Knicks Morning News (2025.04.30)

Ask yourself

Does Thibs give his team any tactical advantages? – no

Does Thibs best use the talent given to him? – no

It doesn’t matter if you gave Thibs prime Lebron he would mess it up. He is a coach that can make crap look decent , but quality team look worse than it is. What is the teams system? Iso. It’s no shock Randle has leveled up away from the Thibs system. These players some want to get rid of will do the same as soon as they are out the door as well.

* The Cavs beat Miami by 53 and didn’t play Garland and started Sam Merill in his place. Zero drop off. Why? because the coach has a system .

The Knicks are also not getting much scoring from this bench. TJ Warren was really that useless? PJ Tucker taking up a roster spot remains bad business.

https://x.com/shwinnypooh/status/1917422856054398990

Also this gem
https://x.com/NBA_NewYork/status/1917471981655503352?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Thibs stans? Anything?

The Cavs beat Miami by 53 and didn’t play Garland and started Sam Merill in his place. Zero drop off. Why? because the coach has a system .

I agree with your overall point and I’m totally out on Thibs, we’ll never win anything meaningful with him as our head coach. But this point isn’t fair. Miami straight up quit in that game; every team in the league would have blown them out.

Miami straight up quit in that game; every team in the league would have blown them out.

This team? I don’t know about that

BBA made a good point about how even though we lost this game he’s extremely confident we’ll win game 6. I agree with him, though I’m not as confident about the split in Boston he predicted.

And that’s really the point of these losses. Last year when we lost game 5 it was painful bc I thought we’d lose game 6 and might have blown the series. That was just about the game.

This is about the direction. These losses don’t make me think we might lose the series. They simply drive home how feeble a contender we are.

It’s no disrespect to Detroit; I think they are solid. But we are incompetent. And that’s a different kind of hurt bc it goes beyond one game.

I didn’t predict a split in Boston, I was just saying it’d be on brand for this rollercoaster Knicks season. At this point I actually have a hard time seeing them winning even 1 game next rd mostly cause even though Boston takes their occasional games off during the playoffs against the Knicks this season they always seem fully engaged.

I do think the Knicks will win tomorrow and I hope so cause if not Saturday will be the least anticipated Game 7 in Knicks history.

Somehow when Detroit runs their offense they end up with multiple dunks by Thompson and Duren.

I can think of maybe one time for the Knicks when Mitch got a slam off of a lob

That’s coaching, I’m with you guys, done with Thibs. His offensive game plan sucks.

I think it’s time to upgrade to an electric motor. We’re missing some torque on this baby. And that might win in the movies…

And I teased Bob about posting up KAT… it’s bc I want to see them use KAT in the pnr more than in the post… but FFS yeah we should be posting up KAT instead of what we’re doing. I saw it once last night and the Pistons panicked.

I don’t have the number on post ups but I saw KAT and Jalen have only run 54 pick and rolls through 5 games. That’s insane. They should run 54 Brunson/KAT pick and rolls tomorrow. And when they’re not doing that they should post up KAT on Harris. We are choosing to run the only offense that Detroit can defend, and we refuse to deviate from it. It is fucking madness. And it’s the same fucking madness we saw in 2021 vs Atlanta and 2022 vs Miami. Same shit, over and over, into the heart of a ready defense.

Honestly, the disaster scenario might almost be preferable to them eking past Detroit and then getting their doors blown off by the Celtics. Big changes will have to happen either way, but at least we won’t have to endure the latter half of getting there.

Help. I am become Pags.

Also, thank god for cafe du monde. I need a fucking donut today.

Hey I’m almost as out on this current group as everyone else but still fuck that I want them to win this series. I see no positives in blowing this series just so it ensures Thibs is fired.

Thibs should be fired no matter the outcome of this series. That die is cast.

I will root hard AF for the Knicks to win but the disaster scenario is not a bad fallback, for a couple unspoken reasons:

– All the pressure is on Thibs right now. That’s just wrong. He’s frustrating and I never want to see him coach a playoff game again, but he’s been working through structural issues all year. The failure pie chart of this year to me is 80% Leon, 20% Thibs. And we need the disaster scenario to drive that point home. The casual fan and the Macri crowd seem to think Thibs is holding this team back from being a contender. He sucks, but this is not a serious team and it never has been.

– As a Celtics hater, the Pistons are more likely to extend a series against Boston and wear them down. They probably won’t break a sweat against us, will be able to rest Holliday during the series, and will be in peak shape for Cleveland.

https://images.app.goo.gl/GNRHr74AfdG3wN137

For the record I would not fire Leon because that kind of instability is bad but he needs to realize what his strengths and weaknesses are and get a quality GM to work under him and fix this mess he created. We’re pretty close to being a tear down and we don’t even have our picks. Someone a lot smarter than Leon Rose is going to need to navigate this transition.

I wrote a long post explaining why, in my opinion, Thibs should be fired.
But I’m too nice to bore you all to death, so I’ll keep it short.

The way this series end shouldn’t matter.
If Leon, who has his fair share of responsability in this mess, isn’t ready to let Thibs go, then Dolan should fire Leon.

Edit: In any other occurrance I’m against firing Leon, for the same reasons Hubert explained.

Well that sucked. Just felt from opening tip we were not going to win it.

Brunson missed free throws and some easy buckets he normally makes. The third quarter when we battled back to lead by 1 only to have like 4 or 5 posesssions where we turned it over or bricked a wide open shot.

All I hope right now is that Brunson and Hart are ok.

And I get what everyone is saying about Thibs. I’m totally fine with letting him go this off season. We need an upgrade, specifically someone who runs a fucking offense that isn’t just ISO.

But this series has totally turned me off to Mikal. Sorry it cost us 5 first round picks but we need to get rid of him ASAP. So tired of watching his funky ass shooting form brick wide open threes and shots all game only for him to do a couple of good things at the end. His scrawny ass needs to go. If we had Donte starting over Mikal we’d be smoking these fools right now.

i think i am officially on the fire thibs bandwagon also. We have all this offensive talent and yet we are stuck in the mud against a good but not great defense. Unless Hart gets the rebound and pushes, it’s Brunson walking the ball up the court and getting into actions with 8 seconds left. I don’t know enough x’s and o’s to know for sure whether Detroit is just playing great or what — but I do know that we seem to enter our actual offense slower than anyone else, leading to dumb shots at the end of the clock. Granted, Brunson is clearly not himself with the ankle – but without OG basically holding us up on his own for 3 quarters, last night could’ve been a blowout.

And that Bridges trade is really not aging well. He’s a good player but we blew our asset chest on a good but not great player.

To be 100% honest – I would sit Brunson if the medical team thinks that will help him be himself in game 7 rather than a shell of himself in game 6. Play Payne and Deuce more, which if nothing else, will really help the defense (how many Thompson dunks from baseline cuts do we need to see while Brunson is in no man’s land?)

For next coach – i would go Johnnie Bryant. Already knows pretty much everyone on the team and has been an integral part of the Cavs unexpectedly great season.

To be clear, I don’t think Leon will look at this series, and season, and decide Thibs is the only problem. One of Mikal or KAT will probably be moved — I’d put money on Mikal — and there’s always the chance that if Thibs is gone, Hart might no longer be considered essential. I doubt that, but we’ll see. Big changes are coming. And need to. This ain’t it. But Thibs needs to go as part of that.

Random thoughts:

1. I don’t really have a lot to add on the Thibs question-that-really-isn’t-even-a-question-anymore, but will throw out/reiterate the minus-29 in aggregate third quarters in the series. The other teams go into the locker room and adjust; Thibs apparently hands out orange slices and juice boxes in silence.

2. I do expect the Knicks to win this series …

3. … but only because the Pistons are missing two key rotation players in Jaden Ivey and Isaiah Stewart. If the Knicks were blitzing Cade and leaving the Pistons to play 4 on 3 as they’re doing all the time now, but Ivey was one of the four, he’d be slashing to the rim and slashing-and-kicking the Knicks to death. The four they have to run now are nowhere near as good at 4 on 3. The Knicks frankly would probably have to come out of the blitzing Cade looks.(*)

4. Malik Beasley shot 41.6 percent from downtown on the year. He’s shooting 30.4 percent for this series. And it’s not ISM, and it’s not (lolol) Thibs “funneling.” He reverts to form, the Pistons could very well win the series.

5. In terms of whether the Knicks have the Brunson prime peak in the rear view mirror, the answer is obviously yes. As we sit here today, they’re 44-1 to win the championship and that’s with a 3-2 lead in their first round series. In 2023, they got down to (roughly) 12-1 after (roughly) Game 2 Miami and in 2024, they got down to (roughly) 10-1 after (roughly) Game 2 Indiana.

6. Which is to say, there’s no question whatsoever that net-net big picture they’ve gone backwards relative to their competition since playoff spring 2023. Not sideways. Not treading water. Backwards. This is more of an offseason, not postseason discussion, but it’s just that this postseason is exposing it so the one small step removed implications of what we are seeing are at least short-form fair game.

7. And all of this is without even considering the five firsts they squandered for an average, duplicative wing. Also more of a postseason discussion (but see 6).

Little Caesars is going to be lit Thursday night and the Pistons are favored by 2. If Vegas form holds, this very well could be coming back to the Garden for Game 7 and the last time that happened the Knicks got blown out. This is without question a loseable series.

by the way – just saying — the Cam/Deuce/Mikal/OG/Towns lineup has a 139.6 offensive rating and a +31.9 net rating (in 106 possessions).

If Brunson can’t be close to 80% due to the ankle, I think they should very seriously consider letting him sit out game 6. They’ll never do it but they should consider it.

Oh, yeah, 8:

While he has a sky-high ceiling, KAT’s floor is too low.

And that Bridges trade is really not aging well.

