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New York Knicks Back Apologetic Captain After Vital Loss – Sports Illustrated
05/29/2025 11:00:02
Is Karl-Anthony Towns playing tonight for the Knicks? – USA Today
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No one will stop the Thunder from winning NBA championship – USA Today
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NBA conference finals takeaways: Thunder dominate Wolves in Game 5 for Western Conference chip – ESPN
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Turnovers, big deficits continue to haunt Knicks against Pacers: ‘We got burned’ – SNY
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Knicks-Pacers: 4 numbers to know as Indiana looks to advance – NBA
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Karl-Anthony Towns? injury status heading into Knicks must-win Game 5 – New York Post
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Knicks list Karl-Anthony Towns as questionable for Game 5 vs. Pacers – SNY
05/29/2025 01:44:33
159 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.05.29)”
Fuck you jobu. I’m eating this burrito.
Objectively weird to think this way after reaching the ECFs for the first time in 20+ years, but KAT or no KAT, winning an elimination game at home is my minimum expectation for this season to not feel like a failure.
Today is a great day to be a Knicks fan.
Game day = good day.
Home game day = better day.
Home playoff game day = even better day.
Home playoff ECF game day = great day.
I am going to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.
Not today, Tyrese.
I really really want that 8pm Saturday night game 6 in NYC. If that’s where it all ends, so be it.
But not today. Not on this shitty rainy work day where I have to watch at home bc I’m too old to go out during the week.
We few, we happy few.
Come to think of it, I am pretty sure the NBA does, too, so the Pacers might actually get called for fouls tonight 🤞
He was also pretty bad in the 1st half like the rest of Minnesota; he put up 3/7 8 pts, 1 reb, 1 assist, 1 steal, and 4 TOs. He put up most of his numbers in the 2nd half which was pretty much all garbage time.
You might and the NBA might but you’ll have to wait at least a year because game 6 would be in Indy, not NYC.
That was a poorly worded sentence. I meant the experience of the entire city being out on Saturday night watching game 6.
In the all-important tentpole derby, I always had JB a category ahead of Hali; i.e., if JB was one of the Last Four In, Hali was First Four Out, and I think most other people did, too … but I’m not actually sure that’s really true anymore. Certainly, it hasn’t been reflected in the playoffs. If it’s not, it’s a game-changer.
In terms of the recent past and how things got here, the Pacers got Hali and Siakam for Sabonis, three ones, and the definition of meh, Bruce Brown. The Knicks, OTOH, paid a significantly higher cost — IQ, RJ, five ones, and that 32 (or whatever) — for Anunoby and Bridges. And now from all indications, the Pacers have materially surpassed NYK. Gonna take a lot of work to recover from that one It’s doable, but gonna be tough.
Here’s a wild theory lol(only for some levity before tonight’s game):
Michael Jordan is the reason Thibs’ offensive sets are uninspiring LOL. But seriously, there is a little truth to that. Mike was so great, it made you feel like he did all of the heavy lifting while playing 1 on 5. People forget he actually had a bunch of 1st round teammates and an effective system to run. I get that your PG is typically the offensive hub in most cases, and that if he can score on his own consistently- it makes it easier to use him. But someone needs to remind Thibs that Mike was never the system. One player being the system does not win- unless your LeBron. Ask James Harden. And as a side note, while LeBron will never be The GOAT over Mike, the fact that he wone 4 titles as the system is a testament to his greatness. Unfortunately for him, he hasn’t won enough. If you ask me, the only 3 players who should be in the GOAT debate are MJ, LeBron, and Kareem. Full stop. There has been other great players who would be the GOAT had those 3 not existed, like:
Wilt
Kobe
Dream
Shaq
Soon to be Jokic
Oscar
Bird
Magic
Probably AI too, but I’m not 100% on that even though he’s my personal favorite
But yeah..it’s Jordan’s fault- THE BASTID!! lol
Request:
Can we stop using X links and use XCancel instead?
Basically you just need to add/type “cancel” after the link. Example:
https://x.com/shwinnypooh/status/1927613074074177565
https://xcancel.com/shwinnypooh/status/1927613074074177565
Someone mentioned this a few days ago, but we need a win tonight not just to keep the series going, but to avoid watching that dickhead Hali celebrating on the MSG floor. That would be pretty sickening.
E the unwritten rule I’ve been abiding is to limit complaints about process and such to the days between games (i.e. the days when it sometimes is not a great day to be a Knicks fan). On days when it is a great day to be a Knicks fan (like today), I suggest we put on the pom poms.
Consider it the Ephus Edict.
This came up in a Bill Simmons / Zach Lowe discussion of Anthony Edwards in response to his comments about how he needs to do it all and put the team on his back sometimes. They basically said that’s Michael Jordan era thinking and the last guy to win that way was Kobe.
I continue to believe – with no evidence at all, just circumstantial logic – that a lot of this is Rick Brunson’s fault. If Thibs had real assistants one of them would have stopped this by now.
THIS!! I have always stopped short of saying let Rick go because he’s also our best player’s dad. But much like a couple other assistants, I can’t clearly see what he contributes. You know- how he fits strategically. If I were GM, he’d be the one I suggest Thibs replace. Him or Brady. 🤷🏾♂️
Rick helped us sign Jalen, he’s already made his biggest contribution. He’s entirely superfluous now.
I think we could fire him without a fuss. Jalen is so invested in being a consummate professional who only cares about winning, it’d be a bad look if he pouted about his dad not having a job with the team anymore.
And despite everything, we are guaranteed one more game tonight. There are 27 other teams whose fans can’t say the same.
We really need the wings to step up tonight. No excuses. Thibs isn’t making them act lazy, scared, or foolish.
When we win, those guys (Mikal, OG, Hart) get blocks and steals on defense that create fast-break threes or layups.
It’s do or die, so they need to play risky — make them fear putting the ball on the floor; make them nervous all game.
We can do this.
