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New York Knicks Rookie Emphasizes Jalen Brunson’s Impact – Sports Illustrated
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Detroit Pistons season hinges on the youngsters – few NBA teams survive an 0-2 hole. – Detroit Free Press
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Game 1 Takeaways – Substack
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Knicks vs. Pistons Predictions, Best Bets and Odds: NBA Playoffs Game 2 ? Monday, April 21, 2025 – Bleacher Nation
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Knicks? Jalen Brunson named finalist for NBA Clutch Player of the Year award – SNY
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93 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.21)”
we’re not realistically worried about ivy coming back sometime during this series are we?
I was worried that after game 1 we would think it’d be easy, but guess i don’t need to worry and they know the Pistons will try to improve and come at us even stronger.
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2025/04/19/jaden-ivey-injury-update-pistons-playoffs-knicks/83162937007/
One thing i read on Twitter/X that has got me thinking:
“Do the Knicks need to better define Mikal Bridges’ role?”
I haven’t looked at the numbers myself, but someone told me that Mikal’s numbers are much better when he shares the floor with Payne (or, I guess, the other PGs) than when he plays with Brunson. This whole thing continues to be strange to me. Remember last season when Mikal guested on Roommates and Hart jokingly called him “Squidward,” invoking the meme of Squidward sadly watching SpongeBob and Patrick having fun? Maybe he really is the Squidward here: the guy who resents the other Villanovans and can only enjoy himself when they’re not around?
Obviously, some of this is also on Thibs. But it’s baffling that none of Jalen, Josh, or DDV (who was still here when the Mikal trade happened) seemed to realize that this could be a bad fit. Or maybe they knew and Leon didn’t ask/care?
thanks for the update on dets other sg (ivey), alan seems that even if he somehow appears late series he wouldnt really be ramped up enough to take minutes from beasly at the bench spot guess i won’t worry about it.
I think alot of the Bridges hate is way over the top. He averaged 17.6 ppg with a 58.5% TS% while being 3rd on the team in assists with almost 4 per game. He was an iron man as usual playing in all 82 games while leading the league in minutes. What else did you guys expect?
To me one of the benefits of getting Bridges was when Brunson is out we’d still have someone like Bridges who can pickup the scoring which is exactly what he did. I understand the 1st rd picks will always be an issue for most but I thought for the most part he was as good as expected.
The Pistons played much better after Ivey left the lineup — more for Beasley and Thompson to do — they were under .500 with him and almost .600 without him. Seems like a guy you should worry about not returning.
definitely did not realize that but good point wonder how much of that improvment was because of ivey not being in there with his usg or if they just gelled better over the season unlikely we’ll have to find out though
Mikal’s 3pt% was substantially below his career average, his 3PAr was way down, his free throw rate collapsed to nothing and shot chart changed drastically for the worse. In the age of dunks and threes, Mikal became a guy who mostly shot from 10-16 feet. He shot well from that distance, but if somebody described that player to me, I’d say “no thanks.” He was also not a difference maker on the defensive end.
If he has some sort of personality quirk that makes him turn into a middling nonentity when he plays next to Jalen Brunson, then obviously he needs to go. A regular normal Mikal Bridges who averages more than one made FT per game and shoots .375 instead of .350 from 3pt would have been a useful player. The Mikal Bridges we actually got, not so much.
Bridges was fine I guess if you ignore the cost, but he also wasn’t particularly good
Bridges was 30% on 3s above the break – not great – and a mediocre defender, when what we needed was a premium defender. The cost factors into the disappointment, but those two issues were far more significant.
Really, if he defended as well as he did when he came into the league, I’d have no complaints. But…he did not.
mikal rookie year defense was not great but next three years all in phoenix were quite good almost elite started going downhill as soon as went to nets and has not fixed itself since
I think this is way too simplistic of an analysis.
If you don’t like guys who shoot the majority of their shots from mid range, you would never like “Playoff Jimmy.” You mentioned he underperformed his 3 ball career shooting for this season by 1.7%, you didn”t mention he tinkered with his shot in the off season and shot 29.3% in december, and then shot above his career rate for the rest of the season.
