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58 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.11.19)”
You’re pretty much just a defender, OG. Look at your rebounding, USG, and assist numbers to start and then to drill down, really and honestly ponder what goes through your mind when you have the ball and embark on a foray to the basket. It probably isn’t “Now’s my opportunity to set up a teammate,” or “If I can get to this spot, it will open things up for my teammate,” right?(*)
Philosophers of all stripes have held for millennia that self-awareness is a positive virtue. They’re not wrong.
(*) And if you’re really interested, you could look at film of the guys in the association who aren’t just defenders, note the skills they show and the things they do on the floor — and contrast/compare. I’m sure the film of your former team’s game last night is already available; it would be an opportunity to both learn and reminisce. A two-fer!!
Here we go again…
He started it!
Delusions in the minds of lead Knick players serve the interests of no Knick factions.
Jalen Brunson:
FG 9-15 (60%) 3P 5-9 (55.6%) FT 3-3 (100%)
And 11 assists with 0 (ZERO!) turnovers!!! š±
Oh, and 1 steal.
Welcome back, cap! š§”š
But for some reason not RJ.
Cavs-Celtics going to be interesting
Whetting your ax on a bot item, that is next level stuff
Albeit 3 straight games against teams we should beat, it looks like the offense is starting to jell. Defensively, KAT needs a crash course in rim protection. He seems eager to defend, but it looks like he’s never learned to use his size correctly. Mitch was the same way for a few years too..but Thibs set him straight. I have no doubt that between Thibs, Bryant, Harrington, and maybe even Ewing- that he’ll get better at it this season. KAT still guards bigs like they are all ball handlers, if that makes sense. Sometimes all he needs to do is show his 250lbs and 7’4″ wingspan, and that will be effective enough in the paint
Mitch was a lot younger and rawer than Mitch was when Thibs got his hands on him, and hadn’t received good coaching before in the pros. Thibs already coached KAT once before, and KAT also played for several years under Chris Finch, who seems like an excellent defensive coach. I don’t think it’s impossible that a more mature and smarter KAT can improve on what he’s been defensively. I just don’t know that we should expect a significant amount of improvement. It’ll be more about better communication and him understanding the scheme better ā and/or Thibs tweaking the scheme as more results come in with this starting lineup.
really and honestly ponder what goes through your mind when you have the ball and embark on a foray to the basket.
this but for knickerblogger posting
It probably isnāt āNowās my opportunity to set up a teammate,ā or āIf I can get to this spot, it will open things up for my teammate,ā right?
renowned teppanyaki rhetorician E would have said:
“Hallucinating creation as the sole purveyor of Association offense is narcissism so extreme it verges on solipsism.”
in human speak, creation is not the only offensive scarcity. the matrix of rare but useful conjugates is vast (ok, ptmilo speak). for example, the capacity to shoot and and attack closeouts and back cut and bully mismatches while finishing at the rim are not promiscuously endowed in singular players.
in the last 5 years, 359 players have played 3000+ minutes. if you wanted one who took at least 6 3s and 7 2s per 36 and shot 38%+ and 54%+ on them, you had seven choices. One was OG anunoby. it doesn’t make him jayson tatum, but he ain’t defense only.
That should be “Mitch was a lot younger and rawer than KAT is now when Thibs got his hands on him”
In other words, within the limitations and parameters of his low-ceiling, uncreative (*) offensive skill set, OG is very effective or even extremely effective.
Already noted, never quarreled with. Reiterated again. Kumbaya.
(*) And quite self-focused, although I don’t chalk that up to selfishness in any way, but in processing capacity and inclination — ultimately part of skill set.
Iām really not sure who thought OG was solely a defensive player. He always has been considered a three point shooter. I think this team might improve his scoring for two reasons. One, when KAT is on the perimeter thereās space for cuts and drives. Two, as Hart said in one of the articles above, when a smaller guy is defending him, he can take advantage. Now that teams are finding they need a bigger defender on Brunson, OG may get easier matchups. Also, a lot of teams donāt have many good big defenders and they will be stretched thin on defense.
Eās like the receiver who puts on a big celly after catching a 3 yard screen pass while losing by 28, except heās losing the OG Trade Takes Game by a lot more than that.
