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71 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.01.31)”
Diawara really looks like a baby Pascal Siakam out there — like a baby giraffe. He’s probably better than Siakam was as a rookie (and Siakam was 22 in his rookie year). What a promising player for a guy who was #79 on Vecenie’s big board – great find by Walt Perrin and co.
Seems he is on a 1 year minimum deal. I assume we have restricted FA Arenas rights on him but I do wonder what sort of deal they will make with him. It would be great to lock him up for 3-4 years.
It’s spooky how much this January tracks with 12 months ago.
Last year we had an impressive December with a long winning streak, trouble started Jan 3 v OKC, we went on a 3-6 nosedive, but then we seemed to turn it around with a 5 game winning streak heading into a game against the Lakers at MSG on Feb 1.
This year we had an impressive December with a long winning streak. Trouble started 12/31. We went on a 2-9 nosedive. And now we’re on a 5 game winning streak… heading into a game against the Lakers at MSG… on Feb 1.
Last year that was a very sobering defeat that kicked off a muddy run to the end of the season. Perhaps we can flip the script.
It’s nice to have the makings of a bench tho.
Lakers are going to be tough. Potentially LeBron’s last game at MSG? Regardless he’s gonna want to put on a show.
KAT played well, but in that role he’s not really worth the 2/118 he’s owed.
In terms of the Bulls trade kicked around, I wouldn’t do it now because (1) there are better trade ideas; and (2) the KAT situation strikes me more as summer business rather than in-season.
True but I think we sometimes overly focus on salary. Maybe he’s not worth that in this role but that’s the role this team needs him to play to win a championship and if that happens, then who cares?
Like you could have KAT be the main guy on a team and he’s putting up great numbers but the team is a first round exit.
With what we’re paying KAT, OG and Bridges any one of them might not be “worth the money” on any given night but all theee have to sacrifice and learn to coexist to some degree in order for this to truly work.
Good morning, guys. I know I’ve said it a few times, but Luka Garza continues to impress in almost every game he plays in. 11 points, 8 rebounds (6 offensive) on 4-of-5 shooting (with a 3) in 16 minutes off the bench last night.
I have been struck that tho KAT at the combine way back when allegedly had 36 inch vertical, now more like 29, he plays most below the rim.
And I am kind of happy to see him make fewer of these ramshackle drives to the basket, where he often gets mauled although he initiates contact and rarely gets the call.
Passing, rebounding, 3s.
Last year at this time, Thibs was essentially going with an 8.5-man rotation: the same starters plus Deuce, Precious, and Payne plus small doses of Shamet. Then OG hurt his ankle and the rotation tightened up even more. We headed into the all-star break on a OT win vs. Atlanta where all 5 starters played at least 42 minutes. Then after the break we eked one out against the Bulls in OT without OG and Hart and the starters playing heavy minutes again (Precious led the team with 46 minutes, none of the bench players…Huk, Payne, or Shamet…played more than 17 minutes. Delon played 30 seconds. Then we got murdered by the Cavs in OG’s return with Hart still out.
Long story short, this team seems much improved over that team, and Brown is part of the reason for it. Mitch has taken most of the Precious minutes, which is a gargantuan improvement. Guys like Kolek and Diawara come in and contribute here and there. None of the starters are playing crazy minutes. We’ve only had one disheartening shellacking (DET).
Also, while Portland is flawed, the Knicks D intensity has picked up significantly and they have shown more of a killer instinct. They were wilding last night
He’s started the decline phase athletically.
And still Day’Ron Sharpe. Very much Day’Ron Sharpe.
KAT may have lost a half-step and some vertical, but he’s plenty athletic enough to be an all-star level player. Think Kevin Garnett in Boston.
It’s mainly between the ears with him.
I actually think “championship” KAT should use Garnett as a role model. Garnett had similar stats as he did in Minny but made very subtle organic modifications to his game to bring out the best in his teammates. fewer MPG, lower usage, higher efficiency, but most importantly, deferring to teammates until it was time not to.
I’m not sure if KAT has that in him. Brown is kind of pushing him in that direction, focusing on how he can positiely impact the game when the shot isn’t falling or the defense is keying on him. Problem is, no one had to coach Garnett up in this way because he had a high-level understanding of the game, much higher than KAT.
For example, KAT seems to need to unnecessarily put extra mustard on a pass for dramatic effect. For example, there was a simple pass to Mikal on the sideline well above the arc that KAT kind of slung underhanded in a Globetrotter motion that Mikal should have handled but didn’t. I felt that a simpler traditional pass would have worked better. In general, he needs to get back to simple, traditional fundamentals, like recognizing doubles and when you don’t have an advantage on a drive.
