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38 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.03.18)”
Here’s a fun game. What’s the worst possible team you can make up consisting only of first team All-NBA players (one per each position)?
Note that there are few guys that you can look at and say, “Him?!” so this team would still be really good, and yet….
So here’s my picks…
PG Tim Hardaway (1997)
SG Latrell Sprewell (1994)
SF George Yardley (1958) (Yardley was quite good, but small forward just happened to be a stacked position over the years)
PF Truck Robinson (1978)
C DeAndre Jordan (2016)
Keeping an eye on Mitch+Towns lineups– only 36 possessions so far which of course is not representative of anything, but it’s a net +42.1 with a 150 ORtg and 107.9 DRtg. They can plausibly play a Minnesota-like lineup with Brunson (Conley), Bridges (Ant), OG (McDaniels), KAT, and Mitch (Gobert) — I would wager we see some of this come playoff time.
Meanwhile – Mitch with 5 offensive rebounds and 4 stocks in 24 minutes – that’ll do.
Mitch is just rounding into shape. Knock on wood and all the prayers he continues to stay healthy. A healthy Mitch is a huge difference maker.
3 things:
1. Thank God we have KAT. Probably would have lost without his specific skill set last night. No way Randle is gonna pull up from 30 twice in 2 separate runs to put the team in the lead and put them away. Randle could still have a run like that, just in a different way- and we probably don’t take a double digit lead as easy. When your center is bombing away and scoring in the paint, there’s nothing the other team can do.
2. Godspeed, Tracy Morgan.
3. And errrrmahhhgarrrd! I just read that they are gonna be serving S’mores Quesadillas at Phillies games. I would never attend a Phillies game, but my inner fat kid is FIENDING- yal hear me?? LOL
Following up on a discussion from last week, can we conclude now that Bridges can do reasonably well in the role Randle had last year? I mean that every now and then Brunson would dump the ball to him and let him create for himself or others.
Looks like i missed the best half, but i felt we’d win even at the end of the 1st half, and i’m glad we did it in good fashion.
Having Mitch gives us a very good 7-man rotation for the playoffs, maybe Brunson, Mikal, OG, KAT and Mitch starting with Deuce and Hart from the bench. And to try to extend the rotation, Thibs can even play whoever is playing ok that day from Payne, Shamet and Precious.
Agree with Mikal’s role, he can be the new Randle and Brunson should make sure that happens. He’s watching the games as we do, and he’s a smart guy so i think he’ll know what to do.
I’m getting the feeling we’re rounding into form for the playoffs, and that’s exactly what we all hoped for. Can’t wait for the playoffs to come. Maybe we can make history, but i hope it’ll be fun at least.
Scary that all our hopes seem to hinge on Mitch’s continued health. I hope that he never misses another game in his career, but watching him play these days is like watching AD play. His health seems so tenuous. I hope I’m wrong.
Cyber – there’s certainly a glimmer of hope that the team can show up and punch some noses. I’m concerned about JBs ankle. Other than that, the team is healthy with no major concerns beyond KAT and Josh’s possible minor corrective offseason surgery. Without a healthy Brunson there is no rounding into shape.
The main thing I am contemplating is how much of our improved defense can be attributed to:
1. Deuce instead of Brunson
2. Adding Mitch as backup C instead of Sims and Precious
3. Subtle adjustments and greater effort down the stretch of the season
Both 1 and 2 are part of it, but I’m not sure how much each is contributing. I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but it does seem like the effort has been better.
I think we are going to learn a LOT down the stretch when Brunson is back and we get to see some Mitch, Towns and Brunson minutes.
At one point in the season we were discussing what would happen if Mikal was asked to be the #2 option because of an injury to Towns. It turned out to be an injury to Brunson instead which is worse because not only did we lose his scoring, we don’t have a strong real backup PG to start in his place (Deuce is more of a combo G). But at least so far, he’s showing he can be the #2 option and hold up.
A veritable 3 body problem. Or bonanza.
Many here have been waiting for the same thing. For all the crap (much of it deserved) the medical staff takes, they deserve a pat on the back for the rehab of Mitch in this instance. No one can see into the future, but this time they finally waited long enough for him to heal and are using him judiciously concerning minutes.
Long enough or as long as they could – remains to be seen. But Mitch looks like a man whose foot has healed physically and in his own minds eye.
So far, so good.
That was an incredibly positive game. Besides crushing a hated rival, we had The Old Mitch showing up big time, Hart suddenly righting the ship (for at least a half), Towns utterly dominating (for a quarter, but that was all that was needed), and Mikal having one of the more impressively quiet dominant and efficient games (10-14, 28 pts). Plus Tyler scored a basket.
