06/08/2025 11:00:01
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06/08/2025 03:57:00
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Knicks Morning News (2025.06.08)
06/08/2025 11:00:01
06/08/2025 11:00:00
06/08/2025 03:57:00
06/08/2025 02:55:00
06/08/2025 02:09:27
83 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.08)”
Spencer Harrison of the Athletic wrote about Thibs and did a good job articulating why some people can get you most of the way but not all the way:
It applies as much to Leon Rose as it does to Thibs. His blind spot is the NBA draft, and he’s never shown a willingness to second guess his approach to it.
Rose hasn’t been successful bc he ignores the draft, he’s been successful bc he’s had extraordinary luck while ignoring it. His stubborn refusal to use the whole toolkit of team building is every bit the analogue to Thibs’ famous rigidity as a coach.
It’s gonna be hard to get a good coach in here with Rick Brunson’s role so undefined and with it looking like he’s still gonna be around.(*)
In the haste to rip him (deservedly) for his game coaching as the playoffs progressed, we missed the extent to which he kept the entire sub-surface mess from unraveling. DDV’s pre-season rant at Rick Brunson (**) now takes on an entirely new meaning — one that isn’t good.
The LOLKnicks never *really* disappeared around here; Thibs just kept it from manifesting. Until he inevitably became its victim.
(*) It’s not actually possible that he’s your next HC of NYK, is it? Is it? Will they, as DDV said, actually explicitly “let daddy run the show?”
(**) Now looking in a way much too close for comfort to Littlefinger.
Alcaraz Sinner best Sunday morning ever
Agree, but why is Carlos dressed as the Hamburglar 😉
And Sinner is dressed as Luigi
Hahaha. Spike Lee courtside. No sign of Chalamet (or Kylie).
So, MLB finally has a women’s league to compete with the WNBA and women’s soccer.
Credit where it’s due — this is another smart move by Manfred.
Hot take incoming: baseball fans here might hate me for this, but Manfred is turning out to be the best sports commissioner of his era. And honestly, it’s not even close.
Spike there. Obviously a backup plan. And he is rooting for the wrong guy.
Edit – see KBA ahead of me. But Odell and Tony Parker there.
finally getting around to watching captain america brave new world…
holy cow, how can it be this bad?!?!?
man, I hope they don’t fuck up: World War Hulk
started watching the new predator movie (animated), that was a surprise direction to go…next blade runner will also be animated, the cyber punk vibe seems to fit well with that style…
Ha, Geo, just watched that yesterday and was like, was that as terrible as it seemed? Thinking about it later that day, yes, it absolutely was. Feel bad for Anthony Mackie, but damn, that was like 2/10.
well..make that three…my son and I watched it the other night and just staggered to our respective rooms when it ended …not even speaking…wondering why we wasted 2 hours on it…
I’ve been stewing about the Thibs firing. There’s a lot of bull crap being spewed. A story is being woven. I buy some of it because a great lie is created by injecting elements of believable truths into it.
The decision to fire Thibs had to come from the highest rank. It had to be Dolan. I sense an owner who got into it with a defiant employee. There was something there and we may never know.
When hear rumors that players were upset with their roles you say to yourself “that player is not a winner”. When you say that “players didn’t know what their roles were” you’re spinning it to make it look like “the coach didn’t communicate well”. It’s subtle but effective.
But I ask, “who here didn’t know exactly what each player’s role was on the team?” We might not have liked everything, but we knew who was going to start, who was coming off the bench and who was glued to the bench. In fact, that’s why some players bitched, they knew they were playing 40 minutes, or 10 or zero and it wasn’t what they wanted.
So that’s all a smoke screen. Apparently Rose and Thibs stopped talking. Rose probably was sent to relay Dolan’s demands to Thibs and was told to jump in a lake. Dolan put Rose in the middle and Rose decided to keep his job. So the rumors of Thibs being on the “hot seat” started to be floated. Once they were floated I knew that nothing short of winning it all would save Thib’s job.
That is what I believe. Screw you James Dolan.
