09/16/2025 11:00:02
09/16/2025 09:55:45
09/16/2025 08:26:06
09/16/2025 06:27:32
09/16/2025 06:37:04
09/16/2025 03:47:45
09/16/2025 02:51:51
09/16/2025 02:54:03
09/16/2025 02:19:00
09/16/2025 01:10:00
09/16/2025 01:20:42
09/16/2025 01:27:00
09/16/2025 00:43:00
09/16/2025 01:03:00
09/16/2025 00:04:55
09/15/2025 23:44:00
09/15/2025 22:54:36
09/15/2025 22:56:02
09/15/2025 22:51:00
92 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.09.16)”
Media Day is 9/23, Training camp opens 9/24, can’t come soon enough!
So, some news: https://alansepinwall.ghost.io/dont-stop-believing/
Ah shit, Alan, sorry to hear. Had that happen to me a few years back, turned out to be the very best thing that’s happened, but it was still a tremendous shock to all systems for a while. Very much hope you end up in a much happier place, as have I.
Yeah, Alan, sorry for this development, I’m sure it is a heavy load. Hope all works out well as you shift focus to other opportunities!
10/2 First Game of the NBA Preseason: Knicks vs. Sixers in Abu Dhabi.
Sending good wishes, Alan.
Relying on legacy media to provide a stable base is a tough proposition. Alan, you have incredibly loyal readers. We are all pulling for you.
I will subscribe to get behind the paywall, but I will skip over all the TV stuff. You talk about music, food, and Bennedict Mathurin over there too, right?
Sorry to hear it Alan!
It’s actually, like, 87% Mathruin at this point, Donnie.
EDIT: I was going to fix the typo, but “mathruin” actually feels like a good term to use on an analytics-driven blog where so many of us are bad at math.
Sorry Alan, but you’re as strong a candidate as any to succeed via the independent newsletter route. Who knows, you might even find it freeing, and maybe even more remunerative!
That really sucks, Alan, sorry to hear that. Hoping the best for you.
Also, Dennis Smith Jr. becoming a defensive ace is not something I ever expected, given his T-Rex arms.
Best of luck, I really feel for you. Your writing is great, you should do ok
Sorry to hear, Alan. Things are looking grim for the industry, but most other industries are following suit if that makes you feel any better. We’ll all be working in the slave mines soon enough.
And hey, on the bright side, at least you weren’t publicly singled out for harassment by Trump’s yappy guard puppy like some writers!
Damn Alan, so sorry to hear that. Hope you’re able to navigate through this to a better place.
Oof. Sorry to hear, Alan. Will still be happy to read you at your newsletter and in your books.
besides being a travesty, that sucks alan. it’s very unlucky to be trapped in this long moment of a broken economic pipeline for written content. the world has still not figured out how to organize itself to route economies between the writers who obviously still have requisite underlying demand and scarcity and their potential consumer surpluses. the options for most writers still seem to be clinging to a flailing publication or capturing only the portion of the audience willing to pay a la carte prices (or clumsily tier them).
i haven’t really understood why a streamlined bundling solution hasn’t emerged that allows readers to pay for groups of writers at lower implicit individual prices, permitting the writers to benefit from price discrimination. technology makes it fairly easy to price these bundles far more meritocratically and flexibly than the old fiat method used by magazines and cable companies. ideas like medium and the everything bundle (now “Every”) on substack are really just old school blind-bundling in disguise. it seems intuitive to me that there is a ton of latent demand for “pick ten writers and pay X price” and also that the technology to reasonably price the individual writers as bundle components is doable.
I agree that it would probably be a mistake, but I’m less certain it will be Mitch that gets traded if things aren’t working in his pairing with Towns and the Towns/Brunson matchup is still giving us issues.
If that pairing is not working, how do you fix it if not with a player like Mitch taking the role of Gobert?
The only other possibility may be trading Towns.
I’ve always been a Mitch fan, but with a limitation on my enthusiam due to the makeup of our team. But he keeps growing on me. If we do trade him, I’m not going to be happy. So it better be for someome good.
Sorry to hear that Alan. You are a bright guy and very good writer. I’m certain the best is ahead for you.
