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Karl-Anthony Towns? foul-trouble issues aren?t going away – New York Post
12/28/2024 10:04:00
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What Is Cameron Payne?s Ethnicity? Tracing Knicks Star?s Family Roots and More – EssentiallySports
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Knicks overwhelm Magic in second half for sixth straight win | SportsNite – sny.tv
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N.Y. Knicks 108, Orlando 85 – Midland Daily News
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Knicks extend winning streak to 6 games with a 108-85 win over Magic – Bozeman Daily Chronicle
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67 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.12.28)”
Yes it is but they are on vacation for the holidays until 9 AM January 6th. Then they can be found live @: https://www.2way.tv/
Interestingly, you can hook up to them via Zoom and they take questions from the audience for the last 30 minutes of the show. The first 30 minutes they discuss the salient issues of the day and then they throw the floor open to comments from the listeners.
Halperin has a show by himself with guests called “The Evening Meeting” which is similar at 6 PM weeknights.
BPS, thanks very much. I was about to repost, but thankfully you beat me to it.
I mean BPL, not BPS
I was at a 3 hr Shabatt diner last night, so I didn’t see it sooner. I think you will find The Morning Meeting the most objective/balanced forum around, if you like that sort of thing. Many on either side do not and prefer to live in their respective echo chambers, sure of the rectitude of their positions.
It looks like (didn’t see the game) the Knick’s D was good in the second half?
By that point, the game was already physical and drawn by an avalanche of whistles, including a flagrant foul on Suggs for elbowing Towns in the mouth.
Hart stepped into that environment and took over in ways that have defined his career.
“My game is very simple,” he said. “I don’t go out there and try to do ball screens and 18 dribbles, dribble combos and all that. I keep it simple. If I don’t got a layup or a shot, I swing the ball, get these guys the ball. And fit in around them.”
Not an aesthetically pleasing game by any means, but an important one. We’ve shown we can win when our 3s are falling and the ball movement is beautiful, but we’ve struggled when we can’t hit from distance and the opposing D gets really physical. But after a sluggish start, we destroyed a very physical team in a total rock fight, taking our offense largely inside the arc when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen for us from downtown. Yes, the Magic are an anemic offensive team without Franz and Banchero, but they’ve also beaten some excellent teams in this iteration. Us being able to outslug them and beat them at their game, when our game wasn’t really working, says a lot about our toughness and versatility going forward.
Also? My wife, watching Thibs pacing the sidelines towards the end of the game: “He just always looks like he can’t find what he’s looking for in a grocery aisle.”
Adapting to the environment and finding a way to win in different circumstances is good, it was a good win against a depleted but feisty team.
Josh’s comments explain what I meant when during the game I wrote that he “plays throught the cracks of the game”.
He’s always moving, cutting, spotting up as a safety valve for last second passes, he’s relentless under the boards and always looking for the cutters on offense.
One tends to forgive his customary 2-3 dumb plays because he makes so many winning things and with so much energy.
He’s a fantastic glue guy and a perfect fifth man for this lineup.
The Captain is 0-12 from three in the last 3 games and tonight’s a good night to break the streak.
I’ll like KAT to be better too, after a lousy low energy game.
And please, hit your free throws guys!
That Jalen and KAT have had a few middling-to-bad games in a row, and we’ve still one, is also cause for optimism, Max. Brunson is not going to keep struggling with his shot like this, and KAT is going to dominate on offense far more often than he doesn’t. So if we have the other things working like they have lately, and one or both of those guys is back on their games… that would be especially fun to watch.
I agree Alan, winning when our stars aren’t playing their best games, or the bench is giving us close to nothing on offense, is very encouraging.
Also, I’m getting used to our relatively slow starts and I’m taking the habit of not worrying during games until we’re down by double figure at the end of the third quarter… 🙂
Also, it’s good to see that Shamet has returned to the rotation. It’s less reassuring, though, that Thibs is getting so tight with the second-half rotations. Macri noted that Deuce and Precious were our only reserves to appear in the second half until Thibs emptied the bench in the last minute or so. I get that Payne wasn’t playing well, and this was a tight game for a while, but once we opened the lead to double digits, Shamet at a minimum could have given somebody a breather for a minute or two.
Somehow these bums have the fifth best expected win loss in the NBA. Hard to believe given all the sturm und drang!
I tried out the morning meeting, to me the juice was not worth the squeeze. Very inside baseball yet didn’t feel like I learned anything worthwhile. It did remind me that Halperin is a sex abuser dweeb so tbh there was nothing unique about it that would be worth tuning in to…
This is 💯 gonna be in my head for every time they cut to Thibs tonight, that’s hilarious!
