News & Blogs
Brunson returns for Knicks, leads win over Mavs – ESPN
Knicks will take ‘ugly win’ to end road losing streak: ‘We can build on it’ – SNY
Game Thread: Knicks at Mavericks, Nov. 19, 2025 – Posting & Toasting
How to watch Knicks vs. Mavericks: TV channel and streaming options for November 19 – The New York Times
Knicks earn first road win of season, sneak by Mavericks, 113-111 – SNY
Knicks 113, Mavericks 111: They practice free throws, right? – Posting & Toasting
Knicks 113, Mavericks 111 | “Game likes that are why I just can’t quit drinking” – Knicks Film School
The Putback with Ian Begley: Knicks-Mavericks reaction with Barbara Barker and Ty Butler – Begley Putback
Knicks Win in a Heart-Stopping Finish! – Knicks Fan TV
Road Game Struggles | First Road Win leads to some concerns | Exploring Preets Liquors NY – Knick of Time
YT News
70 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.11.21)”
Revisiting last night’s Jeopardy category on OAKAAK Cleanthony Early’s international travels, it turns out he’s played for 19 different teams, in Japan, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, France, Taiwan, South Africa, and Lebanon.
So Phil was right to pick him over Joker, yes?
Are you sure that, if we had selected Jokic, we wouldn’t have done something stupid? Like trading him for peanuts…
Entirely possible, Cyber. It’s maybe the only solace I take with Steph being drafted one pick ahead of us: (the real) Donnie Walsh probably would have traded him to Houston for 2010 cap relief, just like he did with Jordan Hill.
“Is there a specific word in Serbian that means not Nikola Jokic?”
I believe it’s philsuksdic
I wonder if Joker was on Phil’s radar at all. Seems like he would have been the perfect triangle big… anyone know what Cleanthony’s career earnings have been?
only 1,352,395 in the nba more difficult to get figures for overseas
Clearly, he was scouting internationally, given some of the draft picks under him. And while every team overlooked Joker — some twice! — you would think that Big Chief Triangle would have noticed his suitability for that offense. Joker’s arguably an even better triangle player than Jordan.
BTW, while Jordan Hill wasn’t quite as terrible a whiff as Kevin Knox, since it was SO obvious that all of the guys taken immediately after Knox are better, I do like to self-harm on occasion by looking at guys we could have drafted who would have been at least acceptable Steph consolation prizes:
DeRozan
Brandon Jennings (burned out, but was promising at the time)
Jrue
Ty Lawson
Jeff Teague
Taj
I am starting to come around to the idea that if I were the Bucks’ GM, I might actually trade Giannis. The East is so weak (albeit less so with Giannis on the Knicks), that a core of Rollins, Turner, and maybe OG and KAT or something comparable might actually remain competitive. Or that they could be wise to start rebuilding. I saw a mock trade that sent OG to the Spurs (which could be scary) and Keldon Johnson and a bunch of picks to Milwaukee.
I didstincly remember how folks flipped out when Brandon Jennings put up a 55-spot 7 games into his NBA career.
Believe it or not, he’s only 36…maybe still a vet’s minimum candidate? He was essentially a Cam Payne clone.
“I am starting to come around to the idea that if I were the Bucks’ GM, I might actually trade Giannis.”
DS for Bucks GM!
I’m starting to worry a tiny bit about the Sixers. Obviously it’s 100% based in PG13 and Embiid being reasonably healthy going into the playoffs, which is about as likely as DS’s Giannis trade to NY scenario, but it it happens, they would be formidable. Maxey is a blur, Edgecombe looks like the real deal, and McCain is coming around. Grimes and Drummond are good bench pieces.
Edgecombe has a TS% barely above 50% and Maxey is averaging 40.7 mins per game. They’re 9-6 but it doesn’t seem very sustainable unless PG and Embiid return to normal and that’s not happening.
Even if the Bucks are willing to trade Giannis at the deadline, it’s a tough trade for us to pull off and still have the right team in place to win. If Towns is the centerpriece, we are trading away the stretch 5 we need next to Giannis. If OG is the centerpiece, a lot more of value has to go out and we’d be gutting something. The only thing I can think of is Towns as the centerpiece and Giannis plays C for the Knicks, but I’m not sure he or we’d want him banging with huge Cs and getting injured all the time. I suspect that any Giannis move will immediately make us much better in talent, but require more moves in the off season (if at all possible).
