Knicks Morning News (2025.05.11)

I wonder whether the two wins bought Thibs another year…or whether one more win would make a significant difference.

If we go out losing 4 straight without putting up more of a fight than we did yesterday, that’s a bad look. You could say tomorrow’s game is the biggest of Thibs’ Knicks career.

If it were a break that would keep KAT out, we probably would know by now. Seems like more of a finger thing, which he might be able to play through by taping it up and just dealing with the pain. Last time we played the Celts in the second round, Bernard King played through broken fingers on both hands.

“He’s the best perimeter shooting big in NBA history…”

I don’t know why folks keep saying this as if it means something beyond “he’s a great 3pt shooter when he’s open and happens to be a big.”

I mean, the fact that he’s a big is kind of irrelevant to his 3pt shooting, isn’t it? In fact, doesn’t it kind of suggest that if you have him out on the perimeter, your “big” is not where bigs are supposed to be, i.e. where bigness is actually is a benefit?

Who are we comparing him to when calling him the “best perimeter shooting big in NBA history?” Who are the other “perimeter shooting bigs?” Does Dirk qualify? Larry Bird? Myles Turner? Arvydas Sabonis? Kristaps Porzingis? Bob McAdoo? Patrick Ewing? Rasheed Wallace? Sam Perkins? Steve Novak? Brook Lopez?

I just don’t get what a coach is supposed to do to generate more high percentage looks for KAT while sacrificing all of the things that a “big” is supposed to do, especially given that you are already inherently sacrificing things that bigs are supposed to do on the defensive end when he’s your primary big. If you play him alongside Mitch, then you bring in the Hack-a-Mitch conundrum, which is designed to keep the ball out of KAT’s (and everybody else’s) hands.

And that’s the problem with the way that this team is constructed. There is no one who can pull consistently KAT’s man away from him. Brunson is obviously great in iso, but rarely do teams throw doubles at him, they just take their chances with a defensive small wing (you could argue that all of White, Brown, and Jrue are the equivalent of defensive small wings) and live with the occasions where Brunson gets a switch and iso’s vs. Tatum, KP, or Horford, and if you are going to hard double off of anyone, don’t let it be KAT’s man unless he is near the paint.

We need someone who can consistently punish a smaller defender to open things up for KAT. None of Hart, OG, or Mikal are able to do that. Short of that, KAT’s best alternative is to be “that guy.” Get in the post and either draw doubles or get into the paint and score or get fouled.

“I feel like I just got a lot of different tools, you know what I mean?” Randle said. “It’s really about using my mind and taking what the defense gives me. If they don’t double-team me, score. If they double-team me, find my guys.”

One would think KAT can do this as well…

“So Randle was bad here but is good now in Minnesota and KAT is bad here but was good in Minnesota and this definitely isn’t an issue with the coach.”

I presume you are only talking about the playoffs because last I checked, Randle was all-NBA twice and an all-star three times when he was here. Not to mentioned that he was either badly injured or out for our last two playoff runs.

“They need to be more flexible offensively and the most obvious way is to scheme the ball in the hands of the best 3 ball shooting starting big man in the history of the NBA and their most efficient scorer. Yes… his 40% is better Larry Bird, Dirk and anyone else you can think of.”

For his career, KAT is 186th in 3pt makes per 36 minutes. He is barely in the top 100 among active players.

In these playoffs, he is averaging 1.4 makes, slightly below his career average of 1.6, and 0.7 below his career high of 2.1 that he achieved last year, although it came at a steep price in efficiency. In last year’s playoffs, he averaged 1 full 3pt make more per 100 possessions on 3.4 more attempts than this year. And that was in a situation where he played the majority of his minutes at PF.

Seems like Thibs is not the first coach to have trouble finding more 3PA for the greatest shooting big of all time without a drop-off in efficiency. And let me state for the record….he won’t be the last.

“KAT has his lowest 3PAr since the 2018-2019 season”

The actual bullshit is that you left out that his TS% and usage% were both above his career averages. Or that the years when he shot the most 3’s, his team won 19 and 23 games. Or that this year he averaged 4 more rebounds per 36 than he did last year, as well as more points per 36.

“We won a couple of games because the other team also played like ass. They stopped playing like ass and now we’re probably fucked.”

Right, brilliant analysis as usual! We are up 2-1 on a team that was 20-4 in playoff games coming in and have won 5 straight games on the road because they are worn out from playing too many minutes. Oh wait, that was your last bit of brilliant analysis about Thibs that we had to endure all fucking year.