I dunno, GoNYGoNYGo. Thibs strikes me as a difficult person to deal with. Towards the end of the season I would look away whenever they showed a close up of his upset, angry face. I can’t imagine spending the whole year with him in that locker room, let alone 5 years. I think those signs of discontent by the players throughout the year were real.
Just an insane match.
Crazy comeback by Alcaraz, great weekend of Tennis
Shyt what a save by Sinner
Great rivalry in the making
So, in tennis these days there is a Sinner and a Joker? Is there a Grinner? What about a Midnight Toker?
didn’t realize jannik and carlos were so close in age…
Is that Dustin Hoffman???
after four and a half hours on the court carlos found another level…
Alcaraz certainly isn’t letting the game tell him what to do.
The Minutes Police thing was derided here by some but it seems to have been a genuine problem for the players who were being asked to play all the minutes. And in the end it also appears to have been a contributing factor in Thibs’ firing.
It wasn’t a nothingburger. It was a blunder on his part, and he paid for it.
Or is he 😉
Historic match. Wow.
What a match
Wait, TNT covers Tennis now ..
all the major sports are now involved with streaming services…
like shows and movies you have to do a little digging to find them, and hope you already have that particular service…
Vamos!
Both champions in my book. Just incredible.
Alcaraz just demonstrated “to the last man, to the last minute, to the last bullet, we fight!”
Sinner was one point away from winning in straight sets, with triple championship point. Alcaraz was down a break in the fourth set. In tennis (even more than baseball), any comeback is possible.
Carlitos. Drama.
GoNY, roles go beyond who starts and who comes off the bench. For one, there are roles players play when executing an offensive set and defensive schemes. And you have to communicate that not just well but to the level of personnel you have. Not to upset Zman again, but if you give Jeff Teague’s words any credence, along with other reports that have come out recently, there’s evidence to support the notion that Thibs did not do a good job of communicating that level of role(s) to his guys.
As I always say, it’s fair game to be nervous whenever Dolan’s name comes up around any kind of team decisions that are made. But ask yourself this: what do you think Dolan would have wanted out of Thibs for demand Rose to let him go?
Re: Thibs — I’m happy for the change but I’m aware that the unknown potential of the new coach is coloring my feelings. I’m sure there will be plenty to complain about in future.
And — I honestly believe Thibs and his rah-rah-go-team-fight mentality was prolly the best guy to get us from laughingstock to where we are now. And even if we need a different guy to take us forward from here, that same guy might not have been able to do what Thibs did to begin with. I do see logic in that.
Trying to glean any logic from a Dolan move is a waste of time.(*)
All that can be hoped for now is that Leon pivots and cleans up effectively.
(*) He stepped on the 2013 offseason post-successful season; he stepped on the 2025 offseason post-successful season. Probably not a coincidence and probably some sort of psychological reason having to do with some combination of attention-starvation, big-footing, and reminding all the happy people it’s his team.
And there doesn’t seem to be nearly enough balance between “Thibs lost the locker room” and “Mikal Bridges was a locker room cancer.”
Who was really complaining about the minutes? Brunson and Towns had viable backups and weren’t overworked. I would be shocked if Josh Hart complained. I doubt Deuce was even interviewed and if he was he had nothing to complain about.
That leaves Bridges and OG. That’s hardly “the locker room”, but it’s enough people to get a coach fired.
(And I’m not even suggesting OG complained; it could have been just Mikal.)
Yeah, the idea that OG is a “great guy” and a “guy everyone wants to play with on the playground” was never really an actual thing. Toronto didn’t work even though it had him, FVV, Siakam, and Barnes; and now there’s a bunch of dissension in NY and he’s yelling at guys in playoff huddles and whining about not getting enough touches.
That said, Dolan just Dolaned. There’s no real logic to it, no sensible cause and effect. This is on him.
Spain Portugal heating up if you missed Spain Italy….
“The players didn’t know their roles” was almost certainly him. He’s probably the driving force behind the whole “we want a coach with a more egalitarian offense” thing, too.
There’s virtually no doubt he’s one of the ones made uncomfortable by Rick Brunson, although that one’s completely understandable.
I’m not sure why the “minutes” issue wouldn’t be taken seriously. Players know their bodies. If they feel the wear and tear is impacting their performance over time or if they feel gassed late in games sometimes and unable to do their best, we should probably believe them.
