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78 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.07.08)”
SL Roster:
https://xcancel.com/nyknicks/status/1942280348433297747
Nobody I know other than the obvious plus Marjon Beauchamp and Anton Watson who ended the year for us on 2-ways.
Just want to comment on Knicks Fan’s point last night:
“He will have to be pretty good to get minutes.”
I’m just taking a moment to appreciate that this is a pretty nice place to find ourselves…
indeed it is a nice change to place in which to find ourselves hopefully we use the embarrassment of riches wisely
The more I look into the Jordan Clarkson move, the more I am intrigued by it. If he is fully healthy, he gives us the best Brunson insurance we’ve had since he got here. I don’t think some folks here appreciate just how skilled he is with the ball.
Jeremy Cohen on KFS did a deep dive into his stats on a recent podcast, and the general takeaway was that he was incredible at certain things in an environment that was ill-suited to complement his game. I believe TNFH posted a few of those stats, and they convinced me that we might have stumbled onto one of the premier bench players in the NBA, again, assuming full health and commitment to playing winning basketball (something he couldn’t do at all for the last 3 years in Utah.)
My expectation is that he will play at least as well as Derrick Rose did in 2020-21. Most here groaned about reacquiring him, yet it wasn’t long before he won everyone over, specifically because he did all the things that Clarkson is probably even better at. After he came over from DET, his TS% was a mere .565 on a 24.3% usage, yet it could be argued that he was our most important player off the bench just by virtue of being able to break down opposing defenses off the dribble. I’m optimistic that Clarkson will be even better in that role.
When Jeremy and I attended Hebrew school on the Upper West Side together they taught us the intriguing Jordan Clarkson stats
cool!
Z-Man, I hope you’re right — I can definitely squint and see that version of Jordan Clarkson. I can also turn my head just so and see a combination of Elf and DSJ that turns us all apoplectic and destroys many a big screen with thrown sneakers.
It’s one of about 20 fascinating narratives coming into this season. Along with ‘Can Brown turn the Knicks into the good version of the Kings on offense’ (see Macri today), ‘Will Kolek (and Huk) get some run,’ ‘Is Yabu the best version of Precious,’ and ‘What version of Bridges will show up.’ Y’all can add your own.
“It’s one of about 20 fascinating narratives coming into this season.”
Another side benefit of replacing Thibs, as his predictability stifled a lot of potential narratives. Really looking forward to Brown’s presser today.
The biggest improvement could be Contract-Year Bridges
I think Josh Hart would be a better Drebin jr. than Liam Neeson.
Someone posted an article (I think) about what they want out of summer league, and it’s basically “can Kolek, Dadiet, and Huk actually show they can do something?” Which we might have a decent answer to if we had a coach that gave them playing time during the season. Hence why I posted the stats about their relative lack of playing time to players drafted after than them.
Thibs’ scorched earth strategy is fine as long as the team wins. But when they don’t, you have to ask the question “what if we tried something different?” or “what if we gave that guy more minutes?” I’m dying to know if these three can contribute, even in a limited role. I’m dying to know if a 5-out offense can work (for long or short stretches.) I’m fine with being shown that Thibs was 100% right in barely playing them or trying different things. I don’t like the not knowing.
Clarkson is great I guess. We will see. Love the end of bench guys (kinda).
But really I want to know what KAT can do. I want to see him shooting ten threes per game.and devastating people in the pnr. I want to see him and Brunson at their best together.
Very excited for Taylor Fritz. Great to make Wimbledon semis.
I’m really concerned that Brown won’t start Mitch and move Hart to the bench. Mitch lineup is a proven net positive because of what it does for OG and Mikal. He also helps JB with spacing with his vertical threat and offensive rebounding. Guarding Josh Hart with a center has hurt the offense since the OKC game and Thibs ignored it all season.
Hart would clearly be one of the best bench players in the eastern conference. Limit him to 28-30 minutes and he looks even better.
Hart + Clarkson + Yabu + Deuce with one starter (KAT or Mikal) will consistently outscore opposing benches by a large margin during this ~ 15 minute span.
