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19 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.
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