This is perfect.
Also, leave it to Thibs to expand his rotation and yet find a way to play his starters even more minutes.
I found last night’s game more worrisome than relieving. If anything, it provided a game plan for better opponents. The Magic are a strong defensive team, but horrific on offense. We beat them because they couldn’t score in the second half and Suggs was stupid enough to unnecessarily get into foul trouble, and possibly because they ran out of gas on night 2 of a B2B, not because our offense really figured anything out.
The alarming thing for me is that KAT was once again completely taken out of the game, and in a way that really didn’t open up anything for anyone else. Sorry, that it totally unacceptable for a so-called offensive superstar. When that happens, you have to reckon with him giving you absolutely nothing on the defensive end. And once again, he picked up at least two bad fouls. It was Julius bad game-level frustrating for me.
This is why I keep saying that while beating up on bad or undermanned teams is nice, it doesn’t really tell me anything about how we will fare against top teams at full health. We’re not beating any contender-level team the way we played last night.
Sure looks like Thibs is rebuilding that defense around the strengths of Anunoby and Bridges, doesn’t it? It also helps that KAT and Brunson are playing really hard on defense. Last night was some of the best defense I’ve seen from Brunson- n9t counting the charges he draws night in and night out.
“Sure looks like Thibs is rebuilding that defense around the strengths of Anunoby and Bridges, doesn’t it? It also helps that KAT and Brunson are playing really hard on defense. Last night was some of the best defense I’ve seen from Brunson- n9t counting the charges he draws night in and night out.”
Yeah, but Orlando without Wagner and Banchero is the worst offensive team in the league. If your defense can’t look good against them, especially on the tail end of a B2B, you got problems.
We have the best ORtg and DRtg against the Franz-less Magic.
Orlando had a better Ortg in games against the 1st, 7th, and twice against the 9th ranked defenses.
The Magic have only played teams .500 or better and gone 3-3 against teams not named the New York Knicks. They beat Boston, Miami and Phoenix. The 3 non-Knick losses, including OKC & MIL, were by a combined 12 points. We beat them by 28 points.
In the mean time the Cavs keep making the case they are as good as anyone in the NBA. I knew they were going to be very good this year, but I didn’t think they’d be this good. If Mobley and LeVert are going to continue hitting over 40% of their 3s, they can beat anyone. They have several players having career years from 3 (Okoro also). I suspect LeVert will come back down to earth, but Mobley is very young and may be breaking out into legitimate stardom.
That is true. But..I think this recent stretch of good defense is giving the team confidence to play their way on that end. Like KAT said post-game, “When we’re allowed to be physical- that’s when we’re at our best..”. It’s in a Thibs team’s DNA to out-muscle, out-hustle, and outwork the other team- regardless of what kind of offense we have. And it looks like that mentality is beginning to mesh with our offensive capabilities. So regardless of who we play, that confidence is good for the team. Now the guys have just got to carry that everywhere they go. I didn’t expect us to be playing this well until Mitch got back and settled in, but it seems like they are making it work. Scary thing is- they can be better. They have got to clean up that 3pt defense though…sheesh lol
Further to the on-going 2s vs 3s debate:
https://open.substack.com/pub/neilpaine/p/nba-teams-might-genuinely-be-taking?r=2rlwo&utm_medium=ios
“We have the best ORtg and DRtg against the Franz-less Magic.”
We played them on the 2nd night of a B2B, the first game of which was a heartbreaking loss.
“They beat Boston…”
…without Jayson Tatum
“…Miami…”
…without Jimmy Butler
“…and Phoenix.”
…without Durant.
“The 3 non-Knick losses, including OKC & MIL, were by a combined 12 points. We beat them by 28 points.”
We played them on the 2nd night of a B2B, the first game of which was a heartbreaking loss. Our coach still had the starters in when we were up over 20 with 4 minutes left.
I think this is a case where the Knicks are good, but not quite as good as our SRS suggests. I don’t calculate injury and schedule included SRS anymore. It’s too time consuming. But if I did, I suspect ours would show that we’ve had better than average luck with injuries and we’ve had better than average luck with opponent injuries. So instead of our SRS being +6.22 it might be in the +5 range or even a tad lower. That’s still very good, but there’s a gap between us and the very best teams. In that intuitive calculation, I’m not including Mitch because I have no idea how minutes he’s going to play and if he’ll be any good. So on the plus side, he’s a bit of a wildcard.
We’ve played the 27th softest schedule in the NBA thus far. Even some of our better opponents were missing key starters.