Mitch starting is the first domino that breaks into other good decisions and leads to inevitable roster optimization. Bench him and you create your own problems.
damn i was not previously worried about mitch not starting but now i am
The thing is, Jordan Clarkson is not a scrub. He’s not a star, but if healthy he is very legitimately capable of being a 6MoY candidate. He played big minutes on three very good Utah Jazz teams, including playing pretty well for them in the playoffs (and out-playing Spida by a wide margin in his last playoff appearance.)
It’s kind of insulting to him to compare him to any of the following guys:
Cam Payne: certified scrub
Landry Shamet: certified scrub
Elfrid Payton: certified scrub
Dennis Smith Jr.: certified scrub
There is truly no comparison between him and those guys, especially given that he’s earning the vet’s minimum (Payton was paid $8M and $5.7M in his two years here.) He should be compared to similar players in similar roles, like 2020-21 Rose ($7.7M AAV), 2017-19 Lou Williams ($7-8M AAV), 2013-2016 Jamal Crawford ($5.2-5.5M AAV).
Clarkson might not wind up playing as well as those guys did at his age, but at least he is theoretically capable of it. Finding guys with that capability at the vet’s minimum who aren’t either coming off career-threatening injury, or head cases, or physically washed, is very, very difficult. Finding scrubs like the ones listed above is incredibly easy.
I don’t have super strong feelings about the starting lineup because I think there are viable counters to putting a wing on KAT that for whatever reason we just didn’t try under Thibs. The main thing that comes to mind is KAT simply shooting over guys from 3–Brown’s record with the Kings makes me optimistic he might be open to really getting on KAT about doing that.
If it continues not to work, we can always pivot to Mitch (or Deuce or Yabu for that matter, hopefully we’re actually gathering data on all of these lineups throughout the season). I do agree that Hart seems well-suited to being an energy bolt sixth man in the McConnell mold, but we’ve benefitted from that level of energy from the opening tip too. I’ll initially defer to Brown, but then watch closely.
I’m also optimistic about Clarkson, he’s guaranteed to cause me at least one apoplexy per game but I can live with that for adequate shot creation off the bench that comes that cheap.
i hope that we all end up loving mike brown it would be crazy fun if we all for the most part at least really enjoyed our coachs methods and substitution patterns no coach is perfect of course but it would be nice to be a little bit closer to it and i think we will be
“I don’t like the not knowing.”
To be fair to Thibs, while not liking the “not knowing” is justified, I saw enough of these guys to believe that his decisions regarding PT for these players were also justified, even if one thinks they were overly-conservative. I believe that Kolek and Dadiet showed that they were both way too over their heads to be trusted with anything but token minutes on a team with the aspirations the Knicks had last year.
And to be fair, Huk was on the verge of more playing time when he hurt his knee, and would have easily played 400+ minutes if not for the injury, which would have been more than a lot of guys drafted before him. I agree that he probably should have played more early on when Precious and Mitch were both unavailable, but getting a good, hard look at Sims was also important.
Dadiet was the 4th youngest player drafted, and just turned 19 before the season started. The only guy younger than him who played more was Salaun, who went #6 and he played for the tanking Hornets, and frankly looked far more ready than Dadiet. As to others in his age group, Bub Carrington played tons of minutes for the terrible Wizards (-4.6 BPM). Risacher, Sarr, Castle, and Holland were all top-5 picks, so one would expect that they play more. Buzelis was at 11 and played 1500 minutes for the shitty Bulls…I doubt that he would have played as much on better teams. The most prominent guy on the list who played for a good team was Furphy, but 73 of his 379 minutes came in the last 2 meaningless games and a bunch of other minutes came in blowouts…the vast majority was garbage time where I don’t think very much was learned. Do Pacers fans know more about Furphy than Knicks fans know about Dadiet? YMMV.
I should also mention that in 2023-24, Mike Brown had 34th pick Colby Jones on the roster and played him 192 minutes, fewer than Kolek and Hukporti.
So in the interest of Scrubs Unlimited, I wasted a half hour collecting their data. All data is career (Elf was -6.4 last year in BPM!). I added Brunson just as a fun fact check. Some stuff, like TOV%, is at least partly predicated on role, but still interesting. Draw your own conclusions, many can be made.