EDIT: JB took a massive pay cut for us, so, no, I don’t think he’d be OK with the team firing his father. If anything just hire/add extra assistants.
“And despite everything, we are guaranteed one more game tonight. There are 27 other teams whose fans can’t say the same.”
Amen!
Predictions!
We will win tonight.
If we don’t win tonight (especially if we lose bad), Thibs will be “promoted” to a front office position and Johnny Bryant will be the new head coach. Rick Brunson will also be promoted to another role.
Regardless of the outcome, the core team will remain intact for another season (barring a Giannis trade). Leon will count on continuity and a new coach/voice plus shoring up the bench to catapult this team to the next level.
But we will win tonight. If we do, Thibs will remain on board as the head coach for another season but there will be changes to the coaching staff that will nudge Thibs towards a better offensive system next season.
We will win very easily tonight, but in unexpected ways (i.e. Shamet enters the game because Mikal and Deuce both slip on Chalamet’s matcha latte and proceeds to hit six threes in four minutes).
I know some are not Macri stans, but he usually has at least one quote per newsletter of interest. In this case:
“It’s all on the table, and as is always the case with this team, we have absolutely no idea what to expect.”
If we can kick Thibs upstairs, I wonder if there’s a role as player development guru we can give him.
From Macri’s newsletter:
These numbers are difficult to believe. I mean, if you paired two NBA starters at random you’d think they could do better than this.
What’s weird is at the beginning of the season the chemistry between the two seemed to be a strength with reasonable room to get even better–the combination produced a 120.4 ORTG and 111.9 DRTG through December. That slipped to 118.6 and 117.5 respectively through the end of the season. In the playoffs it’s been a ghastly 112.1 and 116.4.
They have un-gelled.
Here’s a walk down memory lane for you fellas: Last night I chanced on an argument on r/nba about Sam Presti’s draft record. There were multiple OKC fans claiming that him taking Russell Westbrook at #4 in 2008 was a huge shocker, an unexpected reach, roundly decried at the time.
I was like, hold on, I don’t think that’s true. I was snapped back to memories of logging onto KB every day in college. It was the final season of the accursed Isiah years. KB is where I first learned about Russ. Someone took note of him early on in our moribund season, that Kevin Love’s running mate was a great defender with tremendous athleticism and an incredible motor. He didn’t score much and was a low usage guy so there was a good chance we’d get him in the late lottery.
Unfortunately for us, Russ’ stock shot up like a cannon after the college season ended and on draft night there was no chance he’d fall to us. We took Gallo with the first pick of the Donnie Walsh/Mike D’Antoni era instead.
Does anyone else remember this?
I honestly think this would be the way. Thibs has been absolutely instrumental in helping us turn this franchise around. The “try hard all the time” ethos he has instilled has helped us and I would hate the possibility of losing that if he moved on.
But he’s limited offensively, etc…and he is getting a little up there in age. So transitioning him to a front of office role make sense and they can spin it as not a firing but a promotion. Given his relationship with Leon, this seems to be the way we can do it.
that predates me by abut 17 years or so
“In the all-important tentpole derby, I always had JB a category ahead of Hali; i.e., if JB was one of the Last Four In, Hali was First Four Out, and I think most other people did, too … but I’m not actually sure that’s really true anymore. Certainly, it hasn’t been reflected in the playoffs. If it’s not, it’s a game-changer.”
I’ve never wavered on thinking that Hali was a great player. Like Brunson, he has his flaws, but the kid is a great shot maker and a savant passer. He clearly makes everyone better on the offensive end. He may not be quite the shot creator that Brunson is, but his length and his passing ability make him a bit easier to build a team around.
“In terms of the recent past and how things got here, the Pacers got Hali and Siakam for Sabonis, three ones, and the definition of meh, Bruce Brown.”
I am also a big fan of Siakam, and would trade OG for him in a heartbeat (and don’t even go there with Mikal.)
“The Knicks, OTOH, paid a significantly higher cost — IQ, RJ, five ones, and that 32 (or whatever) — for Anunoby and Bridges.
Unlike you, E, I think the cost paid for OG was fair. The Bridges trade, not so much. But if your point is that Indiana shrewdly stole Siakam, while we paid something like market value for OG and massively overpaid for Mikal, I agree. Kudos to them.
“And now from all indications, the Pacers have materially surpassed NYK. Gonna take a lot of work to recover from that one It’s doable, but gonna be tough.”
Even if we came back to win this series, this statement is objectively true. The Pacers are positioned to have this kind of playoff run for the next few years, while we need to figure out how to build a team from here that can compete with OKC, a goal that we seem miles away from while Indy is just a bench piece or two short.
One major factor you left out is Nesmith. He has clearly developed into whatever we hoped Mikal would be, and was had for a much lower cost. Throw in having Myles Turner on a reasonable contract, drafting Mathurin (who I also like more than the consensus here), finding Nembhard late in the draft, putting TJ in the perfect role for him, and having Jarace Walker as a kid for other teams to dream on in a trade, plus firsts to include in a deal, and Indy could become the class of the East for the next few years. Not to mention that Carlisle is an elite coach.
Doug, my vivid recollection is that Westbrook was widely mocked in the top half of the lottery. He as considered a bit raw for a lead guard, but his athleticism was off the charts. Definitely not a “reach” but there were other players who were considered to be equally good or better.
We took Gallo with the first pick of the Donnie Walsh/Mike D’Antoni era instead.
Doug, don’t remember it, lurking sporadically back then. But I’ll modify my mantra which I use to not rue how close we were to drafting Steph Curry–Russ would have been shipped to Denver in the Melo trade. (and I might add that when The Decision was made, Russ wasn’t good enough yet to make LeBron have a rethink).
that’s a great way to put it noble…
That lines up with the KAT/Brunson PR getting countered by teams putting a wing on KAT and their center on Hart, and Thibs never figuring out a counter for it.
