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80 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.03.06)”
I hate it that the Lakers are such a good team this season.
Well, they *weren’t*…….until they were.
Josh Hart is a shell of himself. He’s obviously hurt and he is hurting the team. Is it on him or is it on the organization to sit him?
Weird that we have 2 players –Josh and Mikal–that have yo-yoed from month long stretches of All-Star level to stretches of middling rotation level without any injury-like explanations.
I don’t think it’s that weird. This stuff is streaky.
https://x.com/KnicksMuse/status/1897384169002709198
I know it’s blasphemy to compare anyone to Jordan, but SGA is doing some Jordan-esque shit this season. And more efficiently.
And to think the Clippers sent him and 5 first round picks to OKC to get Paul George.
Paul George was still pretty great at the time. The next season he outscored SGA by a 21.5-19.0 points per game margin.
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/279552/NBA-Teams-Expected-To-Operate-With-More-Caution-Extending-Their-Own-Players
Luka isn’t a great example here. Maybe, this is why Mikal avoids contact because being an Iron man holds the most value going forward.
Yeah, you’d actually think we’d be happy to have a guy who’s 1) always available and 2) pretty decent (17/3/3 on 49 percent FG shooting). What we paid for him, opportunity cost, blah blah blah. I know. We paid too much, for sure. But that really doesn’t matter right now, does it?
No explanation for Bridges but Hart has always been like this. He went from shooting 30% from 3 in Portland to shooting 50% after we traded for him. And look at his monthly splits from last season: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hartjo01/splits/2024
Well, it was really for Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi told LAC he would sign there if they also traded for Paul George so you kind of have to bake Kawhi into the price of that trade.
That makes it an even more cromulent trade. Again, at the time only. Clippers wouldn’t make that same trade now.
Will be interesting to see if we are one of them.
There seems to be two popular ideas in the KB Collective that shouldn’t coexist:
1. We can’t get anything good for Mikal Bridges bc he’s tanked his trade value.
2. We’re going to extend Mikal Bridges at around $35M AAV and that’s fine.
I might be too optimistic about Mikal’s trade value. I’m relying heavily on Dejounte Murray as my baseline. But if I am wrong, that means his market value is around $10-12M and extending him at the level he wants in this punitive environment would be catastrophic.
I wonder if Mikal would even want to extend coming off a shitty year or would rather put faith in himself having a bounceback year going into FA
Can you cite more than a single poster who advocated for this?
Beal gets all the blame, but he’s not the main problem. He can still play OK. They have had a lot of injuries and the team is contructed poorly. If they were all healthy and played together regularly they’d probably have one of the better offenses, but they’d still suck because their defense is terrible.
Speaking of offenses, the Knicks have dropped to 4th and I read that over the last few weeks we are 7th. I’m not sure how much of that has been related to injuries and missed games, but if the offense starts slipping we are deep doo doo given our defense.
At the time of the SGA trade no one on earth (including Presti) thought he was going to become an MVP candidate. He was a solid rookie guard (6th in ROY voting) that projected to be a consistent solid starter and maybe eventually an all-star. His amazing development totally changed OKC’s rebuild from many more years to what we see now.
I am not in favor of giving Bridges 35 million a year. Going to be brave and go on record with that.
If there is some cap thing that explains it where it doesn’t matter if we give him 20 million or 35 other than Dolan dollars, well then fine.
But he hasn’t played to that number.
I can’t explain Bridges. He should be playing a lot better than he is. I actually think that the squad on paper should have been just about perfect for him to be very productive. But it’s not happening so far.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying that the Clippers made some massive blunder trading away SGA, at the time it made sense based on their timeline.
But it sure as hell has to sting a little watching this guy turn into an MVP candidate.
We’re tied for 4th. Denver passed us and Boston. OKC is tied with us and will pass us soon.
Our offensive rating is currently 1.4pts better than last year. Our defense is 1.7pts worse.
Last year was our year. We traded 6 picks, Randle, and Donte, yet still have a worse team than last year.
The funny thing about SGA is that he is the platonic ideal of the stan position so many of us take about young players, be they the Franks of the world or the RJs. Somehow SGA went from something kinda cromulent to something spectacular. And he didn’t do it by being able to jump out of the gym, either. To quote Alice, “Curiouser and curiouser!”
No team with Donte as the 2nd scoring option is winning a title.
Maybe, and that’s assuming we ignore Randle, but that’s not really the point.
We spent 6 picks, Randle, and Donte for a non-championship team.
