News & Blogs
Knicks Game 2 players and coach grades – Posting & Toasting
Josh Hart’s fourth-quarter explosion helps Knicks hold on to 112-106 win over Celtics – SNY
2026 NBA playoffs: Eastern Conference first-round takeaways – ESPN
Mike Brown’s rotations need a major retooling ahead of Game 3 – Posting & Toasting
How CJ McCollum is dominating Knicks and what they can do to slow him down – SNY
Mike Brown deserves a large portion of the blame as Knicks crumbled in Game 2 – The New York Times
StricklyNFL Episode 57: Dexter Lawrence Trade Fallout – The Strickland
Knicks Lose 1 in Atlanta | How to adjust before tomorrow | Kentucky Peerless whiskey – Knick of Time
Knicks vs Hawks Game 3 Preview: Examining The Keys To Victory For Both Teams – Knicks Fan TV
YT News
76 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.04.23)”
They’re so much better than the Hawks, they really need to shut this shit down tonight.
Agreed. If they don’t come out strong tonight it’ll be disappointing and i’ll be less optimistic from now on.
If the Hawks get to 3 I’ll be concerned. Until then, it’s just a question of how serious they are about playing well and as a team.
This is the worst opponent the Knicks have had in the last 3 years in round 1 so if Mike Brown can’t get his team to start dominating this series , I’ll be out on him quickly.
It has already started, from Jake Fischer:
“Playing in Madison Square Garden and ending the Knicks Championship drought is something that’s ‘very appealing’ to Giannis Antetokounmpo.”
Last night Detroit didn’t come out strong and I thought “uh-oh, they’re in trouble.” And then they absolutely stomped Orlando in the 3rd.
We’ve been largely in control this series sans the 4th quarter of game 2. But I’m still waiting for an explosion like that where we just put them in their place.
It really SHOULD happen. They’re just so much better.
Pistons starters net rating 2 games in (15.6)
Knicks (2.7)
What’s the Piston’s starters net rating if you remove the 3rd quarter from last night? What is our starter’s net rating if you remove the 4th quarter from game 2?
It’s a difficult argument to make, that the Knicks are so much better, yet their starters are so much worse. Takes me back to that “better numbers are being developed” article. Can someone simulate a full game with substitutions from both teams, to actually show it? Lineup against lineup against lineup for 48 minutes.
I said it before the series and I’ll keep on saying it.
Atlanta is better than they look off the their entire sesson record or SRS. Yes, they had an easy schedule down the stretch and that partially accounts for their very good record down the stretch, but they were also an improved team.
I don’t have the ability to calculate SRS by portions of a season anymore and it would take too much work to recreate it just to make a point, but trust me they are better now than they were.
So to me, this series was going to come down to late game execution in somewhere between 2-4 games. I gave the Knicks the clear edge because we have the better “closer” and better team, but we’ve already had 1 of those games. They out-exected us and McCallum was the better closer than Brunson.
I said one other thing before the series started.
Tell me how Brunson is going to play and I’ll tell you who is going to win the series. If Brunson is dominating the ball, getting involved in ego battles, playing hero ball and we aren’t moving the ball we are going to lose. I see no reason to change that opinion. There’s a time for big shot making, but he better play the right way tonight or there’s a very good chance we are going to be down 1-2 unless he just happens to be on a super heater.
Also, now is not the time for Brown to suddenly realize he’s not a top coach and start making stupid mistakes.
We will lose the next two in blowouts. They know all they have to do is put Kuminga on Towns and he’ll just roll over and die while our Ortg plummets to double digits.
I’m sure even when we’re down 3-1 folks will be blithely proclaiming how we’re such a better team and our ‘closer’ will save us even though late-game collapses against inferior teams in the playoffs have pretty much become our calling card at this point.
Downgrading prediction to Hawks in 5
Of course you are.
Cause there’s absolutely no adjustment Brown can make to counter that.
I mean, are you just a generally negative and pessimistic person?
Your takes are like a big, wet fart laid down in the middle of every thread.
The gimmick is tired and played out Pags. Please move on and stop junking up real conversations.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48552647/nba-playoffs-2026-karl-anthony-towns-knicks-stakes-heading-game-3-hawks
I mean if there was, wouldn’t we have seen Brown make it at some point over the last 84 games? Or at any point turns Thibs’ tenure with Towns?
