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How to watch Knicks vs. Cavaliers: TV channel and streaming options for February 24 – The New York Times
Guerschon Yabusele on amending Knicks contract to facilitate Bulls trade: ‘The passion is more than just the money’ – SNY
Jose Alvarado immediately impacts Knicks in debut win over Celtics – SNY
Knicks vs. Cavaliers odds, prediction, spread, time: 2026 NBA picks for Tuesday, Feb. 24, from proven model – CBS Sports
Game Thread: Knicks at Cavaliers, February 24, 2026 – Posting & Toasting
Cavaliers 109, Knicks 94: Scenes from a yawn disguised as a game – Posting & Toasting
Jalen Brunson Explains Why He Wants to Spend ‘Rest of My Career’ with Knicks After Contract Comments – BleacherReport
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96 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.02.25)”
That was frustrating. They didn’t have it and I turned the game off in a fit of pique. Didn’t work this time.
Cavs are good. Can’t win them all.
I’m super impressed with Brown’s four-dimensional chess game against our top opponents. Play checkers against them, lull them into a sense of complacency, and then bury them in the playoffs.
I mean, that’s it, right? It can only explain KAT’s true 6 shots in 30 minutes, of which he was 5-5 for 100%. I mean, some country hick didn’t get with the program (11 and 15 in 19 minutes with 2 blocks), but otherwise from a boxscore view it looks fairly perfect.
Right?
Mike Brown either can’t coach or he doesn’t care about the regular season
1- How does Mitch play 19 minutes against this team. He was very good. The double big lineup was good and it barely got enough playing time
2- Towns 5 shots.. how?
3- Harden gets traded to the Cavs and is already running plays with the Cavs big men, but Brunson and Towns can’t get a consistent two man game going ..
4- his lineup pairings make no sense . Sochan may just suck , but you will never see anything good from him playing next to Hart and Mitch . Has this guy ever heard of spacing ..
I’m starting to get worried about our team, in the playoffs all the other teams will be good, except maybe in the 1st round. And we are failing a lot on games against those teams. My first take on the season was that we were building towards the playoffs, but now i’m not sure i’m seeing the team getting better.
Funny thing is I didn’t even think the Cavs looked all that good, the Knicks just aren’t properly run under Mike Browns system
OG does not have it right now. Has not had a good 3pt shooting night since he came back.
Only 1 game with double figure points.
OG not being 100 percent has an effect on the entire team, for sure.
But how did KAT only get 5 shot attempts? When he was 5 for 5 and literally everyone else in the starting line-up shot poorly?
I thought we were over this shit????
It can’t all be on Brunson, can it? I mean, when he was shooting poorly and complaining, it annoyed me but this is ridiculous. KAT should always get the most or second most shots EVERY NIGHT. He is an elite offensive weapon. How is Brown not utilizing him properly?
Is this really just brown tinkering with the lineups and rotations and not caring about losing to the cavs in the regular season or is something worse going on? It’s hard to tell.
I mean, the CAVS are good and we were on the road. But what is troubling is seeing us lose by so much. It would be one thing to lose in a close game to a good team, but to basically not compete at all in the second half?
Towns had zero shot attempts in the third qtr. Knicks scored 11 points
Game was over in the 3rd
And yes some of this is on Brunson as Kolek can work with Towns just fine…
Curious since I didn’t watch the game — were they actively trying to deny KAT the ball? They have good defensive bigs, so it could have been a very specific game plan. Anyone paying enough attention to tell?
(Even if, Brown needs to counter-scheme. But just curious.)
I know there’s this narrative about the Knicks not beating the good teams but they have 17 wins vs above .500 teams which is 5th most in the NBA, Spurs have the most with 20 wins. Really Knicks have 18 wins cause they’re win vs Spurs in the Cup Final isn’t counted in the standings.
Someone that pays a lot of attention to Xs and Os might be able to see something, but at a higher level there’s too much talent on this team to be this bad as often as it’s happening against good teams. A single “no show” or a close loss is acceptable. But these blow outs and what seems to be misuse of talent are not. Either the coach, system, player/coach relationship, PG or some combination of the above is not clicking.
I mean, if our takeaway is “They won’t beat San Antonio, OKC or Denver in the Finals,” well, I’d be pretty fucking thrilled with the Knicks making the NBA Finals, ya know?
And there still isn’t an Eastern Conference team that I think can obviously kick the Knicks’ asses in the playoffs. This team has too many good players on it.
Yeah, something about the level of talent not matching up to the on court product game after game is somehow more infuriating than when we were in the cellar. Wildly frustrating. Bracing for the first round exit.
This team should be better than their record. A bit frustrating but all that matters is playoffs. If the team crashes out in first round or gets swept in 2nd, I am ok firing Brown and starting again. I didn’t love that higher but was hopeful.
I think Brown is definitely a goner if they get bounced early. There will hopefully be better guys available this offseason. Obviously, Brown was, like, their seventh choice, so I doubt he has much job security at all.
For his sake, then, hopefully the Knicks make the Finals!
A note about the dynamics between FO and coach.
Like everybody else, I was long wondering about Brown’s persistent and often weird lineup experimentations, even when those clearly don’t work. Some if it is him, and it could be healthy: he just tries to give a chance to more players and he is more flexible than Thibs ever was. At the same time, some of this, of not most, has to do with the commitments he made when he was brought in. Brown is neither ignorant nor stupid. He sees what we see and even more. But the front office needs to justify its choices to the boss, and this coach is a yes-man. Hence, he must play the young players and the new acquisitions enough, no matter what.