I do vaguely remember one particular poster here who suspected that passing on Shai was an error that echoed Donovan Mitchell’s draftastrophe.
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/279558/Wolves-Expected-To-Revisit-Trade-Pursuit-Of-Kevin-Durant
Randle a main piece in a KD trade…
The Knicks had 2 options
1. Pray Giannis asked out and you could trade for him /somehow Luka would’ve landed here because you need another top 5ish player to try and beat Boston
2. Trade Brunson and blow it up because you’re wasting his time here
* they chose Mikal and decided to overpay because they felt they needed to do something
Yeah, I think Brunson leaving significant coin on the table is also built into the chips push.
Besides you?
https://knickerblogger.net/2025/03/04/knicks-morning-news-2025-03-04/#comment-950784
Granted there is a delta but surely you wouldn’t argue that $5M makes all the difference.
The defeatism on this site sometimes is super annoying.
I love all the proclamations about how we can’t win or we’ve reached some ceiling when we’re on pace to win more regular season games than last year.
Let’s play the freaking playoff games first before we make these doom and gloom proclamations.
Brunson shows out in the playoffs. Hart was great in the playoffs last year. Mikal was on a finals team. KAT went to the WCF last year. OG played big for us in the playoffs last year.
We have the dogs to run.
Is it really that weird to lose a regular season game to Steph Curry when we don’t have KAT?
How did you feel about Bridges playing soft with Curry defending him? How does he not punish Curry on offense? I heard the MSG crowd was angry at that.
Luka, LeBron, and Reaves are all on the injury report for tonight, as is OG. KAT is in.
NBA injury reporting is ridiculous. Luka and LeBron will play, as will OG. Reaves will probably play, too. I guess if I had to pick one of these guys to not play, it would be OG.
Talking about what the Knicks should do to get better isn’t doom and gloom, swift. The Warriors game has nothing to do with it.
To be clear I’m not usually a doom sayer but we’ve all watched enough basketball to know what we know when we see it. Somewhere inside this core there absolutely could be a championship caliber team. But this team this year doesn’t seem to have “it”.
These convos only happen after we lose, lol.
We can talk about how to get better in the off season. The playoffs are a completely new season. I’ve seen teams roll into the playoffs only to lose in round one (2020 knicks) and other teams play uninspired ball the last month of the season only to kick it up a level.
I’d much rather talk moves once the playoffs are over and we have that actual data to go off of.
I agree. But to be fair this has nothing to do with the loss. But if I gambled I’d take the Lakers and give the 3.5 all day long on tonight’s game.
I said so in the draft thread at the time. He was my pick that year – it’s in writing that I thought his upside was All-NBA, and though I thought he was riskier than Mikal, we should go for the upside pick given our situation. I works have been fine with Mikal, but called it correctly. It was only more obvious once he was playing.
Hubert, I know I said I’d be fine at $30 mil. $35 mil is not $30 mil, and yes, I do think a delta of $5 mil makes a difference. Precious is currently getting $6 mil, for instance. Beyond that, it’s cumulative – an extra $5 mil here, and extra $8 mil there, it all adds up. I would have loved OG at $35 mil; $40 mil makes me uncomfortable, because we now have less flexibility. Why would you suggest that compounding mistakes is not a big deal?
Not so much, really. Most of us feel this team isn’t in that top tier. The differences are mainly whether a complete, healthy squad can get there with this coach.
I feel compelled to repeat this because we spend so much time rightfully talking about how much we paid for Bridges and how much to pay him going forward, but imo the biggest blow was losing I-Hart for nothing. I’m not smart to calculate how many wins he added accurately, but losing him required that we replace quite a few wins just to break even (and of course we lost Mitch for most the season)
So, $30M AAV isn’t that much in the NBA anymore. A player making $30M AAV would have the 70th highest contract this season and is what Jalen Johnson, Tyler Herro, and KP make. We really need to reset our expectations on what NBA contracts look like.
I want to see Mitch and Towns first, but the bigger problem is clearly defense. Brunson is not going anywhere. If we conclude that Mitch and Towns improve the defense but the offense suffers just as much or more, then we either need a very specific pairing at PF for Towns (that’s when Hubert correctly asks me who or how?) or we trade Towns for a two-way big man (Giannis?). If you move Towns, you absolutely have to bring a scorer back. You just want want one that defends better than Towns.
I’m not. My contention is that if you can’t get anything for a guy at $24M then his next salary needs to be lower, not higher. So extending him at $30M is just as dumb as extending at $35M.
