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78 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.03.07)”
Guys, i understand on game threads people speak a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t on a morning news thread, but complaining about KAT yesterday?? The poor fellow has a person close to him with cancer, if the reports are right, and you think he’d play like everything is ok? Give KAT a break, please.
Chris Haynes says there’s optimism it’s only a sprain… that’s the worst I’ve felt after a loss in a while, but obviously JB’s injury is what’s really important.
Thanks, Cyber – I think we objectify athletes pretty easily. We want them to do, what we want them to do and don’t humanize them enough, IMO.
Accordingly, I’d like to apologize to Luka Doncic for any insensitive remarks I made last night.
🙏
Thanks for correcting my misspelling of the word “apocalypse,” Raven. I think it was one of those deals where I went to fix it before my five minutes ran out, but I didn’t make it.
Tough, annoying loss. Hope Brunson is OK.
I fell asleep with the Knicks up 8 and don’t feel good about this at all
Apparently no one else is inspired to say much about it, either.
Sh1t coach, Thibs let a rookie coach outduel him with his same old tricks. KAT gets one touch in the 4th a 1 touch in OT and that final possession in the fourth was awful.
https://x.com/shwinnypooh/status/1897914680649077047
Is this guy actually coaching?
Bryan Gibberman
@BryanGibberman
Knicks starting lineup played 25 minutes tonight & they were outscored by 10. They had a 98 ORtg & 122.9 DRtg.
Not a single other lineup played more than 4 minutes together
Not great news to wakeup to
I thought we let Basketball Matt Ryan go. How is he in our boxscore?
Not on NBA.com, but on ESPN.com. Stephen A. Smith must be even more confused than I thought.
Former Knicks beat writer even knows Thibs has nothing in his playbook.
The only positive for Thibs is the East is so awful even without Brunson it will be impossible to fall into the play-in.
Have you watched other teams with superstars down the stretch of close games? Tatum takes all the shots for Boston, SGA takes all the shots for OKC etc.
Not saying Thibs is an offensive genius, but Brunson is the #1 clutch player in the NBA. I kinda think you want him with the ball in his hands at the end of games.
Something else that was going on last night, Perkins basically added more fuel to my conspiracy Luka was added to the Lakers to increase interest in the league
Have you watched other teams with superstars down the stretch of
Yea I watched Tatum sit the other night and Pritchard go for 40 points and White go off as well. Celtics move the ball really well and have a system. Knicks system is Brunson, Brunson and more Brunson. Any coach can do what Thibs does which is overplay his starters and ride Brunson the entire game.
It was a freak injury, had zero to do with minutes or fatigue. I’ve had that kind of sprain where the toes kind of go under, it is not promising for a quick return. Hopefully it’s not Randle-esque where he comes back but really isn’t near 100%.
Would like to go back to this for a second…
Deuce was on Luka for 10 seconds last night according the nba.com box score.
I did a cursory look at the data that everyone is pulling which shows how much better we are with Deuce instead of Mikal. It is mostly against guys like Davion Mitchell, Darius Garland, Trae Young, Immanuel Quickley.
The selection bias is very real, and statements like these are bad interpretations of biased data:
They’re true, but only in extremely limited instances. And actually it is a credit to Thibs that those lineup numbers look good. It shows good flexibility and tactical awareness.
The half of basketball that I watched was very encouraging.
Let’s just get to the playoffs healthy. Brunson seems to scare us 1-2 times a year and always turns out ok.
Rest the ankle. Give KAT PTO. Get Mitch in shape. Adjust the minutes down for the wings.
And chill. These games don’t matter.
(Well, last night mattered, because we needed to win for CDiggy, but the rest of this trip doesn’t.)
