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34 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.05.25)”
“Sources — Knicks mull benching Hart for Robinson for Game 3 – ESPN”
I would be really excited to see this at the start the game. As a secondary point, doesn’t it make sense to play Mitch BEFORE the Pacers can get into foul trouble??
Our starting 5 rotation was built specifically to take on Boston — spread 5 center in Towns to neutralize Prozingis and “wing stops” to hold back Tatum and Brown. It did its job. But the Pacers are a different beast and require a configuration of pieces we just seem to lack beyond the starting 5. As much as I hate to experiment in game 3 of the ECF, and it’s against Thibs stubborn nature, I think we have no choice (and not much to lose now) in throwing a bunch of combinations out there to see what clicks. Get Shamut some time over Payne, throw Delon Wright and Hukporti in when KAT and Mitch take a rest, hell, even give Kolek some burn. Maybe it’ll throw the Pacers off their game or maybe someone will get hot.
Better to do that in Game 3 than to pull a bench Elfrid Payton only in the last game of the season. That said, I don’t understand why we don’t just use Hart as Denver did with Bruce Brown in 2023. It’s the only reasonable way to extract his full value in this series.
Let’s not get carried away about throwing Kolek in the mix. You start Mitch,Towns, OG, Bridges and Brunson. Then sub Hart for Towns and Deuce for Mikhal (esp if Mikhal starts out cold as he usually does). Then you have Mitch, OG, Hart, deuce, Brunson. When you take out Brunson, put Towns back in the game. Mitch, Towns, OG, Hart, Deuce. Leave Payne on the bench. When Mitch needs a spell , try Hukporti to keep size and defensive presence out there with Towns. Two rotation principles: 1/ Basically NEVER have Towns as the anchor and Brunson at the point of attack together on defense. 2/ NEVER have both Brunson and Towns out of the game offensively
I wonder if Rick is mulling starting Tony Bradley
johnlocke,
+1
JohnLocke – I like, except I’m curious how many minutes you’re playing Mitch…
I think Fuji apples are the way to go. They’re consistently better than all the rest. Honeycrisps are fine texturally but taste like water with a little apple in it.
Well done JohnLocke, but probably can’t be implemented this year… Mitch’s minutes need to be capped at 30… MacIntosh are my favorite apples…
There are no caps on Mitch’s minutes in a do or die game 3. Play him 35 mins and call time outs and take him out when we’re in the bonus to keep him fresh, or at the end of quarters when we have the ball to keep him fresh …. that plus Hukporti
At this point you have to expect Carlisle’s prepared for this and has something up his sleeve. And he probably won’t wait til he loses two games to go to it.
Well, Ephus might be busy, so here it goes…
…today is a good* day to be a Knicks fan! 🧡💙
*well, unless we lose tonight… i hope not! 😉
I’ve resigned myself to enjoying the ECF. Let’s get a win!
from the get it always seemed like mitch and kat together were probably our best hail mary attempt at sidestepping our inherent weakness against good offenses. but as awesome as mitch has looked individually, i struggle to be all that optimistic about towns and country lineups in this series, because indy’s ball movement and player movement is a rough fit for two bigs who are already well below average at improvising and coordinating. it’s also a big transition invitation for them, even on makes. they’ve looked pretty discombobulated in their 16 minutes together in the first two games. definitely not against trying it more though, because the alternative isn’t great either. if i were indy i would pressure the fuck out of jalen early because with no josh we have two guys who dribble like their hands are ping pong paddles and two guys who float blithely up the courts like it’s a lazy river, missing 90 percent of the screens they pretend to set. one nice thing is that mitch does not miss screens so if they try that he might at least send nesmith into some quiet contemplation time.
I think starting Deuce in place of Hart instead has a higher ceiling** — but in the end I’m glad we’re finally going with something different. The best time to change the starting lineup was January, the second best time is now.
**It’s a true 5-out lineup and our best option for fighting fire with fire vs. the Pacers’ scoring. If we want to come back from down 0-2 we really could use at least one game where we win the variance battle and bury them in an avalanche of 3s. On defense, switch everything (I know that’s a question mark, but it’s an unknown quantity due to this lineup not really being tried to a serious extent in favor of the starters.) Sub in Mitch and/or Hart if we need to slow the game down.
