[news.google.com] — Sunday, January 29, 2023 6:27:37 AM
Eastern Conference Recaps, Jan. 28: Joel Embiid’s 47 Points Leads Philadelphia 76ers Past Denver Nuggets Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Sunday, January 29, 2023 1:01:29 AM
Knicks’ RJ Barrett: Another 20-point effort Saturday CBS Sports
[news.google.com] — Sunday, January 29, 2023 1:01:18 AM
Is Knicks-Nets A Rivalry? The Answer May Be Murky Forbes
[news.google.com] — Sunday, January 29, 2023 12:58:43 AM
Knicks’ Quentin Grimes: Continues to struggle in loss CBS Sports
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 10:39:00 PM
Atlantic Notes: Thibodeau, Knicks, Grousbeck, Boucher hoopsrumors.com
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 10:25:00 PM
Nets’ Kyrie Irving reacts to team ‘having control’ in win over Knicks Yahoo Sports
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 9:03:00 PM
Tom Thibodeau talks team’s slow start, Kyrie Irving’s big fourth quarter, inconsistent officiating | Knicks Post Game Yahoo Sports
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 8:11:27 PM
Irving has 32 points, Nets beat Knicks for 9th straight time Eagle-Tribune
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 5:49:55 PM
New York Knicks vs Brooklyn Nets Jan 28, 2023 Game Summary NBA.com
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 5:26:56 PM
Myles Turner No Longer On Trade Market; Signs Extension with Pacers – NBA Rumor Tracker Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 5:00:00 PM
Watch Live NBA: Brooklyn Nets vs. New York Knicks, 5:30 PM EST on ABC Nets Daily
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 2:45:00 PM
Nets’ Ben Simmons ruled out for Saturday’s game against the New … Nets Wire
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 1:06:00 PM
The Latest Knicks News Before Their Game vs. Brooklyn New York Post
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 12:27:41 PM
NBA rumors: Knicks want Grayson Allen in Cam Reddish trade ClutchPoints
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 12:25:32 PM
Report: Bucks offer for Knicks’ Cam Reddish doesn’t include Grayson Allen Empire Sports Media
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 12:04:00 PM
New York Knicks at Brooklyn Nets odds, picks and predictions USA TODAY Sportsbook Wire
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 11:30:00 AM
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[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 11:01:12 AM
FINAL UPDATE: Ben Simmons’ Injury Status For Knicks-Nets Game Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 10:00:00 AM
Julius Randle’s mother claps back at Shaq for ‘Randolph’ Knicks disrespect Daily Knicks
[news.google.com] — Saturday, January 28, 2023 8:00:00 AM
Knicks’ RJ Barrett’s reputation as Celtics Killer comes up clutch on off night Daily Knicks
66 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.01.29)”
I was hoping for a trifecta (both my football and basketball italian teams won comeback games in the afternoon) but no matter who’s missing we can’t beat the Nets, we just can’t, and that alone is enough to be disappointed.
Maybe we were flying too high after the win in Boston and committed a sin of hubris…
We were never able to fully recover after a bad start, it was a one-possession game for exactly 22 seconds between Grimes’ tip-in and Curry’s three…
And while Kyrie closed the game with some superstar plays we lost it to the O’Neale, Watanabe and Sumner of the world that burned us from long range over and over.
We did play better in the second half, with a more focused defense and a palpable urgency, but when you dig youself in a hole you’re forced to spend a lot of energy to come out of it, you need to be near perfect and need opponents to make mistakes.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t…
That said, some guys had nice offensive games (RJ, IQ, I-Hart), our All-Star candidates weren’t perfect (both did help their stats when the game was over) and I’m sad ’cause I don’t know if we can continue to let Deuce shoot.
Next game is Tuesday, against a pissed off Lakers, let’s see if we can defend our own turf.
Stats Of The Game:
22-40. Nets 3FG%.
67.3% vs 42.2%. Nets’ advantage in assisted made baskets. Is anyone surprised that we’re last in the League in this category? I’m surprised that 54.3% of our baskets ARE assisted, it feels much worse (GS lead the league at 69.1%, Nets are 8th).
68-34. Knicks’ PitP advantage. They were small and we were prepared to take advantage… but only on offense
Grades:
Brunson B
We already know he’s not Kyrie and I’d rather have him pass a little more and take less “no pass” shots, but he’s very good.
Randle C+
I went back and forth because of the 8 assists, but his defense until late was old-shool Randle and so was his technical.
