12/20/2024 09:55:00
12/20/2024 10:02:48
12/20/2024 09:28:19
12/20/2024 08:40:14
12/20/2024 07:16:00
12/20/2024 06:41:00
12/20/2024 06:45:42
12/20/2024 06:47:40
12/20/2024 07:04:00
12/20/2024 05:54:49
12/20/2024 06:38:50
12/20/2024 06:03:01
12/20/2024 06:26:02
12/20/2024 05:46:49
12/20/2024 06:23:43
12/20/2024 04:56:22
12/20/2024 05:21:24
12/20/2024 05:04:13
12/20/2024 05:34:38
12/20/2024 05:06:06
148 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.12.20)”
Well, that was about the best possible result for a game such as that.
Wouldn’t he, though? The whole reason Josh Hart was so gettable previously is that 1)He’s very small for his skillset, and 2)He has been an inconsistent shooter (in both volume and accuracy). Once you put that exact same player in either a 6’8″ body or have him shoot the way he has this year, and the cost skyrockets. (Even if we weren’t trying to win this year, no other team would be able to acquire Hart for a late 1st and an expiring lottery bust.)
Regular season wins means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but confined in the limits of a regular season win this was a great one.
It means nothing, it’s december, but while the scoreboard shows the Celtics losing at home with Chicago, the Thunder barely squeezing by the depleted Magic and Denver losing in Portland this was a heck of a statement game.
After badly botching their first test (Adam Silver Cup’s quarterfinal vs Atlanta) they passed this one with flying colors, destroying one of NBA’s best defense on their homecourt.
And they did it in a night where their Captain had an off shooting night, OG did nothing on offense (but man, on defense he erased Julius from the turf) and Josh Hart (& Soul) was missing.
Thoughts:
– 39 assists on 50 buckets. Celestial.
– The game turned when Deuce subbed for Precious, giving us back our spacing.
– The defense was well above our expected standard for most of the game and, and least to me, it gives hope for the time when the games will count for real.
– Speaking of defense. OG’s steal that broke Randle’s “I’m gonna take the last shot no matter what” routine made me laugh sooooooo loud.
– KAT is a monster. 32 points on 12 shots, 20 rebounds and 6 assists. A monster (yeah, he had 4 turnovers but guess what, Julius Randle had 5).
– Mikal Bridges’ best game as a Knick, let’s hope it’s just the starts. Anyway his numbers in december are very good and his defense in the last couple of games has looked way better.
– I’m a magna cum laude graduate at the Bill Simmons’s Body Language University: Julius Randle wants to be traded, Donte Di Vincenzo begs to be traded.
– I missed Josh Hart. To be honest I miss I-Hart too, he broke my heart, no pun intended (maybe).
I’m sorry but I’m unable to really warm to Precious (who had a bad first half, was a little better in the second) and Sims. One’s a pretty good backup, the other isn’t an NBA player.
Next stop New Orleans, a winnable road game. Keep it going guys.
One last thing.
I know very well what Julius Randle has done, good and bad, for this franchise.
I’m perfectly fine without him and I haven’t missed him for a second since the trade.
Yes, I’m a bad person 😀
Among the biggest differences between KAT and Julius is how much easier the former makes everything look. He also does dumb stuff periodically on the court, especially when he gets too cute with the no-look passing. (The Athletic’s Wolves beat writer noted he did this constantly in Minny.) But the rest of the time, the points come in a way that makes you ask what a defense can possibly do to stop him, whereas with Julius, you often asked, “How in the world did he do that?”
(To be fair, Brunson’s game can be similar at times. He’s just much better and more consistent at the impossible stuff than Julius.)
Julius is immensely talented, one of the best I’ve ever seen at hitting the “impossible shots” (the three-pointer in Miami is an example). Maybe his ability to do it is why he tries “impossible stuff” so often.
He’s basically describing Aaron Gordon. I think someone like that is definitely gettable if you’re willing to trade one of our 3 SGs (Hart, Bridges, Deuce). But the idea that we can keep all 6 of our best players and patch together a trade with Mitch, Precious, and Dadiet is far fetched.
(Note that Gordon himself is ineligible to be traded this year bc he signed an extension before the season.)
I think the Siakim trade is a fair price barometer:
Bruce Brown, two late firsts in 2024 (Indiana’s and OKC’s), and a top 4 protected pick in 2026.