There’s a reason so many people high on the 76ers last year. It wasn’t a mortal lock the injuries would be as bad as they ultimately were. The idea was to just get into the playoffs and then make a run while healthy. But the injuries were so severe and included players besides just Embiid and George. So they fell so far out it, it made more sense to tank, add a good young player and try the same strategy again this year. The problem of course is that Embiid and George are also a year older and last year’s injuries make it more likely they’ll fall apart again this year. But if they don’t, I want no part of them in the playoffs.
It’s amazing what a good first week will do for your perception around the league. Edgecomb has been really bad since. There are multiple rookies playing better. He just plays a bunch of minutes, so he scores more points than others. He is shooting .433/.366/.737.
He’s a rookie, so he might become good. But he’s not contributing to the Sixers winning this year.
Edgecombe is really, really good, and is on his way to being a star in this league. There is no doubt about it in my mind. He’s going to have some shooting ups and downs as most rookies do, but he also rebounds, passes, and defends. He’s clearly playing way more than he should be, but his team keeps winning, and he will eventually come around.
I’m not worried about any team in the East except the Knicks. If they’re healthy come playoff time I expect the Knicks to make the Finals regardless of their seeding, especially cause of all the theoretical top teams in the East they’re the only team with playoff pedigree.
There’s an article in the Athletic today about Joe Dumars and the clusterfuck that is the New Orleans Pelicans.
It’ll be hard for any GM to top Nico Harrison for the dumbest trade in NBA history, but the Pelicans sending an unprotected first to the Hawks to move up for Queen might be a close second. Hawks fans celebrate every Pels loss; there’s a decent chance they get the #1 pick in next year’s draft, which is mind boggling.
It’s not just that they sent the Hawks that unprotected pick. It’s that they previously allowed the Pacers to send them their ’25 first instead of their ’26, and then used that pick as part of the Queen trade. Obviously, they couldn’t know that Hali was about to injure himself and be out for all of this season. But they knew that the Pacers had made it to the Finals, and thus that the odds were very high that the ’26 pick would be better than the ’25. So they went from having two high lottery picks next year to having zero. Good job, good effort!
“it turns out he’s played for 19 different teams, in Japan, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, France, Taiwan, South Africa, and Lebanon.”
Yeah but none of those countries have won a single NBA championship.
“Brandon Jennings (burned out, but was promising at the time)”
Back when I was a blogger hanging out in NBA-ish circles we were invited to hang out with some scouts. One guy was so very excited about Brandon Jennings. He told me that Jennings was so fast on defense that when he scrimmaged against NBA point guards they all had to bring the ball up the court backing him up because there was no other way. He stood there staring at me for some kind of acknowledgement that this proved Jennings’ future greatness. I think I asked what his TS% or if he was an efficient scorer, and the guy just turned around & shook his head. It was one of my “Moneyball” movie type moments with non-stat folks at the time.
Didn’t Jennings score 55 pts in like the 6th game of his career? He was supposed to be the next Iverson!
“all the theoretical top teams in the East they’re the only team with playoff pedigree.”
do you not consider the cavs one of the theoretical top teams in the east or do you think that they dont have playoff pedigree
espn moved their minutes back to the left-most column but still has points right next to it
You can’t not be at least a little worried about Detroit. Duren looks awesome, Cade is still Cade, and they’re much more physical than we are.
Here’s a clip of the Cleanthony category: https://bsky.app/profile/awfulannouncing.bsky.social/post/3m65p7dcsn52h
From what I’ve seen from the Knicks thus far, even with a healthy OG we are going to have our hands full with any of the following EC opponents (assuming that they are healthy as well) in the playoffs: CLE, ORL, DET, ATL, PHI, MIL. I wouldn’t sleep on TOR, MIA, or CHI either, although I think we can beat any of those three in 6 or less games.
I would put the current odds at something like 20% that we get knocked off in the first round, 50% that we lose in the second round, and 75% that we don’t make it to the finals. That will obviously change if we start playing better, but right now we don’t seem all that hard to figure out, especially on the defensive end. Folks who feel differently must have more faith in Brown than I do because I see it as a personnel issue, not a coaching issue, and I don’t think Brown is any better than Thibs, just fresher and easier on the eyes, i.e with a different set of strengths and flaws. Hope I’m wrong!