And not just bc of how plain Bridges looks. If the picks we gave up were stocks they would all be up 400% since the trade.

I’m still not that impressed with Detroit, the 2 games they’ve won have been ugly games where their offense was just as bad as the Knicks. It’s not a coincidence the 2 high scoring games of the series were won by the Knicks.

The Pistons are scrappy and they’re competing their asses off but we’re making them look like the ’04 Pistons on defense which I just can’t fathom. They were 11th on D in the regular season and play some exploitable guys and yet we haven’t looked like we can consistently generate decent shots for more than 5 straight minutes really at any point in the series. 110 offensive rating for the series (118.5 regular season) which would’ve ranked 26th in the regular season – just behind the tanking Pels. This for a team that went pretty much all-in on offense with the Brunson-KAT combo. Simply not good enough and the main reason we’ll probably be listening to Thibs on ESPN next year.

The Pistons are a once-in-a-lifetime Cam Payne explosion and a blown call away from being in the second round already.

We’ve played one good game in this series.

Hell we’ve played one good game in the whole month of April.

BBA..I unfortunately am impressed with Detroit. Specifically Cade, During, and Thompson. Those guys can play on my team anytime. I thought Cade wasn’t quite ready to be him in the playoffs, but I find myself in awe of him figuring it out in real time. But let’s be clear- if we had gotten the whistle and free throws we have earned buy getting hacked on damn near every possession, this series would have been over in 4. Only a few free throws per game would have made that much of a difference. But I still have to tip my hat to the Piston. They are TOUGH. Not in terms of ability. It’s their mindset and physical play that impresses me. They are still not on our level, but they are well on their way. I just hope that we on our way to another level as well, because Detroit is gonna be a problem next season. All they need is a consistent 2nd option. As far as this series goes, I just don’t understand why the refs are letting them play overly physical against KAT and Brunson without blowing the whistle every once in a while

1. I think this core deserves a chance with a coach that at least tries to play to their strengths. Somehow, we’ve found a way to be even more 3PT wary in the playoffs than we were in the regular season.

Of the 16 non-play-in teams, our 3PA/100 possessions is dead last at 31.3. I will always concede there’s plenty regarding the Xs and Os I have no business weighing in on strongly, but sometimes the empirics reach a point of per se unacceptability. This is obviously one of those times.

I view it as a proxy for a lack of ball movement and creativity generally more than anything else–obviously I’m not saying we should dribble the ball past half court and chuck. Generating good 3PT looks is just a complete afterthought for our offense, which puts a second round ceiling on us.

2. Mikal Bridges, “I take shitty shots because that skill is at a premium in the playoffs” theory check:

14.4 PPG, .513 TS%

He has played impressive defense, and has even hit some tough, key shots! But for the overwhelming majority of the season, very much including the playoffs, his contributions fall into the “silver linings” category. He has sucked. I don’t know what it augurs moving forward, but to the extent I liked the trade (IIRC I was tepidly pro-trade) he is on a speed run of proving me wrong.

3. Our starting lineup has a -8.2 net rating this series (H/T Macri), which is kind of incredible for a series we’re somehow winning.

I would change it, but I wouldn’t swap out Hart, who is doing everything we could reasonably ask of him. Nor would I insert Deuce, who is sadly reverting to his rookie, “Frank Ntilikina but cooler” form.

I would swap out Bridges for Shamet or Delon, which isn’t going to happen. So, hopefully the starters show us something in game 88 they were keeping in the bag for games 1-87.

Thibs stans? Anything?

Not a stan, but Thibs has dug his own grave. You are what your record says you are.

He is a fine regular season coach who has the long term large sample to prove it. He can get guys to play well on a night to night basis.

When playoff time comes and the scouting gets more precise and opposing player ‘buy in’ increases universally, his inflexibility and lack of creativity with a system other than iso-ball your best player is a huge wart.

Leon is going to have to put on his William of Ockham glasses, soon.

Cade is averaging 5.8 TOs per game and has a TS% below 52%. He’s a great player and has an incredible future, plus I like the way he acts on the court he’s not a whiny bitch like his coach.

But if you would’ve told me Cade’s current stats before the series started I would’ve assumed a Knicks sweep or victory in 5 games max.

Leon is going to have to put on his William of Ockham glasses, soon.

And if he doesn’t want to, I suspect Dolan will make him.

Two things I have noticed by eye test that seem like tactical deployments that I am struggling to understand.

1) Screening – to my eye it seems that Knicks screeners don’t actually set the screen up high and that, by design, the screen is just a decoy to get a soft switch or because Brunson is trying to run some misdirection where the defender thinks a screen is coming, anticipates it and Brunson crosses over and tries to go away from the screen. I could understand doing this a couple of times a game to catch a defender off guard but after a while the fake screen becomes expected and the defender no longer anticipates the contact. This seems like a lazy tactic to me that’s not working.
2) Sideline screens – maybe there is a specific term for these. But there are tons of screens being set for Brunson where the screen is directing Brunson towards the sideline where there is very little room and entirely shrinking the court for the defense and making the sideline an extra defender. Again maybe tricking the defense once or twice when they are expecting the screen to direct Brunson towards the middle but instead he goes sideline can confuse the defense. But using it regularly is not working at all.

Pt? Anyone else noticing this?

Brunson’s passing is also being effected by his height.

The other teams go into the locker room and adjust; Thibs apparently hands out orange slices and juice boxes in silence.

Hey, he also tells them to try harder.

Malik Beasley shot 41.6 percent from downtown on the year. He’s shooting 30.4 percent for this series.

The Pistons as a team are shooting 34% from 3 and getting open looks. And no, it’s not Thibs’ legendary preparation that is forcing them to miss open shots.

For the season Detroit was 17th in 3pt%, Knicks were 8th.

Thibs stans? Anything?

I’m as big a Thibs fan as anyone, but I got nothing. Last night was money time, and he mailed it in in the 4th. If you need to get Brunson and Bridges back in, fuck that last timeout! Gotta give your guys the best chance to win. If they can’t make it happen without that timeout, that’s acceptable. Just give them the best shot.

2. Mikal Bridges, “I take shitty shots because that skill is at a premium in the playoffs” theory check:

14.4 PPG, .513 TS%

More than occasionally he has taken shitty shots at the end of possessions because the offense stalled (again) and he got the ball after Brunson bounced/probed for 18 seconds.

If we are going to ride Bridges for inefficiency, don’t forget Brunson’s .547, OGs .531 MRs .481 and Deuce’s .360 all way below their season’s averages.

Unless Detroit’s defense is the 85 Bears, one needs to look at the reason the entire offense sucks.

Everyone saw Bridges efficiency climb toward the end of the season when Brunson was injured and the offense changed by necessity to include more ball movement.

No one can make me believe this is a bad group of players, rather than a very good group of players poorly utilized. I hope they don’t do a knee jerk disassembly, other than the coach.

At this point I would be fine with bringing Phil back to run the fucking triangle. 🙂

One of Mikal or KAT will probably be moved — I’d put money on Mikal — and there’s always the chance that if Thibs is gone, Hart might no longer be considered essential. I doubt that, but we’ll see. Big changes are coming. And need to. This ain’t it. But Thibs needs to go as part of that.

Honestly, unless it’s for Giannis or Jokic, I really really hope we aren’t trading KAT. We all know his defensive deficiencies but he has shown some toughness to me this series and when he’s locked in, he can pass on defense. He’s made some good players.

Mikal, on the other hand, has been awful. Sorry but what’s the point of being to hit some really tough shot when the game is almost of hand when you can’t hit an open corner 3, which is supposed to be your bread and butter.

I think the good news is that he has some trade value. Obviously we’re not getting back 5 picks for him but if we could get a good rotation player or even a good bench piece and a late pick, I’d go for it.

And get rid of Thibs. There are 2 recently fired coaches – Miller and Bud – who I think would be good replacements. I’m sure they have their flaws but I think both would be better offensive coaches than Thibs. Or bring back Johnny Bryant and give him a shot.

There are other moves to be made for sure. We need a reliable bench scorer/minutes soaker but getting rid of Mikal and thibs would be a start.

I hope they don’t do a knee jerk disassembly, other than the coach.

Me too but I think there is an argument to be made for getting rid of Mikal. Although maybe it’s about replacing Thibs and giving Mikal another season. Maybe under a new coach we’d see better use of him. But part of it seems to be confidence.

Cade is averaging 5.8 TOs per game and has a TS% below 52%. He’s a great player and has an incredible future, plus I like the way he acts on the court he’s not a whiny bitch like his coach.

But if you would’ve told me Cade’s current stats before the series started I would’ve assumed a Knicks sweep or victory in 5 games max.

Agreed. And it’s also why the officiating ticks me off. Call the game evenly and this series shows the difference in talent between the 2 teams, and probably isn’t as close. But again- respect to the Pistons for making it close, even with the mistakes and inexperience.

Leon just seems to me like a rather lazy GM. You don’t get the feeling we’re turning over every rock looking for quality role players with hidden value who might be able to contribute in a pinch. You’re Obi Toppin’s brother? Cool. Jalen’s college teammate? That’ll be cute. PJ Tucker? He looks like a pretty tough character, let’s stick him at the end of the bench to do some mean mugging.

He’s just not a hardcore X’s and O’s basketball nerd who is going to do the extra work. He’s an agent. A starfucker. To his credit, this has worked out better than I thought it would when he got hired. We’re crashing pretty hard into the ceiling right now though. Mikal Bridges was a cute storyline but is not much of a basketball player, we have zero players with any developmental upside because fuck the draft, and we have a roster that punches below its talent level because not very much thought was put into how they would play together as a team.

