News & Blogs
Game Preview: Knicks @ Heat, Nov. 17, 2025 – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Bulletin: ‘I don’t think so, but I’m sure it helps’ – Posting & Toasting
Knicks use great shooting night to throttle Nets, 134-98, in battle of boroughs – SNY
Knicks still searching for first road win following 115-113 loss to Heat – SNY
Heat 115-113 Knicks (Nov 17, 2025) Game Recap – ESPN
Knicks’ Jalen Brunson shooting again after scary ankle injury – New York Daily News
The Knicks Final Play Against The Heat Was BRUTAL! – Knicks Fan TV
KNICKS at HEAT | FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS | November 17, 2025 – NBA
Next Man Up? | KFS Weekly Wagers | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
YT News
79 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.11.18)”
One of the great ironies of Leon Rose is that when his team was in its development stage, he passed on many elite prospects in the draft who could have changed the course of the franchise, instead filling the roster with cromulent vets who could contribute right away.
And then when his team was in its all-in/win-now season, and there was a remarkable class of veteran free agents he could have signed to add meaningful depth for a title run, he kept 1/3 of the roster clogged with a host of inconsequential second round picks who can’t contribute anything now and have very limited upside.
It’s quite literally the opposite of what you want.
Yeah, whatever else you think of Rose (and seeing as how the Knicks are one of, like, two-three teams who you could realistically see making the NBA Finals this year, and they’re coming off an Eastern Conference Finals appearance, it’s been quite good), his drafting has been….not so good.
I will resist any proclamation following yesterday’s game, because the reality is that they lost because they missed too many 3s.
the reality is that they lost because they didnt have two of their top three players available to them i hope no one is going to say that bam and herro are as important to them as brunson and og are to us
I don’t buy it that we could have signed more vets to help us this season. We didn’t have the cap room. Our last hire was Diawara, who filled our fourteenth roster spot as a genuine rookie that we drafted because that was the only salary we could fit under our hard cap. You would think that he would never actually play because of all the players with more experience ahead of him; but ironically, he got floor time in last night’s game ahead of Dadiet, Hukporti and Kolek. And he looked OK, getting one rebound and one steal and being plus one in his one minute of actual play. To me, it just goes to show you can’t predict the progress of young players well at all. It’s good we have five of them. Maybe one will hit as a valuable rotation player eventually.
I don’t think we need to overreact to a road loss when we were missing our best player on offense, best player on defense and the volatility of 3 point shooting worked against us last night.
I do think we need a backup PG, but I’ve been saying that since pre season when Brogdon’s body decided it couldn’t do the job anymore.
We could’ve salary dumped Kolek and/or Dadiet to open up more bona fide minimum slots. However, we have no idea if there was any market for them absent us attaching sweetener, nor do we know how significant the sweetener would’ve had to be.
That said, the fact that there may have been no market to take them for free is itself a mark against Rose. I personally can’t get too worked up about it, even as someone who had useful players like Filipowski and Jaylon Tyson ranked ahead of Kolek and Dadiet respectively, because I don’t think either pick was a reach from a process perspective. But it’s also fair to take the position that Rose is paid the big bucks to deliver results better than “we wish we could’ve dumped our picks for free a season after they were drafted to sign Russell Westbrook.”
I’d say Clarkson’s 14-3-3 on 7/13 shooting combined with Hart’s 14-5-9 on 6/11 shooting is a perfectly good Frankenstein backup PG. We lost because the wing and big depth we do have underperformed and also because we don’t have enough there.
The Pacers are an abysmal 1-13
I wonder what the biggest drop off in record from the NBA Finals to the following season is? I’m thinking maybe the first time LeBron left the Cavs
Bulls in 1999? That was only a 50 game season though.
Knicks lost last night cause KAT played like shit. The polarizing thing about KAT is despite playing like shit he still had 22 pts and 15 rebs.
Miami also shot 40% from 3. James Edwards writes about the need to improve the 3-pt defense under Brown’s Gap defense, which prioritizes protecting the paint
<https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6816186/2025/11/18/knicks-defense-heat-film-breakdown/
I’m not worked up about it (at least not today), I’m just noting the irony of how he handled the two points on the win curve in opposite fashion.
You would think a guy who incinerated a prime draft pick in his team’s nascent stage wouldn’t have chosen patience with a crop of much less talented second-round picks over signing cromulent vets when he’s all in.
Yeah but we’re back to a Thibsian 7 man rotation in November just because two guys are out.
Miami was missing Bam, Herro, and their prized rookie Kasparas, and they still had 9 NBA caliber players to rotate last night.
