Knicks Morning News (2025.06.02)

paul pierce sucks per the link about him above

From the last thread – I am all for trading KAT for Durant. Not 1000% sure how the cap would work but my sense is that once the cap rises in the new league year, we won’t be up against the 2nd apron for the purposes of aggregating players in trade (whereas PHX will still be above the 2nd apron). I presume the Knicks could trade a 1st year rookie signed with part of the MLE to the exact amount between the KAT/Durant contracts (1.566MM) and complete the trade that way.

On the court – starting Brunson + Bridges + OG + Durant + Mitch seems very very good. Hart, Deuce are first 2 off the bench, and maybe resign Shamet. Need development from the young kids – one or two of McCullar Jr, Koley, Dadiet, Hukporti need to be able to provide some minutes (ideally Hukporti given how thin we are in the frontcourt). And if you look at Durant’s B-R page, he has been playing some small ball 5 in PHX. I understand he’s old and injury prone, but my hope would be that our award-winning training staff and Thibs’s newfound minutes limits will keep him healthy enough. But this would help us get off KAT’s contract, which probably is a negative asset at this point. We would lose its ability to be Jeremy Cohen’s “continuous soup”, but well you can’t have everything.

The problem in PHX was that they had too many “stars” and not enough guys that do the dirty work. Between Bridges/OG/Mitch/Hart there are plenty of guys here who do the in-between winning plays stuff, and good luck to teams trying to guard a 5-out lineup with Durant as small ball 5.

big problem is that we would have to be able to rely on mitch to stay healthy and i wish we could do that but we cannot

Even if we had all of those picks back from the Bridges trade, OKC or Houston could still blow us out of the water with their combination of young players and better draft capital.

Unless somehow Giannis insisted on being traded to the Knicks only, which I just don’t see.

big problem is that we would have to be able to rely on mitch to stay healthy and i wish we could do that but we cannot

It would also depend on Huk being ready to step in as a starter if Mitch goes down. He did win the backup job last season so I would be optimistic about it, but it’s not a given. And if Huk also gets injured (he now has an Achilles tear and a meniscus tear in his history), we’re fucked.

good luck to teams trying to guard a 5-out lineup with Durant as small ball 5.

It’s deadly on paper, but if Thibs has to go first. If he won’t play 5-out with KAT at center, he’s definitely not playing 5-out with Durant at center.

My sober take after a few days to ponder. I have a feeling people aren’t going to like it, lol.

Thibs should come back (and it looks like he will). Fact remains. We got to the ECF for the first time in 25 years and we knocked off the defending champs in a series no one thought we had a chance of winning (people thought we were going to get swept or lose in 5).

And as far as the minutes police thing. I think there are defensible reasons why the bench wasn’t developed this year. Mitch didn’t come back till February and there was no way they were going to start him right when he came back. But by the playoffs Thibs started using the Thibs/KAT front court and even changed to starting Mitch in the Indiana series.

The real crime is not trying the 5 out line up with Deuce and KAT at the 5. I suspect Thibs just doesn’t like it because it lacks rebounding but this is the one line up he HAS to give time next season.

As far as the rest of the bench. We didn’t even have Precious to start the season. Shamet was hurt for a long while. Deuce missed some time. Hell, Thibs started playing Huk and then he got hurt. We didn’t get Wright till the deadline. Fact is for most of the season the bench was weak. Going into next season, if we can bring back Shamet and Wright, develop Kolek and Huk and maybe find one more bench piece (along with not starting Hart), we could have a full bench and Thibs would have the full season to try line ups and give those line ups time to gel and develop. I know I sound polyanna when I say all this, but I just don’t see him going. At least not yet.

As far as trades…yeah, count me out on Durant. He’s 38. Sorry but the recent history of teams trying to go all in with a really aging star is not good.

KAT has his issues but let’s step back for a moment and just appreciate the fact that he’s literally been to two straight WCF’s. That’s rare. He’s REALLY good. Honestly, I can live with the D because it’s not bad when he’s got it going on offense too. It’s the dumb fouls.

So put me in team run it back with shoring up the bench. Fact is, Indiana had the exact same team as last year and worked on their weaknesses and it paid off for them. We should do the same. If we can get Shamet and Wright to come back for the vet minimum, use the mid level on one more piece, develop Huk and Kolek (and Dadiet, etc.) we could have a deeper team, a more experienced team that got really close and could be extra motivated. Show some faith in the guys we have and reward them for what they did. And yes, extend Bridges (as long as he takes a Brunson like deal that is fair to the team).

We replaced 2 starters this year and made a huge trade the day before training camp started. We had a weak/short bench all season with injuries, etc. Despite that, we got one lucky bounce away from a game 7 to go to the finals. So give everyone a chance.

Leon could swing for the fences again but honestly, if he can find that one diamond in the rough good deal player like he did with iHart on a vet minimum or the mid level, we could be golden.

do not forget that if mitch is the starter and kat is goine thibs will play him 36 minutes per game until he inevitably went down sometime around december 15 or so i like huk but he is nowhere near ready also largely attributable to thibs

Ugh still can’t think of basketball.

Hukporti was the 58th pick in the draft. He has done nothing to show he deserves to be a rotation player. We do not want to start the season with him in the rotation.

Hukporti was the 58th pick in the draft. He has done nothing to show he deserves to be a rotation player. We do not want to start the season with him in the rotation.

Not exactly true.

While virtually glued to the bench the first half of the season beginning Feb 1st Thibs moved him ahead of Sims in the rotation and played him nine of ten games before he tweaked a knee cartilage. He played him full back up minutes 4 times in those 9 games.

No one claims he is Jokic, but he did earn his way into Thibs “Circle of Trust”

But by the playoffs Thibs started using the Thibs/KAT front court

Did I miss Thibs becoming Bill Russell? 😛

I am a strong no for Durant. I have very little confidence on him playing well. Towns might be a bad fit, but he will retain value for quite long. Big man with a good shooting touch usually age well. I am all for trading KAT for Giannis, but it is a pretty far shot. Giannis must want to come here and the Bucks have to do him and us a solid favor. If the Bucks choose to, they can trade him to any other team, as Giannis is under contract for another two years, and that is enough for a team to take the risk of him bolting afterwards (it did pay off for Toronto with Kawhi, for example). To me, the most natural destination for Giannis would be to go to Houston.

Yeah hard no on Durant. Sorry but we do not need to get into the business of trading for superstars over the age of 35.

Now if Lebron wants to opt out of his team option and we give him the midlevel to end of career here…I would be open to that. 🙂

I don’t wamt to spend time talking about a Brunson trade because it’s not going to happen, but I want to clarify something.

IMO, the main problem on defense is Brunson, not Towns.

When you have Brunson on the court, you need a very good rim and P&R defender because opposing teams are going to target him relentlessly. IMO KAT’s overall defense is not that bad (though he’s clearly not a plus), but he’s not what we need from a C with Brunson as the PG. Brunson with Mitch (or I-Hart last year) are a better fit defensively.

Trying to mitigate that by playing Mitch and Towns together helps on defense, but it diminishes the value of Towns on offense as a elite stretch C where you can play 5 out. The same is true when we play him with J-Hart. IMO, having those 3 together is just plain idiocy. Then you aren’t getting any of the offensive upside of Towns.

I’m not sure how best to deal with this.

If we are not or can’t maximze Towns on offense at C and playing 5 out, we could consider a Towns trade.

We could try Deuce in the starting lineup instead of Hart (imo we should have tried this a lot more during the season and playoffs). That would upgrade the POA defense, free Mikal to do what he does best defensively and create better spacing, but rebounding becomes an issue.

We could try to upgrade from Hart with someone that’s better defensively and that also shoots 3s better. It can be a PF or SG.

It’s not going to be easy. Leon has a tough task.

I don’t love Mitch and Towns together even though I like both a lot individually.

I don’t like Towns and Brunson together defensively.

I don’t like Towns and Hart together offensively or even defensively much.

One thing about Mitch/Towns starting together.

Thibs didn’t really try this combo much until the playoffs and didn’t start them together until this last round. So if that is the way they want to go next season, they will have a full season to work out timing, synergy together.

I don’t think this is like the 5 out line up with McBride where Thibs is stubborn and doesn’t want to play it. I think they legitimately weren’t going to start Mitch when he came back after missing so much time from real bball. I think it really wasn’t until the Boston series that we saw Mitch rounding into the peak Mitch we know he’s capable of being.

If you do start Mitch and KAT together, I think it’s then important to get an upgrade over Precious and Huk at back up C.

The real crime is not trying the 5 out line up with Deuce and KAT at the 5.

We have the most remedial offense in the NBA. We don’t have packages for KAT. We don’t do anything to get OG involved. We waste Mikal’s talents. And we played Josh Hart 3,500 minutes as if he’s LeBron James. Those are the crimes.

That being said, my answer to your frequent question may surprise you, Swifty. Now that the season is over and we can look at everything, I am firmly in the run-everything-back-with-some-minor-tweaks camp.

However, one of those tweaks absolutely must be an improvement of the coaching staff. There must be someone in the vast CAA stable Leon can call on that Thibs can work with. And if Thibs refuses, then he should be fired. We need to give Thibs the Mazzulla treatment: value him but hire support to fill in his gaps.

For the record, I suspect Thibs understands his weaknesses and would be amenable to improving his coaching staff. I think you guys are wrong to assume he’d just as soon quit than have someone smarter than him on his staff. That’s the mark of an insecure man, and Thibs doesn’t give me insecure vibes. It just has to be done respectfully and with his input. There has to be someone out there he respects who could help us.

(Incidentally this reminds me of late stage Tom Coughlin, one of my favorite coaches of all time. Towards the end he ceded almost complete control to Gilbride and Spagnuola while maintaining the structure and culture of the team, and it let to incredible success. This is the way.)