We also have a coach whose style is best suited for the way basketball was played 20 years ago. We’re past the point of the season where we can eke out wins against Charlotte and Washington by playing all of our starters 40+ minutes. What’s happening now is pretty much what I figured would happen: once our opponents start playing THEIR guys the Game 7 type minutes, our talent advantage would flatten out and it would become clear that we’re more like the 10th best team in the league rather than the fourth.

We’ve bought into assets that have depreciated, so turning this around is going to be a challenge.

I think the biggest bummer is that our very small chance of beating Boston just decreased significantly with this loss.

At one point we were tied about halfway through the 4th and Orlando was up on Boston,

Now Boston gets to rest and prepare while we gotta get beat up by The Pistons for at least one more game. So the chances of stealing game one just went down A LOT.

I think this team is not unlike the Amar’e/Melo team before STAT fell apart… just two guys who don’t complement each other.

Brunson is a lot like Melo although I think he’s on the whole easier to win with due to his scoring efficiency. How so? He’s a volume scorer who thrives in a style that makes teammates less effective. He wants to play slow. He wants to isolate.

Like Stoudemire, Towns is the guy who is an incredible offensive weapon but not a guy who is just plug and play. If you just hand him the ball and watch, he might be effective sometimes, but it’s not winning basketball. You need to find ways to get him opportunities, which requires personnel that knows how to and is willing to get him the ball where he is most dangerous.

The other major difference is I think Brunson has enormous trade value and that if the Knicks used it to bring in players that complement Towns better (Towns being less of a trade chip due to his contract and history of inconsistency) you do upgrade this team from a pretender to a legit 2nd tier contender… Like in the group after Boston, Cleveland and OKC. That tier right now is probably the Nuggets, Clippers and Timberwolves… Maybe the Lakers. I know it will never happen, but I do think it would be the best chance at a no rebuild upgrade.

Really? Now we are comparing Brunson to Melo and talking about trading him

between miller and bud i think we should hire miller for sure

If we are going to ride Bridges for inefficiency, don’t forget Brunson’s .547, OGs .531 MRs .481 and Deuce’s .360 all way below their season’s averages.

Deuce has been terrible and I said as much. We also didn’t trade 5 first-round picks for him and he makes junior-partner-at-a-big-law-firm money. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The other comparisons aren’t exculpatory at all. Our team TS% is .544, so Brunson putting up .547 isn’t ideal, but is more than passable when you consider our “let Brunson cook” offense leaves him with a 33.4% usage rate and 29.8 PPG.

OG’s scoring has been up-and-down, but he’s averaging 2.4 steals per game and is also scoring more than Bridges. Maybe not ideal, but hardly a major impediment to us in this series.

Mikal is unique in that the opportunity cost associated with him is enormous, he isn’t being asked to do a whole lot, and he is performing very poorly in his somewhat limited role.

Well that’s the first latke post of all time I’ve vehemently disagreed with

Strawman I’m sure, but the last issue on this team is Brunson. The biggest issues in order are:

1/ Thibs –overall inflexibility, and undisciplined offensive misusage of both Towns and Bridges, who I’d say when they do well, do so in spite of the offensive structure not because of it

2/ Bridges –> before the KAT trade was expected to be a secondary offensive initator, similar to his role in Nets year 1, but playing D similar to his Suns years – neither has panned out, and he’s up for extension

3/ the Bench/Leon: Yes, Thibs doesn’t use the bench enough, but also the bench is one of the least talented in the NBA, esp since Deuce’s shot efficiency has fallen off a cliff

4/ High-end Star Power: Brunson is amazing, but are he and Towns good enough to win a championship as the two best players, I think the answer to that is NO. We need more high-end power alongside either these two or Brunson – whether that be Giannis or whoever else. I thought we might be deploying a Boston Celtics model of 2 stars and 3 stars in their roles…but 2-3 of our starters are unreliable shooters, and 2 are one-way contributors, so it doesn’t work.

A coach with more creative thinking with the offense can figure out how to get Brunson and Towns to work best together.

These 2 should be one of the top 3 offensive duos in the league. Brunson may not be a traditional pass first PG but we’ve seen him play plenty of games where he’s gotten a lot of assists and hockey assists. Hell the team played more this way earlier in the season and then has slowly reverted to Thibs style. They came out in game 3 playing the right way. They just revert to this when it gets tough.

Mikal and Hart can be ball handlers at times. Brunson can play off ball. There can be more movement in general.

I would not give up on this duo.

Before the Mikal trade a lot of the debate around here centered around who would be the “all-in” piece that Leon would cash in all the assets for.

When the answer turned out to be “Mikal Bridges” we essentially put a lid on this team in terms of ceiling. Even the best, platonic ideal version of Mikal Bridges probably wouldn’t have been worth five firsts. Leon used to get a lot of credit for his patience and risk aversion, but boy did he whiff when it was time to push the chips in.

I just keep thinking about how Leon could have probably convinced Minny to give us KAT for Randle and like 3 picks and we kept Divo.

Divo is a flame thrower on offense and a true sniper. He’s also a true SG. He’s the type of guy who could score 20 or even 30 on a given night if he got hot. He doesn’t have the diversity of Mikal’s game but I think, at least with the way we play and the way Mikal has played this season, is the better player. We’d still have some picks to mess with too. Hell even Randle, Mitch and 3 picks we could have just rolled with Precious a the back up C, which is not ideal but then use picks to draft the next Mitch later in the first round where you can find those dudes often.

Leon painted himself into a corner for sure and, unlike after the Kemba/Fournier mistake, he doesn’t have picks to help fix his mistake. Plus the mistake is bigger.

But who knows, maybe Mikal’s next contract will be a lot less because of his play this year and then he finds his groove again with a new contract secured, new coach and a year removed from the pressure of being our main aquisition? I do think that might be part of what is going on.

The other comparisons aren’t exculpatory at all. Our team TS% is .544, so Brunson putting up .547 isn’t ideal, but is more than passable when you consider our “let Brunson cook” offense leaves him with a 33.4% usage rate and 29.8 PPG.

With all due respect, .547 isn’t passable, it is replacement level or worse. And the “let Brunson cook” mentality is what bogs down the flow and ends up with the other 4 guys standing around.

You look at Curry and GS… guys are flying around cutting everywhere looking to get one of the primary shooters freed up. Curry doesn’t bounce the ball interminably and then dump it off with 4 seconds left on the clock.

When Jokic gets the ball sometimes he shoots from 3, sometimes he backs himself down, but mostly they run plays where guys are flying around diving to the basket to provide a lane to utilize Jokic’s greatest skill, his passing.

Move the bloody players and the bloody ball in a cogent offense. The iso Brunson has its place when a play breaks down…. not as the primary feature, when the defense is designed to stop that exact particular thing.

Where is Giannis going to go? OKC?

Not sure who has the assets to get him.

I wish he were coming to NYC.

More and more, the scorer who can’t defend well is on my mind. It’s a hard type to build around.

That said, Brunson is the least of our problems. He’s a guy you can hide on defense. And that’s acknowledging that the Otis Anderson, 3 yards and a cloud of dust offense we default to with him, too much, is frustrating.

With all due respect, .547 isn’t passable, it is replacement level or worse. And the “let Brunson cook” mentality is what bogs down the flow and ends up with the other 4 guys standing around.

You look at Curry and GS… guys are flying around cutting everywhere looking to get one of the primary shooters freed up. Curry doesn’t bounce the ball interminably and then dump it off with 4 seconds left on the clock.

When Jokic gets the ball sometimes he shoots from 3, sometimes he backs himself down, but mostly they run plays where guys are flying around diving to the basket to provide a lane to utilize Jokic’s greatest skill, his passing.

Move the bloody players and the bloody ball in a cogent offense. The iso Brunson has its place when a play breaks down…. not as the primary feature, when the defense is designed to stop that exact particular thing.

100 % correct. The Brunson show where he pounds the ball into the ground and the Knicks run a play with 8 seconds on the clock to get a terrible shot for his team mates is on him. I also wish Brunson would push the ball more so the defense can’t set up every single time. The offense is designed to make him look good, but others are freezed out with no rhythm on offense.

Bob, you’re missing my point. If you read my initial post from today, or really any of my posts throughout the season you’ll see I am no fan of the “let Brunson cook” offense. I was simply describing reality, not endorsing it.

Within that shitty framework, Brunson has performed passably, even well prior to last night. Again, he has an astronomical usage rate and his efficiency is a hair higher than the team average. Whatever his flaws this series have been, there is simply no comparison between him and Mikal, who has spent most of the series either invisible or visibly performing badly.

I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make. It is true that certain non-Mikal players have not played well. I highlighted Mikal because:

1) he is sucking more than every other starter and it’s not close
2) we paid handsomely for his services
3) he has underwhelmed all year, so this is a continuation of an ominous pattern
4) he made the very specific claim that he was sacrificing some regular season productivity for postseason productivity, which is aging about as well as Liberation Day

Seems fair!

he has underwhelmed all year

He was not underwhelming when Brunson was out. He looked like a very good player when he didn’t have the to take part in the pound the rock “Brunson iso show”.

It should also be added, everyone sees a decline in their scoring efficiency in the playoffs over the long haul, even Jordan.

Brunson around 55% is nothing crazy. It’s actually pretty decent I think considering how hard they have geared up to stop him and how cold he has clearly been in a few areas, plus the injury issues.

The failure pie chart of this year to me is 80% Leon, 20% Thibs. And we need the disaster scenario to drive that point home. The casual fan and the Macri crowd seem to think Thibs is holding this team back from being a contender. He sucks, but this is not a serious team and it never has been.

I agree and disagree.

I’ve been saying this from day one and it’s still true.

