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Something is very wrong with Knicks – Newsday
Knicks’ Jalen Brunson on recent struggles, MSG crowd boos: ‘I’d be booing us too’ – SNY
Fans give Knicks earful as struggles continue vs. Mavericks – ESPN
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140 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.01.20)”
jimmy butler done for the season
They might actually have to
Play Kuminga now
yep there goes our chance at him hes a good not great player but i think he could have helped us
should we have a poll to predict the date that kat will be traded?
The problem with a KAT trade is the team isn’t going to get back anything worth making the trade for talent wise. Anybody looking to get KAT is looking to buy low. Taking back lesser talent to improve the locker room isn’t the answer.
People need to chill with the “you can’t get anything for KAT” stuff.
The comps to Trae Young are premature. Trae sucked last year and is injured this year. He’s also one year ahead of KAT in his contract.
Trae isn’t a benchmark, he’s a warning about what will happen if we wait a year to trade KAT.
I agree, the timing is perfect.
If it doesn’t get fixed, though, I would take a page from Denver’s book last year. When Mike Malone and Calvin Booth were tearing the team apart with their conflict, Denver didn’t choose one of them.
If KAT and Brown can’t fix this, pick Brunson and get rid of both.
The scariest thing is that the teams all around the Knicks have ALSO been losing! If not for a number of recent losses from, like, every team, the standings would REALLY look gnarly right now…
The East outside of the top 2 teams has no consistency. If the Knicks played in the West season would be on the brink
This current Knicks team is a mess
Raptors number 4 seed
It’s a bad conference
Let’s stay grounded in core principles. Third of the “Three Theses” from a couple days ago:
— Trading KAT in a “fit” trade will close the window.
Second is also applicable:
— No sensible team chooses Mike Brown over KAT.
Bullshit.
The window was open before KAT got here.
Here’s a really easy “fit trade” you can make for KAT that I think makes us better immediately:
Knicks get: Ivica Zubac, John Collins, Derrick Jones, OKC’s 2027 draft pick
Clippers get: KAT, Yabusele
Third team gets: Bradley Beal & some marginal seconds to make the math work.
That’s it. No stars back, just good pieces. A move like that gives us a Jalen Brunson team again. And it gives us surplus pieces to make more moves.
That ship sailed long ago with the OG trade and the various draft pick chars, blunders, and Incinerations. This team’s depth and bench have never recovered. You can start the process back up again by trading KAT in a 1 for 2, but the team you’ll have after that is nowhere near as good or promising as the 2023 Playoff Knicks, or even the January Knicks.
Big picture, Leon’s friends-and-family relationship “plan” has gone as far as it can go.
I would agree with that. I don’t think KAT is a bad player. I think he just an ill fit here (and not a number 1 guy) and if I have to pick one, it’s Brunson.
And, unless this group works which it looks like it won’t, it closed when Leon gave up five 1s for Mikal Bridges.
John Collins has been available for years. OKC’s draft pick will be high 20s. Worthy effort, but that isn’t a better team.
I get the discomfort with KAT, he’s not great defensively and he’s a bit of a general dork, but he has to go out for another star or it’s over. The “four quarters don’t equal a dollar” principle applies even more to this aproned/no draft pick team.
No sensible team chooses either of them over Jalen Brunson, either.
But KAT’s not a real dollar.
Minnesota traded him for a quarter, a dime, and a nickel and it didn’t close their window. If we make our version of their trade, it won’t close ours, either.
OG was a talent dissipation “fit” trade and they gave him too big a contract. That said, the move was survivable. Trading five 1s for a duplicative 3&D whiny wing was the fatal move. You had OG and Josh Hart to cover everything Mikal Bridges was ever going to give you.
Mikal Bridges isn’t even in the same zip code as someone good enough to get coaches fired.
Wasn’t it a “Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle” team? Not fully getting this one. Not really seeing that KAT has the ball any more than Julius did.
Playoff and January were both Brunson 1A with a 2A-ish second guy that sometimes morphed into a 1B-ish, depending on matchups and how things went. No different now.
They used to have a killer bench and now have a really shitty bench. That’s the difference. (That, and their defense has gotten worse.)