Also, I believe the whole minutes management thing became an issue because initially the Spurs under Pop were doing it and some studies indicated it helped. It wasn’t until it started getting abused a bit and hurting the sport did the NBA start trying to limit it.
Actually this is quite easy: a guy like Thibs (unfashionable, self made, hard working) is always going to be in danger if his boss is a starfucker born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It probably pissed Dolan off to no end that when all eyes were on the team, the team was being represented by someone so workmanlike.
Lord, the Mets are good. Love to see Squirrel getting it going If Mauricio can be his ceiling of a Soriano/Baez type hitter the offense reaches another level.
+10 million.
It’s tough because Dolan goes to such lengths to get the media to pretend he’s not involved, but then when the team goes on a nice attention-getting run, he chafes because everyone pays attention to everyone but him.
And then he steps on it and pisses on it just to make sure everyone remembers it’s his team. Just like he did in 2013. He simply has to.
Just because Dolan mismanaged the team in the early years doesn’t mean he hasn’t learned a lot of over time and isn’t right about firing Thibs. Firing Thibs over minutes, inflexibility, lack of creativeness, not using the Brunson/Towns combo effectively and other factors should be judged on the merits of the decsion even if Dolan was the main driver of it (and we don’t know that to be the case).
When Josh Hart was talking about agendas and sacrifice I suggetsed he was talking about OG because we already knew OG likes to have a big role in the offense, but at times he’s kind of frozen out by all the offensive power we have. He got his chance when Brunson was out and shined.
I love it when this place gets all Irish fishing village women over a fence.
You just know that Johnny beats poor Grace, sure she covers it up good but he’s a monster.
Yeah, but Conor’s so in his cups he probably don’t know Deirdre’s likely steppin’ out on him with Brendan, him with that big swagger of his.
Ya, but who can blame Brian if he leaves that Cara, she’s a witch I’m dead certain of it.
Was it Dolan or the Woman behind Dolan?
😄
In other Knicks related news Fournier-Vildoza became champions 1hr ago in Greek Basket League with Olympiakos by beating 3-1 jerian Grant’s Panathinaikos
I suspect the complaint that “players don’t know their roles” largely came from KAT not knowing defensive schemes and the offense devolving into Brunson vs 5 defenders. It’s the stuff we all complained about. Whoever said it, they were right and Thibs didn’t take the feedback.
Just look at our complaints:
– KAT never did anything other than spot-up from 3 after January
– An ineffective Brunson/Hart PnR
– Never getting the ball to Mitch
An OG iso on the perimeter is terrible, but there’s other ways to get him involved.
Mikal would have his turn running PnR or iso against a set defense at the top of the key. It’s not what you want. At least run a weakside PnR with Brunson as a decoy.
This team had ill-defined roles or, perhaps, stupidly defined roles. The parts didn’t sum at all, Brunson could drag an offense to our post-January Ortg by himself.
So… what I’m hearing is that Vildoza was ready for the playoffs.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE PLAYOFF VILDOZA HAPPEN! IT’S NEVER HAPPENING!
Waiting for Vildoza
Naaah! Vildoza never played during the playoffs according to stats i just checked (don’t follow the greek basketball league closely)
To be fair to Vildoza during the previous season he was playing in Panathinaikos and was able to get Both the Greek League Championship and the Euroleague Title while Miraculously playing During the playoffs between 12-16min!
So Yes Alan, Playoff Vildoza is not just a Myth! It’s just like Pallas Cat. Rare!
Maybe those guys aren’t bad guys, and complained about minutes because it’s actually kind of stupid to play guys for that many minutes
Hence the conundrum. The players who threw Thibs under the bus were right, but the process was unseemly.
There’s not a single thing Thibs did this spring that we didn’t know he was going to do. He was the same stubborn, inflexible, minutes monger when they extended him 12 months ago (which is probably when he should have been fired, if not after the Heat series; all of these things were obvious then).
So even though it’s the right decision, nothing about the process is inspiring.
When Mauricio hits the ball, he hits it as hard as anybody. His swing looks effortless and nonviolent but he generates truly elite bat speed and puts up some freakish EVs on his barreled hits.