This may be an oversimplification, but can Mike Brown and Co get the team to perform a minimum of 2 points better on offense and 2 points better on defense? I REALLY like the assistants we have hired, and I think with the individual talents we have who can take over games as needed(Brunson, KAT, OG,Bridges, Clarkson, and even Hart in his own way)- that it would be enough for the team to be elite this season. I’d much rather for the team to give up less than 110ppg, but we don’t quite have enough high level defenders to do that.
This is not an area I’ve given even a minute’s thought to, but I like this idea. There are a few people I’d like to read regularly that I dont pay for now that I might spring for in a deal like that.
Two points is a lot, but I think it’s more likely we improve on offense than defense. IMO the offense should be top 3. I think the Lakers are going to have a great offense if Luka is healthy and stays in shape. Denver and OKC should be top level again. Last year we were near the top early and then faded. Maybe with a little more variety and better use of our players, we can sustain top level.
Whether we trade Mitch may be dependent on whether/how much Huk develops. But even so, he is too valuable on his deal to trade unless it’s in a package with KAT for Giannis. I just don’t know whether it’s worth extending him…so there’s definitely a chance we lose him for nothing if we dont, as extending him might mean second apron city.
Sorry to hear Alan, but I’ll always look forward to reading your articles on whichever platform they may come from
Sorry to hear that, Alan. Long before I knew you were alsep73 I was an avid reader of your work and always found it to be among the best content online. In fact we even had a few brief conversations eons ago back before you had to shut down your comments sections. Good luck finding your next endeavor.
Looks like Tason Ev… Tason Evbuo… Tason Evbuomw… It looks like Tason used to run a lot of offense out of the high-post at Princeton. He probably makes a good practice body for running Mike Brown’s offense. Wouldn’t be a terrible 2-way with that in mind.
I can absolutely see us trading Mitch (and possibly Hart) to reconstruct the roster in Brown’s image. And that does make some sense, but I’m with the guys who said it would be a huge mistake. Mitch is really freakin’ good and there’s not much more to it than that. We need a bona fide star if we move him.
+1 to that
Alan, I can’t remember – did you review Weapons? Just watched it and was totally blown away. And the use of George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness at the beginning was just brilliant.
What was your take?
I just wanted to chime in and also wish Alan luck, I have no doubt you’ll land on your feet and be better than ever.
Best of luck, Alan!
I just don’t think the Knicks are too concerned about these issues.
Yesterday Director asked me what the signs that our FO is comfortable with the Brunson/Towns problem are and I couldn’t come up with a non-dickish way of saying: “they traded for KAT in the first place!”
It stretches credibility to suggest anyone in the Knicks organization was surprised that KAT is a bad defender. We signed up for this.
Why does everyone think we’ve had an epiphany now?
All signs still points to Leon thinking KAT at C will work if either a new coach puts in a better offense or someone can step up and fix the Josh Hart problem. (And FWIW I think he may be right; we looked tremendous at times with KAT playing C until he hurt his hand and Thibs tanked the offense.)
I also think Leon (correctly) sees major potential for improvement with KAT at C with a smarter defensive philosophy, too. (Which is kinda why I want Precious back, btw; he may be a terrible help defender but he’s likely the fourth best defender on the roster if we move to a switch-heavy scheme).
At the end of the day I think KAT’s gotta work at the 5 for this team to win a chip.
Congrats Alan. You’re too talented to be relying on legacy media.
I think they traded for KAT because:
1. They needed a starting and backup C to start the season after losing I-Hart and Mitch being hurt. If not, they were going to throw away the year.
2. Towns could play C, was a significant upgrade from Randle on offense, not noticeably worse on defense and there were other occasional issues with Randle’s consistency and attitude.
Those were the reasons I liked the deal even though I was also concerned about the defensive issues.
The idea was that while they had Mitch recovering they could see how it was working, plug someone in at backup in the mean time and eventually pair Mitch with Towns like Minny did with Gobert if need be.
Then Mitch took way longer to recover than expected and the Brunson/Towns pairing was not working well defensively as feared. Then after a fast start the offense started sputtering (one reason Thib’s is out).