OG was one long brain fart on offense, but was absolutely deadly on D, so totally gets a pass.
Once they got done sleepwalking through that first quarter, it was really fun.
They could have held him out another month and still had a reasonable number of games to get him up to speed for the playoffs. He certainly appears perfectly healthy.
His ankle/foot might explode a week from next coming Tuesday, but it will be hard to argue negligence at that point.
Sure yeah but why does so much of our offense have to be “Give the ball to player x and let him try to create something”. Why can’t we run an actual offense like every other good team in the league?
We were running an actual offense early in the season before KAT hurt his thumb. KAT operating from top of the key, lots of passing to open cutters, lots of pick and roll with KAT and Brunson, etc. Then KAT got hurt, his shooting was way off, which meant defenses could play us differently, and without that threat, we became Brunson hero ball. Now KAT finally seems back to normal, but Brunson is out. The hope is that by the time the playoffs come, everyone will be healthy at the same time, and we get back to the kind of team that pantsed the Nuggets in Denver.
Knicks third in defense since Mitch returned?
Mitchaholics Anonymous chapter meeting tonight for all who want to join.
Don’t we have a new staff this year?
It’s only one game and against the Pels, who are kind of pathetic right now, but the Pistons beat them last night by 46 points, with four of their five starters not even making it to double figures in scoring. They’re looking a little scary right now…
Kind of a wonder that Mitch was so easily able to step right into a defense that appears to be built around him…
As much as I love Mitch, I had forgotten just how dominant he can be defensively. He covers so much ground and also has very quick hands for a big man. I believe 24 minutes or so of Mitch a game gives us a top 10 defense to go with our top 5 offense.
Tracy Morgan on ‘the incident’:
“More importantly, the Knicks are now 1-0 when I throw up on the court so maybe I’ll have to break it out again in the playoffs 😅 #goknicks”
Since Brunson went down, we have a 113.4 ORtg, which would be 18th on the season and not all that close to 17th.
Maybe that’s good enough for when you lose a superstar, but Mikal as second banana hasn’t exactly been stellar for the offense.
Our defense has carried us with a 105.6, soundly better than OKCs league-leading 107.2.
Since Brunson has been out Bridges is averaging 23.4 ppg with 4.6 asts on a 63/47/95 shooting slash line.
Without a healthy Brunson i don’t know if we’d be able to win our 1st round matchup.
And he isn’t. We have Brunson and KAT, so he is third banana.
Good points, EB. I find it an interesting example of old-time Knicks brainwashing that I find it much more enjoyable watching a good defense-bad offense team than a good offense-bad defense team.
I sure hope when Brunson comes back it’ll be good offense-good defense…
Brunson is as good as Brunson! LOL! But is KAT better than Randle? Is Mikal better than DDV? Is OG better than RJ? And then we have Mitch and iHart, i think iHart is better but it’s close because of Mitch’s defensive presence and OREBs.
I think all 3 in question are an upgrade from what we had, so i’m optimistic.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mitch’s game defensively and I think he’s not far from DPoY level when at his best. However, it’s hard to believe that the few minutes he’s been playing are enough to turn us from mediocre to all-time great defensively.
More likely this is like when we added OG last season and our defense immediately looked great. It wasn’t just the addition of a very good defender in OG, it was the accompanying subtraction of a very poor defender in Clank Barrett that yielded a huge delta.
I think this is what we’re seeing with Brunson — it seems to me Strat’s 1 + 1 = 3 theory on bad defenders is fundamentally astute. We can hide KAT or Brunson but if they’re both on the court, teams like BOS or CLE can still put us in a zugzwang by forcing switches to get an advantage every time. Mitch in the middle will definitely help some but Horford/KP types historically are his hard counter.
I’m concerned that the Brunson-KAT combo will always be fatally flawed.
🙏
Metrics show iHart is actually better defensively than Mitch which makes him better overall as he is a lot better in every facet of offense other than OREBs, and not far off there.
This is something Cleveland is gonna have to deal with in the playoffs. Read some stats yesterday, didn’t realize how bad Garland is defensively. You can say it’s minimized due to having the 2 shot blockers but Cleveland rarely closes games with Allen on the court.
Atkinson is gonna have to make some tough decisions with his lineups in the playoffs just like Thibs.
I looked up zugswang and I am very angry that it is a real word.
Zugzwang. It’s so annoying I can’t even spell it right.
(Actually a great term that I will try to use later today in some kind of work-related communication…)
Dude, we should totally tell Thibs that this is what we should do.
Anyone into that show Queen’s Gambit?
Nuh uh.
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