The Suns are 23-15 in the tougher conference. The Knics are 24-14. yeah the Suns are decent. Just as decent as the Knicks and it is no surprise to anyone at close to the halfway point in the season the Knicks lost to the Suns in PHX last night.

Tremendous coaching job by Jordan Ott, and that’s what I was hoping for when Thibs was fired…a hungry young savant rather than a retread with a spotty track record. Alas.

Has nothing to do with the coach . The Suns have taken on Dillon Brooks personality . He’s a player version of Thibs where everybody plays hard. Grizz haven’t been the same since he left .

Z-man just seems to hate everything Knicks.

Tremendous coaching job by Jordan Ott, and that’s what I was hoping for when Thibs was fired…a hungry young savant rather than a retread with a spotty track record. Alas.

It is perfectly fair to have wished fro a different coach to replace Thibs, but coaching wasn’t the reason the Knicks lost last night. With the game tied at 101 Brunson missed a floater for the lead and then proceeded to turn the ball over twice in the last 90 seconds with the game on the line. I don’t think Brown told him to do that.

https://x.com/NBA_NewYork/status/2009854335459406169

Brown knows his team doesn’t give full effort . That’s on the players. They get paid and decide when they want to actually try . Regular season for many doesn’t matter

“It is perfectly fair to have wished fro a different coach to replace Thibs, but coaching wasn’t the reason the Knicks lost last night.”

I was speaking more generally about Ott, and actually thought that Brown coached a great game last night, it came down to a 3-minute game and we lost on makes and misses in crunch time, happens. Brunson sucked in that 3-minute game. Also happens.

“Z-man just seems to hate everything Knicks.”

Yeah, okay, that’s me.

I’ve been thinking Jordan Ott looks like the guy we should’ve hired a lot lately. But this is where I give Leon grace. We’re not a normal organization, and I just don’t think he could have sold an untested assistant to Dolan. He was likely limited to hiring someone with real experience.

They probably went one year too long with Thibs in that regard (or 5 if you were against the hire in the first place, but I digress), once it’s win or else it’s hard to go with an unknown.

g-d help all of us here if the raptors pass us in the standings

The players wouldn’t listen to Ott so it’s pointless

I think it’s been clear since the first month of last season that Leon assembled a talented but ill-fitting roster. And this is the second year in a row his roster problems are getting exposed after a good start.

Thibs basically accepted the roster limitations, battened down the hatches, and tried to win with a low-probability approach. He was lucky to get the low probability outcome he needed — extreme 3pt variance and a ruptured Achilles tendon — in the Boston series. We got about as far as we could with that approach.

Brown’s job is to absorb the punishment and help the players figure out a way to stop what always beats them. I honestly don’t know if it will succeed but I think it had to be tried.

But should be ready to pivot immediately this summer if the team fails again in the playoffs (and by fail I mean anything short of making the NBA finals and being competitive in them). If all of us took truth serum I think everyone would admit it’s very clear Leon did not take the right steps in the 2024 offseason. We shouldn’t waste the whole Brunson era living with those mistakes.

OG looks like he’s struggling on the offensive end more than usual. The stat line doesn’t reflect it thanks to some late game 3s he sank, but his dribbling and passing are being exposed and he’s passed up some shots at the basket.

mark williams looks pretty healthy to me still not sure why the lakers pretended that he failed their test upon being traded to them and went with ayton instead

The sun’s only scored 112, so defense was fine. The issue is offense. We do not have a consistent #2 scorer on the team. It was KaT last year but his inconsistency in the back half of last season and the playoffs has continued into this season, it’s not about coaching it’s about his mindset, intensity and aggression for a guy of his talent and size. He took 11 shots, had 15 points and had 5 turnovers. The defense was ok in spots by still largely inconsistent. Yes Brunson turned it over a couple times down the stretch but he was the only Knick to score 20+ points. We need more consistent shooting and scoring from KaT. OG is in a funk and Mikhal was mostly invisible , but they don’t get paid $60M/year! Towns has scored under 20 points in roughly 50% of the games he’s played in this season.

