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CJ McCollum, Hawks gave Knicks the kick they needed to go all the way – Posting & Toasting
Knicks 140, Hawks 89: “We witnessed Halley’s Comet” – Posting & Toasting
How Knicks’ versatility overwhelmed the Hawks and why it matters going forward in the playoffs – SNY
Knicks’ 47-point halftime lead vs. Hawks sets record for largest in NBA playoff history – The New York Times
Jalen Brunson’s Nike Kobe 5 Protro PE Shoe Revealed in Photo Amid Knicks’ NBA Playoffs Run – BleacherReport
Anne Hathaway and Karl-Anthony Towns bring Knicks fandom to ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ – ESPN
Knicks’ shift to feature Karl-Anthony Towns key to winning Hawks series – SNY
Knicks Sweep Sixers & Bring Out The Broom! #NBA #Playoffs #Knicks – Knicks Fan TV
KFS X’s & O’s | PLAYOFF PREVIEW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
Knicks Defense Finally FIXED: Can They Reach the Finals? #shorts – Knick of Time
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85 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.05.03)”
The Athletic’s panel of Katz, Edwards, and two Sixers writers pick the Knicks over Philly in six [3] or seven [1] games. To me, they are understating how good KAT was against ATL.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7249117/2026/05/02/knicks-76ers-nba-playoffs-preview/
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I think Boston could and probably should trade one of their stars for Giannis. But that’s July’s problem.
The Sixers basically used 6 players yesterday. That is not sustainable. Their bench other than Grimes is not very good.
Yeah I think this series could easily play out the same way Atlanta did with the first three or four games being really competitive and then we wear them down and take them out eventually.
One thing to think about conpared to the last time we played them in the playoffs is that our team is much better. We have KAT now (and we’re missing Randle) and a deeper bench.
The only reason I’m mad we drew them is the potential for Embiid to injure someone.
I still don’t know what Mazz was thinking with that starting lineup, or by not playing Vuc a single minute. I mean, his team did turn out to be in position to win at the end, and Pritchard missed a wide-open corner look that he seems to make in his sleep. But you simply have to start your best players in a Game 7, no?
I always enjoy reading the post-mortem on The Celtics Blog. One poster said that while it was a thrilling season, the C’s would have been better off taking a true gap year like the Pacers did so that they could find another franchise player in the draft. It’s certainly an arguable point.
I have to think that it will come out that Tatum’s knee injury is more serious than they let on. “Knee stiffness” is not a reason to miss a game 7. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it turns out to be something surgical.
Oh, and congrats to cyber, he got everything he wanted yesterday, a crushing Celtics loss and elimination despite a fantastic game for Queta (that one move where he put Embiid in the spin cycle was impressive!)
I do think the Sixers, if healthy, will be a tougher matchup for us than this version of the Celtics would have been. “If healthy” is always a key question, though. Regardless, KAT has to stay out of foul trouble against Embiid, and has to keep doing what he’s done lately when a team puts a wing on him. One of the Wingstop guys has to be able to at last make life a little difficult for Maxey. And we’ll see if Paul George can do anything to contain this version of OG.
They missed a lot of players/time to injury, but the Sixers were the 16th defense and 17th offense this season. They had a negative net rating! I think that’s better than facing the 2nd offense/4th defense, even if one can argue that Boston is worse than those numbers and Philly is better.
It took a heroic affort for the Sixers to survive a playoff game where the opposing team started Ron Harper Jr. and Luka Garza. They were a wide-open Payton Pritchard rare miss away from being eliminated in embarrassing fashion.
If we lose to this team, it would suggest that we have been frauds all along. Embiid can barely move. Paul George is 100 years old. VJ is a rookie. Oubre Jr. is a flake. Their bench is two players deep. In fact, it would be even worse than if the Celts prevailed and then we lost to them (not emotionally, just on paper…nothing sucks more than losing to the Celtics.)
Series comes down to at least 50% this.
Knicks now at +850 to win it all, Pistons next in the East at +1900.
I do expect the Knicks to win this series — not cashing out the move from +2200 to +850 — but a healthy nucleus of Embiid, Maxey, George is definitely formidable and IMO more formidable than a healthy Celtics team. There’s some brittleness there, though, unquestionably.
Nothing about the Sixers’ regular season ports to now in any material sense. This is the postseason team they’ve been gunning to have for two years now, and because of the dud last year it also includes Edgecombe. They now have it. We’ll see if it stays healthy.
Another data point: Sixers smoked a healthy Orlando in the play-in game, without Embiid.
