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199 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.01.22)”
Spot-on report, Owen. I’m glad you verified my opinion of Barclays vs. MSG, even forgetting fandom, no contest, right?
Jordi deserves a lot of credit. He has those guys playing super hard.
DLo had a very good game. Hard to believe he mostly underachieves, I mean, is there much difference talent-wise between him and , say, Darius Garland?
I’m the exact opposite… a die hard FCPorto fan! 😉
Thank goodness! There are defeats, crushing defeats, and then there is what happened to Benfica yesterday.
Still not sure what the strangest thing about Barclays is. The lack of Jumbotron highlights is up there. At one point, KAT got called for a foul and he looked up to see the replay and he was just looking at himself looking for 15 seconds.
You couldn’t hear anyone’s voice during the in game interviews. It was sort of hilarious since it wasn’t that loud in the arena. The mics aren’t loud enough. I don’t know, maybe I was in a strange pocket of the arena.
Also, the only celebrities other than Sydney were Ben Stiller and Spike Lee, who aren’t Nets fans. Oh, and Jose Reyes.
I got Korean chicken for dinner. That was delicious.
My only other game note. It’s really striking how skinny some of these guys are compared to Towns. Claxton and. Clowney both are unbelievable toothpicks, just insanely light compared to KAT.
I love KAT as a player but I think I would not want his age 33-36 years on my books
That was incredible work, Owen.
It is good that we’re avoiding bad losses. If this team ever does put it together, all these ugly wins we’ve banked will be useful.
It’s getting hard to imagine this team has another gear, though. Maybe a simple Derrick Rose-like trade can unlock the next level. (I hope so, bc that’s about all we can do.)
Thanks Owen for the on-site review!
Brunson woke up in the last 2:18 after a disappointing game (he was in single-figure before).
There no doubt he’s clutch but at the same time I’m not sure I like that he took 4 shots in that span, hitting the first three and missing the fourth, basically without even trying to pass.
The only time he passed the ball out of a double team Josh served OG for an easy dunk.
I’m worried hero-ball could not work against stronger teams with better defenders.
KAT’s clearly bothered by the hand issue, he admitted it after the game, Mikal disappeared after a good start and he tends to do it a little too often.
But whatever, we’re 29-16, the only thing that matters is health and now we have 3 full days of rest before the Kings game.
On other news,
Danilo Gallinari surprisingly announced his next team, the Vaqueros de Bayamon of the Puerto Rican League.
Since last summer, while expecting an NBA call that never came, he rejected offers from many Euroleague’s and Italy’s clubs, choosing to chill in Miami (where he lives) with his family, not a bad choice when you’ve earned 200+ millions playing basketball, now he found a team close enough.
They could trade Bridges and/or Anunoby for better players. Tough to push through with that many minutes at key wing positions going to negative BPM players, one of them negative on both sides of the ball; luckily, they have a fantastic top 2, which covers up a lot of warts.
But that’s the key to the next tier.
My take on Barclays is that it’s too damn loud, and it make everything else inhospitable. There are other flaws, but I just find that the loudness makes it very hard to enjoy a game there. I took my son there last season and he still talks about how loud it is.
My friend took his daughter and her comment was, “why do they only play rap music?” She never wants to go back.
Also, the security lines to get in were crazy. People were out in the cold for 15 minutes at least..
MSG remains the Mecca.
The din at Barclay’s is inorganic and non-spontaneous — essentially fake. It’s the definitive antiseptic 2020s sports atmosphere, a franchise that’s in the place it’s in only to siphon off the money that can be made from tepid, inch-deep fandom, arena suites, and media revenue sharing. The siphoning in NYC is quite good.
Pick your criteria of “real fandom,” and I’d bet a lot of money the Nets are 30th in the association in terms of number of real fans — materially below 29th. There’s no there there.
I’m gonna say it. That was a GOOD win.
Point to the abysmal scoring in the 4th quarter. Say how bad the Nets are and we should beat them easily every time we play them.
Don’t care. That was a gritty win. Our defense won the game. The captain had a bad game but came through in the end. We were gassed on the second game of a back to back, playing a rival that we’ve beaten 8 times in a row and who really wanted to beat us, but we still beat them.
The minutes thing wasn’t TOO egregious. It could have been better but it wasn’t too bad.
The team showed grittiness and heart. These are the type of games we’ve mostly lost this season. We’ve all seen how good the team can be when clicking but the difference between good and great teams are teams that can win games like this last night.
Two in a row and now we get some rest. Every game we notch a win here in the next few weeks is one less game until Mitch comes back.
I offer this as a dispassionate observation, not a cheap insult: the Barclays atmosphere is night-and-day different (read: better) for Liberty games.
It’s a back-to-back. You take the win anyway you can.
They get a couple days off, which they desperately need.
I’ve never gone to a game at Barclays, only a concert. Saw The Postal Service there in 2013, which was great.
But I do remember thinking it felt so cavernous and just had this kind of cold, corporate aesthetic to it that I did not enjoy. Good food options though.
Thanks Pags, this got a chuckle out of me
Knicks are tied for the league lead in games played with Orlando at 45.
Charlotte appears to have the fewest at 39.
LA, MIL, SA, UT at 41.
As a result, we have 4 of the top 5 in minutes played, but per game Brunson drops from 5th all the way to 22nd.
I don’t mind Barclays. It is a very weird vibe sometimes though. I try and go at least once a year, the A10 tournament is alot of fun. For like $20 bucks you get two games and sit really really close.
Last time I went to a Nets game, I was popping 25mg gummies all day long like tic tacs. We did the Knicks matinee and the Nets at night. At Barclays, I was fried. Someone came up to me and asked if I wanted to participate in a game for jet blue vouchers. I had to guess the SNL cast members name based on their character or something. I said “naaah”. The poor intern was shocked. I didn’t wanna space on Andy Sandburg’s name in front of 20k people high as hell. Turns out the game was super easy and I would have won tickets anywhere in country for free.
Not my finest hour.
Good catch, EB.
Glad I missed this one. It sure seems like they’re content not trading Mitch. I guess they’d rather hope for the best than take back minimum value, which makes sense.
I agree with Hubie, though: this team need another DRose-type deadline trade.
I mean, I’m glad we got the W but this was a classic “2025 Knicks” kind of win. Brute forced our way to a narrow win over a subpar opponent by playing the starters 37+ minutes each.