I don’t think there’s a league in the world that has worse game recaps than the NBA. Full game highlights are almost entirely just made baskets, and you lose SO MUCH of what is actually happening in the game that way.

It’ll be, like, Team A 95-Team B 90 with two minutes to go, and the next clip is Team B 100-Team A 98 with ten seconds left. Just AWFUL.

Despite the good record, this has been a really weird season so far for the squad. For instance, even though Brunson’s shooting numbers look great- he’s missing alot of shots that he normally makes. And honestly- that’s probably why we’ve lost most of the games we’ve lost so far. Last season when we needed a momentum switch, it was usually Jalen or Josh that provided it. But right now, Josh is out and Brunson isn’t hitting shots he normally makes in his sleep. Just weird. They’re not playing bad, current stretch notwithstanding, but we are getting unexpected results out there. Another example is while JB is missing shots he normally makes, Deuce is beginning to look like a professional scorer. This is some Freaky Friday shit lol. But again..the overall numbers look great. It’s just not giving us the expected results..yet?

weird that were in an era when the opposing team scoring “only” 112 points is considered good defense the 1990s would like a word

YESSSSSS! That too lol

The thing that annoyed me about last night’s game was the repeated sequences where player after player passed up good shots. It was like everyone was suddenly infected with ‘Hesitation Josh Hart’ from last year. There was one time it worked (the OG non-dunk that turned into a Bridges three), but virtually every other time it ended up as a turnover or rushed last second shot that missed.

It happened a LOT, in a game decided by five points.

Other than that, I thought it was a hard-fought game that unfortunately had those two little shits walk out feeling good about themselves.

Even Breen commented a few times a guy was wide opened and passed

The sun’s only scored 112, so defense was fine.

the suns offense was really efficient it’s just that the pace was slow. their ortg was like 121. they shot 77% at the rim and only had 10 turnovers. the suns’ offense was better than usual, and i would say our defense helped quite a bit with that, at least until the fourth.

While they didn’t project to be as good as the Knicks, and they still probably aren’t, the Raptors always projected among the wise to be a playoff team assuming Ingram stayed healthy which he probably still won’t. All the “what is Masai doings???” never made much sense and were either (1) misguided; or (2) biased.

In terms of OG, after a decent run at the end of last year and the beginning of this one, he’s back to being a negative OBPM player (*). OTOH, Himself is a 1.5 OBPM player and IQ a 1.7. Defensively, the Raptors are sixth in the association, the Knicks are 17th.

At this point, there really isn’t much to talk about anymore with respect to …. that. Clarity has been achieved.

Dolan never would have signed off on a Jordan Ott. That can be worked around, but we’ll see if Leon successfully worked around it with Mike Brown. Probably not. The perennial constant with the Knicks is that their universe of player and coach possibilities is circumscribed by one form or another of non-basketball nonsense.

(*) And negative BPM overall, though DBPM is wonky.

You can’t come into coach this team and not get the buy-in of Karl-Anthony Towns. After “get buy-in of Jalen Brunson” that’s the very next thing on a proper new Knicks coach to-do list.

Very bizarre that this is the direction in which the team went.

Well looking at the schedule we have the potential to ‘get well’ against the Blazers and Kings next (although saying that is such a massive jinx), then the back-to-back against the Warriors, which could tell us if we got well or not, then we get another chance to break Brooks’ and Allen’s noses on Saturday.

The official “Full Game Highlights” of the Knicks/Suns game doesn’t have the possession with the Knicks down 106-103 where Allen knocked the ball out of bounds on Bridges.

You know, just THE fucking play of the fucking game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJzsmOTfCBs&feature=onebox

Well looking at the schedule we have the potential to ‘get well’ against […]

We play more or less .500 basketball, and have gone 1-5 in the last six games. It is not going to be easy to win, particularly against the pesky Blazers. If we got some awakening from our 4th quarter effort last night, then we have a chance to do well. Otherwise, I won’t be surprised if we lose the next three and go 0-4 this west coast trip.