RE: Anunoby. His skill set makes him somewhere between an elite 3&D-plus guy or a low end efficient 2 way player. Either version is great for him and the team as long as he doesn’t try to do too much with the ball. So, he’s not exactly just a defender. But his elite defense and efficient shooting is what got him that bag. He really needs to work on his rebounding though- since he’s a 4 for us now. But whatever he is, he’s awesome on this team.
Agreed 200%. I don’t expect a whole lot of improvement in paint protection, but I do expect some. His shot blocking had been better in years past, so with paint discipline he should be better. I do appreciate his defensive pride and the way he tries to lock in one on one. However, the NBA for bigs is largely a team defense sport these days. It’s not like when Ewing played. So KAT has to buy all the way in on drop coverage, and if he’s not as good as Hartenstein at it, Thibs will adjust. I imagine adjusting when both sides are so used to approaching defense in different ways is incredibly difficult for Thibs. Especially when Thibs’ way has been so effective for him in NY
Do we think the Wizards get to 10 wins this season? That’s about as bad of an NBA team as I can remember watching
Sims went full Mario bouncing off his enemy’s head for that one dunk. He may have tapped A twice for the double jump too.
Why would I be celebrating giving up not one, but two guys who do possess high-ceiling, creative offensive skillsets, that include quick mental processing of facilitation of others, for one guy who doesn’t?
I think you’ve misread or misinterpreted.
E with the age old question, would you rather have a team of 5 RJ Barretts or 5 high-level players with synergistic skill sets?
PT I am glad you summed that up at the end because I was lost.
I was taking about the Wizards last night and someone asked me who their star was. Uhh, Jonas Valenciunas? Malcolm Brogdon?
I think Towns and Mitch are apples and oranges on defense. Mitch was fast twitch from the jump. I am setting the over under on Towns blocking a three pointer at 2.
Mitch is a great athlete for a big. Towns is not.
Mitch never quite got there as a defender, I.e. truly elite, but he is miles better than Towns.
Towns plays small on defense somehow. I donāt even know what the difference in measurables is, if any, but with Mitch you feel his presence on the floor and this is not just the case for KAT
“E with the age old question, would you rather have a team of 5 RJ Barretts or 5 high-level players with synergistic skill sets?”
I will virtually always roll the dice with young, high skill set guys over lowering my ceiling and lowering/hedging my risk with niche, limited skill set guys with more predictable and dependable outcomes. The Knicks weren’t and aren’t in a position to trade two of them for one — as we see with their putrid bench.
There’s really not much more to say about it than that. The trade was a talent/skill sap from the get-go, and consequently has been return to sender for me from the get-go. Nothing I’ve seen since the trade changes that and there’s nothing there since the trade that would change that.
Compare and contrast the two-for-one KAT trade that was a clear winner from the get-go and remains a clear winner. That one was a net enhancer of skill.
“I was taking about the Wizards last night and someone asked me who their star was. Uhh, Jonas Valenciunas? Malcolm Brogdon?”
Definitely *not* Jonas “Valenciunas”!
BTW, I’m pretty sure that they would consider Jordan Poole, Kyle Kuzma, and Bilal Coulibaly to be their “stars.” It’s just that Kuzma has been out a bit.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5929383/2024/11/19/knicks-og-anunoby-defense-offense-nba/?source=user_shared_article
Some highlights:
And because this one is really gonna drive someone up the wallā¦
Your dream team of Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, RJ Barrett, DāAndre Hunter, and Cam Reddish not only wouldnāt be able to beat the Wizards this year, but theyāre also older than them.
E, besides more potential, “your” Knicks would have goals, right? Would it be the ECF, the Finals, a Championship? Because if Leon’s way can reach the same goal you’ll then have to agree that this was a good plan, right? Then let us know what great goals “your” Knicks would have.
A championship, of course. (*) Skill and talent wins championships.
Julius/DDV for KAT — skill-accretive, closer to championship.
RJ/IQ for OG — skill-depletive … well, you know.
No need to complicate things.
(*) Followed by maxing potential in the out-years. The world doesn’t end after the first championship.
Iāve always thought the Thibs Big Man School was vastly overstated (Mitch and iHart were pretty good without him) but if Jericho Sims keeps protecting rims like this Iāll have to reconsider.
Let’s check which skill wins a championship first, ours or RJ’s.
