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Knicks Morning News (2025.06.09)
06/09/2025 11:06:59
06/09/2025 11:00:03
06/09/2025 11:00:01
06/09/2025 04:35:00
06/09/2025 02:33:00
06/09/2025 02:33:00
06/09/2025 02:00:00
06/08/2025 23:30:00
99 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.09)”
I didn’t get a good offer to cash out. Confidence in OKC was still pretty high after game 1 and hedges were expensive. I’m trusting the Pacers to get a game in Indiana instead and maybe put some fear in the bookmaker.
i too expect the pacers to win a game at home but not both of them
That’s fair. Betting OKC can’t be much of a hedge.
The box score shows the Thunder played 14 guys last night is that possible?
…
…
…
…hahaha! Just kidding! 😛
Just trying to check who is still reading the blog. 😉 😀
They unloaded the bench late but played their normal 10-11 guys….
You watch them and there are four guys on the team who I would swap for Bridges and feel confident we’d improve substantially….
Yeah, Mikal was a disappointment this season. Is there a track record of players getting a lot better in the 2nd season with a new team? Can we have hope?
Spit-take successfully provoked. 😉
…and Hartenstein is their 2nd-highest paid player at 28.5 mil.
Leon did about the best he could do with his plan, but the OKC model is a work of art.
Is there a track record of players getting a lot better in the 2nd season with a new team?
Yes, and with the Knicks quite recently–Julius and Jalen and iHart
I thought the max number of active players was 13
it is 15
Not to say that Leon Rose hasn’t made mistakes, because he definitely has, but it’s a lot easier to do what OKC did when you’re starting out by trading Russell Westbrook, Paul George, and Chris Paul vs the 21 win shit show that Phil Jackson and Steve Mills left us with.
Hartenstein’s glow up started in the second half and playoffs of his first season, but his second was much better overall in a variety of ways. It sounds absurd now that we all think, 100% correctly, that the stupid Early Bird rules cost us multiple championships, but he was largely considered a disappointment in the first half of his first season. Some people even felt that Leon got had by his high BPM with the Clippers.
Me neither. The team made the ECF healthy. It was tweaks away from taking the next step. Now it’s in shambles, being torn apart. Dolan.
Reports of Russel Westbrook moving closer to signing with Hapoel Tel Aviv on a mega deal:
REPORT: Hapoel Tel Aviv Preparing “Never Before Seen” Offer To Lure Russell Westbrook To Europe
Met offense is now handily one of the best in baseball.
It’s incredible what a series in Coors Field can do for a group.
WRC+ 116 (4th in MLB, 3rd in NL)
Runs per game 4.62 (8th/5th)
BB/K 0.48 (3rd/2nd)
OPS 756 (6th/4th)
WAR 12.5 (5th/4th)
BABIP 285 (21st)
Cmon, don’t be so down. The team isn’t getting torn apart, it’s just getting a new coach. Of course there is no guarantee we will be as good, but it’s unlikely we will be bad. You have to think about the possibility the players are right, they weren’t working well together. If this true, they could be better, assuming they still put forth effort. I’m hoping so.
And I hope I’m not jinxing anything with this comment.
iHart supposedly had a nagging injury during his stint here. I’m not sure how much of that was improvement vs being healthier.
The glass half full view of Bridges is that he has taken more FTs in previous seasons, and doubling his FT rate could make him a very good player.
So many things are possible for Knicks 2025-26.
We do not know the coach.
We do not know the roster, but we know that the Knicks could bring back the same roster because the top seven (KAT/OG/Hart/Bridges/Brunson/Mitch/Deuce) are all signed for next year.
We are starting with a talent base that got the 3 seed and to the ECF this year. Even if there are trades, I would not expect that the short-term talent base will go down.
😊
SAS says we should hire Mark Jackson
I am now officially at DEFCON 1 or 5, whichever is the bad one…
Oh Owen, he pushed your button. Clickbait, Owen. He’s a professional provocateur. It’s how he makes his money. It’s his schtick. Which I’ve always wanted to hit him with, right in the face… although it looks like someone did that to him earlier…
Idk, is Dolan dumb enough to listen to SAS? Otherwise, we should be fine.
The problem is that Mark Jackson might be one of the 15 current or former NBA coaches that Leon Rose has actually heard of
Instead of hiring Mark Jackson, can we just make a Bobblehead that says “hand down, man down” any time you touch it? Should be cheaper.
They should dispense with the Executive of the Year award and just give Sam Presti Executive of the Century.
