’m kind of glad he doesn’t go to that well too often, but at the same time it seems like something he could use more (he never went back to it in the Philly series; in fact this is probably the first time we’ve seen in deployed against a big since that game 4).
Mitch, iHart and Kat for that matter are NOT comfortable defending a 3 point shooting center. OG is perfect for this role becuase he can hold his own as a 1v1 defender in the post from a taller but thinner center as well.
OG is the solution that must be utilized in this role for ~15+ minutes against both Indiana and Boston this postseason.
yes!!!
give me more wemby with a cp3 attitude…
goodness knows that dude has shelves of championships…oh wait…
after the cp3 experiment, san antonio may wanna bring in some folks who’ve won a chip or two…
Wemby is clearly modelling his game after Andrea Bargnani.
PR is a skill like any other, sounds like he just misspoke trying to say the Knicks got a few lucky bounces, which is said frequently and amounts to the same thing.
Wemby had a 40% usage, grabbed 18 rebounds, and basically is their defense, he’s probably exhausted. If he needs to launch a 30fter once in awhile instead of fighting for post position, that’s absolutely fine. If anything, he needs better teammates.
Btw, he hit 40% of his 3s from 29+ ft, shots which tend to be more open than the shots at the 3pt line. Maybe he usually misses more of them, but they didn’t look like an issue to me last night.
The Spurs are missing an initiatior and their guys can either shoot a bit or do stuff at the rim but not both. Sochan is a nice player and I like Champagnie
Mikal’s stats in 11 December games are mind-boggling.
40 mpg
22.7 pts
57.7 FG%
.469 3PT%
.690 TS%
His usage is on the low side at 19.8% and he still doesn’t get to the line at all, but this version of Mikal at least justifies the exorbitant cost in draft capital.
This Bridges is worth 5 picks. He finally showed some of his on-ball skills in the 4th quarter. Meanwhile, he’s looking like an elite movement shooter off the ball.and he’s staying attached to the hip around screens. Absolutely brilliant performance by Bridges.
disconnected a bit from my knicks’ mania…
back in july told bestest friend to geo I’d be back in a few weeks when I last left…
very blessed to get let back in the door…my sense of time and urgency doesn’t always connect so well with others…
like everything else, work in progress…
also fortunate to have the chance to enjoy that always gorgeous san jose weather, oh wait, it’s overcast up here, and the poor santa cruz boardwalk is slipping in to the ocean…
the central coast part of california has some of my favorite parts, more so than anywhere else i’ve been…i’d like to check out things along the northern coast of the state at some point…
it’s funny, even with lowered temps (about 20 degrees lower from home), the surrounding water keeps these very pleasantly cool…
I can breathe a lot better up here for sure…
more merry holidays…
CP3 is definitely a shell of himself, but he still made plenty of impressive plays and isn’t a fatal liability on defense, by my eye. Honestly, I think it’s pretty cool that he chose to help develop the NBA’s next behemoth instead of ring chase, and he’s doing a damn good job of it.
There’s definitely been more of a spring in Mikal’s defensive step as his shot has started falling. I won’t hazard a guess as to whether the two are related but regardless he’s been everything we could’ve hoped for, more even, for the last 20 games or so. I guess the start was genuinely just a prolonged adjustment period. Weird, but no harm no foul.
Re: OG, it’s probably true that we don’t deploy him on opposing elite bigs, either primarily or in help, as often as we could, but it’s also probably true that like Hubert said it’s best saved for when we really need it. The fact that it’s a genuinely intriguing option shows you why the guy would probably start for 30 NBA teams.
From AI…”According to recent data, Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama’s 3-point shooting percentage from beyond 28 feet is currently around 34%.”
For a guy who shoots 74% at the rim shooting 3s at a 34% clip is ultra bad efficiency.
Not understanding why this is controversial.
Well he’s shooting .848 from inside of 3 feet, so maybe he should eliminate all shots from beyond that range…
OG is only shooting 35.7% from 3…maybe he should stop taking those inefficient shots.
Josh Hart is a career 34.7% 3pt shooter, maybe he shouldn’t be taking them at all.
Sorry, Bob, you are making waaaaay too much of this.
Brunson’s efficiency was bad yesterday (20 points on 23 shots) but I didn’t get a sense he had a bad game. He missed mid range shots he usually makes and absolutely should take, and he had 9 assists (1 TO) and 7 rebounds. Pretty great for a sub-par game.
