News & Blogs
P&T November mailbag – Posting & Toasting
How Knicks’ OG Anunoby’s hot start, new approach impacts winning – SNY
Karl-Anthony Towns on Knicks’ new offense: ‘I haven’t seen it in 11 years’ – New York Daily News
Knicks use great shooting night to throttle Nets, 134-98, in battle of boroughs – SNY
Knicks Bulletin: ‘I think I look good. I got beautiful skin’ – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Insider: And here’s to more minutes, Mr. Robinson? – Newsday
The Run.down Knicks vs Magic Postgame Show 📱 – The Strickland
The Truth About Knicks 3 Point Defense – Knick of Time
KNICKS at MAGIC | FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS | November 22, 2025 – NBA
Knicks vs Magic Preview: Revenge Game Breakdown & Key Matchups – Knicks Fan TV
Knicks at Magic – Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
YT News
59 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.11.23)”
Some thoughts from Team Optimism HQ, which is currently located at Zak the Baker in Wynwood (shout out Clarence for the tip – this double chocolate babka is amazing and I’m bringing a suitcase full of it back home for Thanksgiving):
– I am ready to sell my 60-wins position. I thought we’d dominate right out of the gate like the Cavs of last year and the Celtics the year before. But injuries aren’t going to let that happen. I still have a very optimistic view, though.
– I think people are really, really, really overemphasizing the coach and underemphasizing the injuries. Mitch ain’t healthy. Without Mitch, and OG, and Deuce, and Landry, this defense is just gonna suck. If you want to put that on the coach, do you, but it’s not a reasonable take.
– we may not win 60 but I still think we’ll win the East. Instead of being last year’s Cavs, we’re looking more like last year’s Pacers. Injuries kept them of synch for 2-3 months but they put it together in mid January.
– Mike Brown is about as sideways a coaching change as there’s ever been. I do think it accomplished what a sideways move is supposed to do, though: it raised the team’s ceiling. This team has had a clear & obvious thermal exhaust port since the minute KAT got here: we will only ever be capable of championship caliber defense for brief spurts. But we only need a brief spurt if the offense works. We’ve seen snippets of how effective this formula can be already.
I watched most of the Orlando game and had to watch the Orlando announcers. My streaming service always gives the home feed unless it’s a nationally televised game. In the true Knickerblogger spirit, I was not very impressed with the Knicks’ play. So it was a little jarring hearing them talking about how good the Knicks’ offense was. But I think they were right. Our shooting percentage was high (at least the first three quarters) and we kept getting open shots. The Orlando announcers clearly weren’t used to teams scoring that well against them. We lost because we just couldn’t stop them. And also, even given the nature of the open shots they were getting, they were still sinking more shots than you might expect. So maybe they had a little shooting luck too.
Given that our better defenders are the ones injured or missing time, I’m not sure what the Knicks can do at the moment other than lean on their offense and try to win scoring battles
“Raven is a Big Black Bird says:
November 22, 2025 at 16:54
Random prediction: Franz for forty. Can we weather the storm?
Be a good game to get us some Kolek.
Huk-Huk!!!”
Nice prediction, Raven. He didn’t get quite 40, but 37 on 13-17 shooting is close enough. And we did see some meaningful Kolek minutes. Alas, Huk, not so much.
I turned the game on with 3 mins left cause it was saturday and the game was close and I hadn’t watched any NBA basketball yet this year. The moment I turned it on Hart fouled out and Brown emptied the bench even though it was only barely more than a double digit deficit.
We’ve all seen 12 point leads disintegrate in seconds, let alone minutes. I inderstand this was not an IST game, cause the Orlando court was merely ugly, not disgusting, but still… after a day of reading here about what “quitting” means, that was the epitome of it. Say what you want about Thibs, but he liked to win, even if it meant trying.
whos leading the knicks in blocked shots per game why its mikal bridges of course
As to me, I kicked off the game thread by saying that OG was our most indispensable player vs. Orlando, so a loss would not be as bad as a win would be good. Adding Deuce and for the most part Shamet to the DNP list and you have a scheduled loss to a very good team on the road. Everyone knew that Orlando was going to be very tough going into the season. Underestimate them at your own peril. They could very well come out of the East, and their biggest negative is playoff inexperience. They are kinda built to beat us.
