News & Blogs
‘A psychopath. A lunatic’: Knicks’ Mikal Bridges still hasn’t missed a game – New York Daily News
Tyler Kolek Has Arrived – Posting & Toasting
REPORT: Eurostash center James Nnaji to enroll at Baylor University – Posting & Toasting
Knicks set for NBA Cup Semifinal meeting with Magic after win over Raptors – SNY
James Nnaji, whose draft rights are owned by Knicks, joins Baylor with immediate college basketball eligibility: reports – SNY
Knicks vs. Cavaliers prediction, odds: Best bets, where to watch Christmas game – CBS Sports
Jordan Clarkson COOKED The Cavs For 25 Off The Bench! – Knicks Fan TV
The Run.down Knicks vs Cavs Postgame Show – The Strickland
CAVS Get Coal at MSG | Tyler Kolek Continues to Impress | Magic Next| Oakley Spirits – Knick of Time
Knicks vs Cavaliers – CHRISTMAS DAY Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
EXTENDED: CAVALIERS at KNICKS | FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS | December 25, 2025 – NBA
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64 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.12.26)”
Any word on Hart’s ankle yet? If he’s out and Deuce is back, I assume Brown will just start Deuce (aka “The Lineup”). But would be fascinating if he decides to reward Kolek by starting him alongside Brunson.
jokic with 56/16/15 thats quite a line even for him heres the sad thing tho with him doing that they still only beat the wolves by 4 nuggets really not a very good team
Tyler Kolek is a balm on my life
https://x.com/cpthefanchise/status/2004318181570355610?s=46&t=0wqff4cNt-sCGcDs-uMExw
Fun Kolek December (11 games) per 36 stats:
15.5 pts
6.7 Rebs
9 Asts
.591 TS%
.393 3PT%
18.8% Usage
Man, that was one satisfying win.
I feel guilty for not fully believing in Tyler Kolek. It’s not that I don’t trust him now, but my mind is always traveling to multiple points in time, and recently I was envisioning some growing pains in his first playoff experience that I’m not sure we can afford.
I think of Deuce McBride, for example. He’s an excellent player who killed us in his first playoffs. In back-to-back elimination games against the Heat, we had to play Jalen Brunson 48 and 45 minutes. And Deuce still managed to submarine the season in those 3 minutes Brunson sat (the Heat went on an immediate 10-0 run to flip game 6 and close out the series).
On the flip side, Deuce was simply not this good in his second year.
And even more importantly, unlike 2023, we’re not likely to face a team in the East that we need 48 of Jalen Brunson against. So even if Tyler does struggle in his first playoff experience, we should be able to overcome it. And by the time we get to the finals (knock on wood), he’ll have three rounds of playoff experience.
With every test Tyler aces, I’m learning to stop worrying and love the Kolek Chaos. We’ll see what happens in the next 6 weeks before the trade deadline, but my earlier assessment that he’s unlikely to impact playoff games this year the way TJ McConnell can seems premature.
And if that’s settled, we’re just one move away from everything falling into place. I’m not totally out on Yabu but it’s getting late early, and if he’s not clicking by February he’s got to go. Yabu + Dadiet = $8.3M in salary. Huk gets you over $10M. That should be enough to find the right big we need to shore up the front line.
Between the IST final and the Christmas Day pageant, Kolek has delivered in the brightest lights this season has yet afforded. This while in the midst of the highest expectations this team has had since the mid 90’s. If he can continue to knockdown a three or four a game he’s going to be the villain for many an NBA fan.
Jalen Brunson is the captain and that is meaningful. I’ve rarely understood that moniker to be so perfectly descriptive of the player who carries the burden. Kolek is in the right place at the right time.
Shout out to cdiggy for an article in The Athletic trashing the Lakers. Hope he reads it and it warms his heart.
Also a nice piece by Edwards lauding Mitch. Stay a Knick, Mitch. Please.