I’m on board with Hubert’s takes here: it’s possible that we might be thankful later that we banked some of these brute force wins, but at the same time it’s hard to see where this team is going to find another gear. Maybe all of the heavy minutes for the starters turns them into some sort of high stamina cardio-cyborgs, and when the playoffs roll around it just ain’t nothing for them to play 42 minutes each. Maybe we walk through the raindrops when it comes to injuries and it turns out Thibs has disrupted the NBA by playing a playoff rotation for 100 games, with no significant downsides.
None of that seems terribly likely to me, but it’s clear that’s what we are going to have to hope for: that Operation Brute Force doesn’t come with a price tag that will need to be paid later.
The food is better at Barclays, the overall watching experience is worse. I don’t know if it’s the lighting, or the physical design of the arena or what, but it doesn’t feel as good as the garden.
I should also mention that Mikal & Hart are still 1st & 2nd in minutes and OG drops all the way from 3rd to 7th. Thibs still Thibodeau-ing what he Thibo-does, just not quite as bad as some of the reporting makes it seem.
Owen, curious what you mean by describing Sweeney as “definitely very mid.”
Mikal has played over 1.5x as many minutes as the top Net, who — as we all know — is Jalen Wilson.
If there is a next gear, it’s going to come from a combination of two things: 1. KAT, Brunson, and/or OG getting over the various dings or worse they’ve been dealing with, and 2. Some kind of depth reinforcements, whether it’s a healthy Mitch, some kind of trade, or both. We saw in December how great this team could be when the starters were all healthy and energized. Right now, they’re nicked up and/or dragging. Even having one more Circle of Trust guy will work wonders.
“Owen, curious what you mean by describing Sweeney as “definitely very mid.””
I’m guessing that he might mean “not as attractive as she’s cracked up to be,” based on the fact that all he could see was her “physicalness.” I don’t think she’s all that attractive, anyway, and she might actually be a worse actress than Winona Ryder. 🙂
He might mean “not that approachable” or something like that instead, though.
Here’s the crazy thing:
KAT +9.9 on/off
Payne +7.3
Shamet +6.9
Deuce +5.3
OG +3.1
The bench has been better than the starters. They should be getting more minutes.
Heat with Jimmy back losing at home to the Blazers is pretty surprising.
“Mikal has played over 1.5x as many minutes as the top Net, who — as we all know — is Jalen Wilson.”
In what world is 9/3/2 non-starting 27-minutes-per-game Jalen Wilson “the top Net”? Even in this particular game, he only played 28 minutes, which was fourth on his team.
EB, last night was particularly exasperating on that front. The non-KAT starters clearly didn’t have it on offense (and even he couldn’t shoot), so that group would dig us into a big hole, then the KAT + bench lineups would kick ass, only for Thibs to pull them the second Fernandez started putting his own starters back in. In past years, with more obviously deeper teams than this one, Thibs has been much better at riding the hot hand. This year, it feels like he defaults to relying on the starting five every night, regardless of how well they’re playing as a unit.
Yeah, I mentioned a couple of days ago about Thibs’ seeming inability to stick with what is working (“riding the hot hand”) in a particular game. It’s bad.
And he used to be pretty good at it! If IQ was killing the opponent, for instance, he would close the game. Heck, by the time of the OG trade, Thibs would even sometimes sit RJ in the fourth quarter if it was clear another combination was working better.
But the talent differential between the starters and the bench (even Deuce) seems so vast that Thibs just keeps defaulting to the former group, no matter the context.
This one.
No Net has played every game. Nic Claxton has played the 3rd most games. He’s missed 7.
Cam Johnson is 2nd in total MP and he’s missed 9 games.
The world in which anyone who reads at a 3rd grade level could tell the context was “total minutes played.”
It’s amazing you dense you are. In a comment that specifically says minutes played, you still can’t figure out he’s talking about total minutes played. You’re like a child who needs everything spoonfed to them.
So now 37 minutes is too much for a starter?
I always thought the thresh hold was 40 minutes.
I really wonder if TJ Warren would help just because he’s 6’8″ and not 6’4″ or shorter.
We’re at least getting close to the date where we could sign a 15th man and stay under the second apron, so a Warren promotion isn’t impossible. I expect that will depend on what trade, if any, we make before the deadline, and where that leaves our finances and roster total.
In general, 37 minutes is at the high end of what they play in the regular season. Only 4 players, are playing 37+ MPG this season and looking at previous seasons it hovers around that many players. You’d also hope that in a game against a terrible Nets team we wouldn’t have to play our starters that many minutes to win.
KAT is strange. We were also close enough that I got to truly appreciate how strange his athleticism is. Half the time you feel like you are watching a gigantic St Bernard with hip dysplasia, and then suddenly it’s like someone threw a treat out there by the hoop and he just thunders towards it. He’s not knit together like the other guys but he makes it work. Came down with some big rebounds.
amazing work. towns’ contrasting physical aesthetic has always been endlessly fascinating. elite fine motor skills and internal fluidity. explosive vertical. fast straight line runner. fantastic handle. yet bodily organization always seems discombobulated and lumbering in motion. proprioception and timing of feet and limbs in space often askew. he’s like the glenn gould of nba centers.
geo, check out greg egan if you want something a bit different.
“This one.
No Net has played every game. Nic Claxton has played the 3rd most games. He’s missed 7.
Cam Johnson is 2nd in total MP and he’s missed 9 games.”
Yes, you are correct, sir. Wilson currently has Cam Johnson by 25 minutes total (and counting) in total minutes played. Wow.
Owen, curious what you mean by describing Sweeney as “definitely very mid.”
keep in mind owen got permission to attend an entire basketball game last night and all posts must get through the firewall
“TNFH says:
January 22, 2025 at 10:53
The world in which anyone who reads at a 3rd grade level could tell the context was “total minutes played.”
ThisChicanery says:
January 22, 2025 at 10:54
In what world is 9/3/2 non-starting 27-minutes-per-game Jalen Wilson “the top Net”? Even in this particular game, he only played 28 minutes, which was fourth on his team.
It’s amazing you dense you are. In a comment that specifically says minutes played, you still can’t figure out he’s talking about total minutes played. You’re like a child who needs everything spoonfed to them.”
A big “shut up” to both of you. You’re both being idiotic, as usual.