I’d be ok with Taylor Jenkins. He was dealing with a shitshow in Memphis and will probably do well with law-abiding players. I forget, does Sam Cassell have character issues, or is he just not a great coach?
I forget sometimes that there are regular folks simply tuning in for some knicks basketball talk, not sure how they might find the place, but if they did – what a mad bunch we must seem…
fair to point, my fanatism died down over 20 years ago, were it not for the passion infested upon me by folks, surprisingly many of whom are not even on this continent, i’d probably have a more nihilistic view of the knickerbockers than donnie pacers fan since March of just a few months ago…
which is to say, that flame might’ve burned out…
people tell on themselves, a lot…
what the heck
Mets have 3 of the top 25 qualified pitchers in ERA
Senga – 1.59
Peterson – 2.80
Holmes – 2.95
That’s not including Canning who would qualify if he weren’t a little under the innings threshold.
We’ve certainly seen that play out in ways I won’t go into on hoops blog …
Question: while I share the concern of many here about the next coach, can we put the “Leon is clueless and only hires his former clients” schtick to bed if he brings in someone good? I feel like we’ve been here before (with players, not the coach), and while there are some risible errors, there are also pleasant surprises. The jury is out, and this may be the defining moment. If he somehow he nails it, it would be nice to avoid the doom and gloom for a change.
rama, was that an actual attempt to preemptively prevent doom and gloom?
Kicking to curb yadda yadda.
Would be nice, though…
I think the worst part of the doom and gloom has been preemptively freaking out because Dolan was involved in the firing.
Someone said this yesterday and I think it is true. Just because Dolan used to be incompetent and meddling doesn’t mean he is now. 99% of his incompetence and meddling came before he hired Phil Jackson. He has largely stayed out of all bball decisions except when a firing of a coach was justified. His biggest mistake with Phil was waiting to fire him after Phil got to draft Frank.
I’m not saying he’s good or that he’s a good person. Just that he is older than he was back in the Isiah/Donnie days and he really hasn’t shown himself to be an idiot in a long time. People do mature and grow up, even entitled silver spoon billionaires! The worst thing he’s done in recent history was the stupid fued with Oak and some of that was Oak’s fault.
It’s only logical that if firing someone would cost him $30 million dollars that as the owner of the team he might want to have a say in that decision. It’s also not out of reach to think that Leon WANTED Dolan to be the one who signed off on it since Thibs is a personal friend of Leon. And all the things we’re reading in the paper suggest that the reasons he was fired lines up with the reasons we all thought he should be fired.
And a lot of names have been floated out as possible coaches. We just don’t know what decision will be made and, of course, the uncertainity is excruciating. Thibs brought a base level of competence and was a security blanket to some degree.
Now if they star fuck and get some bad coach and then trade half the team for Durant, we can fully go back into LOL Knicks mode. But I just think we should reserve judgement and not just freak out immediately simply because Dolan was involved in the firing process. That process seemed to play out in a logical way.
Pretty much agree with you, Swiftie, but I used ‘preemptively’ first…
I can’t help but think this was a big part of it. I doubt that Dolan has learned anything; I’m not giving him that credit. But the idea that various voices wanted Thibs gone (WWW), that I believe, and whether Leon was 100% behind it or not, he certainly had pushed back on those voices before. Now he might simply have agreed, but Dolan was good cover for his relationship with Thibs and for wasting $30 mil. Could have been a canny play and not “chaos of a group that doesn’t know what it’s doing “
I mean sure, obviously we are all speculating and it’s entirely possible that Leon nails the coach hiring and also improves the roster this offseason. I don’t actually expect Mark Jackson to get the head coaching job. The Jason Kidd thing was disturbing but that doesn’t appear terribly likely either.
“It’s also not out of reach to think that Leon WANTED Dolan to be the one who signed off on it since Thibs is a personal friend of Leon”
Swiftie, always my take, despite no evidence that it is a better take than anything else. My reasoning is that if Leon thought Thibs should be gone, it probably was because of the locker room. If I were Leon in that situation (firing a friend, firing a guy who I gave an extension to), I’d invite Dolan to the exit interviews. Also, if the debate is the coach or the roster, Leon allows Dolan to see it is possibly the coach, and not Leon dumping Thibs to save his job.
Yup. Again, not saying Dolan is good or whatever, just that it is logical that he would be involved in this decision because it is his money and his involvement doesn’t necessarily point to a return to LOLKnicks days.