Btw we are not getting Giannis or Durant. Let’s just let that go.

I know I made up that crazy trade yesterday but ptmilo aptly named that “kb trade porn”. That was literally me being Jack Horner and dreaming up a fantasy.

I will say that is the only package we can put together that Milwaukee would consider. They’re not doing KAT for Giannis, they’re not doing OG + Mikal for Giannis. The only way we can get Giannis is to give up Brunson, and that’s not on the table so neither is Giannis.

Last thing:

I love Mitch as 6th man.

We always think of 6th men as microwave scorers off the bench but as Alex Caruso is demonstrating, when you have a DPOY level player who you can unleash on NBA reserves that’s a massive weapon.

I was one of the few people who didn’t want Mitch to start. He was dominant as a bench player, and I think we should keep him there.

Plus 18-20 mins of Mitch per game is likely to keep him healthy and bouncy for a whole year.

Funny thing about the KAT trade and subsequent longing for Donte is if we made the trade we were trying to make before relenting and including Donte (i.e. Randle + Mitch)…I don’t think we get past the Celtics.

I love Donte, and to be clear I’ll roll out the red carpet for him if there’s a feasible way for him to return, but Mitch is pretty damn high up there if we’re ranking all of our guys’ playoff impact.

I agree with Hubert. I think Thibs can handle an offensive assistant while he works on improving Brunson and Towns on the defensive end.

A well built offense around our current talent could get this team over the top. Eliminate 1-3rd quarter Brunson iso. There’s no reason Brunson and KAT couldn’t each score 25 a night in much less taxing ways than they’ve been forced to do it. And if they’re doing that you’re going to see Mikal and OG getting between 15-20 a piece as well. That puts you between 70-90 points a night, accounting for variance, from your top 4. This will also open things up for whoever the 5th guy is, something like 5-15 a night and then another 20-25 from the bench which will also improve from a real offense and you’re looking at a range of 100-130 a night. I can see that happening with a well implemented offense, but will it is the question.

Brunson is the Knicks
Untouchable

My 1st “team chemistry thought straight from my ass” is:
Give Kat to get Sabonis & DDV+whatever else you can

Hubs, I think we’re in agreement! Which is crazy, lol.

Yeah, keep Thibs but get him help for the offense.

Shore up the bench and run it back.

I keep thinking about the Pacers. They get to the ECF last year and get trounced by Boston. Then the run it back. Start off the year slow with injuries but the team and individuals got better and they improved in areas where they were weak last year (most notably defense). Their defense this year got A LOT better.

Now we do not have the youth that we can rely on internal improvement on, but we do have the same core 7 players coming back and the team and Thibs can work on stuff throughout next season (5 out offense, more zone defense, giving PT to different units to get experience, etc.) so that when the playoffs come we have different ways we can play when we face a team that stimies what we do initially.

IMO, the main problem on defense is Brunson, not Towns.

Both are a problem, but Brunson is easier to hide.

With Brunson on the court, you can put Bridges/Hart/OG on Brunson’s assignment and switch if they try to put Brunson on the play. Brunson also can draw charges against bigger players, and he might defend bigger players a bit better than quick smaller ones. This also means that Bridges/Hart/OG are in a mismatch, but they are good enough to recover if they have someone like Mitch behind.

However, how do you hide Towns? The smaller his assignment, the worse he does. And you should not count on him to provide help defense. If he is playing as your C, you better not lose the man with the ball, or we are cooked. You can put Mitch and move him to the 4, but he is slow to come back on defense and opposing PFs can take advantage of that. And if the opposing team goes with a small PF, then Towns will have a hard time even in half court.

Any time Towns is in the lineup, I think it is exploitable by the opposing team. I don’t think that is true with Brunson, you can hide his defensive deficiencies.

Not exactly true.

While virtually glued to the bench the first half of the season beginning Feb 1st Thibs moved him ahead of Sims in the rotation and played him nine of ten games before he tweaked a knee cartilage. He played him full back up minutes 4 times in those 9 games.

No one claims he is Jokic, but he did earn his way into Thibs “Circle of Trust”

We traded Sims after the 3rd game. It’s not clear he won the job or we wanted to avoid a Sims injury before the deadline.

Playing over Sims doesn’t make him a rotation piece.

We only had 3 active Cs or PFs on the roster post-trade. We needed bodies.

He could be fine, but we shouldn’t go into the season expecting Hukporti to play at a level he’s never shown himself capable of playing.

Working on this, that or the other thing is fine in theory, but we have a coach that’s a stubborn mule running a CYO offense.

He refused to try Deuce in the starting lineup instead of Hart even though logically it would help maximize Towns, improve the POA defense, free Mikal defensively and the data suggested virtually every lineup was better with Deuce.

Keep in mind, I like Deuce but I’m not some superfan. I was also in favor of starting Hart at the beginning of the season. Point being, at a certain point I realized we needed a change, Deuce made some sense, the data supported it, so I supported trying it.

We could come up with all sorts of ideas, but if Thibs won’t do it because he’s stuck in his ancient ways, it’s not going to help us get over the hump.

I truly feel like we just learned the same lesson that Tim Connelly learned – that KAT is an amazing offensive player, but at the highest levels you just cannot play him on defense– which unfortunately is 50% of the game. He’s 10+ years in the league already and is still a space cadet on that end of the floor. I would love to believe that Thibs can make him playable on that end — but early returns are not promising.

(One can probably find/replace “Towns” with “Brunson” and it would also be applicable unfortunately)

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The Phoenix Suns have narrowed their head coaching search to two finalists from the Cleveland Cavaliers, associate coach Johnnie Bryant and assistant Jordan Ott, sources tell ESPN. Both will meet with Suns owner Mat Ishbia in Michigan ahead of a hiring as soon as later this week.

Johnnie Bryant might be off the board soon as a potential Thibs replacement.

It’s been said here before, but Thibs using KAT as a drop defense center is a lot like Mike D’Antoni trying to use Ray Felton as a SSOL point guard. Neither of those guys is a Pat Riley kind of coach who will coach Showtime if you give him Magic Johnson and bully ball if you give him
Charles Oakley.

So I think one of the two has got to go. If you have KAT on the roster eating 50m in salary and playing 3000 minutes you have to be sure you’re optimizing him. That means maximizing his perimeter shooting and constructing a defense that doesn’t ask him to do too much. That is not going to happen with Thibs as coach.

If you’re going to keep Thibs, give him a Thibsy roster.

KD’s Roc Nation.

Forget it.

I truly feel like we just learned the same lesson that Tim Connelly learned – that KAT is an amazing offensive player, but at the highest levels you just cannot play him on defense– which unfortunately is 50% of the game.

Didn’t Minny make the same exact mistake as we did with KAT?

They had him at C but never even attempted anything like a 5-out offense. Most of that time was with Thibs who typically started his buddy Taj Gibson alongside him.

The blueprint for winning with KAT isn’t to turn him into Gobert on defense, it’s to play 5-out and accept being bad to okay on defense so you can go thermonuclear on the other end. It’s really never even been tried on an extended basis and every hint we have of it shows that it would work.

Devastatingly, we actually had the personnel to do it in Deuce/Brunson/Mikal/OG/KAT and we. never. even. tried. it.

Even though we had shitloads of situations where we’d have benefited from increasing our offensive variance in this very playoff. You know, like the Pacers did to us when we had the worst collapse in NBA history in G1, costing us the entire season.

The argument for Thibs staying to run it back is the same as the argument for Mark Jackson staying in 2015.

As you saw, teams can improve on defense a lot without any personnel changes. It was only last year that Rick Carlisle was publicly making fun of his team for being nothing more than an attractive mail slot. Haliburton was a bad defensive player until he suddenly was not.

The argument for Thibs staying to run it back is the same as the argument for Mark Jackson staying in 2015.

Mark Jackson was fired solely because he went to war with his bosses. It had nothing to do with on court or even locker room stuff.

Thibs, it seems, is able to maintain a working relationship with his employers. So there’s not much to compare there.

Attractive mail slot. Lol!

Today’s entry to Hubert’s trade porn machine:

Josh Hart plus Brock Aller magic to Minnesota for Julius Randle and the 17th pick in the draft.

Minnesota does it because Hart’s about $9M cheaper than Julius and that saves them a lot of tax money plus has apron implications. It allows them to put Naz Reid in the starting lineup (which I imagine they’ll want to do after paying him). And the pick is reasonable compensation for saving the Wolves a lot of money.

The Knicks do it because Julius Randle is better than Josh Hart at pretty much everything, especially those critical things Josh brings that no one else does (attacking the rim, ballhandling, secondary playmaking). We lose a little headiness on the defensive side of the ball but physically Julius can match up to the PFs we need to match up to a lot better than Josh. And with the 17th pick we can select an impactful rookie for the bench.

The obvious obstacles that makes this unlikely are Julius’ feelings towards the organization that kinda fucked him over, and the fact that he would have to opt in and be extended, which was something Leon didn’t want to do last year. But if we could work that out…

As you saw, teams can improve on defense a lot without any personnel changes.

Yes, especially when their core is comprised mainly of young players 25 and under who have substantial internal upside and have already shown significant potential as defenders.

Do we have any of that?

Mark Jackson was fired solely because he went to war with his bosses. It had nothing to do with on court or even locker room stuff.

Then GSW management was lucky to have their hand forced, much like Thibs got lucky when Hart got into foul trouble this postseason forcing him to play less bad lineups.

Jackson led the team to 51 wins, their best record in 22 seasons. Sound familiar?