Yesterday I asked DJ Zullo of KFS on twitter if he’d seen the Knicks try secondary actions to make the KAT/Brunson PNR while he was watching game tape. He said they’d tried the short roll a few times. Also Brunson passing out early to Hart as a secondary roller, but nothing came of it. The latter, in turn, got countered by teams putting out low hands to take that pass away, or by simply ignoring Hart’s roll.
I have been harping on Thibs a lot for not trying enough different things to make the KAT/Brunson PNR work before reverting to iso ball. This has me thinking, maybe he did make an honest effort and then cut bait before there was a large enough sample size to show up in the stats, and I’ve been unfair to him about it.
Which leads us back to this: the next logical step to keep the offense humming was our 5-out lineup with Deuce in for hart — a bridge too far for Thibs.
how do you know westie would have gone to the nuggies in 2011 13 years before he ended up going there anyway in 2024
a bridges too far for thibs
I don’t think you can move Thibs upstairs or fire Rick Brunson. But I thinks there’s room for a solution.
As much as kill Thibs for his flaws I also greatly appreciate what he gives us. If we find a coach to do what Thibs doesn’t do there’s a good chance that coach won’t do what Thibs does.
A nice middle path (involving lots of Dolan dollars) would be to move Rick into a cushy front office job with a pay raise and give Thibs the Mazzulla treatment, i.e. bring in a senior consultant like JVG (but not JVG) and some high-priced assistants.
This would require a degree of willingness from Thibs that he may not have, but I would like to explore this option before firing him. It is essentially the coaching equivalent of bringing in the Dallas medical team.
A guy I would consider for the JVG special consultant role would be Mike Budenholzer, aka the master of low hanging fruit. I wouldn’t necessarily want him as the head coach, but if we could just spend Dolan dollars to have him be in the room pointing out some of the obvious changes we can make (and if Thibs were amenable to working with him) that would be a win-win.
The idea is for Thibs to have someone in the organization he respects but who has a different skill set than him. You don’t want someone to be “play Josh Hart less”. You want someone who can understand why Thibs needs to play Josh Hart so much and help him find solutions to the core problems that require him to play Josh so much. And if Thibs cares about winning as much as folks say he does, I would like to think he’d welcome that help.
how do you know westie would have gone to the nuggies in 2011 13 years before he ended up going there anyway in 2024
Pre-The Sphere James Lawrence Dolan v Pre-Raptor Teardown Michael Masai Ujiri
Agree with everythng you said.
Some fits are more natural than others.
Some of this may be on not having a true 5 out lineup with Hart instead of Deuce that frees the opponent to help or double team.
Some this absolutely has to be on Brunson. He’s the PG and has the ball.
But some of this absolutely has to be on Thibs.
You have a premier scoring C with some ability to pass and a premier scoring PG with some ability to pass and you can’t get any surplus out of the combination?
I used to think Melo and Stat were the worst combo ever but they did better than this!
Should have been a LONG time ago to both see how effective it would be and what the counters would be. You don’t wait until you down 3-1 in the ECF to panic about an issue on offense and try something new that may be effective. Thibs has to go.
“You don’t want someone to be “play Josh Hart less”. You want someone who can understand why Thibs needs to play Josh Hart so much and help him find solutions to the core problems that require him to play Josh so much.”
Just acknowledgement of an insightful comment.
but thibs has to to not only be amenable to having someone like that on staff but also must be willing to actually try implementing their suggestions it is this second part that i do not think can be counted on for example we finally used some draft picks but there was no mandate for thibs to use them at all
I don’t see any way out of the Thibs dilemma that doesn’t involve taking him off the sidelines. If Leon does that, my guess is that Thibs might consider a front office role due to his age, but will probably want to go somewhere else if an opportunity arises. Maybe a team like Charlotte or Sacramento gives him a shot.
I don’t think that Thibs would take kindly to having an assistant forced on him at this point. He’s never been willing to accept any meddling with his coaching. Even under this regime, he totally blew up the Kemba-Fournier gambit by grinding Kemba’s knees into dust and perma-benching Fournier. WWW has taken shots at him, and it wouldn’t be surprising to me if doing that behind the scenes as we speak. But if he refuses, that might give Leon the excuse he needs to offer him a different role, i.e. fire him.
But I don’t think Leon will bail on Thibs as a coach just yet. Fact is, Leon is the one who engineered this team, and in my view, is responsible for its shortcomings. Thibs has gotten us as far as we were likely to go anyway. So sure, try a different coach and approach, but as E pointed out above, we have a personnel problem that supercedes any coaching decision.
I mean, maybe if you swap Carlisle and Thibs, the Knicks eke out a win, but maybe not. In either case, it looks like OKC will run our personnel off the court no matter who was coaching.
I hope the Knicks do not make the same mistakes that cost us Game 5:
1. Limit live-ball turnovers.
2. Don’t allow easy cuts to the basket while ball watching.
3. Hustle back after made baskets so the Pacers can’t fast break.
These are basketball basics, which are taught to fourth grade teams. Just because they are simple does not them easy to execute.
Like rust, the Pacers never sleep.
To me there are 3 keys for a win tonight:
1. Find a way to defend Siakam better. He’s killing us for the 2nd year in a row.
2. Would the Knicks get their mental edge back?
3. Maybe the refs give us the game, to serve the NBA ratings machine.
Yeah I don’t think Thibs is gonna listen to some nerd giving him advice about how to run his basketball team. If you brought in a relatively respected guy like Budenholzer that wouldn’t work either, because Thibs would rightly assume that Bud is hovering over the HC job like a vulture circling a wounded antelope.
There is not going to be any “Thibs with guardrails.” You either eat the whole meal or you fire the guy.
We know why Thibs plays Hart so much.
We’d have a weaknesses in rebounding with Deuce instead of Hart. Hart is a better playmaker than Deuce and we’d make an already small team smaller with Deuce. Hart also does more of the little hustle and unnoticed things.