PT I am glad you summed that up at the end because I was lost.
of all the places i’ve chirped in my seven hundred years of internetting, kb is the king and queen of inverse reviewing my banger art. were there a blank stare button, i might not have the pluck to soldier on.
RJ/IQ for OG skill depletive? I donāt think so. OGās size and defense matter.
That’s not the measuring stick though. RJ isn’t going to win a championship with Ochai Agbaji and Gradey Dick, but the question is whether he and IQ could win one with Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson.
The answer is obviously yes; RJ contributed greatly to a curb-stomping of the third-highest SRS team in the association less than two playoff seasons ago and wing-defended in major minutes for the best playoff defense in the association. That one’s been Knickerblogger memory-holed and rationalized, of course, for pretty clear reasons — but it really and truly did happen.
lmao
I can’t believe we are still debating OG.
Swapping RJ for OG at SF probably had the single greatest positive impact on the team we’ve seen in years. The only bigger one was going from Payton/Kemba to Brunson. Both of those were easy to predict and predicted by many of us.
The idea tha we gave up scoring “potential” is legitimate, but this team is currently overloaded with scoring talent in the starting lineup and is doing a great job moving the ball, making plays and generating the space that allows Towns, OG and Hart to get to the rim and Bridges to get solid mid range shots. It doesn’t need RJ’s inefficient 21 points and bad defense! What it needs is high level defense and efficiency on good usage, which is what it’s getting from OG.
āWe were somewhere around Knickerblogger (Barstow) on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.ā
They have the 21st ranked defense in the NBA.
Their bench sucks.
Isn’t narcissism worse than solipsism? I always took it as a version so extreme as to become a disorder.
Otherwise love your posts, Milo. And Owen’s wit was missed here for awhile, glad to see him posting more. Same for Donnie.
See, E? Wit makes Donnie, curdled Knick hater, fun to read despite his heel turn! I know you have it in you….
I give E credit for vigorously sticking to his RJ shtick.
I think when you field a top 4 where IQ is your “lockdown” defender with 2 sieves and a semi sieve, the answer is clearly no. I don’t know who your 5th man is….
Not trolling, actually curious if people here consider ādefenseā a āskillā or notā¦
??
Whoever it is now. The counterfactual is everything else the same, but OG out, RJ/IQ in. And then continued out through like 2031.
The claim appears to be that a championship is impossible under that situation. That seems a bit odd.
Here’s my hot take today to make sure this OG (E) thread goes well over 100 –
“OG is a poor man’s Kawhi Leonard”
Discuss…
It is, but pure individual defense pales in comparison to offense. If offense is a 10, individual defense is like a 1 or 2.
OG is a skilled defender for sure, but the fact of the matter is a Cam Thomas can light him up when he’s on, and there’s not a lot to be done. And the team is 21st overall in defense.
The game now is pick-and-roll, ball movement, fluidity, open lane. It’s not Mark Jackson backing his ass into his defender for 15 seconds while everyone else stands and watches anymore. There’s only so much individual one-on-one defense is going to bring to the party. And it’s not much.
Isnāt narcissism worse than solipsism? I always took it as a version so extreme as to become a disorder.
it might be worse but i don’t think you can say it’s more extreme, since solipsism is a sort of limit. i would say narcissism is to solipsism as existential despair is to nihilism. at the limit the “disorders” fade to incoherence, like roy jones jr.
blank stare emoji.
We’ve all acknowledged that going from I-Hart to Towns was a huge plus for the offense but downgrade to the defense at C. We are waiting to see how it all functions on a net basis after 20-30 games or so and when Precious and Mitch are back.
If we still had RJ instead of OG the defense would be way worse and RJ’s inefficient scoring and inconsistent 3 point shooting would make the spacing and offense worse.
The bench needs help in part because Precious, Mitch and Shamet are out, but we have 2-3 young players that can slowly grow into their roles while we wait to see if Shamet can make it back.
Once everything (everyone) is evaluated a move will be made at the deadline if necessary. We have assets to make a move that addresses these issues. We don’t need a boatload of assets anymore because we have our #1, #1a, #3 and 3a scoring options. We don’t need a star scorer.
Narcissism is much worse in my experience. No contest. Unless it’s just in books.
Great individual defenders are generally excellent team defenders. You aren’t winning often in professional sports without excellent team defense. Four poop individual defenders aren’t winning often.