They also significantly underperformed their roster’s offensive potential, finishing 12th. The exact same core rocketed to 67 wins and 2nd on offense the next season under Steve Kerr.

Do you take the position that the same thing would have happened under Mark Jackson?

There’s a lot of similarities between Mark Jackson, JB Bickerstaff, and Thibs. I wouldn’t be mad if we fired him, I just think it’s really hard to find a Steve Kerr or Kenny Atkinson. It’s a lot easier to bring in some assistants who can run an offense.

Next year is such a wide open year in the East I don’t want to risk blowing it because we hired the wrong coach. What if you bring in Johnny Bryant and he turns out to be David Fizdale or Mike Woodson? What if Danny Hurley* turns out to be almost every college coach ever?

You have to admit we have a pretty high baseline with Thibs. I’d rather follow the Celtics model and bring in help around him.

* FWIW I love the idea of Danny Hurley. I just have no idea if the reality of him matches the idea. I loved the idea of Mikal Bridges, too, and it turned out he was not nearly as great as I imagined.

Johnnie Bryant is a worthwhile gamble for Ishbia , one less Thibs replacement if he gets hired…

(One can probably find/replace “Towns” with “Brunson” and it would also be applicable unfortunately)

IMO, Brunson is the bigger problem on defense but he’s the more important piece on offense because he can create for himself, especially at the end of games, where Towns as a C needs some help.

The obvious obstacles that makes this unlikely are Julius’ feelings towards the organization that kinda fucked him over,

I’ve actually been thinking about what if we got back Randle or DDV.

I don’t think we fucked him over. He was traded. It happens all the time in the NBA. We also gave him the biggest contract of his career and then followed it up with a nice extension. He became an all-star with us (multiple times).

The only “Old and aging” player worth a 1 yr all in rental is LeBron. And I’m not even sure I’d want that, depending on who we’d have to lose

Keep in mind we can probably get a very overqualified coaching staff because of Leon. It could be someone recently fired who didn’t find the right job or it could be a young hot shot working his way up. Mike Woodson, Kenny Payne, and Johnny Bryant all came through here and got huge career boosts.

I don’t think we fucked him over. He was traded.

I beg to differ. Randle took the Brunson discount years before Jalen did, expecting the franchise would take care of him when it was time. When the time came, Leon took a page from the Danny Ainge playbook and sent him packing instead. It was smart, but it was coldblooded AF.

Took a discount, lol. He still got paid after getting paid from us initially in 2019. Dude made a ton of money from The Knicks, more than he probably could have elsewhere. I mean, that discount he took was after the Atlanta playoffs flameout. We were all having discussions about how he was a hard star to trade because only very specific teams would want that kind of star player to build their team around.

The idea that if any good player gets an extension or contract where he doesn’t make the absolute most money he could theoretically make means he’s taking a discount is ridiculous.

Leon only traded him because iHart left and Mitch was not coming back for awhile. We had no center. It wasn’t coldblooded. It made sense for him to do it from a team building perspective.

I loved the idea of Mikal Bridges, too, and it turned out he was not nearly as great as I imagined.

I remain in the minority on him.

IMO, he was used incorrectly as a POA defender mostly because Brunson is so bad and he was the least bad option unless Deuce was in the game. A lot of the other missteps on the perimeter were due to him and OG constantly having to cover for Brunson’s and to a lesser degree Town’s defensive mistakes. That’s where a lot of the open 3s are coming from.

On offense, he’s the 3a option. The 3a option is not going to score 20+ PPG. If he did, then we’d be whining about OG only scoring 14-15, Towns not giving us enough, Hart being a zero or something else. If we want more from Mikal, tell Brunson to stop playing as much hero ball and just pass the damn thing until we need a basket or it’s late in the game.

If there are any legitimate complaints about Bridges, he was very inconsistent from 3 this year and he refused to attack the rim, finish and draw fouls.

I’m not going to crucify him for a one meh year from 3 with all the experimenting he did early in the season and heaves and tough shots he took on top of that. I think he’ll have a better year from 3 next year. As to his unwillingness to take contact in the paint and hit the boards harder, the coaching staff has to talk to him. Winning games is more important than iron man records.

When Brunson went down with an Injury during the season..

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/03/14/knicks-defense-since-jalen-brunson-injury-mitchell-robinson/

Knicks top-5 in defense since Jalen Brunson injury, Mitchell Robinson return

Brunson’s injury led to Miles McBride stepping into the starting lineup, and his defensive impact has been immediate.

The fourth-year guard has energized the perimeter alongside Bridges and OG Anunoby, forming a relentless trio that pressures ball-handlers, forces turnovers and creates easy transition opportunities.

In just three games as a starter, McBride has been a defensive menace:

He logged four steals and two blocks in Portland
He has at least one steal in each of his last five games
The Knicks are holding opponents to 99.5 points per 100 possessions when he is the floor
And he leads all guards in defensive rating over the last seven games

5 easy steps to success
Mitch starts
Kat goes
PF arrives
DDV returns
Bench improves

Do you take the position that the same thing would have happened under Mark Jackson?

Honestly, I think the Warriors would have still won multiple championships if they hadn’t fired Jackson. His players all really liked him and supported him throughout the divorce. Curry becoming one of the best players ever at the same time Kerr took over is probably coincidental. And Green too. And Thompson was due for a leap and took it too. That team was, literally, the best basketball team of the modern era even before they brought it Durant.

I think the helpful comparison here is that the 2026 Knicks aren’t going to be tue best team ever, regardless of who the coach is. Give coaches great players and pretty much any coach will look great. #istandwiththibs

A CAA Leon white whale came back and that’s why Julius was traded.

Also, Julius said out loud in the press a few days ago that he doesn’t really like playing in NYC.

Took a discount, lol. He still got paid after getting paid from us initially in 2019. Dude made a ton of money from The Knicks, more than he probably could have elsewhere.

Same with Jalen. That’s why I called “the Brunson discount”. Both of those guys did the same thing: they traded a potentially bigger pay day one year later for a cheaper extension today.

You may be right but I doubt Julius sees it your way.

5 easy steps to success
Mitch starts
Kat goes
PF arrives
DDV returns
Bench improves

Interestingly enough, reversing the KAT trade accomplishes all of that in one move (the bench improves via the draft pick and the extra money under the apron we can use).

I am not quite ready to bail on KAT after one year, though. I know he poses problems but I think there’s a lot of juice left in that squeeze.

I beg to differ. Randle took the Brunson discount years before Jalen did, expecting the franchise would take care of him when it was time. When the time came, Leon sent him packing instead. It was smart, but it was coldblooded.

You realize you just made the precise case Leon would have no difficulty trading Brunson if the right deal came up 🙂

And the Knicks would need to shed 11.4 M in salary (Mitch to a 3rd team for a 2026 pick?) to make the money work according to fanspo trade machine. The ESPN machine says neither club can do it without both shedding just under 10M

hubert is all like you’re absolutely right mom it’s disgusting in fact i’m throwing it out right now by the way i’m thinking about a semester in bangkok

i do get begrudging thibs’ lack of flexibility in general and even as specifically applied to putatively freezing out everybody’s favorite hypothetical 5 outer of jb deuce og mikal and kat. but i also think that group is drawing pretty much completely dead as a primary engine for a high end playoff team. it’s tiny and just gets murdered on defense and the defensive boards (kat is a great defensive rebounder but just an average contributor to your team’s drb% for his position), has zero transition game and the personality of an edward albee protagonist. the offense would of course be real nice but even there the lack of fluid connectors for all that space would be a slight decrement in the heat of close playoff games. kat would probably get max’d at 25mpg by the foul gods.

hubert is all like you’re absolutely right mom it’s disgusting in fact i’m throwing it out right now by the way i’m thinking about a semester in bangkok

I wish I knew what this meant bc it seems funny.

One thing I appreciate about Leon is, he hasn’t really ever painted himself into a corner. He’s made missteps but he’s been reasonably capable of pivoting away from them.

Durant has already suffered an Achilles injury and he’s in his late 30’s. The only team Durant put over the top was the 73-win Warriors, who already had one ring under their belt.

Trading KAT for KD is painting yourself into a corner.

That said, I do think KAT needs to go this offseason. I think there’s the potential for things to get ugly with him here. To me, the anonymous insider blamethrowing immediately after the Game 6 loss was a very bad sign.

#Interestingly enough, reversing the KAT trade accomplishes all of that in one move#

The KAT trade was a truly tempting one during its time and it somehow worked but not completely.
We need something else to make this team take off imo.

looking at a porn mag and pretending not to like it but then planning to do the real life version of porn in thailand is a little funny albeit completely out of the blue and without context but ptm posts are often that so it is ok and we are used to it62

looking at a porn mag

Oh! That makes sense. When he said “you’re right it’s disgusting I’m throwing it out” my mind went to food.

Listen, milo, it’s the offseason, and I grew up on random dudes from Queens calling into WFAN with stupid trade ideas. It’s an icebreaker.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1l1oowl/lost_in_the_knicks_season_ending_this_weekend/ kind of crazy

I wish I knew what this meant bc it seems funny.

as a service to america i gave chatgpt the entire thread and asked it to explain the joke to you in an edward albee style dialogue:

Absolutely. Here’s an Edward Albee–style short playlet that explains the joke to Hubert — stylized with clipped, elliptical language, veiled irritation, and just enough absurdity to honor the request and the vibe of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

⸻

“Bangkok” — A One-Act in One Room

Characters:
HUBERT – earnest, whipsmart, slightly wounded.
PTMILO – arch, elliptical, tired of being right.
NARRATOR – possibly the ghost of Mark Jackson.

Setting: a bare stage. Two chairs. A half-empty glass of something no one wants to name.

