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52 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.11.22)”
Someone explain Derik Queen to me like I’m a golden retriever. They paid too much for him but he’s also great now, despite a bref stat page that looks suspiciously mediocre?
He is the king of Twitter this morning.
Continuing with Swift’s assessment… I see the drop off in attitude & toughness he’s talking about but it didn’t start this year and it’s not attributable to replacing Thibs with Brown.
Swift is making those two comebacks in Boston do a lot of work when he talks about last year’s team having a lot of fight and a never-say-die attitude. But those games were like 20% us and 80% on the Celtics inexplicably settling for 3’s instead of attacking the rim we couldn’t protect while also setting an NBA record for missed open 3PAs.
But this team said die against the Pacers. They said it loud and clear.
How could anyone watch that game 1 and call this team incredibly tough? Halliburton punked them with the choke sign and do you remember how they responded? It was a layup line in overtime! Literally. The last 10 points of OT were Nembhardt layup, Halliburton layup, Obi dunk, Nembhardt layup, Obi dunk. Real tough team. Never say die.
When Reggie flashed the choke sign against the Knicks in ‘94 they beat his ass the next two games and went to the finals. That was a tough team.
These guys played flat and meek in game 2 (and that’s usually a giveaway game for the road team after they win game 1). Game 4 was a wire-to-wire loss. And boy they raised the white flag in game 6. They literally raised it down 20 in the 4Q when they put the scrubs in with 2 minutes to go.
All that said, Swift’s not wrong. I just think he’s just got the wrong inflection point…
This team used to seem a lot tougher. But it wasn’t last year. It was when Donte, Randle, and Hartenstein were here.
We replaced three tough MFs with KAT and Bridges, both of whom are very talented but don’t exactly give off the same vibe. Maybe you think body language is overrated but KAT’s body language sucks. He’s always whining. His compete level is both sporadic and transparent (i.e. you can easily see when he’s giving up). You replace Randle and Hartenstein with KAT, and you’re going to see a much bigger difference in attitude than replacing Thibs with Brown.
Mikal’s been a lot better this year but even at his best he’s a cool cat. He’s not in your face like Donte, a guy who exudes fight.
So yeah, I see the change you’re talking about. Except I saw it last year, too. We transitioned from tough (Randle, Donte, iHart) to skilled (KAT, Bridges). Mike Brown is simply
the extension of that. He’s the coaching move Leon had to make after making his personnel decisions.
And yeah, I think the old team was better. I would undo the KAT trade in an instant if I could. But this team still has a better chance of winning simply bc there’s no more Boston and Indiana. The East may be good but there’s no one we shouldn’t beat.
I’ve never seen the guy play a single second, but I was curious about the talk so I ventured a peek. I disagree with you about his Bref page.
Imagine when we picked Obi or Frank or Knox we got a guy who in November as a rookie was putting up 18/10/5 per 36 shooting 75%Fts and a positive DBPM as a 20 yr old center. We’d be pretty stoked!
Also, 11 assists last night? That’s pretty special from any center, let alone a rookie 20 yr old.
I’ve been agreeing a lot more with Hubert lately, so this is either a sign of the end of times (it was a pleasure to meet you all LOL) or something crazy is about to happen… like the Knicks being NBA Champions! 😉 😀
But yeah, Hubert is completely right, we lost our toughness when we replaced Julius, Donte and iHart for KAT and Mikal. For me, KAT is the definition of soft.
But hey, you can win this way too, there are a lot of NBA Champions that were soft, they just were better than the opponents. Outside of Draymond i don’t think the Warriors were tough, and they won a lot.
Someone explain Derik Queen to me like I’m a golden retriever.
it can be hard to tell the difference between guys with plenty of analytical red flags (say questionable shot, sloppy decision-making, big who doesn’t quite defend like a big) whose offsetting traits seem hypothetical, flashy and ornamental. but sometimes the flash is so bright you kind of want to burn your checklist. marquese chriss damn well never did this. in fact not too many 6 10 250 pound rookies ever have.
https://x.com/pelicansnba/status/1992069358009377027?s=46
Interesting counterfactual, but with iHart going to OKC the “old team” of 16-2 fame was never returning. With MR being injured in the Embiid tug, the prospect of playing with a surgically rehabbed Julius as center for 75 games (with the prospect of not being able to resign him reasonably) was just too much of a risk.