More importantly, I doubt $30M is an option. These extensions tend to get done at the max or they don’t get done at all.
If we do consider trading Bridges, imo it has to be for a better player.
We are past the stage where it makes sense to trade Bridges because we don’t want to overpay him a few million and instead bring back an inferior player or two on better contracts. That just makes us a worse team with slightly better contracts. That’s not the goal. This team is on a clock.
There is one and only one goal here now.
GET BETTER
Of course that doesn’t mean we should go crazy with money if it damages flexibility too much, but if you want to trade Bridges, you have to come up with someone that’s better.
Precious and Mitch questionable for tonight.
We’re not worse than last year.
Fake news. Politicial fan virtue signaling type leak. Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have a mortage to think about. That’s why KAT is here.
Got to admit I really though it would take longer than 41 NBA minutes spread over 3 games for Mitch to get hurt again, but here we are. Chance of him being healthy enough to play significant minutes in the playoffs looking bad. Chance of the entire team being healthy at the same time (which is basically the minimum condition necessary for our puncher’s chance) is looking like about zero with Hart, OG, and KAT visibly breaking down as the season has worn on.
For those saying we’re better than last year, there’s really no case for that. We have more wins because we’ve played a soft schedule, had much better injury luck, and played a Game 7 rotation for most of the season. Our SRS is significantly lower. We have less overall talent and depth. Our offense is proving to be nothing special, and completely ineffective against the best defenses to a degree that much worse teams’ offenses are not. Our coach is a dinosaur whose defensive principles are suited to the NBA of 15 years ago.
Teams below 5 SRS are not contenders and we’re below 4 and trending down. This is the team and it’s locked into mediocrity for half a decade. We should fire sale and rebuild.
Interesting that 30 mil would be 70th in salary. Mikal is usually rated higher in the top 100 countdowns of NBA players (e.g., 58 in The Ringer), although these are usually done at the start of the year and are also wildly subjective. Still, a very weak sauce argument could be made that 30 mil is an okay deal…
I don’t think that Mitch is hurt. Him being listed as questionable tonight means virtually nothing, if that’s what you’re going by.
They listed Mitch as questionable the last game too. I think its just what they’re doing out of precaution right now. I wouldn’t read anything into it.
OG, on the other hand, is more concerning.
This is the team and it’s locked into mediocrity for half a decade
Pags, get that you have some need to stay relevant with your pessimistic posts but please explain your rationale for the above statement.
If he was healthy he wouldn’t be on there, or he’d be probable at worst. It’s a clear signal that the ankle is still a ticking time bomb.
Sure.
1. We are mediocre. Teams in our SRS range do not win championships. In the last 45 years, only 3 teams have won championships with SRS below ours.
One of them was the 1995 Rockets, who got a lot better at the deadline by trading for Drexler.
Another had Jokic, the best player in the world. They were able to get a lot better in the playoffs simply by playing him 40 minutes instead of 32. For reasons that have been well covered here, we don’t have that option.
The last was the 2006 Heat, where Dwyane Wade shot 97 FTA in six games. If the league is just gonna rig series in our favor like that, it doesn’t really matter how good the team is.
2. We are locked in. Between our lack of draft assets/young players and our extreme proximity to the second apron, Giannis isn’t walking through that door.
3. We have virtually no upside. All of our players are either already in their prime or do not have NBA talent. With the pretty good injury luck we’ve had this year, this is likely as good as this group is ever going to look.
The rational conclusion is to fire sale our valuable assets now instead of bumping our heads repeatedly against the ceiling of 50 wins and second round exit. We made some good moves that put us within sight of contention, but we failed to stick the landing. We didn’t secure iHart’s Bird Rights so we lost our best C since Ewing for nothing. Then we overestimated how close we were and emptied the clip for Bridges, an average starter whose defensive rep has proven way overinflated.
That’s the game. It’s an unforgiving one. Lots of people here are happy with where we ended up. I’m not. I want to see a great team in my lifetime, and since I’m going to have to wait several years for one at minimum, I’d rather start the wait now.
Cyber: “I wouldn’t, tonight i’d bet the Knicks win”
KB: “But Cyber, you’d always bet on the Knicks, that’s why you don’t gamble”
Cyber: “Busted!”
😀 😀 😀
Thanks Pags. Thoughtful reply to what I have to admit was a caustic question. But what I took issue with was the “locked in” for the next 5 years. I see us as the most flexible over the first apron team, as OG is the only contract I could see having to add a sweetener to if we decided to recalibrate.