As to his teammates purportedly not liking KAT, it wasn’t KAT who got Thibs fired. And there should be little doubt that there are some very prominent players on this team who never really, and still don’t, like that move.
It was really a Jalen Brunson and Isaiah Hartenstein team. That’s why we didn’t miss a beat when Randle went down.
I’m not a Zubac expert but he seems like an intelligent center who can replicate a lot of what iHart did on offense. And the Clippers seems like a team that would want KAT, especially when they’re facing the prospect of handing a lottery pick to the Thunder.
Yeah, he is. You just don’t like him, your prerogative. He’s a star NBA player, multiple time all-NBA.
Nor is Julius a “quarter.”
Yeah, that was nice. Yesterday i went to see the standings fearing we’d be in the play-in… 3rd place felt really great! 😛
By lofting IHart to that level and ignoring Randle, you’re just in my eyes bemoaning the fact that their defense sucks now. Perfectly understandable.
They had Julius Randle on the team, a highly skilled offensive player. Who would even be the second option on the team with that Clippers trade?
Jalen Brunson has had a high quality #2 his entire time as a Knick. It’s never been a fully “Jalen Brunson offense.” (Other than “post-January” and that wasn’t a contender.)
hubert love your clippers trade(s) sign me up “vibe” and addition by subtraction can apply very well here
The part of me that fell in love with Ionesco and the Theatre of the Absurd back in the day is really appreciating this moment in Knicks time. Also kind of loving the vultures (surprise!) that are settling in the trees on this site (and elsewhere), so anxious to tear flesh from bone.
Not much more to say because there’s not much more to say (unless you have a previous beef you want to endlessly belabor as blame). It does feel like a watershed moment, since I’ve played with more focus, energy and abandon in pickup games than this team of purported professionals, which is something I’ve not experienced in all my time following sports.
They 2 for 1’d for OG and then they 2 for 1’d for KAT, and all the while Leon burned all the draft picks.
Then they hired a meh coach who alienated one of the team’s star players. (By all indications, to placate one of their C-plus performers. You don’t placate C-plus performers in pro sports.)
That’s why they’re where they are. Not complicated.
As to how to get out of it, it might not be possible, but I’d first try getting a better coach. Trading said star player because he doesn’t like said meh coach is way down the list, if it’s even on it at all.
They aren’t playing for Mike Brown, that’s beyond question. It’s possible they’re aging and too slow, but I’ll assume they aren’t and that they can play if they want to. They don’t appear to want to.
Swifty had it right — try a new coach and if it still doesn’t work, this is a teardown with the hope of catching Brunson’s late prime after the rebuild.
That’s where they are. This isn’t a “change the mix” situation, and not just because they barely have any draft picks until early in the 2030s.
Hartenstein was the second best player on that team, Swifty. Randle missed the playoffs, and the offense was great.
I’m sure there are better KAT trades the Knicks’ front office could find than that one. The point is trading KAT for players who complement Brunson doesn’t close our window. If anything, keeping KAT might.
Steve Popper
@StevePopper
Randle was a passable defender for his position and a fantastic rebounder and an absolute load on offense. He definitely contributed to our physical, tough style.
I agree with this 100 percent. KAT might need to go but that doesn’t mean Brown isn’t also a problem.
Coaching, does, in fact, matter.
Leon needs to reset and rebuild around Brunson (and keep Hart, maybe OG). But I’d look to move KAT, Mikal, Mitch (too unreliable) to get back some depth. It might cap our “ceiling” but it will make us respectable again this season.
I hadn’t commented yet on this thread, lol.
Randle was our second best offensive player. iHart was maybe the most important as far as defense goes.
KAT at center is a disaster. iHart at Center with Randle at PF was good. People would give Randle shit about his defense but he was miles better than KAT for his position.
To be clear, y’all seem to believe that:
1. We can’t trade KAT because he’s a star.
2. We can’t get good pieces for KAT because he sucks.
He can be traded for another star.
I think you nailed it Hubert
lol holy shit I thought I was talking to you this whole time!
It’s bc you and E have similar icons, and I’m groggy because I intentionally avoided having my cappuccino today knowing what the consequences would be.
OK I’m going to work.