Clarkson: FG%: .436; 3P%: .336; eFG: 50.4; TS%: 539; TOV%: 13.4; BPM: -0.9
Shamet: FG%: .413; 3P%: .385; eFG%: 54.7; TS%: .574; TOV%: 8.4; BPM: -2.0
Payne: FG%: .419; 3P%: .368; eFG%: 50.1; TS%: .525; TOV%: 13; BPM: -0.6
Payton: FG%: .444; 3P%: .286; eFG%: 46.4; TS%: .486; TOV%: 17.8; BPM: -1.1
Smith Jr: FG%: .407; 3P%: .298; eFG%: 45.2; TS%: .479; TOV%: 16.1; BPM: -2.1
Brunson: FG%: .489; 3P%: .389; eFG%: 54.7; TS%: .591; TOV%: 10.5; BPM: +2.3
It just occurred to me that the Knicks will probably win the division for the first time since 2012-13! That’s at least a step in the right direction!
“ I’m really concerned that Brown won’t…”
Let Brown marinate and cook for 20 games.
lets not do the 20 games thing again it sounds too much like what we did last season and we all ended up disappointed that nothing changed after that time period lets try to get away from anything that is like last year this is a new regime and we should be excited to do most things differently
Raven, I don’t think “career” data means much at all in the context of player comparisons as to current value, especially when role and usage are considered.
I wonder if there’s some way we could pick up Kai Jones, who seems to have maybe turned a corner with Dallas last year. He would fit a need at center and could give us another young project for the post-Brunson years. And I think a coach like Brown would be good for him. That said, he’ll probably get an offer above the minimum from a team like Washington/Brooklyn.
Most people thought Dadiet would be a stash. It’s fine to not give him minutes right now, but he should be playing every g-league game.
Kolek is weird because the FO showed so much faith in him by giving him 4 years and the vet minimum rather than the rookie minimum.
Huk got injured almost immediately after the Sims trade.
If Clarkson still has the offensive juice, I’ll like him. I’m just not convinced he does. Either way, his defense is a big negative.
Well yes and no, Z-Man. You yourself pointed out that an argument can be made that Clarkson’s situation the last couple of years is less than optimal. So yes, career info is (as geo would now say) YMMV, but there’s fun things to note anyway.
Such as, holy shit was our DSJ/Elf point guard period blindingly horrible. Or is Shamet kind of good or kind of bad (answer: yes). Or Jalen Brunson is kind of quite good. Or despite all the driving into traffic, Jalen’s TOV% is way less than Jordan’s.
“If Clarkson still has the offensive juice, I’ll like him. I’m just not convinced he does. Either way, his defense is a big negative.”
I think we all can agree that a) his defense is a negative no matter what and b) how much we like or dislike him will depend on his play. But all we have to go on for now is his contract vs. his potential to help, which is hard to not like.
In a way, it seems analagous to hiring Mike Brown. It’s a calculated upside play when the possibilities for dramatically improving the team are limited.
“Or despite all the driving into traffic, Jalen’s TOV% is way less than Jordan’s.”
Well I will grant you that there is very little likelihood that Clarkson is as good as Brunson in pretty much any regard…but considering that Brunson is a top 5-10 offensive player in the NBA, whilc Clarkson is a vet’s minimum flyer, that’s okay!
I should point out that when Clarkson last played a huge role for a playoff team, his TOV%s were 9.2, 9.2 and 9.8, respectively. Does he still have that in him? We’ll see! (caveat: of course, you commit fewer to’s when you pass a lot less, so there’s that!)
Banners baby!😛
Mine is that I don’t understand BPM. How can Shamet’s numbers be so much better and his BPM still be so low? Are the other guards rebounding a lot or something??
Also, to reiterate, I think Shamet would be a fine addition if we go for a wing over a big or PG.
It’s easy not to like if you look at his age and know that his offense needs to be impeccable to overcome the negative value of his defense. It won’t take much slippage for him to be a worse value than Payne, and he’s arguably already slipped below that threshold.
He’s the only non-passer and he probably has the lowest usage by a wide margin.