The thing is, we don’t have an opportunity to add what this team needs now (like a true 3&D PF or 3&D+ SG). The only alternative right now is to try Deuce and see if he’s a “net” plus. Limited data suggests practically every lineup is better with Deuce. So it’s not some baseless experiment. Deuce is our best POA defender. We need that because Brunson can’t guard a chair and Bridges has trouble with that job also. He’s also more of a threat outside than Hart. But it should have been tested heavily a LONG time ago.
Doug, you have been posting since 2005? Did you change your screen name?
It’s kind of remarkable how many people have been on this website for 20 years and this is the first time we have been able to root for a real team. Not giving that one Melo year any credit.
With Ephus – it’s clear what we have to do. I think the biggest thing to is just make some buckets early and keep them from fast breaking. Don’t let them get away early.
IMO it would be 3-1 the other way.
Knicks Go was not named for the NY Knicks, but I’ll take whatever I can get at this point. He was VERY good at his best.
Don’t want to speculate on Thib’s future on the day he coaching perhaps the most important game of his career (hopefully not, that will come mid-June), but agree with the comments you can’t kick him upstairs. He does not have the Scott Perry personality to stay in his lane, let alone a new non-gym-rat one.
If the season ended right now, I will have enjoyed this team more than any season since 1999. My five favorite seasons since I became a fan in 1978.
1. 1994 (still mad at OJ for interrupting the Finals broadcast),
2. 1993 (Charles Smith, ugh)
3. 1984 (Bernard King)
4. 1999 (great run to the Finals)
5. 2025.
It’s important for them to remember they can beat this team. They had them beat in Game 1. They won Game 3. They can make this a series
Yes, Carlisle’s aura as a coach is so strong he would have prevented Hali’s lucky bounce at the end of regulation in game 1. I could see him from my couch at home moving the ball into the basket with his jedi mind power.
Doug Chu?
Know who else does? OKC. Same with the Warriors’ death lineup a few years back. It’s a weakness that can be overcome. Indy blunted our rebounding edge easily enough after iHart dominated G5 last year, without changing personnel.
This is a ridiculous justification for sticking with a lineup that we know sucks on both ends. Elite offense and decent defense woth poor rebounding would be a lot better than mediocre offense, terrible defense, and rebounding that at the end of the day is closer to pretty good than elite.
If the KB archives still went back that far, it would be well documented that, a) I was once actually a knicks fan, and b) my namesake planned to draft Westbrook at #6 if he was available. (Similar to him planning to draft Curry at #8 the next year.)
The consensus here loves Mathurin, they are just mean to him because they know it’s the only way to make me unhappy during this series.
RIP Rick Derringer, one of the more underrated front man guitar players from the early ’70s. Here’s a vintage live version of Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo along with Edgar Winter from the great TV show Midnight Special, love the hairdo’s and get-ups!
More like Carlisle’s aura as a coach is so strong that they don’t get to that position because he doesn’t ride with his terrible starting lineup that can’t guard anyone when up 14 with 2:45. Mr. “The Game Tells You What to Do” did exactly what the game was screaming at him not to do
Defending Thibs is really laughable at this point. This is the 4th postseason in a row where we lose a playoff series with honecourt. The team”s lack of preparation and poor in-game strategy are palpable and self-evident. The guy is just overmatched against the better coaches in high leverage games
There’s a 0% chance the Pacers would be the team they are with Thibs coaching them. If we swapped coaches we’d have a dynamic offense built around the skills of our best players and the Pacers would be ISO heavy and easy to defend.
“There’s a 0% chance the Pacers would be the team they are with Thibs coaching them.”
And given it’s game day, that is a very good thing!
Simply from a tactical pov, if we swapped coaches but kept the same styles in place I still think Carlisle makes a huge difference bc he’s attacking Brunson and Towns relentlessly while we let Halliburton and Obi slide constantly.
I think we can all stipulate that Rick “The Derringer” Carlisle is a better coach than Tom Thibodeau, and pretty much every other non-elite coach in the NBA.
Meanwhile, Rick Carlisle’s have lost 14 playoff series. His teams are a combined 82-82 in playoff games. Seems like having the right personnel to coach helps.
Everyone here acting like it over. F Carlyle and F these Pacers. We not Cleveland…not going out like suckers…
And about Josh Hart. Sure he made a few turnovers but he’s a DAWG. Give us 48 minutes of Josh Hart and the end result will be a W more often than not. If anyone should sit a little is Mikal Bridges.
Here is an idea for game 5 adjustment: Mitch needs to guard Siakam and stick OG on Haliburton whole game. Let’s see what he can do against OG.
Rick Derringer’s real claim to fame is singing Hulk Hogan’s famous theme song “Real American”!
This is a wildly simplistic way of looking at things.
So a coach who doesn’t have homecourt advantage in the first round because they’re a lower seeded playoff team doesn’t get this weird ding on their resume but a coach who gets home court advantage and wins playoff series, gets a ding on their resume because they lose a series in the ECF when they had homecourt advantage?
The more I think about it, JB having 1 assist to KAT in 4 games in all the minutes they have played together, especially in the start of games when getting KAT going seemed to be a sensible priority can’t be a fluke. Something else is going on. Fix it Thibs!
30 and 31 for pag may not matter if jb cannot pass to kat tonite because kat is injured and out speaking of which do we have any path at all to winning this game if indeed kat is out i do not think that brunson getting 50 would do it
no knock on KAT but I actually think our chances of winning go up a bit (just for tonight) if KAT is out.
It means more minutes for Mitch, which improves the defense. Of course Thibs will reinsert Hart in the starting line up and not start Deuce but Deuce will probably get more minutes and you have Precious as the back up C. It kind of lets Thibs play more the way he likes the team to play.
Director, I like your idea of OG on Halliburton to start and Robinson on Siakam. If Siakam is draining threes then so be it. When Mitch gets a rest, Mikhal can switch back onto Halliburton. OG will not reliably seed switches and die on screens. If Brunson has to go up against a defensive demon, let’s put their orchestrator up against ours — doubt we’ll see it, but I like it.
that is almost the same as saying that thibs might prefer kat to not be on the team is it not
Haven’t lost yet!!