In case you aren’t acquainted with recent history, OKC put a wing on Towns in January 2025 and our starting lineup has literally sucked ass ever since. Basically the only reason its net rating is even slightly positive in that span is that some teams have sometimes guarded Towns with a C.
Yes! For example, I think AI will collapse our civil society and economy by 2030 and humanity is structurally incapable of organizing any meaningful resistance to this. However, I’m not completely confident in my conclusion. Too many moving parts. I may be wrong, and hope I am.
However, when it comes to the Knicks, my extreme pessimism is reasonable and justified. Remember how we suffered literally the worst late game collapse in NBA postseason history in G1 of the last ECF, ending our most promising season in 30 years?
Haven’t you noticed the extraordinarily high frequency of events like that in our history, despite fairly limited opportunities for them to manifest given we’ve mostly not even been in the playoff mix?
Are you aware that choking away series we should win against inferior-on-paper teams is clearly a thing we do, and that we’ve ended our last 3 seasons this way?
Sorry! If you think I’m wrong, feel free to make an argument as to why.
I don’t buy it, either.
I made the mistake of thinking we were so much better than Detroit last year. We weren’t. We just underestimated them and overestimated the Knicks.
CJ McCollum was criminally underrated going into this series. He can easily be a pale imitation of Jalen Brunson for a few games.
They have much better wings than us. NAW & Johnson are ahead of Mikal & OG, respectively, by a country mile and a half.
Josh Hart is better than their other wings, but they have a lot of other wings (Daniels, Kuminga, Kispert, Risacher). We just have Deuce and Landry, who seem broken.
I like their coach more than ours.
And they don’t have the internal conflict and tension we seem to constantly have.
The one thing we have that they don’t is KAT. But sometimes we don’t have KAT, either. When he’s right, we’re a lot better. When he’s not, it’s a coin flip.
Mitch could tilt the scales, too, but Brown seems more afraid of hack-a-Mitch than he should be.
We should win this series, but there’s no place for us to put them in. We ain’t all that.
Quoted.
The inferences and implications hopefully speak for themselves so I won’t bother to speak them.
Very interesting story posted by Pepper. Not a lot of surprises, but we should all fully understand by now that, as the story says, Dolan was behind the whacking of Thibs and that, as the story also says, Dolan loves KAT.
Jonathan Kuminga: February 5, 2026: Traded by the Golden State Warriors with Buddy Hield to the Atlanta Hawks for Kristaps Porzingis.
That might look criminally foolish for the Warriors in short order.
Re: KAT, I may be his most vocal critic but let’s stop fucking around and start making this guy happy. The whole 1Q tonight should be a steady diet of KAT getting what he wants and Atlanta trying to deal with it. It’s just stupid at this point to be fighting him. Kiss his ass, stroke his ego, and let him fuck the Hawks up. That’s how we’ll be much better than these guys.
We’re now, as the story kind of notes, in the position wherein the fates have conspired to put KAT in a position he might not be able to succeed in, which is as indispensable “but for” fulcrum on which the team’s success ultimately rests. To a degree, it’s unfair in that (1) Wingstop gets a 80% complete pass on their shortcomings; and (2) JB gets a 99.5% pass on his.
But that’s sports in the big city and he just has to make it happen. Hopefully, he’ll be up to it. If he is, and things work out well, it should be expected and assumed that he will receive his due credit. If you’re in a “you play well, we play well” position and you play well, the credit can’t then be siphoned off to people not in that position. We’ll see if that pleasant problem comes to pass.
That’s been the way you coach talents like him in the NBA for 50+ years. You put him on your roster, you live with that reality.
Mike Brown should know this. It goes double if the owner likes the talent.
Brown just needs to help KAT solve Kuminga, and he ain’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. We should be able to counter this without solving the whole problem.
This is the opposite of the solution.
It’s not that KAT isn’t happy enough. It’s that he isn’t good enough. Yes he sucks worse when he’s unhappy, but does happy KAT suddenly not turn useless when you put a wing on him?