Heat with Jimmy back losing at home to the Blazers is pretty surprising.
a quietly interesting development is that 27 year old ivica zubac has very possibly been a better player than 27 year old bam this year
DOOGIE MADE A GRAMMATICAL ERROR AND DIDN’T FIX IT BEFORE POSTING! QUICK! EVERYONE GIVE HIM SHIT FOR IT!
“DOOGIE MADE A GRAMMATICAL ERROR AND DIDN’T FIX IT BEFORE POSTING! QUICK! EVERYONE GIVE HIM SHIT FOR IT!”
Go ahead. It’s been done before, and I’ve even called myself out for it when I see an error that I posted, after the fact. I don’t mind being called out for errors in any way, shape, or form. I’m just not sure I understand why it’s OK for others to do it, but not for me. You all have such thin skins.
By the way, you didn’t tell me what the actual error was. Where is it?
Speaking of tumescent, next time one of yous guys gets to Barclays get over to Sofreh around the corner for a very special meal. It gets me going.
Owen nails it. Barclays is so odd. Like the person who was in charge of coming up with the warriors movie taunt of its own fans and players “Brooklyn – Brooklyn – Brooklyn” was also signing off on operations, and overall aesthetic. Just weird.
EB, good stuff today, I was pondering toward the end of the game whether our bench could beat our starters right now. Probably not, but that it’s a thought, but not one held by the coach, says something.
And Oak, great story.
“Speaking of tumescent, next time one of yous guys gets to Barclays get over to Sofreh around the corner for a very special meal. It gets me going.”
There are so many meals that seem to get you going. LOL 🙂 🙂 🙂 And by the way, if anyone else mentioned anything about tumescence, I certainly missed it.
Wow, Bam with the .520 TS% is something I did not expect
Yes, Zubac is having a nice season with a .617 TS%.
It’s one of his lower TS%. His defensive AIOs have skyrocketed.
It means his wife reads knickerblogger.
Walker – I was at that Postal Service show! I think they had a few, but one of them.
Alan – Mid is a word the youngs use which can either mean low quality or just mediocre. I was using it in the latter sense. I don’t think she’s good-looking enough to be her generation’s bombshell. I have high standards in this regard but yes, she could never hold a candle to Monica Belluci. She did seem to have lovely interpersonal skills though.
Early returns on Precious and KAT out there together seem good. Tommy Beer reports that they have a 104.4 defensive rating together in 144 minutes together while outscoring opponents by 44 points. This is the best rating for a two man lineup playing 100 minutes together.
Good tweet!
https://x.com/TommyBeer/status/1882094988575608864
I don’t have to point it out. It speaks for itself, Doogie. DO BETTER.
Yeah, they’ve looked good together.
This is why I hope when Mitch comes back Thibs doesn’t just replace Precious with Mitch but still gives Precious minutes at the 4.
Let Mitch back up KAT. Play them together for a bit and also play Precious at the 4. Maybe his minutes go down a few minutes a game but I will be genuinely upset if Thibs simply stops playing Precious.
“I don’t have to point it out. It speaks for itself, Doogie. DO BETTER.”
If you don’t have an error that I actually committed, then don’t pretend that you do. And if you do have one, I’d like to know about it so that I could learn from it.
Coward.
“It means his wife reads knickerblogger.”
LOL, hubert.
What about Ronnie Walker IV? – Can we squeeze them both? – heard he’s killing it in Greece.
It’s Lonnie Walker IV, not Ronnie Walker IV.
“Let Mitch back up KAT. Play them together for a bit and also play Precious at the 4. Maybe his minutes go down a few minutes a game but I will be genuinely upset if Thibs simply stops playing Precious.”
While I agree, not sure the situation will even come up: if they believe Mitch is coming back, Precious and his no-trade waived contract is likely an outgoing in a trade for another bench piece.
Doogie,
You dense you are, isn’t you?
Not only is he dense, almost all of his posts are either passive-aggressive (“How can you possibly…”) or insulting (“Idiot” “Coward”). It’s really not just unseemly but ugly, and he sours the thread and the site.
“walkerandbendercornerstones says:
January 22, 2025 at 12:02
Doogie,
You dense you are, isn’t you?”
You just proved my point for me! Thank you! 🙂
Raven is a Big Black Bird says:
January 22, 2025 at 12:05
“Not only is he dense, almost all of his posts are either passive-aggressive (“How can you possibly…”) or insulting (“Idiot” “Coward”). It’s really not just unseemly but ugly, and he sours the thread and the site.”
I didn’t use either “how can you possibly?” or “idiot” today. If I do ever say “how can you possibly?,” I don’t know when it would have even been. I used “idiotic” instead of “idiot” on purpose today to demonstrate that the behavior is idiotic instead of calling the person himself an idiot, as it is much less personal. If you weren’t as dense as you are (by the way, calling someone “dense” *is* personal), you’d understand that.
He’s definitely a coward if he claims that I made an error but is too afraid to even tell me what it is. Very dubious, to say the least, and calling him a coward is actually quite factual whereas calling me dense is false.
I scoured bad teams’ benches looking for options and there weren’t many obvious ones.
Javonte Green on the Pelicans is someone I’d take a flier on.
Kelly Olynyk makes a lot of sense but I don’t see how it could be done without biting the bullet on Mitch. That is one we should look at in the offseason when we’re not up against the apron and have some flexibility with Precious’ salary.
Damn, I did it again, milo. I didn’t see this one, though.
Yeah, I usually love throwing out potential trades and I just can’t find a realistic target, especially with the restrictions we’re working under.
In addition, I was not the first one who went into personal attack mode today; that would be both of you:
TNFH says:
January 22, 2025 at 10:53
The world in which anyone who reads at a 3rd grade level could tell the context was “total minutes played.”
ThisChicanery says:
January 22, 2025 at 10:54
It’s amazing you dense you are. In a comment that specifically says minutes played, you still can’t figure out he’s talking about total minutes played. You’re like a child who needs everything spoonfed to them.
So yes, you brought this on yourselves. Enjoy! 🙂
Fun little piece in The Athletic about OG’s seemingly eidetic memory related to defensive plays.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6079326/2025/01/22/og-anunoby-defensive-secrets-knicks-nba/
just read your post Oaktrees…that was so damn funny…
um sir, your lucky day, we’d like you to participate in our great fan giveaway
yeah, no, I’m good thanks
that is so freaking funny, keep your free shit, I’m okay…
dense continue to be you are.