Beyond that, my concerns about KAT and Brown were hardly allayed. KAT has something weird going on between the ears right now. I remember reading after we were eliminated last year that teammates were frustrated with his lack of defensive awareness. Is that a thing again? He just seems out of sorts right now. Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s some other disconnect (he openly mused about being unsure of his role in Brown’s schemes.) But he’s not looking anything like an all-star level player right now, other than on the defensive boards.
The other glaring thing is the play of Yabusele. I said last night that he looked like a generic G-League scrub, and maybe that’s being generous. For a team with depth concerns, every projected rotation player is being counted on to play to expectations. There is a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between what we expected and what we’re getting.
Shamet is obviously out for a while. The question becomes: does he have surgery or not? Obviously that shoulder is loosened up to the point that it can’t withstand a hard screen. So either way, he can’t be depended on for a long, tough playoff run. I think Leon has to strongly consider advising him to have season-ending surgery cutting his non-guaranteed deal. In any case, Kolek is going to have to get some minutes, and maybe he plays well enough.
Donnie, first, how’s the rebuild going? Well, I hope! Wishing you and yours the best for Thanksgiving and the holiday season.
Second, to anyone watching the game, you could tell that it was a lost cause, and no reason to risk Brunson or KAT getting injured against a physical team like the Magic. Sure, Thibs would not have thrown in the towel as early as Brown did, but that was something that folks around here complained about for years, so whatever, I was fine with it.
“Nice prediction, Raven. He didn’t get quite 40, but 37 on 13-17 shooting is close enough. And we did see some meaningful Kolek minutes. Alas, Huk, not so much.”
wagner was 13-19 not 13-17 still horrendous for us but not quite as galling
anyone else know that harden was still capable of scoring 55 points
weve now fallen all the way to the 5th seed not expected at all
I turned the game on with 3 mins left cause it was saturday and the game was close and I hadn’t watched any NBA basketball yet this year. The moment I turned it on Hart fouled out and Brown emptied the bench even though it was only barely more than a double digit deficit.
We’ve all seen 12 point leads disintegrate in seconds, let alone minutes.
this what happens when you abandon a life of mindless loyalty to instead chase soulless dopamine. it’s bye bye actuarial pie hello can donnie have one more shot before last call. 2:34 to go down 13 with one free throw left when brown subbed out jalen/mikal/kat. even in the modern tmac on steroids era, you can’t create a probability distribution that gets you to be better than 99.9% to lose (inpredictable agrees https://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/wpCalc.php). this is pretty likely lower than the marginal chance of one of your guys getting hurt in the last 2:34 of a gametime. plus the vibes were horrendous, mikal looked like he was about to cry. it’s hard for a dopamine chaser to understand how bad that would be for chipotle’s brand.
What’s the issue with Mitch?
His defense looks subpar. That’s the last thing we need. I’m not sure if he’s simply not fit yet and can’t play that super high energy basketball for many minutes or something is bothering him.
KAT may also still be less than 100%.
Hart may have taken a step back defensively.
Whatever the issues, we aren’t going to beat the really good teams if we don’t start defending better and I’m not sure we have the players even if Mitch turns it back around.
If we weren’t playing the Magic maybe I’d agree with Donnie but I’m 100% in favor of pulling the starters in a lost cause when filthy Wendell Carter Jr is out there injuring Knicks for fun.
I’m with Z-Man on the end of the game, Donnie, if you’d watched the whole thing, it was over. Thibs’ ‘die on the hill’ mentality was often brainless and dangerous. I was good with the subs.