Hubert, as much as I hate watching the Knicks lose, I kind of agree. We’re 3 ½ games ahead of the Bucks and 4 ½ ahead of the Pacers, and honestly, does the 3 seed or the 4 seed really matter? Either way we’d be big underdogs in the 2nd round vs Cleveland or Boston
But Thibs is Thibs so I don’t expect a foot off the gas, unfortunately
The keys to surviving Brunson’s absence, if it’s anything more than 5-4 games:
-Deuce stepping up as a starting lead guard
-Payne soaking up significant minutes
-Kolek being ready for at least some minutes
-Mikal doing more of what he is paid to do in the shot creation realm
-Hart snapping out of it
-KAT playing like a $50M player
The only thing that matters now is how we show out against Boston in round 2.
It reminds me of the ’92 Knicks. That team was 0-8 against the two top teams in the East (Chicago and Cleveland). Their major offseason acquisition was a wing (Xavier McDaniel) who underwhelmed all season. They had no shot at the title.
But man did the team (and the underwhelming wing) show up in round 2 against the Bulls. And that series set the tone for the next 8 years of the franchise.
We need to get to that Celtics series in good health and give it everything we’ve got. And if we lose in 7 games to the Celtics in round 2, I am prepared to call the season a major success.
But if we get there worn down and in tatters, or if we don’t get there at all, that should be it for Thibs.
I would be totally fine with slipping down to the 4 or 5 seed. Anything to avoid losing to the Celtics before the ECFs. I would rather end the season with a loss to pretty much anyone else, and honestly, losing in the first round or to the Cavs in the 2nd would increase the urgency for Leon to make some tough decisions.
I mentioned this last night, but something seemed very off in Mikal’s body language. He never looked as passive before, like he wasn’t even contemplating taking a 3 for like the entire 2nd half. Worth keeping an eye on that.
And with that, I am giving up basketball (and knickerblogger) for Lent. Which I meant to do two days ago but habits are hard to break.
See y’all at Easter!
“See y’all at Easter!”
I just bet heavily on the under.
Went to bed when the Laker started their run late in the 4th so am feeling sad this morning, but not angry. Timing is everything.
I’m REALLY sad that Cap is down, and hope he comes back strong and soon. But I’m actually really curious to see how the team responds. We have a suite of players who have been massively passive for various reasons, and who have been shielded by Brunson-Brunson-Brunson.
They’re going to have to step up now (or not, which will be really telling), which honestly could really help this team, even when Jalen comes back. He’s like an opiate for the passive players. Force them to go cold turkey.
Plus maybe we see a bit of Kolek, which would be a great subplot.
Welp..at least we should get more Deuce and Wright. And we may possibly see Kolek again. Hopefully Brunson’s ankle is merely a sprain that rest and treatment can fix. It looked crazy painful though.
I also have the under on Hubert.
Someone needs to do a deep dive on how this stagnation on offense has happened.
I understand going ISO Brunson the last few minutes of a super close games. All teams with closers/superstars do this.
But that shit went on for the entire 4th quarter!
Like what the hell is Bridges doing? NOTHING.
I’m giving KAT a huge pass for last night. He’s clearly going through some really personal/heavy shit. I expect him to get his head right in the next few games.
OG had a great 2nd quarter and I expect him to do the pump fake three and drive thing once a game or so to keep defenses honest but dude, you’re open take the fucking 3! Same with Bridges.
Gonna call it now. Thibs is gone this offseason unless we upset the Celtics in round 2. There is too much offensive talent for the offense to look like this. Kerr would have the entire team running action and sets to get dudes open. our high offensive rating is soley because of the personnel and it’s been slipping.
the defense was actually super solid last night. Anytime you can stimy a team with Lebron and Luka, you’re doing a good job.
Lakers are good though. No doubt. I fucking hate it.
The team plays well on offense when shots are falling but the second they don’t, they revert to ISO Brunson.
Also, yes Lakers just got Luka but everyone was hating on them for hiring Reddick. I think he’s turned out to be a really good coach.
It’s been a problem his entire tenure here. Before this season, our offense was heavily reliant on offensive rebounds and this year we just seem to be coasting on individual offensive talent. But the overall lack of scheme and the terrible ATO plays (what the fuck was that at the end of regulation? Maybe if we had run an actual play we would’ve avoided OT and Brunson wouldn’t have gotten injured) are way too much to ignore.