I count two “signature” wins: @ Denver (w/o Gordon), and @ Minny. Every other win has come either too early in the season to tell you anything, or against a mediocre to bad team, or against a team missing one of it’s stars.
I don’t think we have any idea how good this team is yet. All we have shown is that we can win in multiple ways against teams we should beat, and that we can beat any of the better (but mostly compromised) teams we have played other than CLE, ATL, or BOS. We have yet to be tested since the prolonged gelling period. That test is coming next week, starting next Friday @ OKC.
I’m not putting us down, just emphasizing that we can’t draw any but the most obvious conclusions from what we have done thus far. I am interested to see what our offensive and defensive ratings will be just for the month of January. If our ORtg is top-5-ish and DRtg is top-15-ish, then I’ll be more excited than I am right now.
BTW, two teams that have played even easier schedules than us are the Cavs and Grizz, and the Celts and Thunder have also had easy schedules thus far. Maybe the fans of those teams should be having this conversation as well…
I am more positive now than a few weeks back given-
1. Bridges rounding into form
2. Achoowha and Shamet providing at least the promise of replacement level minutes more often than not
3. The “thibs mentality” appears to be taking hold and there is some grit being displayed most evenings
…however, in the Zman camp….proof will be in the puddin’ in the next few months…seems like they have a few more gears to find even if they stumble against some of the elite…and as long as they don’t tune out thibs…the spring should be fun…given the Rangers have collapsed…its all I got to look forward too..
well…i did get my Dame 9’s in the mail today…dang…that is a good looking shoe!
There is a 30-game stretch from January 3 to March 10 that will define this regular season for me:
OKC X 2
BOS X 2
ATL X 2
PHI X 2
MEM X 2
LAL X 2
CHI X 2
SAC X 2
CLE
IND
MIL
MIA
MIN
HOU
DEN
GSW
LAC
Plus BKN, TOR X 2, ORL, DET.
Assuming reasonably good health, anything less than, say, 17-13 will be underwhelming. Meaning, we should beat all 5 of the teams on the bottom of the list and go at least .500 vs. the rest. Is that fair?
trying to enjoy each and every moment of this season…
it’s tough at times because I want to keep projecting in to the post season…
i like our record and how we play ball…
it’s been said a bunch already, but yeah it’s neat to see us go up against a scrappy team like the magic…not so long ago that was us- well coached middling talent that plays hard 😊
now we’re starting to hit up against higher expectations…
glad we finish the year with 2 against the wiz…
those dame’s are definitely some nice kicks…
mostly a new balance guy myself, always liked puma and addidas shoes though over nike for style…
To me it’s absolutely fair and that stretch will say a lot about “where” we stand in the totem pole.
Happy Holidays Knickerbloggers one and all!
Been in the Costa Rican forests this past week for the holidays (and my birthday, but I only resemble JC…). Been a pleasure reading the site, but wasn’t able to post, to everyone’s undoubted pleasure. Lots of things I COULD have said, but had to bite my lip and move on…
Coming on for my favorite quote of the day in The Athletic, regarding the little dust-up with Dallas: “Nurkić mushed Marshall’s head…”
Looked like a pretty solid head slap, but I’m liking “mushed” for that…
Hope we have an actual lead after the first quarter tonight. And hope everyone had (and is still having) a good break!
Yo Raven, welcome back and belated Happy Birthday!
Welcome back, Raven! Sounds like an awesome trip!
It’s just kind of hard to assemble a robust strength of schedule in the East. You have the Cavs, the Celtics, the Knicks, and then question marks all the way down (I’d include the healthy Magic in the former group).
Ultimately a 20+ point road win is always good news, and while I stand by my bitching about key players being in towards the end, it does seem like Thibs is legitimately trying to go to 9-men, which would be welcome.
I was just saying to someone who was issuing a pretty standard grievance about the lack of stylistic diversity in the NBA that the Knicks are kind of the antidote, right?
We could probably stand to take more 3s, but we’re on the precipice of having the best offense in the NBA despite having an unusual number of guys who like to operate creatively between the rim and the 3PT line.
Brunson and his maestro level little-guy-post-moves and fadeaways is chief among them, but KAT, Mikal, and even Deuce to an extent are all also vintage bucket getters. What makes it actually aesthetically appealing is that it works.
TNFH yeah but it applies to OKC and MEM as well. It almost seems like a purposeful Adam Silver thing.