I said it at the tail end of the thread yesterday, but I’ll say it again. Play Huk for the (21) minutes Mitch is not out there and KAT is. Don’t ever play KAT and Yabu together. It’s only five-out if they both can shoot, and right now one is shooting 25% from three for the season and the other has been shooting ~25% from three in recent games.
And Yabu is IMMENSELY slow. It’s like he has no fast twitch muscles at all. He’s (barely) capable of staying in front of his man on the perimeter, but he’s completely non-existent on help or if a guy gets a head of steam. I saw a play yesterday, loose ball, it’s just kind of rolling, four players all equidistant, and Yabu had barely turned himself toward it by the time the other three had converged. Similar reaction toward drives and open threes in the corner.
He looks like a pale shadow of the guy who covered 5 Celtics on one play. Whatever injury he sustained in the preseason, it has drastically changed our early season trajectory.
If by the middle of the year we have him and Yabu looking like they normally do, things will change a lot.
Carter had already fouled out.
I guess I only watch the .1% games, which makes sense cause I have amazing luck.
I missed most of the game because I took my daughter to see Wicked: For Good..pretty damn good btw and I don’t like musicals. Anyways..I did see enough to have 2 thoughts:
1. Orlando just has our number. I know we were down OG and Deuce, but even fully healthy they are a handful for us. Even without Banchero. I don’t quite understand it it, but I respect them for that. They are tough in the same way Detroit is. But, they way that team is built makes them more dangerous IMO. They’re like a bigger Detroit with surprisingly better or more timely shooting. If Banchero can reach the consistency that Cade seems to have found, they are gonna be really good. Good thing for us is that it’s still early enough for us to adapt and get better. But we may want to avoid them in the playoffs.
2. That play Shamet got hurt on was dirty and I’m still pissed that they called that foul on him. Suggs dipped his shoulder and pushed him into that screen. That’s what had him off balance enough to connect in a way that hurt his shoulder. Suggs didn’t need to do that because Carter Jr is a brick fuckin wall. I loved Suggs in college, but I really don’t like he and Bane. They get away with alot physically. Tell you what though..they’d be a great fit in 90’s defenses. They’d definitely start on JVG’s Knicks. Especially Bane. He’s like the guard version of Mason who can actually shoot. Normally I’d appreciate guys like him and Suggs, but the way they just shove guys around at will and escape the whistle gets under my skin. So maybe it’s not the players I dislike, but the lack of whistles against them
Suggs is in the same mold as Marcus Smart and Dillon Brooks – dogged defenders who try to get under the skin of the opponent by whatever means necessary.
I guess I respect guys like that for their intensity, toughness etc. but I can’t stand the whole “everyone look at me, I just drew a charge, here comes the primal scream” act. OG is one of the best defenders in the league and you never see him do shit like that.
I said it last night, Suggs just seems like kind of a dick but I guess he gets the last laugh every time they beat our asses.
There’s just no way a team can win after somebody like Landry Shamet goes down. Can’t be done.
Shamet: Ortg 133.3 Drtg 33.3
Best non-Shamet rotation Drtg was Yabu at 113.8. He actually leads our team for the season in Drtg and Drtg on/off.
Best non-Shamet rotation player who doesn’t leave a wake of potholes in the floor when he runs Drtg was Clarkson at 131.1.
The way we were defending there was as close to a zero chance as possible to overcome a 13 point lead with 2:34 remaining on the road. I was ecstatic when he emptied the bench unlike his predecessor. I’m curious what your take would have been had Brunson resprained his ankle or Mikal or Kat got Randled with 70 seconds to play?
This is a completely unserious criticism.
I don’t buy for one second that Orlando has our number or that they are even likely to win a playoff round.
That team is a handful in the regular season when you’re not up for a fight and the refs are giving them a good whistle, I’ll definitely give them that.
And they’re not a team you want to play in the playoffs bc you will be a walking infirmary when it’s over, like Boston was last year, and Cleveland the year before.