I’m just wondering who we could bring in to replace him. Kenny Atkinson was a very popular choice before Thibs was hired but that’s obviously not happening now. There’s not a lot of obvious choices.
That game was kind of like the last straw for me with Mikal. He has contributed at times but it seems like he vanishes more often than not. He just looks like a soft and passive player the majority of the time. If he had given us anything at all in regulation yesterday we would have won the game and would not be talking about Brunson’s ankle today. It’s very frustrating watching him play so many empty minutes on so many occasions.
Early in the season we were moving the ball, the offense was spaced, OG and Bridges were cutting etc…. We were actually playing basketball like a team that had some idea of what we were doing.
This team has a lot of offensive firepower, but it’s going nowhere if our offense is reduced to Brunson dribbling around trying to create a tough shot he can make often enough or trying to draw a foul.
Some of it is on him getting into that “do it all” mode from last year when everyone was hurt and he had to, some of it is on his teammates that don’t create well and are afraid to take the “big shot” and some is on Thibs’ total lack of imagination on offense.
I’m cooler this morning than I was when I watching all the key missed rebounds and TOs that cost us the game last night, but I haven’t changed my opinion. Thibs gas to go. I know it probably won’t be until late next year and only if they are having a disappointing season, but there are simply too many negatives to his coaching for this work.
I think we also have figure out the C/PF situation once and for all. That may involve making multiple moves in the off season. I still love OG, but we have rebounding issues with him and Bridges being below average and Hart too afraid to shoot to be a starter to make up some of the gap. Figure out C/PF, move OG to SF, Bridges to SG and Hart to the bench.
Strat, I think your third paragraph is exactly right. Which is why I’m super curious to see if things ‘improve’ with his absence.
I know Pags insists it is utterly impossible for the team to improve in any way/fashion/form, but I see this next stretch as testing my hypothesis that we can.
I’m not sure why anyone didn’t like that move. He’s obviously a sharp guy that’s obsessed with the game. I thought he’d be terrific. The absolute shock to me is that he has them playing very good defense also. Offense was a no brainer. Lebron is having a defensive resurgence and other players that looked like weak links have also really stepped it up.
The main reason our offense is in steep decline is because of KAT. He had a monster .664 TS% through the first half of the season, and then sustained an injury. Since he has returned from the injury his TS% has been a relatively pedestrian .566.
We basically traded a great player for a mediocre one, and the results speak for themselves.
THIS. RIGHT HERE. If we move on from Thibs, who do we replace him with?
Kerr? I think he’s with Golden State until he retires from coaching (and he already screwed us over once).
Could we pry Spo away from Miami? Part of me would fucking love that because Pat The Rat abandoned us so long ago but I don’t see it happening.
Atkinson just got to Cleveland.
Budhoelzer? I know Phoenix has been a disappointment but not sure that is really on him and he did get Milwaukee a ring. But he’s not a sure thing either.
It feels like it would have to be someone no one saw coming. An unknown who is secretly a genius but would Dolan EVER sign off on that kind of out of the box move?
Johnny Bryant?
Was curious to me that he left for another assistant gig. Albeit “assistant head coach” whatever that means.
This could be a blessing in disguise. I don’t know why other players (Mikal, KAT) are so passive, but it won’t play without JB. Maybe we’ll be able to get a better offensive system in place that will be more resilient in the playoffs and avoid the need for Captain Clutch. Or maybe we learn to win with defense – we certainly seem capable of it; the Lakers are excellent post-trade and we did a decent job of locking them down much of the night.
Either way, it’s on Thibs to figure this out from here. Curious to see what he does.
Nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action.
W.Goethe
RE: moving on from Thibs
If Thibs somehow gets canned, we need to do what the Lakers couldn’t- lure Hurley away from UConn. Short of that- I have no idea who’d be a good fit for this roster
Have been saying something like this to everyone I’ve discussed the game with today. Based on the opportunity cost involved in acquiring him, the number of games we can sustain Mikal Bridges playing like Frank Ntilikina is essentially zero. Yet it has happened over and over again, very much including in games where we desperately could use a secondary shot creator.