It tells a lot about his season that we feel disappointed with a 19-10-8 line but that’s how I feel, without Durant I expected him to dominate against his BRK counterparts…
Barrett B+
Worst plus/minus of the night despite an efficient game on offense and some good defensive plays.
He Hit some threes in the first half and did a nice job attacking the missmatches and showing good moves in the third quarter. Didn’t take a shot in the last 10 minutes (he was benched for half of them).
Grimes C+
His hands were full on defense and he did a fair job againts one of the best talent in the league but all of a sudden he’s missing a ton of open looks (5-20 3P last 3 games) and botched a couple of drives.
Sims B-
Sometimes I feel we laud him too much and sometimes I feel we’re right. Maybe the solution lies in the middle and he’s just the best 58th pick of the last 30 years (Paul Reed disagrees).
Quickley A-
He’s playing with great consistency, consolidating his role as a mainstay of this squad. If he keeps going he’ll be in the run for 6MOTY.
Hartenstein A-
Decent numbers and a nice display of a diversified offensive arsenal. We’re still not accustomed to play with a passing big man and it shows in his lone turnover (for me it was 50%-50% with IQ).
He’s slowly getting better (healing?) let’s hope he goes on.
Toppin C-
Not his best game in limited minutes (10). Anyway I don’t know if it’s him or Thibs or just a showcase for the trade deadline, but I dig “Broader Arsenal” Obi more than “Corner Howitzer” Obi.
McBride C+
Nothing new; energy, defense, he’s not afraid to shoot but…
Thibs B-
This time we lost and, as Randle said in the postgame, “We weren’t ready”, a thing that I always put on the coach (not only Thibs, every coach). Sometimes “Let the scrubs shot open threes and just protect the paint” doesn’t pay off, expecially against a small lineup full of shooters.
@gkhenman
Re: Rokas
He took advantage from Sato’s ankle injury to get more minutes and had a couple of good games.
Then Sato came back and Rokas had to sit down again, struggling to play well in limited time.
He’s annoying af, but I have to admit that Grayson Allen is having a great season. I assume the Bucks will not look to move him for Cam f’ing Reddish, but if they did, I would not expect any draft picks coming back too.
Allen is shooting over .400 from three and actually plays better defense than I realized; he’s not only a net positive but may even sneak in as a top-100 defender, which is amazing considering he has average athleticism at best.
Ugly game. Even when we started pounding the ball inside in the second half, felt like we were constantly trading our 2s for their 3s. When Grimes is on a cold streak like this, we don’t have enough firepower to keep up with teams with lots of shooting, especially given the volatility of our Invisible Sixth Man.
I agree about Grimes. We need him to be a guy who can hit more of the wide open threes he had yesterday but missed. The team works much better.
Re Watanabe, I remember looking into him a while back after watching a Nets game where he went off. His rep was as a great defensive player in college and his three point shooting at the moment is a heavy helping of gravy.
Grimes’s 3PT% for the season is now down to essentially RJ Barrett’s career percentage. (That’s a benchmark, not a comparison of the players).
At that percentage, he’s not an association starter and I’m not sure he is anyway.
Thibs is obviously now hiding Jalen Brunson on defense; I’m not sure he played against Kyrie a single possession. He (Thibs) is obviously big on “height against the point guard at the point of attack.” Elfrid Payton, Alec Burks, RJ Barrett, Quentin Grimes, etc. So the Knicks’ point guard basically isn’t going to play against other team’s points unless they stink.
That seems … exploitable.
Did Brunson check CP3 and/or Curry in last year’s playoffs? Or was he similarly hidden?
Didn’t wanna hijack the game thread yesterday, but we have a new addition to the Knick fandom (don’t tell my wife tho, she swears he’ll be a Laker fan lol).
7:10pm Friday, coming in at 7lbs, 15oz and 21” long… TheInfamousCCCH!!!
Congrats CDiggy! Great news!
😀
Congrats CDiggy!
Difference in game: We have pretty good 3pt shooters. They have knockdown shooters.
Yeah, CDig!
Congrats CDiggy!
Awesome news CDiggy! Congrats!
Welcome, The Infamous CCCH!
Awesome CDiggy!!
Congrats CDiggy!!!!
CDiggy!!!
Congratulations, CDiggy!
CDiggier has arrived. Love it! Congrats!!!
2C2Diggy!