If Hart and OG shot 80+% at the rim I would agree with you.
Chet is as close to a Wemby clone (young even more frail and highly skilled) and he takes 40% of the 3s Wemby takes and more that twice as many corner threes. He also shoots them 2% better than Wemby.
“CP3 is definitely a shell of himself, but he still made plenty of impressive plays and isn’t a fatal liability on defense, by my eye. Honestly, I think it’s pretty cool that he chose to help develop the NBA’s next behemoth instead of ring chase, and he’s doing a damn good job of it.”
Agreed, except that there’s an outside chance that SAS actually does win a ring in the next 2-3 years and he can hang around as a 10-15 mpg reserve if he can stay close to who he is right now. He looks way better than Kyle Lowry does right now. In fact, maybe that’s where Jimmy Butler should target for a trade…
It is funny to see that the only people who don’t seem anxious about how Wembanyama gets used are the Spurs. Everyone in their organization has said multiple times they’re fine with Wemby developing in his own pace and that they’re not in a hurry, they understand he’s still super young and should be developed carefully.
The 74% close to the rim will always be there for a guy who’s this tall, agile and supremely skilled, this is precisely the time to develop the rest of his game.
He also really doesn’t seem like a pointzz guy at all to me, there’s been multiple reports of him being absolutely furious when he loses and how he takes accountability and works hard on his mistakes.
The only real issue for the Spurs is that he Doncic’s their rebuild by being too good too fast, but they’ve got some interesting pieces with Sochan, Vassell and Castle already and these guys are all on cheap contracts still.
By those numbers Wemby is more efficient from 28+ ft than he is shooting from 3-10ft. I guess if anyone could dunk the ball on every play it’d be him, otherwise it’s not that bad of a shot.
He probably needs to get stronger to consistently score closer to the basket. He also probably needs teammates who don’t force him to take 40% of the usage.
Looking at their spotrac data, seems like the time for the Spurs to go all in will be in offseason 2026. But damn, Wemby is so good, part of me thinks why wait until then? They seem to be like two stars away from winning the West, and some teams are dying to get or stay below that second apron. Seems like it will be a buyer’s market for teams with cap space, but the league expansion thing could impact things as well.
Maybe Wemby could stand to cut out a few 3PA here and there, but the fact that his PPS is higher on shots at the rim tells you literally nothing. It was true of Steve Novak in 2012-2013 too. It’s probably true of 99% of NBA players, give or take.
Thing is, you can’t dunk the ball on every possession, so you have to take some other shot types too.
In any event this is a silly nitpick. The guy can’t buy a beer and will be a deserving member of an all-NBA team. Give it a rest.
If my game was a high volume combo scoring guard that didn’t like to defend, I would force my way to SAS to play with Wemby and turbo charge my career.
Every player in the top 8 by minutes played has a TS% of at least .579. None of the starters is below .586. I could cry.
If Jimmy Butler was 5 years younger, him + Wemby would be really fucking scary together… hell they might be scary now with 35 year old Butler.
Wemby doesn’t dunk the ball as much as someone his size should be, (OG has more dunks than him, for example) You’d figure he should be at least top 5
An analytic discussion is a silly nitpick when you don’t have a good answer to the 105th best 3 point shooter in the league hoisting up the 8th most attempts.
Change the coaches name from Pop to Thibs and all hell would be breaking loose here. But, whatever… back to the Bridges overpay discussion….
I’m not sure its a nit pick situation. Think it’s more of a fundamental approach.
Wemby’s #1 comparative advantage is his athleticism @ his height and length. Basketball skills and shooting are secondary. If he was a foot shorter, – he’d still be in France.
With this in mind, his game should be a fusion between Kareem/Wilt/Hakeem and KD/Melo/Tmac instead of a fusion between KD and Steph that he’s working on developing.
He’s going to end up being one of the top 25 all-time players regardless. It’s an unbelivable floor.
However, if he did his work inside and developed a hook shot, footwork, turnaround and midrange pulls ups and then add his finishing, slashing and 3 point shot, – he could one day enter GOAT conversation.
My two cents is that the just likes and prefers playing this way and the organization decided its better to just let him be himself than force him out of his comfort zone and risk upsetting him. It’s likely a generational thing rather than pure basketball play.
