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Playoff Game Preview: Knicks vs 76ers, Game 2, May 6, 2026 – Posting & Toasting
Knicks-76ers Notes: OG Anunoby’s status in question; Mikal Bridges has ‘great game’ on both ends – SNY
Karl-Anthony Towns, Knicks looking to solve foul trouble woes against 76ers, crafty Tyrese Maxey – SNY
Barbara Barker: Knicks win Game 2 battle but may lose OG Anunoby – Newsday
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Knicks 137, 76ers 98: “Really surreal” – Posting & Toasting
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Knicks Demanding 2-0 Lead against 76ers | Kentucky Bourbon Meets Japanese Heritage – Knick of Time
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178 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.05.08)”
The idea that a bench with Quickley, Hart, Hartenstein, and Toppin was thin compared to this one is incredibly stupid.
The Knicks 2023 playoff bench was lights out. They haven’t come close to matching that depth and quality since.
Regarding the hamstring, it’s medicine. Who am I going to trust, years of medical science or “sources” like “Rick Brunson” or “OG Anunoby’s agent” or “a Knicks junior PR person”?
Not really a close call.
Regarding the reporting, it’s in the interest of Begley and Bondy to carry a bit of water for the Knicks and the player here, but let’s dig slightly deeper.
I don’t remember the details but Begley had that situation where he drew Inference A from Facts A and B and the reality and the proper inference was the exact opposite and he actually had to admit so within 48 hours. It got a lot of play on KB maybe a year or so ago. Details escaping, maybe the Thibs firing?
Bondy’s “exclusive” story in the Post is pure BS, drawing conclusions from (a) OG’s playing on rather than collapsing; and (b) OG coming back in 11 days against Indiana. Both are bogus — OG “played on” almost identically to this (*) when he strained his hamstring against Miami five months ago and of course, he was nowhere near ready to play basketball after that 11 day layoff two years ago. We can all credibly assume there is zero chance of a repeat of that cringe-worthy episode.
He strained his hamstring. His hamstring muscle incurred damage that must be recovered from. It’s not a joint or a ligament or a tendon; it’s a major functional muscle — particularly for NBA basketball players. That’s a medical reality. There are no “sources” who can credibly report that it “was really minor” or any such thing.
(*) Right down to the exact same detail of trying to lift for a layup and evincing obviously reduced capacity. He actually threw the towel in later in the Miami strain than in this one. There, he went to the bench thinking he could still play. Here, he hobbled, asked out, went to the locker room, never came back.
Thinking it through a little more, given the Indiana debacle two years ago, most likely this was OG and/or his agent setting things up for OG to try to come back before he’s ready and then putting the team in the unenviable position of having to hold him back (or, even worse, playing him).(*)
Him playing in the Indiana game was no exaggeration one of the dumbest medical decisions in NBA history. (**) He was completely and unambiguously unfit for purpose.
What were they going to do if they won the game and he re-injured himself — which he almost certainly would have if the Knicks hadn’t mercifully pulled the plug? This wasn’t Willis in the last game before a long summer break; it was the *second round*.
(*) Meaning that the water being carried here probably isn’t being carried for the Knicks.
(**) He gets credit of course for being a “gamer” and “wanting to help his team” in a very important game. It wasn’t his fault; it was the Knicks’ fault.
I went down a Knicks’ bench rabbit hole…
That 2023 bench is probably the 2nd best Knicks bench of the last 50 years. Three of those guys are big time starters now and one is a perennial 6th man of the year challenger.
The best is definitely 1999 with Sprewell, Camby, Chris Childs, and Kurt Thomas. Every time Sprewell and Camby came to the scorers table you could feel the storm brewing. They played with such rage, it was like they were offended they had to wait, and they took their anger out on the opponent.
’92 with Starks & Mason is up there, but Greg Anthony kinda sucked as a rookie and Kiki was washed.
Woodson had a great bench that one year with JR, Prigioni, Novak, Copeland, and the rotating cast of semi-washed vets that we always managed to get one healthy player from (Wallace, Camby, Thomas, Martin).
And funny enough, another Thibs bench is up there among the best — the 2021 one led by a rejuvenated Derrick Rose. They had Rose, Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel, rookies IQ & Obi, and a still useful Taj Gibson.
The 2023 bench has never recovered from the multiple two pieces for one piece trades for OG and (to a lesser degree) KAT. It was always one of the major dangers of the trade(s) and it’s come to pass. (*)
OG’s been great in the playoffs this year (as has KAT), but this is simple reality.
(*) If at least some blame is to be ascribed to Leon’s various incinerations, chars, and draft blunders, fine — but that’s far less direct.
So to Z-Man’s point, here’s how I’d rank the benches Thibs and Brown have had at their disposal:
1. 2023 bench (Thibs) – one of the best ever
2. 2021 bench (Thibs) – an outstanding bench
3. 2024 bench (Thibs) – a very good bench
4. 2026 bench (Brown) – meh
5. 2025 bench (Thibs) – blech
I’m sorry but this just isn’t a very good bench beyond Mitch. Deuce is the 7th man, and he’s played like shit since he returned from injury. So has Landry Shamet. Jordan Clarkson has a -4.8 bpm in the playoffs.
Just finished reading yesterday’s thread…
Evidence #1: This is from Pags and i agree 100%
Evidence #2: But it’s good that we’re not losing OG, so it’s the Knicks and the worst case scenario didn’t happen!?
Evidence #3: You talk about Thibs and his rotations and Mike K goes on a comment-spree 😀
Evidence #4: A CDiggy appearance !!
Evidence #5: And even more rare… a Farfa appearance !!!
Is this the end of the world? 😛
Oh, and the Knicks are looking good for finally getting to the Finals again…
It looks like most Sixers analysts are optimistic because they feel they could have won game 2 and went cold at the end of the game.
Feels pretty delusional to me!
And the Knicks can? I hope we do well, but i think it won’t be easy for us too.
Let them believe everything is ok and it was just bad luck. That’s where we want them to be. 😉
The Knicks were cold entire game and still won. What will happen when we start knocking down 3s too?
RJ and IQ make a combined $60M AAV. I know this needs to be handwaved away if you want to die on the “the OG Anunoby trade was bad actually” hill, but if we didn’t make some kind of consolidation trade that would’ve inhibited us in a number of ways.
At a bare minimum, there’s no KAT trade in that scenario, and it’s not like it allows us to keep iHart or do anything else we couldn’t do having made the trade. In the contrary, it would’ve done nothing but lessen our ability to maneuver.
There’s going to be a staggering amount of Knicks fans in Philadelphia tonight. Like an offensive amount.
Curious to see if there will be a surprise announcement that Embiid’s playing later today.
The Knicks played without their two rotation centers for 21 minutes and still won.
I think they played their worse game in a while offensively, because they were so disjointed due to the foul trouble. I doubt that happens again.
The main issue is OG’s absence. But to think that it was cold shooting from the Sixers is kind of delusional when they still hit twice as many 3s as the Knicks and played their main guy 47 minutes. We’ve seen that story before.
Is anyone still dying on that hill given the way he has been playing in this playoffs?? He has been our best player until now!!
There’s no world in which the OG trade was bad, but we could have extended Quickley for much less than he signed with the Raptors for. Reports were he wanted $25M and we held the line at $16M. If they’d met somewhere in the middle, today he’d be on an entirely reasonable 4 year, $85M deal, and we probably would have used two picks instead of IQ to acquire OG.
That leads to all sorts of multiverse branches that the TVA would have to trim. We probably don’t do the Grimes/Fournier for Bojan/Burks trade if we have IQ on the bench. But we probably would have used IQ & Grimes in the Bridges trade, which would have lessened the number of picks going out for Mikal (but we would have already used those picks to get OG, so in the end a wash).
