Knicks Morning News (2025.01.05)

Agree with Brian that the offense is not firable. The organization has had 4+ seasons of seeing how Thibs operates. At this point the people who would fire him are as culpable as the coach.

It took me a few years but I’ve eventually come around to Z-Man’s perspective on it: you have to take the good with the bad with Thibs. Excessive minutes, rubbing dirt on injuries, terrible inbounds plays, and tactical rigidity are the bad. It’s all part of why I’ve been convinced this team’s ceiling is a step below the championship.

The good that comes with him & Leon is pretty awesome, though. I know I get called lots of things for harping on the fact that we can’t actually win a title like this but I do love this team and appreciate the quality basketball I get to watch all the time.

Kinda shocked no one pointed it out already so allow me to break the seal on the most obvious joke from last night: leaving KAT in to get injured in garbage time was a really fucked up way for Thibs to honor Derrick Rose.

Deuce is hurt, JB is nursing a minor injury and Towns hurt his knee. None of these seem too bad yet but we’re getting dangerously close to the team suffering a ton of injuries and the season being derailed exactly like last year.

This is bordering on criminal behavior. I love Thibs for many reasons but down 13 with a minute and half left on a back to back and still have towns in the game and now he hurts his knee?

Now you gotta face a tough Orlando team tomorrow with your best player out?

Like take the L dude. It’s so short sighted. Beyond the injury worries add in that now we’re much less likely to win on Monday.

Leon needs an intervention. This is absurd. It’s not even the short rotation. The bench guys who do play BARELY play.

So Kolek plays in a game after he kills it in westchester that same day and he plays well and you can’t trust for for a few minutes a game?

You can’t give veterans like precious, Shamet and Payne a few more minutes each game?

What is Thibs trying to prove?

It’s gone too far.

The same attributes that make him a great coach make him a menace to his own players. I’ve said this before and I still think it. He has some of the attributes of someone on the spectrum. People like him are often wildly successful because they have a single minded devotion to something, but they also have difficulty changing and sometime go so far in that devotion, they make bad decisions because they have blind spots.

His extreme desire to win makes him a great coach. But he has some obvious blind spots.

The game itself was more or less meaningless.

I predicted the Bulls loss two days before we even played OKC. The sequence went exactly as I feared. We played OKC tough, they wore us down with their superior bench, Thibs played the starters a ton of minutes trying to get the win even though we are on a B2B on the road and we were so exhausted we lost to the Bulls too.

If we had a really good bench I don’t think it would be this extreme, but it’s a total miracle he hasn’t totally broken down both OG and Towns yet (though Towns limped off the court).

I agree with Swift, it’s gone too far. Many coaches can win with our starters, without putting them at risk, endangering their careers, and eventually tuning them out.

When a team hits 20/37 of their threes against you, that’s just a 2025 loss. So yeah, I don’t make much of last night.

However we’re pretty clearly playing with fire minutes wise. At this point, I think the front office should mandate Thibs stick to a 9-man rotation even if it comes with extra losses. We’re probably safely ensconced in the top-4 at this point, with the top-3 looking pretty good. So if we win 50-51 instead of 54-55, I mean, there’s a bigger picture.

I’m still not entirely unsympathetic to Thibs because the bench guys we have are pretty limited. Payne is cromulence personified as a backup point guard and Deuce is a fine enough 6th man microwave type, but those guys are both small, so we’re over-indexed on guards when it comes to our overall bench quality.

At the moment there’s not really anyone else you can be certain is a rotation caliber player on a contender. Shamet is either hitting his shots or totally useless. Precious has his moments but at the end of the day a 6’8″ center who is a complete zero offensively is difficult to trot out for more than spot minutes.

We need a bonafide playable wing and/or a bonafide playable big. Maybe the latter is Mitch, but in any event if we’re serious about contending this year it should be an active deadline. It may well be the case that the best opportunities don’t present themselves until the offseason when we have access to a few more assets, which would be annoying but fine.

I noticed the Clips put their back four in with 5:06 left, giving them time to run actual NBA plays. Admittedly they were winning, but still, Thibs shows no interest in doing this even in Knicks blowouts.

On the other hand, absolute Josh Hart line: 16 rebounds, 10 assists, 2 points on 0-8 shooting. In 40 minutes…

I imagine this has been discussed here before because there seems to be posters here who are highly familiar with each of the Knicks’ picks but:

The Pistons currently sit at 12th pick in the 2025 draft. If they rise in the standings a little further to the 14th pick or lower, the pick is no longer protected, and goes to the Knicks.

So by sending us (or anyone) an asset, they could essentially gain an asset by increasing their chances of keeping their own pick. Unless they think they’re good enough to be above the play-in.

What asset could make sense for us?

Maybe I should start calling him Psycho again? 😀 😀 😀

Disappointing bad loss yesterday, it’s true we were on a B-2-B and yadda yadda but the meltdown occured just after the prolonged halftime rest.

The defense was mostly unwatchable and for the second consecutive game we played a spectacular kind of selfless, ball moving, smart offensive basketball in the first half and a whole different iso, selfish, clunky style in the second when Mikal and OG were totally forgotten again (and this time don’t tell me the Bulls “tightened” their defense, they’re a joke on that end of the floor).

