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.

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

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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