I know it’s been a discouraging series but the home team in game 5 down 3-1 probably has like a 90% win percentage.
Your mentor didn’t have the stones to trade the immortal Wilson Chandler along with the Jordan Hill pick to trade up to the Jonny Flynn spot to take Curry.
I mean, kind of, lol. But its more that the KAT and Brunson combo is so bad defensively that removing one of them from the equation, for one game, might help our odds for this one game (before Carlisle can “adjust.”)
It really just comes down to the idea that we can’t outscore or outrun this team and our best chance is to slow it down and make it a drag out fight and a half court game. Playing Mitch a lot more does that. It’s also why we need more McBride and Wright in this series.
To put it another way, I think we can make up for KAT’s scoring with increased scoring from Brunson, OG, Mikal, McBride, etc.
Again, this is just if he’s out this one game. I don’t think we can win 3 in a row without KAT.
Yup. I went mononym after we all had to recreate our accounts several years ago
and its probably the inverse for game 6 though….”In NBA conference finals history, there have been 4 instances where a team with home-court advantage has come back from down 3-1 to win a series. ”
…and…”There have been 283 instances of a team falling behind 3-1 in a best-of-seven series in the NBA playoffs. Those teams have gone on to win just 4.4% of the time.”
If (HUGE IF) KAT goes from “questionable” to out, how do people see Thibs playing it tonight:
1. Try to get 36 minutes out of Mitch with Precious or Huk getting the other 12 minutes; or
2. Keep Mitch to 24 minutes and go to OG at the 5 for the other 24 minutes?
I hope that we do not learn the answer to this question. I believe that having KAT tonight gives the Knicks their best chance to win.
i hope it does not end up being one of those things where kat would have been fine if he had not kept playing the final minute when we had no chance to win in the last game i mean cool that he toughed it out but not if he misses an extra game because he toughed it out
I’m not concerned with lack of rebounding if Deuce starts because there won’t be many rebounds if they keep scoring at will
The only thing that I know for certain about counterfactuals is that they never happened, so we will never know.
I suspect that the damage (such as it is) was done when KAT banged knees with about 3 minutes to go. Players can often “gut it out” right after a soft tissue injury, before the swelling sets in. The inflammatory response to injury immobilizes, but it takes awhile.
Someone just broke this down on P and T.
Historically, we have a good chance to win tonight. Then we have a poor chance to win on Saturday but if we win on Saturday we have a GREAT chance to win on Monday.
And then we would have an absolutely dreadful chance to win game one of the finals.
I just want them to win tonight so we don’t get closed out at home by the Pacers 2 years in a row.
Well I’m going tonight so they BETTER FUCKING WIN!
That is all.
If we lose tonight, we will all blame z-man exclusively and ban him or suffer the wrath of the basketball blog gods… because this is obviously why we haven’t won a championship in 50 years
“If we lose tonight, we will all blame z-man exclusively and ban him”
possibly posthumously…
Ok but if we win tonight we’re a team down 3-2, and 57 NBA teams (16%) have come back from a 3-2 according to chatGPT.
In fact if we win tonight there’s a lot of good stats on our side.
In the history of Knicks Pacers the Knicks are 2-1 playing a game 6 elimination game in Indiana (wins in ‘94 & ‘95, loss in the verticality series).
In the current century at least one NBA team has come back from a 3-2 deficit in 22 of the 24 years (and none has happened yet this year, so someone’s due).
Just one year ago the Pacers flipped a 3-2 deficit to win in 7. And the last two times these teams played each other in back to back seasons the results were reversed (94 Knicks in 7, 95 Pacers in 7; 99 Knicks in 6, 00 Pacers in 6.)
Just fucking win tonight
i think the ban threat has lost its teeth…doogie defied it in less than 72 hours…
There is only one game being played tonight. If the Knicks win, the season continues. If the Knicks lose, the season is over.
I plead guilty to being Captain Obvious. Thinking about the task of coming back from 3-1 and looking at the odds is not the way that I cope with life. I look at the task that is front of me right now. The task in front of the Knicks is to win Game 5 in MSG.
Any updates on KAT or is is going to be a game-time decision?
yeah…but did you stratify to see in that down 3-2 scenario…what percentage of those were at 2-2 and then went down 3-2 i.e, how many of those 57 were in the 2-2 vs 3-1, etc.
anyway…i think we win tonight…no way we lose three at home in one series..
I don’t think this series is a lost cause. More than anything else, this is a make-or-miss league. How you get to the makes and the misses is a big part of it, but you see what happened with Nesmith and KAT in games 1 and 3.
Anyway, I believe in staggering KAT and Brunson as much as possible. I believe that teaming Deuce with KAT and Mitch with Brunson are great starting points. I believe more Delon Wright minutes is helpful. And I believe Josh Hart will play better because he couldn’t play any worse.
Also, wouldn’t it be a nice surprise if we threw a zone at the Pacers when Brunson and KAT were on the floor? Take the mismatches out of it. Be funky with it. I know Thibs would NEVER, but if nothing else is working, then why not?
If we win tonight, Z-Man, you’re going to have to come on here and insult me after the game for good luck. It’s kind of a tradition now. Let me have it.
Within transgender identity lies the key to comebacks. Once we become a down 3-2 team we won’t have to identify with down 3-1 teams anymore. By the time we’re playing a game 7 at home we’re basically Caitlyn Jenner
Ha, I read Hubert’s involved treatise on likelihoods under various scenarios, and immediately wrote Ephus’s post for him in my head.
Pretty much spot-on.
Hubs, you’re the hero we need right now.
Raven,
The thing about my having a protocol is that it makes it easier for me to know what to do in just about any situation. It serves me well. Your mileage may vary.
I do not begrudge anyone who wants to calculate the odds of various scenarios. If someone wants to pre-mourn a loss or pre-celebrate a victory, go right ahead. I just will not be joining in.