Sigh, Doogie didn’t write that, he was quoting someone else. Since he just does not use the quote button, it is just difficult to read. And please, dont go back and forth on these kind of things, even if you are right.
Oh no! You’re going to act like you do every day?
Geo, also check out Darkwar by Glen Cook. He’s one of my favorite fantasists but this little sci-fi foray is a gem. If you at all like dark fantasy (platoon meets lord of the rings) his Chronicles of the Black Company is an all time great. I’m not overly found of how much George Martin loathes all of his characters. Cook cherishes his characters and even though they go through terrible stuff you aren’t there for the sport of the terror.
“Fun little piece in The Athletic about OG’s seemingly eidetic memory related to defensive plays.”
In a blog that has been polluted in recent months by inane call-outs on imprecision….got to give props to the perfect and surprising use of “eidetic” in a basketball context!
Greg Egan, thank you milo…
seems there a bunch of prolific readers here – my kind of crowd 😊
are you all doing physical copies, or have you transitioned to reading off a tablet, or even going the audio book route?
i’ve done the audio book thing before, the tablet doesn’t really feel comfortable in my hands…
i just really love holding a book in my hands…probably why I love playing video games so much, being entertained while having something to do with my hands…
Love the OG piece.
I liked but didn’t love the Black Company books. Read most of them although checking now maybe not all.
Geo, I read on a Kindle now. It’s easier to read in bed at night after my wife goes to sleep.
(ducks for cover)
Reposting this from yesterday because Beeks posed an interesting question about what qualifies as a real contender:
Thank you, Mr. Beeks. Glad to see I’m slowly moving from complete pariah to cranky semi-pariah on this board!
Your question is very fair. Going purely by SRS, here are my rough goalposts:
10+: GOAT candidate tier consisting of MJ Bulls, Dynasty Warriors, OKC, and the ’24 Celtics.
8-10: Superteams that are generally the presumptive favorite to win the championship. Only the ’70 Knicks are in this category for us.
6-8: True contenders with a solid chance (15-25%+) to win the championship in most years unless there is a reigning GOAT or Superteam. The ’73 and ’94 Knicks are in this range for us.
5-6: Fringe contenders with an outside shot if everything breaks right. ~ 10% championship equity in most seasons. Our ’93, ’69, and ’71 teams are in here, all of which lost in the ECF.
4-5: Pretenders. Only 9 of the last 45 champions were in this range and 5 of those are past champions mailing in the regular season. This year and last year’s teams are here. 2nd round is a reasonable expectation.
For those keeping track, with yesterday’s worst win of the season our SRS has now dipped to 4.28, below last year’s team.
Geo, I read off of paper almost exclusively. I then donate the books or gift them because I’d prefer to keep my vinyl. The bookshelves are full. Though it’s fun to shed every once in a while to see what has left your affection or esteem or what’s just truly you.
Owen, did you get on to Malazan Book of the Fallen?
I tried Malazan but it wasn’t for me.
I once recommended The Kingkiller Chronicles here and I still haven’t recovered from PT panning the second book. But that’s more my thing. Harry Potter is not.
Geo, I moved to a tablet about a dozen years ago. Never have looked back. But there were a few unique reasons I did so–I have at least 2000 books and ran out of room (don’t have the ruthlessness of bloody-nine to discard something I read and enjoyed), I was doing a lot of long-haul air travel (packing 3 books or taking a tablet with 10 reading options is a no brainer), and the “increase font size” allowed my to forego getting eye glasses (still don’t have them).
Only people who know nothing about basketball can’t see that this team is so much better than last year, Pags.
Well so long as we’re all agreed that Elric of Melnibone is the coolest all is well.
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is a great series if you like fantasy, in many ways it is an anticipation of ASOIAF without the grimdark stuff GRRM likes to indulge in.
Owen’s evocative and provocative description led me, in tangible terms, to Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Oh yeah Kaminari! I enjoyed that series too.
Clarence, you should read his new follow up series the Last King of Osten Ard – the last book dropped a few months ago and I’m reading it now, it’s good stuff.
Oh yeah! Thanks for the rec. Ima pick them up.
“dense continue to be you are.”
And you continue to exhibit idiotic behavior. I was never dense in the first place.
“Sigh, Doogie didn’t write that, he was quoting someone else. Since he just does not use the quote button, it is just difficult to read. And please, dont go back and forth on these kind of things, even if you are right.”
Thanks, iserp.
Doogie what’s your favorite book?
“ThisChicanery says:
January 22, 2025 at 12:34
So yes, you brought this on yourselves. Enjoy! 🙂
Oh no! You’re going to act like you do every day?”
If you continue to personally attack me and/or assign my name to fake posts that never occurred, certainly I will continue to defend myself. As occurred earlier this week, I was minding my own business when these things occurred. It’s all in your hands how this goes.
I read both an e-reader and physical. I travel a lot which makes the e-reader nice but I find I retain info better when reading a physical book.
“Doogie what’s your favorite book?”
I read for a living.
Do you like reading?
Of course, but unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to read for pleasure these days.
Did you ever read a book you liked?
I like many books that I have read, if not most of them. That’s why I read them in the first place. That question is a bit nonsensical.
Okay, are you capable of naming any of them?
Pags, an interesting description re your SRS levels, but I have a problem with you listing a group that contains 20% of champions over the last 45 years as ‘pretenders.’ Just seems not only unjustifiably harsh but also inaccurate by definition. I get you think some of them mailed in the regular season, but it still seems wrong.
I don’t mean to nitpick, especially given the tendencies of late. Just curious if you might walk that one back a bit.
geo, I’m a book lover with basically the same exact story as BernieErnie, but I held out until this holiday season, when Lady Raven gifted me with a Kindle. I do appreciate it for travel and for accessing a lot of books I can’t get from the local library for one reason or another.
Of course I could, but I humbly decline. This is not a topic that I brought up—nor would I have *ever* brought it up—and it’s not one that I have any interest in discussing on this particular forum. Thanks, though! 🙂
Okay. Well back to the washer and dryer for me. Been travelling quite a bit and loads of laundry to get through.
I find the Payne vs. Brunson numbers curious.
That’s why the other night I finally conceded that maybe Payne deserves more minutes. He’s not the scorer Brunson is, but imo he’s a better defender. Ironically, I think the ball also moves better when he’s on the court. He’ll take some ill advised shots, but it’s usually early in the clock. He doesn’t dribble around for 15+ seconds hell bent on creating a shot for himself like Brunson sometimes does.