Bridges problem this year was on the defensive side of the ball as he didn’t get over a single screen the entire season. It was almost like he was playing a different system than Thibs wanted, and I wonder if that is the basis of their mini-schism.
I find it hard to believe he cant play with Brunson and Hart since they managed to win big in college.
Not sure why we’re assigning arbitrary endpoints to Mikal’s shooting. He went on a heater in December and that made his season line look a little better, but after that he regressed again. He shot .347 from 3pt over the last 50 games of the season, which includes that hot streak in December.
Agree 100%. I wonder if his need to play in every game, and Thibs having him play more minutes than ever in his career, hurt his willingness to fight on D.
This is like saying “if you don’t like players who can’t make a free throw you would never like prime Shaq.” Jimmy Butler is a great player on offense because he generates FTA at an all-time great rate, not because he shoots a lot of middies.
If Mikal Bridges averaged 7 FTA per game instead of 1.4 with his current shot diet he might approach being worth the price paid, at least on the offensive side.
Mikhal shot the worst from 3P range since his rookie year, the 2nd worst FT % of his career, the least rebounds per game of his career, the least steals per game of his career, and the 2nd least fouls per game of his career. To both the naked eye and from the stats perspective, he’s having one of his worst seasons, and too often looks disengaged. He needs to STEP UP the effort and production in the playoffs.
Mikal has been a disappointment. I wonder if something is going on with him behind the scenes that we aren’t privy to?
It’s weird because I find it impossible to believe that Leon would make that trade to complete the Nova Voltron if he didn’t have absolute knowledge from Brunson (and Hart) that they wanted him here.
But maybe this all stems from the DDV trade? Leon made it thinking we could keep iHart and DDV (or find a suitable replacement for iHart) and then had to pivot to get Towns (which was a good move) and had to sacrifice DDV to do it and that’s made it all a little weird because if he didn’t give up 5 picks for Mikal, maybe DDV is still here?
And maybe Mikal isn’t as tight with Brunson and Hart the same way DDV was? Still, after a full season you would think this would be resolved if that’s the case. Or is it really him wanting some larger role he isn’t getting (or isn’t capable of having despite him thinking so).
Or maybe, he’s just having an off year?
Mikal’s stated reason for adopting a blatantly inefficient shot profile was that in the playoffs FTA and 3PA are harder to come by, so being an excellent midrange shooter becomes essential. I found this somewhat dubious since scores of players are able to excel in the playoffs without this kind of galaxy braining, but plausible. His Christmas game was something of proof of concept—scoring an efficient 41 with all of 1 FTA was wildly impressive. The idea is he was trading some regular season efficiency to be better positioned to perform in the playoffs, a tradeoff we’d all be happy with if it were real.
So far the playoff body of work consists of an 8 point, 9 shot performance in which his coach is rightfully being praised for benching him for Cam Payne. Suffice to say I am not yet sold on the Playoff Hooper idea.
Just out of curiosity, is there any case against the proposition that we’d be better off with DDV instead of Bridges straight up?
Elite 3p shooting on very high volume was nice. He started the year like ass in Minny but rounded into a 1.9 BPM. He tries hard on defense and gets a lot of steals — I’m not sure he’s worse than Bridges at the PoA at this point.
Jimmy Butler is a great player because even though he is absolutely the least “modern” player in the NBA with his utterly pathetic talent from 3 he can generate his own shot at reasonable usage efficiently and plays terrific defense. Butler shot 51% of his shots from mid range this season, Bridges 42%. Bridges biggest hole this season (and the last 2) was his defense. He wasn’t brought here to be a high volume scorer.
Mikal’s first two seasons he put up 1.9 stls/36 and 1.8 stls/36, he then dropped down to around 1.2 stls/36. This year he averaged 0.9 stls/36.
He’s still a good defender, which is partly being masked by the poor defenders around him, but playing fundamentally sound defense doesn’t make up for the kind of drop-off in TOs that he’s had.
