i knew we wouldnt be happy with our first loss whenever it happened but i cant say that i was expecting this
Watched bits of the game. Hitting some threes would be good. This is how everyone plays and sometimes the threes just don’t fall. I think the process is good though.
1
I love Josh Hart but he absolutely kills the offense when he’s on the floor. If I was the opposing coach I would just instruct my team to double team Brunson or KAT and leave Hart wide open. Right now his shot is completely broken.
I feel bad for the guy but it may be time to bite the bullet and get that hand fixed. We can survive until the playoffs without him.
1
Its going to take time to get used to this style of play which will lead to losses like last night. Hopefully though for the most part it will lead to plenty of wins and winning quarters by 28 pts like the 2nd quarter vs Boston. Ditto playing the bench alot, you’ll get games like vs Cleveland where they played great then 4 days later they cost us the game.
Thibs wanted to control the controllables as he liked to say because he hated variance. Hence not having patience with bench players and not wanting to jack up 3s. Its a different style we’re gonna have to get used to, especially myself, but it should pay dividends in the end.
I’m not worried that much about the poor shooting. We’re 29th in the league in eFG% and that should regress to the mean in a significant way.
The more worrisome thing to me is the health status of Mitch and Josh Hart. The “busted finger” version of Hart looks like a minus player. And it’s not looking like Mitch is gonna be playing a whole lot of minutes. If we’re getting a bunch of nothing out of that guys, that places a pretty firm ceiling on us
I don’t think there’s any info in this outside of the fact that we’re shooting more threes as the team is getting more comfortable with the idea, but so far we’re shooting 35% on 40, 38% on 45, and 28% on 54 shots.
As mentioned last night, some of the threes yesterday were a tad egregious. Shamet took one on a break it seemed before any of his teammates had crossed center court (and missed). Both OG and KAT were taking multiple ones from like 27 feet (KAT can do that, OG’s long shots looked terrible). Those mostly don’t seem like they’re sensible or in the flow. Miami’s defense made doing anything else really hard, but it seemed like giving in to the easy choice. Which was probably just what Spo wanted.
Chalk it up to figuring it out, but the process is fairly fugly.
There was a stretch in the third where KAT was in foul trouble, Brown went with Yabu over Huk probably for the spacing advantage, and Kolek was in the game but OG was doing most of the ballhandling. That made me raise an eyebrow as it seemed like an extremely bad use of personnel. That lineup got smoked and looked completely hapless and disjointed.
If Kolek is going to play, you gotta let him do point guard stuff. Playing him off ball while OG Anuboby tries to cook was painful to watch.
If Friday was arguably the first “would’ve lost under Thibs” game, yesterday was arguably the first “would’ve won under Thibs” game. No one topped 37 minutes, 10 guys played, and 54 threes were taken. Last season we probably push the starters and take fewer threes (which in the isolated case of last night would’ve led to better offense, since we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn).
I support the new style 150%. We’re not going anywhere if we don’t shoot a bunch of threes. Of course, we’ve gotta make ’em, but I thought the selection last night was mostly pretty good. Shamet, just for example, was 0/4 on 4 damn good looks.
And now for the take the will get me canceled…I still think Clarkson brings a necessary element to the team, and is mostly doing what we want him to do. The results just suck. To be clear, they may well stay that way and then we’ll have to pivot, but I’d give him a serious shot to sort it out.
Yabu’s a mess though, and I’m falling pretty firmly on the side of “Hart should just get the surgery out of the way.”
Its crazy to me that Yabu looks so out of shape considering he played in the European championship and had some really good games.
1
methinks that the swapout of rozier for this improved version of norman powell might be more of a boon to the heat than previously considered (or wanted)
Through 3 games, Clarkson has a .357 TS% while Yabu had a .250 TS% on 10.3% usage. The off-season looking like a disaster so far.
The Blue Jays are sending Max Scherzer (4.99 FIP) and Shane Bieber (4.47 FIP) out to pitch in the next two games of the World Series. That is not very likely to go well.
It’s going to take time for everyone to figure out the new offense and defense. I’m not worried about the ups/downs from game to game or even bad shooting nights.
However, I don’t think they’ve found the right formula for trying to shoot more 3s yet.
IMO the idea is to create high quality looks from 3.