Even if Kolek is 100%, Clarence, my mind still drifts to the potential problems of using that Brunson-Kolek backcourt. It seems like it needs Mitch to compensate for the smallness of playing those two with Mikal & OG. As soon as we put KAT in for Mitch Cleveland started getting to the rim and gobbling up offensive rebounds. That may have just been bc KAT was having one of his my-head-is-squarely-up-my-ass games again (which he announced to us immediately by picking up two quick fouls in the 1Q), but we all kinda gasped and felt queasy when he came back in the game.
This team has a lot of combinations, and it’s been great to see Brown make use of our optionality. But it doesn’t have an answer for everything.
Lucky for us, though, 100% of the teams that can counter all our options are out west, and we only have to play one of them.
And we’ve played pretty well against the Wemby Spurs so far, albeit not at the full strength of this year’s team. And KAT has a history of playing well against Joker. And we did play OKC evenly for a half last season. So… there’s that?
More SSS theater: Jordan Clarkson’s last 5 games: 20-29 from 3.
Yeah Kolek giving me shades of Jeremy Lin and Landry Fields. So far beyond expectations that surely the wheels will come off, right? Maybe not! It helps that we’re not looking for a savior.
Could you imagine Melo ever making that late game pass to Lin for the three, down four?
If Brown is getting opposing schemes to spend any effort gaming out the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th guys off the bench we are in uncharted territory. Guys like Kolek are the poison you have to suffer when you’re getting into important games with well built teams. If they’re in your schemes they’re not first order of business. Or second.
And just because those teams have counters doesn’t mean they’ll win. If OKC want to go big against us they’re going to lose a lot of what makes them special. It’s not like last year when I was saying “thermal exhaust port” every other week. We shoot threes now. And we don’t stick with what isn’t working until it’s over. This team can definitely beat anyone in the finals, and it’s more than a puncher’s chance.
I’m looking forward to seeing how we play against Detroit when we’re at full-ish strength. Because they played us well in last year’s playoffs and for the moment are playing better than that.
Two starters Aaron Gordon and Cam Johnson were out. 56 points on 21 shots is something.
I’ve never seen 2 teams score 50 points in a 5 minute overtime before,
Not to throw dirt on the departed, but Tyler Kolek would never have become the player we see today under our prior coach.
And what I really like about Brown is his willingness to experiment and try unorthodox lineup combinations. Not sure many other coaches would play Brunson and Kolek in the backcourt together for extended stretches.
would love to see lineup data for the brunson/kolek combo on the floor together cant imagine that it would be anything other than really impressive
easily best game by any player in a game this season was what joker did dwarfing his own (now) second place 55/12/6 at clippers in mid november
Detroit did play well against us but a big reason for that was how predictable and rigid we were. They had our starting 5 sized up and we never varied from it. We even declined to punish them for using Duren on KAT. It was an abominable coaching performance, and I suspect that series weighed heavier in Leon’s mind than the Pacers series when he made his decision to change coaches.
If we played the Pistons tomorrow I’d confidently pick the Knicks in 5. The only team in the East that scares me is Boston if Tatum comes back. And frankly I’m mostly scared of them hitting threes at a ridiculous clip as
karma for their record-setting misery from 3 last year.
I’m reveling under the orange and blue skies as much as anyone, but there’s still a lot of data to collect.
-We haven’t played any of OKC, Houston, Denver, Detroit, Atlanta, or LAL.
-We have at least somewhat unsettling losses to Orlando, Boston, Philly, and Miami, and needed Brunson knocking down a stepback 3 and a brainfart by Siakam to beat Indiana.
-Our wins vs. MIN, SAS and CLE were games where their best players were coming back from lengthy injury rehabs and on minutes restrictions.
-Teams are still collecting (or should I say Kolek-ting) game film against Brown’s schemes and some of our developing lineup modifications.
For sure, we coudn’t ask to be in better position than we are right now and there are still unspent rounds in the chamber. But that’s true for other teams as well. I wouldn’t assume that any of CLE, OKC, ORL, DET, BOS, HOU, PHI, SAS, ATL, or LAL are finished products right now. I’m not really feeling any more confident about our playoff chances than I was going into the season, and probably won’t no matter what happens.