Thibs was anything but a yes-man. They brought him Cam Redish – he benched him. They brought him Kemba – he benched him. He almost lost his job before that. The rookie Kolek, whom Thibs liked, was not ready and hence benched. Even his otherwise favorite Burks was quickly benched when he came last winter and was unplayable. And so on. Thibs only wanted to win and didn’t care what the FO wants. His approach was kind of crude, and probably rude as well. And we now know that the FO hated him. Eventually, they found a way to get rid of the stubborn coach. Thibs was fired for allegedly ‘not maximizing the talent’ on the roster.
Well, this season’s roster is noticeably deeper than last year’s but the results don’t show it. Part of it is Brown’s yes-man approach, part of it is Brown’s lack of greatness. It is not an exaggeration to say that with Thibs we would probably be sitting at something around 42-15 or so right now. As it is reasonable to say that the starters minutes would be 35+ instead of 32+ or something like that. Then it is the issue of team preparation and strategy which is clearly weak this season, the in-game adjustments, and so on. All this taken into account, I believe by now it has become obvious to anyone, even to Thibs haters, that Brown is not as good a coach. I am not saying he is not good. I am saying he is not as good. The only hope is that he ‘hides’ stuff for the playoffs. I wish that this is the case but really doubt it. I hope I am wrong.
[Have to run to work and won’t be able to be back on KB until late this evening, unfortunately]
For my emotional sake too.
In all seriousness, no one expected Brown to come in ala Steve Kerr and win multiple titles. I thought he’ll make a bunch of mistakes, some good ones and some silly ones during the season but hope he’ll figure out how to maximize this roster by the 2nd round of the playoffs. Being as nice of a human as he is, MB must have a ton of karma in coming his way.
Lets just be cognizant that we’re in the messy part of sausage making process with new recipe additions and an unforgiving schedule over next couple of weeks. Buckle up and keep in mind that turbulence is safe.
Which makes sense. We have about the 5th best record in the league.
For me, it’s not that we lost to the Cavs on the road. They’re a good team, especially now with Harden in tow. But it’s the fact that we lost by so much. Same with Detroit. We should be competitive with every team in the NBA. I’d almost rather see them get randomly blown out by a shitty team because then you can chalk it up to trap game or whatever.
Maybe this is just how it is with this team but when we lose, it always seems to be kind of embarrassing.
Brown was expected to be an upgrade over Thibs
Unless he makes the Finals he wasn’t.
Just put it like this , if Brown can’t meet the task of managing this team…How will he next season with Jayson Tatum back and the Pacers back with a full roster . The coaching hire was mainly for this season .
IMO, while Brown deserves a large share of the blame for the roller coaster inconsistency of the team, a significant portion is on the vets who handle and distribute the ball ( Cap, Bridges, Hart). They should be able to adjust to how the game is playing out. How difficult is it to recognize that they have to get KAT more shots when the others’s shots aren’t falling (ie 3rd qtr last night). Bridges was particularly awful with his shot selection last night and Hart was on sloppy brain-freeze mode for much of the game. This is a veteran team and more should be expected of these dudes.
I do think it is important to remember that last year during the regular season we had a very long slog from December till March where we were pretty fucking average.
Wins wise we’re probably going to win about the same number of games but with more injuries this year, the starters playing less minutes and a longer rotation being used with young guys getting some significant PT.
Does that mean we’ll go further in the playoffs though? That’s where I’m skeptical.
But last night, for example, if that’s a playoff game Mitch probably plays 25 or even 30 minutes and the starters probably play more minutes too. That’s extra juice that hasn’t been squeezed in the regular season that was squeezed last year.
Who the F knows with this team. They seem very Jekyl and Hydish.
Oof. We came out flat and refused to feed KAT again. But this loss doesn’t frustrate me like the Pistons loss did. After the Pistons game, we figure out we need to feed KAT more, and then for some strange reason- went away from it last night. I’m upset that we are now tied with Cleveland, but we can recover from that. We still match up very well with them even though they look better numbers wise. Last night was the first time this season that they played up to their abilities against us, while we did not play up to ours. It happens and Cleveland’s a strong team. My biggest takeaway from the game is our strategy allowed them to focus on Brunson. Anunoby didn’t shoot..KAT didn’t shoot..Shamet looked a little too confident at times last night and took shots he probably shouldn’t have, and our offense was easier to defend because of it.
One last thing..
I think that Brown should make KAT run suicides for every illegal hook he sees. Obviously he’s not gonna see a whole lot in practice at this stage of the season, but he should keep track and make KAT run the suicides the next practice or walkthrough. KAT’s gotta break that habit and find a way to use his unique skills while playing more traditionally as a big. He’s gotta marry those 2. He’s already hard to guard in the paint, so he should use his other skills to accentuate his offense and punish mismatches in the paint. I don’t know if it’s the offense causing him to drive from the 3pt line so often, or if he’s not willing to mix it up inside more.
This is not very relevant….wouldn’t their winning percentage against winning teams be a better barometer(i.e., above 500 teams be more relevant)…only Detroit, Celts, OKC, Spurs and Houston play to their records against their peers (they play 600 ball against winning teams…the Knicks are 500 against winning teams)?
This is a mixture of bad fitting pieces, a mediocre coach and other teams getting better…we can still do something come playoff time but its seems like a longshot given the volatility from game to game from our best players..which shows up in what is essentially a coin toss whenever we play a good (i.e., above 500) team.