Anyway, it is what it is and we know that the schedule has been kind to us. That 30-game stretch ahead has always been out there, I’d put that up against any SOS in the NBA for such a stretch even based on preseason W-L projections. The opposite is true for our games 5-34. It makes it hard to gauge how well our “stylistic diversity” is actually working beyond being good enough to consistently beat shitty or undermanned teams that any top-8 team with a healthy roster should beat.
Hey Raven, glad you’re having fun in Costa Rica. I keep hearing about – and seeing YouTube vids – on how it’s a popular landing spot for ex-pats. Have you spent enough time there to opine on that?
Would love to have The Deuce McBride Game tonight.
i was puma clydes in my youth…then had a brief stint with Nike…then to Adidas…pretty much been Adidas for hoops since then…
I did a few stints in Costa Rica…Raven…did you do Manuel Antonio?
I feel you. I think we should just keep in mind that two key bench pieces (Achuiwa and Shamet) just made recent-ish returns and they’re working their way into the flow of things.
Question for the group: I’m seeing a story that Ben Simmons may be bought out by the Nets in Feb. Is he worth a shot as a bench pieces if he’s gettable?
I’m gonna put it in bold this time, because it keeps coming up:
We cannot sign Ben Simmons if he is bought out. As a team over the first apron, we are not allowed to sign any players who were making at or above the full taxpayer midlevel exception at the time they were bought out.
Any potential depth piece will likely have to come via trade. The Venn diagram of players who could get into the Thibs Circle of Trust, are currently making less than the TPMLE, and are likely to get bought out by their current team is very, very small. It might even be empty.
Hey CDiggy, Costa Rica is lovely, and definitely livable if you want to be off the grid globally. It’s effing hot and humid, though. Dry season now, and it still rained pretty much every day, and I doubt the humidity dropped below 80% at any point, and mostly hovered in the 90s. If you like to sweat, it’s great. However, one of the few lower income countries where you can drink the tap water — go figure. That alone makes it a worthwhile consideration.
The whole country is wild for ‘pura vida’ — pure life, living sustainably and protecting nature. Great pride in that, very different from my homeland. Of course most of the country is environmentally fucked, although it has formally protected over 25% of the land, which is comparatively excellent. Oil palm plantations taking over the banana plantations, however. Fairly low crime rate, seems politically stable but what do I know, pleasant and welcoming attitude. Driving is chaotic, but I’ve seen worse in the Bronx. Most people go slow, which limits the threat.
Gotta watch out for the capuchins, though. Had to fight them off having breakfast in open-air cafes. Lady Raven had her toast stolen from under her nose…
How’re the Lakers fans these days? Seems like a completely psychotic season for them…
Gotcha. Thank you Alan.
One way for the League to keep “rich” teams from getting richer I suppose
right now we have 9 useful players for our coach to use, 10 when mitch returns…
with limited/no draft capital we will have to give to get…
i didn’t think KAT could stay at center the whole season, but he may just do that, and do it well (defense being acceptable)…
mikal and KAT were both a big surprise, I imagine if we do get another player that’ll be surprising too…
a 4/5 like ben who can handle and move the ball would be nice, especially if he can provide some rim protection…
Edit: so, not only are we low on draft capital, we also seem to be a little light on roster funds…
Lol all “Coaches of the Year” since 2018 have now been fired except… (drum roll)…
That’s right: Tommy T
trying to imagine being in a place where monkeys are just hanging out chilling and doing their thing…
that is wild…travel safe and enjoy raven 😊
I think Precious has been a perfectly cromulent backup for these 10 games. He has been a plus defender at the 4 and 5. He has looked shaky as hell with the ball in his hands, with so many turnovers and missed opportunities at the rim, but I attribute that mostly to rust and/or nervousness. It’s hard for me to imagine us getting someone any better without having to kick in additional assets. What does everyone else think?
It’s basically a question of whether we think that one more depth piece will give us a realistic shot at a title this year — or, at least, if that one more depth piece would be under contract long enough for it to be worth us getting him now versus later. Even if we don’t want to touch our top 6 guys(*), we have some stuff to trade: a 2030 pick swap, the fugazi Wizards pick (which would still convert into two relatively high seconds), one or more of the rookies, some useful contracts, etc. It would just clean us out of everything other than the top 6 guys. Whereas we’ll have the ability to trade more stuff in the offseason.
Capuchins are evil. Years ago saw one eating a squirrel like an ice cream cone. Do not fuck with capuchins.
Pepper, did do Manuel. Lovely spot, but as the most accessible park on the Pacific side, and during the holidays, it was like Disneyland with sloths. Still fun.
If anyone goes down and hits up Corcovado (big park in the south), be sure to have someone take you inland to see new and different. I took a boat to the coastal area, which was a nice walk but like every other coconut coastal stroll. Live and learn.