I mean, that is always a possibility but throughout all of Leon’s tenure whenever there was any sort of mishandling of something, certain segments of the fan base have interpreted it as a return to LOL Knicks and every time they’ve been wrong.
Leon is going into his 6th season as the GM. He is far from perfect but he has taken the Knicks further than any GM this century since Dolan took over. I think it’s ok to believe the worst is not going to happen, even if the team has reached its peak already and we’re in for a decline phase.
Most of us agree this is the right move if we want to win a championship or, at the very least, the right move given that he lost the locker room.
The only real concern is whether Dolan begins to insert himself elsewhere in building the team.
Wemby at the Shaolin temple is one of the best recent NBA offseason stories
All these various stories about the Thibs firing and coach search really do beg the question who leaked it and why did they leak it.
I wonder whether Begley’s source is none other than James Dolan himself, or at least someone very close to him. Begley has been very well connected now through multiple front offices, and the story that came out post-Thibs-firing was sort of exactly what ownership would probably want — that Dolan was there to listen but all the decisions were made by Leon and co. Then the Yahoo story comes out and it makes it sound like the opposite – that Dolan was driving the bus and Leon sort of was a passenger.
In terms of the coach search – everyone sort of takes as gospel that the Knicks are interested in Jason Kidd, but who leaked that and why did they do so? Marc Stein (whose major connections are in Dallas) is the one who “broke” the news, but who really benefits from that leak — of course it’s J-Kidd himself, who is known to be a self-promoter even at the expense of people around him. it doesn’t help the knicks at all to leak that info. And now a week after Marc Stein’s substack, the Knicks have yet to actually request permission.
If I had to guess – I think the Yahoo story is more true — it does not seem like a Leon Rose FO move to fire a good coach without already having the contingency plan in the bag ready to go. Maybe you wait few days so it looks better (meaning it’s not like the deal was getting done during the ECFs).
Anyway – I am hoping it is not Jason Kidd. But I don’t know enough about any of the less established candidates. Johnnie Bryant seems to be well-liked. Sure why not.
do not know why we should care what wemby does in his offseason
Next regular season’s gonna be a bunch of “you can’t expect them to adjust to a new coach right away and they have a new 8th man, let’s give them time to gel and blend with the new coach, Leon’s done a great job so far, I trust Leon.”
Blended with a bunch of, “These guys made the Eastern Conference Finals last year, they’ve proven that, I expect them to up their game in the playoffs.”
At this late date, AI could write the script.
Sly. RIP
Sometimes I’m right, I can be wrong.
My own beliefs are in my song.
A butcher, a banker, a drummer, and then
makes no difference what group I’m in.
I am everyday people! (yeah yeah)
There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one for living with the black one trying to be a skinny one
Different strokes, for different folks!
And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
We’ve got to live together!
I am no better, and neither are you.
We are the same whatever we do.
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then, you can’t figure out the bag I’m in.
I am everyday people! (yeah yeah)
There is a long hair who doesn’t like the short hair for being such a rich one that will not help the poor one.
Different strokes, for different folks!
And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
We got to live together!
There is a yellow one who won’t accept the black one who won’t accept the red one who won’t accept the white one.
Different strokes, for different folks!
And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
I am everyday people!
Everyday People
I mean, this season it did take them awhile to gel when the season started and then they won 51 games and made the ECF. What, exacly, is your point?
In terms of the record, it’s completely false that Leon inherited a crap situation. He inherited Julius Randle, RJ Barrett (*), all his 1s, two extra 1s (one top-10 protected), and a crapton of cap space.
And the ability to not have to concern himself with purgatory because his owner doesn’t give a shit if he’s stuck there.
After all that, to be five years in and at 51 wins and 9th in SRS … after having frontloaded things with five ones owed through 2031 … I mean … that’s barely above replacement level. (And to the extent it even is, it’s only so because Brunson has turned out to be way better than market expectations.)
I can’t really adjust my analysis for PTSD because I don’t have it and frankly don’t really understand it as a commonplace in pro sports — because it isn’t. I don’t have it with the Lions, either — the worst franchise in professional sports. They finally got things right after six decades, were up 27-10 at half in the 2023 NFC championship, the coach made some stupid risky calls in the second half, some lucky breaks went the 49ers way, they missed a chance for the Super Bowl, and the fanbase ripped him. No one said, “Oh, let’s be happy just being here.”