“espn moved their minutes back to the left-most column but still has points right next to it”
I really don’t understand wtf they are doing with changing the format every week. Is there some kind of behind-the-scenes contest?
were definitely in lockstep on hating what espn is doing with their boxscores obviously they should just go back to the way they had it for about a decade up until a couple of weeks ago seems like change for changes sake
Macri’s newsletter today is basically a deep dive on the defense to this point, and I think the main takeaways are:
-We will probably benefit from some opponent shooting regression, as the percentage is higher than the look-quality should dictate
-Mitch, even when nominally healthy, hasn’t provided his normal defensive impact
-KAT has been better than expected, maybe even…decent
-All of our non-OG perimeter defenders are having trouble containing penetration
It’s a very worthwhile read, but I came away from it with an additional, boring takeaway–there’s so much noise in a 14-game sample that we really don’t know where the defense stands with this group yet. Both the bulls and the bears have cases to make based on the numbers to this point.
I’m with you. ~25% shot of getting to finals is about right. Although, I would place the percentage odds of a first round exit in single digits.
I mean I don’t expect the Knicks to sweep thru the East playoffs, they’ll probably all go 6 or 7 games which is fine. But I think there’s alot of overrating how good a start some of these East teams have gotten off to.
Detroit is the only team with a clearly better record than the Knicks yet by some of the advanced metrics the Knicks have been the best team in the East this season despite feeling like they’ve been a bit disappointing so far.
So to me if the Knicks while clearly struggling a bit to start the season have still arguably been the best team in the East then I feel sorry for the rest of the conference once the Knicks hopefully start firing on all cylinders. But of course being healthy is a huge part of it although that’s obviously the case for most teams.
I said at the time that hiring Joe Dumars was a bad idea. He was a very good basketball player and had some early success in management, but overall the recent evidence indicated he was pretty bad.
There’s a lot of luck in all this, especially when it comes to the draft and injuries, but you can tell by the moves they make who is valuing players correctly and building teams that make sense and who doesn’t really get it.
Ownership is a big part of the puzzle. If the owner doesn’t “get it”, he won’t hire the right people and they won’t hire the right people under them.
That Pistons teams scares the heck out of me. We were a couple of highly suspect calls away from losing to them in last year’s playoffs, they are younger and better this year, they’ve had some injuries so far trgis year and they are 2nd best defense in the NBA right now.
If the Knicks drafted Jokic he’d probably still be in Serbia, which is worse than trading him for nothing
My opinion hasn’t changed much since the start of the season and isn’t based on much what I’ve seen this year except for Yabu and Clarkson because they are new. IMO there’s too much noise in a handful of games this year that include injuries to both teams and differences in schedules.
1. The team is mostly the same as last year and we know how good the defense was last year.
2. We replaced Payne and Precious with Clarkson and Yabu
3. Mitch is back
4. We replaced Thibs with Brown
5. We upped the pace on offense and reduced the minutes of the best players
How does that all net out?
I’ve been arguing it will net out negatively on defense unless Mitch remains healthy and gives us consistent solid minutes or Yabu winds up being a better defender that I feared. Yabu started out poorly on defense. That got me really worried, but I think he has looked better lately and looked WAY better last game.
Still, I think the defense is almost certainly going to be “meh” at best because Brunson is terrible, Towns will certainly play some minutes at C with him, and Yabu will also probably see time at C (I like him way better at PF). I don’t see you can have a high level defense with Brunson/Towns paired (Towns at C), Clarkson your key 6th man and some other average defenders.
When I clicked on that link, I was expecting Sean Connery to say, “I’ll take an al – bum-cover for a thousand, Alex!”
BBA, I’d like to agree, but I don’t like what I see in terms of our overall size, skill, and athleticism profile. I don’t think what Detroit and Indiana did to us in the playoffs last year was a fluke. We were literally a missed call and a Brunson 50-50 at best 3pt shot away from a game 7 vs. DET, and Indiana threw waves of players against us.