The new team did what it was designed to do, beat the world champion Celtics on the square. Unfortunately in the ECF Hali hit a 3 that bounced off the back rim 10 feet up and 10 feet straight down which put an entireloy new spin on the series and their major playoff flaw, an intransigent coach who never tried different looks in the season who was left with no arrows in his quiver to play when his initial plan was trumped. That fault was remedied.
I’m not going to go all revisionist history or sports psychologist on folks and lament our loss of “toughness.”
Randle might have been “surly” and “physical” but he was far from “tough” in the way that the word “toughness” equals “wins the battle of will and wits.” He just had different flaws than KAT and was just as susceptible to “folding under pressure.” In fact, certain prominent KB posters lamented his “mental weakness” for years and all the fucking time. “Randle only shot the ball well in the bubble, Randle sucked in the playoffs, Randle turned the ball over of hogged the ball at critical times, Randle this, Randle that…” I’ve been as consistent of a defender of Randle as anyone here, but to think that having him (and Donte) instead of KAT and Bridges (without whom we would surely have lost to the Celtics) is ludicrous.
We lost to Indiana because they were a better and deeper team with a better coach. That would have been true with Randle and Donte as well, although we never would have found out because we wouldn’t have gotten there in the first place. Heck, we might have lost to the fucking Pistons!
Yeah, I saw that highlight. Kind of had a Iokic vibe. Interested to see how he turns out. Fun follow for sure.
And this is not to defend KAT, who is indeed soft in many ways. But it’s not because he doesn’t bludgeon guys who punk us. It’s because he makes dumb decisions on both ends, game killing decisions, and his only counter to those decisions is raw talent. I would agree that to have a bruising “enforcer” type role player on the team would help, but only if that player also had 2-way talent…e.g. a Lu Dort. Mitch is long and strong but he’s kind of a flake, not really a tough, intimidating guy. Obviously iHart is way better as a physical presence with all-around skills. Same with OG, he’s punishing but in a gentlemanly way, and can be goaded into dumb decisions with the ball. Hart and Deuce have great toughness but lack specific talents and size for their respective roles. Yabu has physicality but is fat and slow and thus far can’t do the most important thing he was brought in to do.
Our two mentally toughest players that have talent are Brunson and Mikal, but they have flaws as well (Brunson is short and not a vertical athlete, Mikal is skinny and can be pushed around.) But you can count on them to play well no matter what the stakes. They rarely do very dumb shit in critical moments.
Bottom line: our issues are less about physical toughness and more about positional size/lenth/strength/athleticism and ability to perform under the highest pressure.
With the usual injury caveat, I think both teams are going to be a very tough out. They both play very good defense.
That 16-2 Knicks run was in part related to a soft spot in the schedule and not fully a reflection on how good we were at the time.
The single most important development in negatively impacting our championship aspirations is the loss of iHart for nothing, especially when considered in the context of trading out of a decent draft to create the cap space to acquire both him and Brunson. I couldn’t have cared less about the draft moves if iHart were signed to a 3-year deal, especially because if we wound up with Ousman Dieng or Ochai Agbaji or AJ Griffin (i.e. not JDub or Duren or even Eason) it would have not changed anything.
I don’t know whether Leon offered a 3rd year and iHart’s team refused it, or Leon and Aller were too concerned about cap constraints to offer enough to secure him. But that really was the most regrettable development of the Leon era, imho.
Leon tried to duplicate the Celtics champiosnhip model of 5 out and tried to counter the Celtics wing scoring tandem with 2 high level wing defenders.
The difference is that Holiday was a huge plus defender where Brunson is a huge negative defender. Boston also did not need Holiday to be a #1 option like Brunson because they had so much firepower elsewhere.