“The inches we need are all around us.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yWSePMqsk
I’m gonna hit your business
if it’s momentary blissness
one of the many cool things about visiting my friend is access to more streaming services – woo hoo…
okay, maybe my bar is set a little low on cool stuff…
enjoying the heck out of the cast/production for Mobland…
Raven, we’re saying the same thing: don’t worry about the history of teams downs 3-1, just win tonight.
If we win tonight we get a new identity: a team down 3-2.
We all know from years of playoff experience that each game stands on its own and doesn’t really effect subsequent games, but man, it would be nice to stomp all over the Pacers tonight and put a little of the fear of God in them for game 6.
Am I confident the Knicks can do that? Not really, almost all the big runs this series have been by Indiana, with the exception of stretches in the 4th quarters of games 1 and 3.
You don’t want to beat them too badly, d-mar. That was the Celtics’ mistake.
To be honest I didn’t realize that even being down 3-2 we’d be such huge underdogs with 84% chance to lose. I thought we’d be around there being down 3-1 given we have 2 home games. Even if we win tonight the main thing I’ll take solace in will be my Pacers in 6 prediction being bang-on.
Um… yes. Better teams get higher expectations.
Is your argument here that Thibs’ style overinflates our regular season record at the expense of playoff success? If so, I concede.
We literally got Karl-Anthony Towns and never tried playing 5-out because Thibs. We never played our best PoA defender until we were basically forced to because Thibs. We have no bench despite obviously serviceable players because Thibs while the coach in the process of pulling his pants down again gets solid minutes out of Tony Bradley.
Stop with the motivated reasoning. He is bad and this is another winnable series lost to his limitations.
My argument is your statement oversimplified his playoff record with us. Losing in the ECF is not the same as losing in the 2nd round as losing in the first round. We won the first round with home court advantage. We also won the first round with home court advantage the last 2 years. We also won the second round this year without homecourt advantage. Does he get some credit for that?
Boston and Cleveland also lost a series where they had home court advantage. Guess those 60 plus wins were inflated!
this right here…i mean this guy Bradley never played (at least I didn’t see him stumbling around the court in the first few rounds)…but carlisle identified him as a mitch repellent and/or “someone to stand in front of other guys effectively player”…wasn’t shy about putting him in there….i haven’t really seen that from our guy unless the gun is to his head..
Just wanna say I love you guys. Z-Man, Hubert, even Doogie.
And I love this fucked up Frankenstein team and its foamer coach.
It’s been a hell of a year. Here’s to all of us gutting it out for a little longer.
There isn’t anything to oversimplify; it was a simple statement of fact. Your objection is that I didn’t leaven it with a bunch of excuses like you’re doing.
So Thibs is now 2-4 in playoff series with homecourt. Yay.
Yes. Hopefully not enough to stick around after the debacle currently in progress.
This ECF shows that Mazzulla (and Tatum’s Achilles’ tendon) lost the ECSF more than Thibs won it. His strategy when leading in Games 1 & 2 was even worse than Thibs’ when leading in late G1.
It’s a little more understandable when you’ve just won a championship and your superstar gets hurt. CLE also had some bad injury luck whereas we’ve been perfectly healthy up to now.
I have really enjoyed being back on this board. I am “uncool”, but this board is my Lester Bangs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzY2pWrXB_0
My objection is that, per usual, you make an overly simplistic statement with no nuance in order to push your negative nancy agenda.
Your statement acts like losing in the first round with home court advantage is the same as losing in the ECF with homecourt when in the first example a team is out after one round and in the second example the team has won 2 rounds of games before losing. We’re literally one of the last 4 teams standing in the league right now.
But yes, losing to a team that had almost the exact same record as us and who was in the conference finals last year means our coach is the sole reason for our losses.
It’s fine to criticize thibs but idiotic statements like yours add nothing to this discussion.
If it wasn’t clear, I was joking about banning z-man. If we banned a person every time they attended a Knicks loss, there’d be nobody here. Except maybe cybersoze.
#34 since not posting anymore
Doogie can’t spell anymore but he’s become a counting savant.
If all Doogie does from now on is count Pags’ posts since he said he’d never post again, that will be a marked improvement from his previous shtick.
I don’t put much stock in statistics about how many teams have comeback from a given series deficit. There’s way too much noise for it to have much predictive value–plenty of those series were 1/8s, etc. and even limiting it to the conference finals doesn’t adequately control for the quality of the teams.
Prediction markets give us roughly a 15% chance and that feels about right. It’s hard to beat any half-decent team 3 times in a row, and presumably much harder when you have to do it to a team that has largely outclassed you through 4 games.
But hey, 15% is 15% more than 0%.
I want to lighten the mood here by presenting this exchange between Jordan Peterson and an atheist kid from 49:09-51:31. Peterson’s pedantry, obscurantism, and sophistry aside, I think the atheist kid who focused on his definition of “worship” was trying to challenge the false equivalency Peterson draws between theists and atheists—namely, that both inevitably worship, believe in, or place their faith in something transcendental. For theists, that transcendence takes the form of a higher power; for atheists, it’s framed as a kind of belief that there is no transcendental higher power. Peterson seems to suggest that both are on the same existential playing field, but with the implication that theists are ultimately more practical and socially functional because their belief in a guiding higher power yields structure, tradition, and moral coherence—advantages he sees atheism as lacking.
But the kid was trying to point out that this equivalency breaks down under scrutiny. Atheism isn’t an affirmative belief in something the way a Christian believes in the Virgin Mary or in Jesus Christ as a savior. It’s not a parallel form of faith or worship—it’s a default position, a withholding of belief in the absence of sufficient evidence. Framing atheism as just another form of worship risks misrepresenting it entirely, reducing a fundamentally skeptical or agnostic stance into a caricature of belief.
I hope E, Pags, and Hubert all choke on the same elephant penis after we win this game.