IMO high quality means driving and kicking it to an open OG/Mikal from the corner, a wide open step into the into the shot 3 on the break, Towns trailing and stepping into a 3 and things like that. It doesn’t necessarily mean shooting a 35% or lower 3s early in the clock because you are open is the best option.
Open from 3 doesn’t always translate into the right shot depending on the shooter, location and distance. The TS% on even some technically open 3s is not going to be better than some players driving to the basket, potentially getting fouled, potentially getting an extra OREB or even creating one of those kickouts to a wide open high quality shot.
I think they’ll figure it out, but just hoisting up extra 3s of medium quality (and definitely below that) is not going to help long term. It’s going to add volatility to our results game to game and may even cause some other issues.
Was this contract Yabu’s first contract that was big enough for a change of lifestyle?
I might go out to the best restaurants and have a few extra cocktails for a few weeks after a contract that changed my life. I’m not worried about his current TS%. I think he’ll be fine. He has to be better on offense than Precious. Overall, is another issue.
Brown said post-game that he wasn’t happy cause Knicks only had 14 sprays when they were over 20 in each of the first 2 games. He was also more upset about allowing 31 fast break pts and way too many FTs.
Yeah I was just going to mention that we also got annihilated on the fast break. This is a potentially concerning problem given our lack of foot speed and overall athleticism. In a game when we’re not missing 40+ threes that’d be less of a problem, but it was concerning to watch in last night’s game.
Damn, I got threaded twice in the same morning!
My takeaways (from two hours and two threads ago):
1. We are an extremely thin team with no margin for error. At full strength, we can make the NBA Finals. But a simple injury to any of our top 5 players means we’re fucked and could lose in the 1st round.
2. Deuce is one of those top 5 players. Hart & Mitch are important but Deuce feels critical.
3. The early signs on Leon’s reinforcements (Yabu & Clarkson) are very discouraging.
Per NBA.com, our 3PA last night:
Very tight (closest defender 0-2 feet away): 0
Tight (2-4 feet): 3/9
Open (4-6 feet): 7/22
Wide open (6+ feet): 5/23
Dunno, I liked the looks. I’m not saying it’s as simple as “they’ll fall eventually”–sometimes they don’t–but things like KAT going 1/6 on “wide open” 3PA are the type of thing you have to sometimes live with if you want to raise your offensive ceiling.
And my other thought, since echoed by Noble:
For the sake of balance, you could make an argument that last night might have been a game we could have won last year. Thibs would have played Clarkson, Yabu, and Shamet 8 minutes instead of 47 bc they were all so shit. And maybe Brunson goes nuclear if he stayed in the game. But honestly I’d rather take the L than use that smoke & mirrors BS.
Per NBA.com, our 3PA last night:
Very tight (closest defender 0-2 feet away): 0
Tight (2-4 feet): 3/9
Open (4-6 feet): 7/22
Wide open (6+ feet): 5/23
Matches my eye test. Thought OG got great looks and was just off. On a normal night he’d be more likely to go 8-12 with those looks than 4-12.
Landry, Clarkson, and Yabu just sucked. 0% on 12 3PAs. 25% and we win.
All that being said, this is exactly what the Celtics said after they were down 0-2. I don’t want Brown to be just as stubborn as Thibs in the other direction. I don’t think he was; I think the Heat just took away the paint. Ware and Adebayo is really hard to drive against. But it bears watching. I don’t want our offense to look like the Celtics’ last year. They had the shooters for it. We don’t.
* I do think a lot of KATs wide open 3s are because he took the shot from 6ft behind the 3pt line. It’s a shot he can make sometimes but maybe not sometimes enough. Overall, the 3pt decision making looked fine to me.
* There are going to be growing pains in a new system and there are always going to be bad shooting nights.
* OGs poor passing is a problem for this offensive system so far.
We really only get the spacing we want with the Death Lineup: Brunson/Deuce/Mikal/OG/Towns. I suppose you could swap Shamet in for Deuce and still get that quality spacing.
This is why Yabu is a wild card: if he shoots .380 like he did last year from 3pt, that allows you to play some other configurations that maintain the good spacing. When he’s barely hitting the rim with his shot attempts as has happened so far, not so much.
He has enough of a pedigree as a shooter that he should be given a chance to turn it around. He is missing short on almost all of his attempts.
Shams:
The NBA informed its 30 teams that the league has begun process of reviewing policies regarding injury reporting, training and education of all personnel, and enhancing internal and external monitoring programs to identify betting activity of concern, per memo obtained by ESPN.