For folks who thought we were the better team and Indy just got lucky, I would counter that every time we were in a must-win situation against them (OT in Game 1, Game 2, Game 4, Game 6) we not only came up short, we were fairly easily beaten, and the main reason for that was that we were easy to solve by a good enough coach with good enough personnel. I think we beat Boston because their coach was just as rigid and stubborn as Thibs, if not more so, and that they were seriously compromised by KP and Jaylen being far less than 100%.
Now, none of Atkinson, Bickerstaff, Mosley, Snyder, Nurse, or Doc scare me all that much as coaches, but at full health they have some personnel and basic strategy options that might give us fits. Run defensive wings at Brunson and double him up high; force KAT and OG into clumsy drives; hunt and attack Brunson and KAT on defense, hunt “length/size” mismatches vs. undersized Shamet, Deuce, Clarkson, and to a lesser degree, Bridges and Hart. Get KAT into foul trouble. Put Mitch on the line. Dare Hart to beat you from the perimeter. Pick on Yabu however you want to.
Obviously other teams have their holes as well, and many games come down to 3-pt variance. But we seem very vulnerable to strategic game-planning right now.
Obviously we are a different team without OG, and Brown is still well within his grace period. so this is a very tentative judgment until I see a lot more. But I am definitely very worried.
Probably not the most lucrative career, but a fun way to see the world. I wonder how many of the languages he picked up
The Detroit series was tough but you could also say that if Schroder doesn’t turn into MJ in the 4th quarter of Game 2 the Knicks sweep them.
I just think in a 7 game playoffs series against all the other current East teams I’ll take Brunson and this group to find a way to pull it out, unlike the other top teams in the East they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt come playoff time. But I won’t expect it to be easy.
Yeah, not a fan of saying Detroit almost beat us when they would have had to win game 7 on the road to win the series even if they had won game 6. The games were close. We still prevailed.
Usually most playoff series are hard fought, even the ones that are sweeps or just go to 5 games. There’s almost always a few that come down to the last few minutes. But it’s not like we won game 7 on a buzzer beater after a controversial call or something.
Still, Detroit is better and I do not want to face them!
I obviously feel a lot differently about the Detroit series than you do. The Pistons were on to something, and they had a very young, very inexperienced core who is obviously a lot more confident now and less dependent on savvy old vets like Schroder and TH2. They still probably need some seasoning, but the odds are that if we see them this year in the playoffs, it won’t be in the first round, and by definition, they will have already have had success.
Also just to clarify, it’s not about how close they came to beating us, it’s more about how their formula for playing against us was instructive to other teams on how to play us.
“Yeah, not a fan of saying Detroit almost beat us when they would have had to win game 7 on the road to win the series even if they had won game 6.”
swifty, here’s what I actually said:
“We were literally a missed call and a Brunson 50-50 at best 3pt shot away from a game 7 vs. DET”
That’s different from “they almost beat us.” Even so, every tough playoff game brings with it the risk of injury or fatigue going into subsequent games/rounds, as we found out when JR Smith stupidly threw an elbow that woke the Celts up and turned a sweep into a very tough 6-game series. I think we would have beaten Indiana that year had we finished the sweep.
Last year, Indiiana went 4-1 and 4-1 in the two series prior to ours. OKC had a tough series vs. the Nuggets but went 4-0 and 4-1 in the other two. I dunno if it helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt!
Z-Man, I was expecting you to be featured prominently in today’s NYT front page story. You need a new alpha-gal agent.
Detroit is the team I thought Orlando was going to be this year. I think we’ll see them in the ECF and it should be a good series.
I do think we’ll have an easy series in the first round but the 2nd and 3rd rounds of the East will be blood baths.
The JR elbow might have cost us a championship!
Zman, I wasn’t speficiallt referring to your post. Someone the other day said Detroit almost beat us, so I was actually more referring to that sentiment in general, not you in particular.
But yea I want no part of Detroit bc I think they are the exact type of team that could beat us in a series.
glad they dont have malik beasley anymore can you imagine what theyd be if you added him back to the current roster
A mediocre 3pt shooting team instead of a bad one.
I think it’s a little weird that there is suddenly this narrative that physical teams are our weakness because we lost on the second night of a back-to-back to a rested Orlando team on a night the refs weren’t calling fouls.
I the current NBA, “can shoot” will beat “physical” in a 7 game series 10 times out of 10.