Assists are good sign of ball movement, but IMO assists do not always equal running an offense.
Frankie Smokes averaged more than 5 assists per 36 in his first few seasons when he was tasked with being a PG most of the time. He had close to zero PG skills. Some assists come from simply having the ball in your hands a lot and being willing to move it (especially quickly).
IMO, what we need is someone that sees the whole court, that can direct traffic, penetrate if required and make the right pass that leads to an easy bucket even if he doesn’t get the assist. Kolek has most of those qualities, but he can’t hit the 3 at all so far and is suspect on defense. We aren’t going to get a very good player like I am describing, but we are talking about a backup that can at least run and control the offense without being totally inept in other areas.
Would love to see a break down of our 3 pt defense when Mitch is at C. I suspect the reason Brown has everyone jumping into the gaps is to cover up KAT.
You are leaving out Yabusele when you count it as a seven man rotation. He played ten minutes. I think that’s enough to count.
Edwards with a semi-decent cover of the Knicks keeping teams out of the paint but thus letting them take threes (that’s the simplified version) in The Athletic today.
I’m ambivalent. I do know that I saw numerous Heat players start to drive and pull back out when Mitch crouched at them, so his playing 18.5 minutes seems questionable. As we’ve hardly had a Minutes Police moment yet this year, I’ll add that Landry and Deuce playing nearly 40 minutes each is also a tad questionable. Spo is a mad genius at attacking fresh meat, but I’d have still given it a try.
As noted, Spo is a fucking genius, and the Knicks still almost pulled it out, so this game really wasn’t much of a big deal either way.
They’ll likely crush Dallas, and everything will be back to normal.
I would like this kind of player too, but honestly, how many players like this exist in the entire NBA? There aren’t very many to begin with, and you’re damn sure not finding a player with this sort of diverse skill set at vet minimum prices.
‘IMO, what we need is someone that sees the whole court, that can direct traffic, penetrate if required and make the right pass that leads to an easy bucket even if he doesn’t get the assist.’
And we actually have that guy, his name is Tyler, but he can’t make a three often enough to make him playable, even with his questionable defense (how questionable remains to be seen, he’s done mediocre the times I’ve watched).
Otherwise I’m with Brian. KAT lost us the game, but he did what he was hired to do, which was shoot the ball and mostly in the rhythm of the game; none of it felt forced, he was just cold as fudge.
Ntilikina’s AST% put him in the 18th percentile among point guards during the lone season CTG characterized him that way (he wasn’t the easiest guy to assign a position to, because position assignment tends to depend on skill and Ntilikina didn’t have any), which represented his highest ranking out of points per shot attempt (16th percentile) and usage (8th percentile).
Hart is in the 98th percentile in AST% among wings, with Bridges in the 89th, and KAT in the 68th among bigs. Sure, ideally we’d have prime Steve Nash at backup point guard, but in a league where every team is allocated scare resources getting more non-Brunson playmaking shouldn’t be a priority.
What we really need is the kind of player Dadiet would be if he was good–another big wing who can shoot and defend.
And our stretch-4, short-fat-5 was a whopping 0-0 in ten minutes. Pretty sure both Kolek and Huk could have done that, and both were unlikely to have been worse at being late rotating to the corners…
It’s been a deeply weird start for Yabusele, as the coach does not seem to know how to use him.
He’s never been a particularly high usage player, but his usage has crept down to minimalist levels as a Knick. He will never provide any value at 12.5 USG, since he’s not even useful as a floor spacer at that number. It’s easy to pick on the guy for being a chonk, but we’re not putting him in a position where he can succeed.
Completely agree with JK on Yabu, even though I never thought about it that way before. Of all the puzzling line ups/substitutions/minutes allocations, Yabu figures prominently. I think Brown sees a useful player in him, or assumes a useful player is there given his salary, or wants to exhaust every option before Fourniering him. Hopefully he will round (npi) into form and Brown will settle on how best to deploy him in a 15+mpg role. If not, bad on Yabu, bad on the FO, and perhaps bad on Brown.
Yeah, right now Yabu has basically been relegated to full-time spot up duty, which sounds fine but is far from the role he had so much success in last year. Even if he was hitting a few more of them, 22 of his 31 total shots on the season being 3PA represents a failure on a number of fronts.
Last year he was very good as the role man–1.12 PPP, 23% frequency. I don’t have either number for this year because he hasn’t even had 10 total possessions as a role man, which is NBA dot com’s minimum to generate them. Might be something we should try though.