But that team still can’t throw the ball in the ocean, and teams that can’t shoot are not built to beat us.
Franz and Smirkin’ Desmond both say hold my beer, Hubert…
Regarding Mitch’s relative health, I think his minutes are pretty clear in terms of what the Knicks think of his chances of providing good minutes.
He just needs to heal more. He’s a shell of his normal self.
Suggs is one of those guys you love when he’s on your team and hate when he on the other team. I guess you could put him in the same class as Brooks, Caruso, Smart, etc. but it’s easy to forget how good he was expected to be when he was at the top of a lot of draft boards. This year he’s averaging nearly 22-6-7 and 2.8 steals per 36 on a .680 TS% and a 30% AST% and 24% usage. He turns the ball over and fouls too much, but those numbers suggest that he could become an elite 2-way guard. It would be nice if he was less of a mouthy hothead, like, say, Jrue Holiday or Derrick White, but that team’s identity is young, brash, and physical, so he kind of fits perfectly.
“I’m curious what your take would have been had Brunson resprained his ankle or Mikal or Kat got Randled with 70 seconds to play?”
Donnie would have laughed.
today’s good word is that thankfully we play the nets and then the hornets this week…
so we can mostly focus on another team’s problems for the week…
we’re about where we deserve to be in the standings…the ship isn’t exactly sinking at the moment, but we don’t look very seaworthy though…
The defense seems based around playing to OG’s strengths. Kinda think we need to abandon it till he gets back.
Maybe abandon it all together, which may help Mitch. The current set of perimeter players doesn’t seem capable of recovering to their man from where they are in the gaps. It puts a lot of pressure on Mitch when players have a runway heading to the hoop.
Raven said in the game thread: “Random prediction: Franz for forty. Can we weather the storm?”
What happened (via NBA.com): “Wagner erupts for 37 in win over Knicks”
I blame Raven for this L. 😀
I’m not buying the narrative that Orlando will suffer much in the playoffs because they can’t shoot. That’s why they gave up a king’s ransom for Desmond Bane, a career 41% shooter from 3 on high volume, and they are winning despite his current slump. They still have oodles of room for internal improvement from Anthony Black and Da Silva, let alone Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs. They just seem like the kind of team that can disrupt teams enough defensively, both in the paint and on the perimeter, to more than make up for 3pt shooting woes. They also get to the line more than any team in the NBA.
They probably need another year of seasoning, but maybe not. We’ll see!
mitch has looked dramatically different from game to game and sometimes from stint to stint going back three years now. this hasn’t stopped him from being an all time orb force throughout, but it has definitely altered the consistency of his impact on defense.
in the 1200 plus minutes he’s played over those 2+ partial years, opponents have scored 19.6 fg per 100 at the rim with him on. league average is around 17 and our schemes have if anything erred toward covering the rim. he’s had plenty of dominating defensive moments, but they are moments. when he looks off he seems to especially struggle with retreating against the pnr. guys get behind him and all the way to the backboard so much more frequently than the early years.
and he sets great screens but has become almost uniquely ignored as a roller. last night jalen had three assists on mitch dunks. this jumped off the screen at me so i looked up the last time mitch had at least three assisted dunks in a regular season game. it was so long ago that the three passers were rj, grimes and randle. that long forgotten game was the 71st time he had done so.
I can’t help but feel envious of these teams like Orlando, Detroit, and Houston who have built from the ground up with young players and who have many good years ahead of them. We’re a good team right now but it feels like the clock is ticking rapidly.
The history of teams that play 3-on-5 offense in the playoffs say you can go ahead and chug that beer, Raven.
Raven said in the game thread: “Random prediction: Franz for forty. Can we weather the storm?”