This is doubly true when the rest of the defense can’t hold up. He can play defensively sound all day, but the opponent will eventually be able to line up their attack against Brunson or KAT to score if he doesn’t force a TO.
Not to switch topics, but can we talk about the extended run of KAT and Mitch in the 2nd quarter?
From watching the game, it seemed to be fairly successful, no? But I can’t remember us doing it in the 2nd half. Maybe for a little bit. Mitch was out there on his own in the 3rd and I think some of that was when Detroit pulled ahead of us. But the 2 big line-up seemed to do pretty well in the 2nd. Also wondering if that gave KAT a little more energy in the 2nd half.
But I think that’s the longest stretch Mitch has played all season, no?
Mikal takes 18.5% of his shots within 3ft of the rim. Butler takes 31.7%. What are we talking about?
I can live with my guy shooting lots of midrange shots if he has a .650 FTr like Jimmy Butler and averages like 8 FT attempts per 36.
Not really that much into it when my midrange shooter NEVER takes the ball to the hole, has a FTr of a paltry .100 and averages 1.4 FT attempts per 36.
This is an embarrassingly dumb conversation we are engaged in right about now.
OAKAAK Landry Fields out in Atlanta.
Not shocking, I think he was the one behind the Dejounte Murray fiasco, but sad it didn’t work out.
On the other hand, Fields at least made pretty good lemonade out of those lemons he acquired with the Dyson Daniels trade. May we be as successful if Leon decides to flip Mikal this summer.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Bridges.
He’s the 3a/3b option on offense with OG. End of story.
That means when he’s on the court with the starters, unless he has a very favorable matchup or the defense is giving him his best stuff, he’s not going to be a high usage option. Brunson and Towns will be the highest usage options most nights. When Brunson or Towns is off the floor, he rises in the pecking order and is asked to be more aggressive because we need more scoring and ball handling from him. We saw that from OG and Bridges when Brunson was out.
On defense, he’s more of a quality wing defender. He was used as a POA defender against faster PGs a lot of time because Brunson sucks and has to be hidden. He’s not very good at that, but he’s the least bad option to handle that assignment.
If people want to complain about the price we paid, that’s fine. We gave up a lot (but less than all the hysterical Knicks fans think when you weigh his contract and how those picks are likely to resolve.)
But aside from that, you can win a championship with Bridges as one of your starting wings. He’s alread been to the finals. Bridges is the least of our problems. Our problems are on defensive side (mostly the fault of Brunson and Towns), the need for more quality depth on the bench and an inflexible uncreative coach.
The knicks would be idiotic to trade Bridges unless he wants out or they are combining him with something else for a short and long term upgrade.
Obviously we have no idea who was calling the shots at any given time, but technically Fields became GM after the trade for Dejounte and proceeded to consummate the trade of Dejounte, which was a heist for the Hawks.
He had his misses e.g. trading a bunch of second rounders for Saddiq Bey and we’ll have to see how Bufkin and more importantly Risacher turnout, but I’m a little surprised netting Daniels alone didn’t buy him more time. He didn’t exactly inherit a great situation.
I’m fine with Bridges too.
He’s not a flashy scorer or a defensive juggernaut but he’s flexible and his numbers are very efficient.
Protecting himself from injuries is positive As Long as he’s not avoiding playing hard in order to achieve a stupid record.
The stupidity of the NBA never ceases to amaze me. The Hawks are finally on a positive long term path by adding defenders and young talent and they fire the guy. He should start a podcast with Jeremy Lin where they analyze NBA owners.
Well if this is going to be the case, seems quite reasonable to ask him to have a TS+ above 101.
The concept of opportunity cost kind of necessitates that accounting for this is fair game while evaluating Bridges, or anyone else for that matter. I get that Bridges had no control over what we gave up for him, but that doesn’t absolve the front office, and doesn’t absolve Bridges of having an objectively weak year relative to even one of his average years.