To be clear, I’m not saying Payne can carry the team at times like Brunson does or do just as well if he was the primary focus of the defense like Brunson. But I think he’s probably having his best career year or at least very close. I think we can probably give Brunson a little more rest or even try to play them together more since I ike Payne more as an energy scorer than pure PG anyway.
Greatly prefer physical copies but I need to start donating some books. There’s nothing sadder than knowledge unshared… also my bookshelf is full.
I listen to audiobooks, because who has the time, but I forget 90% of what I hear. Admittedly, a large part of that is selecting books I’m less interested in for audio.
Wow.
The parts about OG’s memory were amazing.
Yeah, but what about his negative DBPM. 😉
“Okay. Well back to the washer and dryer for me. Been travelling quite a bit and loads of laundry to get through.”
You do your own laundry? I always imagined you as “having someone for that.” Based on absolutely nothing, of course. 🙂
I’d forgotten that Payne ever played for the Thunder, Cavaliers, Bulls, or Bucks. He’s definitely been around. His “career years” were in Phoenix, where he averaged career highs in minutes per game (~20) and points per game (~10).
The 2nd unit just seems to have more synergy. Payne, Deuce and Shamet are all quick and can handle the ball. It always feels like they’re playing 7SOL offense with Deuce & Payne taking every half open look they get.
On the other hand, Brunson, Mikal, and OG plod. Hart is the only 1st unit player with any pep. I do think they’ll look better with a couple days off.
It’s almost as if — as several of us kept trying to tell you at the start of the season — Payne is in fact a point guard and not a small shooting guard!
That group contains two instances of the Showtime Lakers, the repeating 2001 Lakers, the repeating 1995 Rockets, and the repeating 2010 Lakers. There’s no credible argument we’re in the class of any of those teams except maybe the Rockets, whose record was marred by the chemistry disruption of the Drexler trade.
There are only four first-time champions below 5 SRS, which is less than 10%. Each involves a legendary carry job plus a significant lucky break:
2011 Mavericks in a legendary carry job by Dirk + the Heatles’ chemistry not being fully formed
2006 Heat in a legendary carry job by the Wade + the NBA turning shooting foul sliders all the way up temporarily
1994 Rockets in a legendary carry job by Hakeem + the GOAT retired
Our equivalent would be, say, Brunson going thermonuclear for 16 games + injuries to Tatum and SGA. Possible, but highly unlikely.
2023 Nuggets in a legendary carry job by Jokic + all opponents under 50 wins
“also my bookshelf is full.”
I’ve got eleven of them. Luckily the house is big enough that they’re spread around and we don’t look too much like lunatic hoarders. Mostly novels and field guides (nerd!), but one bookshelf is entirely ancient classic adventure/natural world tales like Lowell’s “Mars and its Canals,” “Africa’s Game Trails” by Teddy Roosevelt, and Peary’s “The North Pole.” Mostly inherited from Father Raven, I have no interest in collecting, and embarrassingly have only read a few of those. But they look cool.
I do face the problem of what to do with them all when I’m devoured by weasels. Still no clue, especially as books become less and less a ‘thing’ in our culture. Don’t want to make a buck, just don’t want them thrown out.
Derrick Lively has a broken foot, the Mavs are in some trouble
I was the idiot (I can use this word liberally on myself) who years ago decided books would be where my excess earnings went. I liked reading them, I liked the look of them after I read them, I thought prudent buying of older editions (about a third of my book collection) was a good investment, and great novelists, old and new, would only increase in relevance. A hit rate of about 25-50%, about the same or slightly better than my Knick takes.
I still don’t fully agree with that, but I think it’s mostly my definition of PG. I’m an old guy. 😉
I think he’s primarily a scorer but handles the ball well enough to let him control it a lot. He picks up many of his assists as a matter of having the ball in his hands a lot. I don’t him see trying to create for others or delivering especially good passes with great vision.
What I really meant by that comment was that Brunson sometimes kills ball movement with excessive dribbling. Payne does that less frequently. He’ll shoot quickly or move the ball quicker on average. He doesn’t dribble dribble dribble like Brunson.
That’s 8.89%, which still isn’t bad.
We’ve seen Brunson go thermonuclear before. This doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.
Regardless, Brunson doesn’t need to go thermonuclear because we have KAT who is a better 2nd option than those teams had.
Kinda loses its weight when you follow this up by saying their first year also had them below 5 in SRS.
Yup, I think Pag’s argument could be summed up by most (other) people as ‘we have a puncher’s chance,’ which seems to be what a great number of people on this site think.
Of course for many of us it’s a glass that’s nearly full, while for Pags its a glass that’s not in fact full and could actually be draining fast.
Our chances are much lower the league currently has one GOAT level team and two super teams in our conference.
Basketball-reference puts our title odds at 1.5% (7th best) and I think that is accurate. Thus, not a real contender.
Geo,
like others here I read both physical and electronic books, while audiobooks make me fell asleep almost immediately and I tend to forget everything I heard after 10 minutes.
Ebooks are useful when you travel, even if I always bring with me 2-3 paper books, and it saves a lot of space in the house (I’m out of bookshelves and all of them are three rows deep, years ago I rented a space in a warehouse basically just for storing the excess of books).
It also makes easier to read books in other languages, not yet translated or whom perhaps never will be, a feature I use happily especially for sports and military history books.
But I really love the feeling of a paper book in my hand, it’s something I can never relinquish and I think some types of books are “unreadable” in an electronic format (i.e. exhibition catalogues, art books).
Also, I find very unsatisfactory to read comics, one of my guilty pleasures, in the ebook format.
I think our chance to win the title is below 2%, which I don’t consider a puncher’s chance. The teams in the 5-6 SRS range have a puncher’s chance. We have a lottery ticket.
On top of that, as I’ve said before, I believe our SRS to be inflated due to our good health and short rotation. I’m less happy about our standing than last year because we spent all our assets to lock in a worse team for the next 5 years.
Obviously it’s not that high for us specifically, but as a group that isn’t a terrible win rate. It’s the same probability you give for the group above it, though I’m not sure if that’s an actual win rate or your estimate.
The season isn’t over. Our SRS isn’t finalized. I don’t think we’re as bad as we’ve looked the past few weeks, our guys are visibly tired, and before that it certainly looked like we were mailing it in quite a bit.