Yes, he’s also the worst rebounder. Payton is the only really good rebounder though.
So either the coach is correct and the Knicks FO screwed up the draft, or the coach was incorrect in his assessment or unable to get decent production from these players. While you may be confident in your opinion, I’m going to defer to the next coach.
And to add to this datapoint, somehow Indiana played Toppin more total minutes in 2 years than Thibs did in 3, and got more production out of him. +1.5 PER, +70% TS%, +75% eFG%, etc.
“It’s easy not to like if you look at his age and know that his offense needs to be impeccable to overcome the negative value of his defense. It won’t take much slippage for him to be a worse value than Payne, and he’s arguably already slipped below that threshold.”
I disagree with the assumptions underlying this statement. Not sure how well Clarkson has to perform to be better than either Cam or Shamet would have, but feel pretty confident that he will wind up helping the team a lot more than either of those two, especially if one of Brunson, Deuce, or Mikal have to miss time. I honestly don’t know how bad his defense is, but saw enough of both Payne and Shamet to want to find out. I would not be surprised at all if he gets back in the 6MoY conversation. This is literally the perfect situation for him. Naturally, he might wind up being diminished and unplayable, or even on that crappy level that Payne and Shamet were on, but the upside is dramatically higher.
Assuming you guys saw the new NBA scoring rule change – any shot attempt from beyond 36 feet from the basket (beyond the center circle extended) within three seconds from the end of a quarter will not count against the individual player’s shooting statistics, only the team’s field goal percentage.
If you needed any more reasons to be in awe of Jokic, his 3 point shooting % last season would have been 44% if you took away his 22 heaves (2 makes)
(and FWIW our very own Mikal Bridges was second in heaves with 12 and made 0)
just to be fair thibs had toppin in his rookie and years 2-3 seasons while carlisle had him in years 4-5 one would expect him to be at least a little bit more seasoned later on just sayin’ but your overall point is fair
“So either the coach is correct and the Knicks FO screwed up the draft…”
…which is certainly possible, since neither guy looks all that promising. There were a number of players on the board who KB’s more draft savvy posters would have taken over Dadiet, and Kolek came with serious concerns about his lack of athleticism….
“…or the coach was incorrect in his assessment or unable to get decent production from these players.”
…Is I pointed out, the analagous players on analagous teams whose coaches got decent production from (and not just played them more minutes) are not really a thing. I gave the example of Furphy on IND…what did Rick Carlisle get out of him.
“…somehow Indiana played Toppin more total minutes in 2 years than Thibs did in 3, and got more production out of him. +1.5 PER, +70% TS%, +75% eFG%, etc.”
It’s apples to oranges. If your argument is that Carlisle is a better coach than Thibs when it comes to using young players, of course! But we’re talking rookies here. OTOH, Thibs played 19yo RJ a ton, played rookie and sophomore Obi a bunch (and his soph stats were actually very similar except for 3pt shooting, which Thibs encouraged him to develop), played IQ 1200+ minutes as a rookie, played Grimes 700+ minutes as a rookie and over 2,000 as a soph…and all of them became pretty good players as they hit their primes. Yet he had a short leash with Knox, Frank, and Reddish…and they wound up being hot garbage.
Also re Toppin, I can’t think of a better system for Obi than the Pacers and their run-all-the-time game. He’s not bad but is fairly one-dimensional, and that dimension was a perfect fit. Say what you want, but Brunson and Haliburton are about as different as two good point guards can be.
Reading about the Kings and their constant ball motion and hard running the floor after both misses and makes, I’m both excited to see what Brown can do and also mystified by how he might do it. Yet another reason I’m really glad I’m not an NBA coach.
Don’t really care about rebounding from my 2, but the passing isn’t a great sign. Still think he’s a decent vet min, though better options (currently) exist.
Then it’s not apples to oranges. Thibs can’t or won’t use his roster to its fullest extent.
Additionally you could point out Thibs didn’t really play IQ commensurate to his talent in his first two seasons, and gave minutes to guys like Alec Burks. Or how Thibs thought Fournier was worthy of ~30MPG in 80 starts one season, and then almost nothing the year after.