Blazers just beat the Rockets in back to back games so I’m not sure that’s an easy game.

not that I would ever bet against the knicks, but the knicks favored by 3 points seems like a pretty good deal…

The offense just got installed. There’s no reason KAT should have had a problem with it before training camp finished and it was fully implemented.

The official “Full Game Highlights” of the Knicks/Suns game doesn’t have the possession with the Knicks down 106-103 where Allen knocked the ball out of bounds on Bridges.

One of the nicest things about the NBA app tho is that they edit commercial breaks out of full game replays. Well, mostly .. It seems the guy in charge of this fell asleep for the second half last night. But still, I watched the whole game this AM in under 90 minutes and skipped every godawful review.

The app also SOMEHOW still doesn’t inject neverending unskippable commercials during live games and instead pipes in the arena feed, which is often hilarious.

Probably doesn’t help if you live in the NY area.

g-d help all of us here if the raptors pass us in the standings

When i read this i thought to reply “You don’t want E back?”, but looks like i’m late to do it… he has already returned. So predictable.

I don’t think there’s a league in the world that has worse game recaps than the NBA. Full game highlights are almost entirely just made baskets, and you lose SO MUCH of what is actually happening in the game that way.

It’ll be, like, Team A 95-Team B 90 with two minutes to go, and the next clip is Team B 100-Team A 98 with ten seconds left. Just AWFUL.

I agree, Brian, and that’s why i always read the game thread first. I get a feeling for how the game went just reading the comments here, it’s great… and sometimes is funny because we go from the worst team in the world to the greatest ever when we score a basket in the end for the win. 😀

I actually found our defense encouraging yesterday, Phoenix’s overall ORTG was good because of the hot start but we clamped down in the second half and were getting crucial stops in the 4th. OG, Mitch, and Deuce stood out to me in particular as looking like they hit another gear on that end.

I don’t mean to be reductive but IMO we’re basically at a seminal moment with KAT. All of the questions, both scheme and personnel related about whether you can build a championship defense with him, and about how good or bad he really is on defense, are interesting when he’s a high volume scorer with a gaudy overall TS% and shooting 40% from 3.

If none of that really applies, well, the questions are pretty easy to answer. He’s just not that good. There are plenty of guys in the roughly 20 PPG/60% TS range who don’t come with all of his defensive issues, and of course, his salary. There’s not much more to say about it other than he has to be better. This team was built with an elite offense as a prerequisite, a merely good one ain’t gonna get us anywhere.

In his last 5 games he’s averaging 16.8 PPG, shooting 24% from 3, 47% from 2, and has a .555 TS%. We’re 1-4 in those games because obviously when your offense is premised on getting elite, high-usage production from two guys it’s very hard to sustain extended stretches in which one of them is flat out bad.

He’ll get better and we’ll be better, or he won’t and we’ll be in danger of a first-round exit.

I would love to hear, in concrete terms, how KAT thinks his role has changed. From my POV he’s got plenty of leeway to do what he wants.

He’s shooting 33.8% on “wide open” threes, 37.8% on “open” threes, and is finishing from 0-3 feet at a .599 clip (worst of his career by light years).

I’m open to the possibility this is somehow related to his role, but seems to me he needs to make the ol’ “play better” adjustment.

I have to say that the “i don’t know my role in the offense” seems like an excuse to me. He only says it when he plays bad, and a guy earning the max makes his way into the offense, either the coach wants it or not. Maybe he’s just not as good as we thought.

I’m confused by people worrying about the Raptors — didn’t RJ just go down with a ‘gruesome’ leg injury last night?

Not that I’m high on RJ, but he does seem to be an important cog on that team.

This is surely a stupid idea predicated on Mike Brown’s infatuation with passing centers but trade machine says Towns + Dadiet for Sabonis + Keon Ellis works

Sabonis has been out since mid-November, and in the last five games he played he ranged from -7 to -38. And he is shooting 20% from three (career 34%). I’ve always liked watching him play, mainly because his massive lower body strength made his screens look like brick walls that people ran face-first into, but even healthy he’s not a good fit on this team.