⸻

HUBERT:
(leaning forward, voice low)
I said it seemed funny.
I said I didn’t get it.
I said—

PTMILO:
(interrupting)
You said it all, Hubert. That was the joke.

HUBERT:
What was the joke?

PTMILO:
Trade porn withdrawal, Hubert.
Your declaration of celibacy.
Your monastic renunciation of fake Giannis ideas.

HUBERT:
I did renounce it. I named it. I called it Jack Horner.

PTMILO:
And then you rolled over.
You unzipped the tent.
You pitched Julius Randle coming back with a lottery pick and a smile.
That’s not recovery, Hubert. That’s relapse in a trench coat.

HUBERT:
But the Bangkok line—why Bangkok?

NARRATOR:
Because Bangkok, Hubert, is always funny.
And always far away.
It’s exotic commitment. It’s sudden reinvention.
It’s saying: “Yes, mother, I’ve thrown away the weed—
and also, I’ve joined a tantric cooking school.”

PTMILO:
It’s not about Bangkok.
It’s about saying Bangkok.
It’s the pivot. The comedy is in the dissonance.
You said it was unrealistic—and then doubled down harder.

HUBERT:
(pause)
So the joke is on me?

PTMILO:
No, Hubert. The joke is with you.
You just didn’t know it yet.

HUBERT:
(sitting back)
I see it now.
Sheer lunacy.
But kind of beautiful.

PTMILO:
That’s the essence of trade porn, isn’t it?

NARRATOR:
And they were never heard from again.

(lights dim)

[CURTAIN]

⸻

Let me know if you’d like a sequel involving Mark Jackson, an overhead projector, and a CAA-branded prayer candle.

@walkerandbendercornerstones

My sober take after a few days to ponder. I have a feeling people aren’t going to like it, lol.

Walking it back with the same lineup, now healthy, isn’t foolish. It’s actually the smartest thing to do. Yeah, find a gem somewhere. Tweak the bench. But letting this team that came within 2 games of the NBA finals to start an offseason healthy, together, with a shared playoff experience, is brilliant.

@Frank

I am all for trading KAT for Duran

Not with a 10-foot pole.

@Early Bird Writes

Hukporti was the 58th pick in the draft. He has done nothing to show he deserves to be a rotation player. We do not want to start the season with him in the rotation.

Where he was picked is not relevant. He has shown more than flashes before he got hurt. I’m betting on him.

@Stratomatic

IMO, the main problem on defense is Brunson, not Towns.

The problem is that you can’t have both of them on the floor at the same time.

I’m not buying for a second that some sort of “offensive coordinator” for Thibs is going to work out, for many reasons.

All you are doing in that situation is setting up palace intrigue and internal conflict. Thibs is as stubborn as they come, and is a walking anxiety attack. I don’t see any scenario where the control freak gives up any control of the thing he has control over.

If you are all in on Thibs, give him his freakin’ drop defending center and trade KAT. Or just accept that we probably just witnessed the ceiling of this whole era of Knicks basketball. Take away the square peg and give him a round one. He’s a personnel-dependent coach. Give him the personnel he needs.

When you get to this elite level where you’re trying to advance from appearing in the conference finals to actually winning a title, things like synergy matter. He’s not gonna figure out a way to McGyver this shit into a championship, that is just not his thing. He’s gonna play his way no matter what players you give him.

Probably should move Mikal while you’re at it, because Mikal doesn’t seem to enjoy playing for Thibs. See what you can get for Mikal and KAT, those guys have trade value and they’re not great fits here.

hubert is all like you’re absolutely right mom it’s disgusting in fact i’m throwing it out right now

lol dude I thought you were talking about spoiled milk or old chinese food.

Only if the sequel has a hand down, man down joke from the narrator while addressing the relinquishing of pornography and flaccid penises

As for KAT. Nobody will argue that he’s a terrific offensive center but not a good defender or anything more than a decent rebounder. His salary escalates quickly over the next 3 years: $53M – $57M – $61M. I’m not that’s what this team needs. I am aware that the Knicks would have been ousted earlier had it not been for some of his heroics. I’m just feeling that without improvement on the defensive end, he’ll become a liability. And that hit-piece about the locker room not digging his defense awareness is the the first malignant cancer cell in the Knick-KAT relationship.

I don’t see renewing your vows with the stubborn coach, heading with no end in sight into year seven, and reversing your main moves to reset things his way as a thing that’s even done in modern sports, much less something that can work in modern sports.

Maybe for a complete outlier like a Belichick or a Lombardi, but not in the NBA for a guy who’s got a losing playoff record and has never gotten out of the conference finals.

Nothing Thibs brings or has ever brought is worth all this drama and worth all his fussiness. It sure as shit isn’t worth it now.

i would not trade kat for kevin duran jalen duran or duran duran cue clarence

Where he was picked is not relevant. He has shown more than flashes before he got hurt. I’m betting on him.

We can bet on Hukporti, I just don’t want to ante up a rotation spot only to draw dead during game 4 in next year’s Eastern Conference Finals when KAT has his 5th foul 50ft from the basket trying to shake someone’s hand.

There’s a difference between betting on a player and guaranteeing 20mpg for a man who played behind Precious Achiuwa.

In terms of the lockerroom malcontents, quality organizations move out their C+ and D+ whiners and complainers long before they move out their stars. You sure as shit don’t move out your stars to make your C+ and D+ guys more comfortable.

Lots of internal indications this iteration of Knicks has hit its peak.

The ship isn’t being run properly if the Miles McBrides of the world feel comfortable enough to publicly criticize the Karl-Anthony Townses of the world. Or if you have to bring in a PJ Tucker to reset the locker room.

He’s a personnel-dependent coach.

He just went deeper into the playoffs than he ever has with a team that did not have his favored personnel.

You know I agree with you on all your critiques of him, I just fear that if we fix the Thibs problem we may create a much bigger one.

Ultimately I’m simply making a the-devil-you-know argument. If you can guarantee me a better coach than Thibs, I’d say do it. Who is that, though? Who is worth the risk?

Hurley strikes me as the best choice, and I base that largely on the fact that the Lakers usually get things right and they wanted him first. But I don’t know Dan Hurley, I just know what I’ve read about him. I do love what I have read, though: imaginative motion offenses seem to be his calling card. That is what we need. But I think a good assistant can install one of those, too, without the risk.

Yeah, he went deeper into the playoffs than ever before without his ideal personnel. I would argue that we just saw the ceiling of this combination of coach and personnel. If that’s good enough, run it back and maybe we can get back there. It’s not good enough to win a title. I don’t think adding a Chris Paul to the bench fixes the problems we need to fix to get to the next level.

If you want to actually get to the next level, actually give him the ideal personnel and let the man cook. He squeezed all he could out of this particular lemon. Bravo to him for that. He’s not gonna do better than he just did with this group of players.

It’s not good enough to win a title.

No one’s good enough to win a title in the peak OKC era, which will likely be at least one more year. That’s why Leon was such an idiot for going all in now. It’s cool to be the Houston Rockets in the era of the Golden State Warriors but you don’t sell out for it.

I think we can win the East with Thibs next year. Isn’t that our ceiling anyway? The only way you win a title is by getting there and getting lucky.

We can’t win. So the solution is to not try.

Sounds good to me.

Glad it’s baseball season.

If you want to actually get to the next level, actually give him the ideal personnel and let the man cook. He squeezed all he could out of this particular lemon

After that game 1 chokejob where he should have put more defenders on the court I don’t think he did the best he could.

The offense got worse over time because he never played 5 out and now the blame has hit Towns because the coach can’t utilize players properly.

but i also think that group is drawing pretty much completely dead as a primary engine for a high end playoff team.

Yeah I was never able to get on board with this idea. I do think it was a mistake to not give that lineup a look, ever (it got 49 total minutes in the regular season and playoffs combined), but that’s 5 guys who are in the allergic-to-skeptical range when it comes to shooting near the basket and you’re not getting any rebounds that KAT doesn’t gobble up.

On offense, he’s the 3a option. The 3a option is not going to score 20+ PPG. If he did, then we’d be whining about OG only scoring 14-15, Towns not giving us enough, Hart being a zero or something else. If we want more from Mikal, tell Brunson to stop playing as much hero ball and just pass the damn thing until we need a basket or it’s late in the game.

Respectfully, I don’t know how many times this needs to be explained.

We can’t win. So the solution is to not try.

Hardly.

There is no coach that’s going to bridge the gap between us and the Thunder, so don’t fire Thibs because he can’t do it. We’re only winning a title if we make it there and get extremely lucky.

So you fire Thibs if you think we can’t win the East next year with him. Is that what you think?

You fire Thibs if he’s been here six years and he’s got you thinking you need to move KAT after a year to appease him and maximize what he brings.

Sacrificing KAT to keep Thibs is nuts.

I’m actually advocating repeatedly for getting Thibs personnel that suits his style more, because I know there’s zero chance he’s getting fired. Give him round pegs and see what he can do. He’s not going to improve on his showing this year if you give him this personnel again. He got insanely good injury luck and a reasonably beatable opponent in the conference finals.

And anyway, maybe SGA blows out his ACL next March and you don’t have to go through the Thunder. I just don’t think you try to stop improving your chances because there’s some team that you think you’re never gonna beat.

But again, since they’re not firing him, the best thing to do is to get Karl Anthony Towns the hell off the team, because that is an awful fit of player and coach.

This team feels fundamentally broken. However, I’m tempted to run it back anyways because I’m not sure if there’s a reasonable trade that helps us more than praying they gel.

One big issue is the team can’t feed anyone inside, which is a problem when your ideal starting line features multiple 7fters and 2 wings who can bully guards in the post… or 1 wing and 1 wing he is in love with a fall away jumper. It’s always been a problem, but it’s more apparent when they do start trying to get the ball inside and it leads to a half dozen TOs.