I want a coach that can recognize and extract talent out of all their players, or at least have the potential to. I think Thibs is a great coach, but I also think he isn’t able to use all the players/options at his disposal, which is a weakness.
Mike, I largely agree but some things aren’t as clear as you are making them out to be.
Take Evan Fournier, for example. He had a strong offensive season in 2021-22. He then played horrifically for over a month to start the 2022-23 season and Thibs benched him. He got a chance to play later in the season and continued to be awful. Then he was traded to Detroit as salary filler and continued to be awful there. He is now out of the NBA. Was it Thibs’ fault that he fell off of a cliff?
As to IQ, he played 1,800 minutes as a 22yo 6th man and had a 96 TS+, compared to 2300 minutes to Alec Burks who had a 99 TS+. In most ways their statistical profile was very similar, with Burks having the edge, especially in the all-important 3pt shooting. You can quibble with the decision-making but it was hardly an obvious blunder. If anything, the blame for that season goes to Leon for bringing back guys like Rose and Burks and acquiring Fournier and Kemba. Thibs probably had a hand in that shitty decision-making, and probably coddled RJ and Randle too much, so he’s hardly blame-free for that shitty season, but his misuse of IQ, Obi, etc. is low on the list of grievances from that season.
I’m with you on the need for a change, and hope that the new guy does lots of things different from the old guy, including utilizing the roster more effectively, or at least in a more aesthetically pleasing way. I’d also like to see a more uptempo version of offense, even if it doesn’t necessarily translate to more success. And no bellowing!
Therapy is not self-harm
Therapy is not self-harm
Therapy is not self-harm
Therapy is not self-harm
Therapy is not self-harm
kind of like old bart simpson, i feel like I gotta write that on the board a thousand times…who know maybe the notion will actually stick with me, cuz it sure does feel fucking painful…
one of the bigger quality of life upgrades in recent memory was going from weekly therapy to going every other week…the sessions would fuck up my mind/body the day before, day of, and sometimes day after…it’s funny, felt like years since I last went, only been about a year though…
it’s funny, noticed my therapist is a lot like my friend and mom – an over achieving woman…
less hung up these days on things being totally right, just need to make them better…
As to the apples vs. oranges thing, I was differentiating between using rookies vs. using other young players. You cites stats about rookies utilization in 2024-25 only. On that specific point about Thibs, I didn’t see anything to quibble with there.
The second week of July is always peak Jordan Clarkson Intrigue season, just try to stay hydrated and be home by the end of summer league.
“it’s funny, noticed my therapist is a lot like my friend and mom – an over achieving woman…”
Just don’t go all Tony Soprano on her…
Hey, our new coach held a press conference! Maybe there was some news from it?
Isn’t the not playing the non-blue chip rookies a lot of minutes outweighed by the career years that his cornerstone players routinely give him? Brunson, Randle, Rose, Noah off the top of my head. All guys that delivered all-nba seasons for Thibs and only Thibs.
Was it Thibs in a Mike Brown mask?
“Isn’t the not playing the non-blue chip rookies a lot of minutes outweighed by the career years that his cornerstone players routinely give him? Brunson, Randle, Rose, Noah off the top of my head. All guys that delivered all-nba seasons for Thibs and only Thibs.”
I guess there has to be some reason why Thibs’ detractors think “he’s a great coach” before the “but” part kicks in…this one is as good as any.
I don’t have time to read through all the Thibs comments.
I think Thibs was a very good coach. I think he identified the players to give minutes to well and developed the young players with talent well.
IMO, where he missed the mark (at least for me) was in the lineup combinations.
He played Quickley a lot, but he more or less refused to play Quickley with Brunson more even though basketball wise it seemed like an interesting combo and the data suggested it was a good pairing.
He played Toppin a lot, but he refused to experiment and play much faster with Randle and Toppin against certain lineups.
He played Deuce a lot, but he rarely played Deuce instead of Hart as a 5 out lineup even though the data suggested almost everything with Deuce was better and 5 out lineups looked really good for Towns.
I’m not even saying any or all of those would have worked better than what he did, but there were very good reasons to at least try it and he didn’t.
