Knicks Morning News (2025.01.23)

44 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.01.23)”

Didn’t watch any, but there were some close games yesterday, Wolves won by 1 in Dallas, Rockets prevailed against the Cavs at home also by 1*, Celtics needed OT in LA to win against the Clippers** and Warriors led the Kings by double digits for the most part of the 2nd and 3rd quarters, to then be tied at the end of 3rd, in the 4th the lead changed 6 times but ultimately the Kings prevailed by 6.

*there’s some good descriptions about the thrilling end of game at the end of the last thread.

**despite the Clippers decided to sit Harden, Kawhi, Zubac and Powell 😮

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.

And because last thread was hard to read, this bit didn’t catch my attention, and i even had to go back when i saw Z-man’s comment about it.

Sorry to hear you’re having to go through a probably painful process, Rama, we’re here for you if you need to talk about it.

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.

Would Mikal and KAT plus whatever we have left be enough to get him? Who says no? The Bucks, right?

Also the Pels game tonight has been suspended due to… snowstorm?

Global warming? Are you kidding me?? Look out the window! 🤭

Cyber, please.

News bot story on Kendrick Perkins calling the KAT JR/DDV trade the worst in NBA history from the TWolves perspective. He might be proven right if you define “worst” as not most lopsided (the Knicks specialized in a couple of those eg Bargs) but did it destroy legitimate contender status for the foreseeable future and was a lopsided trade.

Shrinking is a hard one for me. So is Ted Lasso.

I understand you. I watched some of Ted Lasso until I got to the episode about the little girl with bad breath on a holiday. It was a waste of an episode as far as I was concerned but it did tell what kind of audience the show was aiming at and that the show preferred to be mild comfort food to being something more complicated. I never watched another episode.

This blog would be freaking out if we almost lost to the Clips without any of their starters. The Celtics have had a bunch of “bad wins” lately (and a few bad losses) but I’m sure their blog is taking it in stride and attributing it to the slog of January

I know it helps to be the defending champions, but we really need to stop treating every game as a referendum on the Knicks. It’s a looong season, and games like Tuesday are gonna happen

Next 5 games will be very interesting however!

KFNINJ – Aside from Severance, which I enjoy (casting, casting, casting) Apple has been very Viacom for me.

I’ve really enjoyed Jean Smart in Hacks. I adore.

Went on a date with a real stathead heat fan dork (I like him). They have real hatred for Josh Hart still. Like our collective animus toward Embiid for reasons. He rolled Jimmys ankle in that series and fast forward to now. What kinda Faustian shit is Riley gonna do to make Miami still good.

I’ll check out Hacks.

I’m late to this, but that Katz article on OG was so good. I really miss him on the Knicks beat. James Edward III doesn’t do it for me – he’s a collection of platitudes most of the time.

Good morning, fellow Knickerbloggers!

“Would Mikal and KAT plus whatever we have left be enough to get him? Who says no? The Bucks, right?”

We should. No way in hell Giannis is worth that, at this point.

I’m going to periodically drop some factoids from that Ringer article yesterday, just because they’re juicy. If you read it already, skip my posts. This on Jalen:

‘He’s masterful at driving away from picks and attacking the space where help defenders don’t expect him to be. Brunson has rejected 23 more screens than anyone else, per Sportradar, while generating 1.3 points per chance (that’s good for the 90th percentile) when he pounces from the midrange.’

I appreciate this point as I’ve been constantly amazed at how infrequently he uses picks. Nice to see the logic, which I sort of assumed but had never seen in black and white.

D-Mar 99% of your posts are about what you think sucks about this blog. Your constant commentary about what you hate here is as additive as Doogie’s grammar policing.

For the record, your take about what goes on here is a bad one. We just barely beat a Nets team no better than that Clippers team and no one “freaked out”. No one treated it as a referendum. Reasonable posters had logical conversations about the evident limitations of our team. This seems to cause cognitive dissonance with highly sensitive posters who emotionally bought into the sky high expectations going into the season and are having a hard time coping with reality.

It is you who “freaked out” this morning by concocting an imaginary scenario that would make you really mad and talking about how stupid said imaginary scenario would be, mocking the community you’re part of.

I, for one, care very little about the regular season beyond being a top-4 seed. I think we are somewhat on track for that…and I will admit to being disappointed with anything less than that. Barring things that I won’t even mention for fear of jinxing things, if we don’t have home court in the first round, that would really put a damper on my feelings about the all-in moves.

But there is no outcome short of a second round victory that will leave me feeling great about this season. All in means all in. It’s all about the playoffs, and breaking through that second-round ceiling.

As for the “bitch ass move” the Clippers made last night, I think those fans got their money’s worth.

I’d rather see my team’s reserves compete and fight hard against the champs than watch an exhausted, depleted bunch with dead legs and short shots play down to a shitty opponent like we just did in Brooklyn.