Anyway it’s January, it doesn’t matter especially if we use it to learn some lessons.

Reaching the postseason healthy is the ONLY thing that matters and our Coach is doing his worst to avoid it.

The Pistons currently sit at 12th pick in the 2025 draft. If they rise in the standings a little further to the 14th pick or lower, the pick is no longer protected, and goes to the Knicks.

Didn’t we trade that pick to the Wolves in the KAT trade?

Didn’t we trade that pick to the Wolves in the KAT trade?

This is the type of knowledge I’m talking about!! “Fanspo,” the first Google result, steered me wrong.

The fact that the Pistons can benefit from not rising any further in the standings still stands, though.

Yep, still on Thomas Bryant, who we could have probably picked up three or four times already.

Leon needs an intervention

Leon’s the guy who created this mess. The list of guys we could have on this team right now if Leon hadn’t been so frivolous for years is overwhelming. Hell just in this last draft the Grizzlies drafted an excellent 3&D wing one pick after we were forced to sell the 38th.

Hubs, while I don’t disagree with you, I also think Thibs is being way too cavalier about this.

Precious, Payne and Shamet are all veterans. They each could play three or four more minutes a game and not kill us.

Sims has done fine in the rotation off the bench and has even started for us. Kolek has proved to be a guy who at the minimum can run an offense and not make stupid mistakes when he’s thrown in there.

There is no reason for the bench to play so few minutes like this especially on a back to back.

Ive defended Thibs taking his time bringing along rookies slowly but this is a different situation.

So let me guess when Mitch comes back he’ll just completely replace precious in the rotation? It’s absurd.

I’m looking forward to the post-Thibs era. He won’t get fired this season, but this talented team feels like it’s on a knife’s edge with injuries and once they start it’s going to be a snowball effect.

We’ve been walking through the raindrops when it comes to injuries, and playing the top six guys hellacious minutes. The bill for that is coming soon. I’m having a hard time envisioning this team going into the playoffs healthy.

Reaching the postseason healthy is the ONLY thing that matters and our Coach is doing his worst to avoid it.

Reaching the postseason with a functional bench is also extremely important. I know the rotation gets shorter anyway but you still need a bench here and there. The way things look right now it’s straight 48 for all 5 starters.

I’ve never really come around to Thibs’ ridiculously conservative approach to bench minutes, particularly in 4th quarters of lopsided games, but also in situations where the starters are clearly spent, as was the case with everyone but KAT last night, especially Brunson.

We actually mounted a nice (if not fake) comeback in the 4th on the backs of Payne, Shamet, and to a lesser degree Precious and if it weren’t for that Payne stumble on Shamet’s 3 we would have been down 5 with momentum. Yet as soon as Brunson and the starters came back in, the lead ballooned again.

Brunson was gimpy and gassed. He had nothing. In fact, he has not been himself for a while now. Macri pointed out on a recent podcast that he is in a legit 3pt shooting slump. in his last 7 games: 0-5, 0-5, 0-2, 3-11, 1-6. 0-5, 1-4…a combined 5-38. Having a sore calf (among other bangs and bruises) probably has something to do with that.

And while I agree that it’s not a fireable offense in and of itself, it is the knid of thing that someone in the organization (like WWW?) is going to take notice of and it will be on the negative side of the ledger if the team goes on a bender.

Thibs is sort of insulated from the quick trigger firing because of his friendship with Leon and his close ties to the Brunson family. He’s not going to get yanked like Mike D’Antoni was for the same level of disconnect with a star player or the FO. But if these kinds of decisions continue to happen and lead to players getting injured, and a losing streak ensues and we start dropping in the standings, some tension is going to build. Thibs has never been collaborative when it comes to managing his players and minutes. His stock excuse is: it’s up to medical. If they clear a player, his assumption is that they can go all 48 if “necessary.”

The best “immediate” intervention would be for Leon to lean on medical, thereby taking some of the decision-making out of Thibs’ (or the player’s) hands.

Honestly, our best bet at getting a deeper bench is probably just getting Okeke or Warren up to the big club, since they are already running the same system etc. Unfortunately, that involves shedding salary.

Their vet minimums should be around 3 mil each, so maybe the Knicks would prefer to trade Precious into say Detroit’s cap space once Mitch is healthy and bring those guys in? I’m not sure there are really any other options aside from trading rookies, and no one wants that.

Edit: lol why does Z always seem to publish War and Peace right before my posts (but I agree with him that the tired legs in Q4 are the biggest issue with Thibs IMO).

“Reaching the postseason with a functional bench is also extremely important. I know the rotation gets shorter anyway but you still need a bench here and there. The way things look right now it’s straight 48 for all 5 starters.”

So much depends on Mitch right now. If he comes back healthy and he and everyone else remains healthy going into the playoffs, that gives you 3 players (Deuce, Mitch) who will get 20-ish minutes off the bench and another three (Payne, Precious, Shamet) that can give you 10+ as needed.

It’s wild how forgiving the schedule is. Somehow we have the Magic again then the Raptors again after that.