Bridges seems to me like an utterly generic NBA wing. Gives you league average scoring efficiency on league average usage, and I honestly think you have to squint pretty hard at him to see more than an average defender.
I guess there’s some value in having an utterly generic player gobble up 3,000 minutes for you, but Mikal just doesn’t move the needle much. That trade just did not really pan out.
1. I’m fine with him being low-usage, but if he’s low-usage, then he needs to be a lot more efficient than league average.
2. He stepped up when Brunson didn’t play all game, but I don’t see him stepping up when Brunson sits on the bench for 5 minutes each half. That’s the player we need, not someone who needs 20 shots to find his groove.
3. I don’t see Mikal taking advantage of mismatches. He did in 1 of our 4 games against Trae Young, but nothing else springs to mind. This is likely a coaching issue, but we need to see it more on the playoffs.
Defending PGs is supposed to be what Mikal is good at. OG can’t play on-ball and off-ball defense at the same time, that’s what Mikal was supposed to fix. Now we’re in the playoffs and OG is guarding the 6’6″ PG.
What do you think Mikal should get paid? He hasn’t shown me that he deserves much more than he’s getting now.
Important question of the day: Is Landry Fields still the best Landry to ever wear a Knicks uniform?
Maybe we’re a bit spoiled by watching many of our latest acquisitions having career years and vfm contracts but let’s not forget that players like Bridges are the Present and the near Future of this league.
Young, tall, athletic, defensive minded, efficient and of course …NOT injury prone!
Not that it means anything, but NBA.com has rankings of all the playoff teams, and somehow the Knicks are 11th, with three teams that lost ranked higher than them. They are ranked one notch ahead of Detroit. The disrespect is kind of amazing…I hope Thibs prints it out and puts it on the bulletin board.
2 1RP for an average NBA innings eater is “not panning out.”
With the price paid it is a franchise derailing catastrophe. It reduced our ceiling for this build cycle from 60 wins and championship contention to 50 wins and the 2nd round. Even the justification of “fit” and “vibes” falls flat as it’s turned out to be the opposite — he doesn’t fit and the vibes are shitty.
Here we are, all in with our <5% chance at squeaking into the ECF as all we have to show for every asset we had, covering our eyes so we don't notice that in the Western Conference we would not be a top 8 team.
Young: Mikal is 28, older than the league average player
Tall: Mikal is 6’6”. League average player is 6’7”
Athletic: he’s not athletic
Defensive minded: meh
Not injury prone: 1 out of 5 ain’t bad
That would be great but he:
-Isn’t particularly young, he’s the average age for an NBA player
-Isn’t particularly tall, he’s about the average height for an NBA player
-Isn’t particularly athletic, he’s about average there too
-Isn’t particularly defensive minded, he hasn’t been a top 100 defender for years
-Isn’t particularly efficient, his TS+ this year was 101 in a very easy offensive role
Where’s the beef?
JK47, I see we made almost the exact same post. I know you’re not a fan of the Great Clown Pagliacci but perhaps we are not so different after all….
If you only count Fields rookie season, it’s close. Shamet is a much better shooter and dealt with a shoulder injury early, so I’m shading towards him. Fields was a better defender, but Shamet is defending out of position a lot. Of course, the fact that Fields could guard multiple positions counts for a lot itself. I’m going with Shamet though.
“Young: Mikal is 28, older than the league average player”
Young but not Inexperienced
“Tall: Mikal is 6’6”. League average player is 6’7”
He looks tall so we’re good!
“Athletic: he’s not athletic”
He’s not a power lifter but he’s not chubby also.
“Defensive minded: meh”
Meh or MehMeh He just Is!
“Not injury prone: 1 out of 5 ain’t bad”
5/5 √
Atlanta is an over-achieving team with a bright young core. Seems silly to hold that against someone, but whatever, none of these recent firings have made any sense to me. (Maybe there is a rift between the pro-Trae and the trade Trae factions within the front office? I can see how they are between a rock and a hard place with him there.)
https://bsky.app/profile/mikevorkunov.bsky.social/post/3lndrdwcnn22k
Truly, Nico Harrison is the gift that keeps on giving.