Counterpoint: that same Orlando team lost to Boston’s scrubs.
Ugh..Joel Embiid sounding like a beeyotch already. “Errrrmahhhgarrrrd! Doooonnnn’t sell tickets to Knicks fans! I can’t taaaaake it! It might trigger a recurrence of Bell’s Palsy or flare up my appendicitis! Fweeeeeaaaaze?”
Maaaaaaan FAWK Embiid and his fragile feelings..his fragile body too. I hope Mitch keeps his cool this series though. We all know he’s due some get back. Best way to do that is dominate while you’re in and win the series.
Apart from that, I think Philly is peaking and that’s a little scary. Fortunately, you can’t trust them to stay healthy and sustain a high enough level to win all through the playoffs. This may be the one series that goes 7 for us in the east- especially if Orlando does what I think they’ll do today and closes out Detroit. I’m probably gonna watch that game, should be intense and a good game to watch. Is Franz back today?
Very likely Orlando tanked. Pistons present a better matchup to Boston.
Always important to keep home court but especially with Philly only getting the one day to prepare and just finishing out a 7 game series with a short rotation, we gotta punch them in the mouth early and win these two games at MSG.
“This may be the one series that goes 7 for us in the east- especially if Orlando does what I think they’ll do today and closes out Detroit. I’m probably gonna watch that game, should be intense and a good game to watch. Is Franz back today?”
Nope, Franz was ruled out yesterday. You still think Orlando is going to win? I don’t (but wish they would).
That’s it, Queta playing well and Celtics losing is the ideal outcome. 😉 😀
Yesterday i didn’t watch any of it, because i was celebrating FCPorto’s 31st national championship! 💙🤍 Now i need the Knicks to do the same and it’ll be the perfect sports season! 🧡💙
They very clearly didn’t tank that game. They just couldn’t score, as they do. They were desperate to win and avoid the play in.
I was referring to the play-in game vs Philly and Orlando even if they won that Boston game wouldn’t have gotten out of the play-in. They would’ve been the 7th seed.
What are you taking about Educate?
I think they can still pull it off. They had been playing fairly well without him anyway. Cade is awesome, but hero ball in the playoffs isn’t sustainable. With Duren not playing as well as he did in the regular season, Cade is pretty much all they got. It worked Friday, but will it again for them?
I’d be okay with the Knicks winning a championship only ever facing the worst teams left, with a healthy dash of injury luck. Go Raptors!! Go Magic! Who in the West can blow an Achilles in game 7 of the CF and still win? Wemby? Shai? Either way, I’m good!
No seriously, the Sixers are a good team and we should still beat them. Unfortunately it will be hard, and occasionally probably a bit painful. I really despise Embiid from the last time we saw him, and there’s good reason to have healthy respect for what Maxey can do to us.
It’s been finals or just this year and it currently looks like this IS the year. Let’s hope there are a lot more good memories ahead this month, and no Halluburtons.
Franz is out again? Man the pistons are lucking out
I’m thinking that the 19-point half was very telling and Detroit puts Orlando to bed today. I also expect the Cavs to prevail over the Raps.
That embiid lateral give on the slight hypertension could be more than a small problem
The Sixers have the great front line talent, but their lack of depth is a weakness in a couple of ways: they’ll be relying on their aging superstars Embiid and George to play LOTS of minutes, and perhaps more importantly, they don’t have the ability to throw lots of different looks at you. They have their base lineup and that’s it. They can swap in Grimey for Oubre. Maybe an ancient Andre Drummond gets some minutes.
Also, they don’t have an elite-tier coach. Nick Nurse is competent but he’s not going to pull a Carlisle or Spoelstra and cause you X’s and O’s nightmares. They’re either gonna beat you with brute force talent or they’re gonna lose.
Also they’re not a great 3pt shooting team— they don’t take many, and they don’t convert at an elite percentage. Variance is always in the mix, but the Sixers aren’t a team that’s particularly likely to go on a heater and bury you from 3pt.
Knicks should win this.
Sixers agreed to coffee, but want to meet on Peacock. Was hoping they’d come to my side of town.
Even seeing Embiid holding his too-cute kid for his on-the-floor postgame interview didn’t make GF like him at all. I was shocked by this, but also pleased.
Knicks are now the only team to advance to 2nd rd in each of the last 4 years.
I’ve got a lot of qualms with the way Leon Rose has gone about his business, but I’ve also had a ton of fun watching meaningful Knicks games as the weather gets nice every year. I gotta hand it to the guy for that, can’t take it for granted.