One issue that has reared its ugly head in the last two games (and before but it didn’t matter as much against the shitty teams we piled up wins against) is that, with the exception of KAT, we have a very small rotation.
PF: OG (undersized)
SF: Mikal (undersized)
SG: Hart (neutral at best)
PG: Brunson (undersized)
Backup PGs: Payne, Deuce, Kolek (all undersized)
Backup SGs: Deuce, Shamet (both undersized)
Backup SF: Shamet (undersized)
Backup PF: Precious (neutral at best)
Baclkup C: Precious (undersized)

And even with KAT, he has a glaring flaw as a rim/paint protector that somewhat mitigates his size advantage as a scorer and rebounder.

Mitch will help, but at a cost. I’m not sure what can be done in the short run, but this is not sustainable.

Brunson was gimpy and gassed. He had nothing. In fact, he has not been himself for a while now. Macri pointed out on a recent podcast that he is in a legit 3pt shooting slump. in his last 7 games: 0-5, 0-5, 0-2, 3-11, 1-6. 0-5, 1-4…a combined 5-38. Having a sore calf (among other bangs and bruises) probably has something to do with that.

Speaking of 3 point shooting, before Coby White’s ridiculous 9-11 game last night, here are his prior 10 games

2-6
1-11
1-5
5-8
2-6
2-8
1-5
3-7
2-9
3-11

I mean it almost makes sense to leave the guy open, except that whenever he plays the Knicks he turns into Steph Curry

We’re not as good as our record says we are. We’re faking it by playing a playoff rotation in December and January.

At the end of the day we’re probably all going to agree it wasn’t worth running the starters into the ground.

Everyone keeps saying maybe lessons will be learned but we’re taking about Thibs here, who is stubborn as a mule. It’s fair to ask what the ceiling of this team is with him as the coach. And he signed a 3-year extension this summer. The lack of bench minutes and tired 4th Q legs are pretty noticeable and imo easily fixed.

Another issue I see is I really don’t see an assistant coach that will challenge Thibs. Brunson Sr. seems like a yes man to me and Mo Cheeks is old and has seemingly kept a low profile. Maybe things are discussed behind doors but I’m not seeing another voice Thibs will adhere to. Meanwhile Johnnie Bryant is killing it in Cleveland…

There is no good excuse for Thib’s lack of bench minutes.

Our bench isn’t great but Precious is a legit NBA player and did well in increased minutes last year, Shamet and Payne have both played major rotation roles on multiple playoff teams, McBride is a great sixth man, and Kolek looks like a legit prospect and deserves at least a chance to earn more playing time.

We could totally use a bigger wing off the bench. I personally think we should trade Sims into someone’s cap space even if it cost a future 2nd and use his roster spot to sign a legit small forward.

The easiest would be to sign Okeke or Warren, which would be great. Also, Keita Bates-Diop was waived by Minnesota, could we resign him? That would be even better.

I don’t think there is much to be found on the trade market, and unless we want to move Robinson, McBride, or Precious we can only trade for minimum contracts and I don’t know if there is anyone available that is worth chasing. As for moving one of those three, I find it unlikely we can get a clear upgrade for any of them, especially considering we have almost no draft capital and we cannot consolidate salaries very easily since we need 14 players and are so close to the hard cap.

Mainly we need Thibs to do better, which seems unlikely, or we need to make a coaching change, which also seems unlikely.

I am legit worried for our health come playoff time, and Thib’s need to chase every win like the season isn’t long and not risk leaning on the bench for fear of losing leads is, ironically, actually causing us to lose games and squander leads since our starters are getting tired, worn down, and banged up.

One thing I will say in Thibs’ defense (?) is that we have actually been one of the healthiest teams in the NBA this year thus far.

The odds that Thibs was going to navigate bring a team through the regular season and into the playoffs in full health that would be maintained through the playoffs, effectively plan to play the same team up to 7 straight games, and make on-the-fly adjustments to the playoff opponents’ plans and tactics was always very low.

He’s never done it in his career and there’s no reason to think that he would start this year, 15 years into his head coaching career, and when the GM gave him a thin roster.

We can’t sign anyone new until after the deadline or after a trade that clears cap space. All our deals are guaranteed except the 2-ways and neither Okeke or Warren are eligible for that type of deal, but Thibs wouldn’t play them regardless.

The solution is for Mitch to come back and, hopefully, Thibs uses KAT a bit at PF next to Mitch so we can stagger the wing minutes effectively.

Maybe Kolek can prove trustworthy, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll ready enough for Thibs this year.

I am legit worried for our health come playoff time, and Thib’s need to chase every win like the season isn’t long and not risk leaning on the bench for fear of losing leads is, ironically, actually causing us to lose games and squander leads since our starters are getting tired, worn down, and banged up.

Yeah, I think this is correct. Operation Run The Starters Into The Ground doesn’t even really work against competent teams, as our continued poor play in fourth quarters seems to indicate.

Once a major injury happens, it’s going to be a cascade. Then all the other starters will just play 45 minutes every game instead of 40, then that group of players starts breaking down, then the two or three remaining guys have to play all 48 until they break down too.