Poor Nico. No one told him basketball fans like generational superstars who are top 5 players in the league from the age of 20 onwards.
If a scripted TV show about sports featured a character who did and said all the things Nico has this year, everyone would complain that he was an implausible caricature of a bad executive.
The vibes felt unshitty Saturday.
To be fair, I would have said the same thing about the Mad King but things seem to keep working out for him. Reality is unrealistic.
i only recall the vibes feeling particularly good for approx minutes 6-12 and 37-45 ok i guess minute 48, too
To the extent that vibes were good it had very little to do with Bridges, who :
-was a team-worst -16
-couldn’t stay on the court for even 30 minutes in the most important game of his Knicks career
-couldn’t guard the opposing star, a 6’6″ PG who is exactly the kind of player we brought him in to guard
-posted a sterling 8/2/2 on 9 shots
We’ve been better when he sits for Deuce or even Payne/Wright for awhile now…
I am in the mood of expecting good things for no good reason lately. And it is for no good reason that I expect Mikal Bridges to have one or two really good games a series. I don’t expect him to be consistently good so it doesn’t bother me when he plays like he did Saturday. I’ll take the spotty goodness when it comes, and hope someone like Payne or Landry or Deuce is there to pick up the slack when it doesn’t.
Mikal Bridges was supposed to be good playing the passing lanes and getting steals, i.e. defending off the ball. He also played with Chris Paul and Booker in Phoenix, and also with smallish lineups in Brooklyn as a SF.
We are playing too big and are too slow, and maybe it is ok to blame the FO for not getting another guard instead of Bridges. But I think it could be optimal to play Brunson / Deuce / Mikal / OG / KAT or any other combination like that with Payne/Wright in some of the guard positions, or Hart / Mitch in the PF/C positions.
IMO, Thibs is just having “the east is big” mentality, and that is the problem.
Bridges in his rookie and sophomore seasons put up 1.9 stls/36 and 1.8 stls/36. Since then he’s dropped off precipitously, closer to 1 stl/36. This year he was under 1 stl/36.
He’s not good at playing passing lanes and hasn’t been in a long time.
True story, Alan, i would complain. I still think there’s some reason we don’t know about that triggered the trade. He can’t be that stupid, right?
He’s the loyal fall guy for the Adelsons’ plot to tank the team value as retaliation for Texas not letting them build a casino.
This is actually a lot more plausible than Nico going rogue, and it’s totally on brand for the Adelsons.
Being a big fan of Party Down and having just finished The Residence, I fully believe Ken Marino could pull it off
Just give me all the Nico Is An Arrogant Idiot stories, please: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44704219/inside-end-luka-doncic-era-dallas-mavericks
that’s too funny, thank you for the laugh pags…
not sure if you are aware, or care, I’m guessing though that referring to yourself in the 3rd person (even a pseudonym) is a clear indication of experiencing a manic event…
not saying it’s a bad thing or anything, just some slight mania behavioral exhibition…
may I ask, when is the last time you went out dancing pags?
LOL, you mean his first important game of his Knicks career?
You write this like it was game 7 of the ECF and he’s been a knick for 5 years.
Also, Thibs played the hot hand. The team was down, Cam came in and we went on a run. So Thibs left him in and didn’t put Bridges back in until we were comfortably ahead. This is typically what coaches do in playoff games when the team is playing well, especially in the 4th quarter.
If Nico had pulled a Doncic trade in Greece he’d have to pull a Salman Rushdie hiding the same day! And we’re mostly christians orthodox here!!!
Isn’t that when it matters, though?
This is dumb but the vibes were fine in the first half when we were either barely behind, tied or in the lead. They were only “bad” in the third quarter when Detroit got up by like 9 or whatever.