I agree with your conclusion, but it is an interesting take since they have already beated SA and Denver this season.
re: KAT and only 5 shot attempts – I looked up on B-ref how many touches he had last night- 43 total, 28 in the front court.
Now obviously some of those 28 are going to be dribble handoffs to Brunson, but it looked to me like he was being passive i.e. getting the ball and just giving it up to a teammate. It’s weird because recently he’s been much more aggressive on offense.
So I honestly don’t think last night was about coaching and getting KAT shots. It was about atrocious shooting and mind boggling turnovers. Like I said last night, Cavs only had 49 points in the second half and managed to blow us out anyway.
Just off the top of my head
Pistons- haven’t beat them
Celtics – winning record against them
Cavs- awful last night , but to me more about the coach . Winning record
Spurs – Julian Champagnie goes off for a career high in threes . I thought the Knicks looked fine in that game outside of defending some random guy . Beat the Spurs in NBA cup title game
Nuggets- beat them recently
Rockets- beat them recently, but more of a Rockets choke job
So yeah outside of Detroit it hasn’t been that bad, but the coaching leaves a lot to be desired.
Lots of gnashing of teeth. This season the Knick’s win percentage is .627. Last season .622. This season 5th in the NBA, last season 5th in the NBA.
Last season the Knicks were hammered by OKC by 25, Boston by 27 and 23, Cleveland by 37, Minn by 17 and Utah by 15 FFS under “MR. Win Every Game at Any Cost “Thibs. A little objectivity, folks.
The difference between this year and last year’s team is this season the starters have a more reasonable minutes distribution and this coach plays more players per game. Also offensive rtg/defensive rtg this season 3rd/11th vs 5th/14th.
This season they are ever so slightly better with a little less juice squeezed from the lemon and greater exploration of combinations. How that works in the end is purely speculative, but zero reason to kvetch.
Quite a bit of this. KAT deserves some of the fault as on more that a few occassions he very weakly tried to establish position down low and as soon as he was shown resistance, he didn’t fight hard enough.
Brunson still needs to get him more involved. That is a big part of his job .
I don’t think they are going to get to the finals, at least not at their current level. I think they are going to have a tough time getting out of the 2nd round playing like this. In fact, a team like Orlando that has been injured all year could be dangerous in the first round if they ever get their full starting lineup on the court.
The players are good, but something is not clicking on a consistent basis. I don’t pay close enough attention to the X’s and O’s but something is not right. It’s OK to lose some game to good teams on the road, but they get blown out and sometimes don’t show up.
“They brought him Kemba – he benched him, then played him three straight games at over 40 minutes a game and destroyed him.”
FIFY. Still one of the most inexplicable things I’ve seen a coach do.
People here actually did expect this. Or at least they thought it was a realistic enough possibility that they posted about the comparisons while rationalizing the Thibs firing.
I thought D’Antoni benching Nate for like 18 games because he hoisted a 3pter at his own basket a millisecond after the whistle blew and also nixing Marbury when he was probably the team’s best player were similarly inexplicable. At least Thibs proved the point that Kemba’s knees were totally washed.
Although it’s fair to point out that none of Marbury, Kemba, or Fournier were ever relevant again post-permabenching. Nate, however, was in his prime, and continued to be a good player for years.
I have said this repeatedly, but D’Antoni and Thibs were cut from the same cloth, just with different X’s and O’s.
Donnie, to be fair, no one here advocated for or were all that excited about Brown as Thibs’ replacement. The hope was that someone more exciting would be brought in, not a well-traveled retread. Of those guys, some felt that Brown was among the best of the lot. Not me. I would probably have gone with either Malone or Jenkins. But I would have also been cool with the best guy on the young savant assistant tree, like a Mazz or Adelson or Ott or Mitch Johnson type.
In any case, Thibs kinda had to go…i
As noted on the eve of the season, Mike Brown doesn’t have the chops or gravitas to pull off the “Don’t you worry — I’m getting them ready for the playoffs” routine.
He’s not a true point guard, though. He’s more of a 2.
Yes, but also…maybe he could learn how to be more of a true point guard?
I get that his skill is scoring at an elite level but pick and roll, pick and pop, some basic PG type plays. He can learn this stuff, right? Especially if he’s playing with the same teammates for multiple seasons?
No one is expecting prime Nash out there but we’ve seen him focus on getting others involved first before with decent results. Big men need a PG to set them up. Sometimes it’s as easy as making a simple entry pass to KAT on the block where he can go to work.
The knocks on Thibs were that he cares too much about the regular season and didn’t experiment enough. It doesn’t really seem fair to complain that he’s experimenting.
At least some of the Sochan/Mitch minutes came with a Brunson/Mikal backcourt. Those are 2 players who don’t always need to get to the basket to score with reasonable efficiency. If you add Deuce when he’s healthy, that’s 3 players who can score without getting all the way to the basket. I don’t think those lineups will work particularly well, but it’s not entirely crazy and probably better than some of the Precious at PF offense we saw under Thibs.
Agreed. There’s some moving parts in this, so it’s not all on KAT. But when I see an incredibly talented big man not demanding the ball in spots so he can make BBQ chicken, the voice of Shaq is in my head screaming angrily lol
Chops or no, it seems that is precisely what he is doing and doing it with a slightly better record and team metrics than last year’s edition.