This is probably not going to end very well.

People like to say that today’s NBA players are soft but to me the soft ones are the fans who constantly complain about the best players playing too many minutes.

The Knicks have the top 3 leaders in minutes played, 4 out of the top 7, and 5 out of the top 12.

Fuck this shit. Thibs sucks

Another worry I have is that if the situation deteriorates, they might rush Mitch back, and Thibs will overplay him like he did last time he returned. Hopefully the medical staff will put its foot down and not let that happen.

The Knicks have the top 3 leaders in minutes played, 4 out of the top 7, and 5 out of the top 12.

Game Log: Josh Hart 46 minutes, Mikal Bridges 45.

Yesterday or against the Thunder?
No, november 17th in the 13th game of the season a 114-104 home win against the lowly Nets.

Do we think any other NBA coach would do that? Spo? Kerr? Atkinson? Mazzulla? Udoka? Carlisle? Bickerstaff? Rivers?

I honestly can’t believe Kolek or Huk or even Dadiet can’t play 3-4 minutes in the 2nd quarter against the other teams benches, they already did it!

It’s Thibs 5th season here, depth was always useless to him, despite Julius’ (in)famous “Big 15”, Thibs over the years has gone from the semblance of a 10-players rotation to a 9-players rotation to an 8-players rotation.
In november and december.

He has “his men” and everything outside his confort zone is a problem.
It’s not a quirk, it’s a pathology, I doubt this will ever change.

One issue that has reared its ugly head in the last two games (and before but it didn’t matter as much against the shitty teams we piled up wins against) is that, with the exception of KAT, we have a very small rotation.

I agree Z-Man, just the other day I was scouring the Euroleague rosters, looking for wings/forwards in the 6’7″-6’9″ range to eventually target this summer (a la Yabusele)… 🙂

Many of our players are playing “one position up” and despite the rah-rah about positionless basketball size still matters in some matchups.

Boston v. OKC today at 3:30 on NBATV.

Like someone already said Mitch will just take Precious’ minutes. Then the bench will score even less and Thibs will tear the rest of his hair out and ask Derrick Rose out of retirement.

The trade that really haunts us is the Grimes for nothing one.

I guess the Knicks have been pretty bad at developing players, so maybe they are happy with Thibs contiuining to give those rookies 1.5 minutes against 3rd stringers in blowouts (both for/against)

I like(d) Grimes, but I don’t think another 6’4″ shooting guard is really the answer here. I like him more than Shamet, but big deal.

And just to quibble slightly with Z-Man (I agree we’re too short at most positions), I’m not sure Bridges, at 6’6″, really qualifies as an undersized small forward. Although there does seem to be a growing preponderance of long dudes at that position lately.

On the other hand, given who Bridges usually defends, and Hart’s tendencies, you COULD argue that Bridges plays shooting guard, while Hart’s more of a terrifically short forward.

One issue that has reared its ugly head in the last two games (and before but it didn’t matter as much against the shitty teams we piled up wins against) is that, with the exception of KAT, we have a very small rotation.

Starting lineups (except C) last 5 games:

NYK
OG – 6’7″ & 232lbs
Mikal 6’6″
Hart 6’4″
Brunson 6’3″

CHI
Pat Williams – 6’7″
LaVine 6’5″
White 6’5″
Giddey 6’8″

OKC
Jalen – 6’6″
SGA 6’6″
Dort 6’4″
Wallace 6’4″

UTA
Lauri – 7’0″
Juzang 6’7″
George 6’4″
Sexton 6’3″

WAS
Champagnie – 6’6″
Coulibaly 6’6″
Brogdon 6’4″
Carrington 6’4″

Other than Giddey and Lauri, we’re pretty similar size to everyone we’ve played recently.

Raven, I considered that, but maintain that the issue with Bridges is girth, not length. He’s a lousy rebounder for a SF and below average for a 2, and hardly draws fouls. These little quibbles add up and are all part ot the overall size issue.

The Celts are playing KP and Kornet together with Hauser, Brown, and White. We don’t really have a size answer to that lineup.

I think we are looking at the NBA finals preview right here.

Not that it matters, but Brunson is listed at 6’2” on BB-REF, ESPN and NBA.com…

I was legit stunned to see that the Knicks are somehow playing the Magic again. Thank you, schedule maker!

On the other hand, given who Bridges usually defends, and Hart’s tendencies, you COULD argue that Bridges plays shooting guard, while Hart’s more of a terrifically short forward.

If there is a size issue, it’s this. Bridges often guards PGs leaving Brunson and/or Hart on someone 6’6″ or 6’7″.

Not that it matters, but Brunson is listed at 6’2” on BB-REF, ESPN and NBA.com…

For some reason I was sure he was 6’3″ and didn’t check for him, but I think my general point stands that our starting unit isn’t that much smaller than other teams.

Speaking of height and size, our bench is undersized in its current iteration (Cam, Deuce, Shamet, Precious).
When KAT is on the bench our tallest rotation player is 6’8” and the other three are 6’4” or less.