Josh Hart is the same kind of Swiss army knife player as Derrick White and better in a coupld of ways, but Derick White can shoot the 3 and is a much better defender.
Towns is a better overall player than KP, but KP gave Boston’s high level perimeter defensive a backstop in the paint on top of that perimeter defense where our weaknesses on the perimeter are/were exacerbated by Towns at C. Mitch solves one problem, but creates spacing issues, especially combined with Hart.
That championship caliber Celtics team was MUCH better than us defensively and the pieces fit together better. Our win over them last year was a fluke. They were way less than 100% physically and 3 point variance was not their friend (imo that kind of extreme relaiance on the 3 was stupid given they were the better team).
“With the usual injury caveat, I think both teams are going to be a very tough out. They both play very good defense.”
The key to beating us is to hold Brunson and KAT to good but not great games and to make everyone else beat you. Having guys in the playoffs like Ausar, Dyson, and Suggs to throw at Brunson makes it physically grueling for him to do his thing. That puts a ton of pressure on KAT, and well…
DDV I guess had a certain kind of attitude to him, but it was a “yapping dog” kind of toughness, not a Mase/Oak kind of toughness. It didn’t manifest as any particularly physical type of play. He gave good effort but I don’t think opponents were very worried about getting fucked up by tough guy Donte Divencenzo.
2000% accurate.
He added a lot of wins.
So even though we upgraded Towns > Randle and Bridges > DDV, it was close to a sideways move overall and we emptied our trove of picks just to stay around where we were.
If we didn’t lose I-Hart for nothing, we’d be in a position to win it all. We might have a different looking team now, but that was a valuable asset we lost for nothing and kind of focred us to make a move at C given Mitch’s health.
That 18 game “soft spot” in the schedule contained wins vs Denver (by 38 with their entire starting 5 that won the title) Indiana (by 4), the 76ers (by 36 with Embiid), Twolves (by 6 when they were 24-8 at the time) and Miami (by 16 with Jimmy, Bam and Herro). They were exceptional with that allignment. Cut out the BS and acceed to facts, not feelings. They were fucking terrific.
The great and physical Randle is still looking for his first win against a team with a winning record this season
I agree that the 18-2 run was phenomenal and was punctuated by an utter demolition of a very tough Heat team….and then Randle was submarined by a rookie and, alas, all was done.
Was that a potential championship team that year? Probably not. But we still had all those picks, so there were paths to getting there that we might have explored. Still, we almost certainly were losing iHart, and Julius has admitted to being in a bad way and smoking dope like a chimney at that time and was in a contract year, so there’s no use crying over spilt milk.
We have a really good, if flawed team, and maybe, just maybe, things break right for us. It’s easy to get all verklempt about what might have been when we are a bit stuck in the mud like we are right now (9-5 record be damned!) I’m going to enjoy this regular season for what it is, a season with great expectations in the best run of winning basketball since the ’90s. Who knows, maybe my man Mohamed Diawara is the next iHart?
Very skilled and fun to watch . Makes the Pels worth checking out even with the awful record .
I don’t think KAT is soft, Cyber. When he’s competing he’s tough AF. But his compete level is inconsistent. And it’s very visible when his compete level drops. And I think that drop is what makes it feel like this team isn’t always fighting.
Of course they were less than 100% physically. The started a 34 yr old guard and a 38 yr old “center” who was backed up by a guy who played one relatively complete season in his career. What a surprise when they struggled in their 90th plus games.
They shot 36.8% on threes for the season on 48.1 attempts… it is unsurprising they would have some below average shooting nights, Interestingly, the Knicks shot better from 3 for the season @ 36.9% but with 14 less attampts.
In game 1 when Boston was cold from the floor, they chose the poorer startegy of trying to “shoot their way out” with 60 attempts while hitting 25%.
In game 2 they shot poorly again from 3 @25%, but the Knicks shot only 29%. The Celts faded and melted at home in the 4th as KPs yearly “mystery disease” forced Horford to play 29 minutes and he resoponded wit 2-11 and 0-5 from 3. They were outscored by 13 in the 4th quarter.