Beyond the usual (and mostly overblown) stuff (minutes police, unwillingness to play kids, disagreements with FO, alienating certain players, etc.), the issue I always had with the Thibs archetype is that the team did not have a new level to go to in the playoffs. As opposed to guys like Carlisle and Spo, whose teams seemed to play their best ball come playoff time.
Clearly the Knicks mostly played their best ball during 4 of the previous 5 reguar seasons under Thibs. (I would argue that they underachieved in 2021-22.) I personally think that in the 4 top years they “maxed out” in the playoffs, even though they lost to lower-seeded teams, because those teams had another level to go to and the Knicks did not.
Under Brown, this team seems to be underachieving during this regular season, and I truly believe that their record would be better at this point had Thibs been retained. But at the same time, I think that we have another level to go to, and we’ve shown that from time to time vs. very good opponents.
The only question that remains is: can Brown bring out the best of them in the playoffs? We can all offer opinions, but it really doesn’t matter. If there has ever been a very clear case of “the proof is in the pudding” then this is it.
But even if the team falls short, the question that must be asked is: did this team’s personnel top out, or was there more juice that a better coach might have been able to squeeze out of this group?
Let’s keep in mind that both Spo and Carlisle have fallen short many more times than they have won championships or even gone to the finals. Meaning that if either of them were coaching this team, we might in fact be asking the same, exact questions.
It’s really a classic nature vs. nurture argument. And if making the finals is the bar, I fall more on the side that this team’s roster is flawed beyond a simple coaching tweak. But I think it’s fair to withhold judgment until we get to May, and to give Brown and his many (too many?) cooks a chance to show what they can do. It’s too late to pull the plug this season, so that’s pretty much all we have left.
And if the season ends in anything less than a conference finals appearance, it’s time to make significant moves. First and foremost, Leon should be on the hot seat.
The team has a better Pythag than it did at this time last season, and honestly it seems like this team is pretty much the same quality as last year’s team. If we stay healthy enough and catch the right opponents maybe we make a deep playoff run. Mike Brown is a pretty mid coach, but by the end of his tenure here Thibs was pretty mid too. You can only have Thibs as your coach for so long before it starts to become kind of a drag.
After hating on Thibs for most of the regular season last year, I had to tip my cap to him in the playoffs, and I was surprised he got fired. I figured they’d run it back with him after that run. I don’t really believe that Thibs would be getting markedly better results with this group. They are what they are: a good-to-very good team that is near the top of the conference but ultimately vulnerable in a playoff series because of the lack of a tentpole superstar.
Brown isn’t an upgrade but to my eyes at least doesn’t seem like that much of a downgrade. The overall position of the team hasn’t changed much.
Agreed with everything you wrote up until this last sentence.
Come on, man. Leon built a “flawed” roster that is on pace to win 50 games for a third season in a row and has gotten us to the playoffs 4 out of 5 seasons he’s been here (and about to be 5 out of 6). He’s built a roster that includes 2 all-stars, one of whom is quickly becoming a top 10 Knick of all-time (if he’s not already there).
He’s literally given us the most sustained success since the 90’s. the idea that he should be “on the hot seat” because he didn’t build a team that won a title or got to the finals is a little bit absurd.
Now, should Leon PIVOT HARD after this season if we don’t get to the finals, including trading a lot of the core guys? That’s a different question. But after suffering through Isiah and Phil Jackson and being in the desert so long, you think we should throw out the best GM we’ve had in 25 years? That’s fucking crazy talk, dude. Cause I guarantee you IF that happened, we’re not getting Masai or Presti or whoever else you think would be an upgrade. It’s going to be a fucking clown show of a GM again.
I’d much rather have the next five years or so be playoff outs than going back to whatever the fuck we were before 2020.
walker, I will respectfully continue to disagree with you on the Leon front.
If you step back and look at the team now compared to what he took over, sure, he deserves kudos…building a “ontender” without tanking or otherwise striking gold in the draft a la Giannis or Jokic or SGA is very praiseworthy. But I’ve been pretty consistent (and have had many battles with the resident haters) in my withholding final judgment until the “all-in” move came. I was ready to jump ship if the trade for Spida went through, and roundly criticized Leon for even putting the offer on the table that he did. In a sense, that bought him a reprieve from me. I was fine with all the draft day stuff, fine with the Thibs hire, fine with all the roster churning, fine with everything…until the Mikal Bridges trade.
I think the trade for Mikal was beyond amateurish, something that only the most impatient, short-sighted, inexperienced executive would give in to. There is no justification for that move, zero. And that alone merits him being on the hot seat.
I had less of a problem with the KAT trade because it was shocking that he was available for such a “reasonable” price. Still, I made very clear that KAT is not my kind of player, that I thought he was massively overrated by some here (who in prior years felt he would be worth a “Spida” package to acquire), and that he would be a poor fit with Brunson. And of course, with his max deal eating up 35% of our cap space, it was even more “all-in” than the Mikal deal.
So by saying that Leon should be on the hot seat for those two moves, I am saying that he needs to recognize that his “all-in” moves have put a ceiling on this roster and that it’s his mess to clean up before the Brunson window closes. The “rebuild through the draft” window is looking bleak, and when the 2033 pick becomes unlocked this off-season, along with our own pick plus the 31st or so Washington pick, he needs to find a way to repurpose KAT (and if necessary, part of the ‘Nova connection) for a more cohesive “coach-proof” roster. If the team stands still, other teams are going to rocket past us…Indiana, Boston, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Toronto are all looking like they will get better and better in the next 2-3 years, while we look older and more stale.