The far and away the biggest reason this team is struggling relative to “expectations” is the loss of I-Hart for NOTHING. He added a LOT of value (wins). (for the record I predicted 48 wins, but they got off to a better start than I thought)

I still think

Towns > Randle
Bridges > DDV

Those moves made up the gap, but didn’t make us much better.

If you want to crticize Leon, I think there are reasonable debates about whether we can ever have a solid defense with the Towns and Brunson pairing, what we still need on the bench, how much we overpaid for Bridges, whether these players are a good fit for Thibs etc… Some of this is on Leon.

But I think without question Thibs has been terrible with THIS specific group. Thibs is the anti D’Antoni. He has single way of playing that can enhance his players and team if they are the right fit for him, but if they are wrong fit for him it’s a disaster.

Thibs can’t coach a team built to be a dominant force on offense to offset some issues on defense like this one. He’s turning what should be a top 1-3 offense into a medicority and can’t overcome the inherent defensive issues with Towns/Brunson. Since he’s a clueless offensive coach, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why he’s not at least trying a LOT MORE of Mitch/Towns. At least there’s a history of Gobert/Towns working well. If we are going to have medicore offense because of the coach, at least enhance the defense.

In 16 games without Brunson this season Mikal Bridges had a 64 TS

That’s alarming for the Brunson /Thibs crew

I don’t know how much space they have, but I would be interested in Leon’s CAA boy Cp3 this offseason to run that PHX offense with Mikal

The Brunson pounding the rock iso is on Thibs, not Brunson. When he has the ball and there are 4 guys standing around or setting half assed screens and the defense tightens up, we end up with iso Brunson when the shot clock is running down.

When we got KAT we were all drooling over the pick and roll possibilities with Brunson and we never see it. What good coaches do is put opposing defenses on their heels, forcing them to switch and creating mismatches (the Celtics do that to us constantly)

cgreene, I noticed those things too, and it has made me a bit crazy. Honestly for the second I notice Jalen getting trapped along the sideline, not how it happened, but you know, a coach might see it happen repeatedly and come up with a plan to avoid having it happen repeatedly.

But no…

OG was 8-13 last night and the Knicks couldn’t get him more shots

Thinking about this more, if Mikal can be extended on a reasonable contract, maybe we shouldn’t try to substantially change the line-up outside of shoring up the bench but should look to move on from Thibs.

Just look at Cleveland. People say coaching doesn’t matter but no one saw the leap Cleveland was going to make this season. Some of that is having a lot of young players who were going to get better but some of that is upgrading their coach.

Kerr has a similar effect on Golden State.

It’s not always about the new coach being “better” per say, even. Thibs IS a good coach. But it’s about can the new coach bring something new to the table…ie, has a strength the previous coach lacked that can unlock something. And I think a new coach could do that.

Or look at it this way. If the team can keep the work your ass off all the time mentality that Thibs has brought to this franchise while incorporating a better offensive system with a new coach, they could go a lot further.

Enough to win a title? I don’t know. Gonna be hard to catch OKC and Cleveland regardless, but we gotta give it a shot.

https://x.com/FrankBarrett119/status/1917597942610882792 being stubborn has always been a part of the Thibs game

It brings me no pleasure to admit this is hilarious:

Minutes ? 😂 https://t.co/O9olrHhnSP— Malik Beasley (@mbeasy5) April 30, 2025

Just look at Cleveland. People say coaching doesn’t matter but no one saw the leap Cleveland was going to make this season. Some of that is having a lot of young players who were going to get better but some of that is upgrading their coach.

Let’s not forget that CLE added two wings this season in Ty Jerome and DeAndre Hunter who are both better than Bridges, the acquisition we spent our entire asset chest for, at a fraction of the price.

If we had done the same we would be a lot better. They also have a young first overall pick DPoY who is simply developing as expected, much as Allen and Garland have. Account for all that along with their terrible injury luck last year and their dominance isn’t that surprising.

The Berri-ite insight that coaching doesn’t matter much was derived using data that I believe cut off in 2008. The game has gotten much, much more complex since then, and anecdotally it seems like there are far more examples of coaching making tangible differences.

I of course still believe teams mostly go as far as their basketball players taken them, but I’d be interested in an updated study on coaching.

After watching a season of Mikal I can say I have had enough. I am just not a fan of his game. He’s mostly looking to take midrange jumpers, almost never takes the ball to the basket, never gets to the free throw line, is a mediocre three point shooter, does not give you much extra playmaking, is an overrated point of attack defender, and is an unexciting below-the-rim athlete who rarely moves the needle on either side of the floor. He has a passive attitude and there are large stretches of play where you forget he’s even out there.

He eats innings and gives you as much generic basketball as you ask him for. That’s his special ability. Dude has played an awful lot of minutes in the league and isn’t super young, so I’m not really gonna bank on some sort of return to form. I am really hoping he gets moved this offseason. I will be bummed if he gets an extension to stay here.

https://x.com/FrankBarrett119/status/1917597942610882792 being stubborn has always been a part of the Thibs game

Playing Deuce mitigates multiple problems. You are putting someone on the court that can cover the quick scoring PGs that Brunson can’t cover at all and it releases Mikal (who is the least bad option for the job other than Deuce) to defend on the wing where he actually adds good defensive value.

The one issue I’d raise is that Deuce hasn’t exactly been lighting it up down the stretch of the season (Mar and Apr and this series). I’m not sure he’s been the same since the injuries. So I’m not sure season long stats are applicable. He’s done nothing in this series.

I’d be interested in a study of the impact of coaching also. I bet it would say the same thing though.

His study of quarterback performance year to year remains one of the most interesting things I have seen about football. And that one hasn’t seemed to penetrate, even as quarterbacks leave the Jets and become All-Pro seemingly every year….

He’s done nothing in this series

I agree he’s been bad on offense in this series, but the Knicks best lineup last night was Deuce,OG,Hart,Mitch and Brunsom

Mitch
Mcbride
Og
Brunson
Hart

Had a 117 off rating

69 def rating

The Mikal debate is a joke.

I don’t know why I even waste the keystrokes.

People have been looking at the price we paid and the stats he generated for the Nets on a shitty team and turning that into expectations for what we were getting.

The fact that people were wildly off in their expectations says nothing about whether he’s a plus player that is good enough to be a starter on a championship caliber team.

The answer is “yes”.

When we traded for him I repeatedly said he’s a #3 option (along with OG) and a plus defender. The question I raised was whether he could become a #2 option after Brunson. Then we got Towns. So not only did that question become moot, he became an underutlized #3 scoring option because we also have OG. You know, there’s only 1 ball. And when Brunson is playing, there’s really on 3/4 of a ball. Someone is not going to score and between Brunson and Thibs, the offense could and often does get ugly for everyone else.

As to defense, he’s a WING defender not a POA defender that should be guarding small super quick scroing guards. He’s here to guard guys like Brown on Boston. We have him in that POA role because Brunson can’t guard anyone at all. When he’s guarding appropriate players he’s very good.

And for the record, noisy stat or not, he had the best on/off among all the starters.

I agree he’s been bad on offense in this series, but the Knicks best lineup last night was Deuce,OG,Hart,Mitch and Brunsom

Mitch
Mcbride
Og

I love that combination defensively. 😉

1) I don’t like his game and never understood the infatuation about him here, but Bridges would be a great 6th man.

2) If the Knicks decided to trade him, they could get a nice player back, plus maybe a pick, or a couple of firsts and a generic veteran. DDV plus a 1st and a 2nd, for example. Or a Walker-Kessler. It would be a net loss, for sure, but still far from a total loss.

3) I already said it a couple of times but, again, Leon pulled a DDV, iHart, and Hart out of thin air. He needs to do it again this off season.

4) Regardless, Thibs needs to go. A non-genius coach in this league losses his players after several years. It’s time.

Coaching always mattered.

So does measuring impact correctly.

The reason studies will hint that coaches don’t matter is because there are only 30 NBA teams and there are way more than 30 excellent coaches in the US. So most teams will have a very good coach. Many will be interchangable with the difference between them being hard to isolate and attribute to the coach. People will argue player X got better instead of coach Y utlized player X better.

But there are also a handful of bad coaches or coaches suited to specific styles.

When you see a change like that, it’s a bit more obvious it matters.

If D’Antoni coached this team, we’d probably be breaking all kinds of Knicks scoring records. We might be complaining about a bunch of other things, but is anyone going to seriously argue that D’Antoni wouldn’t have this core playing way better offense?

https://x.com/DJAceNBA/status/1917554919378166057?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

I think this team is not unlike the Amar’e/Melo team before STAT fell apart… just two guys who don’t complement each other.

It’s funny bc quite a few people spent the year proclaiming that if you didn’t know this was the best Knicks team since the 90s you were some kind of idiot.

Not only was the peak Melo team and last year’s team significantly better, but you can make a pretty strong argument that the 2023 team was, too. On the aggregate, it’s not, but the post-Hart trade version of that team probably is.

The Mikal debate is a joke.

The post that follows was written about a guy averaging 14.4 points per game with a .513 TS% in a playoff series in which his heavily favored team is desperate for offense.

Owen, can you sum up the QB analysis in a sentence or three?

1) I don’t like his game and never understood the infatuation about him here, but Bridges would be a great 6th man.

1.He is an overpay , but that’s on the front office not Bridges

2. As I wrote above he has a 64 TS playing without Brunson ball.He’s been very good without him.

So not only did that question become moot, he became an underutlized #3 scoring option because we also have OG.

Then why is his efficiency in such a small and easy role so terribly mediocre? Who asked him to break his shooting form so that he puts up the worst 3p% since his rookie year?

1) I don’t like his game and never understood the infatuation about him here, but Bridges would be a great 6th man.

Did you like playoff Randle?

2. As I wrote above he has a 64 TS playing without Brunson ball.He’s been very good without him.

We seem to agree he has good value. I don’t think a 16 game sample size is enough to say who he is, but someone around the league would pay to find out.