You fire Thibs if he’s been here six years and he’s got you thinking you need to move KAT after a year to appease him and maximize what he brings.

Sacrificing KAT to keep Thibs is nuts.

I don’t really disagree with this, but in the real world of actual reality the Knicks are not firing Tom Thibodeau after he got to the conference finals. That is just not happening. So you work within the possible pragmatic solutions that are available.

“Get more Thibs-friendly personnel” is a better idea than “don’t change anything and get different bench scrubs” or “maybe Thibs will listen to some glorified assistant coach.”

It’s not the BEST answer, but it’s probably the most practical answer.

Hubert, was there no coach that was going to bridge the gap between Toronto and Cleveland, so they shouldn’t have fired Dwayne Casey? Or no coach that was going to bridge the gap between the Warriors and Spurs, so they needed to stick with Mark Jackson?

There was, though, Doug. Those weren’t big gaps.

Look, everyone knows I don’t love Thibs. But are you really so sure the next guy will be better?

I’m not saying Thibs Must Stay. I just haven’t seen any ideas that I love.

I know we need to fix the offense but I acknowledge the possibility that plugging that hole with a head coaching change could open up two or three more holes that Thibs plugged well.

The way I see it with Thibs, until this season he had plausible deniability regarding offensive schemes. We didn’t have the personnel that lent itself to an elite offense, and he actually almost certainly over-performed given the talent on the roster–finishing 3rd in 2022-2023 was a masterclass.

This season though he truly had nothing to hide behind, personnel wise. We moved heaven and earth to acquire personnel that people pretty much unanimously thought lent itself to a top-tier offense. Us finishing #1 in ORTG was a common prediction among both fans and pundits.

He flopped. We finished 5th in the regular season, which obscures that we were fully mediocre for half of it and that continued in the playoffs.

Of course, of course, of course, the players are hardly blameless here, and that’s where my more subjective takes kick in. I happen to think a more imaginative coach could get more, and maybe a lot more, out of this group given their skillsets and, in some cases, past performance.

I also might be wrong about that, but don’t view firing Thibs as an unacceptably large risk to find out. What I don’t want to do is make a suboptimal trade or trades that downgrades the level of talent on the roster in order to better suit a 67 year-old coach.

Side note: I will always have a lot of fondness for Thibs because he is literally the most successful Knicks coach of my lifetime and restored a sense of seriousness to the team. I find it off-putting when people talk about him in what seem like bizarrely personal ways. I’m just calling balls and strikes here.

The 2023 team had way more offensive creativity at the wings and off the bench.

The 2023 team had way more offensive creativity at the wings and off the bench.

That team’s offense was built around offensive rebounding and a low turnover rate. You know, the sort of things some people derided as “hustlebunny” and “moneyball.”

It lost in the playoffs to a mediocre Miami Heat team that was good at forcing turnovers.

He flopped. We finished 5th in the regular season, which obscures that we were fully mediocre for half of it and that continued in the playoffs.

I completely agree.

I just don’t think Thibs needs to be fired to fix this. It’s throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I just looked up CAA coaches, btw, and the first two guys I saw were Mike Budenholzer and Monty Williams. Both of these guys are cashing fat paychecks after being fired in the first year of their deals. And I imagine neither of their phones are ringing off the hook for any job openings this summer.

I think Leon can go to Thibs and say “you need help, and these guys need work to rebuild their reputations. I want you to sit down with them and see if you’re comfortable having one on your staff next year.”

Now if Thibs is like “no, I won’t do it” then so be it. That’s curtains. But this worked in Boston with JVG and Mazzulla then Cassell and Mazzulla. It worked for Atkinson in Golden State. It’s working in Golden State again with Stotts and Kerr. It’s working in LA with JVG and Lue. I think it can work here.

Its wild to read on here that this team is “fundamentally” broken when we just beat the defending champs in a series no one gave us a chance in and got one unlucky bounce away (and yes, a mis-managed game by the coach) from game 7 at home to go to the finals.

Reading this thread you would get the impression that we lost in the first round, not that we went to the Conference Finals.

I just don’t get the hand wringing at all. I mean, I do, but not really.

We were also one very badly missed foul call away from possibly being eliminated in round 1.

When Brunson went down with an Injury during the season..

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/03/14/knicks-defense-since-jalen-brunson-injury-mitchell-robinson/

Knicks top-5 in defense since Jalen Brunson injury, Mitchell Robinson return

This is one reason I’ve been so hard on Thibs lately.

I can’t criticize him for doing something I agreed with at the start of the season and there was little evidence to counter. But I can disagree with him if it’s not working, an alternative makes sense, the data supports it and he still won’t up the minutes.

Brunson for Jrue Holiday

Thibs gets somebody who fits his system

The 2023 team had way more offensive creativity at the wings and off the bench.

I could’ve sworn I read on some website somewhere that it was actually a smoke-and-mirrors offense and uh something about rabbits

We were also one very badly missed foul call away from possibly being eliminated in round 1

LOL. The Pistons won 3 games against us in that series? I don’t remember that.

Yes, the margins are thin in the playoffs. Cleveland might beat The Pacers if they weren’t decimated with injuries. Jokic took OKC to 7 games. You can play these games all day. We got to the ECF. 27 other teams did not. Doesn’t really seem like the panic button to blow up the team, fire the coach, etc…is really warranted.

I said before the season that we should all put down what result we would term a “successful season,” and I, and a number of others, said “Make the Eastern Conference Finals,” and they did that, so I have to say they had a successful season.

That won’t cut it for next season, though, of course, so let’s hope that they improve again!

By the way, as an aside, BBA at one point made the following comment:

Some of you guys just love being miserable. The Knicks next season are going to win over 50 games, reach the Conference Finals and have a helluva series vs whoever they face. They are going to be really fucking good.

That turned out to be correct, so that’s nice!

Respectfully, I don’t know how many times this needs to be explained.

Respectfully, I don’t know how many times it has to be explained that efficieny is not just about usage. It’s also about role.

His role on this team is not the same as it was on the Suns where he mosty shot corner 3s and took easy baskets around the basket at low usage. He was a low usage 4th option there.

If he did that in NY his TS% would be the same or better as it was for the Suns, but he’d score even less and people would really be whining.

Since then, he became a better player and expanded his skillset to the point it makes sense to do more, but he’s certainly not going to be as efficient shooting 3s from less favorable locations/off the dribble and creating shots for himself etc… as he was on the Suns taking only premium shots.

His role on this team is also to create off the dribble and shoot 3s from all over. He lowered his usage relative to the Nets because we have 4 very good weapons but not because he changed his shot distribution. We don’t want him changing his shot distribution. We want that better player. We maybe just want him attacking the rim and drawing fouls at times instead of fading away and we want more consistent shooting from 3. No more experiements. Iron it out in the off season.

His .585% TS% was quite good when you consider the down year he had from 3 due to experimentation and the extra heaves. I could easily see him at .600 next year on this similar usage .

one interesting thing to note is that all our higher volume 3P shooters with the exception of Towns had a down year from 3 career wise — Brunson – first sub 40% season since joining the Knicks and dipped down further in the playoffs, Bridges, worst of his career in both season and playoffs, Deuce down from his 41% the year prior. Question is, was that just a tough year that we’ll get better from or what drove that exactly. Last year’s team had better playmaking – it had 4 guys who could legitimately get 6+ assists per game and get the balls to players in positions to score (Hartenstein, Randle, Brunson, and when on Hart). This year’s team has Brunson and Hart that can do that. Towns averaged 1 assist per game in the playoffs. We absolutely need to prioritize bringing in someone if we don’t do a big move that can playmake — ideally make open shots, dribble and create for others (Tyus Jones type would be perfect, or even a Dinwiddie type, a bigger guard that could play alongside Brunson) … that could be an important unlock in the bring the core guys back and tweak around the edges scenario

His role on this team is also to create off the dribble and shoot 3s from all over.

Well then why was his 3PAr in the 34th percentile among forwards and 21st percentile among wings? Did he not get the memo?

No one’s good enough to win a title in the peak OKC era, which will likely be at least one more year. That’s why Leon was such an idiot for going all in now.

If memory serves me correctly, there were quite a few people screaming we had to go all in quickly because the clock was ticking and new CBA would change things.

while it is true that we got to the eastern conference finals and 27 other teams did not (actually 28 other teams did not), there are only 15 teams in total who could have made the eastern conference finals under any circumstances

Your memory does not serve you correctly, Strat. People suggested we needed to make a move (based on a correct understanding of how the aprons work). Trading your picks up to 7 years out was not a requirement.

“Peak OKC Era”
Denver just took them to 7

If they get some bench help they can take OKC. The West is a much more loaded conference so we shall see.

* Giannis might go west..spurs. Giannis/Wemby

* Rockets with KD and that defense are dangerous. Just swap him out for a bum like Jalen Green..

A decent write up from Bobby Marks:

If the Pacers’ loss in the Eastern Conference finals a year ago taught us anything, it was not to overreact and make wholesale changes to the roster. The same sentiment should apply to the Knicks’ approach this offseason.

And while there are no participation trophies for having the NBA’s fifth-best record, for three straight playoff runs reaching at least the second round or for reaching the conference finals for the first time since 1999, New York’s season is something to build on, not tear down.

And a helpful bit about our options this summer:

Offseason finances:

The Knicks enter the offseason with $200 million in salary and four roster spots available. They are $3.8 million over the first apron and $8 million below the second. They will get $3.5 million in financial relief if the team option of P.J. Tucker is declined. New York has until June 29 to exercise Tucker’s option and the $2 million option of last year’s second-round pick, Ariel Hukporti.