The real what-if is would we have even done the Bridges trade if we had IQ & Grimes? I suspect the answer is yes — we were obsessed and illogical at the time.
But bottom line is it’s crazy to suggest the bench never recovered from that trade without acknowledging how much better the team is for that trade. You’d trade a good bench for a better starting lineup every day of the week!
To add a little statistical flavor to the discussion of our bench, past and present:
-32 lineups have played 100+ minutes in the Leon Era (2020-2021 onwards), and the best net rating belongs to Brunson-Deuce-Donte-Hart-iHart at +31.4 in 172 minutes*.
-In 3rd place at +21 in 228 minutes is a hilarious lineup of (Derrick) Rose-IQ-Alfonso Blumenthal-Obi-Taj.
-IQ is in 3 of the top 4, and alongside Brunson in 2 of those. I do wish we got to see them play together more, but as per my prior comment I’m pretty sure it just wasn’t tenable to pay that backcourt so much.
Put it all together and, weirdly enough given that the team was far from our best, there’s a strong case that our best bench was the one from 2020-2021 when we had a not-washed Derrick Rose, IQ and Obi as precocious neophytes, and Athena Brooms.
All I have to say this morning is that OKC is ridiculous.
Missing Jalen Williams (their OG) last night, but they still have a legit 7-player bench, many of whom would be starters on other teams.
It’s also seriously insane that the Sixers gifted them McCain (4-5 from three last night).
And they even have guys like Sorber and Topic who still haven’t played yet, not to mention a million picks in the future.
The only chance of them getting bounced is facing a fully healthy Wemby squad, but even that’s a long shot.
I don’t think we can safely assume anything about what Toronto would’ve wanted if we weren’t willing to trade them IQ. I mean, given the contract they gave him they clearly valued him extraordinarily highly (as we all did too, especially in our hearts).
In any event, I strongly agree with the larger point. As evidenced by our best bench arguable being the one from 2020-2021, bench strength is not a very good proxy for team quality, and in fact can often be a sign a team hasn’t distributed and consolidated its talent efficiently (this doesn’t apply to behemoths like OKC that can simply stack 12 good players).
“The idea that a bench with Quickley, Hart, Hartenstein, and Toppin was thin compared to this one is incredibly stupid.”
Not if you define the bench in terms of minutes played.
Hart played over 30mpg during the regular season and 32 mpg in the playoffs, including 35mpg vs the Cavs. He came off the bench but was a nominal starter.
Our “bench” was really 4 guys 24 years old and under: iHart, IQ, Grimes, and Obi. They were outplayed in both series and the bench battle was a huge reason we lost to Miami in the playoffs, if not the main reason. Caleb Martin and Kyle Lowry destroyed us. The great iHart averaged 2 points and 4 rebounds on 3.5% usage, outplayed by the great Cody Zeller! Obi put up a .502 TS% in 88 minutes of stink. Even Hart couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, yet still started 3 games and averaged over 30 minutes.
I don’t give a shit what those players went on to be. At that time they were inexperienced kids prone to kid mistakes. This year’s bench would destroy that year’s bench just like Miami’s bench did. It’s stupid to think otherwise.
BTW, the argument seemed to be that Thibs never played his bench enough. If you insist Hart was a bench player, he might have led the league in bench minutes. Quickley played 29mpg in the regular season and 22mpg in the playoffs. iHart was nursing a sore achilles all year and still played 20mpg both in the regular season and in the playoffs. Obi played 16mpg in the regular season and in the playoffs. So the entire argument that Thibs instinctively doesn’t trust his bench is a big pile of steaming bullshit. You actually reinforced the argument that Thibs will play bench players if they are actually good! Thanks, dude!
No one does that and no one means “Team A plays their bench more minutes than Team B” when they stay “Team A has a better bench than Team B.”
“Our “bench” was really 4 guys 24 years old and under: iHart, IQ, Grimes, and Obi.”
And those four guys are *without question* better than the front four guys on this year’s bench.
There’s no need for scare quotes around the term “bench” because that was a very good one.
That bench also had Deuce, so it’s five guys under 24.
Generally speaking, in this discussion the “bench” issue is getting conflated and intermixed with the “Thibs” issue. I’m not weighing in on the latter.
BTW I think there are parallels between our 2023 bench and Boston’s bench this year. Their young guys looked great all regular season and then not so much in the playoffs.
Speaking of benches, I watched the Lakers-OKC game last night and came away thinking that OKC’s bench could make a long playoff run as starters.
The “multiverse” question is do you ride out that deeper squad knowing that at the very highest levels of the association teams are able to “stack” players 11 and 12 deep like OKC … or do you instead turn the deep (and potentially very deep) if you wait it out squad into a more top-heavy one.
I think the answer is obvious, though I respect the other side. Speaking generally, the “top heavy” idea is one that was in vogue for a while but went out of vogue about 10 years ago when the “Heatles” began to fray. Trying to reassemble it now is fighting yesterday’s wars.
The best GMs would have added OG and kept one of the two (or even both) sacrificed pieces and simply made the rest work.
No one does that and no one means “Team A plays their bench more minutes than Team B” when they stay “Team A has a better bench than Team B.”
Um, yes they do. Most obvious examples are McHale and Havlicek, who were never considered to be true “bench” players even when they came off the bench. Best Knicks example I can think of is Mase. Hart is a close second.
I think perhaps he learned from the experience in Miami and stopped playing right but away this time. He knew from experience that if he tried to gut it out, it would get worse.
I have no idea how this translates into “you measure the quality of a bench by the amount of minutes they play.”
McHale was a great bench piece full stop, not sure how the number of minutes he played weighs into it.
Even if you do that — and I don’t think it makes any sense to do that — you’d then have to count one of the starters as part of the bench.
So if you’ve taken 2023 Josh Hart off the bench (even though he was definitely on the bench) now you have to add 2023 Quentin Grimes to the bench. That was the guy with the 62% TS who was the primary defender on Donovan Mitchell and Jimmy Butler in the playoffs.
Now you have to argue that Jordan Clarkson and Landry Shamet today are better than the guy who played 48 minutes in an elimination game covering Jimmy Butler in his prime.
Not to mention you have to argue that a guy who played 48 minutes was only a nominal starter!
I want to be very clear that I’m only calling your argument stupid. I know you are a smart guy. But you’re twisting yourself into knots to avoid admitting you were wrong, and the positions you’re being forced to take as a result are ridiculous.
Brown’s bench this year is better than Thibs bench last year. We can agree on that. You just went a little too far making your point when you claimed it’s always been that way.
It’s a fascinating debate, one that is kind of “polluted” by the genius of Presti over the past decade plus. He patiently took advantage of both the structural framework (draft, salary cap, etc.) and the ring-chasing blunders of his peers to build a team the likes of which we may never see again. They will have some cap-wrangling to do in the next 2-3 years, and Wemby’s ascent plus the Spurs being a close second in terms of cap and draft management could give them a run for their money, but it’s hard to see another team following that model and catching up any time soon. It almost demands that teams follow the top-heavy model and hope for both injury luck and non-lottery draft luck.
PS Jared McCain is just the latest example of how Presti’s genius played out. He threw a few draft bones to Philly to acquire a young player with huge upside. (I was never much of a Morey fan, but that was maybe his dumbest move ever.)
Understanding the potential obstacles in keeping it intact, were it still intact, Josh Hart, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, Isaiah Hartenstein, Miles McBride, Obi Toppin would be the best bench in the association.
Hey guys, has the offseason begun? If I’m not mistaken there’s a playoff game tonight?