We obviously don’t have the picks but Josh Hart is probably worth two in a trade and Dadiet likely has a late first round pick value so with the two of them, the Washington 2nds, and Precious for matching salary we probably have the goods to get the guy we need.
Identifying the right player is the harder part.
gelling
I thought they were really impressive last night. Yes, the shots were falling and Minny seems to be a mess right now, but the Knicks also made a bunch of boneheaded plays, Brunson had a bad game, and OG/Precious did little offensively.
The defense was possibly the best they have shown all season? Mikal was excellent, I don’t know if Ant had any effective dribble penetration at all. More of this, please.
They really should go 7-0 or 6-1 the rest of the year. A 23-11 record on Jan 1st would be nice.
Damn Memphis beat the Warriors by 51 pts.
I think the biggest impact of Mitch coming back might be reducing Sims minutes to zero, I’m sure he’s a nice guy and I’m rooting for him, but I don’t think there’s anything there, he’s just not a NBA rotational player.
Very encouraged about how Bridges played last night, he was flying everywhere, making himself available and looking for his points. OG didn’t do much on offense but had a couple of demoralizing steals and defensive plays when it mattered.
I think Josh Hart was always considered a high energy low usage SG/SF that rebounds well for the position and can make some plays. If you need those skills in your lineup he’s perfect, but if you need more scoring and outside shooting he’s not. IMO, the reason he wasn’t super expensive was because he’s not a scorer and he’s an in and out shooter.
As to his value now, I wouldn’t even consider his 3p% this year. It’s nice that he’s shooting so well this year, but the reality is probably somewhere between last year and this year. 35% from 3 overall and a little better when wide open is what we can settle for.
Jonathan Isaasc will make 15m next year.
Bobby Portis will make 13.4m
I’m not saying those are the right guys or that they are available, but that’s close to the profile.
I’m not sure guys like that aren’t gettable for a talent like Mitch other than right now no one knows if Mitch can even still play. If he comes back and looks good, he’ll have good trade value if the “right” player is available.
I’m guessing they’ll probably wait to see what Mitch has left, fool around with two bigs a little and then wait until the off season if they think we need another move.
If Precious could shoot at all, he’d be good for the job. He’s a 6m player because he can’t and he’s too small to be a C.
I think last was a reminder that OG can be a pretty devastating one-on-one defender, even if Thibs feels his best use the majority of the time is as an all-word free safety. Julius was just carving up Precious early, and the second Thibs switched OG onto him, things started to go bad in a hurry for our former cornerstone.
(And Mikal sure made life miserable for Ant.)
No Kvetching Friday… a rarity on KB 🙂
MN looked like a team with internal problems. Out rebounded by 20? We (thankfully) got to watch the entire Randle experience from a far.
Missed the game bc family stuff, but, if this is true, it makes me so happy.
Strat, right now you have to look at Mitch as salary filler. Teams aren’t acquiring him to acquire him. They’re acquiring him to make a deal work under the CBA, and are doing it for whatever other goodies the Knicks can send them. And assuming we don’t want to trade any of our top 6 guys, we are pretty goody-light compared to the rest of the league. I just think if an Isaac type (not Isaac, because Orlando ain’t moving him) comes on the market, almost anyone else can offer more than we can. So the move either has to be a hunt for another diamond in the rough, or it has to be a more substantial trade where we’re including Deuce, or even Josh Hart. (I have to imagine he would only go out if it was for an All-Star talent, and even then it would have to be the perfect fit.)
That was a very delightful beatdown. Keep it up, Knicks!
“Damn Memphis beat the Warriors by 51 pts.”: the Santi Aldama Experience at its very finest.
Well, yeah of course — they used to have Karl-Anthony Towns on their team and now in his place they have Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.
Yeah, someone suggested Aldama as a trade target recently, and I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening
Aldama’s another guy who was available with the Incinerated pick.
I could get used to these road laughers
I just read 18 Friday morning posts and there’s something missing, but either way that was an E-normously entertaining game.
Would it be premature to upgrade the Bridges trade from utter disaster to okay?
BTW, Strat, I agree with your larger point. The move to make is to get the best 3-and-D guy we can who’s actually PF-sized. Even if that person comes off the bench with Hart continuing to start, it gives us many more options.