What happened (via NBA.com): “Wagner erupts for 37 in win over Knicks”
I blame Raven for this L. 😀
C’mon, Cyber, we should have won by three…
Brooklyn will be a relief and great remedy tomorrow lol
we certainly hope so the good news is that the nets are actually worse at home (0-7) than we are on the road (1-5)
Random thoughts about the game without having read this thread:
(but i’m still a firm believer in waiting until game 20 to cast strong opinions, so there’s still time)
The bad…
– Shamet getting injured is a disaster for us, he was playing well, seemed comfortable in the system Brown is trying to put in place.
– Mitch doesn’t look right even in the minutes he plays… any idea why?
– KAT is our 55M player, we need him to play like it. Brunson was being double teamed, if he doesn’t take a step up when that happens, for what do we need him? His stat line looks OK, but watching the game he was far from OK. He’s been bad this season. Is it Brown’s system? He wasn’t too fond of it at the beginning of the season.
– Hart getting frustrated is not what we need. He is the one that is relentless and that might get the others to join in. When he’s like this, the team gives up more easily.
– Yabu… WTF is going on with him? A pro doesn’t need 15 games to get into shape… he needs to get his sh*t together or else we need to trade him before the deadline. He has been a total disappointment.
– And last but not least, in 2 games we already lost the tiebreaker with the Magic. 🙁
The good…
– JB is still JB, even when some were saying he was playing bad, and for his standards he was, his line reads 33 pts and 11 assists having FG% .571 w/ 9 3PA. KAT had FG% .429 w/ 6 3PA. And Brunson was double teamed, at least in the 2nd half (i didn’t watch the 1st half).
– Mikal is playing great, and along with Shamet, this seems like the greatest achievement by Brown.
At a certain point d-mar said “Brunson and Bridges have scored 21 of the Knicks 23 points”
– OG is a beast on defense, that we already knew, but now we know that if he is not there everything falls apart. This is a bit concerning.
– Deuce is having a breakout season, at least by my eye test (LOL), and he was dearly missed.
– Shamet would be here, but alas… 🙁
– Clarkson is surprising his doubters, and it’s kind of funny (although in a bad way) that we cheered the Yabu signing as a great signing and then showed reservation about the Clarkson signing. In hindsight it should have been the opposite.
About this Silky said “It’s awesome that Jordan Clarkson is actually good but just did not give a fuck the last three years in Utah, allowing us to sign him for the vet min.”
And although all of this at the half BBA said “This has been an excellent 1st half offensively by the Knicks.”. Also, we were complaining about the officiating and i watched the 3rd and it was real, the refs were helping the Magic, it was blatant to the point of getting Breen angry, which i think it’s not an easy thing to do. Then in the 4th they opened a big lead and we had no answer.
This might help explain it:
clydefraziersblazers: “I guess letting the other team shoot lights out from 3 is a big part of this ball club (no matter the coach)”
Brian: “Probably not ideal when three of the players on the other team are at their season high in points.”
At a certain point in the 3rd Breen said that there were 16 lead changes, so i’m hanging to the game being a 2/3 pt game until the 4th, even though we had all the limitations listed above. Meaning i’m still team optimist for now, but it’s waning.
I’m not saying our season hinges on Landry Shamet’s already once dislocated shoulder, but…
Not gonna lie, the Hornets game kinda worries me. Luckily I’m hosting Thanksgiving so won’t be around for the meltdown if we lose.
LOL
So now that it seems pretty probable that a) Shamet is going to be out for at least a couple of months, b) he might be very susceptible to re-injury if he does return, and c) he may opt for season-ending surgery, what do folks think will happen? His salary becomes guaranteed on January 10 (but according to what I read, he would need to be waived on January 7 to ensure that he clears waivers before then.
I’m guessing that Shamet will try the non-surgical rehab approach until the beginning of January, after which time he will be re-evaluated and it will then be determined whether to waive him or guarantee him. The good news is that because of his prior dislocation, maybe the soft tissue damage is less than it was last year. The bad news is that if the shoulder gets better but is still unstable and even more susceptible to reinjury, would Leon be taking a big risk in keeping him on the roster?
I suppose that the answer to that question partly depends on a) how Brown deals with his absence…his shooting might be tough to replace and b) whether any trades are made.