If New York signs a player to the $5.7 million tax midlevel exception, then the second apron is triggered. The Knicks are allowed to make trades but cannot use more than 100% of the traded player exception if the post transactional salary exceeds the first apron. They are also not allowed to aggregate contracts if the salaries after the trade exceed the second apron.

And things would look a little better if we hadn’t flubbed another draft last year:

The internal development focuses on last year’s draft picks, Pacome Dadiet and Tyler Kolek, who played a combined 400 minutes in the regular season.

Well then why was his 3PAr in the 34th percentile among forwards and 21st percentile among wings? Did he not get the memo?

Do you want players to shoot the correct shots given their own skillset and the skillsets of their teammates or do they have to attain some idealistic goal that hurts the team?

He was shooting mostly good shots for him at this stage in his career. Had he been shooting the same shots for the Suns he would have been way worse back them. If he added more tough 3s now, it would just take potentially better shots away from Towns/Brunson or even OG, lower his efficiency further and make the team worse.

What we want from him is to keep doing what he’s doing except become more willing to take contact and draw fouls at the rim and next year come in ready with his 3 point form so his 3p% will get back to a more normalized level at this stage of his career shooting this shot distribution.

If you want him to shoot more high quality 3s, tell Brunson to focus a little less on dribbling, his own scoring and hero ball and a little more on creating quality shots for Bridges, Towns and OG. I’d bet anything he’d shoot more 3s and higher quality 3s playng next to Haliburton.

We all watched Mikal play mediocre basketball all season long so this retcon attempt is pretty bizarre. If you can explain to me why Mikal is a markedly better player than guys like Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Naji Marshall or Derrick Jones Jr., I’d love to hear it.

He’s not all that much better than players like that. He’s just “Mikal Bridges, Guy We Have All Heard Of.”

Denver just took them to 7

Yeah well it’s also the peak Jokic era.

Coaches have 1% impact on a game, but have 100% impact on a game thread.

I’m curious, just to change the convo a little bit. How much does Indy playing OKC competitively (at least 6 close games) change the calcus for people who think we need to make a huge trade (KAT or Mikal) and/or change the coach?

Like if Indy takes OCK to 7 and it’s a hard fought, close series, does that change people’s perceptions as far as how close we are or nah?

Do you want players to shoot the correct shots given their own skillset and the skillsets of their teammates or do they have to attain some idealistic goal that hurts the team?

If players have a shot distribution that puts them in the 93rd percentile for midrange shots, 34th percentile for 3PA, 26th percentile for shots at the rim, and their overall efficiency is middling in the regular season and dog shit in the playoffs, I plead guilty to being skeptical they are taking the “correct shots.”

Your memory does not serve you correctly, Strat. People suggested we needed to make a move (based on a correct understanding of how the aprons work). Trading your picks up to 7 years out was not a requirement.

You bascially said exactly what I said except added that Rose overpaid – which I think everyone on planet earth agrees with.

The argument was, if Leon waited, there may not be an opportunity for an “all in deal” later. I had no opinion on that. To me, every year crazy stuff happens that makes players available that I never would have guessed would become available.

The new CBA and aprons are a complex mess I refuse to put any energy into understanding. They don’t pay me for that when I gamble on games. I’m not sure how much that figured into he move he made.

Like if Indy takes OCK to 7 and it’s a hard fought, close series, does that change people’s perceptions as far as how close we are or nah?

I don’t think it matters all that much.

We’re close, but not quite there. We need to improve. Running it back is not the way. The teams we’re trying to beat are going to try to improve. We should try to improve.

We all watched Mikal play mediocre basketball all season long so this retcon attempt is pretty bizarre. If you can explain to me why Mikal is a markedly better player than guys like Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Naji Marshall or Derrick Jones Jr., I’d love to hear it.

Fax. We can gripe about Towns or Thibs all we want, and justifiably so, but there’s no greater mismatch of value vs. cost on this team than Bridges, and it’s not even close.

If he was half the player Aaron Nesmith is, we win that series in 5. For all the raving about his ‘great contract,’ there are about 20-30 better players making less money. At the end of the day that’ll be why this team never eclipses this year’s “high water mark” consisting of losing the ECF to an inferior team on G1.

If players have a shot distribution that puts them in the 93rd percentile for midrange shots, 34th percentile for 3PA, 26th percentile for shots at the rim, and their overall efficiency is middling in the regular season and dog shit in the playoffs, I plead guilty to being skeptical they are taking the “correct shots.”

We already agreed he has to get to the rim more and try to draw fouls instead of always fading away.

Other than that, he’s one of the better mid range players in the sport. However, I feel comfortable saying if he was open from 3 more often he’d take those shots. He’s not Josh Hart. 🙂 He’s not pasing up quality looks from 3 to create a midrange 2.

My theory on the lack of 3s has been (and it extends to Towns and OG too) is that it’s mostly Thibs and Brunson’s fault. We play slow and lack purposeful ball and player movement to get players open.

Brunson dribbles too much trying to create for himself instead of moving the ball or trying to draw the defense and hitting the open man. As a result Towns takes fewer 3s than we’d like. OG tends to do what we don’t want Mikal or anyone else doing. He takes some that make me want to cringe. I think OG gets pissed off when he thinks he’s not getting the ball enough and winds up putting up some suspect shots.

IMO, we’d shoot more 3s and higher quality 3s if we played faster and moved the ball.

if we play faster and shoot more 3s then i am not sure where mitch fits into that equation

It’s settled then. Start Kolek and bring Brunson off the bench!

I’m curious, just to change the convo a little bit. How much does Indy playing OKC competitively (at least 6 close games) change the calcus for people who think we need to make a huge trade (KAT or Mikal) and/or change the coach?

I thought the Pacers were very good and very close to us, but I think the Knicks are a bit more talented. If we played them a 100 game series I’m not sure how it would end, but if we ran a decent offense we’d beat them more than they’d beat us. Hence my frustration with Thibs.

I think OKC is so good defensively, they’d beat either team handily in a very long series and will probably handle the Pacers. But if the Pacers should somehow get hot from 3, avoid TOs and win that series, I’d still think OKC was the better team long term.

So not much changes for me.

i also might be wrong about that, but don’t view firing Thibs as an unacceptably large risk to find out. What I don’t want to do is make a suboptimal trade or trades that downgrades the level of talent on the roster in order to better suit a 67 year-old coach.

To be completely clear Trading Kat doesn’t mean We should keep Thibs.
Like it or not this is Brunson’s team.
If JB wants Thibs you keep him.
If he doesn’t you change him.
But watching Brunson playing an elimination game with a sad face instead of the face of a Warrior yells TROUBLE to me.
Who’s the Trouble maker?
Ask the captain and act accordingly.
My bet is on Kat

It’s settled then. Start Kolek and bring Brunson off the bench!

🙂

Or get a coach that Brunson respects enough to change his game a bit and start running a coherent offense for 43 minutes and trust Brunson take over late and decide what’s best.

But if the Pacers should somehow get hot from 3

Is it “hot from 3” if they shoot it like they’ve been shooting it all playoffs?

(as Leon Roseopoulos)
Even if the Pacers win the chip 4-0 i go to JB and ask him what’s wrong with the team and i start making changes…yesterday

Late to the thread, so wish to comment on “Hukporti was the 58th pick in the draft. He has done nothing to show he deserves to be a rotation player.”

Ariel Hukporti averaged 104 pts per 36 in the Eastern Conference Finals.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIO3_WGg2ao&pp=ygUfSGF3a3Mga25pY2tzIG1hcmNoIGRlbG9uIHdyaWdodA%3D%3D

This was the one of most pleasing offensive game of the Knicks season

Ball movement

3 point sniping

Hawks trash defense? Sure, but that ball is moving and taking advantage of it

Is it “hot from 3” if they shoot it like they’ve been shooting it all playoffs?

Fun fact: 3/5 of the Pacers’ starting lineup is over 46.3% from 3 for the playoffs. 4/5 is over 40%. Fuck me.

it is now 64 percent

Do you want players to shoot the correct shots given their own skillset and the skillsets of their teammates or do they have to attain some idealistic goal that hurts the team?

A league-average 3pt shooter is going to be better than all but the best midrange shooters. I don’t care if his shot chart is ideal for Bridges, I care that it’s ideal for the Knicks. Bridges’ shot chart is not ideal for the Knicks. We have a guy who can take midrange jumpers, and he’s a lot better than Bridges. What we don’t have is a high-efficiency knockdown shooter.

Respectfully, I don’t know how many times it has to be explained that efficieny is not just about usage. It’s also about role.

Respectfully, a player who generates middling efficiency on middling usage is also not a player we need, and generally speaking not the most valuable archetype. We have two high-volume players and, as you like pointing out, another middling usage player who is also slightly more efficient. We don’t need two players trading off higher usage nights. There’s no added value to having players alternate scoring nights when you can have a single player do it every night.

IMO, he was used incorrectly as a POA defender mostly because Brunson is so bad and he was the least bad option unless Deuce was in the game.

Again, that’s great that he’s a good wing defender, but we don’t need a wing defender. We need a PoA defender, it’s why we brought him in. If he can’t do it, then we don’t need him. You’re asking to buy a 7th hammer when we need a screwdriver.

Maybe Mikal is great, but he’s great in all the ways we don’t need. Give him to a team that needs him.

https://x.com/WFAN660/status/1929549817086398922 NY sports radio

I’m firmly in the camp that it’s about Thibs vs KAT this summer.