In pivotal game 4 where Boston could have squared the series and taken an overwhelming psychological lead they shot a very typical 37.5% on 48 attempts, sprinted out to an 11 point lead at the end of the first quarter and then gave up 70 in the last half, outscored by 19 in the last half. Poor Al Horford was forced to play 37 minutes and shot 1-2.
In another NBA news, Conor Gillespie scored 20 points off the bench for the Suns and hit the game winning basket to beat Houston
My Nova graduate son and his friends used to refer to him as “fake Arch” (Arciadacano) Now I guess Arch is fake Conor lol.
I took “fight” in the sense Swift was using it to mean “compete level when you’re losing”, not actual physical confrontation.
Fingers crossed. And i think we deserve it, i’ve been a fan for a long time and the “pleasant surprises” are very few. Now would be a good time for the basketball Gods to make up for it.
KAT has some tremendous physical gifts and skills but also has one serious limitation: he’s not a fast twitch athlete at all. He’s a lumbering sort of fellow, and it takes a moment for him to get some momentum and for all of his limbs to move together in concert. He’s big, strong, and skilled, but slow.
I think this reads as “soft” sometimes, but actually I think he’s a competitive dude who gives a tremendous amount of effort. He just doesn’t get to his spot quickly enough on defense, and doesn’t react quickly enough because he physically can’t. Jumping and grabbing a rebound in traffic? No problem. Sliding his feet on defense or trying to keep his body between an attacking ball handler and the basket? Big problem.
I think this same physical limitation hurts him on offense, in the form of him not getting a favorable whistle.
Queen is a really fun player AND they overpaid for him. Both are true.
But I think he has a bright future and is part of why I think they should trade mopey Zion asap and build around Queen and their wings. I’m just not sure who wants Zion at this point though.
If last season’s team were quitters they would’ve quit in Indiana when down 20 in Game 3 and gotten swept, instead they were able to force the series to 6 games which I actually give them alot of credit for.
BBA I don’t give them any credit at all for that, it’s a baseline expectation. No goddamn NBA team should ever quit in a fucking playoff game. That’s not a Thibs thing, that’s just being a competitive collection of players. I mean, that’s like crediting teams for not getting gentleman’s swept by winning game 3 or 4.
The main point being made here, which I happen to agree with, is that Thibs had zero to do with the mental toughness of the team, other than giving them a game plan/roster construction-utilization thing that generally worked well. If the Knicks falter because of Brown, it will also be a game plan/roster construction-utilization thing, not a “coach instills mental toughness” thing.
Why is Queen a “fun” player? Whether he is overpaid (cost of a likely high lottery pick to move up 10 spots) can only be found in the fullness of time.
If the cost for Jackson Dart was the 2026 first round pick (which could easily be #1 and certainly a top 8) instead of the 25 #2 and the 26 #3, would it have been an overpay? Nope… it would be a complete steal.
Did we know that on draft day? Nope, but Dabol was in love with the guy and (on this) he proved to be correct.
Dumars, et al saw something in this guy he thought strong enough to give up next years very likely high draft choice for. He’s been wrong before, but his guy is off to a terrific start.
Look at the “gerneational player” vs the “fun player” and tell me who has the better per 36 and advanced numbers:
https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/basketball/versus-finder.cgi?player_id2=queende01&player_id1=flaggco01&request=1&utm_id=flaggco01&utm_source=bbr&utm_medium=sr_xsite&utm_campaign=2023_01_wdgt_player_comparison
I agree with JK’s take, but I would add that it’s not really just a “slow-twitch” thing (which is more about muscle movement…for example, Brunson is also pretty slow twitch compared to Tyrese Maxey) and more of a “slow processing/situational awareness and anticipation/court vision” thing. Meaning, both his body and mind are a step slow.
Case in point: no one would confuse Jokic with a fast-twitch athlete, he lumbers just as much as KAT. If you put Jokic’s mind in KAT’s body and skillset, you still have an all-time great player. If you put KAT’s mind in Jokic’s body/skillset, you pretty much have KAT.