In that sense, I like that he’s frustrated with Brown because he will eventually realize that he’s not gonna win that argument. He will also realize that Knicks fans and media are smart, and that if he plays more conservatively and productively beyond scoring, he will be more appreciated than if he puts up lots of points but does lots of dumb, selfish shit.
Whether Mikal was being passive-aggressive in his comments or not, KAT should heed the words. Be more coachable and less entitled. Keep putting up 20+ rebound games with no dumb fouls and bust your ass back on D after falling down and you will be more beloved than when you hot-dog a pass or a jam.
I should mention that in a recent KFS pod with the guy from Canis Hoopis that focused on who won the KAT trade, the guy mentioned how KAT had a serious meniscus injury in 2024, and chose the quick route rather than the full repair so that he could play in the playoffs, and how that had a significant impact on his mobility. He sort of implied that we were getting damaged goods.
There’s a time to focus almost exclusively on the value of the deals and a time when the weighting shifts more towards getting the highest quality player you can at every position. We are way down the road to the latter stage. That doesn’t mean you want bad deals, but’s it’s more important to have the best/right players than all bargain contracts.
In his subconscious and proprioception, I believe that KAT knows he’s starting to decline and that’s why (1) he’s blaming his role; and (2) he’s starting — successfully — to recast himself as a spacially-aware, not-jumping-very-high, elite rebounder.
Boston KG was still blocking 1.7-1.8 shots per 36; KAT hasn’t seen that since he was 23 and is and will be running at less than half that.
KAT does throw some mustard on it every now and then, but he’s an excellent passer and I expect that skill to remain in tact as his decline continues.
He’s gonna be showing old man skills not too far in the future. If the shot doesn’t bounce back, it’s going to be a slog.
I believe that.
I think KAT has back, knee and finger issues but is playing through it all. It might make some sense to give him an extra game off here or there, develop Huk further and try to get him back to himself.
Offensive Rating 3rd
Defensive Rating 13th (nice improvement)
We have improved the defense without sacrifcing offense.
I still want too see us against the better teams in the west, but not too bad.
zman i get the level of abstraction you’re going for here but asking kat to use kg as a role model would be like telling hubert to use clyde as a role model the next time he rolls into burning man. if you want kat to model an ex timberwolf star big who had to dial down his game and mature a bit as he went east and got a bit older, there’s a better option.
Extra mustard for dramatic effect is better than strangling Mike Brown for dramatic effect, so it’s not all bad.
I remember when Amar’e declined physically he tried a couple of things to make up for it…from hitting the weight room (“I feel like a BEAST!”) to working with Hakeem to becoming a jump shooter. None of those things helped all that much.
The good news is that a) KAT’s physical dropoff is as pronounced as Amare’s, and b) KAT’s game was never entirely build on elite athleticism as Amar’e’s was.
If KAT can accept that he needs to modify his approach, I think there are ways for him to become very valuable again…maybe not $60M valuable, but someone who can be productive against the smartest teams with the best coaches. It should start with re-modeling his offensive game so that he never resorts to the off-arm follies that are going to get called every time, or even if missed initially, are going to lose lots of opposing coaches challenges. Maybe work on the Dirk (actually Wilt) step-back banker, or a couple of Hakeem moves, or a iHart floater. It is probably too late for more advanced back-to-basket moves, especially with his low release point, but adding the threat of more midrange options to his approach might free up some space for drives.
“asking kat to use kg as a role model”
I only meant in the sense of modifying his game to accommodate his drop in athleticism at age 31. Obviously they are not similar players, either physically or mentally.
But yeah, Kevin Love is a good example as well, except he was in his physical prime and playing with prime LeBron.
Twink/twunk death is Jeff goldblum in the fly level scary. Embrace it and you can be Daddy af.
I’d trade him way before having to pay him 2/118 to decline and remodel. And deal with his desire for an extension and all that drama.
Leon got a year of his prime for a $220 million commitment.
He got the decline phase of Mikal as well.
JB and OG are pure prime.
Jalen Duran should make the all-star team, which means Leon third-degree-burned-over-90-percent-of-its-body the lottery pick that could have been him, an all-Star, or Jalen Williams.
Yuck.
“I’d trade him way before having to pay him 2/118 to decline and remodel. And deal with his desire for an extension and all that drama.”
Seems like you are moving off of the “KAT can’t fail, he can only be failed” hill.
“Leon got a year of his prime for a $220 million commitment.”
He also got off of the Julius Randle train, which was not your preferred mode of transportation iirc…
“He got the decline phase of Mikal as well.”
Mikal is decline-phasing his way to the best season of his career.
“JB and OG are pure prime.”
That’s great and all, but overpaid role-player OG cost us Mr. Moxie himself! Unforgivable!
“Jalen Duran should make the all-star team, which means Leon third-degree-burned-over-90-percent-of-its-body the lottery pick that could have been him, an all-Star, or Jalen Williams.