I also think that we are more vulnerable to injury than some other key teams. Obviously every team has an indispensable player, and ours is Brunson. But losing any of KAT, Mikal, Mitch, or OG and to a slightly lesser degree, Hart, would be hard to overcome in a tough playoff series. The dropoff from these guys to their replacements is pretty massive. In my opinion, our depth is not as deep as it looks when our main guys are healthy.
Anybody else feel a trifle trepidatious over the fact that our starting five, one of the most intimidating group of starters in the league on paper, absolutely unequivocally SUCKED yesterday?
I mean, it’s great that Mitch, Tyler, and Jordan have morphed into Killer Bees, but I’m not sure we can depend on them to bring us back from 17 down (more than once) every game..
One of these teams is not like the others… Atlanta is a sub-.500 team.
Raven, one thing you and others (Hi, Strat!) may need to tweak your priors on is Jordan Clarkson’s defense. He’s hardly Tony Allen out there, but he is trying his ass off and making some plays. He seems healthy, positively engaged, and certainly not physically washed as some feared. Even if he is not his 28yo prime self, he showed yesterday that he still has enough of that 6MoY residue to be up there with the best vet’s minimum signings in the league.
“One of these teams is not like the others… Atlanta is a sub-.500 team.”
A healthy and gelled version of the ATL roster has not been a thing yet. Will it ever be? Probably not, but in theory, a starting lineup of KP, JJ, Riaacher, Dyson and Trae, with a bench of Okongwu, NAW, Kennard, Kredji, and Newell seems pretty good. Maybe I’m still traumatized by Trae’s MSG antics over the years. I’d put them in the same class as the Heat…a team that we are better than on paper, but that can give us problems on any given night.
I posted it a couple days ago – they’re +11.3 over a meaningful number of minutes (before yesterday)
I remain, as I was before the season, utterly unconcerned about the Hawks
Re: the Hawks, it’s less that I’m “concerned” about them and more that I think they will be a much better test than the teams we have beaten in most of our wins so far this year.
Z-man seems to be crediting a lot of other teams for their faults while giving the Knicks none.
Any decent team can give the Knicks problems on any given February evening, but they don’t have the chops to realistically challenge in a 7 game series.
Trae is a poor Melo-ish high volume/low efficiency chucker who is a sieve defensively and doesn’t make those around him better.
His douchebaggery is sometimes annoying when he gets hot an puts up 35, but his teams will never win consistently. The days of having Elfrid Payton as the pg and RJ as the second offensive option are long gone.
Those announcers that called the game on ABC are terrible by the way.
“Z-man seems to be crediting a lot of other teams for their faults while giving the Knicks none.”
That’s fair, although I did in fact say that we have unspent rounds in the chamber.* I only meant to point out that there is significantly more uncertainty than our record alone would indicate.
*Mitch could get healthier and could improve his FT shooting, Kolek can get better with experience, KAT could find a rhythm and become more consistent, especially from 3, and could cut down on fouls, Diawara might blossom, Clarkson might become more consistent, Huk could develop, Yabu could either improve or be dealt, Brown can implement even more plays and schemes and ther players can run them better, etc,
here are the 4 post game locker room interviews shared…
made me smile seeing kolek talking to reporters 😊
reminded me a little of when deuce first started shining and got some spotlight…very cool…
also good to see and hear mitch getting in to the right mindset (I am a beast, try to stop me)…
kind of a noisy scrum though, hard to hear some of the questions/responses…
loved hearing jj reddick going off on his team…
not too long before they totally tune out that tool…
I am soooooo there to watch and enjoy the lakers’ pending demise…yeah good luck with deandre ayton shoring up your defense and controlling the boards – ha…no ‘D’ luka, a bunch of spare parts and old man lebron…
Z-Man, I have already tweaked my priors over Clarkson (resulting in my having to go on the injured reserve list). He will always occasionally make agonizingly moron plays a la Randle and now KAT, but he clearly IS trying, and he’s also shooting the ball in the rhythm of the game (something I wasn’t expecting, and didn’t see much at the start). He’ll win us a few games, like yesterday, but he’s probably not going to lose us any (perhaps a quarter here or there). I sort of think of him as a +/- 0 overall, but with a lot of variance; and in fact his last five games he’s been +7, 0, -2, -9, and +13. That feels right.