I think Leon knows this and if we hit a wall in these playoffs he will make a big move. But he definitely should feel some heat on his ass.
I also don’t think the “he’s the best GM we’ve had in the Dolan era!” argument holds much water for me, nor does fear of going back to the Isiah days. I gave Leon plenty of grace, and he’s made lots of mistakes that I could overlook, but he needlessly lowered his own ceiling with the Mikal move. I’m not gonna look the other way on that one, unless the results prove me wrong. Hasn’t happened yet, and if it doesn’t this year, it probably never will.
And if I could swap out Leon for Masai, I would do it in a heartbeat. Would Dolan bring him in? Maybe not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
We’ve often criticized Thibs for giving his stars special treatment as compared to the other guys like, for example, never benching KAT or Brunson for their terrible defense.
Interestingly enough, it feels like Brown goes too far in the other direction, basically saying all the starters are equal, spray the ball around, the best shot is the open man, etc, etc. That’s why we get games where KAT gets 5 shots.
I guess I kinda wish the team fell somewhere in the middle of those? Sharing is definitely caring, but they have to prioritize KAT and Jalen, at least somewhat.
Idk maybe that will happen in the playoffs, and this period of sharing is just Brown getting the other guys reps so that they’ll always be ready to perform. Either way, I don’t have the bandwidth to care much at this point.
But they didn’t spray the ball around last night where the starters (other than KAT) got 9, 11, 17 and 19 shots.
I’ve said from the start that the whole “spray the ball” thing is just inane coach-speak that Brown sometimes acts like he invented. Every team since the beginning of time has believed in penetrate and kick. It’s Basketball 101. It’s imbedded in virtually every offense in the NBA, just like “set screens” or “reverse the ball.”
There was no “spraying” last night because Cleveland were successful at largely guarding us straight up. There weren’t a whole lot of “tilt the floor” possessions.
WRT Leon, you are what your record says you are. 18-42 before he took control and 266-199 since. The oldest rotation players are 30 so they should be at a similar level for the next few seasons.
Solid B work.
Every off season people say this. OH look at all these teams that have gotten better than us and then most of the time they haven’t and it’s some random team that no one saw coming that gets really good.
I don’t put much stock in the idea that the east is going to be SO MUCH BETTER than us next season until it actually fucking happens.
Again, Leon will have work to do. But “hot seat” implies he should be fired and I think that idea, just because he came up short, is ridiculous…especially when you consider who our owner is and how bad his choices to replace Leon might be. Dance with the devil you know.
Sorry to keep quoting Macri, but since we’re talking about spraying the ball, he had a nice description of what that doesn’t look like as a major problem last night:
“It came early in the second half. Jalen Brunson dribbled the ball for a while, got just inside the top of the key without creating any real advantage, and passed it off to Josh Hart. Hart also dribbled around for a bit before dishing it to Mikal Bridges, who became the third Knick unable to create an advantage, and wound up taking a long two that missed.”
Whenever the Knicks look effed up, that’s what I’m seeing, in various forms.
“Solid B work.”
If you are satisfied with a solid B ceiling, sure. But Dolan just made no bones about B not being good enough. If it was, an Emirates Cup Championship banner would be in the rafters.
So, given that irrefutable context, the question is (and always has been) what is the path to A from here? If everyone around you is getting better and you are staying the same, you are actually getting worse. Miami and Milwaukee are good cases to measure our team against. Meanwhile, Boston and Indiana (and to a lesser degree, Atlanta and Orlando) just made significant roster moves rather than standing pat. And they have more trade capital to burn than we do right now.
“I don’t put much stock in the idea that the east is going to be SO MUCH BETTER than us next season until it actually fucking happens.”
Yeah, folks said that about OKC too.
“But “hot seat” implies he should be fired…”
No, it implies that he had better not commit another colossal blunder. Since you think he’s so great at his job, or maybe that the Mikal trade wasn’t all that bad, you probably have nothing to worry about.
I know this should also be Basketball 101, but I don’t see us “moving without the ball” much in the halfcourt offense.
Sure, one of the guys will jog up to iso Brunson to set a fugazi pick, but do any of our guy ever set picks off the ball? For instance, maybe OG could set a pick on Brunson’s man when Jalen doesn’t have the ball, Brunson could run unimpeded to the 3pt line, and ball-handler Mikal could then pass him the ball for an open three?
Do we do that at all? I don’t feel like we do. Maybe that’s just not a valid play anymore, but it was bread and butter for guys like Korver. He didn’t even need a pick to get open sometimes.
great point swifty…
this, sooooooooo much 🙂
I actually think Brunson sets the most picks when he’s off the ball.
Why didn’t we go after Kuminga, again? (See? Just because a good coach/team doesn’t want someone—see Sochan, Jeremy—doesn’t mean that they suck. I mean, Jeremy may indeed suck, but it may not be the reason that the Spurs no longer had a need for him.)
Fire the coach, but…
If I told you the New York Knicks were 12-4 over their last 16 games, would you believe me? What if I said that before Tuesday, they had the best net rating in basketball over that time? Would you believe that?
I agree with ess dog. Often we do not see basic motion plays executed at all. Also the picks are definitely fugazi. I’m not saying I dont like the team, but the lack of flow is frustrating and unpleasant to watch. I think this really is most apparent when 3s aren’t falling and Brunson is a bit off on his one on one stuff. Another way of looking at it is when the 3s are falling and Brunson is burning, the lack of flow and motion offense is covered up.