Did you like playoff Randle?

I liked Randle more than most here, I thought and still think he’s a good player, not a first option though. In the playoff as the #1 option, or an injured #2 option he was above his head.

Strat, you just wasted a lot of keystrokes telling us how good Mikal Bridges actually is while making him sound… uh, not really very good.

The fact that people were wildly off in their expectations says nothing about whether he’s a plus player that is good enough to be a starter on a championship caliber team.

The answer is “yes”.

Is he REALLY a plus player? He’s at 19.6 USG%. Average. 101 TS+. Pretty much bang-on average. Poor rebounder, does not generate a lot of assists. On the defensive end, I’d say “average” is a fair way to describe him. He makes some occasional plays, but also dies on screens and isn’t really quick enough to play great on-ball defense.

What about his game is “plus” exactly? You have to either give him a lot of credit for his decent defense or pretend like his mediocre offensive numbers don’t exist.

Does “good enough to be a starter on a championship team” really mean anything? You could probably pluck an awful lot of average players around the league and stick them on OKC and they’d probably have a good chance of winning a title. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was “good enough to be a starter on a championship team.” So what?

The argument here isn’t that Mikal stinks, it’s that he’s an utterly average player who doesn’t move the needle a lot. This is not some super rare commodity we are talking about. He’s pedestrian and the exorbitant price we paid for him absolutely matters.

i love love love brunson but a case can be made that cade had an objectively better reg season (26/6/9) than jalen (26/3/7) and altho it is not a pg stat he had 53 blks to jalen 8

The argument here isn’t that Mikal stinks, it’s that he’s an utterly average player who doesn’t move the needle a lot. This is not some super rare commodity we are talking about. He’s pedestrian and the exorbitant price we paid for him absolutely matters.

THIS. And, yeah, sure you could have him start on The Heatles with prime Lebron, Wade and Bosh and he’d get a title.

But we can’t really expect Brunson or KAT to get better than they already are. Or OG or Hart for that matter. People have rightly brought up that Hart doesn’t shoot great and that limits our offense to some degree but wouldn’t it be easier to find a starter to replace Mikal than to expect Brunson and KAT to become good defensive players or Hart to suddenly be a great 3 point shooter or OG to become some savant with his handle? The other 4 guys are all playing, for the most part, as expected and are contributing to winning. Mikal is just a guy. Like think about how much OG is making with his contract and yet no one is bringing that up because OG is doing what he is supposed to do.

One thing that I think gets a bit overblown is the 5 picks for Bridges impact. 1 of those picks isn’t the Knicks own which is Milwaukee’s that conveys this year at 19th. Knicks pick being conveyed this year is 26th.

If that 2013 team had had Lin on it, I think it could have hung with the Heat that year. The Pacers took the Heat to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals that year, and the Knicks’ big problem with the Pacers was that they got zero scoring from their guards, and even a mediocre Lin would have been a big improvement in that series, and him being there opened up so many other possibilities in terms of A. Would Kidd have helped him improve? B. If he was here, would Kidd not have had to play so hard early in the season to the point where he was getting by on fumes in the playoffs?

That team was probably the closest they’ve come to a title contender since 1996-97. Even the team that made the Finals in 1999 probably wasn’t quite as good as that team.

Raven – Berri basically showed that QB performance varies wildly year to year, whether for Tom Brady or lesser lights. The exception to the rule, interestingly, was Peyton Manning

Basically, the argument is that QB performance depends so much on the quality of the team around you and the quality of the defenses you face that it’s actually very hard to know who the good quarterbacks are. This is true coming out of college and in the NFL.

The study was done a long time ago, maybe 20 years, using basic box score data. I know there is a lot more out there now. But the basic logic of it seems to hold true. Put a quarterback in front of a sieve offensive line with a bunch of receivers with lead hands with a terrible OC and he will look really bad. Move him to the Vikings and he will look like an All Pro for 14 games.

Also, a lot of stuff observably affects where QBs are drafted, like height, speed, and the Wonderlic.. And “In all of our formulations, we never found that the combine factors, or the college performance with respect to Wins Produced per 100 plays or QB rating, had a significant impact—of the expected sign—on NFL Wins Produced per play or NFL QB Rating at any level of experience in the NFL.”

There is stuff about race too that was very interesting, don’t know if it is still relevant though.

Here is a page with a bunch of relevant links, at least relevant in 2010.

https://dberri.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/and-yet-another-look-at-drafting-quarterbacks-in-the-nfl/

I know basically nothing about football fwiw

I’m sure there’s a saying in poker about how you can’t win the pot unless you’re sitting at the table. The Knicks have a very good chance of sitting at the table with the Celtics in Round Two.

We all know they probably won’t beat the Celtics, but you really, truly never fucking know in the world of sports. So just get there, Knicks, and we’ll see what we shall see!

Put Mikal on the Warriors and he looks like a star. This no movement offense the Knicks run got yall blind.

Don’t make the luck gods angry like that BC.

JK is right. Mikal is basic in every way- and at the price we paid – he is a sunk cost with minimal upside . I thought he would be the perfect fit. My perception of him as a defensive difference-maker with a plus offensive game has been blown to bits. He cannot thrive with Brunson, period. I also think that there is something off about the team chemistry this year. Our entire rookie class is wasting away on the bench while every ankle is breaking. Thibs will not experiment now, I get that. Leon is not going anywhere, but there are no untouchables on this roster.

Brunson had a pretty significant edge on Cade during the regular season in TS% and turnover rate which is playing out in the playoffs.

I said earlier Cade is a very good player and has a bright future but I don’t think he’s played particularly well this series.

It’s very rare for a team to win three straight road games in the a series.

I have this going 7 now. Hope I’m wrong.

Who is this unemployed offensive genious head coach that can milk every ounce of this talented starting five?

What kind of deal will Randle sign this offseason?

Randle will get a nice deal and deserve it. I see him back in Minny.

Put Mikal on the Warriors and he looks like a star. This no movement offense the Knicks run got yall blind.

Mikal has played like a billion minutes in the league now and has never “looked like a star” except maybe the first 25 games he played with the Nets, which was a clear aberration.

At his peak he was a solid role player. “Star” is out of the question. He’s not a star, never was, never will be.

Let’s not forget that CLE added two wings this season in Ty Jerome and DeAndre Hunter who are both better than Bridges, the acquisition we spent our entire asset chest for, at a fraction of the price.

This is always been Leon’s problem, and it’s been apparent since Day 1 when he drafted Obi & IQ bc of personal relationships and punted on a good pick bc no one he knew was left on the board.

His flow chart goes like this:

Do I or does someone on the team have a relationship with the player or his agents?

If No, ignore.

If Yes, overpay.

To his credit, he’s got relationships with some great players. We’ve managed to get Brunson, OG, KAT, etc. And he got good intel on IQ.

But we don’t ever get value like Ty Jerome bc we’re only looking at a small slice of the available player pie. He needs to know this is a problem and get someone in here who will look at the whole league, not just the close circle of him and his players.

A lot of people sure know how to offer a bunch of hot takes that are contradicted by the actual game information….

This failure is on the coach, period. We are badly underutilizing our talent. The Pistons are a good team, better than their record and better since Ivey went down, but we are not playing our best lineups enough and our offense is offensive. There is a lot more juice in this orange.

The Pistons are a good team, better than their record and better since Ivey went down

That’s an interesting question about the Pistons – will they actually improve when Ivey returns next season?

Who is this unemployed offensive genious head coach that can milk every ounce of this talented starting five?

It wouldn’t take a genius. And we don’t need to milk the talent, we need to help it to grow together.

Holy shit, the Cavs are -500 to win their series against the Pacers. Those are crazy high odds.

There are 2 recently fired coaches – Miller and Bud

Just for future reference, as you’ve done this a couple of times now, you’ve been writing “Miller” when you mean “Malone.”

I know who you meant, so it’s very much not a big deal, but I thought you might like to know.

Fwiw, Pistons are shooting 11% under expectation when guarded by Mikal and his deflection and steal rates have doubled compared to the regular season.

Some have mentioned it already but to me a player who has low key had an awful series that is really hurting the Knicks is Deuce.

it is not that lowkey that duece is averaging less points per game in this series than mitch is

We all know they probably won’t beat the Celtics, but you really, truly never fucking know in the world of sports. So just get there, Knicks, and we’ll see what we shall see!

The Celtics are dealing with injury issues; Jrue has a hammy strain and Brown has had knee issues all season.

Sadly, even without those 2 at 100% (or even absent) we might win one extra game, i.e. Celtics in 6 instead of 5

I don’t think Deuce has looked like himself since he returned from injury.

Last night was the first time Mitch really looked like himself, thank god

RE: Mikal

He’s a tricky eval for me. Like- I KNOW he’s good. But he hasn’t been quintessential Bridges at all this season. Maybe it’s my expectations, or maybe it’s the way he’s used- but he looks like the Phoenix Bridges who didn’t shoot enough mixed with the Brooklyn Bridges(no pun intended lol) who’s uptick in usage hurt his defense. It’s possible that Brunson’s newfound dominance has made it harder for Bridges to feel comfortable playing his game, ESPECIALLY with Anunoby’s leap on offense. Defensively, after thinking on it some, I think strategy is on to something with this:

As to defense, he’s a WING defender not a POA defender that should be guarding small super quick scroing guards. He’s here to guard guys like Brown on Boston. We have him in that POA role because Brunson can’t guard anyone at all. When he’s guarding appropriate players he’s very good.