More importantly, pponents are unlikely to keep shooting this far above average against us.
EPM gives us a 7% chance to win, not that it means anything either way, but it does put us with Memphis & Houston in the 2nd tier.
Well, I’m jealous. Sounds like a great setup. Those books aren’t really my type either but I love the aesthetic of having that bookshelf anyway.
If I ever figure out how to fit 11 bookshelves into a 1 bedroom apartment, I’ll happily take them off your hands.
We do not have a puncher’s chance to win the 2025 NBA title.
Everyone knows how this season is going to go:
We will win a very tough first round series in 6 or 7 games. It will be everyone’s favorite first round series bc of how competitive it is. Thibs will, of course, grind his starters into dust during it and a few of them won’t make it to round 2.
In round 2 we’ll be shorthanded against a vastly superior opponent and get summarily dismissed.
geo i’m around 80/20 digital, but i do miss the real thing. the benefits of the chip are just too great. but i’m also around 90/10 nonfiction if you don’t count reading with the kiddo. didn’t used to be that way. have an audible subscription but for me the experience often plays more like back floating through the pool of syntax than reading.
“back floating through the pool of syntax” – I love it here
For a while I pleasure read with a Kindle. Definitely has its advantages economically, spatially, etc. Then I went to law school and became a lawyer, and a large part of my job became reading stuff on screens.
So now when it comes to pleasure reading, I’m a luddite.
the thing is the playoffs don’t start tomorrow and you’re all running the odds of what would happen if they were
This is towards the better end of our outcomes. Very good chance we lose the first round as our team is worse than last year and we’re not much better than the potential opponents.
We could also very easily drop out of the top 6 as our players break down and our schedule toughens.
can we get the odds on the injury projections? what, where and when.
Subconscious Pre-registering of Words via Visual Saccades sounds like a psych paper that probably exists and explains this
My analysis bakes in the expected effects of 36 more games of our starters having some of the heaviest workloads in the league as well as us having the 5th hardest remaining schedule. The expected effects are not positive.
We’d probably be better off if the playoffs started today rather than in April. Ideally they’d have started in December.
“can we get the odds on the injury projections? what, where and when.”
You *do* know that this is impossible, right?
No shit you dimwit, that’s the fucking point of the comment.
Found it. Disappointingly, it’s very legibly named: Eye movements, the perceptual span, and reading speed
I decline
No, it’s not. And that is the problem.
The Knicks would have a punchers chance if you helicoptered them directly into the NBA finals at full health.
But the Knicks’ chances of winning the title are actually:
[the Knicks’ current chances of winning the title] * [the Knicks’ chances of surviving the next 35 games without a significant injury] * [(the Knicks chances of avoiding a simple injury in any round) * 4]
So, like, less than 0.1%
(That last one is the most important. Most teams can’t survive an injury to their best player. We can’t survive an injury to any of our 5 starters. Possibly not even Deuce. And since we play the most minutes, we have the highest chance of one of our guys getting hurt.)
Thibs’s teams almost across the board playoff underperform their regular seasons. It’s much more likely this team does that than the opposite.
I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but it’s hard to understand why everyone seems to think there’s inherently more here than what we’re seeing from this team. They’ve had it relatively easy so far compared to what’s to come.
Hubs, what you described only happened last playoffs. It didn’t happen the year before when we crushed Cleveland in the first round and were pretty healthy going into the playoffs.
The idea that players accumulate tiredness over a season and no amount of day’s off will heal them is silly.
The minutes and injury thing is more about getting injured in one game because they’re playing too many minutes or they played heavy minutes on a back to back or they’re in there when they shouldn’t be (cause it’s a blowout in the 4th) and bad luck happens.
If Brunson is tired after a game because he played too many minutes but then has a few days off, he’s not going to still be tired.
If we get to the end of the regular season without major injuries and we’re not a play-in team, we get like a week off before round one and then we get at least a day off between games (sometimes two).
OG didn’t pull a hamstring because he was tired. He literally had a 2 month break in action because of his hand injury. How would he have accumulated tiredness?
Brunson didn’t break his hand because he was tired.
honestly these takes are silly. We should be concerned about the minutes thing because the bench isn’t getting developed and also because there is an increased chance in injuries in any particular game if a guy plays too many minutes in a short stretch of days.
Both times Randle got hurt it wasn’t because he was playing too many minutes and tired. And pointing to minor injuries a player might have in the playoffs is silly. Every team has dudes that are nursing something come playoff time.
By all means critcize thibs for not developing the bench or wearing guys out when we’re blowing a team our or getting blown out. But if we make it to the end of the season with no injuries, dudes aren’t going to suddenly start dropping life flies because of accumulated minutes over the season when they have days off between playoff games.
OG and Mikal are so heavily taxed on defense with no real rim protecter and a Jalen Brunson at point that a healthyish Mitch can really allow them to redistribute their energy more efficiently. They are not just tired from minutes but from the kind of minutes played. There’s likely some upside here.
Fuck you, dimwit. LOL 🙂
“The Bloody-Nine says:
January 22, 2025 at 16:16
I decline”
LOLOLOL!!! Thank you for the great laugh. 🙂
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time too.
An ethical Donald Trump might be a decent President. I expect to see that sooner than we see a healthy Mitch.
“…The idea that players accumulate tiredness over a season and no amount of day’s off will heal them is silly.
The minutes and injury thing is more about getting injured in one game because they’re playing too many minutes or they played heavy minutes on a back to back or they’re in there when they shouldn’t be (cause it’s a blowout in the 4th) and bad luck happens.
If Brunson is tired after a game because he played too many minutes but then has a few days off, he’s not going to still be tired….”
Probably the best post of the day. 100 percent co-sign.
“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time too.”
That *definitely* didn’t have to do with basketball. Hell, it didn’t even have to do with sex, eating, baseball, music, or (directly) books. 🙂
5-10% feels about right to me. I’d shade to the lower end there but if Mitch can somehow come back fully healthy maybe I’d go higher.
Stuff CAN happen, to DRed’s point. Mobley could break his foot. Tatum could discover that Kristaps slept with his woman. I don’t know. It’s farfetched but not impossible.
Having to beat both the Celtics and the Cavs would be rough but I am going to worry about that scenario later. Right now I just want the team to play to its potential and for Thibs to not be quite as much of a psycho.
“An ethical Donald Trump might be a decent President. I expect to see that sooner than we see a healthy Mitch.”