If the idea is that we will never get comparable value back for KAT in a trade, at least trade him for a productive PF who can play some C- even if he isn’t as good as KAT on offense. Or press hard for a Bam/KAT swap before Miami gets a chance to steal Ja from Memphis. JJJ would be ideal, but he makes half of what KAT makes AND would require picks to obtain
A Memphis trade for JJJ makes sense on paper because it’s a swap of two players that are underperforming. Plus, Memphis has a lot of other contracts it would like to dump to make the trade work (Caldwell-Pope, Clarke). But then I guess they’re building around the Ja/KAT combo, which… I wouldn’t want? But maybe it’s enough draw in a town like Memphis.
They actually didn’t though. they got OG and Precious, who was on the team for a season and a half. We could have brought Precious back, too, for the vet minimum and he’d be better than Yabu.
If we could get BAM for KAT I’d be ecstatic.
I went to Miami for the natty (sad, but hard to complain about a great game even if my net worth has materially changed) and everything kinda went to hell huh?
1. Bam
2. KAT
3. JJJ
That’s how I’d rank those players
saw some headline which stated we might be trying to talk with: grizzlies, magic, and hornets reference a KAT trade…
too funny that seemingly quiet OG might be the one bringing this situation to a head…
I’m pretty sure JJJ’s extension kicks in next season when he’ll start making 50m a year. I think many of you are in love with the theoretical thought of acquiring someone like JJJ but you’ll be pretty disappointed with the actual player.
JJJ EPM this year is the same as D’Angelo Russell / (+) 0.4
JJJ is one of the very last guys I’d want on this team. If he’s the answer you’re asking the wrong question.
I don’t see what he brings to this team
https://x.com/i/status/2013611572740944089
There’s going to be so many different conflicting reports between now and the trade deadline.
If you’re going to build a team the way Leon did, eschewing the draft entirely and building entirely around known commodities, it’s imperative that you end up with a genuine tentpole superstar at the end of all of the maneuvering. Jalen Brunson is a very fine player but on a championship team he’s the second best player.
Leon didn’t do that, so we’re not an actual title contender even as the team crests at what should be its peak. And he’s not a creative problem solver kind of cat, so this team will probably shuffle around one known commodity veteran for another for a few years in a vain attempt to improve while the core players who remain enter their decline phases.
This was always how it was going to go. You can’t make your all-in, cupboard emptying trade and get back Mikal Bridges as the return. If you want to talk about windows, that’s where the window got slammed shut.
You COULD do a rebuild quite nicely now if you wanted to, but clearly nobody wants to.
Unless you have Jokic, SGA, Giannis, Prime LeBron or Curry or the NBA lucks you into Wemby etc not many players in the NBA are true number 1s so you will just be sitting around forever
Kevin Durant Top 20 player all time don’t have a title unless he joins a super team .
Harden one the best shooting guards ever most likely retiring without a ring
Here’s my argument for trading KAT at this year’s deadline if this situation remains untenable in two weeks:
A. You have to trade KAT eventually, because
B. Surely no one thinks extending KAT is a good move, so
C. It will inevitably come to a head, and
D. When it does, his trade value will likely be lower than it is today (this is the Trae Young warning)
Yeah, well that’s why you build through the draft and young players instead of building a team around 27-year old non-tentpole players. You can execute that strategy very well and you’ll still hit a ceiling without the tentpole. Much like the ceiling we are at right now.
Jokic and Giannis were drafted late and Steph was a regular lottery pick, not a #1 overall. SGA was acquired in a trade. It’s not completely impossible to find the tentpole.
You’re not gonna find it though the way Leon operates.
neither memphis nor miami would even consider it. jjj has his drawbacks, but he’s 26 and his contract spans ages 27-30 ending at 27% of the cap. kat is 30 and his age 32 team option is 35% of the cap. at a minimum you’d need a third team to make that a possibility. riley would sooner return here as coach.
30 team league with 5 tentpole superstars. Seems like it’s not that easy
Yeah KAT’s 61 million player option for the 2027-28 season is a killer for whoever has him at that point, which is why I think Leon rightly knows it’s better to move him sooner rather than later if he’s clashing with the rest of the team.