I think Clarkson is cooked, I would give oladipo a look at his spot. He looked explosive in his preseason games against NBA teams.
24 replies on “2025-10-27 Daily Post”
i knew we wouldnt be happy with our first loss whenever it happened but i cant say that i was expecting this
Watched bits of the game. Hitting some threes would be good. This is how everyone plays and sometimes the threes just don’t fall. I think the process is good though.
I love Josh Hart but he absolutely kills the offense when he’s on the floor. If I was the opposing coach I would just instruct my team to double team Brunson or KAT and leave Hart wide open. Right now his shot is completely broken.
I feel bad for the guy but it may be time to bite the bullet and get that hand fixed. We can survive until the playoffs without him.
Its going to take time to get used to this style of play which will lead to losses like last night. Hopefully though for the most part it will lead to plenty of wins and winning quarters by 28 pts like the 2nd quarter vs Boston. Ditto playing the bench alot, you’ll get games like vs Cleveland where they played great then 4 days later they cost us the game.
Thibs wanted to control the controllables as he liked to say because he hated variance. Hence not having patience with bench players and not wanting to jack up 3s. Its a different style we’re gonna have to get used to, especially myself, but it should pay dividends in the end.
I’m not worried that much about the poor shooting. We’re 29th in the league in eFG% and that should regress to the mean in a significant way.
The more worrisome thing to me is the health status of Mitch and Josh Hart. The “busted finger” version of Hart looks like a minus player. And it’s not looking like Mitch is gonna be playing a whole lot of minutes. If we’re getting a bunch of nothing out of that guys, that places a pretty firm ceiling on us
I don’t think there’s any info in this outside of the fact that we’re shooting more threes as the team is getting more comfortable with the idea, but so far we’re shooting 35% on 40, 38% on 45, and 28% on 54 shots.
As mentioned last night, some of the threes yesterday were a tad egregious. Shamet took one on a break it seemed before any of his teammates had crossed center court (and missed). Both OG and KAT were taking multiple ones from like 27 feet (KAT can do that, OG’s long shots looked terrible). Those mostly don’t seem like they’re sensible or in the flow. Miami’s defense made doing anything else really hard, but it seemed like giving in to the easy choice. Which was probably just what Spo wanted.
Chalk it up to figuring it out, but the process is fairly fugly.
There was a stretch in the third where KAT was in foul trouble, Brown went with Yabu over Huk probably for the spacing advantage, and Kolek was in the game but OG was doing most of the ballhandling. That made me raise an eyebrow as it seemed like an extremely bad use of personnel. That lineup got smoked and looked completely hapless and disjointed.
If Kolek is going to play, you gotta let him do point guard stuff. Playing him off ball while OG Anuboby tries to cook was painful to watch.
If Friday was arguably the first “would’ve lost under Thibs” game, yesterday was arguably the first “would’ve won under Thibs” game. No one topped 37 minutes, 10 guys played, and 54 threes were taken. Last season we probably push the starters and take fewer threes (which in the isolated case of last night would’ve led to better offense, since we couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn).
I support the new style 150%. We’re not going anywhere if we don’t shoot a bunch of threes. Of course, we’ve gotta make ’em, but I thought the selection last night was mostly pretty good. Shamet, just for example, was 0/4 on 4 damn good looks.
And now for the take the will get me canceled…I still think Clarkson brings a necessary element to the team, and is mostly doing what we want him to do. The results just suck. To be clear, they may well stay that way and then we’ll have to pivot, but I’d give him a serious shot to sort it out.
Yabu’s a mess though, and I’m falling pretty firmly on the side of “Hart should just get the surgery out of the way.”
Its crazy to me that Yabu looks so out of shape considering he played in the European championship and had some really good games.
methinks that the swapout of rozier for this improved version of norman powell might be more of a boon to the heat than previously considered (or wanted)
Through 3 games, Clarkson has a .357 TS% while Yabu had a .250 TS% on 10.3% usage. The off-season looking like a disaster so far.
The Blue Jays are sending Max Scherzer (4.99 FIP) and Shane Bieber (4.47 FIP) out to pitch in the next two games of the World Series. That is not very likely to go well.
It’s going to take time for everyone to figure out the new offense and defense. I’m not worried about the ups/downs from game to game or even bad shooting nights.