We got Cam Payne to play there instead of Barrett, let’s call it a wash.
Then the important, driving variable isn’t OG; it’s Mitch and Precious. That kinda makes my point for me.
Pure speculation. They never had the 21st ranked defense with RJ and often had very good defenses — including in the 2023 playoffs.
You boys are just imagining things regarding things that don’t exist to confirm your biases regarding things that do. It’s fine; we all do it from time to time. It’s just seemingly more pronounced and obvious with this one.
In the 2023 playoffs, the defensive rating was 13.1pts better when RJ sat.
I remember last year when E was badly losing some idiotic argument he tried to move the goalposts by extending the timeframe. Our optimal window is the next four years, not seven.
Iām again going to throw some cold water on the idea that Thibs is a great defensive coach. Maybe he was at one time, but in the modern game Iām really not so sure. He coaches ONE way and heās gonna coach that way regardless of who the personnel is. This particular team is woefully underachieving defensively and has at times looked hapless against some very vanilla offensive strategies.
Iām just not seeing the brilliance. He sees round holes everywhere, so you have to give him round pegs, otherwise heās just gonna try to jam the square ones in there. Getting Mitch back isnāt important because Mitch is a transformative player, itās important because Mitch is a round peg.
Maybe this isnāt a great defensive team personnel-wise, but it should be better than 21st in the league even with the injuries weāve had.
You are wasting Precious time on this debate.
With RJ instead of OG, the defense might be bottom 3 and nothing Mitch or Precious could contribute could get us to a realistic target of a top 10 defense.
I see no evidence anywhere on planet earth including eye test that RJ is a plus defender let alone as good as OG. Most evidence indicates he’s a negative on that side.
You need all your important pieces on each side to maximze that side. We are missing pieces on the defensive side.
If we were missing Towns or Brunson, the offense would suffer.
The 2022-2023 Knicks had the 19th best defense even with 82 games from iHart and 72 games from Mitch…
I agree.
I think we have to give it some time to jell before thinking about making changes. We aren’t going to be a great defense with Brunson and Towns at PG/C, but imo we can be better than we are now. A top 10 quality defense for the stretch run and playoffs should be a goal once everyone is back and used to playing with each other.
That’s all well and good, but the missing element is transferring the eye test to impact on overall team defense. You’re positing a world where we see a guy play a certain way when he’s on or around the ball and extrapolating that directly to a major impact on team defense and there’s a lot of reason to believe it’s not that simple.
What we absolutely know for sure is that OG Anunoby can exist playing major wing minutes on meh or shitty team defenses, and has for the majority of his career and that RJ Barrett can exist playing major wing minutes on really good defenses. Beyond that, it’s mostly speculation.
Offense is much more individual skill-based than defense, and skilled offensive guys have far more ultimate impact on team offense than skilled defensive guys.
There are many “events” on the offensive side of the ball that are almost entirely a function of offensive skill where there’s little a defense can do, and there’s nothing like that on the defensive side of the ball.
Is Toronto winning a lot?
Bottom line for me is that they moved out two highly-skilled, young guys primarily to fix Thibs’s defense and yet here we are like 50 games later and Thibs’s defense isn’t remotely fixed.
For some, the counter to that is “Well, it isn’t OG’s fault.” That’s fair. My counter-counter to that is that I don’t really care whose fault it is because there was no reason to believe the roster would stay exactly the same for the next five years after the trade. If the next move fucked up the defense — it didn’t really that much, but I’ll play along, then that should have been planned for.
And now their bench sucks, too.
With that, I’ll spit out my narcissist pill and move on.
Unsurprisingly, Sam Amick says the Nets are open for business, Cam “Empty Calories?” Thomas included: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5931434/2024/11/19/cavaliers-jayson-tatum-mvp-celtics/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bsky&source=bsky
Finney-Smith or Cam Johnson would both be really helpful to us, but the Nets will get better offers for each of them.
Our defensive rating was 14.5pts better with OG on the court.
Between Mitch going down and trading for OG, we had a 123 DRtg.
Before OG got injured, we had a 104.8 DRtg.
After OG got injured, we had a 115 DRtg.
OG comes back for 3 games, we have a 95 DRtg.
Goes down, DRtg is 114.
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