He also got out in transition a surprising amount for a guy of his, um, size, last year (14.8% frequency) and was excellent at converting (1.49 PPP). That one might just be a matter of conditioning.
what is a role man?
we are averaging 27.31 assists per game this year 29.75 assists per game in wins (low of 22 and high of 35) and 23.4 assists per game in losses (low of 20 and high of 27)
Last night’s loss was super annoying but it means nothing in the bigger picture, all games without Brunson and OG really are irrelevant to determining how this team will look in the playoffs.
However a loss like last night could be the difference between getting a higher seed which might prove consequential in May.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role, and don’t call me man
Ha, oops, I’ll wear that one, but Doogie still sucks
Trade idea: Deuce and Mitch (maybe picks, maybe not) for Daniel Gafford and Brandon Williams
Offense:
(1) We could really have used Kolek last night. Offense looked incredibly disorganized. Deuce with 0 assists.
(2) Mikal played excellent ball, everything coming to him and everything within the system, but we needed him to be more assertive. He’s one of the guys who is supposed to be able to go get a bucket when you need a bucket.
Defense:
(1) Clarkson got cooked on a number of occasions. First time this season I felt his defense was the detriment it was alleged to be. They went at him a lot.
(2) Shamet did a good job against Powell & Wiggins. He also led the team with 8 deflections and 11 contested shots.
KAT displayed all the flaws that I think will limit out team’s upside so long as he is a co-centerpiece. Anyone can have a bad shooting night, so it’s not that. It’s the combination of a subpar ability to think the game and poor defense that really frustrates me. If folks thought we had a hard ceiling with Randle as a co-centerpiece, I don’t see why KAT would make them feel any differently. There’s only so much Brunson, Mikal, Hart, OG, etc. can do to buffer against his deficiencies, and Mitch is also deeply flawed in some regards. I’ll keep hoping and praying that I’m wrong, but last night was not very encouraging, and again, not because he missed shots.
(1) Clarkson got cooked on a number of occasions. First time this season I felt his defense was the detriment it was alleged to be. They went at him a lot.
Spot on. I saw the same exact thing. It felt like every three in 2nd half was a result of his poor effort contest. Also, Clarkson should have been in the game on those last two posessions. Brown tried to play hero ball with Deuce and that’s a low percentage outcome. Perfect example of hot hand fallacy. It’s a concerning data point on Browns holes as a coach.
Looking at last night’s Mav’s game, I don’t know half the people on their team, including starters (Moussa Cisse was their starting center). If there was ever a game where the kids should get some run, this might be it.
I don’t think Towns consistently makes winning plays. We know about his deficiencies on defense, but I think this includes offense.
I can’t stand watching him drive to the basket. The following seems to happen: he flings an off-balance shot at the basket, falls to the ground (which leaves the team down a player on defense), then complains about a non-foul call. Oh, and also commits offensive fouls.
I really think he should focus more on Dirk type shots. I think he would have more balance and not end up on the floor so much. Post-up, 3’s and some mid-range. Less crazy driving.
I am also slightly disappointed in Brown and the minutes last night. It was game 13, I feel like now is the time to try some other players and give them around 10ish minutes. Especially with JB and OG not playing. Experiment.
B/c if those guys aren’t NBA players, then we have too many players who aren’t NBA guys then. Basically we had 6 guys that would be not playable (counting Yabu b/c he only played 10 minutes). Something isn’t in sync here between Leon and Brown.
Panic stations eh?
Watched dribs and drabs. That’s just who Towns is. He’s a great offensive player, even though it looks ugly occasionally.
We are who we are and that’s still pretty good when we have all our guys on the court.
Welcome back Trent Grisham?
He’s so efficient overall I hate to nitpick, but that’s a pretty accurate description of what happens multiple times every game.
Falling down after your shot is probably an underrated negative if anyone even counts it. It almost always leaves you at a disadvantage defensively.
I wish he would just post up more often if he has an advantage. The way it is now he either shoots a 3 or gets the ball out there and drives (sometimes a little out of control).
Right now
Two staters down
Another starter who can’t play back to backs or play over 20 minutes a night
Two younger drafted players who can’t see the court with roster spots- Dadiet and Kolek
Short handed roster
To be clear, are you suggesting this team has a hard ceiling? That it can’t win a championship?
My feeling at the time (and I’d still say this) was that we were getting the more efficient player overall. So it was a plus. But I had seen enough of Towns before we traded for him to know he was going to make more than his fair share of head scratching plays.
I think it’s kind of typical of those really big guys to not be be good enough shot creators off the dribble to just give them the ball and say “get me a basket”. They’ll do some of that, but the best scoring Gs and SFs will tend to be better at that than the best scoring Cs.