Wait. Alan politely asked us to keep politics off of here.
But if we do ever see either of those two things, it would be the Mitch thing. The Trump thing will likely never, ever happen, with 99.9999999999999999999999999 percent certainty. Mitch is probably more like 80 percent certainty of not occurring.
Can we hunt down and kill the one asshat who didn’t vote for Ichiro?
I’ve been enjoying the many stories of how nobody believed in him when he started in the US. And then how amazed they all became.
I was at the game when he threw that guy out at third. It felt like the whole stadium went quiet for 30 seconds, because nobody could believe it. Me included.
Doogie read the room. If you can you will take a break from posting today including not responding to this post. Thank you
I’ve read and enjoyed the Ichiro pieces too. What a player he was.
As for books, I am in the process of getting divorced and sold the house a couple years ago, which meant dealing with 5000+ books. The ongoing culling has me down to 3000 or so, all in storage, and it’s been getting tougher. Really, really love all my friends…though perhaps I could take the next step and give away the purely nostalgic, like the Hardy Boys and some truly embarrassing Star Trek novels from the 80s….
Suffice to say that ebooks and especially audiobooks aren’t going to do it for me.
As for the Knicks, the idea that we are what we are and haven’t even had bad injury luck is funny. Our entire bench has been out weeks (Deuce, Precious) or months (Shamet, Mitch), and yes, Mitch does count because he was our starting center. That obviously impacts the minutes situation. Beyond that, every top 3 team in the East also somehow has an easy schedule. How could that be??? So odd….
Seems a bit extreme.
Nobody puts Baby in a corner
I think Injuries are mostly bad luck. In some cases a guy might be more or less likely to get injured based on his build and other physical attributes. I guess playing style also matters. If you are driving into players and banging you are more likely to get hurt.
After that, I think without proper rest between games and through the season minor injuries do not heal properly. So by the time the end of the season comes along, a player could have multiple minor things going on that make him less than 100% even if he’s still playing. I think wear and tear is a real thing and it’s to be avoided with rest and healing. That sometimes requires giving a guy a day off and potentially sacrificing a win.
Of course, if you play 40 minutes instead of 35, that’s 5 extra minutes of higher injury risk multiplied by how often you do it also.
Heat are suspending Jimmy for another 2 games.
He’s actimg like a real asshole and possibly hurting his own chances of getting traded.
I dunno, I don’t really believe that serious injuries are the only thing to worry about when it comes to minutes. Players break down in smaller ways when they play too many minutes– there are more nagging injuries that never really fully heal and things like that. There’s also the problem of putting yourself at risk for injuries because fatigue causes your technique to get ragged. I just don’t buy that wear and tear and general fatigue has zero effect.
If this was true, why wouldn’t other teams just do the same One Weird Trick that Thibs does, and use a playoff rotation for the entire season? I think there’s probably a pretty good reason why other teams don’t ride their five or six best players so hard during the regular season.
Maybe I’m overstating the effect, which is not really measurable in a tangible sense. But I would guess that the effect isn’t zero.
Julius Randle didn’t get injured in the final weeks of the season and limp through the playoffs two years ago?
Mind you I’m not putting that random occurrence on Thibs.
That team two years ago was built to withstand an injury. This team is not. And an injury will happen, because they happen to everyone.
The idea that this team has a puncher’s chance is based on the very valid idea that in a 7 game series, at full health, we have a chance to beat anyone. That’s totally different than having a puncher’s chance of making it through 82 games and 4 rounds with the shortest rotation in the NBA. That is not happening.
“Doogie read the room. If you can you will take a break from posting today including not responding to this post. Thank you”
Wow, now you’re going to tell me which posts I can and cannot respond to? Trumpism, meet Knickerblogger. Knickerblogger, meet Trumpism.
Seriously……did you really think that I would comply with that? LOL
I apologize, Alan, but that was just beyond ridiculous.
Yes, they are. You wrote them, though.
I didn’t say our players are going to get hurt because they’re tired.
Players get injured when they play, and our players play the most.
If you drive 10 hours a day and I drive 8, you’re more likely to get into a car accident than me.
Players used to play in all 82 games, and routinely played 40 minutes per game. Mikal is playing more than anyone, and isn’t breaking down.
“If you drive 10 hours a day and I drive 8, you’re more likely to get into a car accident than me.”
That’s like the “statistic” that most vehicle accidents occur within one-half mile of one’s home. Well, of course they do, because that is where someone would be driving most often when they are leaving or arriving home.
This is a complete non-sequitur that is completely irrelevant to Hubie’s simple and solid argument. It’s extremely obvious that more playing time implies more injury risk.
Everyone used to play 40 mpg x 82, yes. That’s why every 90’s superstar not named Stockton or Malone was done by age 35, while today the best players of the last generation are still going strong at 36+ like Curry, and Durant, and LeBron is still All-Star level at 40.
Hubie almost always has good points. Sometimes it’s just fun to play. 🙂
Just took a gander at Cooper Flagg’s numbers and they are muy guapo.
His reputation is as an elite defender, don’t have the numbers on that, but there are absolutely no red flags on the offensive side.
I’d be seriously excited about drafting him, were I a Wizards fan
Can everyone here just agree to not acknowledge anything A Certain Very Bored Pencil Pusher posts? He’s not going to get banned, I suppose, but you can just freeze him out.
Ess-Dog – Such sensible advice. No one will take it.
Most days I get addressed before I ever address anyone. Just saying.
And I abhor pencils. Never use them.
Doogie feeling oats.
This thread has some of Thibs tendencies… some “players” are getting too many minutes!
I love that Bob couldn’t get three posts away from sensible advice before not taking it.
Or was that E? I can’t ever keep them straight…
I agree.
To think otherwise is to say that every other team and medical staff is wrong and Thibs is right. That’s not impossible. There are plenty of examples of the league being wrong.
But it strains credibility to think we used to play the best players a lot of minutes, watched their peak/careers tend to end earlier, reduced the minutes allocation and gave players more games off and watched their peaks and careers get extended, but think somehow we were right to begin with.
There’s a tradeoff between short term wins vs. end of season freshness and long term career/health. Where the right balance is I’m not smart enough to know, but Thibs is obviously at the short term extreme.
“Or was that E? I can’t ever keep them straight…”
That was definitely E. Bob hasn’t been on here all day. And E was totally incorrect, anyway. I’m not feeling any oats over here.