As for the Sixers, Embiid is what he is at this point. I’m sure he’ll have some quarters and halves in which he looks unstoppable, but he’ll be unreliable in terms of health/conditioning and our personnel is better suited to defending him than just about anyone else’s. There’s Mitch of course, but KAT is also one of the few guys with the size to give him some fits.
Maxey will always scare me because we can never seem to crack speedy, talented scoring guards. Mikal was supposed to go a long way towards helping us in that department but he mostly just didn’t. My guess is we take a committee approach and throw the kitchen sink at him. Mikal, OG, Deuce, Hart, and Alvarado can all contirbute depending on lineups and switches.
No one else really scares me. Paul George isn’t going to light up our wing defenders. Edgecombe is plenty talented but too young for this series, I think. Oubre and Grimes are in over their heads.
The statistical indicators all say this should be Knicks in 5, but I have so much respect for Maxey I’ll say Knicks in 6.
I have also had a lot of fun watching Aaron Judge and Ben Rice play baseball. Cashman gets all kinds of shit but the development pipeline is as good as it’s been since I was a toddler. Judge, Rice, Schlittler, Warren, and Wells is a great homegrown core, and Lombard looks primed to join.
Knicks in six. Because Brown will adjust while Nurse can’t (bench plays a part but he also is stubborn).
How do they stop selling on the secondary markets where I assume most of the action is…. and I cannot believe that isn’t illegal. How can a corporation restrict the sale of publicly available tickets?
If Embiid is so shook by the prospect of NY fans invading the building than he should go to Stub Hub or whatever and buy up a few thousand and give them to poor kids in Philly.
100%
Maxey, tho.
I have no doubt we’ll win this series.
The goal is to win a championship, though. And no one’s ever done that without an easy series.
My concern is not that we’ll lose, it’s that the Sixers will push it to 6 or 7.
A comfortable 6 like the hawks series please
Carson Benge is the Mets’ best hitting prospect. He had a dreadful start to the season, but in the last few weeks has been making much better contact and getting better results. Getting into a bit of a groove.
Yesterday Carlos Mendoza sat him on the bench and instead started two no-hoper minor league journeymen in the outfield. The Mets lost 4-3.
Mendy just has a perpetually dopey look on his face. This disaster of a season isn’t entirely his fault, but he certainly isn’t helping. Play the prospect who is starting to break out of the fucking slump! Common sense my dude.
They’re at the point where they’re better off just losing so everybody can get fired.
Low key underrated moment of the season: Daryl Morey traded Jared McCain for a draft pick to duck under the apron.
Thanks, Daryl!
This has been the story with them for 2 years.
Loads of smart people thought they were a legitimate contenders last year and they wound up in the lottery due to injuries. Throw in Edgecomb and they look even better, but can they stay healthy another series?
I hate this matchup for us. We don’t match up well against their guards. I’d way rather we played Boston. We were built to matchup against Boston, not the 76ers.
Boston = die by the 3, die by the 3. lol
Maybe I just have to consider that our playoffs started in game 4 and we got an easy series win already 🙂
It’s not like one or two extra games cause a team not to win a chip. The short series are just correlated with championships because championship teams usually kick someone’s ass. And we did kick the Hawks ass after waking up.
Im probably overthinking it. My concern is if we have a physical 6 or 7 game war with these guys, and then another physical series with the Pistons, I doubt we’d be in good shape by the end.
Suggs has been disastrous. I wish I could laugh at it.
Philly even healthy isn’t very good. They had a negative pt differential during regular season and I remember seeing a stat towards end of the season about their net rating being roughly the same even when PG and Embiid played.
Maxey is a legit stud and Embiid will probably have at least 1 great game so I think it’ll be another 6 game series cause that’s what this Knicks team always seem to play regardless. But at this stage of the playoffs don’t care if it takes 4 or 7 games just win the series.
IMO, it’s going to be a tough series unless they come up lame. They played good defense in the Boston series and we don’t match up with their guards. If they can match that intensity defensively I don’t see how it can be an easy series with Maxey and Edgecomb going off. We are supppsed to win because we are deeper, but I don’t see a cakewalk.
I’m sure there’s a reason, but I don’t get why Orlando doesn’t press Cade full court every time. He’s allowed to save a lot of energy.
Benge certainly is a top prospect, but his being on the roster show a fundamental flaw in their process.
This guy was a first round pick in 24 and played well in a few games in low A. Last year he played very well at high A, and AA and got raised to AAA where he got a little exposed as being not ready for prime time hitting .178 in 24 games at AAA.
After running him through 3 levels in one minor league season where he failed at the 3rd level, not giving him another half serason at AAA to regain his mojo is professional malpractice by the front office.