My opinions don’t change unless I learn something new.
Clarkson has always been a negative defensive player and most years a net negative player. That’s not to say he won’t have good minutes or even good games defensively or light it up once in awhile. That’s to say over the course of the season he’s a negative player and weak on defense.
I never once said paying him the minimum was a bad financial deal.
I said we needed a backup PG (would have liked Brogdon if he had anything left), Clarkson is less of a backup PG than Payne and our issues were going to be on the defensive end. So IMO he was the wrong player for us to sign.
It looks like Kolek (who I have been high on as a prospect to eventually be the backup PG) is breaking out a lot faster than I hoped. I’m hoping it’s not a short term mirage. If he winds up taking that spot, that solves one major problem that Clarkson did not address. But even at this point I’d play a healthy Shamet over Clarkson except in certain lineups and situations and I’d play Deuce over both of them.
Jokic has a 71 TS% at 30% USG. Even without counting his assists and rebounds, it’s crazy.
I think we can get better play out of KAT. One of the worst plays we run is “give KAT the ball at the three point line and let him drive to the basket.” His PPP on those must be vanishingly low. Most of the time it seems like he either gets stripped or throws up some flailing low percentage shot that clangs off the rim and he falls on his ass and starts complaining while the other team pushes the ball up the floor.
I don’t know if the numbers back this up, and this is an anecdotal observation, but I do know that I just assume it’s going to be a bad outcome when he puts the ball on the deck, and it also seems like that’s a go-to play.
Obviously we have a very good offense so it’s not like this is killing us, but I’d like to see that particular play happen a lot less often.
I wonder what is going on behind the scenes with Mitch’s representation and the Knicks FO. Are there no extension conversations being had? I find it sort of hard to believe that Mitch would not extend if given a fair offer (although fair is in the eye of the beholder I imagine). He loves playing for this team, has had 1000 injuries, so you would think he might want to re-up and lock down more generational $. I would love to see them offer him something like 3 for 60 and see if he would turn that down? Mitch’s skill set wins big games, and even more importantly, he can do it against any team, any opponents, reg season or playoffs — and even if they’re able to keep him off the boards, opponents need to devote so many resources that they can’t get out and run or anything. I vaguely remember hearing on some podcast that the Knicks ORtg after a Mitch offensive rebound is like 217 or some such ridiculous number.
I just hope Brock Aller doesn’t outsmart himself with Mitch’s contract. I have the distinct notion that the reason we ended up with Pacome Dadiet is because he was willing to take less than the usual 1st round slot so that we could play cap gymnastics and stay under the 2nd apron last year. Winning on the margins is great until you end up with Pacome Dadiet.
Even worse is probably his PPP when iso-ing against DPOY Evan Mobley, which happened multiple times yesterday with predictable results. I think Mobley is extremely overrated, but as a 1-on-1 defender he’s amazing. On the flip side, he doesn’t really rebound, is no more than a #3 or #4 scorer (but thinks he’s a #1 or #2) and so i think all the slobbering over him is a little overdone.
One of us is way off, Frank, bc I feel like that’s Mitch’s absolute best case scenario. He’d need to stay healthy, have a great playoffs, and find a team willing to give him that much on the open market before I’d go that high.
The highest I’d go is 2 years, $24M. We can only offer him a deal we can live with if he gets hurt in February and misses the rest of the year.
So I think the reason nothing’s been done is because it’s unfavorable to both sides to do something now. Mitch wants to show he’s healthy, Leon wants to limit our exposure.
We’ll need to give Mitch a bit more than the mid-level to keep him, because lots of teams would do that. Maybe we can limit it to two years, but it’s got to be at least $15 mil per (or whatever $1 mil over the mid-level will be).