He’s also an adequate defender at short, a plus defender at second, and has the arm strength to play third, and runs well. If he could hit for a 100 wRC+ he’d be a plus major league player but he might be able to do considerably more than that. Only question will be if his hit tool will play.
JK47, I would also add that Mauricio’s arguably as fast as Acuna is on the bsepaths. He’s a very talented guy. I am really hoping for a Javier Baez type trajectory because he will never be a patient hitter who sports a high OBP. But a 110-ish OPS+ type utility infielder who can spot start at 2B, SS, and 3B would be a very valuable player to have on a rookie contract.
There’s Pride in pushing yourself to the limit and there’s also Self protection.
Thibs as a WReed fan may is fine by pushing his players to their limits but Professional athletes ain’t all Warriors. Some of them are just Business men.
Then it’s just a matter of influence and interests.
Thibs played and lost.
there are two things i cannot seem to get out of my head although i cannot seem to process them fully 1 how good the knicks could look with delon starting and og and mikal flourishing when jalen was out and 2 how good the knicks looked in the playoffs when jalen was saddled with foul trouble see game 1 of pacers series i love jalen but cannot shake these negative things or was that a thibs thing too i am sincerely asking
Alcaraz and Sinner pretty good at that leisurely lawn game
“Not to upset Zman again, but if you give Jeff Teague’s words any credence, along with other reports that have come out recently, there’s evidence to support the notion that Thibs did not do a good job of communicating that level of role(s) to his guys.”
Z-man is not upset at all, nor was he then, especially after Z-man learned that excerpts from the Teague thing were posted in a way that distorted the meaning of what he was actually saying.
Beyond that, I’m not going to engage with the typical bad faith speculation being posted in this thread. Bottom line: Thibs had run his course and it was time to move on. But he did an excellent job of coaching this team, given who he is. If folks want to pretend that this team should have gone further this year than it did because of the amazing roster we have, good for them.
The Mets are so sweet.
This Red Sox rookie pitcher talked shit about the Yankees before this series so naturally Judge hits a 436ft bomb on the first pitch he sees from this scrub tonight.
A shame for the pitcher’s ERA that this wasn’t a playoff game.
Ras is the perfect example of why many Yankee fans make fun of Mets fans for acting like the Yankees’ little brother.
I’m sorry, BigBlue. Did I hit a nerve?
Turning to tonight’s basketball game, the refs are letting both teams play extremely physical defense.
Doris Burke
“Send that back young son!”
Is that a thing people say?
If the Pacers come back from here I will be impressed
OKC is vulnerable to a bit of the Knicks’ problems on offense, becoming stagnant just watching SGA take his own one-on-one.
There’s some motion out of the TO and a good result for OKC
Nice to see iHart with a good game, I guess
They need to automate goaltending
That was ridiculous. Bryant put his hand through the rim
I did not cash out my bet, in case you were curious. Might have been a mistake but I’m riding the Donnie Bus (at least to game 7).
Made me feel better about them missing calls in our series
I would have hedged
Hali was pretty much a no show tonight, most of his points came in garbage time.
I just don’t see how you can put him in the elite superstar category when he seems to disappear every other game
Hali has been bad/mediocre through 2 games except for that one shot.
He’s really good but he’s a weird player for someone as talented as he is
It is impossible to hold together the claim that Thibs did an excellent job and got the most out of the team with the claim that he ran his course and had to go, unless one specifies “he did an excellent job overall but not good enough for this ‘all-in’ season and roster.” If Thibs got the best out of the current roster, then he should have been given another shot. If he didn’t get enough, then he had to go and someone else must come in and complete the job, as the Knicks organization decided.
What’s done is done right now. For what it’s worth, I firmly believe that Thibs deserved another shot with an improved roster. It takes hard work and patience to move forward in professional sports. It was astonishing that he brought us back from what seemed to be eternal damnation to what we were until two weeks ago and did so in just five years. Even this season he did a very good job, not excellent but very good, despite the glaring problems with the roster construction. He took us as far as he could, possibly one lucky bounce away from the NBA finals. It wasn’t always pretty, but he did it.