It is not. My argument is that Thibs repeatedly had better benches than Mike Brown currently does.
IQ finished 2nd in 6MOY that year and he probably should have won. Obi Toppin — the 9th man! — had a 2.0 bpm, which would have been tied with OG for 5th on the Knicks this year.
You seem to be arguing that we should give more weight to how they actually performed in the playoffs that year instead of their regular season numbers, is that fair to say?
No time like tonight to witness the truth of what this bench is made of.
Marechal have you really not figured out this is how I manage my game-day anxiety yet? 🙂
IQ was totally banged up that playoff season. Hurt their chances against Miami a lot.
Same with Julius.
Not really seeing the “Caleb Martin” thing either. Shot 458/357/750 against the Knicks, 10.5 ppg in over 28 mpg. He lit up Boston in the next series, so maybe that’s the confusion.
“I want to be very clear that I’m only calling your argument stupid. I know you are a smart guy.”
Likewise, I’m sure.
“But you’re twisting yourself into knots to avoid admitting you were wrong, and the positions you’re being forced to take as a result are ridiculous.”
Actually, you are the one that is doing that. You initially name-dropped Derrick Rose and Deuce McBride as part of that great bench, even though one was washed/injured and the other horrifically bad that year. Then you refuse to look objectively at how our bench played overall during the playoffs. You cite a game where Grimes gave a heroic effort when we were already down 3-1 largely due to our bench not being outplay Old Man Lowry, One Hit Wonder Caleb Martin, and Ultimate Journeyman Cody Zeller. The kids predictably sucked when it counted most, and the numbers show that.
But again, the overriding argument was that Thibs never trusted his bench enough and should have played them more during the last two years. Yet you actually made the argument for me! When the players on the bench are actually “good” (and you are insisting that Josh Hart was a bench player in 2023, so I will gladly stipulate that) then Thibs will play the shit out of them! (Our bench played more minutes than Spo’s did in that series, and played ample minutes the entire year.) So it”s weird that you don’t think Thibs should be given the same grace other coaches get by not playing the end of the shitty 2025 bench more than he did.
As to 2024, you are critical of Thibs for not playing Burks, Precious, and Sims more? As if that is the reason we lost to Indiana? THAT’S twisting oneself into knots. Calling Burks a hired gun? After he put up a -7.8 BPM and .420 TS% in the 23 regular season games after we foolishly re-acquired him? Come on.
And in 2025, a year where you are conceding that our bench was the weakest in the Thibs era, we went into the Indiana series fully healthy despite all the whining about minutes played all regular season. OG (the reason for this argument in the first place and a guy you dreaded acquiring at the price we paid in part due to his injury-proneness) had his healtiest season and playoffs ever despite the big minutes, and some would argue (not me!) because of the big minutes.
My anxiety management technique, on the other hand, is to stress out about whether Hart will miss tonight’s game in addition to OG.
I guess there is not much anxiety management involved here.
Maybe we should “bench” this conversation for now and put it back into the game once the season is done?
Biggest game of the playoffs is tonight. OG’s injury definitely hurts our chances of going all the way but the dream is still alive, Knicks fans!
If we can take care of business tonight, Philly will most likely roll over in game 4 and we can sweep these bums. Then, we just gotta hope that Cleveland can continue their winning ways at home and win games 3 and 4 of that series. If Cleveland can extend that series to even just 6 games and we can sweep Philly, that’s gonna be like an extra week off for our guys and for OG. At that point, game 1 of the ECF would be a full 12 days or so from OG’s injury.
I continue to believe that the Knicks aren’t being cagey or lying for false optimism about OG. I don’t think his injury was as bad as the one 2 years ago and I’m going to assume if we get out of this round that he can come back by game 1 or 2 of the next round.
I also think, as good as he has played, our team is good enough and deep enough (that bench, oh my!) to weather this injury for a few games. Brunson didn’t shoot particularly well last game. Hart has not shot well all playoffs. We won last game with no Mitch. Shamet has the potential to go off and win us a game or two. Deuce can play more minutes. Diawara’s played enough regular season minutes to go out there and not shit the bed. It ain’t ideal, but winning a title is not easy. Losing games 2 and 3 of Atlanta was the first test. Weathering OG’s absence is the second test. There will be more tests after this, if we get that far.
So who starts tonight? Deuce? Clarkson? Shamet? Diawara? Who from our INCREDIBLE BENCH steps up tonight?
My personal Og probability curve
25%- done…comes back to try it in about two weeks…aggravates it more and see you next year
50% – assuming we get through Detroit (and Philly in seven because that is likley what it will take without him)…first game of finals is June 3rd…month from now he is healed up…he suits up for game 1
25% – see him game 7 unless we lose three in a row…then we wheel him out there for game 6
only silver lining is if he is out for rest of this series…than Brown (assuming it goes 7) can get the rotation set and good minutes for it before Detroit so it is not totally discombobulated without him when the series starts.
“You seem to be arguing that we should give more weight to how they actually performed in the playoffs that year instead of their regular season numbers, is that fair to say?”
Yes. As I said, very similar to Boston’s bench this year.
Our bench this year has 8yr vet Mitchell Robinson, 5yr vet Deuce McBride, 5yr vet Jose Alvarado, 12yr vet Jordan Clarkson, and 8yr vet Landry Shamet, backed up by 4yr vet Sochan, second year guys Kolek and Huk, and intriguing rookie Diawara (who I think Thibs would have loved to have had on that 2023 team).
Is Embiid going to play? And does he help or hurt the Sixers?
Current:
Expected Lineup
PG Jalen Brunson
SG J. Hart Ques
SF Mikal Bridges
PF O. Anunoby Ques
C K. Towns
MAY NOT PLAY
C M. Robinson Prob
F O. Anunoby Ques
F J. Hart Ques
Expected Lineup
PG Tyrese Maxey
SG VJ Edgecombe
SF Kelly Oubre
PF Paul George
C J. Embiid Ques
MAY NOT PLAY
C J. Embiid Ques
The Embiid question is fascinating. Did they look better in game 2 because he was out or simply because they played harder and were a little bit more rested than in game 1?
There is no doubt they play differently with him than without. Much slower and more methodical. He is a walking bucket and foul merchant but he is a sieve on defense. Maxey, Edgecomb and the rest have to defer to him on offense more, etc.
trying to figure out if it’s better to have the feeling of constant unease and dread (current state)
or
feeling like some ax murdering monster is chasing me up the stairs (previous state)
neither is good, this constant feeling of dread sucks though, at least the ax murderer scenario is a bit more exciting…and yeah, no I’m not talking about the knicks 🙃
doing the “i’m okay”, “i’m safe” mantra stuff just ain’t cutting it…ay ay ay…
this too shall pass, i imagine/hope…it just doesn’t feel good to be me sometimes…
yay, it’s friday…
I think if Embiid has the mobility he had on Monday, he’s a liability. But we’ve seen before how he can look dead in one game and is back to normal the next game. He’s weird like that (maybe he has PG’s supplier, who knows). Given how gassed Maxey and George were at the end of Game 2, Embiid will help them have a lesser load.
That said, Philly looked very unprepared on Monday, and much better prepared on Wednesday. Which is expected given the turnaround they had from Game 7. But also, I feel like the Knicks looked a bit unprepared not to face Embiid in Game 2, and might adjust better to Barlow/Bona/Drummond if Embiid doesn’t play.
I’m skeptical that the lateral movement will be returning. That looked like a lot more than “I’m tired” to me.
Who wins in a series — the 2012 or 25/26 thunder?
I kind of agree, but he moved better during the Boston series, so who knows…
I want Mo Diawara to make us *believe tonight (but a lot of people want a lot of things).