Edit: fuck you, ras
Just to be clear, me saying I think the series would be 3-1 in our favor if we swapped coaches was not me complimenting Carlisle as some kind of elite coach.
I was saying I think Thibs is stubborn, inflexible, focuses too much on winning meaningless regular season games instead of developing his bench, experimenting with lineups and keeping his players fresh, plays idiotic lineups and is a less imaginative offensive coach than Mark Jackson.
I think he’s great at getting a lot of out of mediocre talent by getting them to play hard and coaching every game like it’s game 7.
I think he’s great at selling his expertise with nonsensical post game platitudes that the media lets him get away with.
I still think this is an imperfect but extremely talented team. I think it’s underperforming its talent because we have the wrong coach. We are better than the Pacers.
PPS: fuck you, strat
Dude, really? Anyways….
[In my best Kermit the Frog/Jordan Peterson voice] It really depends on what you mean by “fuck,” doesn’t it?
Fuck you as in your post is hurting my pregaming head. Speak English!
I don’t think a Knicks team coached by Rick Carlisle would play ISO ball, utilize a drop coverage in order to defend the rim at all costs and only use the players he trusts 10000%.
In fact, I think a Knicks team coached by Rick Carlisle would employ an offense and defense that would have been tailored to their strengths as a full roster, and not to the very specific preferences of their head coach. I’d think we’d have a ton of player movement and more Brunson & KAT two-man games to get them into the action together. I don’t think we’d move the ball as much because Jalen ain’t Haliburton. I do think we’d run way more and shoot more threes. And I do think we’d be playing a bunch of zone to hide Brunson and KAT’s defensive shortcomings.
(To be fair, last year’s Knicks team felt like it was constructed to fit to what Thibs wanted to do on both sides of the ball, more or less).
In both this series and against Boston it seemed like we were losing the games most of the time, with only a couple of exceptions: the last game of the Boston series and the first game of the Indiana series. For a minute there, with about 3 minutes left in Game 1 against Indiana, we looked like maybe we had figured something out.
Unfortunately we lost that game and then went right back to trailing almost the entirety of every game since. We made another miracle comeback in game 3, but really you can’t expect to go very far when you’re trailing for what seems like 80%’of the time.
Ras: fuck this small talk, let’s get in to some real shit…
luv ya ras, and i’m sure like some other folks tuning in – I’m usually down for some awkward complex convo to tick away some moments from a dull day…nothing against dull days of course…
no idea off the top who jordan peterson is, but will give the theists/atheists comparison some thought…
withholding of belief in the absence of sufficient evidence.
thought that was the agnostic type folks…kind of also thought being an atheist was a solid disbelief in god, maybe not so ironically, also a belief without evidence…
do enjoy getting a little wild on a thread nearing it’s end…nice ras…
Remember the time Jordan Peterson switched to an all-steak diet and almost died?
Jordan Peterson signing up to be the Christian in a “20 Atheists Debate 1 Christian” youtube debate despite not being a Christian is so funny.
One of the kids asked him point-blank if he had given his life to Christ and he turned red and waffled for a good minute before yelling at the kid in frustration.
Why are we talking about Jordan Peterson?
Ephus, I can’t believe you are back, posting nonstop, and I can’t get enough. Only good thing about being down 3-1!
Doug – I know what you mean, but I cannot abide the use of the term “a good minute” to describe any time spent watching a Jordan Peterson video. Even when he is being taken apart, Jordan Peterson is not worthy of my time.
I’m honored not to be after “even”.
okay then, after a deep 98 second or so dive in to mister peterson’s bio: pretty sure that fucker is heading to hell with a fast pass…
if you asked him to name just 5 christian values to try to adhere to while living life, he would come up woefully short…
Geo, agnostics don’t really take a stance one way or another. They tend to fence-sit on the whole “Does God exist?” question by saying it can’t be definitively proven either way. The difference between that and atheism is that atheists don’t treat the “yes” and “no” options as equally uncertain.
To use Richard Dawkins’ famous analogy: if I told you a giant spaghetti monster created the universe, you could either believe me (theism), disbelieve me (atheism), or say, “I can’t know for sure” (agnosticism), depending on your inclinations and the available evidence. But the atheist position is essentially the default one: a lack of belief until sufficient evidence justifies otherwise.
So atheism’s not necessarily an active belief that no god exists, but rather a refusal to accept the god claim without convincing evidence—just as you wouldn’t believe in the spaghetti monster without proof. That’s a key distinction: atheism, in this framing, isn’t “belief without evidence,” but skepticism in the absence of it.
He’s a total manic-depressive freak. That daughter put him up to that insane carnivore diet and then had him locked away in a Russian sanitarium, I believe.
The thing about having home court just means it’s hard to say you lost to a vastly superior team.
Kinda rude not to invite Clarence to this party.
That was the same atheist kid I flagged in the earlier video discussion. He was genuinely trying to draw a clear contrast between Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God and the atheist rejection of that belief—that she isn’t the mother of a living God because no such deity exists. But of course, Peterson couldn’t just engage with the premise directly.
Instead, he does what he always does: evades in bad faith by refusing to be pinned down on any definition that might be rigorously scrutinized. It’s his classic move—using rhetorical smoke to avoid clarity, all while pretending to explore complexity.
Then came the moment the kid absolutely annihilated him. After Peterson dismissively said, “You really are something,” the kid shot back, “Yes, I am. And you really are nothing, aren’t you?” It landed because Peterson refuses to make any substantive claim about what he actually believes. His evasiveness ends up hollowing out any meaningful assertion of religious faith, and the kid called it out with precision.
Also, Doogie has been on relatively decent behavior, just to catch him being good.