Here is a recap of Grimes’ defense yesterday. Irving had 32 point on 30 true shots. Nothing fantastic about his night in other words. Kyrie really hit some toughs one late to clean up that line.
https://twitter.com/ace_zullo/status/1619731267498704898?s=46&t=hKjheAho99anBODfKCWNtQ
congrats…maybe he’ll solve the lack of a long lanky 3 pt shootin wing problem we have…
Thanks, Owen. I also thought Grimes did an admirable job until Kyrie went (even more) nuts there at the end.
While the execrable shooting has me laying out and measuring planks on the sandy beach of Deuce Island, it felt like Kyrie was similarly stifled during the times when he was being guarded by our new favorite mop-haired hustlebunny.
I want to believe in Deuce and I admire the defense – the way he gets over screens is textbook – but his form on a couple of shots last night was indeed execrable.
He was feeling the defensive heat so much on one he released it almost behind his head it seemed.
Happy to collect more data but his offensive game is as bad as I have seen in the NBA from a 1-3.
Congratulations Cdiggy! Welcome aboard Little Diggy!
Yup. The only reason my sails aren’t unfurled and my boat not plowing the waves is that there’s an actual database of dominant offense in his not-so-distant past, admittedly in the junior league. Which makes him (conceptually) different from Frank, who really was all wishcasting offensively.
An interesting twist to the situation is Deuce’s sudden (as in the last two games) attempts to take it to the rack. He almost never did that before, and it’s fast (seems he’s taken Grimes lessons) and shifty. What it’s not, unfortunately, is successful, in that he had three or four yesterday with only one actually going in.
If he can also take Brunson lessons in how not to get stuffed inside, he may have something. At the moment, however, half the game is wonderful but half is painful to watch when he’s in.
watching the westies and keels is a complete non-factor
Deuce is 22 and still could develop his offensive game if given time.
I don’t think it can be understated that Grimes guards the best opponent 1-3 every night. Not many people get assigned Kyrie Irving, Donovan Mitchell, & Jayson Tatum in 3 consecutive games.
He held all 3 under their season shooting averages.
Keels is awful.
He’s young so maybe, in the most wishful begging and praying manner possible, he can put it together and figure out how to leverage his strength or improve his agility/speed through some weight loss and drills.
During the combine he basically put up C times in the agility drills and bottom 5 in vert. So I’ve always been skeptical. On the other hand his metrics were great. Probably fine as a risk/reward in the 2nd rd.
Unfortunately Deuce probably needs to be excised from the rotation at this point. You can’t survive with a complete zero on offense. He’s been given plenty of time to round into form. But the guy just can’t hit a shot.
At this point Cam or Rose should get his minutes.
Thank you guys so, sooo much! It’s been a fairly long 3 days, and the OB feels the wife and baby are fine to go home. She had to have the baby c-sect bc he had a true knot in his umbilical cord, which is super rare. She also
tested positive for Covid after birth – her older son had it 3 months ago and I guess it’s still showing up in her even though she’s completely asymptomatic. That meant no visitors and I had to stay for the whole dutation – but hey, I got free hospital food tho (lol).
One of these days I’ll learn how to post pics on here. Until then, my IG is mrcdiggy77. I got pics there.
People realize Cam sucks on offense. Like really bad.
Cam has hit 11 more 3s than Svi in 11x the minutes.
Congratulations, CDiggy!
all the blessings in the world to you and your family cdiggy…and so the real work continues…
looking towards rain outside…I was just about to have to go out and water…
today very much has the potential for an excellent day of football…
lightly rooting for the niners and bengals today…
The primary problem is the defense.
Brunson and RJ are negatives.
Randle is inconsistent.
You can typically live with a weak defender at PG because you can hide him some nights and the opposing PG will also be weak some nights, but we can’t live with RJ also being both undersized and a negative defender at SF and Randle’s inconsistent effort.
I’m not sure what we should do anymore.
When RJ was focusing on defense, I felt like he was adequate and we could be patient with his shot selection and shot on offense. Now it feels like the latter is at least showing signs of improvement but the defense has taken a big step back. That’s simply not tolerable with Brunson. I don’t even want to think about how bad things would have gotten with Donovan Mitchell, Brunson, RJ, and Randle with Mitch hurt. We didn’t dodge a bullet. We dodged a missile.
congrats cdiggy… many sleepless but also glorious nights ahead… all the best and good health to the fam…
“Unfortunately Deuce probably needs to be excised from the rotation at this point. You can’t survive with a complete zero on offense. He’s been given plenty of time to round into form. But the guy just can’t hit a shot.”
If I was Thibs I’d take another look at Rose. He could always reverse course if his defense is an issue.