There’s a certain amount of game-to-game variance that is acceptable. I mean, both Detroit and OKC are going to lose 15-20 games this year, and it’s likely in those games that they were kind of flat or the other team was on a roll, or both. So as.a stand-along game, the CLE loss on the road was not a big deal. Neither were any of the DET losses.
In fact, within reasonable limits and injury luck aside, nothing that happens this regular season matters all that much, aside from being outside the top 4, and even that is not insurmountable. Each of our last 3 playoff losses were to teams that did not have home court. We beat Boston in spite of them having home court.
I would go as far to say that this regular season is the most meaningless one we have had since the 1990’s. We’ve shown that when we play wel we can compete with anyone, and when we don’t we can lose to anyone.
Ainge > Silver
Solid B beats most of the alternatives. Dolan can say whatever he wants to the press but he seems pretty happy with a full house every night and a bunch of playoff home games. I’ll be totally shocked if he fires Brown with anything other than a first round exit.
Red on Roundball is going to have to be reincarnated. They aren’t taking a flier on some hot assistant.
I don’t want to be Leon’s defender, but I’ve said it a million times and I still believe this is what happened. Leon went all in on Bridges because he thought it was the FINAL piece to serious contender.
That team was expected to include I-Hart.
It was supposed to be I-Hart/Mitch, Randle, OG, Mikal and Brunson with DDV/Deuce etc….
He expected to retain I-Hart because even if someone offered a little more than NY could offer I-Hart was going to stay in NY. I-Hart even said as much later.
The came a double dose of bad news.
1. OKC made a huge overpay offer to I-Hart that he could not turn down. (Just for the record, OKC was supposedly shopping him at the deadline)
2. Mitch was going to be out a lot longer than orginally expected.
So Leon had a choice to make. Throw away the season without a starting C or get a high quality replacement C. He tried to swing Randle for Towns (moving OG to PF) but was forced to throw in DDV (which he did not want to do) to avoid a throw away season.
That’s why we are where we are. We lost I-Hart for nothing and had to replace what would have been the DDV bench role all to save the C position.
IMHO, if he knew he was going to lose I-Hart he would not have gone all in Mikal. He certainly wanted Mikal to upgrade a position and move DDV to the bench ((which would have been perfect), but I think he would have been more patient and gone with Mitch/IHart, Randle, OG, JHart, Brunson with DDV/Deuce etc… for longer had I-Hart stayed. He would have revisited a Mikal trade later at a more reasonable price.
So do I.
I think the ball is moving a little better this year (especially against bad defenses), but I don’t think there’s enough purposeful movement of players and picking going on. The best defenses are so good and fast, it takes brilliant ball movement to get someone open. We need more picking and player movement also.
“I don’t want to be Leon’s defender, but I’ve said it a million times and I still believe this is what happened. Leon went all in on Bridges because he thought it was the FINAL piece to serious contender.
That team was expected to include I-Hart.”
If Leon was too dumb to read the writing on the wall re: iHart going to OKC, he should be fired now rather than waiting. It was widely rumored to be a sure thing that OKC would make such an offer, i.e. whatever it would take to get him. Presti LOVED iHart, and he had all the leverage. Please stop with the total bullshit that it was “unexpected” or even all that much of an “overpay” when the team option is considered.
“IMHO, if he knew he was going to lose I-Hart he would not have gone all in Mikal.”
If Leon actually was so confident that if iHart was kept, Mikal was worth giving up all of your draft capital for, he is just as guilty of gross incompetence, and should have been told “this better fucking work or you’re outta here!”. There is zero chance that Mikal was going to improve the team more than whatever else could have been done with all of those picks. Do you understand that the pick haul was the largest one ever paid out for a single player, ever? That it dwarfs what was paid out for guys like KAT, Siakam, AD, Luka, Harden, and other HOF-types? There is no excuse or explanation for it, other than ones based on idiotic assumptions.
I finally finished watching the game. I had a couple of different takes than I see above. One, we could not handle Harden in the first half and that hurt us. Two, I felt that Brunson tried to play too much hero ball in the second half.
As others have noted, we also coukd shoot threes and made a lot of dumb turnovers.
But we actually couldn’t shoot 3s (well, we could shoot them just fine—we just couldn’t hit them). We would have had to hit almost 41 percent of the 3s that we took instead of the 27 percent that we actually hit. That’s pretty significant.
AD was traded for Luka. Unless you’re talking about the version in Dallas who went back to sitting on the sidelines and wanted out.
“AD was traded for Luka.”
26yo prime perennial MVP and DPOY candidate AD was traded by the Pelicans for 3 good-ish young players (Ingram, Lonzo, Hart) and 3 firsts.
Too little Kuminga talk
LOL I brought up Kuminga a couple of hours ago, but no one bit.
The Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau in June after the franchise’s deepest playoff run in twenty-five years. The reasons leaked out over the following months: players felt the relationship had run its course, starters were playing too many minutes, and Thibs wouldn’t collaborate with the front office.
Two names kept surfacing. Mikal Bridges went public complaining about the minutes load. Karl-Anthony Towns was part of the roster feedback that told management coaching was the problem. These were the two guys the Knicks had mortgaged their future to acquire, telling ownership the coach was holding them back.
Rose listened. Thibodeau was out. Mike Brown was in, collaborative, flexible, softer touch.