Edwards breaking down the Brown presser:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6476058/2025/07/08/mike-brown-knicks-head-coach/?source=emp_shared_article
Thibs didn’t play the kids much, but when he did, they were ready for it. If you can do that, then there isn’t much difference between playing and not playing them early on.
Unlike the vets, Thibs supposedly held practices with the younger players.
fake news.
Peak Strat
ha z-man, they are all also well educated and teetotalers…I’m fucked up enough for all – i need sober people around me…
it’s taken some time, but I can mostly now answer the question: what’s wrong with me?
severe social anxiety with a large dose of paranoia, risk aversion, and fairly frequent bouts of mania…
a good thing from all this head shrinking bullshit – i can kind of cross anger management issues off the list…
i don’t know how toxic it was to me, maybe a little, maybe a lot…
way way toxic to the people around me, who i need to be as healthy as possible…
you know, to ultimately make my life easier and definitely better…work in progress…
tried soooo hard not to let the thought:
Daddy’s Home
settle in too deep…it is good though to see you kicking in – other than you know, all the other shit you’re already doing 😊
My point there was that I might be repeating a bunch of things that were already said. It was those lineup issues that made me lose faith in Thibs.
i am going to assume with approximately 95 percent certainty that the rick brunson role change was already run by and accepted by our star player who took a massive pay haircut to stay with us just as i assume the mike brown hire was run by him
Good news on the Brunson front. Aside from him generally seeming like a bad guy, the optics on having him in such a prominent position stunk.
I hope Brown gets one of his main targets for that associate head coach role.
can’t rick brunson get another job…just kidding, maybe as a scout…
Maybe when Thibs gets hired somewhere else
Why is Brunson a bad guy now?
It was actually the 41.1% from 3 on 3.5 attempts per 36 mins that made him so important.
If Jordan Clarkson shoots 41% from 3 next year then yes this will be a great move.
Geo, If I can go back 35 years and take the prescriptions my therapist scripted my way I’d probably be a put together shite. I kinda like what I do. That being said, exploring self medicating and mind altering experiences while also being an angry queerdo in late nineties ny club scene as a build your family exercise might have limited me… I like my doctors and pharmacists. I wish one of them had something for being a Knick fan… I hear Ibogane is a wild ride. We’re gonna be punchers again this year.
It would be cool if one of these kids the Wizards are loading up on takes a leap this year and leads them to the 9th pick
“It was actually the 41.1% from 3 on 3.5 attempts per 36 mins that made him so important.”
Derrick Rose hit 37 3’s in 35 games for us after coming over in 2020-21, a .211 3PAr. That certainly helped, but I would argue that the 80% of his shots that weren’t 3’s and his ability to break down defenses and get to the rim were far more important.
The larger point is that you don’t have to have a high TS% to make the team much better coming off the bench. It Clarkson gets to a .565 TS%, it won’t matter much how he does it, he will be a huge positive for us.
Rick, not Jalen. Jalen’s good as far as we know.
Is Brown quotable?
Would make me like him more if he had some folksy expressions like “we aren’t going to kick playing hard nosed defense to the curb” or “missing above the break threes is a big part of what we do around here”
it would make me like him less if he had some folksy expressions i do not want ted lasso as our coach if we wanted that we should have hired nori instead
yay mets
That was a nice win, glad I didn’t give up on the game.
‘Clippers likely to sign Beal if Suns buy out contract.”
Are the Clips like the aging all-star garbage dump for the NBA? I feel like they just need Ben Simmons to complete things.
Whether Beal is worth it depends on how much the Clippers have to pay him. I read an article that there is some reason the Suns aren’t allowed to buy him out for the full value if his contract. It has to be $13M less. So then if the Clippers pay less than that Beale takes a haircut. I’m not sure he’ll do that and I’m also not sure he is worth that much to the Clippers.
I find the pro-Clarkson arguments here to be pretty persuasive. He’s not a high efficiency player but he’s not brutally inefficient (95 TS+) despite a high usage and low assisted basket rate. He gives us a dimension we didn’t have with Payne and should be considered an upgrade. Nice pickup on the vet min. I’m sold.