Unsurprisingly, he’s he’s hitting .179 for the season, and as you noted .217 in his last 15 games and .227 over his last 7.
I hope they young man overcomes this beginning, but it is horrible management of a valuable asset.
If we get Orlando & Cleveland victories today it will almost make up for the disappointment of not getting to kick Boston’s ass.
(I want a Cleveland victory bc I think they’re more likely to beat Orlando than Toronto — and bc they’re soft as charmin. No one should ever want the Magic in the playoffs. Even though they can’t score they will take a pound of flesh.)
If you look at it in reverse, Boston with a hobbled Tatum was a GREAT matchup for Philly. Once they got Embiid back, the talent gap was large.
In game 7 without Tatum, the Celtics rather obviously were sorely lacking in shot creation. The wave of tryhards they sent out there in Tatum’s absence were pitiful. The combined Garza-Harper-Walsh-Scheierman-Gonzalez hydra went 0 for 12 in a combined 52 minutes.
Boston was ripe for the picking.
Shittiest of shitty times for Tatum to come up lame after playing consistently since his return, but maybe he—you know—shouldn’t have played as consistently since his return.
At this point I hate Orlando more than Detroit.
Time for the Lakers to once again serve their role as sacrificial lamb to a true West contender. 😂
If Benge is gonna be on the roster— and I agree he should have solved AAA first— then at least keep him in the lineup when he’s starting to hit a little bit.
I don’t want this group of coaches to be entrusted with the next wave of prospects, and I don’t want David Stearns to have any hand in making decisions about them. The Mets are terrible this year, but they do have a number of high quality prospects in their high minors. The Mets in recent years have done a very poor job of coaching at the MLB level and getting their young players to produce in MLB.
Gotta clean house of these fools. This didn’t pan out. Pivot to the young core, move the potentially useful pieces like Peralta, LuBob, Bichette and whoever else for more prospects, eat the Manaea/Polanco/Peterson contracts, move on from Baty and Vientos, and forget about this season. Use this season to develop the young guys who might be part of the future.
Orlando’s offense is as sorry as the Mets
Work and then has kept me from watching the Knicks these past two weeks. I’m pretty confident for this next round, and that’s with acknowledging that Maxey is great and will be very problematic (I dare Embiid to be healthy for an entire series). I just think that this shift to Point-KAT is sustainable, and the Knicks have too much firepower for Philly bc they’ve unlocked this new paradigm that gives them more options offensively.
BTW… for any of you that watched the NFL Draft… WE GOT A KID DRAFTED IN THE FIRST ROUND!!! Max Iheanachor, the Steelers pick out of ASU, started playing fb with us! ELAC’s first ever alum to get drafted in the first round in any pro sport! Historic stuff for us that our district admin are pretty clueless about bc they pay zero attention to sports.
Doesn’t seem like Orlando’s going to do it. 11 points at halftime seems insurmountable, even if Detroit didn’t score again.
Brian Cashman has never really gotten much credit, being seen as primarily someone who had a massive spending advantage over his peers. Since Hal assumed the helm, though, that really isn’t true and it’s hard not to conclude that Cashman has become highly underrated.
In a very real sense, him not getting any credit for a team that has been very good for 30 straight years is why we see the modern geek-adjacent GM always making sure their fingerprints are on a lot of their moves and why they always try to do the “smart, clever” thing.(*) It isn’t a direct line, to be sure, but there is in fact a line from Cashman not getting any credit to things like Stearns “replacing” Alonso with Jorge Polanco.
(*) “Sign a guy to a bad contract? Well, that’s the kind of thing *Brian Cashman* does and gets away. Well, gol’darn-it, you’re not gonna catch me doing that kind of thing!”
Shame Wagner got hurt. Detroit I can see making conference finals now
jalen suggs is a good player, doesn’t seem to run their offense, same with paola, wendal is useful, franz is the man there that makes their show go…
he’s only 24, 2nd season with health stuff holding him back…wish he could have been healthy enough to play more against the pistons…
no doubt the next time we face the magic in the post season he’ll be healthy for that…
The lockdown defense the Pistons can put on teams for massively long stretches is really something to behold.
Kind of embarrassing for Detroit that this Magic team took them to 7 games.
They’re really not very good.
Cedric Coward, the player the Grizzlies got in last years draft might be better than Bane by next season plus everything else they traded for him .
Meanwhile, on the west coast, it will be kind of funny when Justin Wrobleski wins the Cy Young.