Sabonis has been out since mid-November, and in the last five games he played he ranged from -7 to -38. And he is shooting 20% from three (career 34%). I’ve always liked watching him play, mainly because his massive lower body strength made his screens look like brick walls that people ran face-first into, but even healthy he’s not a good fit on this team.

I’m not actually advocating we get him, but he’s only 29 and it seems fair to chalk up this season so far as a combination of his injury and a bad small sample of five games.

EDIT: Just to be extra clear, I am not saying we should do this trade, which would be a bad idea. I was just messing around in the trade machine because it’s annoyingly hard to find trades that work with KAT.

Toronto has 4 players between 1 and 2 OBPM. They have a lot of good offensive pieces but no stars.

I don’t know Toronto’s pick situation, but if they could swap Ingram (who is not one of the 4 above a 1 OBPM) and picks for a star, they’d be a pretty interesting team.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of getting Sabonis, who we know fits Brown’s system, but he’s just too much of a talent downgrade from Towns.

Even before this year, but there’s just a massive difference between KAT & Sabonis on the all-in-ones.

I guess we’re not the only team with defensive issues

Cleveland 146 Minnesota 134

We play more or less .500 basketball, and have gone 1-5 in the last six games. It is not going to be easy to win

that’s a reality check…wonder how the players in the locker room are dealing with it…

when i think of knick players with an irrational amount of confidence on both ends of the court – it’s pretty much just josh and deuce…

MORE FOOTBALL!!!…yes please…

anyone wanna guess at where ja ends up…for whatever crazy reason i’m thinking either the heat or bulls…

“when i think of knick players with an irrational amount of confidence on both ends of the court”

I wonder if you can put Jordan Clarkson into that basket. Certainly fits the ‘irrational’ part.

but he’s only 29

was just thinking that although sports medicine has elongated some careers, some of these players these days are playing competitive at a high level in their early teens…

sabonis seems like an old 29…AD at 32 seems like he should be already filing for social security…

sooner than later perhaps lebron is gonna look like someone’s grand dad trying to play out there, because he will be…

we have some confident offensive players and some confident defensive players…

doesn’t feel like we have a lot of “2-way” players though…

all kinds of good stuff can make fit into an excellent sausage, so, maybe meaningless to our situation…

Here’s what I don’t get. Did the Knicks even, like, CONSULT KAT about Brown?

It sure seems, for instance, that Memphis didn’t cheat with Ja about their current coach.

Geo, I can’t imagine Ja going to Miami. He’s very many things, but the embodiment of Heat Culture is not one of them.

I don’t think KAT means role as process. I think it regards hierarchy.

I think KAT is referring to plays and options off plays. He’s playing both C and PF and his role in the play is different defending on which position he’s playing. Hart has mentioned that issue a few time also, but that was early in the season. I think it’s more than that. The plays are not designed to take advantage of his strengths. He’s a round peg in a square hole playing with a score first PG that doesn’t nothing to make him better.

It’s amazing that the return that Atlanta got for Trae seems to be encouraging Memphis to trade Ja.

I think teams are just looking to get out of contracts they don’t want . Ja also clearly doesn’t want to play for that new coach.

Kind of like

Towns

As for the Hawks trade..it lowers the offensive upside of the team , but they remove the biggest weak link on defense .

Great game between the Rams and Panthers. Panthers had a good chance to win. They looked pretty good for a team with a losing record.

I found two trades that work for Ja in the trade machine, but neither is likely. One is Ja straight up for Zion. Their salaries match exactly. The other is Ja to Houston for Sengun and Sheppard. Houston could probably use a better point guard and is rumored to be willing to trade Sengun, but I don’t know what Memphis would do with Sengun.

Rockets would never do that. Sengun can get a better point guard if the rockets wanted to move him .

Checked the trade machine and Donte and Randle works for JA

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