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27 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.08.09)”
I have vague memories of Chris Jent as a player. No idea if he’ll be enough of an offensive mind to help iron out our problems on that end. But at least we made the hire.
So all that’s left to look forward to prior to training camp, barring the totally unforeseen, is who’s gonna take those last two roster spots.
I don’t mind that it took a while to fill out the coaching staff. The. Knicks under Brown seem to want the best assistants possible, while Thibideau seemed to do so much himself he hired different sorts of assistant coaches.
I can’t see how getting someone that was basically our 4th choice to be in charge of the offense is a positive development.
We needed a change, but this entire coaching search has been a bit of a shit show. I have no confidence we upgraded anything. We should have gone with Jenkins or Borrego.
Strat, I have no idea why you would think that, what is so special about either of those guys compared to Brown? Seems like they did lots of due diligence and there’s no reason to believe that there would have been better assistants available if either of those guys were hired. What do you specifically have against Brown or the process that would have caught your attention if it weren’t the Knicks?
not the biggest jaylen brown fan, but the numbers should howl a bit this year:
24-25 pts per 100, TS, ast/100
ant: 37.4, 59.5%, 6.2
tatum: 36.9, 58.2%, 8.2
booker: 34.0, 58.9%, 9.4
mitchell: 36.7, 57.5%, 7.6
last 3 years brown with tatum off in 2290 mins:
38.7, 57.6%, 7.3
So..with Jent signing on, is the coaching staff finalized? I can’t seem to find any real confirmation that Brendan O’Connor is officially on board.
That being said, I hope O’Connor and Jent have the room to move their respective sides around as they wish. I’m kinda anxious to see what they cook up. I imagine alot of experimentation will be happening early, and hopefully with the roster essentially being finalized, they’ll have enough time to build their schemes the way they want to around the players. I’m especially excited to see what O’Connor can do with Mitch, OG, Deuce, and Bridges. As far as Jent goes, he has plenty of offensive talent to work with. Not many teams have the individual offensive talent we have. Hopefully he can use it better than Thibs did
More generally, I feel pretty strongly that the coaching search is being overly scrutinized because it’s the Knicks. They did the right thing by firing Thibs immediately. They checked in on current coach and were denied permission. No big deal. They interviewed a bunch of candidates of different ilks. Seems logical. They picked a guy with a decent reputation and track record. Fine. They checked into and interviewed a bunch of assistants and were turned down by first choices before settling on a couple of guys with good reputations and experience. Also fine. The process took a couple of months and is finished well before training camp. Cool.
Where’s the shitshow? Don’t see it, not even a little bit.
Kind of agree with you, Z-Man. I do wish we had Carlisle and his ‘random’ offense, although of course we don’t have Kidd (or Hali). Maybe someone can send that interview to Jent. Maybe Jent can help Jalen take the next step in his evolution.
Or, you know, maybe we can just do a bit less iso.
People putting Boston at 12th in the East is crazy to me. KP is gone, but because of his minutes wasn’t a huge contributor to wins, Jrue is better than Simons, but not tremendously, Tatum is out for the year, but wasn’t the entire offense. It matters if they can get Horford back, but they’re still decent either way. Not top 6, but Pacers, Raptors, Heat, Bulls aren’t all better than them. I agree that Brown is likely to have a huge year.
I’m with pt on Jaylen Brown, beyond the stats I always felt he was a big intangibles guy…not worth $300M but a very strong 2-way player.
If he can get his knee right, I could see him having a monster season.
I feel like Brown has had multiple chances with multiple teams, multiple stars, multiple styles of play and multiple amounts of pressure. He’s a good coach, but not one of those guys that moves a team up.
I think we needed someone that was younger or more likely to be very creative and out of the box in order to take a big step up with this team because there’s not much internal upside from last year.
That’s why I was more interested in guys like Jenkins, maybe Borrego or even Micah Nori sounded interesting. I wanted to take a bigger risk.
I don’t dislike Brown, but once we made that decision I was hoping we added coaches like that to the assistant staff. But if feels like we are missing out on everyone we actually wanted and bringing in people further down the pecking order. It feels like a retread coaching staff.
He may score more pointz but his efficiency is going to go way down. He’s going to see constant double teams and without Horford and KP spacing the floor and the defense shading toward Tatum, his forays into the paint are going to be much more difficult.
Jim Brown scored his season high number of touchdowns in his final year while winning MVP. He retired at his peak to act in Burt Reynolds movies.
Legend
The whole coaching search seems strange—not a shitshow but some other agenda is at play. Leon runs a tight ship and when stuff happens , the press is caught flat-footed. As recently as this year’s draft. Last year when Johnnie Bryant left, Brunson got his job, and Mo Cheeks was hired, not one peep beforehand. Was Mo the 4th choice?—who cared. The explanation that Leon the agent wants to get coaches paid does not pass muster because the press knowing is irrelevant. Why now the transparency?
Not a big deal, but my Knickiness antennae, semi dormant, remain.
My two cents.
There has always been extra coverage on the Knicks bc they’re nyc and the Knicks but we had so many years of lol Knicks that Leon had a grace period where all his moves were surprisingly good and he was able to kind of operate with an element of surprise but now we’re legit contenders and that’s over. The expectation is championship now so the element of surprise and maybe relaxed scrutiny bc “hey this guy is making the Knicks respectable again!” Is gone.
The Celtics defense is going to be ass
If I were Mazz and was concerned about defense, I would try starting:
PG White
SG: Simons
SF: Brown
PF: Boucher
C: Queta
And then experiment with the following guys to come up with a 4-5 person bench:
Prichard
Hauser
Scheierman
Tillman
Gonzalez
Garza
Walsh
That has the makings of a reasonably competitive team, and if Tatum is back by April, which is entirely possible, they would not be a fun first round matchup.
Part of the reason I think that is because I like the potential of Queta, Boucher, and Simons more that many folks do, and I think that the Celts have a very tight organization and serious fan base that will bring out the best in those guys.
I will find it ironic if KD is on a lower salary than Jimmy Butler next season. He clearly could have gotten a two year extension if he had taken a trade to GSW last trade deadline.
I don’t hate that Celtic lineup on paper. They have Niang, too, who can shoot and probably play All Defensive level D against the Knicks 5 games out of 82.
Also, according to the Tom Tom Club James Brown still is the godfather of soul, y’all, so check this out.
Even if Tatum is back by April he’s not going to be the Tatum he was before the injury any time this season. To go from a year off of surgery and rehab to playoff basketball, he will look awful. I would not expect Tatum to be Tatum again until like decemberish of 2026. You can’t lay off that long from competitive ball and immediately come back to your old self
That being said I don’t expect the Celtics to be bad. I actually think they have a reasonable shot as a play in team and can probably end up as a low seed playoff team. Brown is a two way all star, white is quite good and they still have some decent role players. Plus they got a system that works for them.
DW, Niang was traded for salary relief.
“Even if Tatum is back by April he’s not going to be the Tatum he was before the injury any time this season. To go from a year off of surgery and rehab to playoff basketball, he will look awful. I would not expect Tatum to be Tatum again until like decemberish of 2026. You can’t lay off that long from competitive ball and immediately come back to your old self”
My understanding is that recovery time from achilles surgery is 9-12 months. It’s a big if, but according to reports he’s already ahead of schedule.
Aha, yes, I missed that Niang had been rerouted. (Boston should hang on to their Jimmer Award winners, they come in handy against the Knicks)
“Aha, yes, I missed that Niang had been rerouted. (Boston should hang on to their Jimmer Award winners, they come in handy against the Knicks)”
Why not sign OAKAAK Jimmer himself? He’s only 36…