The Knicks could not compete with a team that outscored them by 8 points over a six game series while they were being badly coached. Is that your argument?

My argument is that the Knicks were not a championship caliber team this year and I don’t think it was because of the coaching. They were, what, 0-16 against the top teams in the league or something? And nobody here seemed to even like the team that much up until game 4 of the eastern conference semi-finals. Every game it was “how are we gonna find a way to blow this?”, “here comes the inevitable collapse”, etc… They had a very good playoff run that transcended any reasonable expectation, and I believe it is bad business to fire a coach on such grounds. That is all.

A stretch 4 who can shoot and defend, who would slide OG down to the 3, Mikal to the 2, and Hart to the bench.

Bring back Crazy Eyes. He shoots, defends and rebounds. With healthy Mitch, it allows KAT to move from Center to PF depending on playoff matchup & pernamently moves Hart to the bench.

Do you know how many minutes we played a true 5-out lineup this season? NINETY in the regular season and ZERO in the playoffs.

I think most of us agree that if we played 5 out we have the potential for an elite offense.

There are a couple of problems with that.

1. We would need a replacement for Hart in the starting lineup. I’ve argued we should have used Deuce more to create a 5 out lineup, but that was an argument for this year and the payoffs and not as an ideal long term solution.

2. The Brunson/Towns combo almost guarantees a mediocre defense to go with that elite offense even if we figure out how to add a starting wing that shoots.

Well there are a whole lot of smart folks who think that they were clearly NOT good enough to beat the Pacers.

I don’t know how anyone can think that.

We lost 4-2 and were one of the flukiest shots you are ever going to see and an incredible 4th quarter shooting run away from winning game 1 and having a game 7 in MSG where we would have been the favorite by several points.

If you want to argue the Pacers defense has stepped it up a notch or with Thibs as coach we would deserve to be a underdog or that they are a better matchup against OKC than us, those are all reasonable positions. But we definitely had a chance to beat them with sub optimal coaching.

OKC offense is incredibly unimpressive.

I’ve been saying that for awhile.

What makes their offense good is their defense and ability to generate TOs. If you can keep your TOs down and slow them down a bit their offense will be less impressive.

I just had a thought- I would actually trade Anunoby for JJJ.

JJJ has been one of the players I’ve heard rumors they are interested in going back to last year, but coming up with trade has been an issue.

‪@theathletic.bsky.social‬
JUST IN: Kevin Durant has two preferred trade destinations, league sources tell The Athletic.

◽️ San Antonio Spurs
◽️ Houston Rockets

I don’t think the firing was insane it was just too late.

Yeah, I think that’s fair, in the sense that, if you were ever going to fire Thibs despite him plainly succeeding here, then why not last year? In other words, if Thibs’ performance wasn’t the issue, then how did we even get here?