Yuck.”
I loved Duren in that draft and agree that we should have drafted him. But hey, we got HUK!
Luka Garza is clearly a cast member of the Godfather II and I want him nowhere near the team in this age of betting scandals.
Kolek hitting threes, throwing dimes, and making driving pull-ups in the second half was like — not sure there’s a word for it, perhaps Clarence can provide. Made me very, very happy tho.
Mo makes boatloads of assinine rookie mistakes, but there’s a very visible basketball player growing in there. Low level exciting.
Calling ’em like I see ’em.
His peak was the 27 games in BKN in spring 2023. He’s clearly declined off that, back to 3&D status. Done right, 3&D can cobble together a decent-looking BB-ref page — but that remains an entirely different bucket than the 30 USG guy he was that spring. There’s no comparison.
The decline is also why he never gets to the line anymore.
It was impressive, Raven. Hopefully he can stay impressive more regularly. A lot of pressure to produce in that role and that young man getting it right would be a timely fucking base hit.
Mikal’s defense last night looked like a player who deserved consideration of five 1sts. I don’t think anyone got by him all night and added 3 steals off the ball.
I like a lot of what I see in Diawara, but Portland also intentionally left him wide open all night. Diawara still managed to miss a wide-open layup and needed to use the backboard on a 3. There’s a lot of room for growth and that’s not necessarily a compliment.
Kolek needs to stay in the rotation.
Announcers said KAT in TOR was the first time as a Knick he ended a game with 0 fouls. Only 1 foul last night. I don’t care what we pay him per point if we blow out all our opponents.
“His peak was the 27 games in BKN in spring 2023. He’s clearly declined off that, back to 3&D status. Done right, 3&D can cobble together a decent-looking BB-ref page — but that remains an entirely different bucket than the 30 USG guy he was that spring. There’s no comparison.”
Tanking team, different role not scouted yet by opponents, 27 meanignless games…probably an outlier stretch. Unless you are actually dumb enough to believe that his next season with the Nets was due to acute physical decline at the ripe old age of 27! He is simply not cut out to be a high usage player, as he demonstrated that next season when teams had film of him in that role. Seriously, this is almost as dumb as suggesting that Julius was in physical decline after the 2022-23 season.
Mikal is getting to the line a whole 1.0 attempts per 36 less than he did in his entire career in PHX. He’s shooting at a higher % from 3 and just as well from 2, getting more steals per 36, more blocks per 36, than his career averages in PHX. There is zero sign of any meaningful athletic decline that can’t easily be attributable to something else.
Swift, i agree with you if you’re talking about his current contract. If he is best suited in a 20M role, even if he makes 40M, he should play the 20M role. But E was talking about the extension, and you can’t give almost 60M AAV to a player that will be getting a role that a player earning one third of his salary could do. That is not sustainable at all. JB won’t take paycuts forever, nor should he.
ptmilo did they do it?
I decided to break the question into 2 steps and asked ChatGPT how many active players scored 10k career points. It gave a clearly false answer, so I hit Gemini with the same question, and it returned 66 names. Then I asked it who of these 66 was selected in the 2nd round. It answered:
1. Nikola Jokić
2. Khris Middleton
3. Jordan Clarkson
4. Bojan Bogdanović
5. Jerami Grant
6. Jalen Brunson
Is this list correct? I guessed Jokic and Brunson. Was surprised JB just passed 10k yesterday, and is now at 10,006.
About the team, maybe the losing stretch was for the best, most of them seem to now play what’s best for the team, not for themselves. At least for now, it was for the best, who knows how much time will it last.
He’s doing it in a characteristically odd way, but Mikal has absolutely been worth the trade package this year. He’s providing efficient, medium-usage scoring while making the team much, much better defensively. He leads the team in BPM and is second in EPM (this is much closer to my subjective view, FWIW). I still would like him to try to avoid having 10 game stretches with 5 total FTAs that all came in the same game (real thing that happened recently), but we’re getting the Mikal we signed up for this season. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone so automatic from the midrange.
KAT is…a very different story. I mentioned being heartened by his non-scoring play from the last few games, and if he can keep that up he can salvage a lot of value even if he’s no longer an elite scorer. CLE Kevin Love with potentially less exploitable defense seems like a good model.
Two things that happened/may have happened last night that I’m curious if anyone else noticed/can verify.
First, as mentioned Kolek acting out in the second half. He didn’t play badly in the first half, but was effectively shorted out by intense, in-your-grill defense that didn’t let him do anything useful. Wondering if he was defended differently in the second half or just put his head down and ignored the defense.
Also, I cannot remember KAT even once driving from the top of the key to the basket. He had a number of half-drives, but he mostly passed out of that, or perhaps once or twice pulled up for a jumper.
May need to go back and watch it all again, but curious if any of this is true.