I’m loath to take a stab at armchair psychoanalysis, but it seems mental. I watch a player who seems to have the skills to do what we need him to do from a shot creation perspective, but for whatever reason often just doesn’t. The passiveness bothers me way more than any and all missed shots.
I guess with Brunson out, I’m viewing the upcoming stretch as a last chance of sorts. It could not be more obvious that we need Mikal Bridges to assert himself. Dude has to be more afraid of going 3-for-6 than 6-for-18 if we’re gonna weather this.
Hurley is one of the few college coaches where I think his approach works perfectly for the NBA. So many of these college coaches are about being good recruiters or getting a lot out of a little, but Hurley is all about schemes built for quality talent, and that’s the NBA to a tee.
Jay Wright makes sense for obvious reasons.
I mean…sure? But then we have to get Divo back.
I like Wright a lot, of course, but I think the same concerns are there for him that are there for most college coaches, as to how their approach can adapt to the NBA. Hurley seems built a bit different, where he draws up stuff that is pretty much wasted on lesser talent, hence the team playing like shit now that his players are worse.
He hasn’t been right since he injured his thumb. I really wish he had taken games off before the AllStar break and gotten like a good two weeks of to try and heal.
Something happened last year but I don’t watch the Nets so I have no idea what. His BPM, EPM, Darko, and even his WS all tanked last season and haven’t recovered.
Fred Katz says:
“But there is a hint of chucking.
During those close-and-late moments, Brunson finishes 45 percent of the Knicks’ possessions with a shot, a turnover or a foul drawn. That’s the highest rate in the NBA and is three times greater than any other New York starters’ figure. The Knicks employ another All-Star starter, Towns, but it becomes clear in fourth quarters that this is Brunson’s team. Towns finishes only 12.6 percent of their clutch-time possessions.”
Again, should be an interesting next couple of games…
Also, for those watching the game tonight:
“If you love hook shots, watch every Clippers game. Zubac took 20 shots against the Pistons, and 14 of them were right-handed hooks.”
It’s much more likely a physical thing. He’s had a few injuries where he’s played a token number of minutes to keep the Iron Man streak alive instead of resting. Either that or 2023 was an 2024 RJ Barret-like stretch of super hot shooting.
Either way, there’s really not much in his resume to indicate that he’s anything more than average as a shot creator or scorer. Basically he’s one of those guys who peaked at age 24 and has gotten steadily worse every year since, even including the magical stretch for the Nets in 2023. Look at this BPM trend:
2020-21: 3.3
2021-22: 1.6
2022-23: 1.7 (1.0 outside of the magical 900m for the Nets)
2023-24: -0.4
2024-25: -1.0
When all it takes is a glance at his BBRef page to see he’s worth closer to one 1RP than five, you really fucked up. Losing iHart was recoverable if not for this massive blunder.
Committing to this when there was every indication that iHart was gone threw away all the surplus value we got from Brunson. We paid an average starter price for an All-NBA player in Brunson, and then we negated that coup by paying an All-NBA price for an average starter. Result: an apartment squarely in the mezzanine purchased at fair market value.
This is revisionist history.
No one knew at the time that iHart was gone. We all knew the max amount the Knicks were allowed to offer iHart. And we suspected he might get an offer that was higher than that.
When OKC offered iHart that contract, the general consensus here was “wow, that’s a huge amount of money for ihart.” I think most of us thought he’d get something for 4 or 5 million more than what we could offer him and, if so, the prospect of getting to stay in NYC as a starter on a team that just added Mikal Bridges would be enough to keep him here.
He got an offer far above what anyone thought he would. That happened a full week after we traded for Mikal Bridges.
https://x.com/TheStrickland/status/1898052509337264446
Yeah I mean that Strickland post is spot on.
Strickland is asking questions we’ve been asking here for years. One: What is Thibs telling his offense to do? Answer: Not much.