The problem is that those guys are nearly as rare a commodity as 3-and-D wings, and I just don’t know how good a version of that we can get with our meager asset chest.
I was far more impressed by our D than our O, since we already know our offense is good.
KAT had one silly stretch early on where all of his TOs occurred. Beyond that he was ridiculously good on O and pretty good on D.
Minny looked disengaged, other than first Q Randle. Gobert and Ant were hardly noticeable.
The game actually turned at the start of the second Q when both Randle and Brunson came out. Bridges, Towns and Deuce powered them to a big lead, and Minny had no answer on either end.
I think the one game in seven days after an embarrassing loss gave Thibs and the guys time to both practice and to get healthy. They seemed to be a step ahead all night, especially workhorse Mikal.
Having more length in the starting lineup was very important against a big team like Minny.
Outstanding effort this morning, E. Some of your finest work.
I don’t think the Bridges trade will ever be bad in terms of the player we got. I think it is bad in that we had no firsts left after making it because we gave up 5 of them. Exchanging that amount of draft capital for a player like Mikal is unprecedented on its own, but if we were OKC with a million picks to spare it wouldn’t be nearly as much of a big deal.
That said, Mikal played like a superstar last night, on the level of, say. typical SGA. That’s how he looked for an entire 1/2 season with BKN. If he can play like that on most nights, then you have to recalculate….five firsts w/o good players is a fair price for a superstar. Who knows, maybe the guy just needs more rest.
Z-man, the caveat we have to add every time we refer to the Bridges pick haul is that we sent basically zero value in players. Every other “star package” deal is either a mix of players and picks, or primarily about the players. This was all picks. So while the price was steep — we’ll see in the long run whether it was too steep — and it is now hamstringing us in terms of future deals, I don’t think it’s substantially steeper than a deal that was, say, three picks and a promising young player, or two picks and two prospects, etc.
Sorry, I missed that you noted “five picks w/o good players.” At this point, it’s barely even “players.” Bogey hasn’t suited up yet, Shake plays scrub minutes, and Diakite is long gone.
Steph and Draymond were a combined 0-11 with six turnovers, I wonder if that’s the worst game they’ve ever played together
Anyone have any insight into Hart’s status? I know someone posted something from his Twitter account last night that showed that he was engaged with the game. Everything OK with his family? Should we expect him back against the Pelicans? I kinda hate this narrative that we don’t need him because we happened to beat a good-to-slightly-better-than-average team last night.
One of my early season theories has been that Thibs’ high minute/short rotation has been one of the biggest drivers of our poor defensive performance. I think it’s notable that these last two games our defense looked a lot better with fresh legs from extra days off.
As painful as the Hawks loss was (and I was at the game, it really sucked), not going to Vegas was really helpful for this team.
Listening to this morning’s podcasts, and perusing r/timberwolves, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth occurring in Minnesota.
I still can’t believe we got KAT.
Tom Haberstroh mentioned that our first quarter defensive rating is, I believe, 11th in the NBA, while our fourth quarter defensive rating is, I believe, 29th.
Shamet and/or Mitch could help by just being playable.
I might be Aldama ignorant but I don’t think he’s the impactful defender we need.
The unfortunate thing is there is no 4.0 bpm big wasting away on a bad team like Porzingis was when Boston traded for him. I think you have to solve this problem by projecting a young breakout player, like the Hawks did with Daniels.
Tari Eason, Jeremy Sochan, those kinds of guys are the ones we might have to add. Not easy, I know. But hopefully there is an undervalued one wasting away somewhere like Dyson was.
The quality of our top 6 players is championship worthy. That’s why we have games like this where we look brilliant. It’s the imbalance that kills us. You can’t have Towns & Brunson and be undersized. If we can just balance it out by trading one of those undersized guys for a big, we’re going to be incredible.
Isaac is a worse shooter than Hart and makes Mitch look like Mikal Bridges with how many games he plays. Otherwise, he’d cost a fortune.
I don’t think Bobby is known for his defense.
I remember last season when we were all hand wringing about KAT’s defense and alleged softness. I was one of the few who siad KAT is dominant as a 5 because of the numbers he was putting up before Gobert. And boy..is KAT proving his worth. This guy is really fuckin good. Sheesh! Please Thibs, PLEASE rework your defense so that it can be great with OG and Bridges’ talents! I imagine our rim protection and rebounding will be much better once Mitch is back or we move him for someone playing now. But man! I knew KAT would be really good as a 5, but I never imagined he’d play this well- especially with the rebounding. 2 20/20 games already, and 4-ish 20/15 games? Incredible
Something I learned just now: after the opening night demolition, the Knicks have had the 10th best defense in the league.