Now, the task of firing the coach who brought you so close to the NBA finals and finding another one who would make you better is an enormously difficult one, even if planned and carried out professionally. However, things may be much worse than that. Thibodeau’s firing may be potentially catastrophic if the gradually emerging information about the conditions thereof turns out to be true. Be that Dolan’s intervention, players caprices and involvement, other intrigues, lack of planning on how to move forward, and so on, all those are unhealthy and dilettantish. These are not signs of a well-functioning organization. I hope I’m wrong. It could be my PTSD talking, as I wrote in another post, or the fact I cannot get over what I consider to be a terrible move which came to complement last summer’s terrible decisions. The fact is that we are glaring at the abyss at this moment, and the only hope is that the new coach will turn out to be a perfect fit.
i’m not getting this precarious posturing on some kind of precipice, waiting to fall…
2nd round injury flameout the year before…won a couple of games this season in the conference finals…
talented 7 deep roster, under contract…
finally moved on from a coach who at times appeared way over his head with the roster and the league’s top competition…
true to point, no guarantee things get better from here for the team, no guarantee things get worse either…
maybe best not to emotionally tap in to a negative consequence that hasn’t occurred already…plenty of time to suffer later on when some bad shit does happen…
like the coach of your team not inserting mitch in to the starting lineup at an earlier date during the playoffs…or, utilizing deuce in the line up more, or giving delon some time on the court, landry more of a shot, not having some kind of offensive system, not being able to put together a consistent defense with the players on hand…
I’ll probably have to repost in today’s thread but there it is. Confirmation that it was Dolan behind the Thibs firing.
Sources: Some Knicks players weren’t thrilled with Tom Thibodeau, with his firing being spearheaded by owner James Dolan
If you read through it you’ll see that Dolan ran the exit interviews, that Dolan has been off the Thibs bandwagon for a long time, that there is no real plan to replace him.
What’s worse is that there are coaches that have already said “no thank you” about a Knicks HC job. Dolan set us back to reset.
It feels like the Knicks won’t win the title for a long time now.
Since it seems like this IS today’s thread, at least for now, I’ll just note that I’m not feeling great about where we are at the moment. We went from (what looked like) an interesting and very strong group of players with some weak links (Mikal, KAT’s defense, a bunch of short people on the bench) to what feels like a largely disfunctional team with those same problems as noted but that also doesn’t really get along and now has no head coach and none visible that would be an improvement.
It’s a moment in time, but a pretty unpleasant snapshot.
What coaches have said no? Jay Wright? Your comment feels a little over dramatic.
The Knicks had 3 chances to turn the series around: Games 2, 4, and 6. That they lost all 3 of those games strongly suggests to me that our roster was not good enough to beat the Pacers in must-win games, especially on the road. If folks want to pin the home losses of games 1 and 2 on Thibs for not making lineup changes, I would counter that even after the lineup changes we couldn’t beat the Pacers when it counted in games 4 and 6.
But in any case, I think letting Thibs go was totally reasonable. For me, it felt like he had reached his expiration date and you could tell things were threatening to turn sour if he was retained.
So sure, get a fresh new face in here with a new voice and a new approach. Squeeze your 48-52 wins out of this roster, maybe even overachieve like Atkinson did with the Cavs. And then when we come up short in the playoffs, we can play the blame game again.
But for me, the guy who is most responsible for the hard ceiling on this current roster is Leon Rose, and it seems like he isn’t going anywhere for at least a couple of years. I’ve been supportive of how he has done and allowed for a growth curve given his lack of experience, but the Bridges trade is pretty much unforgivable. It’s not as bad as some of the blunders made by prior GMs, but the overall result will be similar in that it puts a theoretical ceiling on the team, just at a higher level. Thibs was just an easy target to take the fall.
The best hope now is for Leon to work some crazy magic like he did with Brunson, but with few assets left in the chest, I’m not all that optimistic that this team gets over the top during the next 3 years, and then we have to start dealing with Brunson’s decline phase with no pick in 2029 or 2031.
The thing that most concerns me is that if you glare too long into the abyss, the abyss glares back at you. Not sure I can handle that.