We’re past the All-Star break. Bridges and Towns got the environment they wanted. They’re playing worse.
Towns is having one of the worst seasons of his career, career-low shooting, scoring down four points per game, disappearing in big moments. Bridges still hasn’t shown he can be a consistent second or third option on a championship team. He wanted fewer minutes and more balance. He got both. The tradeoff appears to be less intensity.
SNY’s Ian Begley reported at midseason that players still hadn’t bought into their roles and the group “is not tied together.” Then came the 2-9 stretch in January. This wasn’t a team learning a new system. This was a team that didn’t know how to fight when things got hard.
That’s the thread. Thibs’ teams were hard. They competed. Bridges and Towns didn’t like that. They wanted a different voice. Brown is giving them one, and the team looks softer than at any point since Thibodeau arrived in 2020.
The analytical exercise is simple: change the coach, same players produce worse results; maybe the coach wasn’t the problem. Bridges and Towns are the common denominator. Under a demanding coach, they chafed but performed. Under an accommodating one, they’re comfortable and declining. That’s not a coaching problem.
Thibodeau may have been stubborn. He may have been difficult. But he wasn’t the reason this team fell short.
Sorry but I completely disagree with that Frank O. In my opinion he was a big reason they fell short
That is completely asinine to not hand any blame to Thibs. Sorrg. Ridiculous
It was a lot friendlier the first time, kind of like the first half of last night (that could either be the game or the SOTU 🙂 ).
trying to wrap my head around the idea we very well may end up in the 4 5 match up…
hopefully we’ll have home court…
can’t control these other teams in our conference continually playing well…
ugh, james harden…takes the heat off mitchell and automatically unlocks mobley and allen’s offensive game…
hard for me to imagine jason tatum not returning to the celtics…philly will be a tough first round test for any team…
we’ve seen up close what the pistons can do…
espn should have a couple of good games for us tonight…
I think Leon had been an A student.
Apparently Harden broke his thumb playing us. He will miss the next game nut how many after that isn’t clear.
https://global.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48034058/cavaliers-james-harden-non-displaced-fracture-right-thumb
CC getting his number 52 retired! Well deserved.
Jolly Roger,
Nice. Listen. The two players that complained the most are the same two players severely underperforming this year. They are a common denominator.
I said Thibs was stubborn. I did not say he was perfect. But this comment – “That is completely asinine to not hand any blame to Thibs. Sorrg. Ridiculous” – suggests you missed that part.
The current beat writers have mentioned how much KAT unsolicited has praised Thibs this season and Bridges advanced stats wise is having a much better season than last year so not really sure what Frank O is talking about.
With all due respect, it is impossible to be rational and say Bridges isn’t playing much better this season by any reasonable broad measure. Need convincing?
Nothing against Red HolZ-Man, who succeeded in a much simpler era, but Leon Rose is the best executive the Knicks have ever had. There, I said it. (Hi Hubert, see you in April:)
BigBlueALsays:
February 25, 2026 at 20:47
The current beat writers have mentioned how much KAT unsolicited has praised Thibs this season and Bridges advanced stats wise is having a much better season than last year so not really sure what Frank O is talking about.
It has been widely reported that in the season ending interviews KAT and Bridges complained about Thibs and that pushed management to force him out after he resisted change. well documented. KAT saying nice stuff after is fine. I don’t think his attitude was fire, Thibs, but he was complaining.
Bridges is scoring nearly two fewer points per game this year (15.7 vs. 17.6) on slightly worse shooting. But the real problem is when it matters. He’s averaging 3.5 points in the fourth quarter on 42.4% shooting — a collapse from the 55.2% he shoots in other quarters. Mike Brown has benched him down the stretch multiple times, including sitting him the final 9½ minutes against Detroit last week, where he scored eight points and went 0-for-3 from deep. Landry Shamet got his minutes. This isn’t new either, Thibs was benching him in fourth quarters last season too. The guy the Knicks paid five first-round picks for and just extended for $150 million is losing crunch-time minutes to a player on a veteran minimum deal. In what universe is that “better”?
The reporting isn’t ambiguous. SNY’s Ian Begley reported that player feedback in exit interviews with Dolan directly factored into the firing. ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne specifically reported that Bridges’ and Hart’s willingness to publicly criticize Thibodeau “was alarming” to the organization. Yahoo Sports reported that Dolan led those meetings personally, that multiple players complained about minutes and Thibs’ inability to adjust, and that one player said he couldn’t play for Thibodeau if he returned. A later Yahoo report from November added that players told decision-makers the relationship “had run its course” and they wanted a new voice.
Nobody said they trashed Thibs, they were respectful about it. But they made clear they wanted change, ownership gave it to them, and now they’re playing worse. KAT praising Thibs now is easy. The question is where that energy was when it actually mattered.
Mikala’s TS% is up slightly (60.4% vs. roughly 58% last year) but that’s largely because he’s shooting less and taking easier shots. He’s scoring two fewer points per game. Efficiency on lower volume isn’t an upgrade, it’s a smaller role. And the efficiency disappears when it matters: 3.5 points per fourth quarter on 42.4% shooting. He’s getting benched for Landry Shamet in crunch time. You can’t cite efficiency gains for a guy who’s producing less and vanishing when the game is on the line.
Bridges last season had a negative BPM, this season he has a 3.3 BPM which ties his career high he set the season Phoenix made it to the NBA Finals.