There’s no such thing as “geek adjacent” GMs in MLB anymore. Every front office relies heavily on analytics and statistical analysis, and the Yankees are no exception.
Cashman has done well because he understands risk in a way that Stearns does not. It’s better to pay a premium and pay for the risk that comes with premium talent rather than paying for the risk that comes with second tier veterans like Sean Manaea and Jorge Polanco. Just give the years to Max Fried type talents and don’t sweat the back end of it.
Of course, but then the GM doesn’t get the credit.
And there’s nothing to pontificate about, often using prolix jargon, and to seem “smart” about. “We signed Max Fried because he’s a really good pitcher” is pretty straightforward and, as these things go, “unimpressive.”
I don’t really think it’s so much about Stearns wanting to seem smart. He has a small market mentality, and applying that to a big market team doesn’t work. You don’t need to chisel out value everywhere. You end up with shittier players who crap out in the first couple years of their contracts instead of the last few.
Get that up front value out of star players, then use the owner’s money to paper over their decline phases. That’s how you run a big market team. The strategy of signing lesser players to shorter contracts just doesn’t make sense on a team with a gigantic payroll.
The funny thing is that most Yankees fans would say that Cashman and co are not doing that at all. They’ve eschewed big name signings that were readily available in favour of cheap options. Let me tell you about Yankees third basemen in the last several years.
Fried is an exception because of how the Juan Soto negotiations went.
The Yankees also gave Rodon a 6/162 contract, and in his first two years of that he ate a shitload of innings and got them into the playoffs. They also gave Gerrit Gole a nine year deal and got six buttkicking seasons out of him before he got hurt.
Both of those guys are going to be returning to the rotation soon, and they’ll both probably still be productive.
Stearns went with guys who were willing to sign short term deals, AKA shittier pitchers, and got negative value out of them.
They’ve done it for pitchers, but not for position players, for some weird reason.
That’s a hellova catch
Mark Vientos OPS: .737
Pete Alonso OPS: .743
(Insert shrug emoticon)
As bad as the Cavs have looked, I think they’d beat Detroit easily.
Toronto’s defense will give Detroit some trouble, but I am not sure Toronto would score more than 80 points per game.
RJ is giving me PTSD.
Holy crap CDiggy, that’s amazing.
Rough go of it there for Toronto in the third
Congrats CDiggy,
JK, your baseball takes might be better than your basketball takes, and that is saying something….
Embiid and Co should feel pretty good about themselves with the way the other upstarts faltered.
Those “USA” chants were quite interesting
cavs versus pistons
you know, I don’t know…important series for both franchises to take another step forward…not sure who wins though…
maybe this is the moment evan mobley takes a solid step forward in fulfilling his potential…
Having been peacocked out of watching any of these games, I’m getting the feeling that these are more like play-in games with game 7 affectations.
CLE-DET should be a very feisty series.
It’s like the Cold War again, only the war is just against the cold.
Hopefully the Cavs and Pistons beat the hell out of each other over seven games, and the Knicks easily feast on the victor.
I’d give the slight edge to Cleveland, but it’s a toss up.
My wife is a Pistons fan who is getting increasingly excited about them as they become regulars in the playoffs. This could get ugly around here.
There’s a lot of wood in Canada.
The Marcus Semien trade is the classic David Stearns blunder.
He was hot to move Brandon Nimmo’s contract: Nimmo had five years remaining. He traded Nimmo for Semien, who had three years remaining.
The problem is, Semien’s hit tool was showing signs of collapsing in his previous season. He was slightly below league average in his age 33 and 34 seasons. His age 35-37 seasons were a very bad bet. Sure enough now he appears to be completely washed.
Nimmo, meanwhile, was still an above average hitter in his last couple of seasons, and was heading into his age 33 season, he’s two years younger than Semien. Nimmo had been durable and reasonably productive. This year, at age 33, he is still hitting. He’d easily be the Mets’ second best hitter.
Stearns was so hell bent on not taking on Nimmo’s decline phase that he took on Semien’s instead, simply because there were fewer years left on his deal. Second base wasn’t even a position of need for the Mets.
Instead of two years of a productive Nimmo and three years of an unproductive one, he instead simply took on three years of an unproductive Semien.
I know that cleveland is the go-to punching bag for relative desirability and all, but the cavs really are kind of hot, probably the best looking roster in the association. Jarrett Allen is adorable by even the most heteronormative standards.
The Yankees basically telling Volpe he can’t be the starting Shortstop right now is funny. Staying in the minors for now, but also lets you know they don’t think he is an upgrade to Jose. Jose has been very solid btw.
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