If you want to build a team that fits into the Thibs mold of what a successful team is, you trade KAT. You can’t have two negative defenders on the court at once, and you might as well find another piece. Thibs won’t zone up with those two on the court. And if KAT can’t figure out when or how to drop or play at the level, during his 10th NBA season, I don’t think he’ll ever figure it out. Playing at the level was constantly obvious, and he just couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Plus, having watched Steph Curry evolve as a defender for his entire career (I live in the Bay Area), I think there’s room and desire from Brunson to grow as well. It’s just a matter for him to always be in the right position and not leaving his teammates in a scramble because he’s lost.

And yes, I know I just claimed that two players who are basically the same age have different potentials for learning, but it’s just different for those two.

But if Leon Rose picks KAT, then I think you have to let go of Thibs. He’s just too inflexible in his schemes to work around any of the defensive and offensive issues. He’s not changing the offense. Hell, we’re running the same offense he ran in Chicago, trading Derrick Rose for Jalen Brunson. And he’s not changing the defense either. We might switch more, but I see him continue to jam round pieces into square holes. He’ll just keep hitting the “play better” button.

I very much hope I’m wrong.

But my biggest fear is keeping both Thibs and KAT, and absolutely nothing changes on the offensive or defensive side.

My two thoughts on running things back are:

1. Tim Connolly is one of the better GMs in the league, and he thought it made sense to trade his star center right after making the Conference Finals, and his issues with KAT are almost exactly the same as the Knicks’ issues with KAT (he needs to play the 4 in the playoffs for you to win, but is he a max player playing the 4?).

2. “Just hope for improvement from continuity” makes a lot more sense when the players are younger. This Knicks team is not young. I don’t think that means you change your approach, per se, I just think it’s important to remember that this team is not young. It’s filled with guys squarely in the middle of their primes. In other words, I don’t think you should be relying on improvement from these guys. You can still obviously add other guys to the rotation, of course, to help these guys, just that it isn’t one of those “Just let these guys develop more.” They’re developed already. They are who they are.

They just made the Conference Finals, so running the same team back with a new mid-level ring-chaser is not some crazy idea, but there are some real limitations to that approach, as well.

The argument was, if Leon waited, there may not be an opportunity for an “all in deal” later

There was no need for an all in deal, period. And people were not clamoring for one.

You make an all in deal when it’s going to make you the favorite to win a title, not to become an Eastern Conference Finalist.

Do you think the Cavs shouldn’t have gone all in on Mitchell?

You make an all in deal when it’s going to make you the favorite to win a title, not to become an Eastern Conference Finalist.

If only we were the favorite to become an Eastern Conference Finalist. Instead we were a huge longshot that benefited from fantastic luck to get a weaker opponent in the ECF and still got our pants pulled down, losing the series in Game 1.

The unexpectedly deep run masks the fact that going all in for that expected outcome is catastrophic. We are every bit the mezzanine team we feared we’d become, and the fact that any move that would get us out of that category qualifies as ‘porn’ shows that there is no realistic path.

CLE and IND are a lot better than us and still improving. DET is at least our equal by next season. ORL and ATL have a ton of internal upside. Even PHI has a decent shot at a Tim Duncan rookie season kind of year if they can add McCain and the #2 overall or whoever they can fetch in a trade to a healthier Embiid/Maxey/PG. Nor is it clear we’re better than even a Tatum-less BOS if Brown and KP are healthy.

We are a lot more likely to be out of the top 4 than a favorite for the ECF, and there aren’t really any cards left for Leon to play here.

I don’t think the Cavs ever did go all in (at least not to the extend Leon did). Mobley and Garland were 20 and 22 when he made that trade. They maintained the flexibility to use their exceptions every year to add depth. They just pulled off a DeAndre Hunter trade. And they can currently trade an unprotected 2031 first (plus pick swaps in ’30 & ’32). Every single guy on that team is a hot commodity. They have infinitely more flexibility than we do.

Leon gutted this team’s war chest. No one was arguing for that.

CLE and IND are a lot better than us and still improving.

Cleveland never shows it in the playoffs. Nice regular season record though. Their best player has a history of flaming out in the second round. Funny because Gobert has been able to get to the conference finals twice without him.

Teams do their circles and build their power through scouting, tanking, draft luck, developing coaches and smart GMs.
Going all in is a matter of timing and has to do with not only your team but the whole league, FAs and trade possibilities.
Rose grabbing Kat and Bridges wasn’t the obvious All in for a chip move but if i were at his place I’d be badly tempted to try it too (despite preferring the previous team)
It was a gamble that wasn’t too bad finally.
It could have been much better if players were clicking between them but …
At the end he probably improved the value of team’s pieces through this playoff run.

Cleveland never shows it in the playoffs. Nice regular season record though. Their best player has a history of flaming out in the second round. Funny because Gobert has been able to get to the conference finals twice without him.

You mean the guy who put up over 29 PPG and 7 BPM in the playoffs these last two years? The guy who’s been over 7 BPM 4 of the last 6 postseasons?

For reference, no Knick has put in a 7 BPM regular season in NBA history.

Brunson did it for one playoff run. His individual playoff resume is weaker than Spida’s and he’s already on our Mount Rushmore.

Also Spida isn’t one of the 10 worst defenders in the entire league, so there’s that.

Raptors and Giannis have mutual interest?! Why?!

Guy couldn’t make the get out the second round on a 64 win team

How many times in Utah did he fail?

2nd round exitttt

I don’t care about his bpm

Raptors and Giannis have mutual interest?! Why?!

It’s a weird roster and odd spot. I would assume Barnes would be the major piece in the deal, he’s like a really bad version of Giannis.

Guy couldn’t make the get out the second round on a 64 win team

How did we do with a fully healthy squad against the team that beat their MASH unit? Did we suffer the worst collapse in NBA playoff history against them or nah?

How many times in Utah did he fail?

About as many times as we would have if we played that level of competition instead of the baby soft East.

Brian you can use my quote again right now but instead change Conference Finals to NBA Finals!

Cavs suffered a 7 point choke in 40 seconds in game 2

He had his roster back with him when they traveled to Indiana. They were down almost 50 points in game 4..

Raptors and Giannis have mutual interest?! Why?!

They have a really high IQ…

we suffer the worst collapse in NBA playoff history

Cavs suffered a 7 point choke in 40 seconds

Throw in:

Bucks allowed an 8-0 run to close out overtime while facing elimination

What do all of these epic collapses have in common? You know it, baby! #pacersareactuallyreallyfuckingoodjust dealwithitandwelcomeaboard

Giannis and Ujiri are tight.

Look, barring a Giannis or Jokic trade, KAT is staying and so are Thibs and Brunson. That’s just the reality of being one of the last three teams standing in the playoffs.

Obviously Mikal was a disappointment, but he had some clutch moments in these playoffs… that final steal against Boston?!

This team was literally built to beat Boston, and we did it! But matchups are a real thing, and we didn’t match up well with Indy. So we need to get faster, deeper, and better at defense.

I could see us ultimately moving Mikal for depth pieces, guys who specialize in shooting and defending only, along with a cheap Brogdon type to run the 2nd team offense.

Giannis and Ujiri are tight.

I get why Ujiri would want Giannis, but if Giannis feels Milwaukee isn’t ready to win a title, why would Toronto be any better situated?

giannis is an international kind of guy and barring nyc toronto is about as diverse and international a city as they come

I also might be wrong about that, but don’t view firing Thibs as an unacceptably large risk to find out. What I don’t want to do is make a suboptimal trade or trades that downgrades the level of talent on the roster in order to better suit a 67 year-old coach.

normally i’d say that us obsessives wildly overestimate the chances of a major change after a good season, especially when options are so constrained. but i’m taking the over in this case. i just buy the story that the team seemed off from the inside and think leon is not the type to sit still with that feel.

“I happen to think a more imaginative coach could get more, and maybe a lot more, out of this group given their skillsets and, in some cases, past performance.”

I doubt it. Maybe the “greatest coach of all time” (whoever that is) might have figured out a way to make the offense a bit more consistent. But I just don’t see a way for any coach to paper over the fundamental flaws of our offensive players that are not scheme-dependent.

Folks can speculate that a different coach would try different schemes that would magically result in a better offense. I think the defensive schemes would also change, and the same fundamental problems would just get exposed in a different way. Maybe we’d hit more 3’s but fewer higher-percentage 2’s. Maybe we’d up our eFG% but commit more turnovers.

Sooner or later, as you climb the playoff ladder, you get exposed for what you are. And that goes for both ends.

This is not to say that Thibs didn’t make mistakes. Only that this roster is not a championship roster, and that no coach would make it one without an inordinate amount of luck. Even an average coach like Bickerstaff with an above-average but not elite roster came close to figuring out how to stop up. Throw wings at Brunson and KAT. Lay off of Hart. Make OG drive. Go after KAT and Brunson on the other end. Easy stuff.

I hate Donnie (not really) but he has a point: the Pacers are actually really good! Stealing Siakam was one of the most underrated GM moves of the decade.

Carlisle is probably better than Thibs, but not enough to credit him more than Prichard. This would be a fun roster for any coach to work with. Hali is a heck of a point guard. They have a solid two-way rotation. They force their pace on opponents, which impacts their defense as well…Game 6 was right out of their script. Our personnel was not built to keep up no matter what scheme we played. There were three occasions where we tried to even the series and we failed all three times, and not in nail-biters either.

Let’s Face it.
We’re actually in the 3&D&Run era

I don’t get why folks flippantly suggest that solving our offensive problem is simply about changing our shot profile. Opponents adjust their defensive schemes and personnel to whatever the offense successfully runs. If the players just don’t have the skill to consistently punish a defense at all 5 positions for whatever adjustments they make, the offensive results will eventually settle where the personnel mix tops out vs. the personnel mix on the opponents’ defense.