P.S. OKC looks undersized against the Celtics 😁

Boston only up 10 at halftime, Knicks were up 12!

I don’t think I agree that Precious won’t play when Mitch is back. Thibs seems to like Precious and he gives the lineup some toughness when he shares the floor with KAT. And while I would call him a stretch big yet, he *is* 5 for 13 beyond the arc in his first 15 games and may be developing that side of his game.

Assuming Mitch, Precious, Shamet, Payne, and Deuce are healthy (two of which were not last night), I am not seeing the same crisis of depth (or size as some… not resting starters when the game essentially over is extremely frustrating.

Missing Deuce is part of the problem. He’s not tall, but has a nearly 6’9″ wingspan.

OKC shot 14 for 27 from 3 vs Knicks, they’re currently 9 for 27 vs Boston and they’re still only in the 3rd quarter.

We are definitely one wing short of a dinner box. Ryan Dunn was there for the taking and at 6’8″ would have been perfect. He has one NBA skill already, his defense, and could have contributed 10 minutes a night right away. He was the answer, alas…

Yes Ryan Dunn with his below 53% TS% and -3 BPM would be a huge help for the Knicks…

Ryan Dunn, shooting 30% from 3 and 50% from the free throw line?

OKC dominating the 4th quarter vs Boston, must be cause the Celtics played their starters too much in the first 3 quarters and they’re tired down the stretch.

I hope the Celtics will miss so many open threes when we meet in this year’s playoffs…

News Update

Karl-Anthony Towns questionable for tomorrow: right knee patellar tendinopathy.

We don’t need Dunn for offense. He’s already a plus defender. Dadiet is unplayable at this point.

OKC just held Boston to 92 points, 27 in the second half, they’re basically dominating everybody.

Dort the Leprechaun Slayer

OKC is removing ending me of the dynastic Spurs. Love how they play.

Obviously defense also has something to do with how well a team shoots from 3 on any given night, but I want to see this OKC team hold Boston to under 20% from 3 while shooting over 40% themselves in Boston.

They have a great defense, but not that good! I’m not convinced their offense is as good as it looked against us or Boston either. They shot over their heads.

Our defense is mediocre and you could see we were gassed at the end of that game, but Boston has a very good defense. It’s going to be tough to shoot 40%+ against them consistently.

Thibs is great for team aspiring to win 40-45 games. Builds culture of stability and professionalism, great habits, accountability and mental strength.

Asking him to be responsible for managing two MVP level talents and a frail injury prone OG with over half a billion in committed contract assets is clearly more that he can chew. Thibs is one of those men that just can’t have nice things cause he doesn’t know how to take care of them.

Leon just gave him a 3yr contract this summer, JB and his Dad love him and there is no obvious replacement choice available, – so he’s not going anywhere.

Doesn’t mean he should be immune to criticism or that fans should pretend that he’s the ideal coach to lead and maximize this team.

Rose and Thibs are most likely both going to be here for this next 3-year run. Then it will probably be time to start over with a new regime.

I’m fine with Thibs criticisms, I’m only taking issue with “He should be fired.” I didn’t think D’Antoni should have been fired back in the day, either, and he was way more annoying than Thibs.

Thibs is a good enough coach that you put up with the annoying BS he does, so long as he has player buy-in.

Kind of with you, Brian…until further notice.

Player buy-in is key. If they turn on Thibs, and if you ask other players in the NBA, they all seem to hate Thibs until they play for him, so it might happen, then sure, fuck Thibs. This is a player’s league. But he has buy-in now, so you gotta roll with him (similarly, I wouldn’t have fired D’Antoni back in the day, but I also understood that they had to when it became a Melo or D’Antoni situation).

The part that gets me — and I otherwise like, or at least appreciate, Thibs — is that the error is both so obvious and dramatic, and also so easily fixable. He’s doing something no other coach thinks is a good idea. 1, 2, 3, 5, and 12 in minutes played for our starting five. Eight man rotation for the first half of the season. No minutes for our youngsters, even in blowouts. Play the starters throughout and right up to the end, regardless of situation.

I would love to spend my time dissecting his in-bounds plays, or defensive rotations, or whatever. But I’m literally blinded by the great white elephant in musth that everyone but Tommy can see.

We are definitely one wing short of a dinner box. Ryan Dunn was there for the taking and at 6’8″ would have been perfect. He has one NBA skill already, his defense, and could have contributed 10 minutes a night right away. He was the answer, alas…

We don’t have the cap space to have drafted Ryan Dunn

Having the top three guys in minutes and 5 of the top 12 is… well, it’s damning. Thibs has been a caricature of himself this season.

His job is secure, so there is no need for him to proceed this way. When it comes crashing down, it’s gonna come crashing down hard. The dominoes are all set up, we’re just hoping nobody knocks over that first one.

For years I’ve been hard on Thibs for his playing time distribution, use of a shrinked bench and a decent number of lineup choices.

But firing him in-season would be a mistake and make no sense at all.

While it’s fair to criticize him, he’s a good coach and has earned the right to show what he can do in a full season with this (very changed) roster.