Similarly, last year they were the Superbowl favorite, the OC spent the game sniffing his own farts, called some stupid and showy gadget plays and they lost as a big favorite in the first round. The coaches got ripped and we’re now wondering about whether Goff can really get you there.
Things are obviously a zillion times better than winning one playoff game between 1957 and 2023 … but they’re still judged in 2023 and 2024 (and in the future) just as any other team would be judged.
(*) Don’t even bother.
This is literally the opposite of what happened. They were best at the beginning of the season and got steadily worse over time. They were first on offense in 2024 and like 10th in 2025.
The league’s strategies against the Knicks gelled. The Knicks ossified.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOH7uVtYjkM
RIP.
They struggled in November then did really well in December/beginning of January. Then they went to the ECF.
And everyone at the time thought Randle was a disaster signing by us.
And RJ Barrett sucks. He sucked even more after his rookie year. Like historically bad.
And yet they still won 10 playoff games and beat the defending champs. Other teams should be so lucky to “ossify” as much as we did.
89
Why do people constantly quote SRS like it means anything at all?
51 wins would have put them 3rd in the West too.
3 teams won over 60 games. The next highest win total was 52 and then us at 51. That makes us the 5h best team of the regular season.
We then went to the ECF after beating the defending champs.
No one hangs a banner for “Best SRS of the regular season”
They did really well against the dregs of the league. Then OKC figured out the wing on KAT strategy, our offense cratered, and the starters had a negative net rating the rest of the way.
Adjustments made by Thibs to counter this: None.
We made the ECF because Boston collapsed, and failed to compete once we got there.
Because it’s more meaningful than win totals, which can be skewed by weak competition.
We wouldn’t have won 51 games in that conference.
No it doesn’t. SRS > wins.
Know what else no one hangs a banner for?
-Winning 51 games
-Going to the ECF
-Beating the defending champs (or in our case, assisting in their suicide)
-Winning 10 playoff games
The above are much more influenced by luck/variance than SRS. Any of the top 6-7 teams in the west would have very likely done the same or better in our position.
Are you going to cry?
is that question for paglucci
I believe you are behind on a couple of posts counting my posts. Get back to work, Doogie!
IF you think Thibs did a bad job with this particular team it would seem to be possible for another coach to do a significantly better job.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a veteran player when asked why they signed with a particular team quote their SRS rating!
Sometimes this place is old Irish women gossiping over a fence. Other times it is the cod grasping with gaping mouths at their grisly husbands’ chunks of rotting herring being trolled out on the water.
more often the latter
Bondy is reporting that Kidd is open to discussing the Knicks coaching job
it does not matter if he is open to it if the mavericks are preventing him from doing so he is under contract with them currently
It’s about the same number of times as they talk about the number of playoff games they won
Actually no. Vets talk about how they could be the guy to help team x win it all, all the time and usually cite how far that team went in the playoffs the year before.
If I had to guess, they’re holding the coach announcement so as not to step on the Finals in the media
Jason Kidd is one of the most brilliant basketball minds ever. He has made some terrible mistakes in his personal life and has had some character issues but seems to have gotten those things straightened out. Still, I can certainly understand why some might be revolted by him.
Beyond that, is he really a difference-maker compared to Thibs? Hard to tell. My sense is that he’s not, but if that’s who Leon and Dolan go for, I’ll give him a grace period before passing judgment. I just don’t understand why we would sacrifice more draft capital to hire a non-elite coach with a somewhat checkered past.
dallas denied us permission to speak with him about our vacancy
I’ve got to say, Rose really seems to want a name coach. I wish he didn’t care so much.
As for SRS versus games won, our SRS was lower than our record because we had very few winning blowouts, but some notable games in the other direction against Cleveland, Boston and OKC. Since we didn’t have that sort of game in the playoffs, I think our winning record is representative of the team’s quality.
Pacers were 13th in SRS.
Seems like Dallas never went through with denying the Knicks permission
Shove this stupid SRS argument up your ass. For all your annoying fucking crybaby whining the team went to the conference finals and extended it to six games. I’d like to win a championship too but stop your stupid bitching and try to find something constructive to say for once.
It was a glorious five fucking minutes when your stupid fucking ass said you were quitting the blog. Why don’t you do us all a favor and quit, for good this time? I fucking guarantee that you would not be missed by a single person here. In fact I’m pretty sure everybody would be very pleased if you deleted your account and started annoying the fuck out of some other little corner of the internet.