It’s not the first time he’s gotten cooked, but it was particularly evident last night and probably contributed to why we were -17 with him on the court even though he scored OK.
Kat being the best shooting big man of the Universe and struggling to dominate against a short team means that he’s just a good shooter BUT Not a Great Center so when his shot is off we’re Fucked.
Having Kat and Mitch and Not being able to dominate in the paint against a Hobbit Bamless Heat is on Brown.
The point I am making, it’s NOT about assists.
If we move the ball well we’ll get plently of assists and score OK.
If a guy is a good passer (like Hart) he’ll get plenty of assists relative to the typical wing. Hart’s probably a better passer than Brunson and piles up assists, but I don’t want him running the offense.
Those are good things, but they are NOT the only thing that makes a good PG and not what “I” think we are still missing on our team.
A good PG is a quarterback. He will know every play backwards and forwards, direct traffic if players are going to the wrong places, settle the possession down at crunch time, see what the defense is doing and counter it with a pass or drive in the correct direction. The key is he’s the quarterback running things.
Two good examples were the last two plays. Deuce is not a PG. Both possessions were basically helter skelter attempts at shots and offensive rebounds with plenty of time left. That can work and almost did last night, but that’s not what you want.
A guy Delon Wright may not have enough left in the tank to be the player I am describing (Brogdon was done also), but if we had a guy like that on the last couple of possessions they would have been more controlled and we would have had a better chance to win. Without Brunson, we have no quarterback other than Kolek and he’s not cutting it in other ways.
IMO, when you are up against smaller weaker players you are supposed to post them up. Towns doesn’t post up enough.
Under Phil, the Knicks were correctly trying to teach KP to post up. He was too weak, inexperienced and unskiiled at that age to be efficient at it, but he was on the right path. But by the time he got away from Dallas (who misued him badly as a glorified floor spacer for Doncic) he had filled out and slowly developed the skills. That’s when he became a more efficient big man.
Towns is way stronger than KP, a better finisher and a better 3 point shooter than KP. He should be able to dominate smaller guys.
We may live in the 3p era of Nba but if you’re able to have a party in the paint You Should Do it.
Still remember the bubble finals where miami was killed by the Lakers bigs.
My very favorite fall-downer was Emmanuel Mudiay. Remember him? Almost every time he drove he’d go sliding into the stands. Even when it seemed he didn’t have to fall down, down he’d go. The big difference between him and KAT is that somehow KAT makes a significant majority of those drives, while with Mudiay it was usually a blown layup and a four-point swing.
KAT sucks at posting up
“To be clear, are you suggesting this team has a hard ceiling?” That it can’t win a championship?”
I believe that they have a hard ceiling in how well they can play. They absolutely can win a championship if they play to that ceiling and have some good fortune, say, like the Celtics had in 2024, or the Raptors had in 2019. But does anyone here actually think that the Knicks are favorites to win a championship?
This year is our best chance with this roster and this coach. I would expect that if we fall short, meaning that we don’t get to the finals, some significant changes are in store. I think we have a decent chance to get to the finals, and if we get there, anything can happen, but that we can also get knocked out in the second round. We’ll see!
Out of boredom I just looked at way-too-early draft picks on ESPN and they had the Knicks taking SG Miles Byrd out of San Diego State, which as a fan of jazz is just my favorite name ever.
wow, usmnt on fire early against uruguay…
Maybe I’m overly down losing last night but early on this team looks soft. No defense, can’t win on the road and when they lose the coach just chalks it up to “shots not falling.” I’m not a fan.
Soft…
Towns in the center
Landry Shamet is a major part of the rotation
This team is built on offense
We had a 108.5 Drtg last night. Our defense wasn’t actually the main problem.
With the personnel we have, we probably have to win with offense.
I know we’re spoiled to have Brunson, and that KAT’s shot was off yesterday, but a superstar player has to make that last shot, it was a clean look. I think KAT doesn’t have the killer instinct needed to be a good closer.
And frankly, i don’t think a player this soft and with no killer instinct is what NY and the Knicks are about. He seems like a great guy, but i’m with Z-man that Leon should do all he can to upgrade from KAT (Giannis, please).
What did we think a team with Brunson & KAT was going to be built on?
At least we’re seeing some experimentation. We played more zone last night than last season.
Giving Randle to get Kat was definitely a slight upgrade but telling me that Brunson Kat is the final product ain’t making me very pumped up… there’s gotta be an extra move, right?
*Last 5 seasons
I think last night everybody was being harsh on Deuce. I agree that the Brunson impersonation on the last 2 plays was not his finest moment, but it was Deuce’s 3Ps that put us back on a position to try and win the game, he totally deserved to be the one in charge of closing out the game.