I mean, if KAT was playing suboptimal, but the locker room was tight and playing as a unit, I’d be fine keeping him through his contract/our window. It would just be “well, Leon took his shot with KAT and Mikal and came up short.”
But if there are issues between him and the other guys and/or the coach (not a given but things feel off), something has to be done asap.
Leon better not trade KAT for pieces. Can’t cave because of a 3 week shit show of injuries, shooting slump, minor personnel issues, effort and winter fatigue…
Hope he does a soft ball interview with Hahn and states that this is the season’s roster and it’s the players and coaches job to figure it out amongst themselves. No one is getting traded and there is no help coming.
The goal of this season is to get to the NBA finals. This roster, with all its flaws, has the best chance to represent the eastern conference in June. Leon is mot trading his way out of that top spot.
We all know where Steph was drafted, JK
Not really wanting to rehash the team building strategies, but you can do everything right and turn into the KD OKC. Winning is fucking hard.
Seven different teams have won the NBA title in the last seven years. That’s 23% of the entire NBA. We operate in a way that seems to make winning a title an impossibility.
In a salary cap league you have to trick the salary cap, you have to find players who are worth more than what you pay them. We don’t have many players like that. We pay the going rate for our guys, with a few exceptions.
I don’t think this team is incapable of winning a championship if everyone bought in. The problem is that KAT has not, and everyone doesn’t want to cover for him anymore. So in that circumstance, no, they can’t even win against depleted teams at home.
We may not win a championship but we’ll always have the NBA Cup!
We won it because of our bench production. To DNP Kolek on a night we coudn’t generate any offense was straight silly.
kolek played (and took three shots and even scored) last nite he was not a dnp at all
Darkest before the dawn and all that….
This team is basically what I expected so far, just with more emotional turbulence….
kolek played (and took three shots and even scored) last nite he was not a dnp at all
i don’t think i’ve ever witnessed a ongoing reverse turing test quite like this, where a hooman conspicuously fails to prove it’s hooman. it’s not just mediocre fanfiction or failed method acting, because it’s like this very specific attempt to convert from a rigid gofai-style axiomatizier into a veneer of a genuinely bohemian meat machine, except the wires are just constantly poking through. this is not an insult. we’re all faking analog at the bottom turtle. it’s just usually a bit harder to see.
This team is basically what I expected so far, just with more emotional turbulence….
i mean, probably a bit worse, no? overall 3.1 net rating without terrible health. that’s a high-40s win team. i guess “basically” is doing some work.
“i don’t think i’ve ever witnessed a ongoing reverse turing test quite like this, where a hooman conspicuously fails to prove it’s hooman. it’s not just mediocre fanfiction or failed method acting, because it’s like this very specific attempt to convert from a rigid gofai-style axiomatizier into a veneer of a genuinely bohemian meat machine, except the wires are just constantly poking through. this is not an insult. we’re all faking analog at the bottom turtle. it’s just usually a bit harder to see.”
i love so much that you also eschew capitalization 🙂
KAT gave a shout out to Cam Payne last night. Cam did bring the vibes
https://x.com/NBA_NewYork/status/2013464629695984073
Add this
https://x.com/BenRitholtzNBA/status/2013648359593013725
That is interesting. I remember a few weeks ago (before the wheels fell off) and Kolek was putting together some nice games, he also gave a shout out to Cam Payne as being a great mentor for him.
Maybe Clarkson is the problem! Bring back Cam!
And a very tight schedule after an emotional high.
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/283517/Knicks-Have-Talked-Karl-Anthony-Towns-Trades-With-Magic-Hornets-Grizzlies
Hornets? Magic?
They should cut Clarkson. He sucks.
“Much like the ceiling we are at right now.”
Not to nitpick JK as I mostly like your posts, but as a few folks have said similar things, I’ll just point out that this isn’t our ceiling. This is our floor. Our sub-basement. Underground parking garage. Nadir.
We’ve seen our ceiling, albeit briefly, sometimes only for a quarter here and there. We may never again approach it because whatever the hell is going on, and even if we do we may not be able to string consistent games from it, but the ceiling I got a peek at could have rolled right into the finals if it were consistent (ignoring our current collapse of course).