When Mitch finally came back, it took him awhile to get up to speed and then Thibs was relucatant to use the pairing to see how well it worked until management pressured him to (another reason Thibs’s is out)
So now we are where we were hoping to be in late 24 or early 25 except we don’t just think there may be issues with the Towns/Brunson pairing, we know there are.
Next move is to see what a healthy Mitch and a new coach can do to mitigate the problems. If it doesn’t work you accept that you did what you thought was best to improve the team at the time, it didn’ work out, so you have to make another move.
And I love me some Mitch. But let’s be real: if you’re playing him at C in the NBA finals you’re dead. The Thunder had a hard time keeping Isaiah Hartenstein on the floor and we know how many light years ahead of Mitch he is. Twin Towers is not the answer. It certainly didn’t work well against the Pacers.
Nice shout out from Chris Herring to Alan, calls him “the best in the game, hands down.”
Better days ahead, AlSep.
Keith Smith Article, posted after he expressed surprise at Brogdon only receiving a camp invite:
NBA’s Vanishing 15th Roster Spot
Yeah the more I think about it, the more I think mitch should be exclusively a back up and the Mitch/Towns combo should only be used situationally. I do think it should be a line up/look that we use probably every game but I don’t think it should be our starting line-up.
I’d rather start Deuce, have a true 5 out offense and potentially blitz teams to start games with high powered offense. Then bring in Mitch to pair with Towns later in the game.
Get the lead, then hold down the fort with defense and rebounding.
But the Mitch/Towns combo should definitely be used.
I do want to point out that the Towns-Gobert frontcourt went to the Western Conference Finals in their last season together
I think that we can definitely win a championship with Mitch playing significant but strategically varied minutes at C. He’s one of the best offensive rebounders and rim protectors in the game, and he is mobile enough to get out on the perimeter and defend in space. The key would be to have a plan to keep teams from iso-ing Brunson or KAT on switches. That’s Brown’s job, and one where Thibs’ rigidity was a detriment. Brown will probably be more amenable to mixing in some zone variants to keep Mitch down in the paint, and varying his minutes situationally, although rarely less than 18-20 mpg.
I don’t think it’s all that relevabnt whether Mitch starts or comes off the bench, and would love to see Brown actually vary starting lineups with the opponent, or at least have a quick hook in the first quarter. If he decides to keep Mitch largely with the bench units, he can still be an incredibly impactful player. A lineup of Mitch, Clarkson, Yabu, Deuce, and one of OG or Mikal is going to be hard for opposing benches to handle. Obviously you have to work around his FT shooting and lack of shooting and passing chops, but opponents are going to have to figure out how to stop the other guys. If hack-a-Mitch becomes a thing, and Mitch’s FT shooting is still sub-.500, then you reduce his use in penalty (but not last 2 minutes) situations as necessary.
And then Doncic hunted him ruthlessly and famously put him on skates.
Gobert was better in that series than highlights give him credit for (MIN’s DRtg was considerably worse without him) but playoff teams averaged 0.92 ppp on 43% shooting when they got him in isolation, and the offense suffered without Naz Reid creating space.
Basketball in the deep playoffs is just different. Jamal Murray couldn’t do that to Gobert, but Doncic is a different beast. Likewise 26 teams can’t exploit a Mitch/KAT pairing. But there’s 2-3 that can absolutely dominate anyone playing 4-on-5 offense, and we’ll probably have to beat one of them.
Also, if nobody posted it yet, James Edwards:
https://bsky.app/profile/jledwardsiii.bsky.social/post/3lyxppystmk23
“Keith Smith Article, posted after he expressed surprise at Brogdon only receiving a camp invite”
I don’t really see it as merely a camp invite, even though it’s non-guaranteed at this point. But sure, the point is fair, it’s curious (but at the same time, understandable) that no one is offering guaranteed money.
I think we should also keep in mind that Mitch missed almost the entire 2024-25 season and probably was still not 100% in the playoffs. Having a fully healthy offseason and a new coach should be considered.
I think folks both underestimate what a weapon Mitch is off the bench and overestimate how impactful he can be as a starter.
He’s like a dominant middle reliever that shortens games. Think Mariano in ‘96 or Andrew Miller in 2016. You don’t want to take those guys out of the bullpen to make them your game 4 starter.