However, I don’t think they’ve found the right formula for trying to shoot more 3s yet.
IMO the idea is to create high quality looks from 3.
IMO high quality means driving and kicking it to an open OG/Mikal from the corner, a wide open step into the into the shot 3 on the break, Towns trailing and stepping into a 3 and things like that. It doesn’t necessarily mean shooting a 35% or lower 3s early in the clock because you are open is the best option.
Open from 3 doesn’t always translate into the right shot depending on the shooter, location and distance. The TS% on even some technically open 3s is not going to be better than some players driving to the basket, potentially getting fouled, potentially getting an extra OREB or even creating one of those kickouts to a wide open high quality shot.
I think they’ll figure it out, but just hoisting up extra 3s of medium quality (and definitely below that) is not going to help long term. It’s going to add volatility to our results game to game and may even cause some other issues.
Was this contract Yabu’s first contract that was big enough for a change of lifestyle?
I might go out to the best restaurants and have a few extra cocktails for a few weeks after a contract that changed my life. I’m not worried about his current TS%. I think he’ll be fine. He has to be better on offense than Precious. Overall, is another issue.
Brown said post-game that he wasn’t happy cause Knicks only had 14 sprays when they were over 20 in each of the first 2 games. He was also more upset about allowing 31 fast break pts and way too many FTs.
Yeah I was just going to mention that we also got annihilated on the fast break. This is a potentially concerning problem given our lack of foot speed and overall athleticism. In a game when we’re not missing 40+ threes that’d be less of a problem, but it was concerning to watch in last night’s game.
Damn, I got threaded twice in the same morning!
My takeaways (from two hours and two threads ago):
1. We are an extremely thin team with no margin for error. At full strength, we can make the NBA Finals. But a simple injury to any of our top 5 players means we’re fucked and could lose in the 1st round.
2. Deuce is one of those top 5 players. Hart & Mitch are important but Deuce feels critical.
3. The early signs on Leon’s reinforcements (Yabu & Clarkson) are very discouraging.
Per NBA.com, our 3PA last night:
Very tight (closest defender 0-2 feet away): 0
Tight (2-4 feet): 3/9
Open (4-6 feet): 7/22
Wide open (6+ feet): 5/23
Dunno, I liked the looks. I’m not saying it’s as simple as “they’ll fall eventually”–sometimes they don’t–but things like KAT going 1/6 on “wide open” 3PA are the type of thing you have to sometimes live with if you want to raise your offensive ceiling.
And my other thought, since echoed by Noble:
For the sake of balance, you could make an argument that last night might have been a game we could have won last year. Thibs would have played Clarkson, Yabu, and Shamet 8 minutes instead of 47 bc they were all so shit. And maybe Brunson goes nuclear if he stayed in the game. But honestly I’d rather take the L than use that smoke & mirrors BS.
Matches my eye test. Thought OG got great looks and was just off. On a normal night he’d be more likely to go 8-12 with those looks than 4-12.
Landry, Clarkson, and Yabu just sucked. 0% on 12 3PAs. 25% and we win.
All that being said, this is exactly what the Celtics said after they were down 0-2. I don’t want Brown to be just as stubborn as Thibs in the other direction. I don’t think he was; I think the Heat just took away the paint. Ware and Adebayo is really hard to drive against. But it bears watching. I don’t want our offense to look like the Celtics’ last year. They had the shooters for it. We don’t.
* I do think a lot of KATs wide open 3s are because he took the shot from 6ft behind the 3pt line. It’s a shot he can make sometimes but maybe not sometimes enough. Overall, the 3pt decision making looked fine to me.
* There are going to be growing pains in a new system and there are always going to be bad shooting nights.
* OGs poor passing is a problem for this offensive system so far.
We really only get the spacing we want with the Death Lineup: Brunson/Deuce/Mikal/OG/Towns. I suppose you could swap Shamet in for Deuce and still get that quality spacing.
This is why Yabu is a wild card: if he shoots .380 like he did last year from 3pt, that allows you to play some other configurations that maintain the good spacing. When he’s barely hitting the rim with his shot attempts as has happened so far, not so much.
He has enough of a pedigree as a shooter that he should be given a chance to turn it around. He is missing short on almost all of his attempts.
Shams:
I think Clarkson is cooked, I would give oladipo a look at his spot. He looked explosive in his preseason games against NBA teams.
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