This has been such an ugly stretch I’m no longer holding my breath. Which is a shame.
Certain people post less when the Knicks are struggling. A good amount post about the same. A small portion arise and post more. I am in the first category but honestly wish I were in the second. The only feeling I have in this 2026 slump is to thank god we have Jalen–not the player but the team leader. I have some faith he can sort this out by having a quiet word with certain teammates or whispering in the ear of Leon. Contrast with having the same situation with Melo and Phil finding a solution.
I am not sure how a KAT trade could with any of those teams, although I would love to snatch Goga if we are dealing with Orlando.
1. This team was a top 5 offense and mid teens defense last year. IMO (expressed every bit of the way from pre season to now) it got WORSE defensively while many teams around the league got better overall due to internal development, draft or injuries that held good teams back last year.
2. At the start of the year, Brown had them playing a version of offense that was better than it looked most of last year. I blame a lot of the regression on Brunson because he’s the #1 option and controls the ball. Some of it may be Towns/Brown/system. Regardless of whether you agree, the ball has not been moving well and player body language and effort has been bad recently.
3. I think winning the NBA Cup kind of drained them emotionally a litte. Everyone else was just playing. The Knicks were all out to win and they haven’t fully recovered.
4. Payne’s positive impact last year is underrated because he kind of fizzled in the playoffs. He’s not nearly as good a scorer as Clarkson, but he’s a better overall player with some similar downsides. Still he was good for us last year in the regular season.
5. Precious was not especially good last year, buy Yabu has been worse so far.
6. There are a lot of ups and downs in an NBA season that have nothing to do with anything. We aren’t as good as we we looked for awhile and we aren’t as bad as we look now.
7. I think developing young players and experimenting with lineups is something we had to do more of after Thibs, but I think Brown may have overdone it. At a certain point you want everyone to know their role and minutes, get comfortable with who they are on the court with and feel a sense of stability.
I haven’t said this publicly and for most of the season thought I was going to be wrong (and probably still will be), but I bet the Under on the Knicks total wins. I thought expectations got way out of line after our mediocre second half last year, luck enhanced run to the conference finals last year and weak off season. If I could take that bet back now, I might consider it, but none of what’s going on is a shock to me other than Yabu being so bad for stretches. We are good, but so are a lot of other teams.
That’s a very hard sell for me right now.
When I say “ceiling” I’m not referring to how the team is playing at this exact moment in January 2026. I’m talking about in terms of talent on the roster. This group of players can play better than this, but this group of players playing even at peak optimization isn’t a likely title winning team. And there is no internal improvement happening, so that’s what I mean by “ceiling.”
Clearly we can play better than the slop we’ve seen over the last 10 or so games and still be a good team. But a title winning team? That does not seem possible without the addition of a tentpole.
depends on whether or not leon is choosing to believe that hes actually *in* the “top spot”
The Athletic:
“Jayson Tatum’s recovery from an Achilles tear last year is ahead of schedule, as witnessed in an hour-long public workout yesterday. A returns this season could make the Celtics East favorites.”
I want to add one thing about Leon.
For the most part I think he’s done a very good job. That goes double if you grade him on a Knicks curve.
I still think the loss of I-Hart for nothing was a major blow to this rebuild, but I can’t blame him fully for that.
He overpaid for Mikal, but I still think given where we were and what we needed it was the right move to try to get us over the top. A little soft or not, I still like Mikal a lot.
All in all, I am slightly suspect in management’s/Browns’s ability to value which players are actually adding wins and which just have enhanced reputations around the league. I see it in the moves and playing time. Thibs on the other was usually right.
No one’s saying you should. The deadline is 2.5 weeks from now.
Right now you let the players fix themselves. But you have to prepared if they don’t. You can’t predetermine you’re the best team in the East and ignore all evidence to the contrary.
I keep thinking about how after Thibs was fired, the Celtics brought him in as a consultant to talk with the coaching staff and players about what they did to beat them in last year’s playoffs.
The Celtics didn’t fire their coach. But they did bring in the coach that beat them to learn from him.
mikal has 47 fta in 43 games (1.09 per game) relatively a bit less than his 1.44 per game from last season
Erik Spoelstra did the same thing, Swifty, bringing in Adam LaRoche as a consultant to design their new offense.