The question is, how do you mesh the 2 versions of Bridges we’ve seen this season? He was really good on both ends without Brunson, so maybe we don’t get peak Bridges on defense. But, is it simply a matter of fixing the offense to get a better Bridges? Or has the combination of his expectations and a brighter spotlight hurt the chances of that? You gotta think that he was at least a little blindsided by the KAT addition and alot blindsided by OG’s move up the food chain

Mitch did look good last night but the team needs to realize he isn’t one to catch passes anymore unless it’s a very basic/clear pass. There were some ridiculous turnovers in the 3rd where they tried to get Mitch some really tough passes. That stretch was critical because Detroit got up by 10 but we got it back to 1 and even tied it but then had like 3 or 4 wasted possessions. That cross court pass from Mikal to Mitch was so fucking stupid.

https://x.com/KnicksFanTv/status/1917599580583063558?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

we actually lost a playoff game where mitch had 13 and 11 not great

It’s hard to win playoff games when your best player plays as badly as Brunson did last night, he was straight up awful. Mitch was excellent except when he somehow convinced the team to start forcing passes at his shins. Brunson sucked, KAT was middling and the bench aside from Mitch was again completely useless, and those are the main reasons they lost.

The Pistons have been much, much better since Ivey went down. Correlation isn’t causation blah blah blah but in particular their defense has been very good since Ivey’s minutes were siphoned to Thompson, which checks out. Ivey is also clearly offensively talented but it’s not like that has translated to stellar production yet. We may have won this series already if he was playing.

Re: coaches, I know Budenholzer has rubbed some people the wrong way but the Bucks were always in the top-8 in 3PA under him and he absolutely made the most of his personnel in Atlanta. I straight up do not care what happened with the Suns because no amount of coaching can salvage such an affront to the basketball gods.

It’s funny bc quite a few people spent the year proclaiming that if you didn’t know this was the best Knicks team since the 90s you were some kind of idiot.

It shows how bad this franchise has been that those people were basically right

I’m inclined to agree with you DRed..but I’m gonna go with 60% Thibs, 40% players. Thibs could have coached better. He could have ran way more plays for KAT and OG in the post. It has already been proven that Detroit cannot guard those 2. You know what- maybe 52% Thibs and 48% players, because no one made it a point to feed KAT when he had the advantage. That part is heavy on our PG, sadly. And then it only exacerbates the problem when Brunson is off because everyone is trained to look for him at all costs.

Bud is basically a different flavor of what people think Thibs is, so sure, that might work. And his playoff problems with Milwaukee may have been flueky. Malone was just a guy who was there when Denver lucked into the best offensive basketball player maybe ever, I wouldn’t touch him

ha, the good vibes do not abide a loss…

one neat thing I learned having the pooch is that dogs not only shake themselves to get dry, they also do it to reset themselves…

shake it out…reset…

all things as currently known, I’m voting for having johnnie come on down and try on the knick’s head coaching spot this summer…

This is getting understandably bleak, so a quick note about my sole positive takeaway from this series so far: KAT is legit.

22/9 with a .617 TS%, with multiple absolutely enormous, grande cajones shots. Defensively he’ll always have his difficulties, but we’re holding the Pistons to a 109 offensive rating (106 with KAT on the floor) and even KAT himself has come up with some big plays.

He’s doing this despite long stretches in which he inexplicably doesn’t touch the ball, and an offense that almost seems engineered to minimize his strengths.

Many, many questions about this team, but I’m happy he’s here.

Interesting news just came out, the Celtics series is now starting on Monday regardless of the outcome tomorrow. So if Knicks finish this series in Game 6 they’ll have 3 days off which would be pretty huge, same outcome as if they’d won last night and the Boston series started on Saturday.

No bud…no Malone…retreads like thibs…kick the tires in jenkins…

Thibs reminds me of woody hayes or bo schembecler at the end of their runs of Neanderthal football…the end is near

I’m not so sure we won’t be playing basketball on saturday BBA…

Hahn just said on his radio show that even if Knicks lose this series Thibs isn’t getting fired

It would surprise me if he did get fired.

Leon pulled a DDV, iHart, and Hart out of thin air.

No, he used cap space and exceptions that were available to him bc Scott Perry was a meticulous motherfucker who handed him the cleanest cap sheet in the game and a bounty of surplus draft picks that enabled Leon to unload his first round of blunders.

Btw don’t forget Jalen Duren is a Piston solely bc we acquired him and gave him to Detroit to take Kemba.

He won’t get fired. He’ll be “promoted” to a new role within the organization and replaced with a new coach.

okay, pile on mikal day…

at the beginning of the game it seemed the knicks and jalen were trying to get mikal involved…

a couple of minutes in to the game he looked completely flustered and confused while interacting with josh and jalen under our basket (detroit had just scored)…

he still looked that way as he brought the ball up the court…

maybe it’s the speed or the physicality of the playoffs – but mikal looks overwhelmed at times, in his mannerisms…

on that moment under the basket you could see josh looking at him like: just play ball…

maybe he’s overthinking things, who knows…

he needs to get it together fast…

jalen and KAT should play better on thursday, hopefully that will be enough…

Defensively he’ll always have his difficulties, but we’re holding the Pistons to a 109 offensive rating (106 with KAT on the floor) and even KAT himself has come up with some big plays.

that’s not right pistons’ offense has been stronger per poss with kat on

No, he used cap space and exceptions that were available to him bc Scott Perry was a meticulous motherfucker who handed him the cleanest cap sheet in the game and a bounty of surplus draft picks

All three of DDV, iHart, and Hart cost one protected 1st, and their cap hit was minimal, in fact in iHart’s case too small for our own good. That said, I loved Perry’s asset management.

Hey Hubie, ltns everyone.

The loss sucked quite a bit. But there is a LOT of talent on this team that has several prime years left. So I gotta disagree about us being close to a teardown.

What I will say is what I’ve said before: I believe in this front office’s ability to learn what has worked, what has not, and to pivot when needed. Someone said we’re in Mark Jackson/GSW phase comparing Thibs’ run with our team. I’m cool with that; I can buy that for all Thibs has done for us, he’s not a “final level/form” HC… IF there’s a Steve Kerr-level coach out there that you believe can unlock this team’s true offensive potential while keeping the defense stable.

Fell asleep last night and saw none of it. Without having watched the game i feel like a lot of you are overreacting, but what do i know? LOL

Let’s get this done in Detroit, and as they’re trying to be loud like MSG, if they lose all games there that would be hilarious.

Btw don’t forget Jalen Duren is a Piston solely bc we acquired him and gave him to Detroit to take Kemba.

Let’s remember another one:

Donovan Mitchell was angling hard to leave Cleveland and land in NY. Leon could have made that trade easily. He chose Bridges over Mitchell.

Z-man, thanks for the video about Dick Barnett. Now that was commitment into being a great basketball player. Love it. 🧡💙

For those of you who missed it, here it goes again:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJBaP0_OESQ/

between miller and bud i think we should hire miller for sure

Are you talking about beers? 🤭🤣

all things as currently known, I’m voting for having johnnie come on down and try on the knick’s head coaching spot this summer…

Count me in, Geo. 😉

All three of DDV, iHart, and Hart cost one protected 1st, and their cap hit was minimal,

The cap hit was more than minimal. DDV was the full MLE, Hartenstein’s $8MM cap figure required real cap space. Leon doesn’t have more than minimal left.

Scott Perry did not give us the MLE we used to sign Donte, that’s just a thing teams have.

And is the Jerome contract actually a massive fuck up by Cleveland’s GM when he leaves in FA because they don’t have full bird rights? Because that’s what people keep saying about the Hartenstein deal.

Donovan Mitchell was angling hard to leave Cleveland and land in NY. Leon could have made that trade easily. He chose Bridges over Mitchell.

Dude, you need to stop this right here. I’m pretty sure I can pull up a dozen posts from you at that time talking about how a Brunson/Mitchell back court would not work defensively and/or how we were not ready to make that kind of a move and give up all of our young talent and picks for Mitchell.

So unless you said neither of those things, you don’t get to turn around and ping Leon 3 years after the fact now that Cleveland looks like a juggernaut. Were you saying this after we bounced them in 5 two years ago?

Scott Perry did not give us the MLE we used to sign Donte, that’s just a thing teams have.

Really?

Some have mentioned it already but to me a player who has low key had an awful series that is really hurting the Knicks is Deuce.

These kinds of comments are getting to me. Again, what your eyes tell you and what the numbers are seem to be two different things.

1) every lineup with Deuce has been great, with huge net positives compared to other lineups. He may not be scoring, but apparently he is not “hurting the Knicks.” When he’s on the court, the Knicks are not only winning but crushing the Pistons.

2) Mikal hasn’t been “mediocre” on defense, he’s been very good. The numbers quoted above bear that out, but there are also the numbers Cade is putting up when guarded by him, which are poor. Anecdotally, it’s been amusing watching the Pistons get OG and Bridges in pnr together – last night there were several sequences when they went back and forth as if unaware that they’d be greeted by the other again. Needless to say, those possessions ended badly.

3) er, gotta go back to work but I’ll finish arguing later lol

Btw don’t forget Jalen Duren is a Piston solely bc we acquired him and gave him to Detroit to take Kemba.

Let’s remember another one:

Donovan Mitchell was angling hard to leave Cleveland and land in NY. Leon could have made that trade easily. He chose Bridges over Mitchell.

These have nothing to do with my point about the 3 players Leon brilliantly found on the cheap, nor my hope he can do it again. Dude, there are so many whataboutisms in the world. Just sayin’.

Btw don’t forget Jalen Duren is a Piston solely bc we acquired him and gave him to Detroit to take Kemba.

You know we got this year’s 19th pick and were able to sign Hartenstein because of this deal, right? It’s important to me that you know that.

idk rama i’m on team deuce has been pretty bad. the on-offs for a bit player in these samples are like the bag in american beauty. they even think timmy vs schroder has been drago vs apollo. fickle bitches.