Mikala. Slightly offensive, but also slightly funny.
These Universes:
BPM 3.3 vs -0,5
VORP 2.7 vs 1.2
WS/48 .152 vs .90
TS% .597 vs .585
3p% .382 vs .354
Rebounds, assists, steals and blocks all up and turnovers down. Offensive rating up 10 points, defensive rating down 4 points.
You mentioned his scoring was down 1.9 ppg, but since he is playing less his scoring is only down 0.6 per 36 minutes.
It’s hilarious that Harden is hurt again.
I think Detroit is squezzing the regular season juice ala Knicks under Thibs. Their poor shooting and lack of secondary playmaker will be an issue in the playoffs.
At least we’re back alone in third again, for whatever that’s worth.
The per-36 adjustment is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Bridges’ usage rate dropped from 19.6% to 17.7%, that’s a nearly 10% reduction in how often the offense runs through him. When you touch the ball less and take fewer shots, your efficiency metrics improve almost by definition. You’re selecting higher-quality attempts, you’re not being asked to create in tough situations, and you’re not absorbing the possessions that separate a number-two option from a role player. BPM, VORP, and WS/48 are all downstream of that. They reward efficient production, and efficiency is easy when your volume shrinks. His field goal attempts per game dropped from 13.5 to 12.6. His free throw attempts dropped. He’s simply doing less.
The offensive and defensive rating splits are team-contextual stats that reflect lineup composition and opponent matchups as much as individual performance. The Knicks added depth this offseason – Clarkson, Alvarado, Sochan – so the minutes Bridges shares with better bench units skew those numbers favorably. That’s not Bridges getting better. That’s the roster around him getting deeper.
And none of these numbers – not one – account for the fact that his own coach doesn’t trust him in the fourth quarter. I’ll say it again: He’s averaging 3.5 points on 42.4% shooting in the fourth. He’s been benched for Landry Shamet in crunch time multiple times. BPM doesn’t capture that. VORP doesn’t capture that. You know what captures that? Mike Brown looking at his bench and deciding a minimum-salary guard gives him a better chance to win.
Advanced stats describe what happened across 48 minutes of game time. They don’t weight when it happened. A guy who puts up efficient numbers in the first three quarters and disappears in the fourth is a fundamentally different player than one who shows up when it counts, and the box score treats them identically. The Knicks didn’t trade five first-round picks and hand out $150 million for a player who’s efficient in low-leverage minutes. They paid for someone who could be a difference-maker when the game is on the line. By that measure, he’s worse this year, not better. The spreadsheet just can’t see it.
His BPM went from negative to 3.3. His usage dropped from 19.6% to 17.7%. Those two facts are connected. BPM is a box-score estimate that rewards efficient production, and efficiency improves mechanically when you take fewer and easier shots. He’s not impacting the game more. He’s being asked to do less, and the stat is rewarding him for it.
The Phoenix comparison actually makes the case against him. That 3.3 BPM came as a defined third option on a 64-win team that went to the Finals. He knew his role, executed it at an elite level defensively, and the team won. This year he’s posting the same number and his team is going 2-9 in stretches while his coach benches him in the fourth quarter for Landry Shamet. Same BPM, completely different reality.
Advanced stats describe what happened across 48 minutes. They can’t tell you when it happened. A guy who’s efficient in low-leverage minutes and invisible in the fourth quarter looks great on a spreadsheet and terrible on film. His coach sees the film. That’s why he’s sitting.
I’ll concede this much: Bridges’ individual efficiency metrics are better this year. His three-point shooting is up, his BPM has jumped, his turnovers are down. Taken in isolation, the stat line looks like a player who’s settled into his environment. Credit where it’s due, year two in a system usually looks better than year one.
But that’s precisely the problem. The Knicks didn’t mortgage their future for a player who’s more comfortable in a smaller role. They paid for someone who could expand into a bigger one. His usage is down nearly two full percentage points. He’s taking fewer shots, initiating less, and occupying less space in the offense. The stats look better because the burden is lighter. That’s not growth. That’s a player finding his level and his level is lower than what this franchise needs from him.
The question was never whether Bridges could be an efficient complementary piece. He proved that in Phoenix. The question was whether he could be more than that for a team chasing a championship. So far the answer is the same one it was last year, just with a prettier stat line attached to it.
Through 59 games, Brown’s Knicks are 37-22 — the same pace as Thibodeau’s Knicks last year. Thibs did it with a thinner roster and had the team peak in the playoffs, beating the defending champion Celtics. Brown has a deeper roster, a full year of Towns integration, and a team that just got swept by Detroit by a combined 84 points.
Same record. But the losses look different. Thibodeau’s teams didn’t get swept by a conference rival by 84 points. They didn’t have their own beat reporters questioning whether the group was tied together. And yes, a new system takes time, but Brown was hired in July. He’s had training camp, preseason, and 59 games. At some point the adjustment period expires. And the entire premise of the firing was that these players would thrive with a different voice. If the new system is why they’re struggling, the coaching change still didn’t work.
Two players the Knicks traded their future to acquire told ownership the coach was the problem. Ownership fired the most successful Knicks coach in 25 years. KAT is having the worst shooting season of his career — that’s not a system adjustment after 11 years in the league, that’s performance. Bridges is more efficient in a reduced role his coach doesn’t trust in the fourth quarter. The record is the same, the roster is deeper, and the team looks worse against the opponents that will decide their postseason.
The coaching wasn’t the problem.
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