And recall after the season ended, I was actually on your side. I said don’t fire Thibs, bring in an experienced coach he respects to help him fix the offense. But by all accounts Thibs was unwilling to accept that. It was his way or no way.
I know you love the guy & I won’t begrudge you your grief but if he had been willing to accept input and work well with others, he’d probably still be here.
I hear you…was refering to the so called professionals in vegas and odd makers. Looked them up last night and we were still at the top with Boston closing in fast.
I don’t care about a January slump. Actually prefer the adversity. If they come together, – they’ll be a force to deal with. If they don’t and instead band aid this, – they’re cooked and won’t get passed the 2nd round.
Hubs, I did love Thibs. I won’t make any bones about it.
One of my best friends is a Bulls fan and he still laments the day they fired him because he was unwilling to tank.
and I wonder if the players who had issue with them are truly happy with what they got. Because sometimes you get what you want and realize you didn’t want it at all.
I don’t know. I also just feel karmically it was messing with the bball gods to fire the guy who brought your franchise back from the brink after going further than the franchise had gone in a long time.
If we had lost in the second round to the Celtics in 4 or 5 games or went out early, then you could justify it as the team is stalling or going backwards. But we had slowly but surely progressed every season (except year 2) under thibs. I don’t think it’s right to fire someone when they’ve continued to improve the team’s fortunes.
I think I had the team at 51 wins in the preseason?
So with them slightly below that I feel like my expectations have more or less been met. But to go from feeling like we might genuinely contend back when Mikal was playing well and OG was playing great to whatever we are all feeling right now, well, it’s a hard fall.
a couple of weeks from the trade deadline…
guess there’s enough data from this season to see how things are going…
gotta imagine jimmy d was looking for some clear answers to what is wrong with the team…just wondering who he asked, and did it include any players…
don’t imagine cutting MB loose while paying thibs still, that seems like a fireable front office fuck up…
so, time to figure mitch, at this point he does not appear to be a starting nba center, because of his health…
now he’s like maybe resignable at 13 to 15 million a year…hold him…
deuce is another impact player up for a new deal…if we could resign him at 8 to 12 million that would seem good…
yabu needs to go, maybe clarkson too, or at least put him behind landry in the rotation…
el grande gato, I think we may still be playing for a championship, only january to be sure, but yeah – I’d tell whoever would listen that he’s a key core piece – but trade him for 2 rotation players, ideally a moe defensive minded center and power forward…
OG seems like he might be able to be that number 2 offensive option consistently…
hopefully with some better defenders behind him he can focus more on his offense…
mikal bridges…wow, just doesn’t seem a good fit with jalen in the backcourt…
we got a really good small forward in OG and a better fitting shooting guard in josh…
so yeah, mikal for a rotation player, back up point guard maybe and some picks…mostly likely we ain’t never gonna get back what we sent out – just not sold on him in our starting lineup anymore…
it might take 2 or 3 trades to set things straight this season and the next few…
so final answer: would look to make those moves in the next couple weeks…
make it more an jalen, josh, OG focused team…find the right players to put around them…
At this point trading KAT seems to have the added value of no longer having KAT, which may make up the gap in talent between KAT & the incoming package. It’s seemingly come to that point.
Still think we should keep bashing out head into the wall this season so we can package him with picks to try and upgrade in the off-season.
whether or not we get passed the first round will likely depend on who were playing and what theyre cirumstances (such as injuries) are in late april
“At this point trading KAT seems to have the added value of no longer having KAT, which may make up the gap in talent between KAT & the incoming package. It’s seemingly come to that point.”
yep said that at 8:44 addition by subtraction (and vibes)
So Dolan gets a new sphere in Maryland to distract him in the midst of all this. Don’t give up hope.
Swifty believe it or not I really liked Thibs, too. I didn’t want him to be fired, I wanted him to adjust. But that just wasn’t him.
You see that Celtics story and think it makes Thibs look so smart. But I think it makes Joe Mazzulla look even smarter for bringing him in. You think Thibs wants to hear what Rick Carlisle has to say after beating him? Me neither.