Now I’M confused. Don’t put me in this shmey drey.
“Now I’M confused. Don’t put me in this shmey drey.”
Yep, I get it. They tried to pull that same shit with me yesterday morning. LOL
I don’t think load management has anything to do with extending players careers outside of hopefully avoiding catastrophic injuries. If, and I’d like to see actual evidence this is true, players careers are being extended I would think that has a lot more to do with improved medical care for injuries (nobody gets microfracture surgery anymore) and, if I’m being honest, access to better PEDs.
Load management has two benefits. Playing fewer overall minutes means there’s less opportunity for injury. Playing fewer minutes, but not 0 minutes, means players are better rested and should have more energy in games, particularly near the end of the season.
So I was going to copy and paste a few delightful and jaw-dropping bits about Jalen and KAT from a Ringer article about who deserves to be in the all-star game, but there are actually too many. I recommend a read, if nothing else just scroll down to read the Brunson bit and then the Towns bit. So many tasty factoids.
https://www.theringer.com/2025/01/22/nba/nba-all-star-game-2025-voting-rosters-ballot-east-west
I think that’s likely a big part of it also, but I’ve seen players quoted as saying load management extends their careers. I think it’s part of the accumulated wear and tear debate. A car (body) is only good for so many miles until it starts breaking down. You can extend it’s life in years by taking better care of it and not driving as much, but it’s going to break down eventually.
So, I decided to do some very basic research on players’ ages. I used bbref to check players’ ages for every season every 5 years going back to 1994-95 plus 1984-85 and 1974-75. There’s an obvious increase from the 70s to 80s to 90s but I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that players’ career are being extended after that. The numbers below are the total number of players and the percentage of players in the league that season who are 36 years old or older.
1974-75: 2 | 0.85%
1984-85: 5 | 1.56%
1994-95: 11 | 2.7%
1999-00: 29 | 6.69%
2004-05: 18 | 3.88%
2009-10: 9 | 2.04%
2014-15: 14 | 2.85%
2019-20: 6 | 1.13%
2024-25: 9 | 3.64%
People like to point to Lebron and what he’s doing at age 40 but he’s an extreme outlier. It looks to me like most players follow the same trajectory for the last 20+ years.
Doogie, I’ve actually been skipping past your posts lately and I suspect others are too. If you want an attentive audience, try posting less and try ignoring nits that aren’t important.
Are the Bucks really going to swap Middleton out for Beal’s contract? I don’t think this is being discussed enough. If this trade happens, it could really hasten Giannis’ exit stage left.
Also the Pels game tonight has been suspended due to… snowstorm?
Rockets absolutely gaging a game at home against Cleveland but they’ve got a chance last minute
Truly sorry to hear, rama.
vincoug, it is an interesting endeavor, and I appreciate anyone who dabbles in research of this kind, even with confounders. But I wonder how much the data is skewed by things like expanded rosters, two-way contracts, lucrative non-NBA options, salary cap tightening, etc.
wow, Darius Garland just missed 2 of 3 FTs and Cavs lose by 1.
Hou-Cle was crazy, Houston had a big lead in the 4th, the Cavs went on a 19-0 run and it got tight back and forth. Houston went up 2 with a few seonds left and Garland got flagrant fouled and then missed 2-3 FTs and Houston won as Mitchell missed at the buzzer
I watched the last minute of the Rockets Cavs. Incredible ending. Sengun made two free throws to push the lead to two. The Cavs took a three point shot with about two seconds left and Eason fouled Garland on the shot. The foul was upgraded to a flagrant. Garland, a 90% free throw shooter then missed two of three. Because it was a flagrant the Cavs got the ball back but missed their last second shot and Houston won.
Clippers have a back to back at home starting tonight vs Boston and tomorrow vs Washington. Tonight they’re sitting Kawhi, Harden, Powell and Zubac. What a fucking joke.
My post crossed with either ones about the game ending.
“Doogie, I’ve actually been skipping past your posts lately and I suspect others are too. If you want an attentive audience, try posting less and try ignoring nits that aren’t important.”
If you’re not reading my posts, then how do you know that I’m not *already* “ignoring nits that aren’t important”? For the most part, people are taking it upon themselves to engage with me in the early part of the day, as opposed to the other way around.
BBA, this actually makes sense from a coaching and team perspective. This way they have very strong chance of beating Washington. They will almost certainly lose to Boston so they will probably win one of two. If they did it the other way they could still lose to Boston (a quite likely outcome) and could lose to Washington too, meaning they went zero and two for the two games. I’m sure he’d rather be confident of going one and one. This has the added benefit of good experience for the bench.
Im sorry that’s a bitch ass move, in fact load management to me in general is such bullshit. Say what you want about Thibs and this Knicks team but I’m glad I don’t root for a team who pulls that crap especially at home.
“Clippers have a back to back at home starting tonight vs Boston and tomorrow vs Washington. Tonight they’re sitting Kawhi, Harden, Powell and Zubac. What a fucking joke.”
Harden at least I think is actually hurt. I could be wrong about that. Man, has his star fallen!
Harden and Powell both played their normal minutes their last game which was a home loss vs Chicago, Kawhi of course didn’t play and to be fair Zubac didn’t play either.
Well they’re basically tied at the half…
Shrinking is the best thing I’ve watched in a long time. Season 2 is incredible. Touches upon so many aspects of human frailty. Or maybe I’m just a sap.
Woof… just got back from a date with hubby at a more than decent performance of Uncle Vanya – on Huron Street…that’s rough for Garland. That team ain’t ready.
Shrinking is a hard one for me. So is Ted Lasso.
Why would Ted Lasso be tough for you? It’s as soft and fluffy as KAT’s (incorrect) reputation. I especially hate Keely (that is, when I even understand more than 25 percent of what she is saying), and the showtune from Sound of Music was almost egregious enough to make me go screaming from the room. It was almost as ridiculous as the “haircut in the locker room” scene. Neither of those things would ever happen within an English football team’s existence (especially the showtune).
Thanks Z-man. Not what I wanted, but it’s a gift. Life is about growth, right?
My belief in Kevin Porter Jr. and Derrick Jones Jr. against the Celts paid off tonight in daily fantasy NBA. Amir Coffey, too. Went big on the (remaining) Clips. Tied with 4.2 seconds left!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂
Also Shai and his 54 points. 🙂