No results this season have really worried me given the personnel available, opponent quality, etc., but having close to nothing to show for the 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 draft classes is shaping up to be a major failure. We had plenty of decent draft capitol across these years, and have so far managed to come away with zero rotation quality players.
Some of the moves made in specific years are more defensible than others (I will die on the hill of 2021 being the most egregious and 2022 being the most defensible from a process standpoint), but taken together it’s an unacceptable state of affairs at a time when teams are regularly finding guys who can at least fill in for someone else with later picks.
It’s also not accurate to write this off as cherrypicking. In 2024 alone, of course guys like Flilipowski and Ajay Mitchell stand out, but we also passed on perfectly #cromulent guys like Wells, Larson, Shead, Post, and Spencer.
The point isn’t that any of these guys will win a playoff series for you, but across 82 games it really is important to have some guys who won’t airball wide open 3s like Diawara for when injuries and/or fatigue inevitably hit, and there are only so many vet-min types who pass the two pronged test of “doesn’t suck” and “is willing to be on ice for a lot of the season.” That’s where draft picks are supposed to come into play, even for very good teams.
Leon’s done a lot of good things, but we have to hope he rigorously reevaluates his approach to the draft, because it’s very important and our neglect of it is proving costly.
Fucking Giants are going to finish the season 3-3 and throw themselves a parade for it.
Deuce is from the 2021 draft class.
While the buck stops on his desk, I don’t think Leon’s draft strategy is based on his own feelings. Brock Aller and Walt Perrin might be the guys to fault here for talking Leon into making draft decisions based on Aller’s cap considerations and Perrin’s draft board.
At the end of the day, it is what it is, and we have already debated any points of disagreement ad nauseum (and there are fewer points of disagreement than the volume of those debates would suggest.)
The question is, what next?
The Beatles just goofing around in the studio and figuring out how to play a song that would end up being a pretty minor b-side is more compelling than like 98% of all bands’ master releases
https://youtu.be/nFJSaNfxxGA?si=N6aKEMZ5NGwOixnD
And i thought the offseason was bad because there were no games… 😛
Brilliant coaching by Kafka, going for TD, giving time for tying FG, inevitably losing in OT, thus preserving better draft position
Tommy Beer
@TommyBeer
Over the Knicks’ last five games, NY is allowing a whopping 130.6 points per 100 possessions with Mitchell Robinson on the court. That is, by far, the worst DefRtg on the team during this stretch.
New York’s Net Rating with Mitch on the floor is (-) 15.1 during this 5-game span.
if you got any cannabis, send it in…
wish we could post turkey pics hubie – so i can flex my bird…are you cookin’ or caterin’ your turkey day feast?
I have nothing against people who cater their TG, Geo. But I would rather set myself on fire than let someone cater Thanksgiving at my home. I mean you might as well have sex with Lady Hubie while you’re here.
The Magic playing zero defense tonight
This game against Boston struck me as a schedule loss for the Magic as soon as I realized they were playing Boston so soon after our game.
Boston lost their last game at home vs Brooklyn…
Eagles 🦅 chokejob
Raptors have won 7 in a row and 11 of 12. Soft schedule, but still…
RJ left the game with a knee injury, hopefully nothing serious.
Nimmo getting traded for Semen (special spelling for Doogie)
Ronaldo giving the Saudi’s their money’s worth doing his best Pele interpertation…. https://x.com/i/status/1992686096980062618
Gladdens me to know there are still some things you can trust, Hubert. We got babka. Watched the last game with hubby in Nola sidled up to the bar wearing my beef and broccoli. Come fourth quarter barkeep put a glass of Pinot gringo in front of the hubby and an N/A Heineken in front of me. Looks at my hat, looks at the tv, motions at my hubbys wine “At least it’s not hemlock.”
In my heart, PT is the coolest dude ever. But in my mind, he’s just an internet dork no better than my own teenagers.