I agree with JK. Even so, Embiid has a way of having big games even when he is gimpy. Even if he can just goad our C’s into foul trouble in 20 minutes of semi-mobile flailing, he can be a factor, especially if OG sits.
And on that note, I do think that OG should sit no matter what. Give Huk, Shamet, Sochan and Diawara some reps out there. Maybe even give Kolek some burn. I’m not suggesting conceding the game, but if there was a game to play non-rotation guys, this is it. Take some pressure off of Brunson (who is likely going to be hounded by Oubre and Barlow again) and throw a curve at Nurse.
Or not!
Has Embiid ever really looked like he “moves well”?
“Who wins in a series — the 2012 or 25/26 thunder?”
Excellent question. I’d go with the current team because of their defense and depth but that team was really good.
I asked a friend the other night, who wins in a 7-game series, this Knicks team or the ’94 Knicks? I think it would depend on the era in which the series was played. In 1994, Brunson would get the snot beaten out of him every time he went into the paint. Today, the ’94 Knicks would have had to stretch the floor to create more space for Ewing. I’d probably give the edge to the ’94 team, also based on defense.
Embiid has never been particularly fleet of foot but he was an Eddy Curry-level defender in game one. As in, didn’t really play any defense at all. Maybe there’s another gear available to him, but he was extremely exploitable in game one to the point where he was a clear net negative even with the foul spamming.
Thank you for clarifying.
So then why are you doing this?
According to you, we have to judge these guys by how they’re performing in small playoff samples, not by trivial platitudes (“5 year vet”) and meaningless opinions (“Thibs would have loved him”).
Well, they’re actually all playing like shit except for Mitch (8th in minutes played) and Alvarado (10th).
Deuce McBride (6th) – 48.1% TS, -5.8 bpm
Jordan Clarkson (7th) – 51.7% eFG on 23.3 USG, -4.8 bpm
Landry Shamet (9th) – 38.9% TS, -9.7 bpm
Ariel Hukporti (11th) – 50.2% TS, -5.8 bpm
Mo Diawara (12th) – 35.0% TS, -4.7 bpm
That’s check mate dude. You walked right into it.
I’m sure you’ll keep playing by yourself, but the match is over.
The only player on Philly who scares me is Maxey, and even if he gets hot like he did in the 2nd quarter of game 2, we can survive it. Hopefully whiny Nick Nurse plays him 47 minutes again so he has nothing left in the tank in crunch time.
I know a lot of people fawn over Edgecombe, and he has a bright future, but he’s streaky as hell and really not a very good shooter overall. PG 13 does seem to be revitalized, but disappeared in the second half of game 2
I think even without OG we win game 3; if KAT can stay out of foul trouble he can dominate and we still have one of the best closers in the association.
Knicks 110 Sixers 99
I’ll give Z-Man a pass because he’s using the bench idea to try to defend Thibs and therefore intermixing and conflating two separate questions but that said, arguing that list is even close to the equal of Josh Hart, iHart, IQ, Grimes, Toppin, Deuce is quite the rhetorical feat.
“I’m skeptical that the lateral movement will be returning. ”
From my (singles) tennis playing days…when your lateral movement suffers because of a hip issue (even if just inflammation), you can still play but your lateral movement will not improve (and likely get worse since you are going to instinctively try to move laterally). And a couple of days rest does not fix it. At least a week.
Of course I did not have the luxury of some physio massaging my hip 20 hours a day or the medical team responsible for PG’s suspension.
The whistle can’t possibly be as bad as it was last game, right? RIGHT?
I guess I want OG to be able to play but actually not play. Most likely reality is that the idea of him being even questionable is bullshit, and he won’t be close to ready for weeks, and when he does return he won’t be close to his recent impeccable form.
I don’t feel the usual sense of dread today. Part of it is that road games entail less pressure to win, but part of it is that this OG thing has really taken the wind out of my sails. It really felt like we could be on track for a finals run with a puncher’s chance against the Jordan Bulls of our time.
In just one game, my gut feeling is that this is a 2024 type run. I’m expecting we limp to the ECF and break down against a younger, fresher team that we probably beat at full strength. After these last 30 years, that’s a more comfortable trajectory for me, so my anxiety level is lower than it’s been. I could feel myself positively buzzing with anticipation pre-game on Tuesday, now I’m just kinda feeling resigned to a long march towards an unpromising offseason full of tough choices.
I linked to a post by an actual medical doctor yesterday who said the recovery time of a hamstring tweak would be 1-2 games.
A grade 1 hamstring strain can be recovered from in 2 weeks.
He really could be day-to-day.
Another doctor said he’d need to miss games to avoid aggravating the injury
I’ve given up on those kind of questions. Completely different era, offenses now entirely abandon (*) what would have been prime real estate for the 1994 Knicks. Defenses will give you spots on the floor that you used to have to fight through a bunch of crowded grown-ass men to get to. Rebounds can now be obtained for virtually free by 6-4 guys in spots that there used to be multiple 6-8 and 6-10 guys occupying.
And obviously the universe of NBA guys today are far better pure shooters than the 1994 universe.
Impossible to compare.
(*) Well, other than Mikal Bridges anyway.
The funny part is he tried to dismiss IQ by posting his awful playoff stats that year, and his awful numbers are better than everyone on that list!
He’s moved the goalposts so many times he must have a fork lift.
It’s not a tweak, it’s a strain.
Tweak just means an extremely mild strain:
https://xcancel.com/madicmonday/status/2052503548311556393#m
It’s Game 3 against Indiana all over again, isn’t it? (I think that was on a Friday night, too).
That Nembhardt shot still kills me.
“…but he was an Eddy Curry-level defender in game one.”
Can you even imagine having Eddy Curry on your favorite team? Sheesh.
All I can tell you for certain is that in 2026, betting and gambling on anything (including if OG will play tonight) has reached an insane peak.
The amount of noise and “medical reports” and “breaking” news stories will only increase in tandem.
And, ironically, the only place to get actual information on this would be to log on to Kalshi — because when people are betting on this, they are using more genuine information. But when I tried to create a Kalshi account, just to see what the odds were, they asked for a head-spinning amount of information. So I passed.
Can you imagine trading for Eddy Curry, because someone called him Baby Shaq, and then finding out that the two first-rounders you gave to the Bulls turned into Lamarcus Aldridge and Joakim Noah
Kalshi does have odds on OG’s next game played, but it doesn’t seem very efficient because the odds of him playing before May 15 (64%) are lower than the odds of him playing before May 13 (66%).
“Before May 9” is 20%.
Volume is barely over $5,000, so not a very deep market.
Nah, you are again twisting yourself into knots trying to defend the putrid performance of that green bench’s in the playoffs.
First, the vast majority of the minutes played by Shamet, Hukporti, and Diawara have been in the garbage-iest of garbage time. Clarkson was abysmal in a long garbage-time stint, dragging his numbers down. Deuce’s shot has been coming around after being injured and is playing excellent D.
Second, if you are gonna pull that stupid shit, make sure you include Alvarado and his 6.4 BPM in the IQ role. Or Mitch with his 4.7 BPM in the iHart role. As to guys outside the rotation, why not throw in Sochan and his 18.9 BPM? Or Dadiet at 4.8? Or Kolek at 3.6?
The 2023 bench was our demise in the playoffs. The current bench has thus far been instrumental run off the most dominant 4-game run in NBA playoff history. But hey, you go right on tying yourself into knots defending those kiddies! I’ll go with the actual results.
And for the sake of the board, I’ll rest my case.