This whole brute force thing we’re doing is not very entertaining. Nor does it seem like the optimal way to deploy the abundance of talent present. I will be happy, not mad, if I get to see Tyler Kolek for 24 minutes on a back-to-back while Brunson gets to play his best ball bc he’s not running on fumes.

Big news! The shot clock’s shape is changing!

https://bsky.app/profile/mikevorkunov.bsky.social/post/3lgg6kbtiqs2p

“I, for one, care very little about the regular season beyond being a top-4 seed. I think we are somewhat on track for that…and I will admit to being disappointed with anything less than that. Barring things that I won’t even mention for fear of jinxing things, if we don’t have home court in the first round, that would really put a damper on my feelings about the all-in moves.

I’d like as high a seed as possible (which I guess would mean staying in third place), but at the same time as I detailed a couple of days ago our record on the road (15-8) is as good as our record at home, so a top four seed might not be absolutely necessary.

But yes, for me the idea is to improve each season and get closer to a championship, and for this year that of course means making the Eastern Conference Finals.

“D-Mar 99% of your posts are about what you think sucks about this blog. Your constant commentary about what you hate here is as additive as Doogie’s grammar policing.”

I was surprised by this strange comment so I checked on D-Mar’s posts (not including game threads). He didn’t post yesterday (wise decision). His first post the day before was a completely neutral one about how the next 5 games are at home, etc. I stopped right there because it seemed highly doubtful his previous 98 posts concerned something he hated about the blog.

Load management is a valuable addition to modern nba life, and life in general. We’re generally conditioned to see the machination as negative when a coach uses it for something other than the health of a specific player. Thats just stale. The nba is a competition not a parade (that tasted funny).

Hey d-mar, you’ve been posting here for many years and I never once remember you having an ugly conflict with another poster. You keep right on doing you!

Our record at home is currently 14-8, so pretty much the same as our road record (15-8).

The Celtics were missing KP, Horford, and Jrue. They still should have won easily, but they weren’t running at full strength either.

The Celtics sat half their team too. These detente games are strange.

I always like when you get the understudy out to see what they can do. Let’s give Daniel Gafford 33 minutes just for the fun of it. What if you swapped Joel Embiid for Paul Reed was one I liked in years past.

I can understand why fans hate it though. It’s pretty niche.

Like the difference between a square and round shot clock.

I think we are somewhat on track for that…and I will admit to being disappointed with anything less than that.

This is a perfectly cromulent take, but things do happen. Health can unfortunately be a major issue (both for and against us) before and during the playoffs.

But I agree with z-man in spirit, although I would add that a first-round playoff win is important.

For 2025, I don’t necessarily expect us to advance beyond last year’s team with this new group, but we should equal it and then try to build around the edges after that. Because this is our team, for better or worse, for the next 3-plus years. The next order of business is clearly to acquire the type of depth Boston has.

Many here have and will continue to insist we need an upgrade among the starters and/or positional shifts, which is fine, but my expectation is that this is the starting group we want in place, so I will treat it as such.

Big news! The shot clock’s shape is changing!

https://bsky.app/profile/mikevorkunov.bsky.social/post/3lgg6kbtiqs2p

Time is a flat circle

“Time is a flat circle”

That’s very funny!

I can understand why fans hate it though. It’s pretty niche.

Of course the fans hate it. It is not cheap to go to an NBA game. Imagine getting decent seats to an NBA game, the only one you can afford to go to that season. You go with your son, who loves X star player on X team who happens to be in town that night for a game. So you splurge on tickets.

You drop minimum $100 for 2 tickets. Maybe more like $200 if you want really good seats. You spend $10 on parking. You plan to buy a hat or whatever for your kid. Another $30. You buy food and drinks for both of you. Another $40 to $50 bucks.

All in you’re dropping anywhere from $200 to $300 bucks. Maybe that’s half a week’s paycheck but hey, you want to see a game and your son wants to see star player. Only to get there and find out they’re not playing bc of load management.

It’s a star driven league but now many of the stars skip 10 to 15 games a year simply for load management (not even counting when they actually get injured).

It’s bullshit and it’s one of the reasons why the NBA isn’t as popular as it used to be.

IMO, the league still needs to address this. They’ve tried scheduling hacks to not have as many back to backs but there are still a lot.

They need to either A) shorten the regular season or B)start it a week earlier or both.

KAT and Giannis make the same money and trade fits nicely under the apron. I’ll add our 2025 Detroit pick too.

God help us if Leon flips Randle + a mid level guy for Giannis.

Time is a flat circle – lol. That did get a chuckle.

Yeah, hard to argue that the fans bear the brunt of it. I was at the Nets game next to a very young, very cute kid, son of my friend’s friend, who was a Brunson superfan. I actually thought about how crushed he would have been in Jalen had sat.

Thibs does it for the children I think is the logical conclusion.

