News & Blogs
Game Thread: Knicks vs Bulls, April 3, 2026 – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Notes: Rotation tweaks, OG Anunoby’s All‑Defense push and Mike Brown’s playoff belief – SNY
Knicks 136, Bulls 96: “OGUA WENT NOVA” – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ Towns sits out vs. Bulls with right elbow injury – ESPN
Bulls vs. Knicks odds, prediction, time: 2026 NBA picks for Friday, April 3 from advanced model – CBS Sports
‘It’s bulls–t:’ Knicks’ Mike Brown makes All‑Defensive case for OG Anunoby – SNY
This Knicks Player Is A Lock For The Playoffs Rotation – Knicks Fan TV
Knicks vs Bulls – Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
BULLS at KNICKS | FULL GAME HIGHLIGHTS | April 3, 2026 – NBA
The Run.down Knicks vs Bulls Postgame Show – The Strickland
YT News
33 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.04.04)”
Sorry, I just truly can’t give a shit about these games against tanking teams. It’s still my bad for missing the game thread. Boo, me!
I’ll be sure to have threads up for the remaining four games, as those games actually matter.
Great win, though!
You are forgiven, Brian. That game was an atrocity.
Maybe E can bring a class-action suit on behalf of all who paid hard-earned money for last night’s abomination.
So FWIW I am sort of hoping that we avoid the Sixers in the first round. Assuming that we end up in the 3rd seed, it will come down to them and Toronto battling it out for the 6th seed.
Philly just beat Minny at home, which I think is a strong win for them. PG13 played 38 minutes and Embiid played 34. Today they host Detroit on the back end of a b2b so it seems like a loss. Then they go on the road against the Spurs and Rockets. Meanwhile the Raptors play the Celtics tomorrow, then a home and home with the Heat, then us, then the Nets. Since the sixers have the tiebreaker, the Raptors would need to go at least 3-2, while the Sixers went 2-3. Seems pretty unlikely, but that’s what I’m hoping for.
I was out to dinner, literally as well, so sorry for not posting a game thread also….
Funny, I was actually thinking Philly would be a bit easier for us across 7 games, not that any series will be “easy”.
Their older guys could easily break down at some point in the series due to heightened intensity, and their young guys are still a little green (although very good!)
Yes they’re dangerous, and it might take us the full 7 games, but I think we are the better, more well-equipped, and even more consistent team.
Plus, Atlanta’s athleticism is scary now that they’re putting things together.
Edit: dang, I didn’t realize Orlando has dropped to 9th… what a disappointment for those fans. I think they need a big move this summer. Maybe the move Banchero?
Zman — I agree “Here’s a way to address tanking: Go back to an unweighted lottery for all teams that miss the playoffs, and give teams that win in the play-in an extra pick in the beginning of the second round (31st and 32nd for 7th seed, 33rd and 34th for 8th seeds) that can’t be traded until after the draft.”
All: seems obvious to me that Mitch should be in the starting lineup and play the start of each Q and then the last 2 minutes of the game and overtime situationally. Eliminates the hack a Mitch issue. And probably the right lineup regardless.
Interesting tweet re level of uncompetitiveness in the NBA
https://x.com/bytimreynolds/status/2040424135407403165?s=46&t=0wqff4cNt-sCGcDs-uMExw
Embid has played 37 games, PG 32, ( genius load mgt?)so it seems the likelihood of playoff injury is lower. With Maxey and Edgecomb, that’s a dangerous team.
dang Owen, that is some bad basketball there…although i rather enjoyed our shitty game though…
Mitch’s FT form is still a train wreck, but they seem to be going in lately. So maybe the hack-a-Mitch thing will be less of a thing? One can hope, right?
Thing is, this is the closest thing to the idealized version of Mitch we’ve seen since, I dunno, the playoff series vs. the Cavs? In fact, he looks more agile and fresh than even then, when he might have been overly bulked up.
I’m almost starting to feel confident that the ankle thing is finally fully healed. Not quite, but getting there. Even though the Bulls were tiny, the sight of Mitch hammering down one lob after another, then knocking down free throws, was very encouraging.
In a larger sense, I am hoping that the injury/chemistry ebbs and flows of the season have lulled us (and opponents) into a place where the team is being underestimated. Right now, I feel like some real playoff optimism is welling up within me. Peak Mitch. Deuce on the rise. Shamet back. Clarkson a defensive demon. Alvarado too. Mo lurking on the edge of the rotation. Huk as a viable emergency big.
Brown has nurtured a lot of options, way more than Thibs did. Hopefully he uses them wisely.
Damning stat Owen. But the 80 year span is disingenuous given what is going on with 3PTAs in the last decade. Think most noteworthy is the dates are with less than 10 days to play—makes a complete mockery of the end of the regular season (when things used to get more interesting) as a team’s schedule becomes the primary factor.
While still telling, before 1974 they couldn’t even have 9 games a day unless they were running double headers.
I want no part of Philly. Not because I don’t think we can beat them. I do. But I do not trust Embiid to not play dirty and get one of our main guys, especially Mitch, injured.