As long as Quinn Snyder uses the most obvious strategy in the world, KAT is unplayable even if he’s in a state of ketamine-induced euphoria. We need to be playing Mitch as much as possible and minimize/survive the KAT minutes.
Then we need to get rid of KAT by any means necessary, because as we have discovered over the last two years, he is the Trae Young of centers.
No, dude. That’s the way you coach talents much better than him. No one bends their team to a ~3 bpm player whose head is permanently up his ass.
But we’re past the point of expecting KAT to figure out his place. Brown tried and KAT out-stubborned him. Now he needs to make believe KAT is a superstar. Dealing with the disconnect is for the offseason.
Nonsense. I went to Lehigh, but CJ is overpaid at 30M per year. He is an inefficient volume shooter as a PG who has an assist % 10 points lower than Brunson who plays relatively poor defense. He has an offensive game and can go off if they switch him on to Brunson in space AND DON’T GIVE HIM ANY HELP.
That is the issue. We all know Brunson’s defense is poor and if they can’t scheme around that vs Atlanta, they are in deep do-do.
KAT doesn’t have the capacity to solve Kuminga, or really any smaller defender. Dirk had this problem in 2007, but in the subsequent years he developed a killer post game, and played in an era where league offense was suboptimal enough for post play to be viable without being the offensive GOAT (i.e. Jokic).
KAT has two (2) viable offensive skills: open catch-and-shoot threes and blowing by centers who close out, which opens up a dice roll between a layup and offensive foul/turnover. If we post him up we likely accept similar Ortg to a hack-a-Mitch possession.
There is no counter with this roster. We’ve seen it a thousand times at this point. Thermal exhaust port.
Respectfully, Pags, I agree that your fatalism schtick has become a bit too much. It’s kinda hard to engage seriously.
It’s Jonathan fucking Kuminga, dude. There is plenty KAT can do. I’ll leave it at that.
I’d say he is to that “in-out” line what Brunson is to the “tentpole superstar” in-out line. Somewhere between “last four in” and “first four out.”
In terms of that one, I’ve had Brunson on the last four in group for a couple years at least, but I fear he’s slipping down to the first four out. He needs to pick things up in these playoffs.
We have this regular season as a good data set of what this team is all about…to think that anything is changing with respect to our approach on either side excepting for as BPL stated above on CJ (which is pretty obvious and if we can’t counter it…well…nuff said) ,i.e, making matchup specific tweaks as we (hopefully) advance. I honestly have similar views as Pags on KAT…but then he does some good stuff and I waver…but he is the proverbial box of chocolates…and he is one of our “big two” and that is no bueno.
The thing that bothers me all year is how we can’t beat good teams on the road, however, it was same last year and we went 6-3 on the road in the playoffs….so, I think tonight will be revealing…if we look like last year’s road warriors or shrivel up…but I still think we win this series…maybe not in 6 which was my original prediction…it might take 7.
Man, I really wish that Bridges jumper at the end of game 1 had gone in, so I wouldn’t have to read today how criminally underrated fucking CJ McCollum and Jonathan Kuminga are
Get a grip guys…
https://x.com/KnicksWilding/status/2047345369822986644
Tim Legler speaks
I agree with Perkins here . Knicks don’t have an identity under Mike Brown. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ob5DgdL324Q&pp=ygUgUGVya2lucyBrbmlja3MgbGFjayBhbiBpbmRlbnRpcnk%3D
Legler: Mike Brown doesn’t want to run a lot of plays and just wants to “play in the flow.”
“He can take three dribbles and get to the rim against anyone Atlanta puts on him — but that’s not the way the Knicks play.”
Unacceptable.
If the Knicks don’t make the finals, Dolan’s gonna throw the bag at Steve Kerr and if Kerr doesn’t take it, hire Billy Donovan. The tea leaves are all screaming it.
This game is important not only for the series but the playoffs. We have to prove to other teams that Game 2 was the worst of brain farts from the coach and star player and we actually can problem solve and adjust. This team can win despite coach ineptness (they did it so many times with Thibs last year) and the Hawks while solid, haven’t looked overwhelming better at any point in the series so far. But we need to get KAT and others involved and Mike Brown has to get the rotations right. It should be simple as this point but when has this team ever made it simple?