But I forgot. If we aren’t dominating from tip-off till the final buzzer, then something must be wrong wit the team.
just finished the article by tim macmahon, wow, nico comes off looking pretty stupid, petty and insecure…
that’ll be a tough narrative to knock off…
cool that now dirk’s story is out there…I don’t usually care that much about ownership…
sounds though like they have some strange story of their own going on…
From that same article at Alan’s link by Tim McMahon:
“Casey Smith, Dallas’ director of health and performance, was also part of the team’s traveling party for the weekend. Nowitzki often credited Smith, who arrived in Dallas as the Mavs’ head athletic trainer in 2004 and was promoted to the executive ranks 15 years later, for helping him extend his career to 21 seasons. Nowitzki trusted Smith implicitly, considering him one of his best friends.”
Isn’t that same Casey Smith our new physio guy as of this year? Good news, if so.
Watched the 1st game wo knowing the final score a few hours after it ended, VERY CLOSELY.
Pistons seemed to me very confident and organised till their Colapse.
That knicks run at the end was almost unreal.
I expect anything tonight.
Lotta ppl on here getting way over their skis today.
I’m not going to judge Mikal on his first season here. He’s been less than stellar as a POA defender, but he’s a good overall defender and a good shooter (maybe not great). Yeah, five picks is a lot, but that was the price of doing business with the Nets for the first time since idk when… plus, after this summer, it’s only 3 picks!
Sure it would be good to still have DDV, but Landry S. continues to almost be a rough facsimile of him, and Deuce will come around.
I’m actually surprised about the Landry F. firing. He stole Daniels, made a great call on Jalen Johnson, and didn’t really f- up with Risacher. There’s definitely a lot worse happening around the league.
Same guy. It’s discussed in the article.
This is not remotely true.
I said “almost.”
Yeah, thx. Got through it all now. Good news for us, it seems.
That Dirk quote about Casey helping him extend his career to 21 seasons just stuck out to me. Love it.
This is an absurd response to the very reasonable take that the Bridges trade was extremely bad. Do you get that an average NBA player is not close to a fair return for 5 1RP? If you think that’s laughable, geo, you simply aren’t being fair minded.
I’m being silly. I never said I was the Very Serious Person Pagliacci. I’m the Great Clown. That implies a certain jocularity. If I’m one of the two polarities of human dispositions with regard to the New York Knicks, I think you’ll agree that manic isn’t it.
Now that would be manic behavior if I ever did it. To be honest I don’t get dancing, and never have. I even once asked a friend who was good at it to teach me and he gave up within half an hour.
From what I can tell being good at dancing well in a social context simply amounts to ‘moving around in a dark space with loud music while being attractive.’ This comes easier to some than to others.
I think there is more offensive slack in Bridges’ game than the generic NBA wing. Which isnt that useful with Towns and Brunson.
Biut yeah, don’t feel great about him. Like most I thought he would defend better with less of an defensive load.
Bro this is not even an almost. Shamet put up -2.4 BPM while DDV put up 3.4 last year, a borderline all-star level of play.
The gap of 5.8 between them is equivalent to Jalen Bruson’s BPM last season, which I think is the best in the history of our franchise…
Per 36, Donte has more points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks.
Donte has 5 asts/36 to Shamet’s 1.3
He has 5.1 rebs/36 to Shamet’s 2.9
He averages 1.6 stls/36 to Shamet’s 1.1
He takes a significantly higher volume of 3s and hits them at a similar %
Shamet is almost Donte in the same way that Melo was almost LeBron except for the passing, but if Melo also couldn’t rebound.
Stewart out tonight
This Mikal converation is borderline lunacy.
First off, he’s NOT low usage. He’s averaging 17.6 points per game. I believe the Knicks are only team in the NBA with FOUR players averaging over 17.
He’s not at Nets level usage because he was #1 option there. Here he’s on a team with Brunson, Towns and OG (who also insanely gets trashed every time he doesn’t score 20 for a few games in row). His efficiency is not up to where it was for the Suns, because in those days he WAS a low usage role player. Here he’s asked to create.
His efficiency is fine. He got off to a rough start both shooting 3s and trying to fit in in part because he was altering his form and he had to figure out how to contribute with so many other options on the court. So he had a terrible November, but he picked it up and finished strongly. The last couple of months of the season he was playing the best basketball of his entire career.