The 90’s Knicks translating into the modern game is an interesting proposition, because they had two guys in Ewing and Oakley who probably would have been stretch bigs in the modern game.
They’d probably be pretty fierce playing in the modern era.
I think the reasonable blanket assumption is that teams from today would destroy teams of yesteryear. The reason 90’s teams don’t play like teams today do is that they couldn’t. The ’94 Knicks had 1-2 guards that would be playable today in terms of shooting: Hubert Davis and maybe Derek Harper.
The offense of throwing the ball to Ewing in the post on a one-way trip so he could back into a baseline fadeaway he hits 42% of the time would be pretty unthreatening.
Obviously their defense was what made them good, but what do they do against the Brunson P&R or Karl-Anthony Townsic? Do you really want Oakley or Ewing guarding in space?
Current Embiid kinda reminds me of post-Pitino Ewing in a lot of ways — craftier on offense and less mobile on defense, but you can tell he’s kinda permanently compromised on an athletic level.
Return to sender.
You might even think that Charles Smith would have been a pretty good modern stretch big.
Trigger alerts, please. This is supposed to be a safe space until game time. 😉
Re the mention of Sixers gifting OKC Jared McCain:
How about the Knicks gifting Ajay Mitchell, and turning the acquired pick into the useless Kevin McCullar.
Mitchell is starting for OKC. Last night: 20 points, 6 assists, +18 in 30 minutes.
I don’t believe it’s an overstatement to say that Ajay Mitchell on the Knicks vs. Ajay Mitchell on the Thunder is the difference between the Knicks having a very realistic chance to beat OKC in a 7-game series and not.
Every GM should follow one simple rule: if Sam Presti wants a player, don’t give him up.
The injuries to Julius Randle and Immanuel Quickley, and the off-trend bricklaying of Josh Hart against Miami, were our demise in the 2023 playoffs.
“The injuries to Julius Randle and Immanuel Quickley, and the off-trend bricklaying of Josh Hart against Miami, were our demise in the 2023 playoffs.”
Hart was part of the bench, that was confirmed, right?
Quickley sucked before he got injured, right?
At the time, you and others hated Julius Randle and called him a playoff choker extraordinaire. So it was up to our “great” bench to cover for him, right?
Fail.
(sorry, but if folks want to keep going, let’s go!)
Patrick Ewing shot 125 trifectas in 17 seasons, Charles Oakley shot 269 in 19 years. Neither made very many.
So the question by definition comes down to, “If they’d been trained since they were eight years old to shoot the trifecta, could they have at levels acceptable to the modern era?”
That’s an unknowable question if certainty is your aim. It’s reasonable to speculate that they could have. It might not have even taken training from birth; after all, Brook Lopez turned himself into a trifecta shooter mid-career. I don’t see any reason, based on many years of observation, to believe Brook Lopez had any more innate shooting talent than Patrick Ewing did.
Certainly there are guys from the 90s who would have failed this hypothetical test and been weeded out under today’s standards, just as there are guys today who can’t remotely play the type of defense expected of 90s players.
Not pictured: an actual argument.
In 1994 there were two bigs in the entire league that shot over 33% 3FG. Only 18 players managed to make 100 threes.
They didn’t play this way because they couldn’t.
Of course, but that’s what “off-trend” means. He was lights out against Cleveland and has never laid brick like that since, either in the regular season or playoffs.
He was injured the whole playoff season.
He was injured. That hurts the team. By definition.
timo, we also traded them the 26th pick in that draft for and they used it on Dillon Jones, who sucks. And in 2021 they gave us two picks (one of whom turned out to be Deuce) to move up for Jeremiah Robinson-Earl. He also drafted Ousmane Ding with our lottery pick in 2022.
So I wouldn’t say you have to avoid trading with Presti, just copy his process, which is take as many swings as possible.
2022 is a great example. He had the 12th pick in the draft. He could have taken Dieng or Jalen Williams. Instead he swindled us for the 11th and took both. One hit and one was a bust. That’s a great result.
It was a virtual given that when Presti wanted Leon’s lottery pick, Presti was going to take Leon to the cleaners — and he did.
This continues to be a misstatement of what transpired. (*) Leon traded a lottery pick that could have been used on Jalen Williams and Sam Presti drafted Jalen Williams with one of two back-to-back lottery picks he had.
Literal truth sometimes is not real truth. The truth is that Leon traded Sam Presti a lottery pick that he, Leon, could have used on Jalen Williams and he, Sam Presti, walked out of the lottery with Jalen Williams.
There are a lot of Rangers fans on the popular boards who insist that Pittsburgh selected Ben Kindel, a great young prospect who’s playing in the NHL already at 18 with the draft pick Chris Drury handed over to them last year but that isn’t accurate because Kindel went 11 and the pick was 12. (There was a point at which PGH had both 11 and 12, just as OKC had two picks in a row.) Kindel would have been gone if the Rangers had hung onto their pick and he therefore wasn’t available with the pick. That’s different than the J-Dub situation.
(*) And now, oops, I see that Hubert amended while I was writing.
This breaks the comparison. If we do this then it isn’t the 1994 Knicks, it’s something like “players from the 1994 Knicks but if they had been born a generation later and lived completely different lives but somehow ended up on the same basketball team still.” At a certain point they’re so different from what we knew that the comparison loses any meaning.
You have to assume one team time travels to the other and they play by one era’s rule or the other. Maybe we alternate games in 1994 and 2026 until one team is ahead by 2 games.
We also gifted Osh Ighodoro to the Suns right after that, too. He’s a pretty useful defensive big who I’d love to have right now. He’s basically the player some people think Huk is.
Andre fucking Drummond shoots threes at a reasonable clip these days. That’s a guy who would have never attempted a three point shot in his entire career if he played in the 90’s.
In fact, Drummond had barely made any threes in his entire career before he was asked to take them this season: he had made 18 3-point baskets in about 24,000 career minutes before this year. This year, as a 32-year old, he made 32 of them and his 3PAr was .267, meaning over a quarter of his attempts were from 3pt. He shot slightly below league average on those attempts, went 32 for 90.
So it seems pretty obvious to me that Ewing and Oakley wouldn’t have needed to start hoisting three pointers at age 8. I mean, Andre Drummond just learned how to shoot threes as a grown ass adult right in front of us.
Pags, respectfully, players in the 90’s grew up in the ’80s on playgrounds that didn’t have 3 point lines, and were then coached by high schools and college. The 3pt line wasn’t even adopted in the NCAA until 1986 and in high school until 1987. Practicing that shot was not a thing for most of the players in the ’90’s when they were little kids, and coaches rarely let anyone shoot them in HS and NCAA until after those guys were in the NBA. So I find the argument impossible to have unless you can correct for either today’s players being raised and coached the way players in the ’90s were, or having those players raised and coached like today’s players.
Ewing is an example. He was considered one of the best perimeter shooting bigs of his day and even before. He was considered deadly from 18-20 feet or so. It seems to me that is a Patrick Ewing clone was born in 2000 and was shooting 3’s from childhood until he entered the NBA, he’d have been quite good at it. Same with Olajuwan, or Robinson, or Smits, or Daugherty, or Cartwright, or others.
“He was injured. That hurts the team. By definition.”
Well Randle was defined by you and others as “the most detrimental player in the NBA” not long before that. Seems like that would be an opportunity for the bench to shine. Alas.
Me: “It might not have even taken training from birth; after all, Brook Lopez turned himself into a trifecta shooter mid-career. I don’t see any reason, based on many years of observation, to believe Brook Lopez had any more innate shooting talent than Patrick Ewing did.”
Switch “Brook Lopez” to “Andre Fucking Drummond” and the pro-Ewing case gets even stronger.