Of course we do. We’re a maddening collective of misfit talent with high highs and low lows.
It’s the same identity we had last year.
In 2023 & 2024 we were a Thibs team.
Last year Thibs was our coach, but it wasn’t a Thibs team. It was this team. Same shit, different coach.
At what game does Mike Brown make the Mitchell Robinson for Josh Hart swap in the starting lineup?
Beyond breaking up the never-ending +/- issues with that five, it puts Mitch in the game at the start of quarters, where Hack-A-Mitch isn’t an issue.
I thought we resolved this last year.
It’s gonna happen soon, right?
We’re a Leon team now. We’ve got the best players he and his family have worked with.
In game 5, when we’re down 3-1. We’ll lose that one due to 3-point shooting variance as NAW goes 8 for 9 or something and conclude that the adjustment didn’t work.
Seen this movie before.
—
it’s a sausage…ingredients are important, as is the casing providing structure…
little time tossing around in the fire ain’t such a bad thing…
best we win tonight though…
more mitch, try mo and/or tyler in the first half…
and ducking feed KAT please…enough already – one of either jalen or KAT on the court at all times…
and for the love of the fans, pleeeeeze – no more deuce, jose, clarkson combos, it’s the worst choice of many choices…
What a depressing thread… it was ONE GAME !!
pags, breathe, go outside, nature bathe…
everything is gonna be alright, more or less…imagine the very worse that can happen, put yourself on death’s door…then move forward from that…
you are frightening the women and children, so stop ✋️
Always a sad given that after a bad loss Pags, Hubert, Bob, and a few other foul-weather friends will take over a thread with endless sky-is-falling narratives.
Hope we win tonight so tomorrow’s thread is clean.
sure seems like there’s a good shot this off-season of giannis landing with the knicks…i mean it seems what he wants, financially and legacy wise…
doesn’t necessarily mean that is what the bucks want…
hopefully we draw the line at bringing any family members on to the roster, although with the brunson situation, maybe that’s inevitable…
totally to be determined on what roster assets go out…most likely KAT and/or mikal…if they were smart they’d ask for josh in the deal…
There is no sky-is-falling theme in my posts, Raven. And Bob simply made a reasonable retort to a slight overstatement.
There’s nothing about basketball in yours. Coming here to make fun of other people is lamer than politics.
“sure seems like there’s a good shot this off-season of giannis landing with the knicks…i mean it seems what he wants, financially and legacy wise…
doesn’t necessarily mean that is what the bucks want…”
And it also doesn’t necessarily mean that it is what *we* should want, either. Don’t need the guy for 60 regular season games and 0 – 5 playoff games for a couple of years, *especially* considering the assets we’d have to give up to get him here. KAT for Giannis straight up? Maybe, but probably still a no for me.
Steveoh, Josh is the last guy I want taken out of the lineup right now. If anything I was longing for the days when Thibs would play him 48.
More Mitch, yes.
Less Josh, no.
giannis is such a nice shiny object though…hard to see any cracks, other than like with his body…
Even off-peak as he is now, Giannis would be the best player in the history of our franchise by a wide margin. He is still a true superstar and top-5 player when healthy. If we aren’t willing to make this move we really ought to just firesale and wrap up the Brunson era.
I would do KAT for Giannis in a freakin heartbeat…
Looks like bucks are hiring Taylor Jenkins…maybe he’s a KAT fan
KAT is actually an excellent fit next to Giannis
I’m thinking of another player , but it would absolutely lose the fan base
Taylor Jenkins is Giannis newest coach.
I agree with your theme, but it wasn’t a slight overstatement; it was a massive one.
In terms of the rest, Alan Dershowitz has always been very pro free-speech (**) and I’m sure participated in the seminal early 70s Supreme Court case (Cohen v. California), probably as amicus. The state of California was trying to jail a young guy who wore a T-shirt (*) saying “FUCK THE DRAFT,” on the grounds that it was offensive or tended to generate breaches of the peace, but the Supreme Court, in one of its finest moments, said no, you can’t jail people in the United States based on the content of their speech. (***)
It’s been awhile since I’ve studied the case but I’m pretty sure that the court did mention the idea that using profanity served to signal that the person speaking cared about the issue they were speaking on even more intensely than without it, and that signal of intense feeling on the part of the speaker is important in and of itself. While there was probably something to that in 1971, I’ve sort of always thought that today, when everyone uses profanity all the time, it no longer really signifies intensity of feeling and in any event, there are probably more literate and intelligent and creative, and therefore better ways to get your point across. Oftentimes, it says more about the user than the user’s target.