I’m literally in Jupiter, FL and the fascist swine bobneptune is nowhere to be found
Bob is kicking it down there somewhere in the sunshine state with 1st and 2nd amendment auditor: @thearmedfisherman…
gotta give credit where credit is due, Bob is out there doing the good work and protecting our rights…
go Bob…
James Edwards:
Good to hear from you, Jowles, and Happy New Year. I hope 2026 is better for you in all ways (including getting you out of Jupiter), and that it emboldens you to more posting — your vitriol has never not brightened my day…
Living ret free in you head is better than Jupiter.
I’m not so sure.
If he plays 60 games and turns in another playoffs like 2025, definitely.
But if he gets another injury and has a postseason like 2024, I don’t envision a robust market for his services.
Geo, I never heard of a 1st or 2nd Amendment auditor unti you mentioned them a few weeks ago. When you mentioned them, I Googled and looked at a few and found them more interested in attention whoring than education, but two is a small sample.
Revisiting earlier question two ways:
1. If Deuce is back, does he start, or does Kolek?
2. If Deuce isn’t back, does Kolek start, or does Clarkson?
I’d start Mitch and Kat and run Mitch for 28-30 min.
Alan, I don’t think Kolek will start. My guess is that it will be either Deuce (more likely) or Clarkson (less likely.)
I wouldn’t completely rule out Diawara but that would definitely be outside the box.
I also don’t think Mitch will start. He’s in a good role and rhythm right now.
2 old school auditors for you:
– sean reyes: long island audit
– james freeman: random patriots
they’re just about the work…
the folks outside trader joes, target, weed stores, even post offices are about:
content > clicks > cash
active channel is probably worth anywhere from $5k to $15k monthly…
lot of work though…
I got in to watching this stuff a few years back cuz of fear of a traffic stop…wanted to make sure I had a good idea of what the rules about traffic stops are…
I don’t trust the police, very much…fair point, I don’t trust most folks, regardless of how they are dressed…
edit: goof auditor too apree (asif khan) is kind of funny…
You can trust me, Geo, I promise!
I’m in Fort Lauderdale surrounded by naked men.
Are you in Wilton Manor?
From Tommy Beer. Modest differences (OG doesn’t count, he was hurt) except Kolek, obviously
One of my earliest exposures to humor was my Dad telling me that Jupiter Island should be referred to as “God’s Waiting Room.”” He was not a fan. Still isn’t.
Tomorrow. Maybe tonight if the tides turn. Not one to miss out on nine inches but glad to have the sun.
Embiid was postered in the most humiliating way. My goodness.
clippers looking cooked…
Feels ike it’s becoming a trend where if a player gets hurt, immediately another inujured player is somehow ready to come back from an injury.
I went to Fort Lauderdale High School, which is either in Wilton Manors or right on the border. It wasn’t yet the glorious gayborhood it is today. The Dairy Queen on Wilton Drive we used to frequent after school is still there though 35 years later!
Freshman year of high school, I was befriended by some older longhair kids who also played guitar. One day one of these kids said he had met a famous musician who was kind of loitering around the high school. This turned out to be Jaco Pastorius. Jaco had fallen on hard times and was basically a vagrant, an obnoxious drunk who would cause disturbances all over town, telling tall tales and doing crazy destructive shit everywhere he went.
Because there was no parental supervision in the 80’s, we’d hang out with him from time to time. One morning about 9AM he wandered onto campus and came into our jazz band class and jammed with us. He had to have consumed many beers before stumbling in there. At the end of the jam, to our delight, he told the band director (who had very patiently put up with his shenanigans) to go fuck himself.
A few months after we met him, he fucked with the wrong guy at the wrong place (in Wilton Manors) and was beaten to death. I knew at the time that he was a highly respected musician, but it didn’t really register with me until years later just how great he really was. He had severe bipolar disorder and just was never able to get his demons under control.
People said he was useless, them people all were fools
‘Cause Curtis Loew was the finest picker to ever play the blues
well, looks like the clips showed up to the “y” with their prime ‘old man game’ going on…