Over the last 10 games (yes, poor competition), they’ve had the 4th best defense, and only the 11th best offense.
The Sixers have won a few games, but a third of the way into the season, Maxey has a .528 TS%, Paul George has a .551 TS%, and Embiid, who has played 6 games, has a .538 TS%. For the bargain of 96% of their cap space. Yikes.
By quarter DRtg per NBA.com:
9th
14th
7th
30th
Mikal seems to be rounding into form. Counting last night’s games he is up a TS of 57.8 and 3p% up to 34.6. His ridiculously elite 2P% is roughly to PHX levels (61.9% now). His december stats (8 games) – 22.1 points, 3.3 rebounds, 3.5 assists, shooting 58/43/73 with TS 68.7. That’ll do.
Tommy Beer tweet this am – KAT’s game last night was the first non-OT game in NBA history with 30p/20r/5a and 5 3pt made. Watching Julius do Julius things and seeing poor Donte struggle there makes me appreciate Leon and co.
I did feel bad for Donte, the poor guy was still playing when Minny emptied the bench (I’m sure they are just trying to get him going, but still).
A ranking where just one team gets to remove their worst performance of the season seems hardly worth mentioning.
I imagine that if you remove every team’s worst performance we probably rank exactly where we do now.
As damning a comment on Thibs’ minutes as could possibly be
Obviously, the lack of depth is a problem, and Thibs needs to play guys a bit less. No one would argue against that.
Let me just ask, though, as our resident math-challenged guy: to what degree, if any, is that fourth quarter number influenced by the fact that we’ve had a bunch of blowout wins? If you search those stats on Cleaning the Glass — which I know filters out garbage time — are the fourth quarter numbers that bad?
“and seeing poor Donte struggle there makes me appreciate Leon and co.”
It sounded like Leon nixed a Randle/DDV for KAT trade on draft night–they offered Randle/Mitch. It also sounded like they shopped Mitch for a DDV clone to restart KAT trade discussions I believe he didn’t want DDV to leave and his struggles are as much as a surprise to Leon as everyone else. But I get your point about Leon–even if DDV scored 40 last night, we would still have looked better because of who we have on our team and who they have on theirs.
Do you? I think you might have had some memories implanted, my friend!
Let me just ask, though, as our resident math-challenged guy: to what degree, if any, is that fourth quarter number influenced by the fact that we’ve had a bunch of blowout wins? If you search those stats on Cleaning the Glass — which I know filters out garbage time — are the fourth quarter numbers that bad?
if you just include the minutes where we are within plus or minus 15, our Q4 defensive rating is actually worse at 127.5. the caveat is that this is small sample (only 183 minutes) and opponents have shot 47.1% from 3 in those minutes, which has a large luck component.
“As damning a comment on Thibs’ minutes as could possibly be”
If it were 9th, 14th, 21st, 30th I would agree. But why 7th in Q3? As Alan mentioned Q4 may have some noise.
“I still can’t believe we got KAT.”
I can’t believe we got this version* of KAT for the price we paid. To put it into perspective, let’s liberally assume that Randle was worth 2 unprotected and a lightly protected pick, and that DDV was worth 1 unprotected and a pick swap. That suggests that we gave up AT MOST 4 firsts, a heavily protected first, a pick swap, and no “good” players for a legit first team all-NBA candidate. Meaning that we got him for less than the cost of Mikal.
Compare that to a) what Leon offered for Spida, who never played as well as KAT is playing right now, and b) what folks were suggesting we give up for KAT 3-4 years ago. No one even thought to frame the discussion at the price Leon wound up paying, it seemed utterly impossible to imagine. The price was expected to be a combination of what we paid for both KAT and Mikal!
At the time, I suspected that Minny chose to salary dump KAT rather than Gobert due to internal frustration with his game, which made me a bit leery. Now it just seems like an idiotic choice.
One wondering: KAT apparently worked his ass off this offseason to lose some weight and better prepare for playing the 4 full time next to Gobert. He looks to be in phenomenal shape, more chiseled than he did earlier in his career, even recently. Has that actually served him well in moving back to a full-time 5?