And again, I’m only talking about getting further than we got this year. For the regular season, sure, maybe another coach figures out how to squeeze out a couple more wins, but as we saw in these playoffs, regular season success doesn’t necessarily translate.

I’m not sure there’s a worse possible matchup of coach and personnel than Tom Thibodeau and Karl Anthony Towns, and I don’t say that as a slight on either of them. KAT simply can’t do the things that Thibs needs his centers to do. He’s never going to be good at drop coverage and Thibs is never going to employ a defensive scheme that doesn’t involve his center playing drop coverage.

Maybe KAT is such a poor defender that he’s just not a championship caliber C for any team, I don’t really know. But I do know that this pairing is only going to bring frustration for all involved, for as long as it lasts.

Still ruminating…

Watched PTI. Pacers have had best record since ASB, other than OKC

They also noted KAT had one block in the series.

Shams says the Knicks will be “very active and aggressive” about making changes this offseason, especially to the rotation.

I think that there is a widespread over-simplication of the nature of defensive coverage responsibilities, most notably as it pertains to KAT. While Thibs may prefer a particular decision in response to a read, it’s rarely as simple as “drop” vs. “at the level.”

The fact is that KAT’s defensive woes are not due to the coverages that Thibs employs. He is a lousy defensive player, period. He can get by playing certain ways in certain schemes vs. certain players, but at the end of the day, he will be targeted by opposing offenses in a way that puts him in position to fail. KAT is slow to read plays as they develop. He is slow to a spot, is easily blown by, is easy to get off balance, commits dumb fouls by reaching, lunging, swatting, and is a slow jumper. He trails the play more often than not, and can’t defend well in transition even when he is ahead of the play.

It would be less of a problem if he didn’t have to share the floor with another sub-par defender…namely Brunson, who is undersized and only modestly athletic, and while better than KAT at reading the offense, he depends on drawing charges and stripping the ball before a shooter/driver can get into his move, or just physically maintaining position, but that makes him foul-prone and vulnerable to getting caught near the basket guarding a player a foot taller than him who can shoot right over the top of him or react to the help that has to come, leaving someone else open.

What I’m trying to say is that KAT has been a problem on defense for whatever coach he has played for, with the exception of playing alongside a 4X DPoY who relieved him of his need to play C…and even that only got his team as far as an ass-kicking in the conference finals by a team certainly no better than these Pacers. It probably helps when Mitch is out there, but then you bring Mitch’s issues to bear. Top teams with good coaches will figure that out pretty easily.

I’m still trying to process what Thibs did halfway through this series. Suddenly out of nowhere (of course not out of nowhere, everyone was screaming it from the rafters) he starts Mitch, puts Hart on the bench, and goes to a nine-man rotation.

Did anyone really see that coming? We all WANTED to see it coming, we were screaming for it to come, but who here predicted that Thibs was suddenly going to switch gears and do those things?

And what does it mean going forward? Something profound? Nothing whatsoever?

I know there are many posters here who have fossilized into obsessing that Thibs is fossilized. I was one of them, to be honest. Now I don’t know what to believe.

Raptors and Giannis have mutual interest?! Why?!

Could it have anything to do with the President of the United States publicly questioning his greek citizenship because of his race? I dunno. Pags, you’re Canadian. Is your new PM a racist dickhead? Does my theory for Brian hold water?

This year’s Raptors remind me a lot of Detroit…a lot of good young talent who could gel with the addition of a star and some stabilizing vets. I could see them going hard after Giannis.

“I’m still trying to process what Thibs did halfway through this series.”

Game 1 will hurt forever, but it was Game 2 that really exposed the shortcomings of our short rotation. Thibs adjusted, but the Knicks went on to lose two additional “must win” games.

At the end of the day, there is a reason guys like Cam, Shamet, Precious, and Delon are fringe NBA rotation players. Not that Indy’s bench beyond TJ and Mathurin are any better, but it magnifies the simple fact that their starting lineup was able to dominate the tempo vs. our starters when it counted most, even after the change. Our role players made the “mix and match” game harder for Thibs to play than it was for Carlisle.

Leon gutted this team’s war chest. No one was arguing for that.

lol you literally were. Lots of people were on here and in the media. it wasn’t a crazy option. We have a real superstar, going all in is not a ridiculous move.

Gutting the war chest wasn’t really the problem. Gutting the war chest for a guy who played pretty much the same caliber of ball as Nickeil Alexander-Walker was the thing that was suboptimal.

Game 1 will hurt forever, but it was Game 2 that really exposed the shortcomings of our short rotation

I think you’re right that game 2 was worse than game 1 but I disagree with the reason.

Game 1 was literally unprecedented. Thibs made some mistakes but he played the historical percentages well.

Game 2 was so much worse. We lost game 2 bc we had no idea Pascal Siakim was going to leak out on every play and bc we went over every pick for TJ McConnell like a bunch of idiots who have never seen him drive before. How do you watch as much tape as Thibs allegedly does and not be prepared for Siakim leak outs and McConnell drives to the basket? Throw in the fact that we inexplicably gave Cam Payne 3 crucial 4Q minutes in which we got outscored 11-2 and I think a case can be made that game 2 was the single worst game Thibs has ever coached in his life. He did a lot of good things in games 3-5 to make up for it but holy shit, that was an all time shit show.

i am still trying to process why we are crediting peyton prichard for anything at all

Gutting the war chest wasn’t really the problem. Gutting the war chest for a guy who played pretty much the same caliber of ball as Nickeil Alexander-Walker was the thing that was suboptimal.

Yes

lol you literally were.

I absolutely was not. You love posting quotes out of context but I was very clear that my desire to acquire Mikal Bridges was 100% dependent on Isaiah Hartenstein coming back and based on all of the firsts being between 2024 and 2026.

I was apalled when I saw the picks Leon actually gave up.

I’m not even talking about your lusting after Bridges, you thought we should go all in last summer. Lots of people did, it was a reasonable decision.

you thought we should go all in last summer.

If Hartenstein was coming back.

Post the bookmark you’ve been holding on to for twelve months, I’ll show you the quote.

There was a course of action that made sense if we were bringing the whole team back. That same course did not make sense if Hartenstein was leaving to open up a massive hole at C.

“We lost game 2 bc we had no idea Pascal Siakim was going to leak out on every play and bc we went over every pick for TJ McConnell like a bunch of idiots who have never seen him drive before. How do you watch as much tape as Thibs allegedly does and not be prepared for Siakim leak outs and McConnell drives to the basket?”

I watched Siakam’s highlights from game 2, and his leak-outs that can be pinned on Thibs’ coaching are a non-factor. The couple that did occur where Siakam got behind the defense was due to bad execution. The biggest culprit was Mikal, who got caught flat-footed a couple of times. Siakam did the vast majority of his damage in the halfcourt, where he had several 3pt plays and also converted several times when he was left wide open several times at the arc.

As to McConnell’s highlights, I didn’t see a single play where TJ’s defender went over a screen where it led to him scoring or getting an assist. On his first basket , Deuce chose to go under the screen leading to KAT switching unnecessarily, and Deuce had no choice but to switch. TJ then easliy blew by KAT and got to the rim. On his second, he got an offensive rebound and put it right back up from 10 feet. His 3rd came on another offensive rebound where he got a pass, drove to an open spot before the defense could react and pulled up. On his 4th, while the defense was pushed out on shooters as the halfcourt defense got set, he blew right by Deuce and went straight to the rim while Mitch was slow to help. On the 5th, he went around two screens, both were switched…first Deuce to Bridges and then Bridges to KAT. As soon as KAT switched, he foolishly fell back in drop while TJ pulled up.

What I concluded in watching these plays is that there was a combination of bad communication on screens and defensive execution by the Knicks and excellent execution by the Pacers. Preparation only goes so far, the players have to execute the plan.

Thibs definitely deserves criticism for not extending the bench earlier than he did, but most of the leak-outs and miscommunications were on the players.

Folks can think what they want, but there is one advantage Indy has over us that I think is understated. They have 2 pure pass-first PGs who can score, while we have a bunch of score-first PGs who can pass. Neither Brunson nor Deuce nor Payne nor Delon make anyone on their team better to the degree that Hali and McConnell do.

Obviously Brunson is so consistently good at scoring and good enough at passing that he is not the problem. But he’s clearly not the kind of savant passer that Hali is, the kind that picks apart teams with his passing to open things up for himself. Hali is somewhat inconsistent, and his bad games are really bad, but the guy has had 9 playoff gemes already where he’s had double digit assists, and for his playoff career he’s had a 5:1 AST/TOV ratio on 10asts/36. When he has it going, he is nearly impossible to defend and his team becomes very tough to beat.

This was from an article posted a few days ago on realgm, quoting an article from the Athletic. Sorry if this was posted before, it’s the first time I saw it.

“New York Knicks coaches and players were frustrated by Karl-Anthony Towns’ defensive habits throughout the season, according to James L. Edwards and Fred Katz of The Athletic.

The frustration was caused by Towns’ defensive process and execution of incorrect coverages without communicating his reasoning.

His teammates were also worried that Towns did not understand the importance of the issue.”

“and for his playoff career”

Correction: for these playoffs…not his playoff career, which is still around 4:1

“Neither Brunson nor Deuce nor Payne nor Delon make anyone on their team better to the degree that Hali and McConnell do.”

I should point out that we do have one pass-first PG named Tyler Kolek, but he obviously isn’t nearly ready to play at the conference finals level.

You didn’t watch those highlights very well. With a 77-76 lead Siakim scored easily bc an exhausted Mitchell Robinson can’t run down the court. At 86-85 Turner gets a wide open 5 footer bc two players jump over the screen to guard him. Those are just some of the many breakdowns in those highlights. We lost that game in the TJ McConnell minutes, for which we seemed terribly prepared.

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