Thanking you in advance for quitting this site permanently,
JKfucking47 🖕
Me: We were about the 9th best team in the league based on this widely accepted objective metric.
JK47: FUCK YOU FUCKING FUCK SHIT MOTHERFUCKER DIEEEEEE
Maybe take a step back and try to consider objectively which one of us here is making the blog worse.
As far as I can tell the Knicks have not formally requested permission to speak with Kidd. They have leaked that they’re going to, and Dallas has leaked that they will deny permission, and now Kidd is leaking that he’s interested.
Pacers were the 13th best team in the league based on Pags’ favorite objective metric.
Actually, JK’s occasional epic rants are one of the things I’m here for.
You, Pags, on the other hand, make me tired and a bit nauseous with your one-note shit that’s designed entirely and only to annoy the rest of us.
You don’t have to die. But yes, please go away.
I thought about it.
It’s you, cunt.
Eat shit.
Was that you, Raven? Admit it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt-pB1R64mI
Sorry Rough, pied crow. But easily could have been Pags, with the cats maybe Hubert and Z-Man.
Two cats enter, one cat leaves. Man.
If Leon takes all the draft capital he didn’t squander on Mikal Bridges and squanders it on Jason Kidd he’s dumber than I thought.
Mr. Juice Box strikes again.
94
The first third of the season hides the real relationship between us and the Pacers. I don’t have SRS splits so I’ll use Net rating which is very closely related:
Full season net rating:
Knicks +4.2
Pacers +2.2
Net rating since Jan 1 2025:
Knicks + 1.5
Pacers + 5.4
We have not been very good since the league figured out the starters on Jan 1. The Pacers have been extremely good since that time. This trend was highly predictive of how the playoffs would go.
The starters continued to be awful in the playoffs. The Pacers continued to be awesome. Our net rating for the playoffs was exactly 0.0. In the two series we won, our average MoV was 1.3 and 0.5, and that’s with Boston losing an All-NBA First Teamer for a third of the series.
It’s funny that you think this is some kind of great point because it only proves my thesis.
that was crazy rough, good find…
i used to mock my young un’s for their youtube viewership – there is nothing worthwhile to be seen there, boy was i wrong, case in point that belligerent bird…
just recently heard something about them having a tightly condensed nueral network – little brain, really smart creature…
Pags, you just completely shifted the goal posts. First you seemed to be saying the Knicks were worse than their record. And why? Because of SRS. Niw you seem to be saying the Pacers are actually good (which no one was arguing with), and concluding that therefore the Knicks are worse than their record even though there is no logical connection between how good the Pacers were and how good the Knicks were (during the regular season).
Its funny that you think all the bullshit you write actually makes great points when it’s all just a bunch of gibberish nonsense.
No one here is making points; they’re just bloviating ad nauseam in a futile attempt to forget about their insignificant temporality.
Guys… guys… please. Let’s put our differences aside and focus on what really matters: the Mets are the best team in baseball.
Pags would say based on the valuable metric called run differential the 2 best teams in baseball are the Cubs and Yankees.
There’s a lot of scientific research available on the intelligence level of the crow family (Corvidae), and much is available online. Sometimes I think it is higher than some of the Knicks decision makers. 😂😂😂
Pags would be wrong.
At the end of the day it was Dolan that made the final decision. It’s him that has to pay Thibs the 30 million. But from the interview with Brunson and Hart mid season, I think there’s almost no chance it was mostly his idea and Rose just went along. I think Dolan, Rose, World Wide Wes, Aller, Brunson and Thibs have been working by committee, but World Wide Wes has way more control over basketball decisions (who to trade for and who to draft) than any of us have been thinking. I think he’s the guy that wanted Thibs out and Dolan went along after hearing the players vent.
Regardless, imo it was correct to move on, but they should have had a plan A and B and C in place before doing it. It’s critical they get a coaching upgrade. So I just assumed they were smart enough to do that. Right now it doesn’t look like they had a Plan A, let alone plan B or C. Unless something is going on behind the scenes and the Knicks are being tight lipped (which I hope is the case), there’s at least some reason to be concerned.
i wonder if there is anyone outside the organization that dolan might be listening to…
Maybe Nico is dumb enough to trade AD for KAT…
I get that Street Clothes is oft injured, but if he could miraculously stay healthy for even one of the next three years, he gives you a better chance at winning a championship during the Brunson era than KAT does.
Probably a bad idea…not the trading KAT part, the AD part. But not the worst “hi risk, high reward” idea considering the team’s current hard ceiling.