His mean is that of a mediocre-IQ player who can flash stretches of high-IQ play, but ultimately will regress back to that mean.
Derik Queen is the kind of player I watch basketball for.
Bob, I’m not interpreting “fun player” as a novelty act, but as a “hey, Dumars just may have known what he was doing! This guy may indeed be fun to root for!” kind of fun player!
Please follow the context.
Swift thinks last year’s team never said die and this year’s team does.
I’m not bringing up the Pacers series to call last season’s team quitters, just to point out that he’s mythologizing them by cherry picking his two favorite games and ignoring the larger sample.
And it has nothing to do with physicality, either. A tough team doesn’t punch Halliburton in the mouth bc he flashed the choke sign. But a tough team does play good defense in the overtime period instead of giving up easy buckets for 5 minutes.
This season will apparently be the end of the line for CP3.
In OT Knicks were up 4 then got a blatantly obviously missed goal tending call which would’ve put them up 6 but instead turned into a Pacers fast break.
I vehemently disagree with Z-Man because if he thinks teams don’t regularly quit during playoffs then I dunno what sports he’s been watching in his lifetime and he’s much older than I am. I don’t think quitting is necessarily always a demeaning quality it’s just human nature. Sometimes you just have no more left to give especially if you’ve faced unusual circumstances like the flukey ass Pacers comeback in Game 1. If you think just bouncing back like nothing happened immediately after Hali’s bullshit game tieing shot shot that forced OT is easy then you’ve never played any competitive sports in your life.
Hubert brought up Game 5 in 1994, the Knicks in that game were so shell shocked they basically did quit, they committed a shit load of bone headed turnovers during that quarter too it wasn’t just Reggie going nuts. In Game 6 the Knicks again almost choked away the game in the 4th quarter but held on for dear life with help ironically from Miller missing a FT with a couple of mins left in the game.
Teams getting swept or gentlemen swept happens all the fucking time, probably moreso than it should happen if the playoffs were truly competitive and teams never quit. So yes after losing first 2 games at home then trailing by 20 in Game 3 I was pleasantly surprised at that moment the Knicks were able to get the series to Game 6.
Maybe i’m being unfair with the basketball Gods, as we have not one, but two pleasant surprises on our roster right now – Deuce and Mitch.
Also, it implies the caveat that it’s only been a handful of games, so who in their right mind would either fully anoint a 20yo kid or insist the trade was 100% negative for the Pels?
Narrator: “The answer, dear reader, is most Knickerblogger commentators.”
Right, Jokic compensates for his lack of fast-twitch reflexes by having that amazing vision and processing speed, so the overall net effect is that his game looks much more effortless. KAT always looks like he’s about to faint.
“In another NBA news, Conor Gillespie scored 20 points off the bench for the Suns and hit the game winning basket to beat Houston
My Nova graduate son and his friends used to refer to him as “fake Arch” (Arciadacano) Now I guess Arch is fake Conor lol.”
except for his name is collin gillespie not conor
Deuce is now questionable for today with an illness.
Expected Lineup
PG J. Brunson Prob
SG Landry Shamet
SF Mikal Bridges
PF K. Towns
C M. Robinson
G J. Brunson Prob
G M. McBride Ques
F OG Anunoby Out
The only reason I commented on you post was when you said “He was a fun player And they overpaid for him.” We have no earthly idea whether they overpaid for him or not. I would certainly agree it looked very heavy at the time. But today it is a reasonably open question.
Speaking with metaphysical certitude is a common affliction here and I am certainly guilty at times.
BBA, I guess you’re an authority on quitting since nobody is as quick to “quit” on the team they root for as you are.
Seriously, “quitting” is the absolute worst think you can say about a player or a team, and should be evoked only in extreme circumstances. There was no “quit” in the Knicks last year, or in the ’90s. They simply got outplayed when it mattered most by a team that was equally good, if not better. When teams “recover” from losing an early game in a playoff series in excruciating or humiliating fashion, it’s almost always because they clearly are the better team. Sure, “their betterness” could include qualities such as resiliency or mental toughness, but it’s mostly about the things that made them a great team in the first place.