This is what OKC does with Caruso. It’s what Orlando does with Isaac when he’s available. These guys wreck second units and turn a 48 minute game into 36. It’s illogical to assume the same dominance will continue when a team has its 5 best players in, just like it’s illogical to think that two inning dominance can translate to being a 6 inning starter.
That’s why I was the biggest (perhaps only) opponent of starting Mitch against the Pacers. It was a late-night-caller-on-WFAN idea. Thibs deployed him perfectly against Boston and in games 1 & 2 against Indiana. He was dominant. Then we moved him into the starting lineup and he was mid, and the bench was mid, too.
Spot on. This is proof that Leon DID NOT trade for KAT to play @ C long term but to fill an urgent need and then go back to PF as his full time role with a sprinkle of C. Problem was Thibs hard head and his man crush on Josh Hart.
I’m certain that when interviewing with candidates Leon made sure this was discussed ad nausea.
Another reason to want Mitch on the bench is that there’s likely to be an incredible interaction effect between him and Clarkson. We had the #3 offense in the NBA once bc Mitch could turn RJ Barrett drives into dunks and threes. We have the potential for a truly dominant bench unit.
It’s not. It’s proof that Leon and Wes were easily influenced and irrational.
Leon shopped Mitch hard after he got KAT. That’s your proof that this was never the plan from the beginning.
This head coaching job was not a philosophical basketball vision & built from scratch type thing to make sure GM and coach have the same principles and harness a collaboartibe approach to team building.
Forget asking the candidate “how you would like to play” The interview question had to be: “what are you going to do to beat Orlando and Cleveland and get us to NBA finals?” – Candidates had to come in with a plan on how they can best maximize this specific roster. This is not a Sacramento type situation where making playoffs are being relevant is a succesful goal.
As a teacher and leader of humans you have to be versatile in your approach and be able able to deliver results while adjusting to your personnel’s strengths.
This is 2009-10 Cleveland all over again. Forget winning 61 games. Have to beat Boston in conference finals or you getting canned again.
OK. I guess, we’ll find out soon enough.
As a kid, I was a much bigger hockey fan than I am today, and the Rangers were the only one of my teams to fall just short of a championship in that ’69-’73 window. But I knew and loved all the players, and none more than Fast Eddie Giacomin, who just passed away. And I sure wasn’t alone, this went down as one of the greatest sports moments in MSG history, right up there with Clyde’s return as a Cav.
I had a tee-shirt designed by a neighborhood friend that I wore in college back in the mid seventies. The front said “you blamin Eddie? Eddie had no-o-o chance!” and the back said “Eddie was screened.” A college buddy reminded me of that shirt today!
RIP Eddie and thanks for the great memories!
No one really knew if or when Mitch would recover from his two ankle/foot surgeries. Seems like that might have factored in to why Leon tried to move him.
However, they didn’t move him. To me, that means either that no team valued him enough to offer anything in return (which would suggest that Leon was justified in having concerns and looking to deal him), or that whatever was offered wasn’t worth giving up on Mitch’s potential impact upon a reasonably healthy return at some point (which would suggest that it was actually part of the plan.)
In either case, it hardly suggests that Leon (and Wes, I guess….) were easily influenced and irrational. But haters gotta hate, so whatever.
Leon, Wes and Gersson have not been perfect but they have been unbelivably great. Just look at how they fixed the bench scoring this summer.
Two 6MOY award winners and a legit stretch 4 in Yabu.
That’s Brad Stevens type shrewdness + he signed and/or drafted a few extras (but very talented kids) for the training camp so that Mike and his staff get to pick the 9-15 players they like.
Why stop there? Montrezl Harrell and Eric Gordon are both still available.
Mitch is the only meaningful rim protector we have on the roster. If he’s not in the game, rim protection goes to absolute shit. Not really sure there’s a good way to solve that problem.
You can mitigate it a little with a more switch-heavy scheme, and we have some good personnel for that, but the lack of rim protection is the team’s biggest flaw and one that doesn’t seem very easy to fix. It’d be less of a problem if Mitch wasn’t a sub-Shaq level free throw shooter.