We didn’t need a new head coach to fix the offense. Mike Brown could have been hired as Thibs’ assistant and gotten the job done from there. Thibs just needed to be flexible, but he doesn’t have it in him.
The next 7 games are vs teams much worse than NY. ~ 30% chance Knicks beat Brooklyn and then go on a mini win streak…3pt shots have to revert back the mean. Everyone has been chucking up shots and mostly bricking trying to play hero ball.
Wow there’s a lot of history rewriting about Thibs these past few days
That’s how I felt when we traded Randle, so I feel you there, too. I think of that KAT trade the same way you think of firing Thibs.
I also feel you on culture. I just don’t think Thibs created it by himself. I think we had a lot of guys here cut from the same cloth, and together with Thibs, they formed a culture.
But there was no culture here in the 2021-22 season before Brunson, Hart, Donte, and iHart showed up. That year was a shit show, and everyone who was saying the Knicks never quit under Thibs last night would be well served to look up the results of that season.
IMO the culture changed when we brought in Mikal and KAT. Going from Thibs to Brown was just a further erosion of it.
My only thing about all this is WTF happened between New Years Eve and now. The Knicks win the Cup, go 5-2 immediately after to move their record to 23-9 and were up 19 in San Antonio before the wheels fell off. Like how can everybody hate each other or their coach but look so good for the first 2 months.
It wasn’t a fluke either, Knicks had the 3rd best point differential during that time so they weren’t just sneaking out lucky wins. For the most part especially thru the Cup they were winning all their games by double digits. It’s just so weird what’s happening to them right now.
I don’t know BigBlue. But is KAT’s new wife the Yoko Ono* of this year’s knicks team?
*IRL, Yoko took way too much blame for The Beatles break up.
Yeah BBA the whole falling off the cliff thing is mystifying, going from one of the best teams in the NBA to one of the worst in basically 3 weeks.
Every team hits that January wall at some point, but they usually tread water for a while, go 5-5 or something and then right the ship. The Knicks are literally playing like a lottery team right now (although even lottery teams give better effort than what we’ve shown lately)
I feel like there’s going to be some big reveal by Begley or someone that explains this completely baffling stretch we’re going through. Because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I like Steve Popper, but that was some really horseshit, “Why are people talking about that one line?” stuff from him.
“I wrote a whole essay about the President, why are people focusing on the one line where I said I planned to shoot him at noon tomorrow?”
Don’t act cute about people naturally reacting to your bombshell piece of news, dude.
https://x.com/ALLCITY_NBA/status/2013705320753750415
These two don’t make each other better
100%
Knicks signed former OKC 1st rd draft pick Dillon Jones to a 2-way deal, he’s here to save the day.
The Cam Payne effect
https://x.com/BenRitholtzNBA/status/2013666554328629721
I dunno, I sort of interpret the graphs as “They do make each other better and the offense and team hum early in the season, but for whatever reason, they stop doing things off each other as the season goes on.”
One obvious and likely possibility as to why this has now happened two years in a row is that the other guys “feel left out” or whatnot, bitch and whine, and then the two relatively good-natured, good teammates then “try to get the others involved, too.”
If you go offensive superstars over the past 40 years, KAT is like fifth percentile in the “selfish cutthroat, I don’t give a shit what others think” criteria. (Put Jordan and Kobe at 100th percentile). JB is probably sub-50th.(*) It’s not in either’s nature, but the team would be better off if they never listened to another word Mikal Bridges or OG Anunoby said. (**)
(*) Multiple times since his time here, JB has been asked about a struggling player and responded with “we and I need to be better teammates for him.” I doubt Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant even generated the precursor of that thought in their head, much less said it out loud. If they did, it was fake.
(**) Part of me thinks Josh Hart could play the “honest broker, team conscience” role in that better for the team dynamic — but I’m not 100% sure of that.
Current mood:
https://c.tenor.com/XNwh6dCtBZwAAAAC/tenor.gif
Per 36:
15.9pts
7.6rebs
7.3asts
2.8TOs
1.8stls
.336 3P%
.587 TS%
18.4% USG
Interesting stat profile. Seems to do a bit of everything.