Also, swimming in the ocean is, well, different. Had a 12-foot croc grinning in the surf when de-boating at one point. And got to see a young lady post-stingray. She was having no fun at all.
SRS includes quality of competition.
What it doesn’t include is injuries, home/away adjustments if you’ve had an unbalanced distribution early in the season and scheduling (a lot of back to backs, 3 out of 4 and in the old days 4 out 5 etc..). That’s why years ago I’d make adjustments to include those things.
Like I said earlier, I think our SRS needs to be adjusted down on the injury issue, but that’s not a huge adjustment because they are individual games in a group. It’s not like have an injury edge every single game. There may even be a bit of an offset in that in a couple of our blowout wins we really eased off the gas a LOT and the margin narrowed quite a bit because the deeper part of our bench is pretty bad.
All else being equal, when we start running into the best teams when they are healthy, I think teams like Boston, OKC and maybe Cleveland if they keep shooting like this are likely to have a mildly positive record against us as a group, we’ll be close to 50-50 with the next tier, have a small edge over the next tier and keep crushing the bad teams.
We are more or less what our adjusted SRS says, which is very good.
A healthy Mitch may take us up a notch and we’ll see if they do anything about bench depth.
Forgot to do the asterisk thing with my previous comment, which is that I think they would be willing to trade Deuce, but only if the player coming back was more than just a depth piece. In other words, he could be part of a package for a guy who would supplant Josh Hart in the starting lineup.
We have to be very, ahem, precious with our remaining trade assets such that I’m not really interested in anyone that won’t obviously play in the playoffs. The middle of the Venn diagram of guys realistically available to us and worth firing our last few bullets for is pretty small.
Myles Turner is intriguing enough but probably out of our price range, asset wise. Would say the same about Capela. Who knows though, it’s always possible the market for these guys doesn’t materialize and all of the sudden the WAS-first-that’s-really-two-good-seconds looks appealing enough.
There’s been a lot of noise about Isaiah Stewart but I don’t see why DET would be in a rush to trade him. He’s signed for 3 seasons after this one, including a handy team option in 2027-2028. I’d also be a bit queasy about handing the backup 5 reins to a 6’8″ guy, though he’s versatile enough to ease that concern a bit.
I still am monitoring the Day’Ron Sharpe situation. He could be one of the very few sub-TPMLE buyout candidates, and by March the prorated minimum will be low enough for us to sign him.
I think Precious is somewhere between a good backup and 3rd string player, but his position is the area where we can improve if the right player is available. Again, if Mitch comes back and is effective after a few weeks of knocking off the rust, backup C is set and we can even look at playing him with Towns in some spots. But if Mitch is diminished or gets hurt again, we’re ultimately going to have to make another move even if it’s in the offseason. I like Precious, but he’s not really where he needs to be for me to be satisfied we are set at back up PF/C. He’s only 25 though.
Precious fits what we need well enough and gives us a good amount of defensive versatility. I wouldn’t hesitate to move him for a better player, but he’s fine in a bench role. He does most of what Strat wants from a 4 except for shoot, and it will be difficult to pry any player who can do those things and shoot away from their team.
Per 36, Precious is at 13rebs, 1.5 stls, 1.7 blks this year. Let the other guys worry about offense and let’s see what Thibs can do with his defense.
But the whole sturm und drang has been about how they used nearly everything in the cupboard to get to around fifth and didn’t leave enough for the rest of the journey.
Frodo’s supposed to get to Sammath Naur, Owen, not Cirith Ungol.
While I agree that there is definitely a new efficiency in the midrange, this author seems to overlook that the reason the efficiency of 2s has gone up is because teams are taking more threes and less 18-22 ft 2PAs.
And yet Frodo gets there, despite never being favored by the analysis.
I realized that in all my years of dancing unironically, I have never danced unironically to Cher’s Believe.
yeah…imagine that park is crazy this time of year…I went on a few surfing excursions to Tamarindo..that is/was a cool town 20 yrs ago…also…went down to santa teresa/malpais…that was also very nice..those were the daze..
I will take a fool’s hope
Worked for Frodo!
Like to see kolek get some run…
I suppose if we were all live commenting on the fellowship of the ring I’d have killed Elrond for having 4 hobbits and just one elf.
Samwise was an elite glue guy tho
Please sit Brunson!
Can someone else sign him and then trade him to us?
Want to point out Frodo had God on his side, i.e. the Author.
Ben Simmons is 5-36 from three for his career. That’s 13.9%.
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