By the way, guess who shot fewer 3’s than us this year…the Denver Nuggets. Maybe that’s why they fired their championship-winning coach. Have they increased their 3PAr in the playoffs with their new coach? Nope. Still seem to be doing pretty well, though. Go figure.

“Sure, but then we would need the other four Knicks to 1. Be out at the 3pt line 2. All be able (and willing) to shoot threes and 3. KAT needs to be able to find shooters on his drives when he gets doubled.

KAT is a good passer but not necessarily while being doubled in the post. In fact, I don’t remember seeing him kick from the post much if at all (aside from the give&go) probably because it was either Hart or Mitch being left open.”

KAT is a good enough passer if he keeps his head up and sees/feels the doubles coming. The problem is, he doesn’t have great feel or great judgment in those circumstances. Even in game 2 when he bullied Horford on 2 consecutive possessions, there were possessions after that when he could have passed but didn’t and wound up taking an ill-advised weak shot. The other problem is that the double is often coming from whoever is on Hart, who they will let shoot from 3 all game long. They are not going to help hard off of OG or Brunson, so it’s really on Mikal to knock down those 3’s but thus far he’s 4-15, even worse when you consider that 2 of those 3’s came in the 4th Q in game 2 and 1 came in OT in game 1. By and large, he’s missed a ton of critical good looks.

And that’s the problem with our offensive personnel that transcends our schemes…there is no one that can consistently draw doubles in the paint other than KAT, and that means that no one is going to be open from 3, especially KAT (really, what defense is going to leave him open, either on a PnR or to help off of him?)

And if KAT can’t draw doubles vs. elite defenses and punish them, we need someone who can. And that can’t be Brunson because he’s too small, and therefore most teams (see: Celtics, Pistons) will take their chances by gluing a defensive wing to him. We need someone like KD or Jimmy or Giannis or LeBron or Tatum or Luka….heck, even Julius…to unlock KAT. The closest we have is Mikal, and well, let’s just say that he’s clearly not up to the job at this point.

OKC went 10-41 from 3. Denver went 11-45. That’s a combined 21-86. The final score was 92-87. But hey, at least they are jacking em’ up!

“Jalen taking 9 seconds to get across half-court, then dribbling for 9 more before initiating an action, leaving everyone frozen. Mitch playing when the Knicks are in the penalty, and not playing when they are not (like say starting off the game…). KAT yadda yadda see many previous posts. Pull up a player, and it’s weak sauce.”

I think these are all legitimate points, but not the main reasons why our offense is gummed up. And if we play faster when not in transition, but shoot as poorly as we have, or pass more but start turning it over at a higher clip, that just increases the chance that the Celts will go on one of their unstoppable transition runs.

I think our fatal flaw is on the defensive side. We haven’t been good at defending the 3-pt line all year, and that was on full display in game 3 and to a degree in games 1 and 2, although your going to have to concede some open 3’s to the champs, they are among the best in the NBA at generating looks but only shot 36.8% from there on the year, so as dmar pointed out, there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.

They are also killing us on the offensive boards, which is limiting our transition game. I think they scored a ton of their points either off of turnovers or on ORebs.

Mathurin apparently punched Hunter in the mid-section prior to the ball being inbounded. Hunter reacted by walking up to Mathurin pointing his finger and suddenly shoved Mathurin to the floor. Myles Turner then ran over and bumped Hunter. Both Hunter and Turner received techs, but Mathurin was ejected as his punch was ruled a flagrant 2.

One nice thing about the Knicks-Celts series is that there aren’t any trash-talking punks or fake tough guys on either team. Good, clean, high character basketball. At least, that’s how I see it.

I can’t believe how poorly prepared Cleveland was for this game.

Of course, they did choke away a lead in game 2 in horrific fashion, so maybe it’s not all that surprising.

Or maybe they are so banged up that they just can’t keep up. Mobley and Garland are pretty invisible.

“Rick Carlisle knows how to use Turner. Wonder if he could help Towns”

Carlisle is an excellent coach.

“…there was someone here who kept saying there was no other coach who could make a player out of Obi Toppin, either.”

I know that someone wasn’t me, unless you are stupidly distorting my opinion that Obi’s best role was energy guy off the bench, which has turned out to be about as spot on as one could be. Going into this game, he was averaging 15.9 mpg in these playoffs…the exact same amount he averaged in his last playoff run under Thibs!