Agree, JK. Huk might become a cromulent rim protector, and Yabu has pretty good timing and although not all that tall he has a 7’1″ wingspan, but none are anywhere near Mitch’s class.
Seven and a half years at the same place are plenty. Good luck moving on, Alan!
Sorry to hear that Alan. Count be in as a paid subscriber too.
So true.
Join me in celebrity row at Gainbridge, season tickets. They’re cheap! And, unlike me, whose only claim to fame is “the non-knicks fan on a knicks site”, you will have actually earned your status on the Jumbotron.
So I guess Tray Jamyson II (sp?) just got a 2-way spot.
Agreed!
Btw..has anyone here watched the Netflix series “The Madness”. I stumbled upon the thumbnail and saw that Colman Domingo is the lead and I didn’t even care what the story was. That dude doesn’t get enough credit for his work outside of his peers. I’m near the end now, so the story was enough to keep me in it
In ESPN’s future power rankings Knicks finished 3rd behind OKC and Houston.
Lol, Nnaji couldn’t even make the training camp roster
at least thats still first in the east
Interestingly the Clippers rank 2nd in management on those rankings.
I just checked out some highlights of Tosan Evbuomwan (apparently pronounced ewoma or something like that) and came away impressed. Seems to have a good understanding of the game, nice touch on extensions around the rim with both hands. The shot doesn’t look broken. Would be a really nice 2-way guy imo, along with Dink and McCullar…or another big.
Vecenie at draft time 2023:
I like Jemison III over Nnaji as a 2-way guy…he’s old, has footwork issues and can’t shoot at all, but at least doesn’t move like he has cement boots on.
Maybe the best move is to start Mitch and Kat against some teams, but not others, based on the match up. We have lots of talent, why not use it with more design? To win, sometimes you need more defense, sometimes more offense. This is a true coaching choice that could result in the net plus 4 wins a poster noted earlier. That number to me is about the most you can cull from a coaching change, excepting outliers.
To Z-man and hockey. Grew up near an Industrial area called Oil City in Oceanside, NY. To some it was wasteland, but not to us kids. It was freaking awesome! We could ride mini bikes without Johnny Law and could play ice hockey in the huge frozen puddles with impunity. Great hockey, great ice, albeit weird color. Yikes. Back then, loved me some Eddie Giacoman, John Rattel, Rod Gilbertt, Tzchchuk, etc.. Deeks, shoots, scores! Thanks Marv. Can’t spell sorry.
I’m guessing Jemison is one of the more ready-now 2-way eligible Cs on the market, which means he still sucks, but he’ll only be there in case of injuries for our very injury-prone frontcourt. I don’t see any real upside potential.
Also, we can cut all our 2-way guys without penalty, so these guys taking a 2-way spot now may not mean much in the long-run.
“Can’t spell sorry.”
lol I remember being a big fan of a player named Rod Joe-bear and then looking at a box score and asking myself “Who is this guy Gilbert?”
It’s unfortunate because Nnaji has had a back injury that seems to have sapped his athleticism. He was an explosive athlete when he was drafted, but needed back surgery and doesn’t look the same. He’s young enough that maybe he can eventually recover, but the fact his back was hurting him still in SL doesn’t bode well.
I want to backtrack or clarify a little. I’m not so sure what we should do regarding the defense, Mitch, the Mitch/Towns pairing or the Brunson/Towns pairing.
I’m obviously fine with Towns, OG, Bridges and Brunson starting.
Then we get into who the 5th player should be, Mitch, Hart or Deuce.
I think all 3 bring positive things to the table, but have drawbacks. I think the only way we’ll figure it out is to try all 3 for more minutes and see what works best. That was one of my criticisms of Thibs. I don’t think he tried some things that showed promise. Hopefully, Brown will be a little more flexible and also adjust the minutes to the needs of each specific game and matchup.
My gut tells me this team is going to be very good as is, but it still needs one more move to get that starting lineup right.
Yeah, I think we can win 55+ games this year with literally any starting lineup combination. But how do you win the title? I think it’s by putting together a dominant bench unit and a great offense to overcome the unavoidable defensive challenges this team has.
In other words: be the Pacers. Think of how many playoff games they win just bc no one’s second unit has an answer for limited guys like TJ McConnell and Obi Toppin. It goes a long way towards covering up there unfixable defensive issues.