I strongly disagree this team is a finished product. And it’s quite funny that last season what mattered was the playoffs, because we were overachieving, and this season we don’t even wait until the playoffs to “decide” the fate of the team. What if Mikal is a lot better during the playoffs, because there’s more time to rest? That would change a lot the team’s prospects. What if KAT doesn’t give a damn about defense during the regular season and then takes a step up once the playoffs start?
I was with you, Cyber, until your take on KAT. Nice try.
On the other hand, while I respect Pags’ (annoying) bit focusing only on the worst possible scenarios for the Knicks as all guaranteed, one after another if not simultaneously, I give you this bit from an article I was just reading. As in, you know, doom and gloom is relative, and the Knicks are in a pretty good place.
“Incredibly, the Sixers aren’t even the saddest among them. The Dallas Mavericks—who were in the Finals last June—inexplicably traded their best player (Luka Doncic), immediately lost his replacement (Anthony Davis) to injury, then watched their remaining star (Kyrie Irving) go down with an ACL tear. The Phoenix Suns, who mortgaged their entire future to put Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal next to Devin Booker, might not even make the play-in tournament. By just about any measure, those two franchises are in demonstrably worse shape than Philadelphia, though that’s hardly much comfort to Sixers fans.”
And, you know, it’s all Thibs’ fault:
Dallas Mavericks Injury Report vs. Milwaukee Bucks:
Caleb Martin: Doubtful (Right Hip Strain)
Kyrie Irving: Out (Left Knee Sprain/ACL)
P.J. Washington: Out (Right Ankle Sprain)
Jaden Hardy: Out (Right Ankle Sprain)
Danté Exum: Out (Right Foot Contusion)
Anthony Davis: Out (Left Adductor Strain)
Daniel Gafford: Out (Right Knee Sprain)
Dereck Lively II: Out (Right Ankle Stress Fracture)
I meant a step up from the lowest point to a less lower point. LOL
RJ Barrett is ruled out for “rest” tomorrow. Toronto is not going to be in the playoffs. He’s 24 years old and has been healthy. What the hell?
And a sign of the apolalypse: Stephen A. Smith just signed a 5-year, “at least” $100 million-contract.
Maybe his knee hurts. He does play basketball. Maybe Darko is the anti-Thibs and doesn’t like to ride his players like Secretariat. Maybe it’s precisely because the games don’t matter that he’s giving one of his guys a rest. Maybe he wants to see a bench guy as a starter to find out if he has moxie. Maybe…
But yeah, definite sign of the apocalypse. No matter how it’s spelled.
This actually isn’t what I’m doing. I’m projecting the median case. I’m recognizing that the way this season has unfolded so far with our brittle non-Mitch players being generally healthy is close to our best case and still we are very mediocre and far from contention.
The worst case is something like what Dallas is experiencing now. We could easily lose KAT/OG for a lot of games given their track records. We’re a game ahead of our Pythagorean record so we could easily have much worse luck in close games. Brunson could easily get Derrick Rosed when Thibs puts him in with 4 minutes left in a game we’re up or down by 25.
The median case is somewhere between that and what’s happened this season. While close to our best case, this season has not been great and we’re very far from championship contenders, so it’s reasonable to conclude that the median case kinda sucks. Yes, we could be Dallas/Philly/Phoenix or the 2007 Knicks or whatever. To me, locked in mediocrity isn’t much different from abject futility. I’m just not that thrilled to watch us average maybe 48 wins for the next couple years. Sorry if that’s annoying.
Following this logic, it’s also clear that last year’s team was a LOT better. They endured long stretches with no Randle, OG, or Mitch, and a lot of games of Clank Barret dragging us down, but still had better SRS. The January Knicks with our level of health over a full season are probably a 60-win team. We aren’t close to that.
‘is close to our best case’
Agree to disagree. I think we can be much better than we are right now. Will we get there? I’m feeling a bit doubtful at the moment, but lots of conceptual room for improvement. Hart can recover from his mysterious disease, Robinson can continue to round into form, Mikal and OG can start being consistent(ly good). Just those four things could make for a vast improvement. Will they all happen simultaneously in time for the playoffs? Like I said, feeling a bit doubtful, but we’re still not close to our best case. Our best case is a lot better.
“and still we are very mediocre and far from contention.”
I don’t know, fifth overall (and fourth until very recently) doesn’t sound like very mediocre. Being 15th is very mediocre. By, you know, the definition of the word. Fifth means five spots away from the top out of 30, so in fact not far from contention at all. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like ‘in contention.’