You drop minimum $100 for 2 tickets.

This is very much a NY problem and not an NBA problem. You can get Nuggets tickets for about $10 a pop in the cheap seats.

“All in you’re dropping anywhere from $200 to $300 bucks. Maybe that’s half a week’s paycheck but hey, you want to see a game and your son wants to see star player. Only to get there and find out they’re not playing bc of load management.

IMO, the league still needs to address this. They’ve tried scheduling hacks to not have as many back to backs but there are still a lot.”

I agree with most of this. The league has also instituted the 65-game minimum for awards, but I don’t know that it’s made that much of a difference.

$300 as half a week’s pay = ~$31K per annum. One cannot live in the DC area with any modicum of comfort at 3x that salary.

Hold out hope if you will, but for an all-in team, they aren’t good enough — primarily because Mikal and OG aren’t good enough. In addition to that reality on the floor, the assets used to get them turfed the depth — which also isn’t good enough.

That’s the fundamental reality of where they are. Discussions/arguments/discord around the edges of that can certainly be had and are perfectly valid.

In terms of measurements, getting waxed in the conference finals isn’t good enough for an all-in team that’s depleted the asset chest. It may be perfectly cromulent by way of short-term excitement and energy, but in cold, hard basketball reality, not so much.

The thing about the association is that it’s pretty easy to see reality and the future if you just permit yourself to. I wouldn’t say that about the other sports, but pro basketball is different.

In terms of the odds, they started the season at +750. They’ve fallen to +1400 and been surpassed by the Cavaliers in the East, who are now only +750. If everyone’s healthy, and that includes Mitch, the Knicks project to lose in the second round to pretty much the same core group of dudes they smoked in the playoffs less than two seasons ago.

I’m not sure why or how this observation would bother anyone. It’s a simple statement of fact about where they are in the pecking order right now, and the best stock model of where they’re going.

Now, does this big matzo ball hanging out there have to be belabored in every game thread? Does every bad game have to then include a follow-up about how it shows where they stand in the pecking order and be proffered up as some kind of referendum?

I’d agree the answer is no, it does not. But it should be kept in at least some mind when googly-eyed things like “Landry Shamet has barely played all year” are trotted out.

“If everyone’s healthy, and that includes Mitch, the Knicks project to lose in the second round to pretty much the same core group of dudes they smoked in the playoffs less than two seasons ago.”

Not sure where the characterization of this statement as a “projection” comes from. There is zero data upon which to base such a projection. It’s really just speculation based on a preconceived (i.e. glass half empty) view of current circumstances.

There is zero data upon which to base such a projection.

There’s a laundry list of data to base that projection on. As we sit here today, the Knicks do not project to beat either the Cavs or Celtics in the playoffs. Simple statement of reality.

Doesn’t mean it literally couldn’t happen; they didn’t project to beat the Cavs two years ago and they smoked them. But that’s the stock model, baseline projection.

$300 as half a week’s pay = ~$31K per annum. One cannot live in the DC area with any modicum of comfort at 3x that salary.

DC minimum wage is ~$35K a year.
Maryland is $30K.
Virginia is $25K.

Write your representatives.

“Thibs does it for the children ”

This made me wheeze.

Wait, we all agree the Knicks aren’t as good as the Cavs or Celtics but are reasonable underdogs to beat either but obviously not both in the Eastern Conference playoffs?

What have we been arguing about for months then?

Simple statement of reality.

Truth and reality are two different things.

“DC minimum wage is ~$35K a year.
Maryland is $30K.
Virginia is $25K.
Write your representatives.”

What exactly am I supposed to be writing to my representatives about? My claim about salary needs near DC was more of a statement of fact based on living there for almost 40 years, rather than meant to be a complaint of any kind.

“As someone who ranks 23rd in minutes per game but first in time of possession, Brunson is the engine behind a top-three offense, but, despite that stat, he doesn’t stand around and dribble while his teammates watch.”

Your mileage may vary…

What have we been arguing about for months then?

To one degree or another, primarily the proper suggestion by Hubert, Pags, and occasionally others that you don’t have to wait around for the future to happen to make reasonable projections, based on current realities, about the future.

Some people chafe at and try to police those reasonable projections. That’s the primary source of Knickerblogger disputatiousness.

The Knicks a very good. The Knicks are not the best team in the NBA. The Knicks should continue to be very good for the foreseeable future. It will take a combination of luck and creative finishing touches to win a title in the next 3-4 years, but it’s possible albeit unlikely.

This all seems unobjectionable. I guess the disagreements fall on whether it’s an acceptable state for an “all-in” team. I see why some people feel that it isn’t, but I think they’re overlooking just how many teams go “all-in,” or close to it, and don’t even approach this status. Look at the Wolves, Suns, and Sixers just off the top of my head. Now that’s what a proper mess looks like.

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