Again, if you want to trash the deal, that’s all Leon. But that says nothing about whether he’s very good or whether we should keep him or trade him .
The uptick in his play coincided completely with the absence of Brunson and ceased immediately upon Brunson’s return.
That’s perhaps the worst indictment of this trade. It’s not just the value that was terrible, the fit also sucks.
Steals are not necessarily a good indication of playing good defense.
Almost any player can up his steals by being more aggressive. The problem is there is often a downside. Going for a steal often leaves the defense in a bad position if you don’t get it. What you want is thoughtful risk taking where the upside is clearly greater than the downside. That’s one of the reasons Thibs has tended to not encourage going for steals and probably the reason the Knicks seem to be more aggressive lately now that Mitch is back. If you go for a steal now and miss, at last MItch is back there sometimes instead of Towns. So the risk reward is different.
Holy Moses, that Nico article is nuts. At the time thought there had to be some secret motivation behind the trade – and the incompetence of the return – but no, just ego and stupidity and dysfunction.
The good news is that we got an extraordinary leader of our health team out of it – someone that Brunson was saying was fantastic while at Dallas, and who Dirk credits for extending his career. A win for the Knicks!
But Nico, you seem terrible at your job, dude. Fragile and moronic. Truly inspirational.
It’s an indication of the change in usage I told everyone 1000 times would happen with and without Brunson (for OG too) and an indictment of BRUNSON as I told everyone 500 times.
When Brunson was not there, the Knicks were forced to create shots in part by purposeful player and ball movement and by being more aggressive. When Kolek played, he was 100% focused on quick ball movement and setting up others for good looks.
When Brunson is in there, he often dominates the ball, dribbles, runs off clock and tries to create for himself. So a lot of the movement stops and other players get fewer shots. We 100% need what he does, but we need it later in the clock if the ball movement doesn’t lead to a good shot or we desperately need a score to break some momentum. We don’t need hero ball or “playoff” Brunson at the start of every possession or all game long. HE has to find the right balance.
Brunson and Bridges worked just fine at Villanova and won 2 National Titles. It seems to me the issue is the head coach has no idea how to put all the pieces together.
It’s not that strange that the Mavs new owners/front office wanted to replace the old staff with people they chose, but they really seem to have bungled the process completely.
Best irony from the story:
DERECK LIVELY II, a 21-year-old center who projects as a long-term cornerstone, was listed as questionable on Jan. 20 because of a right ankle sprain after sitting out the previous two games. Under Belton’s supervision, Lively went through an intense return-to-play workout before sitting out again that night.
The plan was for Lively to play at home two nights later against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But Bilsborough had concerns, prompting him to send Lively for a CT scan. It revealed a stress fracture in his right ankle that sidelined the center for the next 2½ months.
“Somebody should be fired for that,” a team source said then.
If bleeping up one instance should be a firing offense…. the Knick’s medical team has the 9 lives of a cat.
Going to the game tonight, very pumped
But I just want you guys to know the last 2 games I went to were the OkC blowout and the Celtics ass kicking
So if you wanna start a Go Fund Me to stop me from attending I’ll go watch it at a bar (-:
as owen already stated stewart is out tonight the other night he had 19 miutes to bang our guys around and tonight it will be zero i am not necessarily saying that our guys are soft but 19 minutes of not having to deal with him can only help
We have a new medical team, it’s the Mavs old one
What happened with Lively? He got a stress fracture in the intense rehab session? Or they didn’t do a cat scan originally?
It’s still strange to me when other teams are more dysfunctional than we are.. Aughts PTSD still strong n me.
And Bridges isn’t terrible, he just isn’t as good as we need him to be.
No, but when someone specifically says that Mikal was brought in to play the passing lanes and get steals, it does shine light on that take.
with all do respect brunson and mjkal at nova is not the same brunson and mikal that we have together now totally different roles totally different experiences in nba up til now etc
Will post a game thread if need be but in Brian I trust