Last year, Indiana was grossly underrated, and that was pretty clear during the NBA finals, when they gave heavily favored OKC all they could handle and might have won game 7 if Hali didn’t go down. OKC’s vaunted defense never solved them. OTOH, I am fairly confident that had we played OKC the series would have been a one-sided affair.
Im more of the thought that Thibs knew how to throw rock really well and we traded him for a guy who knows how to use paper really well.
Paper is the more in style move now with the NBA but I still don’t know if this team can win if “the shots aren’t falling.” IE, I think we’re vulnerable to losing in the playoffs the way Boston did against us if we face a team like Detroit or Orlando.
I want to see us win an ugly game or two on the road like we did against Dallas but against better competition. That’s kind of what I mean by soft or quitting. I don’t think the players themselves are soft or will just quit if they’re behind. But I don’t know if stylistically we can win if we’re forced to now play our game.
And maybe I didn’t miss the January 2024 Knicks so much last year bc we still had Thibs but now that he’s gone, I do really miss the identity of that team and feel like that was an inflection point. That team plus a healthy Mitch back in up IHart with Mikal would be a lock for the finals IMO.
The funny thing is that if the Knicks had not blown that lead in Game 1, they’d probably be known forever as a tough team given how they performed in the clutch and how many come from behind wins they had in the playoffs. Narratives fit the facts only after they happen, generally.
I only semi quit during games but I always jump right back on the bandwagon! In the coming weeks I’ll be busy during game threads so while I’ll be watching I won’t be able to comment much so you’ll be spared my exaggerated mood swings.
But Z-Man we’re actually on the same page in terms of I don’t think the Knicks quit last year at all although I disagree with how much better you think the Pacers were than the Knicks. To me Game 1 was a complete fluke and that comeback changed the entire complexity of the series. If Indiana truly was so much better than the Knicks after going up 2-0 they shouldn’t have allowed the series to get to 6 games.
In fairness I’m being a bit hypocritical cause I think the Knicks were clearly better than the Pistons last season but that series also went 6 games.
BBA, you know I respect you even with the hyperventilating, so it’s all good!
As I have often pointed out, there were 4 moments where the Knicks could have shown that they were the better team: OT in game 1 (no excuses, they couldn’t hold on to a lead), Game 2 (they couldn’t stop Siakam in a game that IND might have been less motivated to win than us), Game 4 (they couldn’t even the series by doing to Indiana what Chcago did to us in 1993 after they lost the first two games at home) and in Game 6, where we simply got beat fair and square. Fir Indy, it’s harder to win game 2 on the road after winning game 1 and taking home court. Once they won game 4, they had less motivation to win game 5 than we did (see: Boston game 5 in the prior series.)
Winning teams make their own breaks. The Pacers made their own breaks, both against us, and against OKC in the finals until they got the ultimate bad break. And yes, some of that is coaching. Carlisle recognized our flaws and had the horses and the game plan to exploit them. But edges in personnel and depth were also important.
The January Knicks are the team that’s preserved in amber as some sort of platonic ideal of Knicks greatness, because they never had to go through the playoffs and likely lose. So there’s this romantic attachment to them that’s quite frankly kind of ridiculous.
They died young and left behind a beautiful corpse. They probably would have lost in that playoffs and then we wouldn’t have to hear these ridiculous takes about the burning competitive fire of Julius Randle and Tom Thibodeau, and how this team just doesn’t have the will to win that the January Knicks did.
It’s kind of like how we never had to hear Jimi Hendrix’ crummy 1980’s albums or hear John Lennon go through a New Wave phase, or watch John Cazale play a bit role in the shitty Dick Tracy movie. All we have is the “what if.”
What if John Cazale had played Flattop, though? Rain Man was good that year, but beatable. The other nominees were totally forgettable — Accidental Tourist? Working Girl? I mean, Cazale could have easily pushed Tracy into the nominees, and once there it’s really just a coin flip. Just ask LaLa Land.