Ewing in fact shot .152 from downtown, but I’m sure no one including him gave many fucks about any of those eight trifectas per season he took.
The funny thing about Drummond shooting corner 3s is he has a worse career FT% than Mitch.
Andre Drummond before this year was shooting .129 from downtown on his career. Now, solely because he cares to, he’s become a .356 shooter from deep.
This fact, standing alone, dispenses with the ludicrous, “They didn’t play that way because they couldn’t” idea.
The bench unfortunately didn’t play very well against Miami.
That and a quarter used to be able to get you a Washington Post.
Presti is very good but has also traded away a future Hall of Famer in Harden and a multiple time all-star in Sengun.
Immanuel Quickley was officially drafted by OKC and traded for a higher pick to get the completely useless Poku.
There are some very major Presti screwups
i think maybe in like some previous existence i may have been a goat and pig farmer on some beautiful island in the mediterranean somewhere…it just feels right…maybe even on malta, back when there were still trees there…
no chickens or sheep though, noisy animals and they both seem to be lacking in intelligence and personality…
animals definitely have a way of making things better…
it’s funny, whenever ma and i go out to eat during the day, and the restaurant is absolutely packed she’ll make sure to claim at some point (volume enough for at least the few surrounding to hear):
oh my god, doesn’t anybody work anymore?
surprisingly, each time the realization for her is like the first time…
can only imagine if she checked in here daily…
Between his age 20 and 27 seasons, Brook Lopez took 31 trifectas and made 3.
Then he decided he wanted to be a three-point shooter and since then he has made 35.5% of his threes at a 3PAr of .466.
In the 90’s the average team shot less than 10 3’s a game. The vast majority of those were taken by guards or “specialists.” Even a great shooter like Chris Mullen only averaged 2.4 3PA per 36 for his career despite hiting more than 38% of them, and that number is padded by his late career (post-1997) numbers.
If hoisting 3’s up and down the lineup was a thing then, players would have adapted.
Josh has been upgraded to probable (along with Mitch already being there), so there’s that.
“That and a quarter used to be able to get you a Washington Post.”
Correct, our 2023 bench was worth about a quarter. Or at least a quarter of what you think they were worth.
reference presti at the moment, thankful there is a salary cap and a roster limit…
I feel like you’re making the argument against your point very well.
People had not mathed out the 3 pointer in 1994. If they had understood its value, Ewing and Oakley, kings of the 18-footer, would absolutely have been able to do it at high volume and percentage. A non-shooter like Ben Wallace? Probably not. But Ewing? Come on.
Geo for the win again!
Coincidentally, I’ll be in an island in the Mediterranean tomorrow…working, though.
i think i may be a little jealous you all can even remember half of this shit…and worse yet, it seems to come pretty easily…
freaks me out at times when some of you will recall in detail some game from the 90’s…i sincerely have no idea how that can even be a human capability thing…
We should still be a better team than Philly but OG was playing insanely good basketball.
KATs passing seems to have really opened up the paint for OG to cut. It’s perfect because you get OG under the basket without him dribbling.
BTW, I appreciate Eddy Curry, because if it weren’t for him, I would never have found this board. I needed someone to understand my frustration!
take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me take me…
please 🙂
Isiah thought he’d made the coup of the century lol when that chucklehead played marginally ok for the first half of that one season.
This has been the magic unlocking. OG’s a phenomenal two-foot finisher and KAT is a terrific point passer.
“There are some very major Presti screwups”
The screwup of all screwups for Presti was losing Harden when he did for nothing in return. That set him back at least a half-decade.
But his track record (including drafting Harden in the first place) is like 95% good, 5% bad. And he didn’t repeat his mistakes. He also capitalized on the mistakes of others (Hi, Leon!).
He will probably go down as the 2nd or 3rd best executives in history. No one will probably ever catch Red Auerbach, and Jerry West is certainly on that level. Riley is up there. So is Buford. But it seems like the best is still yet to come for Presti.
Doogie can you keep track of how many posts Z-Man makes about the bench after he lost the argument the same way you kept track of how many posts Pags made after he promised to leave? Knowing him it’s probably going to go on all playoffs, so it could get pretty high. I’m expecting him to run a lot of victory laps in his clown car every time someone from the bench makes a good play.
Who are the most overrated executives? My personal list:
Morey
Ainge
Ujiri
Walsh (sorry Donnie!)
Phil (only by Strat)
“Doogie can you keep track of how many posts Z-Man makes about the bench after I checkmated him and walked away the same way you kept track of how many posts Pags made after he promised to leave? Knowing him it’s probably going to go on all playoffs, and he’ll be running victory laps in his clown car every time someone from the bench makes a good play. So it should be fun to keep track.”
Nah, no need for that. You have jive answers for everything. Just admit you were wrong and move on. Or please show me how I imagined that our green bench played like shit under the bright lights in 2023.
I had a crazy dream last night that I think was rooted in where I’m at with my grieving process for losing my mother to cancer during Covid. I visited my childhood home with a good old friend who was proudly attended Horace Mann (I dunno) and shared a delicious beer with him. It broke his sobriety which sent him for a loop. While I finished the beer, considering that, I explored the grounds and suddenly found myself in a hidden water temple all steps of stone and spilling pools. Eventually I ended up arriving at a shrine to Buddha in the middle of the temple and discovered my mother’s gold coin offerings to Buddha. One gold coin for each of her loves. I woke with the deepest comfort.
I’d like the Knicks to prove me wrong and go all modern NY. Let’s do 646.
The ban on polluting the game thread with this stuff still holds and I fully intend to comply.
I’d agree with Morey and Ainge.
Ujiri turned his team completely around with the OG/Siakam trades and giving the ball to Scottie Barnes. Plus he won a championship. Not sure why he gets this kind of grief, unless you think he waited too long on the chemistry-deficient FVV/OG/Siakam nucleus or you’re dinging him for putting it together in the first place.
Sean Marks is on the list, for sure, and I’m not fully sure how Scott Perry ever got another GM gig — other than the fact that the Kings’ owner is a moron.
That’s fair about Ujiri. Yes, I didn’t think he followed up the rather fortunate championship run particularly gracefully. I don’t see the Raps being particularly competitive for a while, but he certainly didn’t leave a mess. But Toronto is a tough market to build in. Still, he’s been around for a long time and has only 1 chip to show for it. He’s better than Leon, although Dolan probably wouldn’t let him have carte blanche to troll for draft picks at the expense of wins.
Dallas seems like a great landing spot for him to shine up his rep.
The 3 pointer wasn’t even introduced to the NBA until the 79-80 season and wasn’t added to the NCAA until 86.
So many of the NBA greats of the 90’s era, who would have been in high school in the late 70’s to mid 80’s, had probably never even attempted one in high school or college. Doubly so for big men as it was assumed that only guards…ie, the ones were already taking the majority of longer mid range shots, were capable of extending their shot to the 3 point line.
You cannot convince me that Ewing, Hakeem, Rik Smits and other big men would not have been decent 3 point shooters if they had been practicing those shots from childhood.
Z-man, I agree with you — Gen Z Patrick Ewing is obviously trained in a different way than Boomer Ewing was.
It’s just that adjusting for that amount of variables makes the comparison lose its meaning as even the very concept of “Patrick Ewing” loses his meaning. If we give him a 3pt shot, don’t we also need to adjust Ewing’s skills downward in the stuff that bigs practiced back then? So we end up with a stretch big who’s less skilled as a post player and rim protector?
What does “Patrick Ewing” signify then? He’s just an imaginary player with the same name and DNA who plays nothing like the Ewing we knew?