OG Anunoby is making more and more sense to me. We’d get more length on the court at SF, we could use him as a small ball PF here or there (he’s already done that in the past), the overall defense wouldn’t suffer swapping OG for Grimes in the starting lineup, but the offense would improve a bit. If RJ is not part of the trade (sending him back to Canada), then RJ would go back to SG and we could get a good look at him on both sides at that position again.
One thing that hasn’t been discussed is including the “untouchable” Grimes in that deal to offset having to give up so many picks if Masai is not interested in Obi. To be honest, I’m not sure he’d be interested in Grimes either. He likes tall long players.
I wouldn’t write off Keels for one bad game. He is only nineteen. Per ESPN he had a good game 3 days ago
Looks like he’s been better during the regular season. His numbers were awful in the showcase (I don’t know the difference but the stats are listed separately). So maybe I’m jumping on it too quick.
But when you’re struggling as bad as he did through 13 games in the g league, I thought it was fair to wonder. Looks like he’s had 3 strong games in the regular season.
This is a good point. It definitely seems that in many cases the more a player has to work on defense, the worse his offense is. This seemed to happen with Barrett and now is maybe the case with Grimes. It could also explain McBride’s lack of offense compared to G-league. He undoubtedly has to work harder on defense in the NBA than he did in G-league.
Rokas Report Update:
He had a nice game against Marc Gasol’s Girona.
25 min, 17 Pts, 5/7 2FG 1/2 3FG, 4/5 FT, 3 Reb, 3 Ast.
Here are some highlights, Barca is in yellow and Rokas is #31,
He has an unusual dunk (at 00:45) and a three pointer (at 2:20):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwavX-4Nppw
He can’t defend like Deuce but he can’t shoot like Deuce too… 🙂
(he’s still a semi-reluctant shooter, he needs to slide his confidence bar to the maximum 😀 ).
Deuce’s poor shooting definitely hurt yesterday, and has hurt in some other games. I suppose you can commend Thibs (or the FO?) for keeping him in the rotation for developmental purposes. Thibs has consistently said that playing young players limited minutes in meaningful games is great for development, and that you can’t do that when you are tanking.
Obviously there is a belief that Deuce’s shooting will come around eventually, and if it does, he’s a very valuable bench piece on a minimum salary. But will it?
I don’t care much about shooting form per se because I’ve seen great shooters with bad form and bad shooters with great form to know that it’s more of a consistency/hand-eye coordination/pressure thing than a form thing. Most of Deuce’s misses seem to have decent arc and alignment, but are either long or short.
His forays to the hoop are almost comically inept when he doesn’t pass. But that should improve with reps.
He and his career are both very young so I hope they don’t bench him unless he starts losing games for us. He’s not why we lost last night, but definitely was a negative.
Re: Rokas, I don’t see the makings of an NBA player there, but hey, you never know!
Of course LeBron and AD are both out tomorrow in Brooklyn so they’ll both most likely play vs the Knicks.
Crazy.
Now THAT’S reversion to the mean!
Oh, and congrats, CDiggy!
Honestly I don’t either.
Since I’ve been following him closely he has had some good games but he did never “made the difference”, so far this year his progress has stalled (I’d dare to say he regressed) and Barcelona’s reluctance to give him the keys, always preferring a more experienced player (first Calathes, then Sato) isn’t a good sign.
Clearly I’d be happy to be wrong…
Congrats CDiggy! I hope his Knicks fandom is more fruitful than it’s been for my generation.
Echoing Z-Man, I actually do commend Thibs/the FO for keeping Deuce in the rotation because of how blatantly obvious it’s become that it’s not the optimal winning formula. I like his defense as much as the next guy but he might be literally the worst offensive player I’ve ever seen. I suppose the question is how long do you give him to show, well, anything? Eventually a guy isn’t a “prospect” anymore, he’s just a bad player who happens to be young. I’m well aware of the talent difference but it’s still pretty shocking he’s *this* bad despite being the Michael Jordan of the G-League.
I think the most underrated positive development of this season has been the play of Quickley. He’s on pace to post career highs in just about everything, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a drastic defensive improvement from a player. He is a serious disruptor on that end. I got yelled at the other day for making a subjective assessment of a player’s defense, so I’ll add that we are *fourteen* PTS/100 better defensively with him on the court. That’s an insane number for a perimeter player, noise and all.
Admittedly arbitrary sample, but he turned his season around exactly 20 games ago and since then he’s posted 17/4/3.4 with a .619 TS% while being our best point-of-attack defender, and one of the best POA defenders in the league.