I knew. I was beating the drum for months that he was gone because iHart is extremely fucking good. He was 2nd in the entire league in DEPM last year and at least better than neutral on offense. That’s a player comparable to Rudy Gobert, who is paid $44m and sold for a package near the level we paid for Bridges. The idea that we were gonna retain a player like that for a hair over the MLE was laughable from the start, and certainly very far from something to bank your team’s entire future on, which we did by trading for Bridges. Even if we did think we were gonna re-sign iHart, why not just wait until we had that done before paying through the nose for Bridges? Was someone else gonna swoop in and offer 5x his value in that week?
If iHart’s market blindsided anyone here, the explanation for that is very simple: they had absolutely no idea what his value was, and were laboring under biased wishful thinking where things work out for us as though we’re the Lakers. The smartest GM in the league thinks he’s a $30m player, and lo and behold, there was a shitload of statistical support for that all along, just like the numbers that show Bridges has slowly transitioned towards replacement level since 2021.
You didn’t know shit. You just take the most negative possible outcome of any situation and, sometimes, you might end up being right because you always take that position.
You’re like if a doctor told every single patient that came to see them that they had terminal cancer and then when one of them actually does, you say “see! I was right!”
That’s not you knowing anything.
So let me get this straight:
I make a prediction on iHart’s value based on widely respected metrics.
Others on the board disagree based on wishes and dreams.
The smartest GM in the league acts exactly as I predicted and in accordance with said metrics.
Conclusion: The people who were wrong about everything treat this as a black swan event that nobody could have predicted, even though all the available facts pointed that way, just because the poster who predicted it is unpopular.
With mental gymnastics like that you should be watching the Oympics, not the NBA. I have been bang-on right about the long term trajectory of the team. I didn’t give the most negative possible prediction because that would involve us being the Sixers or the Suns. I predicted we’d be a capped out, asset poor noncontender, and that is EXACTLY what we are, for the exact reasons I’ve identified.
KAT & Mitch shared the floor for 2:15 and we’re a +5.
They looked more willing to stay out on the perimeter against screens and seemed to both hold up well when forced to switch — though this may just be missed jump shots.
If I had to guess, they both feel more comfortable playing the perimeter when there’s another big available to grab rebounds. To some extent, KAT always needed to stay close to the basket because Mikal & OG are minus rebounders for the positions they’re playing.
KAT did seem late to a rotation to help at the rim from the corner, but Mikal had also just vacated the rim area to return to the corner. Should get better with more reps as the 4.
Didn’t notice much on offense with them together. There was one awkward cluster when both were in the paint but OG was left alone for a 3, so it may have just been KAT removing his man from the space, I couldn’t see the whole play from the clip.
Hopefully we get to see more. Thibs’ system has historically featured a rim protector with a high-level rebounder at the 4, e.g, Boozer & Noah, Randle & Mitch, or KG & Perk.
I don’t think Mikal has gotten worse on offense. IMO he’s a better offensive player now than when he came into the league.
IMO, here’s what’s going on with him.
When he came into the league he was as a super selective shot taker that was very focused on efficiency. Over time he started expanding the types of shots he was willing to take. However, his skill level did not match that growth in usage so his overall efficiency dropped. IMO he’s still just as efficient or maybe even more so on the shots he took earlier in his career. He’s just taking tougher shots on average. To be clear, I’m not just talking about how many feet from the basket. I’m talking about how open he is, whether it’s off the dribble or other movement etc…
So this is the deal.
If we want TS% of .625 Mikal, we can have it, but he has to dial back his shot selection a bit and we have to get used to him being closer to a 4th option than a 2nd option type player.
If we want him to be more aggressive, we have to get used to more volatile shooting and TS% closer to .575 or .580.
Of course the hope was we could get 2nd or 3rd option Mikal with a TS% of .600 or better, but that seems less likely.
Knicks are down to +2300 to win the Larry O’B, sixth in the league, barely ahead of Golden State. Leon’s big moves have turned out to be pretty much a disaster and he has a lot of tough choices ahead. This probably should be a teardown, though of course it isn’t going to be.