Yes, two guys learned to shoot threes. If that proved it’s so easy, why are there so many bigs still around who haven’t? Only 12 centers made 100 threes or more this season.
Where’s Mitch’s 3 point shot? iHart’s? Are they stupid?
You’re ignoring the rather obvious Andre Drummond-sized elephant in the room here.
Modern day bigs AS GROWN ADULTS have learned to shoot three pointers seemingly out of nowhere, including 32 year old Andre Drummond, he of the .489 career free throw shooting percentage. Ewing was already an excellent perimeter shooter and also shot 74% from the free throw line in his career.
It doesn’t take a large leap of common sense to figure out that Ewing probably would have been able to shoot consistently from a few feet further out. If you watched him play, you’d know that his long jumpers were actually very reliable, as were Charles Oakley’s.
Which clearly demonstrates how terrible BPM is.
How does this help your claim that the 90s didn’t play trifecta ball because they couldn’t? Not only is that false on its face — Ewing, Oakley, Lopez, Drummond — but you’re now pointing out that there are players today who are in the league who can’t play trifecta ball.
So what that means is that today’s league isn’t even meeting the bare minimum requirement for your theory’s proof, of weeding out players who can’t shoot the three. Not just the substance, but the entire premise of your case fails.
You could have stopped at Morey and just typed his name 5 times.
The Phil comment was legitimately a belly laugher. 😉
I didn’t overrate Phil. I thought everyone else on earth underrated the disastrous circumstances he inherited, didn’t appreciate that you CAN build a contender without repeated tanking (as Rose has demonstrated) and didn’t appreciate he had a woefully bad GM to work with that he was forced to take on as part of Knicks politics. I still think he was a “basketball” genius. But that’s a more warn out debate than the OG trade which is in the top 10 Knicks moves of all time (and this is coming from a huge IQ fan).
Maybe let’s pump the brakes on crowning Andre Drummond the next Karl-Anthony Towns. He shot 35% over a 90 shot sample, very likely completely unmolested for most of those because he’s Andre Drummond.
Precious Achiuwa shot 35% on 156 shots at age 22. Is he a legitimate 3 point threat? Is the shot a substantial part of his game or value?
Brook Lopez’s “sample” is gargantuan.
If he played in the 90s, his BB-ref page in the three point shooting columns would look worse than Ewing or Oakley and you’d conclude that he couldn’t play in the 2020s because he can’t shoot the three, and that would be completely, unequivocally wrong. Now extrapolate that out to 350-odd players and the problem becomes clear.
The debate should not be whether the old timers could have hits 3s if they worked on it. Many certainly would have have been able to so and others would have taken way more. The current debate shoud be whether modern teams are shooting too many of them and increasing volatility to the point that the more talented team is sometimes losing the series because of it. I suspect the answer is yes and an adjustment needs to be made in quality that will lower volume. IMO OKC has the right formula. Interesting that it’s not impossible we have an OKC vs. Detroit final.
The part you’re ignoring here is that Ewing and Oakley were actually excellent perimeter shooters. I’m not trying to make the argument that Chris Dudley would’ve been a modern day stretch big, or that anybody could do it. I’m speaking specifically about two players who had excellent shooting form and consistent results.
This is straw mannish even for you, E, and that’s saying something. Did I claim that there were no good shooters in the 90’s? Obviously not. I’m saying that modern NBA ball requires a certain prevalence of good shooters that teams in the 90s did not have.
What are you citing Ewing and Oakley as evidence of? The scenario where they learn to shoot is hypothetical and didn’t actually happen. Drummond has one very small sample of okay shooting.
When did I say that the modern league can’t have non-shooters? My point is that the bar for non-shooters is much higher than it used to be. There were plenty of guards in the 90’s who didn’t have a 3 point shot. Now there are hardly any, and the few who can stick are outliers in others skills, like Dyson Daniels. Where is today’s Mark Jackson or Muggsy Bogues?
Similarly, there are plenty of nonshooting bigs still, but it’s generally accepted that your PF or C needs to have a 3-point shot, and that having less than 3-4 viable shooting threats is offensively crippling. Ergo, the bar for nonshooting bigs is higher because there are fewer slots available.
Guys, this is a great time to be… alive, of course… but even better to be alive and a Knicks fan! Peace and Love, please! 🙂
Lets just merge the two arguments and conclude that the Knicks 2023 bench mob would have destroyed 1994 Knicks.
That’s not what you said. You said the 90s didn’t play 2020s style because the players couldn’t play that style.
Now that’s been proven completely wrong and so you’re trying to find a retreat to something different that might be right.
The fact that you can’t really read anything into their BB-ref pages in terms of being able to play modern trifecta ball.
And Lopez is a much bigger sample.
See above re superficial readings of old school BB-ref pages.
I’m not actually ignoring that. I recognize that they were competent FT and long two shooters. That doesn’t mean they’d have necessarily been good from 3 if they trained on it, but it does suggest it.
But the 1994 versions of those players didn’t train on it, and weren’t good. If we posit the ’94 Knicks against today’s, my argument is that the only comparison that makes sense is to take the ’94 Knicks as they were. If we try to adjust their skills upward based on what they would have trained on today, we’d also have to adjust everything else that would come as a trade-off, and they’d become so different that they wouldn’t meaningfully be the ’94 Knicks.
That’s my general argument with era comparisons.
Sorry to break it to you, but there’s no sense whatsoever in which Dyson Daniels would be a defensive “outlier” in the 90s.
Yes, because they didn’t have enough players who were good shooters to play that style. Very few teams even had a SF who could shoot the three.
Blithely proclaiming a conclusion doesn’t make it so.
Yes you can. The reasonable default assumption when a player has not exhibited a skill over a long sample is that he does not have that skill at a high level. I’m talking about these players as they were, not as they might have been if they had trained differently.
Brook Lopez is one guy.
See above re: reasonable baseline inferences when you aren’t wishcasting skills onto past players that they didn’t actually develop.
You don’t need to “train on it.”
Brook Lopez and Andre Drummond.
If you meant Patrick Ewing shooting the trifecta from age 8 and playing analysis ball from age 8, there’s literally zero question that he would have been a very effective analysis ball player. Brook Lopez and Andre Drummond are nowhere near as skilled and athletic as basketball players than Ewing was.
You aren’t breaking anything to me here because I agree with you. With shooting being less of a critical selection criterion for guards, there were more jobs for guards who couldn’t shoot a lick but were good defenders. Dyson Daniels thus would not stand out as much defensively as he does today compared to the Sam Hausers and Luke Kennards of the world.
Virtually no 90s player put up a big enough trifecta sample to conclude anything. That’s your fundamental blunder in this whole thing, as well as extrapolating out how a guy shot 17 footers in congested mosh pits and concluding how he would shoot open or mostly open stand still 23 footers.
And we’ve already seen from Lopez and Drummond that you can put up a superficially awful sample in 3 point skill but still have within you modern association-level 3 point skill. The BB-ref page did not reflect true skill. That defeats your entire premise.
So now your argument is that these guys developed 3 point shots without making? They just started attempting threes and making them and they would have always been able to?
Then why didn’t Ewing make more than 19 of his 125 career attempts? Since Drummond’s 90 shots last year are a big meaningful sample that you claim has huge probative value and all…
And the fact that the modern game weeds out numerous world-class defenders makes the comparative numbers even less reliable. Today’s trifecta (and other) numbers are being put up against a universe of relatively worse defensive players.
Yes, of course that’s the argument. Brook Lopez when he didn’t give a shit, shot 3 for 31 from downtown over eight years. Then he decided to give a shit and immediately became a very good trifecta shooter on big volume.
The 3 for 31 didn’t reflect a thing about his actual trifecta skill.