I also doubt things will change as long as he has Leon, JB and KAT in his corner, barring a Dolan’s reckless fit of rage that will not happen until we plummeted in the standings or a disaster struck in garbage time, two things I’d rather avoid…

By the way most, if not all, the other good coaches got a job last summer, there’s not much around to dream about… 🙂

“We don’t have the cap space to have drafted Ryan Dunn”

I don’t understand this EB. We are currently $500k under the second apron right now. Couldn’t we have used that plus whatever we signed Dadiet for instead of drafting Dadiet?

I honestly don’t think Dolan cares about championships. Just sell tix at maximum prices and he’s happy.

Who’s better, Hart or Dort?

Hart. By a substantial margin, too.

Running the b-ref comparer, it seems Hart, and not all that close (although a lot of similarity). Dort’s had a higher ppg over his career, But Hart’s kicking his butt this year (14.2 to 9.8). Josh also crushes Dort on rebounds and assists, not to mention eFG% and BPM.

I don’t understand this EB. We are currently $500k under the second apron right now. Couldn’t we have used that plus whatever we signed Dadiet for instead of drafting Dadiet?

Only if you can convince Dunn to take less than the max 120% of his salary slot. Dadiet took 80% of his salary slot and currently makes $1.8M compared to Dunn’s $2.5M. We have $535K left to spend before our hard cap at the 2nd apron.

$1.8M + $535K < $2.5M

And, no, it’s not likely that we could have signed Dunn to 80% of the rookie scale.

The last player to take 80% seems to have been 5 years ago when Kevin Porter, Jr. took it. Here's a quote on it:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Porter agreed on draft night to take below scale. He was slipping in the draft, and even a reduced rookie-scale deal would have guaranteed more money than he’d get as a second-rounder. In the second round, he likely would have received the minimum or slightly more.

The writer of the article thinks Andre Roberson in 2013 was the last person before Porter to take less than 120% of scale. In other words, only one player other than Dadiet has agreed to 80% of the rookie scale in the last 10 years. Chances are Dadiet only took it because we not only drafted him in the first round but also agreed to pay his $850k buyout and bring him over right away.

The trade that really haunts us is the Grimes for nothing one.

A year ago our bench was Hart, Deuce, Grimes, and Precious. And they fucked teams up. Remember the game in Philadelphia where Hart & Grimes were plus 40 something? That was awesome.

EDIT: I just looked it up and it was literally one year ago today. Check out this box score porn:

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401585111

I think a solid argument can be made for Dort, especially the way he’s hitting 3’s. He’s an all-NBA defender.

Dort is a pure 3 & D play who has so much talent around him no one cares what he can’t do. I think Hart is better overall but Dort is outstanding in his role.

Thanks EB.

I thought it’s fair to say that Hart would be awesome on OKC in Dort’s role. But Dort’s 3-ball is looking more and more dangerous.

Dort’s career from three is 35.2. Hart’s is 34.6.

This year Dort’s lighting it up at 40.0. Meanwhile, Josh is at 37.3.

So you know, not that much. You can argue Dort’s a better on-ball defender. I like Hart’s free safety game, though, especially as we have OG (and Mikal).

Plus this year Dort’s at 40.4 FG%, while Josh is at 56.3%. Dort’s averaging 4.5 Rebs and 1.6 assists, while Josh is at 8.9 and 5.7.

I say it’s not really close. Dort’s good, Hart is better.

Thibs physically working a max player like KAT the same way he works Mitch/i-Hart is crazy to me.

I agree that he’s not getting fired because of personal relationships and lack of replacement options (non-basketball reasons) but that doesn’t mean that he the ideal person to coach a championship contender with 2 MVP level players.

What a difference 24 hours make!! From being unstoppable to firing the coach. Wow! I can only imagine what will happen if we lose another couple of games. Everyone should calm down! Yes, Thibs should consider giving a few more minutes to bench guys as, unlike previous seasons, we have the luxury of losing a few more games. No more than that though. Nobody can tell for sure if Kolek or Hugporti will develop into rotation NBA players this season. By comparison, IQ had shown that and was rewarded with heavy rotation minutes while being a rookie a few seasons ago. Other than that, we should all calm down and hope that the front office will be able to pull another rabbit out of a hat in the following weeks. Our bench is thin and it is what it is. I wish we didn’t have to spend a ton of picks to bring Mikal Bridges over.

This is a long season. OKC pulled the same in the second half against the fully healthy and advertised Celtics as they did to us on Friday. The Celts scored 27 points, yes, 27 points in the second half.

OKC looks undersized against the Celtics

What impressed me so much about OKC was that their undersized guys (particularly Dort and Williams) did not seem undersized at all.

Anyone who has played basketball at a competitive level knows that size and height are not the same thing.

What a difference 24 hours make!! From being unstoppable to firing the coach. Wow!

This is not a new over reaction due to a loss or an unfortunate injury.

Many others and I were saying this during our winning streak too. This is simply an unsustainable aproach to an NBA season for a contending team.

Same as last year, – I’m looking forward to die hard fans bending over backwards to come up with excuses when we get an unexpected and unfortunate “injury bug”

Hubie, you didn’t quote my smile emoji! 🙂

How important is Friday’s game? (Which I’ll be missing due to taking my lovely wife to the opera for her birthday.)