(*) I think into court, but it isn’t relevant.
(**) And very civil libertarian in matters of constitutional criminal procedure — holding the state to account with strict adherence to the 4th/5th/6th amendments (unreasonable search, right to jury trial, right to fair trial, right to Miranda warnings, state can’t coerce confessions, etc.)
(***) That’s still the case today, even though wide swaths of people are under the misimpression that the content of “hate speech” or “offensive speech” can be punished by the state on a non-content-neutral basis. The Supreme Court reiterated very recently, unanimously, that the state couldn’t. (The case involved the federal copyright office trying to deny (an Asian) band the trademark of the band name, “The Slants” on the grounds that it was ethnically offensive. 9-0 strikedown.)
“He is still a true superstar and top-5 player when healthy.”
Which is increasingly seldom with each passing year, especially during the playoffs:
Giannis Antetokounmpo has faced significant, poorly-timed injuries in three of the last four postseasons (2021–2024), shifting from a durable player to missing crucial games due to knee, back, and calf issues. Key injuries include a 2021 knee hyperextension, a 2023 back injury, and a 2024 calf strain that caused him to miss the entire first-round series.
Key Playoff Injury History
2024 (Calf/Soleus Strain): Suffered a left soleus (calf) strain on April 9, which forced him to miss the entire first-round series against the Indiana Pacers.
2023 (Back/Quadriceps): Suffered a lower back contusion in Game 1 against the Miami Heat after a hard fall. He missed Games 2 and 3, returning for Games 4-6 but was visibly limited, resulting in a first-round exit.
2021 (Knee Hyperextension): Hyperextended his left knee in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks. He missed the remainder of that series but returned for the NBA Finals, recording a legendary performance despite the recent injury.
2020 (Ankle Sprain): Re-aggravated a right ankle sprain in the NBA Bubble semifinals against the Miami Heat, forcing him to miss the final game of that series.
If we wouldn’t likely have him for the playoffs, what is the point, really?
“The state of California was trying to jail a young guy who wore a T-shirt (*) saying “FUCK THE DRAFT,””
Was it Leon Rose?
We were talking about CJ McCollum, Penny.
good one Doogie!
/multiple laugh emojis
Can we please re-ban Pags? He sucks
In the 5 years before we got him Towns averaged 50 games played per season. Giannis never played less than 61 the year before last. It’s not like he’s Anthony Davis.
Give me the guy who at least is a real superstar when he does play.
Guess there were two Bob corrections then.
Why is Alan “I Kept My Underwear On” Dershowitz a sudden topic of Knickerblogger conversation?
Because of Jim Dolan’s surveillance and comments on their civil liberties impact.
Worst thread of the year?
JB is marketing some hoodies through Faherty that say “The Magic is in the Work” on the back?
That’s Thibs’s statement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAjjY0oA65k
Doogie that Leon line was your KB windmill dunk! Bravo…..
Just gonna leave this riiiiiiiight here:
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/285250/Karl-Anthony-Towns-Wants-To-Be-A-Knick-For-Life
I gotta say between the Knicks game tonight, two top ten picks for the Giants, the backgammon tournament I’m playing in at 7, the constant state of unrest in the financial markets, and the general angst of living with a 7.5 year old boy… I’m really living with a high standard deviation today.
Sure seems like Brunson’s taking the heat to me.
Trump’s a walking, talking risk premium.
you got this hubie, you were born for it sir 😊
https://x.com/ShaxNBA/status/2047435127643394255
Steveoh here is your answer on the double big lineup ..
Um, Doogie just made me laugh. So this is actually the BEST thread of the year.
Raven, there is no more “glass half full” fellow on earth than me. But if the Knicks miss 10 free throws and can’t solve a simple match up vs a 34 yr old one way PG, being a fan isn’t going to change anyone’s opinion.
They should win easily, but they need to play a lot better.
This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.