I feel a discussion of the incinerated pick coming

Before rehauling the team, I do think it would be good to try a new coach, much like the Cavs – who were on the bring of blowing it all up – just did.

Dude, you need to stop this right here. I’m pretty sure I can pull up a dozen posts from you at that time talking about how a Brunson/Mitchell back court would not work defensively

It wouldn’t have.

But it would have worked better than a defense built around Brunson & KAT.

Deuce for the series is shooting 26.9% overall including 25% (4 for 16) from 3pt. If he were making some shots Thibs would probably be playing him more.

Ivey would be shredding the Knicks’ 4 on 3’s so much they’d very likely have to go back to playing Cunningham straight up. That might make Ivey revert to form, but it would make Cunningham even better.

He’s badly missed by the Pistons.

duece was a +9 last night just saying

You know we got this year’s 19th pick and were able to sign Hartenstein because of this deal, right? It’s important to me that you know that.

And you know Hartenstein plays for the Thunder now, right?

And that we traded that pick when it’s value was at its nadir?

Hey I’m all for Deuce playing more mins, hell a few weeks ago before Brunson got hurt I was advocating for him to start ahead of Hart to help the offense. But he’s shooting awful in this series which I’m sure is why Thibs isn’t playing him more and I can’t blame him for not giving Deuce a longer leash when he’s not coming close on most of his 3s.

These have nothing to do with my point about the 3 players Leon brilliantly found on the cheap, nor my hope he can do it again.

Leon didn’t get those guys cheap, dude. They cost real assets, assets he doesn’t have anymore.

He doesn’t have cap space, which he used to sign Hartenstein.

He doesn’t have the MLE, which he used to sign DDV.

And he doesn’t have a first round pick, which he used for Hart.

You might as well say “remember when he signed Jalen Brunson?” Maybe he’ll do that again, too.

Were you saying this after we bounced them in 5 two years ago?

Do you remember what I did say to you when we bounced them in 5 two years ago? Back when you were boldly declaring that Leon had just proven he could build a legitimate championship contender? It’s probably a pretty good read. Well, maybe not for you and z-man.

Leon Rose is no Brian Cashman.

I’d probably rank my teams’ front offices:

1. Brian Cashman
2. Joe Schoen
3. Leon Rose

It’s pretty bleak.

Before rehauling the team, I do think it would be good to try a new coach, much like the Cavs – who were on the bring of blowing it all up – just did.

Probably best to tinker around the edges. Get a real bench, maybe shuffle thibs staff, and then if that doesn’t work you get a new coach or try get a new coach and trade karl or whatever

1. Brian Cashman
2. Joe Schoen
3. Leon Rose

Mets fans will tell you David Stearns is a dreamboat

Baseball has no salary cap, its not a comparable sport.

this team is not unlike the Amar’e/Melo team…Brunson is a lot like Melo…Like Stoudemire, Towns is the guy who is an incredible offensive weapon but not a guy who is just plug and play.

Also, Payne and Jeffries share a face.

Nothing like taking a six-week hiatus from being the angriest blowhard asshole on KB under the guise of religious observance only to return as an even angrier blowhard asshole! Nice job, hubie!

Yes, Hubert, NBA players cost money. This includes Ty Jerome who makes a salary and took up the Cavs biannual exception. He is also likely to leave next season, netting the Cavs nothing, or maybe they get lucky and nobody throws a $30M/year salary at him.

So if your point is only that we have not signed a star player for the same money or less than Ty Jerome, you’re correct. Most teams don’t do this, just as most teams don’t find iHart for $8M or Donte for $11M.

As you say, last year’s team featuring iHart is the best team since at least the 90s, so that seems like a pretty great acquisition.

No way Schoen has done a better job than Rose, not even close.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OJlc4dyCqVk&pp=ygUdV2FycmlvcnMgYmFsbCBtb3ZlbWVtdCBidXRsZXI%3D

Has it all in this video.

Cutting

Passing

This is why a young innovative mind is needed at HC.

It does look prettier when you hit all your threes. And all your midrange shots as well.

Although the Jimmy-Buddy play was pretty sweet.

It also looks better when you don’t start running offense with 8 seconds left

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OJlc4dyCqVk&pp=ygUdV2FycmlvcnMgYmFsbCBtb3ZlbWVtdCBidXRsZXI%3D

Has it all in this video.

Cutting

Passing

This is why a young innovative mind is needed at HC.

I also advocate for getting a 6x all-star and likely Hall of Famer, that tends to help

Knicks currently have two guys who are going to make All NBA teams. Both guys started the all star game. Thibs certainly has talent to work with.

Does passing a lot correlate strongly with having a more efficient offense?

all indiations are yes

If the Thompson boys ever figure out how to shoot they’re going to be awesome

Some more damning numbers from Tom Haberstroh’s pod today:

-Our average offensive possession has lasted 15.84 seconds during the playoffs, which is obviously dead last and would’ve been dead last in every regular season dating back to 2016. Pistons are at 14.37.

We’re slow getting into our sets and piss away precious time to respond to defensive adjustments. This is why it feels like every god damn possession ends in a mediocre iso. Relatedly…

-21% of our possessions are ending in the last 4 seconds of the shot clock, when expected points per shot obviously craters. Again, the most of any playoff team.

Just impossible to defend this stuff. Hard to fathom numbers that more clearly scream “bad coaching.”

Re: iHart, DDV, and Hart, we obviously got exceptional productivity out of those guys compared to the cost we paid. Of course we don’t literally have the exact assets/cap space we used on them due to the linear passage of time, but we’ll have similar (re: low) quality firsts to trade and comparable amounts of money to offer via the BAE and TPMLE.

Leon did an excellent job finding value with those guys, which is actually what has salvaged this team despite him getting god awful value from Mikal (iHart excluded since we lost him due to EB rules). He’ll have the chance to do it again because the asset/money expenditure really was minimal.

Our average offensive possession has lasted 15.84 seconds during the playoffs

This pretty much checks out. Dribble, dribble and take a terrible shot.

How long did our possessions last during the regular season?

Mikal has been like a C- but not an F.
IMHO his main issue on offense has been whatever is going on with his 3 point shot and that hitch. His midrange game has been frankly unbelievable. His shooting splits are really quite good — except for 3 point shooting:

0-3 feet -> 78.5%!!
3-10 feet – 51.3
10-16 feet – 50.7
16-23 feet – 52
3 pointers – 35.4 –> below average.

his 3 point shooting from the corners has been quite good but he has been horrendous above the break – like 30% for the year – just horrible.

Compare to Donte last year who shot 39.6% from above the break — teams would go crazy to make run Donte off the line no matter where he was shooting from, whereas they are more than happy to give up Mikal ATB 3’s.

My guess is that Leon and co thought that Mikal would be a better shooter than he is – and he HAS been in the past. his career ATB 3P% is about 36% which is at least league average. But he has been a straight up bad ATB shooter. And that (amongst other things) breaks the offense.

Defensively he’s had his ups and downs, but clearly he is not what they thought he was.

Crazy to think that the guy we could REALLY use on this team is Quentin Grimes. Great POA defender with quick trigger from 3. And we had him and traded him for Alec Burks and Bogdanovic. I was lukewarm on that trade but it has aged terribly.

I agree that there is no way you can claim the Giants front office is better than the Knicks. Cashman? Maybe. I read an article where MLB execs anonymously rated other front offices. Cashman came in fourth in the league and had some first place votes. One thing said about him was that the Yankees drafting and development of young players was excellent so that they always have tradeable pieces they can trade to other teams for useful big league players.

Agree wholeheartedly with TNFH and the horrible pace this team plays at. Some of that is on Brunson who is very deliberate bringing the ball up, especially when Thompson is hounding him. Knicks should honestly have Hart bring the ball up every possession whether off misses or makes – will decrease wear/tear on Brunson and get the Knicks into their actions earlier.

(speaking of Thompson – how many times is he going to do a baseline cut before someone thinks about not letting him do that?)

I also advocate for getting a 6x all-star and likely Hall of Famer, that tends to help

I thought it was E

I’m sorry but, BigBlueAl, you’re being sarcastic about Cashman, right? RIGHT?!

I’m a huge Yankees fan. The moment they get rid of him will be the moment the franchise may return to greatness.

Cashman has absolutely had his shortcomings (player development in the last decade or so has been a disaster) but being in the playoffs almost every year is nothing to sneeze at, even with the payroll advantage.

The early returns on this year are looking favorable to Cashman. We’re getting a ton of production out of Rice, Grisham, and Goldschmidt for very little cost. All the better if putting so much faith in Volpe is finally vindicated.

For me to believe we can actually contend we’ll need, at a minimum, an additional playoff caliber SP and a 3B though.

Cashman will most likely end up in the HOF so yeah he’s been pretty damn good.

(player development in the last decade or so has been a disaster)

the one guy they hit on turned out to be pretty good at least

Such revisionist history on Cashman. So he’s stunk at player development literally the most important part of his job for a decade and he’s good?

No one has done less with more as a professional sports GM than Cashman since 2009. No one.

Yankees won’t win 89 games this season.

Funny thing is Judge wasn’t as highly regarded a prospect as basically anyone in the long line of guys who either never amounted to anything, or fizzled out after initial success. Gary, Bird, Gleyber, Frazier, and even Peraza were all ranked higher.

Estevan Florial, Everson Pereira, and Deivi Garcia were all highly regarded at some point, and gave the Yankees, I believe, 0 WAR between them.

Hopefully Volpe and Jasson buck the trend because it’s a genuine statistical oddity at this point.

So if your point is only that we have not signed a star player for the same money or less than Ty Jerome, you’re correct. Most teams don’t do this, just as most teams don’t find iHart for $8M or Donte for $11M.