Actually fairly different 1st-year players but with similar value. Siakam was really an old-school PF when he came into the league, with no outside shot at all but the ability to score up close. He had a similar PF profile on defense, blocking a decent amount of shots but with few steals.
Diawara on the other hand is a modern 3&D forward prototype. He hits threes (.388) at almost the same rate he hits shots from the field (.405), and he’s a good wing defender who racks up steals but doesn’t really protect the rim.
In the end, both are/were good, active defenders as rookies, who were negative contributors on offense.
I haven’t looked, but Norm Powell has to be close.
Post-look: 9,146
Is this list correct? I guessed Jokic and Brunson. Was surprised JB just passed 10k yesterday, and is now at 10,006.
yep your llm tag team nailed it, except bojan retired over the summer. strangely 3 of 5 were active in yesterday’s game, which is such a classic nba trivia gimmick.
Hahaha, Paul George, what a loser.
That’s the only way to keep him healthy for the playoffs.
Spurs and Hornets with a 12 noon start?
Sixers might come to the conclusion that they’re better without him. In our last game against them, i thought he was cooked.
France 24 didn’t want it competing in the 8:00pm slot with Asterix & Obelix.
seems like he was micro dosing..said it was for “mental health”…
Micro-dosing what? Can’t find a source…
i was just guessing…psilo gummies or something….
I would never go to burning man. But I suspect that suggestion was the true dig in that analogy, as none of us can ever emulate Clyde.
And Swift it’s incomprehensible to suggest no one should care what someone makes in a salary cap league. We care because if KAT’s playing like a $24M guy we’re short $30M worth of value.
I don’t think you can name many champions with a mismanaged cap. In fact I don’t know if you can name 1.
To be more blunt: KAT’s contract disqualifies us from winning a chip. That’s why we care.
George will lose over $11 million in salary and the Sixers will save over $5 million in luxury tax payments according to reports. They will be left about a million dollars over the luxury tax line making it easier to avoid the tax altogether by money saving moves.
David Lee and Andrew Bogut were once the highest paid Warriors, combining for 44% of the salary cap, 2400 minutes played, and a 2.5 VORP. They still won 67 games and coasted to the chip. So KAT taking up 33% of the cap, while giving more production in more minutes, doesn’t disqualify his team from winning a championship, it does mean that the other guys have to do more for less.
That said, instead of looking at the Kevins for inspiration, maybe KAT has looked at Bogut, who was deceptively valuable in his 24 min/game back then. Less is sometimes more, too.
He was dosed.
Yeah the warriors team that had Steph, Klay, and Draymond making 20% of the salary cap were horribly mismanaged 🙄
You are being sarcastic, but the truth is it’s the overall team salary cap position that matters for roster flexibility, not the salary of any one player. We’re not great, but not horrible either if the Knicks don’t mind paying tax. Cleveland, for example is much worse off and Orlando doesn’t look good either.
Here I thought we were happy to be on a winning streak but according to you guys the season is over it sounds like
If Steph merely turned out to be great instead of an all-time great, they probably don’t win much, and then they are just another mismanaged team in your eyes. That’s not good management, that’s good luck, and good luck isn’t off the table for the Knicks, as they still have a lot of time and a lot of talent on their side. KAT making 33% of the cap does not “disqualify” them in and of itself, it just makes it hard, which, to be fair, is kind of the standard for winning a championship.
who says they don’t give out medals for parenting…boys had their ymca all-star ceremony and game today…
oldest son is sooooooo cool he casually discarded his medal on a some bench, youngest son though came over to me to hold his medal…
i’ll probably sleep with that thing around my neck tonight…those little moments that make it all worth while…
Nice, Geo
My husband is reading the Melania reviews to me. They spent 40 million on that. overpay?
Cooper Flagg is the real deal.
I don’t really get the whole cake pop thing…to each their own i guess…sort of just seems like a tease unless you consume a handful…
the mavs have their own pick this draft, so they should be tanking; however, they’re not really that bad a team, even in the west…
doubt they trade AD, so their gonna win some more games, may even get kyrie back in the next month or so…
maybe they pass the blazers and make it in to the play in…
Good ol Sacto still being Sacto.
Were you really expecting any good reviews?
I’m pretty sure Bezos got his money’s worth
vapid…soulless…insidious…
more fun to guess at exactly what drug (improper mental health medication) did mister george self medicate with to help him make it through the day…
it’s not weed, they don’t test for that…any kind of steroid wouldn’t make sense…don’t think they test for shrooms either…
some non-prescribed xanax or something maybe?
I’m very disappointed that “people would walk out if it were shown on a plane” isn’t a legit review quote
I had no thought about it, Bob, until the readings of the reviews. And then all I thought was how very bizarre all of this is. That was it. Definitely not an overpay.
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