He might be our most valuable asset…
Congrats CDiggy! Best feeling in the world, right? 😉
I think we should give McBride the rest of the season. He barely played last season so he’s essentially a rookie. He doesn’t seem to be tentative on offense so it’s not a confidence thing like Frank. He doesn’t need to be good. He just needs to get better.
i’m encouraged by what i see from IQ but i would pump the brakes a tad as the perceived improvement is largely driven by his percentages within 3-10 ft.. i’ve been monitoring it all year and while ft and 3pt% have largely been stable.. his 2pt fg% has been varying quite wildly and that’s because of his floater range percentages have been bouncing which makes up the bulk of his 2pt attempts… he’s hot now but he wasn’t for a fair bit and so it all looked rather pedestrian for a long while… that could change at any point but we’re having some good part of that volatility now….
the better part of his line that is encouraging is his rim opps and his conversion rates.. which is small and could be variation also but much less so than the floater range percentages… that it’s not coming with higher ftr is not great but he’s likely getting used to the rule changes.. the fact that he’s trying to make sustainable changes in response is good….
i would also be cautious around the defensive on/off numbers as i always do… especially with bench players… we’ve gone through this with frank and a lot of other players… the variation in lineup data season to season is going to be wide let alone with partial season data… that’s not to say he’s not showing good results now.. he is… but that’s very different than saying he will show good results going forward… that’s a hard thing to say about a perimeter defender who doesn’t come with a multiyear reputation or even box score numbers to back it.. he doesn’t even have a stopper reputation now… which more than likely points to volatility to explain the eyepopping on/off numbers…
his profile is well established at this point which makes his value ok but teams will keep looking to upgrade… he’s in that servicable 6th guard type since he can’t score that efficiently or create enough to do much… that’s where hyland is now too… that’s where devonte graham is… lou williams etc… these types of guys will likely bounce around teams and won’t command all that much on the open market because the upside isn’t all that much… and isn’t all that much because they’re deficient in key areas that are hard to improve…
he’s inching towards it tho which is more than i expected… and getting hot is better than not getting hot… but would i be giving him a 4 yr 60million dollar year based on what i’m seeing now?
i’m actually kind of curious what the KB hivemind think what IQ’s value is so i’ll open that question up to everyone else….
TNFH, I am with you re: IQ and while he’s not our “best” player, he might be our most important one. I think they should try to lock him up on a long-term extension before he gets too expensive.
Since he became a mainstay in the rotation, McBride is averaging somewhere around 3FGA per game, hitting around 1 of them. So his offense on average is costing them around 2 points on paper, but there are also possessions where his lack of being a threat is putting other shooters in bad spots. Yet his on-off numbers are so good that on balance it’s hard to conclude that his offense is so bad that he’s hurting the team. The question becomes, is his defense actually THAT good? Or are his second unit teammates just carrying him?
https://nypost.com/2023/01/29/knicks-looking-to-clean-up-defense-after-concerning-outing-vs-nets/
That might have been the dumbest penalty in the history of the NFL playoffs. Literally cost the Bengals the game.
Bad call
?? It was an easy call, guy pushed Mahomes when he was clearly out of bounds
My brother was also arguing against it, but I agree, it was a pretty easy call. And yes, one of the dumbest penalties in NFL history.
I agree it was an easy and obvious call. Even though it’s reasonably likely that the Chiefs would have won anyway, either in regulation or overtime, he just handed them the win on a silver platter.
https://basketball.realgm.com/analysis/270123/The-Very-Different-Vibes-Surrounding-Walker-Kessler-Rudy-Gobert
Walker Kessler was one of the reasons why I wasn’t deeply concerned about losing Mitch in free agency. So is Nic Claxton, Jarrett Allen, Clint Capela, RWIII, and even Rudy Gobert…all of whom were drafted in the 20’s or 30’s. There are bigs like this available after #20 in nearly every draft and many of them are good right away. Sure, I rather use the pick on a guard or wing, but it seems like purely rim-protecting bigs are more likely to be useful more quickly.
I’m worried that the refs are going to give LeBron like a million makeup calls on Tuesday.
Giannis had a night.
Hasn’t been his best year but all the Jokic/Embiid talk
has to be irritating.
I was thinking this might be a year where the four vote getters for MVP might all be foreign and it would be pretty awesome if no one cared about it. But doesn’t look like Giannis will be in the conversation over Tatum.
Also, SGA. We really did fuck up there.
The Knicks have a 126 DRTG since Mitch went down. The worst team in the NBA has a 120.5 DRTG on the season.