Because he didn’t give a shit about shooting the three, just as Brook Lopez and Andre Drummond didn’t.
Until they did.
Now extract that out to 350 or so players in a typical 90s season and you’ll see the issue. Hopefully anyway.
It weeds them out because we’ve learned that shooting is really fucking valuable. i.e. it makes NBA teams better. i.e. NBA teams are better at basketball now than they used to be.
So you have personal knowledge that these guys who went from shooting threes never one season to shooting threes regularly the next definitely didn’t, you know, practice shooting threes during the several months they have between seasons?
They know this is the most highly valued skill in modern basketball, particularly among their positions. And they know it’s worth tens of millions of dollars for them to be good at it because it will tend to increase their present value and extend their careers, but instead of training that skill they just, like, starting caring if the shots go in?
Even that seemingly innocuous fallback statement isn’t true. “More efficient” doesn’t mean “better,” particularly if the efficiency is only attributable to the universe of defenders being significantly poorer because the universe of defenders is a universe sorted for offensive efficiency.
At that point, it’s nothing more than a tautology.
Oh, I’m sure they probably did practice between seasons — because they starting giving a shit.
Just as Ewing and Oakley probably would have practiced the shot more if they’d actually gave a shit about it.
Weird, weird thread going 2-0 onto Philly. I guess priors are at stake, but come on. Next one who comments “you can see from my previous posts” I was right if the Knicks struggle can go to hell.
Wait, what about 90s Knick *fans v today’s fans? Could 90s fans do as good or better than “Fuck Trae Young.”?
Was the sing song “Scahhhhty” taunt for Pippen actually even more hurtful bc it used no obscenity?
More to the point: if 90s fans had had the good fortune to train consistently with obscenity from age 8, like today’s kids, what extraordinary filth would have been the result?
NBA today just showed an interesting stat:
Most Consecutive Losses in 2nd RD (criteria being 20 ppg playoff scorers)
– harden 5
– embiid 5
– mitchell 4
– 4 other retired players with 4 consecutive losses in the 2nd round…
sadly one of those 4 is patrick, ’95 – ’98…
wow 5 seasons in a row harden and embiid got bounced in the second round…
too funny they are about to do it again, and donovan will have had this happen now 5 seasons in a row…
Rat fighting pigeon
If it didn’t mean better then some team would have taken advantage of this glaring market inefficiency by signing all the great defenders who can’t shoot.
Great offense beats great defense and that’s factorial. Steph Curry >>>>> Tony Allen.
There you go! The giving of said shits (read: the practicing of long-range shooting) is a thing that has to happen on a deliberate and long-term basis to go from 1994 Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley to the imagined 2020s versions that are stretch bigs. As of 1994, that had not happened.
Ergo, the 1994 Knicks would get destroyed by the 2026 Knicks. Any argument otherwise requires that we imagine new skills onto the 1994 Knicks that they did not have in 1994.
Anyways, I’m disengaging from this argument it’s dragging down the thread and as a reformed clown I don’t want to do that sort of thing anymore.
No. Practicing isn’t necessary. It’s only indicative of giving a shit. We have no idea whether or for how long either Lopez or Drummond practiced.
And there was no “long term” to the improvement of Lopez and Drummond. It happened overnight.
Would have been better to have disengaged once Lopez and Drummond’s before and after trifecta numbers were presented, because that fatally wounded your massive initial overbid.
https://giphy.com/gifs/matt-groening-SVnVbQAMtTXJm
I want OG to sit out tonight no matter what, but realistically fans overestimate how much a team can do if a guy is medically cleared, insisting he’s fine, and wants to play. They have to tread somewhat lightly, lest the find themselves in CBA land.
In any event, if OG gives a guy I will be so god damn nervous every time he moves that it’s hard to imagine being able to enjoy the game…and that’s a hard enough task when it comes to high-stakes playoff games already.
So here’s to hoping he takes a game off and we win anyway!
So Vegas has us as -2.5, but I’m wondering what assumptions underlie that re: OG. Do we know Embiid’s status?
OG, if you read this blog, please just take this one game off!
I don’t care how good he feels. He should sit this one out
Sit, OG. We got you.
Worst case we lose, OG can come back next game, and maybe we then have the chance to close it out at home. Best case we win, he sits for game 4 as well, we still close it out at home and he got even more rest.
I’m with rama (and the rest of you lot). Sit, OG. Sit.
I’m on Team “Just take this one game off, OG.”
No real movement in the Kalshi odds of OG playing tonight. Still less than 1 in 5 chance.
Knowing what I know about markets and regulation and greed, assuming here that insider and knowing money is all over Kalshi.
Same.
It’s good news that he could possibly play, but have a long term view here please.
A Knicks fan wrote into Bill Simmons podcast with a remarkable email about KAT — “he’s improved his defense, he’s fouling people less, and has stepped into a playmaking/leadership role. He’s also become very likable. I’ve been telling my friends he’s Rocky IV’ing me. KAT is Rocky and I am the Russian crowd. I came into the playoffs not a fan but his play and perseverance is winning me over.”
I’m getting Rocky IV’d, too. You were right, Director.
Sit OG! We got you! This is why Brown spent all season playing and developing the bench. For this very scenario. We can win one game without him.
Kalshi odds for tonight down to 1%
Unless this was all just crazy 4D chess mind games by Brown and the Knicks to give the 76ers a false sense of hope before we crush them and OG was never really hurt at all.
Don’t play OG or, if for some insane reason he’s active, sit him on the bench to go play end of quarter defense for 5 plays.
Nikarl-Anthony Townsic has been just as responsible for our success so far as KawhOG Leonardoby.
He actually extended his BPM lead over the rest of the league last game. He’s now up to 14.0.
This is the highest playoff BPM since 2017 and fifth all-time, behind only LBJ, MJ, Hakeem, and Kawhi. Wow!
What makes the OG injury hit so hard (even if it really is only a tweak) is that these two had found such a clear synergy. OG’s defense makes it possible to not suck on that end while playing Townsic/JB, while Townsic’s recently unlocked passing game supercharged OG’s awesome cutting and finishing skills.
OG out; everyone else in for us. No word on Embiid:
Expected Lineup
PG Jalen Brunson
SG Josh Hart
SF Mikal Bridges
PF OG Anunoby Out
C K. Towns
MAY NOT PLAY
F OG Anunoby Out
Expected Lineup
PG Tyrese Maxey
SG VJ Edgecombe
SF Kelly Oubre
PF Paul George
C J. Embiid Ques
MAY NOT PLAY
C J. Embiid Ques
Thank God they’re sitting him. Hopefully they were bluffing the whole time.
wow, I wanna cry…just found out the seal show i was going to tonight, was actually last night…
yep, life like that…i need a new drug…
But did you know that when it snows, my eyes become large and the light that you shine can be seen?
worse yet pags, everyone i keep reaching out to share my life’s woes with – keeps beating me to the punch…
there like pro fucking dumpers…literally I say hi and they just start going on…
by the time they’re done – I’ve lost all interest in unloading…I just wanna get off the phone…
probably should schedule another visit with the shrink…
at least then it’s all my worries getting washed while talking with someone…
Embiid playing. We are now a 4.5 point dog.
Seems like a lot of movement for a guy without a lot of movement…
Told you they were just resting him.
Well I’m hosting people tonight and will miss the game.
Godspeed y’all. Hope Deuce hits 7 3s.
Game thread?
The guys on tv are saying “this is an important game,” so: new thread?
Here’s hoping the medical staff pays as much attention to the illio-psoas muscle as the hurt hamstring(s). I have found that to be the key to quick healing in most types of these injuries.
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