I felt that way before the Orlando game. This team can’t win if the shots aren’t falling. And they can’t win on the road. Unless it’s Dallas.
So a good defensive team that can gum up our offense I think we’re vulnerable too. It’s not about the other team being physical. It’s about us being a regular season offense first team.
Swift, how many first round picks did Team Pessimism give up for you?
lol, I admit it is ironic. Maybe I just really did love Thibs. I just find myself less patient with Brown mainly bc he inherited a team that returned all of its core plus a healthy Mitch and supposedly bolstered the bench. A team that got to the ECF.
I admit I should be more patient with him and give this team time but I think I’ve also switched over from “just happy to be good again” to “are we good enough to win it all” mode. As much as people have Thibs shit for playing the starters so many minutes it was kind of in line with the culture Thibs installed where the team never gave up. That attitude allowed us to come back from 20 down on the road against the defending champs twice and get to the ECF for the first time since I was in college.
To put it another way. I expected tweaks to the core and Brown to take it to the next level and I’m not seeing it yet. Just a different coach who emphasizes different things and is better at different things but is weak in other ways Thibs was not.
If you think Brown inherited a team on the precipice of a title I can understand the sentiment but we weren’t close to good enough to win it all last year. Indiana humbled us. And they weren’t even the final boss.
“Got to the ECF” is a very false flag.
Mailk Beasley is still a free agent? That’s odd, right?
I don’t know what you could possibly have seen already that tells you this team doesn’t have that. But let me remind you what really happened in the Eastern Conference Finals last year: the team gave up.
The season ended with Tyler Kolek, Landry Shamet, Pacome Dadiet, Precious Achiuwa, and Ariel Hukporti playing the last 2 mins of a 20 point blowout.
We went down meekly running the same shitty offense in game 6 that the Pacers had swallowed up all series. No adjustments. Just one more feeble attempt with the same stupid game plan.
The team quit in the 3rd quarter.
And the year before game 7 at MSG was over before halftime
As Bob Neptune would say — if he weren’t still banned ( 😉 ) — you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
I’m sort of with Swift. I’d love for the Knicks to be the best, but it’s so hard to do. There are all these other good teams. Lately it’s been easy to be hopeful in the preseason, but then the regular season starts and the worries begin. Brown is a good coach, but so was Thibs. It’s not like we changed from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr. We’re not worse than last season and we’re competitive, but there’s a lot of competition.
“Z-Man, I was expecting you to be featured prominently in today’s NYT front page story. You need a new alpha-gal agent.”
The dealbreaker was that I had to admit to being a lousy golfer.
Seriously, it’s is a pretty tragic case, and it is probably far from the only one. Front page of Times is a pretty big deal, glad the word is getting out.
For anyone interested, here’s a link to the article.
And here’s one from a couple of years ago that I unfortunately missed.
Mike Brown is still installing wrinkles and new sets to the offense and we saw a zone defense for the first time only a couple games ago. There’s more to come from Brown.
For all the complaints about the Knick defense, we have a better defense compared to league average (which has gone up a full point) than we did last year despite our opponents’ 3pt onslaught.
I’m not saying he’s better or worse than Thibs, but we’re really not at a point where we can fairly evaluate Mike Brown.
With the Heat whooping the Bulls tonight I believe it puts the Knicks in pole position to win their group. Pretty sure if Knicks win out they’ll finish tied with either Miami or Milwaukee and the Knicks will have the head to head tiebreaker.
Anyone else watching this DEN-HOU game?
I would actually like it if the Knicks were not in the IST playoffs, so long as they didn’t miss out due to an additional loss.
Yeah I agree would be nice to have a couple of easier games instead but Knicks shouldn’t lose at Charlotte or at home to Bucks who probably won’t have Giannis. Those are their 2 remaining Cup group games.
I lifted that from the great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
reed sheppard still looks unbelievably young out there…also looks a lot more comfortable playing, houston is just so deep, and then they have KD too…
What a choke job by the Wolves to blow an 8 pt lead with 49 secs left.
Wolves just completely choked away a game in Phoenix. And Ant Man got everyone in the crowd a free chicken sandwich by bricking 2 FTs with 12 seconds left.
Randle and Ant combined for 3 turnovers in the last 46 seconds.
Sometimes I forget just how talented Jamal Murray is.