Clarence (deleted)
Dunno why you edited out the rest of this post Hubie, it was downright factorial.
thanks ras, since we are sharing…been several years now since attending a service…
visited this beautiful big newish church in the area…they had a great choir, I’m a big fan of that (that and those big catholic pipe organs, beautiful sound there)…
all was well til we got to sermon time, wherein the minister proceeded to use the sacking of Jericho as an example of god telling you it is okay to go get yours, even if it means appropriating your neighbors’ stuff, and perhaps also killing them in the process…
cuz, god wants you to have it…reminded me of that joel olstein stuff where he keeps mouthing off about how god wants us all to be materially wealthy – just like him…
there were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers – and their families inside of jericho…oops, wrong side of god i guess…
nice small stone episcopalian church in town, hopefully one of these days I’ll make inside the door…they probably won’t have a great big choir though, oh well…
Bingo! But the real spectacle would be how he comes up short. He’s not intellectually honest enough to say “I don’t know”—he’d launch into a long-winded diatribe about how it all depends on what you mean by “Christian” and what exactly constitutes a “value” in his best Kermit the Frog voice.
the one that snags me all the time is the forgiveness thing…well, that and humility/patience/obedience i guess too 😊
When I read Ras’ post since I know he’s a Mets fan at first I thought he was talking about David Peterson…
If you had told me before the season that I could guarantee that the Knicks would be down 3-1 in the ECF with homecourt advantage over the Pacers or play out the season and see what happens, I’d have taken tonight’s starting position.
I would too. From a blank slate start, we probably have a better shot of winning 3 straight against Indy than we would of getting past Boston.
That’s why it’s been so fucking disappointing to watch Thibs blow the series, complete with fan trauma that makes Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 18.8 seconds gut punch look like a love tap.
I would also assume from that vantage point that we were down 3-1 due to bad luck or some exogenous cause rather than Thibs’ Old Man Coffee strategies minimizing our chances.
After watching the entire Cathy Newman interview and some other YouTube clips of him in a classroom, I read 12 rules for life and thought it was mostly very reasonable. Had my 16 year old read it last year and write me a book report on it. Not sure if he read it or not but used used AI to write the report so I doubt he really got anything out of it.
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The ‘hard’ is what makes it great.”
Ha, that’s the problem, Geo. I grew up Catholic and going to an all-boys Jesuit high school got me out of that pretty quick. Met the soon-to-be ex-wife in college and she was Quaker and I was intrigued. Turns out they actually walk the walk when it comes to Christianity… But the services are completely silent, no music at all! There’s not even a priest or preacher, just someone who keeps track of the time so that s/he can shake hands at the end to indicate the service is over.
Or course, during that quiet you’re supposed to essentially follow a mystic path and try to go inward and connect to the Divine, and if someone feels inspired with a message they get up and share it, which can help, but it’s mostly a lot of silence. I missed the singing.
Belief matters. I’m a believer. I believe in the Knicks.
Heaven in Seven!
As Journey said …..Don’t stop believin!
Go NY, go NY, go!
KAT a game time decision
that is what my kung fu instructor used to say when we were busting our balls in class..
Watched Woody Allen with Chalamet, listened to Coltrane and Dylan’s Bringing it back home earlier
I guess im ready
LOL! Another good thing about living in Portugal, it’s hard to be banned from KB for going to MSG and bring bad luck to the team. 😀
For my money, the greatest single-game Knicks individual performance was Clyde Frazier in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals against the Lakers (more commonly known as the Willis Reed Game). Clyde played 44 minutes, scored 36 points on 12/17 from the field and 12/12 from the line, had 7 rebounds and 19 assists.
I’m hoping that someone in Orange & Blue tops that tonight.
Tonight i can only watch the 1st half… because tomorrow some guys will come to my company to make an institutional video, and i don’t want to look like a zombie! LOL
But will i be able to do this… If the game is close? Or if i’m already mad at Hali and his shenanigans?
Spoiler alert:
We’ll have a small lead at halftime. Then our starting five comes out lethargically, and our lead evaporates and they go up by double-digits. Then we put in Deuce, Shamet and Delon, and the pace slows down. We slowly get back into the game.
With 9:00 to go in the game, we put our starting five back in, down by three.
Choose your own ending.
RIP Peter Kwong
I like the cut of your jib, steveoh.
I think we give up another 40+ point 1st quarter if KAT plays and Thibs shuffles through ineffective lineups unless foul trouble forces him to use one that works.
Our chances for a comeback are largely down to Pacers shooting luck and foul luck (inasmuch as it forces Thibs to sit Josh Hart and/or stagger Brunson/Kat). Don’t think Thibs gives us a chance to win here (or any series against a good opposing coach) so kinda hoping we go down in flames to maximize chances he’s fired.
https://x.com/TheAthletic/status/1928187349361643772 this is who the Knicks have as a beat writer
Is he wrong about any of that tho
I am determined to enjoy tonight’s game as much as I’m capable of…
stay safe and have fun tonight z-man, yell for me too 😊
https://xcancel.com/krispursiainen/status/1928214934074044874
Just saw the update above
38 no idea y u even claimed you were going to stop you lasted all of 8 hours or so
Not sure if you’re aware, Doogie, but this inane counting schtick only encourages me to run up the score.
For the world’s biggest pedant, you sure have a hazy definition of likely. Too bad your Knickerblogger-imposed definite ban didn’t stick any better than my self-imposed likely one.
I’ll wait for the game thread to say what I want to say…
We have a band here named Pyx Lax
They started their farewell tour 20yrs ago
They’re still playing farewell tours
They’re not the only ones
Goodbyes sell tickets
🤩
Thanks for xcancel! I friend received a reply to a tweet he wanted me to see, and of course they’ve changed it so you need an account to sign up. I cancelled mine a few years ago, so I signed up a dummy account
After being forced to choose a subject I want to see (sport) and being forced to follow 1 account (ESPN of the ones highlighted) my feed was presented to me.
2 sports tweets, multiple white nationalist tweets, racism, misogyny, conspiracy theory and misinformation.
This is the default experience. I do not want to spend time with that. So thanks for xcancel
Also: the above is what has allowed a charlatan like Peterson be viewed with any credence.
Anyway,: go Knicks
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