But the NBA would absolutely want that matchup so that’s probably who we will end up playing.
Regardless of the quirky stat, I think the level of tanking this year is unsurpassed by any prior year. But that is all on Adam Silver, and on Stern before him. Once you start connecting lottery odds to losses, you are going to incentivize losing in some way. The flattening might have actually made things worse.
The pick protections thing would not be a thing if there was no weighting of odds according to record. For example, if Washington was not concerned about finishing low enough to keep that lottery pick from conveying, there would be no reason for them to do anything but miss the playoffs, which they would have no matter what.
One travesty of the tanking mess is that even if the lottery turned out so that picks went in strict reverse order of finish, the top pick would probably not go to the “worst” team. For example, we all saw that if Indiana played all of their healthy players and tried as hard as they did when they beat us in OT, they are probably a 30-ish win team at worst. Yet by abjectly tanking, they might have a better shot of landing a franchise player than legitimately bad teams like the Wizards and Nets, who probably couldn’t win 30 games no matter how hard they tried.
If the goal of draft order is to promote parity, yet you want to eliminate tanking for preferred draft position, something else needs to give. I truly believe that the salary cap rules can be adjusted to benefit perennial losers. Give them a way to clean their cap sheet to attract free agents to make a quicker turnaround, whether by exceptions to the apron structure or by amnesty allowances. In other words, increase the likelihood that established players would want to go play for those teams.
obviously doesn’t matter how we feel or think – but yeah, sign me up for the hawks rather than the sixers…
playing the sixers would feel like some catastrophic injury was about to occur at any second to a player I really like – for every minute of every game of the series…
I don’t know, despite another up and down season, feel way more hopeful going in to the playoffs this year than the previous few…
yep, just means it is gonna sting all the worse when or if we get bounced out of the playoffs…
trust the talent and coaching – but at the end there can be only one team…
seems no matter whom we face – we are in for a knock down, dragged around the ground scrap that is destined to go six or seven close games…
I was looking at five man lineup data on Screwball. Not even sure how I ended up there.
I know our starting lineup isn’t good but it’s pretty wild how variable our other lineups are. It’s not surprising of course, but still, you think there would be a decent signal through the noise.
But basically what I takeaway is that Deuce is good and our starting lineup is bad.
Beyond that, not sure what to think.
And here is Macri with a somewhat adjacent post, re our starting lineup
https://x.com/jcmacrinba/status/2040453162880860473?s=46&t=0wqff4cNt-sCGcDs-uMExw
An interesting thing I heard Tim McMahon talk about recently is how tanking teams are purposely not signing the best available G League players but instead signing mediocre G League players and giving them a bunch of minutes. That’s some stealth tanking moves right there.
I truly wish that Brown would try starting Mitch instead of KAT but obviously that ain’t ever gonna happen. So the next best alternative would be to start Mitch over Hart and then sub Hart in within the first 3-4 minutes for one of KAT or Mitch.
spurs and nuggets trying to make up for all the bad basketball played yesterday…
https://screwball.com/nba/new-york-knicks/best-lineups-in-2026 Pretty interesting how much better the starting lineup plays with just a Towns/Robinson switch
some tough news for the lakers heading in to the playoffs…that’s too bad 😢
If Doncic wins his appeal of the 65 game rule that’s just going to tell me the Lakers are favored by the league.
(Although weirdly it might not be a benefit for them if he wins since then they will have to pay him more money)
I don’t know how the Knicks are going to keep the team together next year. Look at this article about Clarkson. Now he defends for 94 feet, gets rebounds and still scores and gets assists. Someone will be willing to pay him.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7169356/2026/04/03/kon-knueppel-hornets-knicks-trends-nba/
Diawara might get paid too and Robinson needs a new contract too.
Doubt Clarkson will get above the vet min . He has been playing better lately , but I don’t think he will have a market above that amount .
If the season ended today I’d be very happy about our playoffs position. Toronto round one is as easy as we could hope for. And yes, we’d have the Celtics in round 2, but they’d have to deal with Charlotte or Philly, either of which would be much tougher than Toronto. So they might be a bit beat up by the time we get them.
Meanwhile, Detroit would most likely have to deal with Orlando, which would also be a physical series and grind them down.
Fingers crossed things don’t change too much…seems about perfect to me….
Rama to me it’s simple
If fans truly want Toronto, the Knicks would’ve to lose the game against them most likely
Assuming the Raptors lose tomorrow in Boston
Both teams would be 43-35 with Philly holding the tiebreaker
You would need Philly to lose both against San Antonio and Houston
Raptors would need to go 3-1
2 games @ home against Miami – they win 1
Beat the Nets
And it comes down to the Knick game
Watching Aday Mara – could be around with the Wiz pick
Question is , is he too slow for the league …
We talkin tv?
(NCAA )
I have no idea, but that was also supposed to be a question about Zach Edey and it turned out it wasn’t true at all. He just gave that impression because of how he was used in his college games.
Yeah that’s the thing that could give some hope NJ
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