Towns played on the top-ranked defense in the league with Gobert, so if the defense still can’t keep up with ball movement and whatever it is that Indy does even with NYK’s Gobert inserted into the lineup, that certainly isn’t on Karl-Anthony Towns.
Start Mitch each quarter and play him till we’re in the bonus. With the breaks each quarter and half time you can probably play him 32 minutes and he gets the last few minutes of each quarter and the break between each quarter and half. Get into the bonus early so we can slow the game down.
I’d give wright Payne’s minutes or just play deuce more.
I’m sure Carlisle has a counter to this but will that counter work? I don’t know if they have an answer for Mitch and Carlisle’s counter might take away some of their other strengths where they’ve been killing us.
The series is NOT over. We win today the momentum changes. Both of these games have been incredibly close. We could be up 2-0 right now with a few tweaks and breaks going our way.
But we gotta figure out a way to slow them down a bit and make them lose a little confidence with their shooting.
I’m not giving up on this team yet. They play well when their backs are against the wall.
Win tonight changes the entire perspective. That’s playoff basketball.
I also think this is the correct move. It would be kinda cool if we leaked the idea that we’re going to start Mitch as a feint to go with something they’re not prepared for but I doubt it.
Today I have pooped twice. And twice I did not bring my cell phone with me as sacrifice to Jobu.
Excellent, Clarence. We all need to do our part if this team is gonna make history.
😊
That’s a great point Penny.
I just wish we weren’t introducing a switching defense for the first time in the playoffs. It’s not setting up KAT or the rest of the team to succeed.
Clarence have you had Cosmic Crisp? I haven’t had a good one yet despite the hype. Flavor too muted, texture a touch mealy.
This isn’t logically sound. The top-ranked defense in the league got lit up by Dallas in the WCF and a lot of that was on Towns.
Doug, the cosmic crisps can be good-ish but there’s like this unguency to them that makes them almost too perfumey in the mouth. Like just a little. I’m a fuji boy but I’m open so if and when that next apple comes along I can be in the moment about it.
Everything we’re doing in this series seems one half too late. We should have kept Mitch in the second half of game 1, so we did it the first half of game 2. We should have started Mitch in the second half of game 2, we’re doing it in the first half of game 3.
The point is not to play Mitch. The point is to recognize what is and is not working, and to react to it during the game, not after you get killed in the press.
By doing today what we should have done yesterday, we’re always a day behind the team that’s operating in real time.
“KAT can’t fail, he can only be failed” -E
I’d play Deuce 38 minutes
I’m a granny smith kind of guy myself…
Pretty much, this team has been put behind the 8 ball by it’s coach, coming out with that starting unit after halftime in Game 2 was another gift being delivered.
now that this series expectations have been thoroughly throttled back – today is starting to feel like a good day for a basketball game…
It has been a long time since the Knicks had me fully emotionally invested like this. I was on such a high during and after the Boston series, that I needed to not look at Knicks-related stuff for a while after I commented yesterday. They are exhausting me right now lol. I still think we can pull off a series win, but for the 3rd series in a row- it is gonna take EVERYTHING we have. We get past Indy, we won’t have any juice left for what’s likely to be a Finals matchup with OKC.
About the lineup tonight- I hope that starting Mitch means Thibs will have no choice but to expand the rotation to include Achiuwa (obviously) and Shamet or Tucker. Hell maybe all 3 if that’s what it takes. But we’ve gotta find a good combo for the non-Brunson minutes because when he’s probing, nobody moves on offense. So maybe we can Gemini Shamet the Reggie Miller treatment on offense for a few minutes while Deuce and Hart try to create open looks somehow.
Indy is playing like they’re the better team, and that is a ginormous disappointment
The issue with replacing Hart is that he’s our 2nd best ball handler and 2nd best rebounder in the starting lineup, you’re either giving up the boards or your ability to beat the press and play in transition.
Against this team, I think it might make more sense to move OG to the bench if we start Mitch. One of KAT or Mitch will end up guarding Siakam anyway and it’s a waste of OG to have him out there against Nesmith. Won’t happen, but that lineup construction makes more sense to me.
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