Again, I ain’t expecting a chip this year, for reasons. But your take is just weird. And going ‘median’ with the idea that we will definitely end up somewhere between what we are now and Dallas is also weird. But you live in your world where we end up 15th. It sounds like a sad and ugly little world, though.
Seems like people missed it but Hart has a bad knee, he’s putting off surgery till the off-season.
These are wishes and dreams with no basis in reality. Our players have generally played to the talent level they’ve shown throughout their carers. Guys don’t just make leaps in ability at age 29.
Our record is inflated by our weak conference. You also know that SRS is a much more meaningful metric. We are 8th in SRS and dropping like a stone. A team in the West with better SRS than us like the Timberwolves has a significantly worse record at 35-29.
Multiple teams below us have also improved greatly at the deadline, so they are underrated by their SRS. LAL and GSW are pretty clearly better than us now. A team like DET is probably even money to beat us in a playoff series.
I have this little patch of back hair on my left shoulder. It tickles the back of my neck occasionally and I’m like “Jesus Christ there’s a bug on me!” Getting older is weird. And then there’s the little hairs that grow on my ears that are definitely not attractive in a traditional sense. I won’t cut the back hair or wax cuz it’s funny. But I pluck the ear hairs because I think it might distract someone in a professional or romantic setting.
I still like myself pretty much as much as my therapist thinks is healthy.
We’re 8th in SRS and honestly that sounds about right. We can very rarely beat (or even compete with) the true top teams in the league, can usually hang with and sometimes/often beat the next tier down, and can usually beat the average to below average teams.
In a playoff series we might be able to beat a couple of teams that rank ahead of us, but could also lose to a couple of teams ranked behind us.
Roughly the 8th best team in the NBA. I think that’s fair, and it’s what the scoreboard says anyway. In the top third of the league or so.
https://x.com/DaltonJ_Johnson/status/1897742511004959173 crazy stuff
Clown, where did I say leap? Nobody makes a leap in my conceptual improvement. Well Mitch does, but that’s a leap from not playing for a year to rounding back into DPOY candidate form. That’s not a leap, that’s coming back. Yeah best case, but that’s what I’m arguing, that we’re not currently at best case as you seem to think. And it’s two guys becoming consistently good, rather than seemingly trading turns being wildly up and down; and well, EB may have punctured my Hart balloon, but maybe he learns to play through the pain?
And SRS is nice and all, but although it’s from an article from a little while ago, at the time only 54% of league leaders in SRS won a chip. Which sounds like about half don’t, or half the time someone with a lower SRS wins a chip.
The Eastern Conference has 6 teams with a winning record . The play in teams will both have losing records..
That is a leap. OG and Bridges aren’t consistently good, they’re average to slightly above average starters in the NBA. That’s who they’ve been for their entire careers. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re shitty, and the average is in the middle.
Going from that to consistently good IS a leap. That’s no more likely than Derrick White and Jrue Holiday going from consistently good to All-NBA level. What matters is expected value, not the variance of individual trials.
Is this supposed to be an argument against having the best SRS? Because 54% championship equity is fucking massive. The top SRS team is literally more likely than not to win a championship. A historically dominant SRS leader like OKC is probably significantly higher.
What percentage of the time does the 8th SRS team win a championship? It must be VERY low, because the only team below 6th to win a championship in the 3-point era is 1995 HOU, who added Drexler at the deadline and had won the previous year.
Besides having a better overall record than all of them the Knicks are also 6-2 against the West teams ranked 4th thru 7th in SRS. 4 of those wins have been by double digits including wins by 37, 27 and 26 pts. But yeah sure they’re clearly better than the Knicks…
The Atlanta Hawks are 4-2 against BOS and CLE. Guess those teams aren’t “clearly better” than the Hawks, eh?
Well, the Giants being on the verge of signing Aaron Rodgers will neatly extinguish whatever remaining interest I have in that franchise and its stewardship under John Mara.
I think he goes to the Steelers and Giants end up with Russ Wilson.
Being a close follower of both teams, I would give the Knicks and the Yankees very similar odds of winning a title. That’s sad… for the Yankees.
I also saw something about Jaxon Dart going as high as #3 now. Idk if that means the Giants take him or trade the pick to another team, but neither sounds like a good move.
If Rodgers plays for the Giants I’m going to raise the probability that we are living in some kind of simulation and whoever created it is some kind of intergalactic troll.