The offense is going to be wildly different this coming season, here’s some breakdowns of Mike Brown’s offense in Sacramento:
On where the elements of his offense come from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF2MnVVNh0M
Short, Sweet X’s & O’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEs5p_LZXF8
You can kinda see how some players will fit in the offense, and you can kinda worry that some players won’t fit in at all. Either way, Brown’s offense looks like a different sport compared to Thibs’s offense.
Pate & Warren waived. I’m guessing this is part of Leon/Aller’s bonus money packages.
Alex Len & Matt Ryan seem to have taken their places.
I would think McCullar has to accept his two way offer to play in training camp.
https://x.com/NY_KnicksPR/status/1968062320359457021
Thanks EB, I was three hours out of date.
I tried the YouTube links but there were so many ad interruptions that I gave up. YouTube needs some competition.
Worth pointing out those videos were from two years ago. Back then it was reasonable to assume this was Mike Brown’s offense but his offensive assistant was Jordi Fernandez and we know a little more about him now than they did then.
With the benefit of hindsight, the comparisons to Golden State seem kinda lazy. They’re using Sabonis like Jokic-lite, and Jordi came from Denver.
In Jordi’s first year in Sacramento, the Kings finished 1st with a 119.4 ORtg. In Mike Brown’s first year without Jordi, the Kings were 18th with a 114.5 ORtg and Brown got fired after 31 games. Maybe that’s why Leon tried so hard to pry an elite offensive assistant. Brown probably wanted someone like Borrego to be his new Jordi.
I think Brown is probably more of a CEO than an X’s & O’s guy. That can be a good thing, but maybe Chris Jent’s offense in Charlotte is more predictive of what we’ll see than Jordi Fernandez’ offense in Sacramento.
TJ Saint is another important guy. His G League team led the league in offense and he’s supposed to be a coach on the rise.
I think Brown’s style will work well because he seems to want to empower bright young coaches. We just have to hope we hired the right ones.
Whether we look like the Kings or not, I like this kind of collaborative approach better than Thibs’.
Yeah, I can’t find anything more recent because nobody makes video essays about middling offenses, but I’m guessing Brown brings some of the concepts over with him.
Didn’t realize the offensive coordinator left immediately after that year. Also, Huerter’s 3p% dropped from 40% to 36% and Murray’s made a similar drop. So if Mikal & OG aren’t shooting 40%, that might be a concern.
No worries, the Knicks made so many moves today I think we collectively gave up on posting them all. I honestly didn’t see it until I went to look it up after your comment.
YouTube premium is about $14 a month…since YouTube became my primary music and vid source i went to that service…it’s been more than worth it because of how much time I spend on youtube…
I can’t think of many tv shows or movies even that did suspense as well as Alien Earth.
mets didnt blow their game tonight
That show is insane, gonna be kinda sad when it ends next week
one more episode in season 1 to go!!!
binge scheduled for next week…
getting to the end of Fargo season 3…the thing that has stuck out the most, other than the overall quality of production – wow did kirsten dunst and jesse plemons (peggy and ed blumquist) crush it…just wow…
read they hooked up and married afterward…
those two were kind of like how rhea seehorn and michael mando somehow shown bright in their roles, even surrounded by brilliance…hmmm, see miss seehorn and vince gilligan are hooking up in a new show called pluribus…
I can’t even imagine binging this show. It takes me 7 days to relax from each episode. Tonight when ****** was walking around with the kids and you knew what was going to happen to him but you didn’t know when… so fucking good. Almost as good as the water bottle.
And we are blessed to have one more Alan piece:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-recaps/alien-earth-episode-7-1235424034/
Interesting article about Hukporti. He has stuff to prove this season.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/new-york-knicks/news/knicks-ariel-hukporti-most-foreboding-contract-setup-entire-nba/021efe47a309d60c4a65066c
my expectations for trey jemison III to help out up front is minimal…
concerned that mitch will either get injured or traded this season…
if huk can help out up front this season, that would be outstanding…
Overall, the Knicks seem to have done a good job finding interesting guys to fill out their 21 man training camp roster.