You can keep OG and/or Mikal in there when Kolek plays those non Brunson minutes and his pass PG skills can maybe keep those two involved and get them going and maybe that bleeds over into the minutes Brunson plays too. Hell maybe Brunson seeing that play out when he’s not playing will remind him to look for those guys more often instead of just thinking to score first.

It’s a delicate balance bc we want JB to score obviously but we’ve seen him get the balance right and when he does the team operates so much better. I also think it’s only natural for OG and Mikal to probably play better on D if they’re staying involved on offense.

Regardless, looking at this team next season (without considering any majoré trades) I’d like Leon to not bring back Payne and sort of force Thibs hand to make Kolek the full time back up PG.

I usually ignore tiebreakers because of the extra effort of looking them up. So magic numbers are (1+ the total number games in the regular season; 83) minus the current number of wins for the team that is higher in the standings (now 47 for us) minus the current number of losses for the team that is lower in the standings (31 for the Pacers). This equals 5.

Because we all live and breathe the Knicks more than we do most other teams, we happen to already know that we would have the tiebreaker over the Pacers, in which case it’s 82 – 47 – 31 = 4 instead of 83 – 47 – 31 = 5.

This is the most simplistic method, and does not account for multi-team tiebreak scenarios.

I hope OG and Mikal can keep this level of play when Brunson is back…

I think they’re playing faster and with more movement, two things Brunson absolutely does not bring.

I say it practically every day, but I think it’s critical to understanding what’s happening.

There are only so many possessions per game. Brunson is a very high usage player. As soon as he comes back, OG and Bridges will automatically have the ball in their hands less often.

That means OG will take fewer shots, get to the FT line less often and score less.

That means MIkal will taker fewer shots, get to the FT less often, get fewer assist opportunities and score less.

None of that matters much as long as Brunson remains more efficient than Bridges and OG.

However, that’s where we get into more debatable things like Brunson’s tendency to think “score first” and use up much if not most of the clock dribbling too much. Overall he’s efficient, but some of the tough shots he forces are probably not as good as we could get with better ball movement and faster play.

IMO, the ideal is somewhere between the ISO hero ball Brunson who we need at times but probably get too often and a true PG looking to move the ball and create easy shots for his teammates.

We’ll see if OG and Bridges proving they are much better than just 3rd or 4th option role players sinks in for Brunson (and Thibs) and we go into the playoffs with a more balanced offense. We want to take advantage of mismatches and what the defense is giving us instead of Brunson and Towns taking turns. If we play the right way, IMO we’ll have a top 2-3 offense and hopefully with Mitch improved depth and defense.

This seems incorrect.

The magic number vs. Indiana is 4. They have 8 games remaining and can theoretically get to 51 wins. Since we have the tiebreaker, it they won out, we would need 4 wins to get to 51 to clinch.

I believe that the magic number vs. Detroit is also 4, but it’s more complicated because it depends on the tiebreaker, which I believe will go to the winner of the game we play next week. So if we win that game, it may be 3.