Knicks Morning News (2026.06.12)

One bit of irony is that Mike Brown probably got fired due to Fox’s dumbness. He got so frustrated with Fox that he called him out in the media in a way that I’ve rarely seen a coach call a player out.

It was one of the reasons I was worried about the Mike Brown hire, since publicly calling a player on this team out in this media market for making a dumb decision would go over even worse than it did in Sacto. Not to mention how much Leon and his team has tried to steer clear of any controversial quotes in the media. The most recent example of that was the Mitch injury, where he was about to say something and got cut off by a FO media guy.

But the Fox gaffe in that Sacto game was of the same “situational awareness” variety as the one in Game 4. It’s Bargnani-level bad.

Still, Fox is a dangerous player and I wouldn’t count on him screwing up in these final 3 games. He was huge in game 3 after everyone had written him off, and the only reason he even had an opportunity to make that gaffe was because he made a brilliant defensive play to get the ball and himself ahead of the field, a play that should have won that game for them. Now he did make a bunch of bad decisions throughout the Knicks comeback, and Spurs fans were crucifying him in real time in the Pounding the Rock. game thread.

I am not all that optimistic at all about Game 5. I think we have a good chance of winning, but this series reminds me a lot of the Game 5’s in the Boston and Indiana series’ last year. We got our asses in Boston on a magnificent performance by Brown, and we easily beat the Pacers at MSG.

Now in both cases, it could be argued that the road team let up after a hard-fought pivotal win in Game 4, whereas this Knicks team seems to have no let-up in it, and if it did, they did that somewhat in game 3.

But it could also be argued that these Knicks have not had a “signature” win yet, like the Pacers had over the Knicks in Game 2 (and to a degree in game 4), or the Knicks had over the Celtics in Game 4 (and Tatum was gone for good.) So the Spurs have more reason to believe that they are the “better team” and could come back from this.

So I truly think that it will come down to whether the Knicks come out highly focused as a team and maintain that focus for 48 minutes with no let-up. It’s a very tall task, but they have shown that they are up to it. They just shouldn’t rely on the Spurs fucking up again after taking a big lead, or laying down after we get a lead.

“You can certainly argue that the Spurs were dumb to keep shooting, but it’s explicitly what the Knicks were willing to concede, and they destroyed the Knicks in the first half because of it. It was not quite as dumb as argued that they kept shooting.”

One thing that I felt strongly about going into this series (and frankly, into all of the series’ we have played thus far) is that we are at a coaching advantage. Mitch Johnson is a very good young coach, but is, in fact, a young coach. He’s been gifted with an uber-talented team with a generational player, but it’s a very young team who needs coaching more than, say, the Knicks do. It is asking a lot, maybe too much, of a young, inexperienced coach to push the right buttons in these nail-biter games.

Young coach Daigneault had issues in the finals last year vs. Carlisle and might have lost while getting outcoached in embarrassing fashion if it weren’t for the Hali injury.

Young coach Mazzulla was gifted a veteran team and still found a way to get outcoached in embarrassing fashion to the Heat, and then to the Knicks.

Johnson looked a bit rattled after Game 4, saying “we got away from the things we did well in the first half, yadayada…” I mean, isn’t that his job? What did he do to counter whatever the Knicks were doing when they whittled away at a freakin’ 29 point lead?

One of Mitch Johnson’s more curious decisions was not getting Wemby more rest. He said in the postgame that he was trying to close out the win. Clearly that strategy backfired.

Dolan’s decision not to match the Lin offer sheet was a wholly rational analysis of the financial and basketball implications. We simply could not have afforded Lin’s ~$8.4M salary in 2012-2013, even though there was nothing stopping us from re-signing him and acquiring Felton.

Look, no matter what you think of the decision to not match, Dolan definitely did not add $11M in raw payroll and $29M to his luxury tax bill the very next offseason. Again, that did not happen, and any memories you may have of him doing so are nothing more than a trauma induced delusion.

The man has been a beacon of fiscal restraint and sound basketball analysis for his entire career.

Dolan is an asshole, we all know that. He is also a guy who has never taken well to being told “do this or else,” which is the very nature of a poison-pill deal. You, me, Morey, and Jeremy Lin and his agent knew who Dolan was at the time. He and Donald Trump are of the same thin-skinned “100% loyalty or else” ilk. If you are so inclined to take it as a personal affront that a notoriously mercurial owner predictably did what a) everyone knew he would do and b) what nearly every other owner would have done under those circumstances, go right ahead!

And while you’re at it, why not massively sugarcoat Lin’s post-Linsanity career in the process! You know, he did actually play 21 mpg in the 2013 playoffs, so we don’t really have to speculate on whether or not he would have helped. In those 84 glorious minutes in Houston, he scored 16 points on 24 shots and had 8 assists and 8 turnovers. The team was -38.2 per 100 possessions while he was on the court, and his on/off was -42.2. Damn, we sure could have used that!

Was that an outlier? Well, in his 477 career playoff minutes, Lin had a -2.7 BPM and a TS% of .490 (21.6% from 3).

So pardon me for dispensing of my Jeremy Lin love shortly after he made his bed with the most bloodless and ruthless in the league. And as painful as it still seems to be for some Lin apologists, believe me, no one is more upset in retrospect that Dolan refused to match that offer sheet than Daryl Morey.

Gee, who brought it up?