I just watched the Towns play again. You know, if there is someone we need to talk to, it might be Josh Hart. I don’t really think that throwing a football pass in traffic with 90 seconds left is really the right move there. He was also the guy who was unnecessarily pushing the tempo on Julius Randle’s fatal drive to the basket in another 17 point game.

I don’t mean this as an anti-Hart thing but have you ever had that one indestructible friend who does stupid shit all the time but the only people who ever get hurt are the ones trying to keep up with him? I think that might be Josh. He only has one speed, and he plays these blowouts at full tilt when everyone else in the game is slowing down.

KAT scored 90 points in two games against the Bulls and we lost them both, what a waste…

Kinda-to-pretty important.

What impressed me so much about OKC was that their undersized guys (particularly Dort and Williams) did not seem undersized at all.

What’s really wild is that the heights I listed earlier for Dort and Williams appear to be their heights in shoes. The combine measured them without shoes and found Dort at 6’2.75″ and Jalen at 6’4.5″. By contrast, Hart at 6’3.75″ is technically closer in height to PF Jalen Williams.

Of course, Dort is built like a brick wall and has a 6’8″ wingspan, which is pretty good, but nothing on Jalen’s 7’2.25″ wingspan (same as OG’s).

BTW, I said OKC would ne flirting with winning 70 games this season. They lost Chat and iHart early on so they got off to a 11:4 start but are 19:1 since. Will likely end up with ~67 now.

If the NBA somehow ended up with a Cavs-Thunder final it would get the lowest TV ratings in Finals history

OKC goes to Cleveland on Wednesday. Should be interesting.

We’ve been walking through the raindrops when it comes to injuries, and playing the top six guys hellacious minutes. The bill for that is coming soon.

Have you, or anybody that you are aware of, done the math on this?

It’s kind of funny, back when I first discovered this blog, guys like Mike K, Caleb, Dred, jon abbey, Owen, Ben R, Ted Nelson, and JK47 taught me that the coach’s only real impact on a game was assigning minutes to his best players. We seem to have now come full circle, where some of these same guys are like “stop playing the high-usage high-efficiency guys and give minutes to Achiuwa and Payne!” Have we evolved? Or are we just never happy, no matter what.

Obviously there is a breaking point where you are playing the guys too many minutes. There IS such a thing as overdoing it. I’m pretty sure “top three guys in the league in minutes played are all Knicks, four of the top seven, and five of the top twelve” constitutes overdoing it.

Maybe I’m wrong, and there will be no downside to this, and there won’t be an inevitable cascade of injuries. Maybe fatigue is really not such a thing. Maybe fatigue is way overrated and Tom Thibodeau has cracked some kind of cheat code and is disrupting the entire NBA by playing a playoff rotation all season long.

Probably not though!

We are just never happy, no matter what.

However, we’re not saying ‘stop playing the high-usage high-efficiency guys. We’re saying don’t play them too much. Too much is a very subjective term, but a lot of people would agree over 40 minutes regularly isn’t a great idea.

And more than that, at least for me — don’t play them at the end of blow-outs, either direction. It’s a) pointless, and b) it risks injury for no goddamn good reason (see pointless), and c) it possibly increases likelihood of injury because they’re baked, having probably played over 40 already, and d) it means the (young) bench dudes will likely never get better because their only reps are the last 1:45 where it’s hold the ball until the clock runs out.

Or are we just never happy, no matter what.

Imagine a universe where Thibs would play Kolek, Hukporti et co. plenty of minutes and our record would be, say, 19-17 instead of 24-12. Guess what the reaction would be! Probably by the same people. 😂

And Hubert, I love your Josh Hart take above. I think you’re absolutely right (and I had one of those friends…).

However, there’s no way to turn Josh Hart down. Except one way, which is to sub him out toward the end of 17-point games, which is on Thibs.

The last Knicks team to reach the Conference Finals had Spree and Houston playing all 82 games while averaging 40 and 38.6 mins per game. They ranked 6th and 12th in that category.

Rough, absolutely I’d be one of those! But I don’t think anyone is saying play Kolek and Huk 24 minutes a game full stop, even if the ship be sinking in those minutes. Of course, if they’re holding serve, maybe give them that time. A fresh KAT and Brunson in the fourth would be a sight for sore eyes.

And I do NOT think that in blowouts if you gave Huk and Kolek 5 minutes at the end of games instead of 1, that we’d have lost 5 more games. Especially since the other team has usually flooded the court with assorted randos by that time.

No other team does this, which I can glean from just glancing at the minutes played leaders. If it’s a good idea to play a playoff rotation all year long, why doesn’t anybody else do it?

Rough, absolutely I’d be one of those! But I don’t think anyone is saying play Kolek and Huk 24 minutes a game full stop, even if the ship be sinking in those minutes. Of course, if they’re holding serve, maybe give them that time. A fresh KAT and Brunson in the fourth would be a sight for sore eyes.