My point was pretty obvious to anyone who can read: Leon doesn’t have the tools to acquire guys like Hartenstein and Donte any more.

You’re right Yankees won’t win 89 games this year they’re gonna win alot more.

No one has done less with more as a professional sports GM than Cashman since 2009. No one.

From 2010 on the Yankees have the 2nd most wins in the sport. So, not all bad.

No one has done less with more as a professional sports GM than Cashman since 2009. No one.

And it’s not even close.

I’m pretty sure going into 2017 Judge was around a Top 40 prospect in all of baseball so he wasn’t exactly some guy who came out of nowhere. As much as I was frustrated with Gary and Gleyber by the end of their Yankee careers they each made 2 All-Star teams so they were pretty productive.

I actually blame Boone and his coaching staff moreso for all these guys eventually flaming out at the big league level.

Devin Williams pitched a scoreless inning tonight…..yay!

I agree that there is no way you can claim the Giants front office is better than the Knicks.

Over the last 14 months going back to the Grimes trade Leon has used almost every single current and future asset he has and he made his team demonstrably worse. That’s pretty hard to do. He’s been the worst GM in basketball over that period; maybe the worst GM in sports.

Say what you want about Joe Schoen, but I’m pretty sure if you let him trade all his future draft picks he’d at least make the current team better.

Hubert it might be time to observe lent again.

My point was pretty obvious to anyone who can read: Leon doesn’t have the tools to acquire guys like Hartenstein and Donte any more.

Oh, I missed that you stopped saying “he had never found a value” to “he will never find that value again.”

However, we still have a 1st every other year, Washington’s two 2nds, and possibly $4.7M of the taxpayer MLE next season.

Leon has also turned DSJr and a single 2nd into a very productive when healthy Derrick Rose.

Joe Schoen – the guy who has become well known for dissing Saquon on Hard Knocks

The guy who paid Daniel Jones after throwing 15 touchdowns in 17 games

And whose team is pretty much a lock to finish last in the division again

He’s been the worst GM in basketball over that period; maybe the worst GM in sports.

Not in a world where Nico Harrison exists

Kevin knox getting some run….

Not in a world where Nico Harrison exists

Or whatever the Sacramento Kings are doing

The best player on the team Sabonis came out after the play in loss and said the team needs a point guard …

Kevin Knox getting run must be because the Warriors beautiful pass and cut offense blew the doors of the Rockets tonight

Not in a world where Nico Harrison exists

Nico Harrison did get his team to the NBA Finals last year. Even with the Luka trade that’s got to put him ahead of Leon.

Joe Schoen – the guy who has become well known for dissing Saquon on Hard Knocks

The guy who paid Daniel Jones after throwing 15 touchdowns in 17 games

And whose team is pretty much a lock to finish last in the division again

You forgot spending a #7 overall pick (Neal) a second round pick (John Michael Schmidt) and a 3rd round pick (Ezudu) to “fix” their black hole offensive line, and failing miserably/whiffing on those picks and then having to buy Van Roten, Jon Runyon, Eleumunor in FA as stop gaps…

How could I forget Neal, what a bust.

Hubert is just trolling

Joe Schoen – the guy who has become well known for dissing Saquon on Hard Knocks

The guy who paid Daniel Jones after throwing 15 touchdowns in 17 games

You forgot spending a #7 overall pick (Neal) a second round pick (John Michael Schmidt) and a 3rd round pick (Ezudu) to “fix” their black hole offensive line, and failing miserably/whiffing on those picks and then having to buy Van Roten, Jon Runyon, Eleumunor in FA as stop gaps…

Yeah, and the guy who mortgaged his team’s future for Mikal Bridges trumps all of this.

Jones is gone already. The damage is over. Brooklyn’s going to still be using our picks when Brunson is 34 years old.

Leon made the Herschel Walker trade. Except he made it for Rodney Hampton.

Same division with Hurts and Jayden Daniels

The guy is pretty much a lock to be fired after this upcoming season btw

Not in a world where Nico Harrison exists

How could I forget the great Matt Ishbia in Phoenix.

Yeah, and the guy who mortgaged his team’s future for Mikal Bridges trumps all of this.

Jones is gone already. The damage is over. Brooklyn’s going to still be using our picks when Brunson is 34 years old.

Leon made the Herschel Walker trade. Except he made it for Rodney Hampton.

Stop the bleeding. Take the L like a man.

Schoen 18-32-1

Rose 229-1177

I’m not a huge Leon Rose booster but at least he didn’t trade away a top 5 NBA player because he wasn’t swole enough

Hubert IVsays:
June 25, 2024 at 22:50
I deeply hate losing Hartenstein if it comes to pass but we are going to be able to play some incredible small ball lineups now so I actually don’t think it will hurt as much as we think.

Incredible. How could anyone have thought trading all those picks for Bridges was a good idea????

Stop the bleeding. Take the L like a man.

Schoen 18-32-1

Rose 229-1177

idk Rose being like 900 games under .500 seems pretty bad

Stop the bleeding. Take the L like a man.

I’ve been racking up nothing but wins all year, my diamond-crusted-L-necklaced friend. And this is another one.

Y’all myopic. And you’ve been myopic since opening night. “Wait 20 games”, “wait til Precious Achiuwa comes back”, “wait til Mitch comes back”, “I think now that Landry Shamet’s back things will be different” It’s been nothing but L’s for the greek chorus. And now it’s “wait til Leon Rose uses the TPMLE”? Seriously? Thank god you have each other.

And this is another L for you that you can’t see coming because you’re looking at where the puck is, not where the puck is going.

You think the Bridges trade is bad because Mikal is mid. You are not seeing the big picture. We are already in the decline phase. That wasn’t supposed to begin for another 3-4 years. And with the miles we’re putting on these guys, none of ’em are likely to have extended primes.

Those picks are solid gold.

By 2031, when the true cost of the Bridges trade is finally clear, forget Joe Schoen & Nico Harrison… that trade is going to go down as worse than anything Isiah Thomas ever did. It was a Garnett-and-Pierce-to-the-Nets level franchise-crippling trade, the likes of which have rarely occurred in sports.

Bookmark this page: No one is going to remember Joe Schoen in 2031. But we will still be cursing Leon Rose for the Bridges trade.

Yeah, and the guy who mortgaged his team’s future for Mikal Bridges trumps all of this.

I’m not a great fan of the Bridges trade, but I think saying or writing “five first round picks” gives the wrong impression of how much we paid for him. Yeah it’s a lot of picks, but they are mostly lousy first rounders. I mean, we did overpay, but it’s hard to say we mortgaged our future. Leon is a good judge of value. My suspicion is our lousy first rounders weren’t very sought after around the league, so he did the best he could.

I deeply hate losing Hartenstein if it comes to pass but we are going to be able to play some incredible small ball lineups now so I actually don’t think it will hurt as much as we think.

Sorry, can you point to the part of this quote that says trading all those picks for Bridges was a good idea? I don’t see it.

Not to mention Leon went and panic traded 2/5 of the small ball lineup I was referring to a month later.

Yeah it’s a lot of picks, but they are mostly lousy first rounders

Sure they are. Things are going great. We’ll be contenders forever. And the history of small guards like Jalen Brunson taking a beating for 4-5 years straight is really good. I think he’ll be good for as long as CP3.

Hubert, don’t you have kids or little demons you should be spending time with this evening?

Listen Hubert is full of shit about his support for the deal at the time but he’s definitely right today that the Bridges trade was terrible.

And now it’s “wait til Leon Rose uses the TPMLE”? Seriously? Thank god you have each other.

Us having assets left and Rose having shown he can do things with those assets does not entail any of the other things you’re saying.

I’m not saying wait till Rose uses the MLE, I’m saying that factually we do still have assets we can use to acquire new players. We may not acquire good players with them, we may not use them at all, and depending on who we bring back, we may not have access to the MLE. However, none of this changes the fact those assets exist.

Here’s our next coach

https://x.com/TheHoopHerald/status/1917561829666218425

EB, remind me, you’re the guy who told me beating the Memphis Grizzlies proved this team could win the championship this year, right?

And now your thesis is that Leon can bridge the gap with the TPMLE and the vet min exception?

I’ve got to say the refs seem to be favoring LA. First LA makes what seemed a desperation challenge, but they won. Then Luka fell down when the defender backed off and it was called a foul.

Yeah…nba wants this series to keep going

Hubert, don’t you have kids or little demons you should be spending time with this evening?

I’m in San Francisco for work. I can swat this feeble shit away for a few more hours.

Amazing to me JJ won’t play Hayes.

Two more questionable calls. It’s disgusting.

6-44 from 3 and leading late in q4 is crazy

The Lakers will be better when they can add more players next season, but yeah, ooph, they are rough right now.

It’s awesome seeing DDV and Randle both on the court closing the Lakers out.

seems like govert has 1 playoff game like that every season but nly one of this so i guess this is the one

Amazing to me JJ won’t play Hayes.

And he let Rudy destroy his small lineup without putting his big man in the game. JJ was clueless.

seems like govert has 1 playoff game like that every season but nly one of this so i guess this is the one

JJ played a midget lineup

6-44 from 3 and leading late in q4 is crazy

The right way of putting it is that Minnesota should be up by 20-30 points. At no point during this game did the Lakers show they are the better team.

I am so bloody happy for Randle and DDV.

But but Luka
Lakers bailed out Nico (at least a little bit)

Randle made shots and was good in this series

randle only shot 47.6FG but was 45.5 from3 which is odd

Well, Randle was 1-6 from three tonight, but Donte was 2-12 so there’s that.

yeah what i said did not include tonite make that 48.1 FG and 39.3 3 for the series inc tonite

That FG % would be his highest over a full season as a Knick

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