Vecenie ranked him 65th, very far from. OKC’s eval. Here’s his summary of him at draft time:
@TheDunkCentral
i dont necessarily disagree with them but then the question becomes are they going to let it go sooner rather than later or not
I liked Jones during that draft but idk if his shooting translated. Seems like a worthwhile gamble though.
It was ridiculous.
i had dillon jones at #272 overall last season between orlando robinson and trey lyles
Yeah, I said the Brown thing with Green would be an issue. People overlooked it because his dad was talking to Draymond as well. “People” must be in reference to Towns himself. It’s a quick way to lose respect from a player your looking to build a relationship with.
Apparently Brunson called a players only meeting after the game last night, would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall in that locker room.
Jones is 6’5″, 237lbs. He’s a tank.
Also, his in-game vertical in the highlights I’ve seen makes Yabu look like Jericho Sims.
Mike Brown is a hugger & a genuinely nice guy who cares more about relationships and people than he does about a game.
It’s time for KAT to realize thats who MB genuinely is and not take it personal. Not everything is about KAT.
JB and/or Leon needs to reach out to Senior Mr. Towns and have his Dad frame this a little better so that he can swallow it and move on.
wonder if was to get a consensus to see if the team should try to bring back pj tucker to get everyone to get along and play their role with effort…
That’s like if Bruce Willis got mad at people for being nice to Alan Rickman after they filmed the scene where Gruber kills Takagi.
This does make me like Brown a bit more:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/47654730/the-new-york-knicks-mike-brown-brooklyn-nets-jordi-fernandez-cross-town-friendship-nearly-two-decades-making
Deep cut there Donnie….
also kinda dumb
https://x.com/ALLCITY_NBA/status/2013705320753750415
that was already posted by underground kings almost 2.5 hours ago thanks tho
Doogie, might be time to start your breathing exercises….
Yeah I was also thinking that was something we probably had lost, but look at this game 3 weeks ago:
https://youtu.be/aKdmzryO0cw?si=kg43MplPljkNjTmp
I was assuming I would see a ton of KAT-Brunson dribble-handoff (because they both played so well) but no! KAT seemed to do more damage when Brunson was out of the game, and he actually had a better 2-man game with Mikal.
So idk, there are many ways to skin a cat (KAT?), so long as we can create open shots (and convert them).
I think one of my least favorite things is when Doogie posts negative commentary about other people’s posts. He’s either wrong (Donnie’s post was dumb, which it most certainly was not), or he’s just banal to the point of causing pain in the back of the neck.
Also two out of the last three games we only had 23 assists. Admittedly someone has to make a shot to get an assist, but that’s still shamefully low.
Fun fact: we drafted Dillon Jones and traded him to the Thunder during our very regrettable 2024 draft. The other three players we drafted and traded were Kyshawn George, Ajay Mitchell, and Oso Ighodaro (all of whom are currently solid NBA rotation players unlike anyone we drafted and kept).
youd really think that jalen and kat could figure this out or at least that jalen could
It was kinda dumb, but it still hurts to hear doogie say it out loud.
When they come out on the other side of this adversity, their bond will be stronger.
This will be like the fourth player-related adversity episode this team got to the other side of, not counting all the ones we don’t know about.
And we don’t have PJ Tucker to help us this time.
https://x.com/MoDakhil_NBA/status/2013797571131797979
PJ Tucker is probably available, no?
U_K, that’s one damning video…
So the Knicks drafted Dillon Jones with the 26th pick in the 2024 draft and then instantly traded him for five second round picks and now they have him back as a two way free agent signing. In Isolation, that’s a nice piece of work.
kuminga is playing tonite
The Warriors pretty much have no second option now and Butler is most likely out for most of next season . Wonder if Curry looks to leave .
I’m thinking Mikal was likely involved in that Giannis for KAT trade last summer and that’s why they waited to extend him. Mikal can’t get traded until February 1st now.
Mikal, KAT and Yabu for Giannis, Turner and Thanasis works on trade machine.
Just saying…hope Dillon Jones can defend Jaylen Brown.
Or that can mean that OKC wasted the pick and that’s why the player is available. We need to know who we could’ve got at 26 to determine if that was a good trade or not.
ryan dunn isaiah collier kyle filipowski…….
IQ scored 40 last night. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for him.