There is definitely something to be discussed, and I agree, as I wrote earlier, that Thibs should probably consider playing the bench a bit more. We do have the luxury to do that this season at the expense of losing a game here and there. Yet, the discussion is being derailed toward seeing our weak bench as miraculously being transformed and able to tread water while the starters are out just because they play a couple of more minutes here and there. This is not serious. Furthermore, and most importantly, the best and most transformational coaching staff we had in a quarter of a century must be fired because the pundits here understand more about those players and basketball in general than our coaching staff.

All this happens because we lost two games in a row. Just take a look, as I wrote above, at how many points the Celtics scored in the second half today against OKC.

Is it reasonable to call for some calmness?

Maybe fatigue is way overrated and Tom Thibodeau has cracked some kind of cheat code…Probably not though!

I’m just wondering if there is any actual data the correlates a high mpg average with injury, either by Thibs or by any one? The truth is out there, to anyone who parses the numbers. Seems silly to get all worked up about something being under the bed without turning on the lights and looking first.

Well, no maniac coach ever plays his top 5 guys this many minutes, so I really don’t know which data set to check. We’re kind of in uncharted territory here.

I don’t know how I’d search it. Is there another example in NBA history of one team dominating the minutes played leaderboard to this extent?

No other team does this, which I can glean from just glancing at the minutes played leaders.

Really? It appears to me that mpg is trending upwards. Look at Denver: Malone has Jokic, Murray, and Porter obliterating their career averages. They are a similarly shallow, top heavy team.

I’m just gonna go ahead and guess that it’s a lot easier to get injured running full out and jumping over other people than it is sitting down. Even if there’s no added injury-risk from cumulative fatigue, why chance them getting hurt in the last 5min of a blowout?

Denver has nobody in the top 10 in minutes played, and 2 of the top 18. We have the top three guys in the league, and 5 of the top 12.

Maybe MPG is trending up, but Thibs is just going apeshit with it.

I went back and looked at the 2010-2011 Bulls who won 62 games in Thibs first season as coach and made the ECF.

Here’s the top 5 in minutes per game:

Deng 39.1
Rose 37.4
Noah 32.8
Boozer 31.9
Thomas 22.7

So other than Deng he really wasn’t overusing his starters. The knock on Thibs back then was that he drives his players too hard in the regular season and they flame out in the playoffs, but those minutes aren’t nearly as high as his current Knicks squad

Is there another example in NBA history of one team dominating the minutes played leaderboard to this extent?

On the leader board, the #9 guy and the #30 guy are separated by 1.5 mins. Is your contention that 1.5 minutes of extra exercise every few days fatigues professional athletes to the point of injury? If so, there is validation to be gleaned from the mountains of data out there.

He is playing EVERY STARTER that many minutes. Perhaps some players, like Mikal Bridges, are low risk. Other players, like non-Iron Man OG Anunoby, not so much.

There’s another angle to this besides injury risk: fatigued players just don’t play as well. There’s growing evidence that the Knicks fade in the fourth quarter a lot. It’s really not too controversial to suggest that a more rested team is going to play better at the end of a game. Then there’s the additional factor of the bench players getting very few reps in actual meaningful game time.

We’re goosing our win totals right now, but I’m guessing we’re not going to like it a lot when the bill comes.

JK has been mostly embarrassing wrong on his alarmist posting in recent years, but whatever, maybe he’s right this time.

This is a fireable offense for Thibs.

Who posted this, literally yesterday?

That was an in the moment emotional reaction, since modulated. You are off the hook.

I agree with the overall sentiment, but I’m not seeing where “top three guys in the league in minutes played are all Knicks, four of the top seven, and five of the top twelve” is coming from. By total minutes, I can definitely see that we have four of the top seven players, but then KAT is the fifth of our players, and he is all the way down at 15th.

Plus, if we are going to do this, shouldn’t we be looking at minutes per game, not total minutes? Thibs doesn’t control how many games the Knicks have played in comparison to the number of games played by other teams. Then we get:

1. Mikal
2. Hart
3. Fox
4. Joker
5. Maxey
6. JMurray
7. OG
8. Dame
9. Banchero
10. Jalen Johnson
11. Booker
12. Ant
13. Tatum
14. KD
15. Trae

Yes, that’s still three of the top seven, and that’s quite something, but it’s not nearly as much as we keep talking about. You’d have to go down to 27th to pick up Brunson, and then down to 32nd to pick up KAT.

More succinctly, if we don’t do well come playoff time, it will be way more about our roster than about coaching.

I generally view 36+ minutes to be a lot. But our top two guys (Brunson and KAT) play only 35.0 minutes per game and 34.6 minutes per game, respectively, over the course of this season thus far.

But if you look at the last five games, where all five starters are at 37.9 minutes per game or more (five of the top nine), that’s pretty egregious. If you look at the last 10 games, really only Mikal, Hart, and Jalen are too much, with Jalen at #8 overall with 36.8.

More succinctly, if we don’t do well come playoff time, it will be way more about our roster than about coaching.

Putting the minutes distribution aside for a minute, I think falling apart in the 3rd and 4th quarters can definitely be attributed to coaching. I’d be more worried that Thibs was generally out-coached the last two games than who played how many minutes.

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