And please don’t react like “Deuce can’t close out games, we shouldn’t do this anymore”, because he’ll learn from this experience and will be better next time we need him to do it again.
I hope so. Your work last summer almost tilted Giannis towards the Knicks, so you have to do it again next summer. 😉
🙏
Many star players could be on the market before the trade deadline
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2482196
Gulp- Anthony Davis is the only one who I think could be an upgrade for this team, but his injury history says stay away
😄
Idk… maybe i should talk to his mother! Greek moms are the real agents!!!
On another note – calls for the Pels to relocate are growing
https://www.nola.com/sports/pelicans/draymond-green-pelicans-crowd-quiet-nba/article_6d011dd5-1ccf-44e7-bce4-355e04e51e71.html
https://x.com/TheDunkCentral/status/1988666293051093428
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6815281/2025/11/18/aj-dybantsa-pelicans-warriors-nba/
I don’t expect us to win on defense but the one trade mark of Thibs teams the entire time he was coach was our ability to win on the road. It was almost comical how we were a better road team than home team under Thibs and now it appears to have flipped. It just further solidifies my theory that we traded a coach and system with very obvious flaws for a new coach and system with other very obvious but opposite flaws and the hope for me was we’d keep the thibiness essence while sprinkling in some new offensive wrinkles. But now it’s just the shots aren’t falling we didn’t spray the ball enough and brown talks a great game about needing to do better, that’s in me, yada yada but the team still won’t be able to get to the finals. And I’m feeling very much like, in fact, we might not make it to the ECF again.
The Knicks should’ve lost to the Pistons in rd 1 last season which is why I don’t get the Thibs love. A missed call on Hart which would’ve resulted in a win for Pistons and in game 6 a huge pistons choke with some magic going on the Knicks end. Game 1 Cam Payne bailed him out..
Thibs played a 5 man unit that didn’t work for long stretches of the season . One of the worst 5 man units in the NBA and declined to change it.
MB played 8 last night…thought we had moved past that being any kind of useful strategy this early in the season…
playing your “best” 8 in a game doesn’t guarantee a win, it does guarantee that 1 or 2 additional players received no development opportunity, so why do it?
it’s like coaching scared…
Magic might be better without Paolo
Less predictable on offense and better spacing
Some of you guys wanted to be patient with Thibs in year 5, now you want Mike Brown to have it all figured out in 5 weeks.
He is under enormous pressure and has a lot to fix. This team was outscored for the whole second half of last year and the playoffs. I think letting him handle one problem at a time is fair.
Is he doing a good job with Yabu? No, I don’t think so. But it took him a minute — one minute! — to do what Thibs could never do: get Mikal and OG playing the best basketball of their careers.
Does is suck that sometimes we still do the minutes thing? Yes. But 1/3 of the roster is garbage and he’s the second coach to feel that way. Point the finger at Leon where it belongs.
Are we giving up too many threes? Absolutely. But a team with KAT at C immediately became one of the best rim protecting teams in the league after being shit at it under Thibs with the same players.
I would guess his two biggest goals were to get Mikal & OG involved on offense and fix the rim protection problem on defense. He crushed both of them right out of the gate. That’s not enough for his first month?
The Magic might have fired their coach if that Bane buzzer beater a few games ago didn’t go in, and now they seem to have hit a groove.
Always thought that Banchero was overrated, by the way.
I’m not out on Brown, not by a long shot. He’s doing some great work. But that said, I feel strongly that he’s about the same level of coach as Thibs, meaning a second-level guy with way more positives than negatives, and who could win a championship with the right players and some luck. The Venn Diagram between the two has lots of overlap, and since Thibs’ voice had gone stale, Leon brought in a new voice. I agree with anyone who thinks that the regular season means next to nothing (assuming that the team doesn’t go completely off the rails, of course!), and that Brown should not be judged until we get to the playoffs.
Outside of Spo and Carlisle I don’t think the NBA has some elite level coaches currently, so Brown and many are in the same tier. It comes down to who has the better roster
OKC is great, but I give the credit to Sam Presti for that
nice, there’s an nba game just getting started out here on the west coast…
seems pretty standard for west coast games
Literally.
Kind of funny to see the “Thibs got better playoff performances” posts when it’s game 13. Count me on the side of “hurrah, we’re trying obvious things!” Mixing in some zone, lots more movement and passing on O, Brunson off ball a lot, having someone else bring it up (and faster than in 8 seconds) – I mean, Brown is doing the obvious stuff, and it’s good.
But yeah, I can’t believe he doesn’t have it all figured out in 13 games…