Knicks Morning News (2026.07.03)

Strat, the concert was phenomenal! Yeah, the main guys were old but the quality of the music was still great. The best thing about the concert was the weather, it was 78 with a breeze there when it was close to 100 every place else.. I’m glad that one of my kids got to experience Santana before he joins that great band in the sky.

Just to be clear, I am by no means ambivalent to not having a backup plan for losing Mitch, nor am I any less repulsed by James Dolan, and how he has acted in the wake of the championship, both in his official capacity. The dude literally killed the vibe of a finals game I paid a fortune to attend, my first and only since 1994. I hate him more than ever, if that’s even possible.

It just hardly matters to me right now.

“One night, I had mind-blowing sex with a beautiful woman I never saw again. The next morning I woke up and stepped on her kid’s lego. My toe still hurt.”

When you got together with your buddies in the ensuing days, how much did you bitch and moan about the lego?

“I’m glad the weather turned out like that. I love seeing concerts at Jones Beach. I saw the Doobie brothers 20 or so years ago, but this was a first I saw Santana. I’m glad I got to see him too.”

The one “negative” is that the crowd was loaded with geezers, with a smattering of kids my daughter’s age who (unlike her) didn’t have the love of the music or the sense of the place in the history or R&R these bands held. The parking entry and exit is a fiasco there, so scores of fans left well before the “Smooth” encore. And the fans didn’t go quite as insane as I remember in the past. But minor quibbles aside, it was one of the very best concerts of my life.

“Tastycakes – why do think Croatia got robbed? The Snickometer said there was a touch. Clear offside in that case. Yes, it was barely visible to the eye but they got the call right.”

I’m waiting for cyber to weigh in. My guess is that he is very happy with how things turned out! 😉

“Re Rich Paul, it just made me realize again how perfect this victory was. I would have been delighted to win with LeBron if we hadn’t won last year, but it was so so much better without him”

You couldn’t have said it better. More pointedly, I would have been thrilled if the Knicks had won a championship even on the backs of hated mercs. I definitely was cringing at the thought of Durant and Kyrie coming here, and was relieved when it didn’t happen, but if it had happened, and Harden joined them, and COVID didn’t ensue, and we won a championship that way, I’d have been dancing in the streets…but there would always be a bit of stink on that one. Same if it was LeBron who got us there.

Not this one! The vibes are 99% immaculate, with the 1% of stink being seeing Dolan with his grubby little hands on the LOB trophy.

Queta gets his bag! 4/$56M.

“have you ever collected “trophies” from some of your more joyous encounters…

had a box at one point, with you know, ladies’ garments…always made me smile a bit to see the wide range in sizes within…”

geo, love you like a brother, but really?

The Knicks are going to be “The Hunted” this year. Every team is gonna come into MSG with something extra. Part of it is just being the defending champs, but I think other teams (and their fanbases) are itching to put the “overrated and lucky” Knicks back in their place. That, and the elimination of tanking, is going to make every game an event. Brunson is going to have more of a target on his back than ever. And Mitch was the closest thing we had to an “enforcer” type.

“Only reason I’ve kept anything is “on accident” so we could meetup again when I return it.”

I left my suit jacket at a freaky one-night stand’s apartment and had to come up with a way to get it back. The plan failed miserably. The freak has been sharing my bed for the last 36 years.

Also, I’m pretty sure that there are many, many examples of championship teams who did NOT run it back to the degree that we are. By my count, we have retained 8 of our ten rotation players and 4 out of our 6 non-rotation players.

It’s more about Mitch being both very important to winning and very lovable. And he hasn’t been replaced yet, likely resulting in a major downgrade. Whereas any of the other guys was either more redundant or more replaceable. But I don’t think that it’s all about our chances of repeating being less.

“All of which is to say, I’m wired to just play it straight, irrespective of history, cosmic considerations, long periods in the wilderness, etc.”

Two things:
1) we are definitely wired differently in a great many respects. I only know you through your posting, but the degree that it represents who you are outside of ths blog, I am personally very thankful for that. If I were a Lions fan especially one with 3 Lions fans kids and a Lions fan wife, or perhaps a long-suffering father who didn’t have many years left, I would have joyfully made that bargain and never looked back. And I can tell you from personal experience that nothing that happened in 1971, or 1972, or even the championship in 1973 had one iota of meaning compared to what happened in 1970, and in retrospect, I wouldn’t have traded championships in all 3 of those years for the magnificence of the Willis Reed game. I feel that way about many of the special moments in my life, whether they were replicated or not.
2) Beyond that, it doesn’t mean that anyone who feels this way is immune to having feelings about events and decisions that ensue. It’s really about time, place, and degree. There will definitely come a point where I step off of cloud 9 and rejoin the hunt for the next one. But I also know that the next one will never be as good as this one for me and the folks I love. Probably not even close. And that will be true whether we miss the playoffs for the next 10 years or win 10 straight championships. This was the one.

But hey, to each his own!

Brown gets short shrift in the analytics dept because of his inefficiency. I think he’s a much better player than many here do, and while not worthy of his supermax deal, he’s a legit all-star and all-league level player. He is physically dominant at his position, and that opens up things for others. Melo was a net minus on defense, so the comparison to Melo kind of fails for me.

I would love to have him on an OG-type deal, and anything less would be a bargain. But his contract has gone to his head and that’s a dealbreaker.