Fred Katz:
Lew Alcindor was dunk unstoppable. The NCAA outlawed the dunk because of him and the sky hook was born. Pop is doing the NCAA treatment to Wemby at the same age as Kareem. Kareem still could dunk afterwards. That’s what you do with someone who you think has no athletic boundaries.
Bob, I don’t think anyone is arguing that you are wrong…I, for one, agree with your premise. It’s about the here and now vs. the future that make it seem like a nitpick. Speaking for myself, I just think there is no need to force him into his most efficient and effective self right now. There’s plenty of time for that.
From AI…”According to recent data, Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama’s 3-point shooting percentage from beyond 28 feet is currently around 34%.”
For a guy who shoots 74% at the rim shooting 3s at a 34% clip is ultra bad efficiency.
Not understanding why this is controversial.
never trust allen iverson he’s known to hallucinate. wemby is 39.4% (26-66) from 28 plus this year and 46% from 29 plus.
“never trust allen iverson he’s known to hallucinate. wemby is 39.4% (26-66) from 28 plus this year and 46% from 29 plus.”
LOL!
Welp, that puts a different light on things, doesn’t it? Wemby has to learn to eliminate those inefficient 28 footers and shoot nothing inside of 29 feet.
I wouldn’t count on Mikal becoming a consistent high usage scorer. He’s still 3rd option behind Brunson and Towns and OG is also going to continue getting up shots. There are only so many shots in a game.
What this December period is demonstrating is that if someone is hurt, in foul trouble, has a tough matchup or he has an easy one, he can step up and remain very efficient on higher usage than when he was on the Suns.
That is what I was hoping for before the Towns trade. I was wondering whether he could be an efficient 2nd option behind Brunson. His December results are hinting that he might have been able to handle it, but he can certainly handle being a 3rd option that can step up to 2nd option when required.
The funny thing is that he’s playing so well on offense now (which I was never worried about) I haven’t been paying as much attention to his defense or how he’s being used defensively. I’m just assuming he’s also playing a bit better on that side because the team is playing so well when he’s on the court. His defense was always my only worry.
Maybe Wemby’s shot selection has more to do with spacing and maximizing the team TS% than maximizing his own TS%.
Back in the days when KP was in Dallas he took plenty of 3s well past the 3 point line that made no sense from his perspective. They were impacting his own efficiency negatively. But the goal wasn’t to maximize his stats. The goal was to maximize the space for Doncic and other non shooters to operate.
The Spurs are not exactly loaded with shooters that will provide space for Wemby. They have some players that will do better with space that he provides by dragging the opposing C out. So for now, it may be a team oriented strategy. When they ultimately surround him with all shooters, they may shift his ratio of inside and outside shots and worry less about dragging big men way out.
Here’s a great film breakdown of Mikal’s game yesterday by Benji Ritholtz. Amazing stuff.
It was a Merry Knicksmas indeed…
I was gifted a pair of orange & blue Dunks. I call them my Nike Brunson Lindors(as I am a Mets fan too). Or is it SotoKATS? OG Alvarez? Mikal Nimmos? SengaHarts? I dunno…LOL
Only one thing about the game. HOLY SHIT WEMBY IS NOT OF THIS WORLD!
An underrated aspect of Mikal putting up a highly efficient 41 is that he did it with all of one (1) FTA. That’s what we call Ethical Hooping.
Obviously foul baiting is a value add, but an ethical 41 is both more viscerally impressive and aesthetically pleasing than a 50+ game in which we get to see the player really go into his free throw shooting bag.
I suspect he benefits more from the extra space between him and his defender when shooting from 29ft than he loses by being slightly further away.
Would anyone here grab Ben Simmons should he get bought out, and play him as our 2nd unit 4 alongside Achiuwa, Deuce, Payne, and maybe Shamet?
Pat Riley’s late-stage Vito Corleone era is a sight to behold.
We can’t sign him, Poindexter. We’re over the first apron, so we are ineligible to sign buyout players who make the non taxpayer minimum or more.
Since Wemby doesn’t have to come off a screen, or create space, or be assisted, he should probably shoot a 3 on every possession. Surround him with a few Josh Harts and let him just dribble down and shoot. Even if he only shoots 30%, that’s still enough to win given that very little energy gets spent on the offensive side by anybody.
7’4 designated shooter. Love it
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