The intermediate solution is to keep JB as the tentpole and shop everyone else on the roster with the hope that you flip things around quickly enough to still have some JB prime years left once the retool is done. The lack of first round draft picks resulting from the utterly disastrous Mikal trade make this a less appealing option than it otherwise would be.
The team is well under .500 against .500 or better teams and non-competitive against the truly elite teams. With all of their key players essentially at their peak age. It’s really nowhere near contention.
This ain’t wrong.
Remember Doctor Pagliacci’s diagnosis of OG “Out For The Season” Anunoby? That turned out to be really fucking dumb and based on nothing except always adopting the most pessimistic possible.
I mean, by all means keep doing it, but don’t think that you’re fooling anybody.
1) It doesn’t matter what IHart’s value was. We couldn’t match it no matter what. The only sin that was Leon’s was maybe not getting a 3rd team option???
2) E, don’t come here all high and mighty. Like someone just said. It’s the same thing many posters have been saying for a while. The move to get into contention could be material or it could be a tinker. We will see.
I don’t claim any expertise around player injuries, but I do know player valuation. As I’ve said before, my projections on the long-term trajectory of the team have been bang-on accurate. Show me where I’ve been wrong on that.
It absolutely does matter. It his value was below $17m we could have matched it. If it was close we could have maybe won out by offering him a more appealing role and destination. In fact it was WAY more, so those possibilities weren’t there. I correctly identified that months ahead of time while apparently a lot of KB is still blindsided by a thing that was the most predictable outcome in the world a year ago, and also has already happened.
E’s thesis, which is supported by all of the available facts, is that contention is definitively NOT a tinker away because we are very very far from it.
My recollection is that there was a ton of concern from a broad swath of posters that iHart was a goner. There was hope that he would stay, but lots of worry that he wouldn’t. So if pags wants kudos for being more definitive about it, sure.
Problem is, pags has a history of doing a chicken little bit and has lost all credibility as a poster to be taken seriously.
I’m still holding out hope that Mikal being just a terrible move and a not a disaster.
I’m shocked we haven’t gotten a detailed injury update on Jalen from the Knicks. Very uncharacteristic.
Probably the best we’re gonna get is that he’s listed as “questionable” for tonight’s game
SNY said the ankle isn’t broken. But that’s all they know. A really bad sprain could be three months.
Knicks PR tweet –
Jalen Brunson sustained a sprain to his right ankle. An update on his status will be given in approximately 2 weeks.
Not sure how to take that, I guess it’s good news?
That’s not at all good news. This could very well be the end of our season. Fuck.
Well, it’s time for Deuce to shine. And as long as Jalen is back soon I am ok with that. I mean , obviously I am not ok with it at all but I am ready for Deucesanity.
Or Paynesanity I suppose
The Great Clown Pagliacci says:
March 6, 2025 at 22:24
Yay another blowout where a good team dominates us wire to wire
To be fair they would have if they didn’t miss like every three until the last few minutes of regulation.
Instead they only completely dominated us down the stretch and in OT. You sure showed me!
10:30 start? Wtf, I’m not Nosferatu.
You know, because he’s up all night.
…because he’s a vampire.
This was from nearly 2 years ago, the day after Randle sprained his ankle vs. the Heat:
The good news is that Randle was able to return for game 2 of the playoffs on April 18. That’s around 3 weeks. Brunson has an additional 3 weeks to heal before the playoffs. So even if it is a 5-week injury, he should be in better shape than Randle was in 2023. Julius was not only still not 100%, he wound up getting Bammed again in the Heat series, and required surgery during the offseason, so that’s the bad news…Brunson might be back, but will he be 100%? If not, how close?
In any case, it’s certainly not the worst case scenario…something like a high ankle sprain or an accompanying bone injury that would have ended his season. Still, that did not look like the “2 weeks and good as new” kind of sprain, but Brunson is as tough as they come.
wrong thread