Still, I think he’s gonna really help Philly. He’s WAAAAAY better than Paul George at this stage. He’s also in his prime and has a lot of intelligence and pride He takes a ton of pressure off of all of Embiid, Maxey and Edgecombe.

I also think that Jaylen Brown’s season last year is being disrespected. He put up 30-7.3-5.4 per 36 on 36% usage at close to league average efficiency, and led a team to 56 wins when the second best player on his team was, I dunno, Derrick White (.529 TS%, 22% usage)? Payton Prichard (.584 TS%, 37.7% from 3, 21% usage)?

That said, I think the most valid part of the Melo comparison is that he really isn’t cut out

Great post, Gonzo.

“That said, I think the most valid part of the Melo comparison is that he really isn’t cut out…”

….for the role of first banana, or the “brain” of the team. The same is true for lots of other stars. Honestly, KAT is an excellent example. Without someone like Brunson, KAT would be Melo-like in terms of being a true 1A.

I think that will be less of a problem for JB in Philly. It’s Tyrese Maxey’s team, just like the Knicks were Clyde’s team. JB believed that the Celts should have been his team, when everyone else thought it was Tatum’s (and he might also not be cut out for a pure 1A role) and it took big b-ball IQ brains like Jrue Holiday and Al Horford to get those two over the top.

How the Sixers do will be as much about Maxey as anyone else. How can he rein Brown in and bring out the best in him? I personally don’t think that Maxey has that in him (he’s flawed as well!), but we’ll see!

“The Celtics were 4.6 points/100 better with Brown on the bench.”

So what you are saying is that without Brown they would have won more than 56 games, just by replacing his minutes with someone from the bench, or by trading him for some generic wing? Okay. BTW, the Knicks were 2.3 points/100 better with Jalen Brunson on the bench.

“They were 31.4pts/100 better in the playoffs.”

They were also 34.8pts/100 better in the playoffs with Derrick White off the court. Maybe Jaylen coulda used some help? After carrying the team on his back the entire year? BTW, we were 8.8 points per 100 better when Mitch was off the court in the playoffs, the worst of all rotation players. Is that an accurate assessment of his impact on winning?

“He collects stats, but they’re not additive. His game is grabbing defensive rebounds from teammates, but if you could do that for every stat.”

Sorry, I’m not buying this, any more than I would about Josh Hart.

“Granted, the Celtics are usually very good, so on another team he’ll probably be additive. But he’s the type of player to set a floor more than raise the ceiling of a good team. Works for Philly because getting to the playoffs is a struggle with Embiid never healthy.”

Isn’t it kinda odd that this guy who doesn’t raise his team’s ceiling was the MVP of their only championship he played in? And it wasn’t because he put up fluky offensive stats. He was a menace on D and visibly the most impactful player on the court. Sure, you could have given it to Tatum, but even so, suggesting that Brown didn’t raise the ceiling of that team in that series would be laughable.

Again, being the only all-star caliber player with by far the highest usage on a 56-win season didn’t just raise the ceiling on that team, it blew it off the building. The preseason odds had them at 41.5 wins!

(Oops, sorry for the double-post!)

“Yes, so the difference between the perception of the two is that Melo was the go-to scorer and Brown has not been.”

Well first, Brown was the go-to scorer in many a game for the Celtics, even with Tatum on the team. Second, it the only year when he was indisputably the go-to scorer, he led his team to more wins than Melo ever did.

The piece Owen posted is, imho, very misleading because Brown is a player whose full value is not reflected the box score. But more importantly, I actually agree on its main tenet…Jaylen Brown is not a “supermax” player. He is not at the same level as the all-time greats in today’s game: Jokic, Giannis, SGA, Luka, Steph, Durant, maybe even Tatum…that ilk of player. But he is without a doubt a top-20 player in the league, and impacts winning way more than is being suggested. This year actually proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt! Even his staunchest doubters here were eating some crow during the regular season! He was fucking sensational! I feel confident that most C’s fans that watched every game this year would tell you the same thing, even if they were frustrated with him in the past.

That doesn’t mean he is worth what he is getting paid. But he has a lot of company in that regard. Personally, I don’t think KAT is a supermax player even with the improvement of late, and certainly not before it. De’Aaron Fox, Spida, Jamal Murray, Devin Booker, Evan Mobley, Paolo Banchero, Scottie Barnes, Bam Adebayo….none of these guys are true supermax players. My point is that Jaylen Brown is as good as any of these guys, and probably better than most.

I am not going to post about the Jaylen Brown anymore because really who gives a shit about Jaylen Brown?

I emailed my Diehard Celtics fan buddy from college to get his take, and he basically said that the new ownership is corporate and couldn’t care less about what the average fan thinks, similar to Dolan. He compared losing Jalen Brown this way to losing Mitch, mainly on the basis of them both being beloved homegrown talents. He also thinks that Brad Stevens does not look happy with new management and may have been forced into doing this, because he feels he’s too smart to have done it on his own. (sounds familiar?) He suspects that Brad may work his way back to the college ranks, which is more his passion.

He’s at the very bottom of the picked over barrel but whatever. If we still have something close to the full, TPMLE, maybe something frees up in a trade for one of our minimum guys. Or we run out a who sucks less platoon between Drummond and Looney.

My hope is that Drummond turns out to be the third string center.

I don’t really think that Leon would be allowed to go into the second apron at this point. I’m just mentioning that it was still possible if we don’t use the TPMLE.

“But I will admit I’ve always wanted to hear Clyde say the name Bismack Biyombo.”

OAKAAK Nerlens Noel is only 32…