*meaning the version that is leading the NBA in rebounding on by far career-best numbers, shooting 46% from 3, posting career highs in TS and eFG, and showing marginal improvement on D.
Well per Cleaning the glass – for the season we have the #1 offense and #13 defense. I think that’s pretty good!
By ORtg:
6th
1st
1st
19th
But note that our 4Q offense goes from 4th in losses to 29th in wins, likely the scrubs playing/taking the foot off the pedal.
Our defense goes from 23rd in wins to 29th in losses, but the difference is 114 DRtg to 133 DRtg (Boston is 30th in 4Q DRtg in losses at 135)
Bridges has 16,000 NBA minutes sample and is 28. He was always going to play to the back of his baseball card and likely will for the next 4ish seasons. As Parcells always said, “You are what your record says you are.”
He played 576 minutes of crappy hoops in November and the Greek Chorus of panicky nattering nabobs of negativism started wetting themselves.
Healthy 28 yr old basketball players that aren’t drug addled don’t just mysteriously fall off a cliff.
Because the players rest at halftime.
The fact that we’re much better in both periods where legs are fresh and we drop considerably after Thibs runs Bridges, Hart, and OG into the ground suggest there could be something to this.
Or alternatively, maybe opposing teams just play harder on both ends in the fourth quarter.
Eye test-wise, though, it seems we often come out flat at the starts of games — when legs would be at their freshest — and then turn things on midway through or late into the first quarter. So there’s more nuance to it, it feels like, even though we all agree the overall minutes distribution is not ideal.
An alternative way to look at the KAT trade:
Based on 2023-24 numbers, we traded 5.3 BPM and 4.8 VORP for 2.5 BPM and 2.3 VORP.
Based on 2024-25 numbers thus far, we traded 0.0 BPM and 0.8 VORP for 5.6 BPM and 1.7 VORP.
No wonder Minny fans are freaking out.
As a floor spacer Hart shoots the 3 exactly 1% better than Isaac for their careers. Isaac is a vastly better defender and rim protector than Hart. While he couldn’t play 42 minutes a game like Hart, over the next 4 seasons Isaac will make 5M per year less than Hart.
https://stathead.com/basketball/versus-finder.cgi?player_id2=isaacjo01&player_id1=hartjo01&request=1&utm_id=hartjo01&utm_medium=sr_xsite&utm_campaign=2023_01_wdgt_player_comparison&utm_source=bbr
To add to that- i don’t know if you can trust Isaac to start. And I would love him on this team if his health could be trusted
Look, Minny is good but not elite and it was one game and we know our team can look ridiculous when the offense is clicking.
Nevertheless, that was maybe our best win of the season? God the 2nd quarter was a thing of beauty. My friend said it was like watching a video game with all the shooting levels turned up.
Minny chose Gobert over KAT, lol. Idiots. I mean, if they had countered with KAT is off the table but we’ll give you Gobert for Randle straight up I feel like we would have taken that cause we were so desperate for a center.
A few thoughts.
WE SHOULD DO NOTHING beyond a trade deadline move that involves a couple of second rounders (like a D Rose type trade).
Precious returning has already helped the D and even beyond him, the defense is just getting better as they play together and Mikal settles in.
And sorry, but the ceiling of this team is SO MUCH higher than it was before with Randle and DDV and iHart. Of course, having iHart WITH this team would be GOD Level, but Leon made the right moves. Yes, the Mikal trade was probably an overpay but he stuffed our top 6 with so much talent.
Also, no Hart last night and Precious gets the start and I gotta say, I like it. I think he is still working his way back and I know Randle went off in the 1st, but I still feel strongly that starting Precious gives us the height and defense we’re lacking and yeah, with the way Hart is shooting we lose some offense but then you get HART leading the bench. And someone said it last night…maybe putting HART as the 6th man also opens things up for Mikal as well because he can do some of those jack of all trade things that Hart does so well. It moves OG to the 3 too. I don’t know. As long as Precious can hit a corner 3, I feel like it would work and, of course, Hart is still going to play crazy minutes and probably close a lot of games but giving Precious the nominal start might be the way to go.
The team just needs time. Time to tighten up the D, time for Mikal to settle in. Time for Precious to get up to speed and time for Mitch to return. Plus we potentially have Shamet coming back too. if Leon wants to do a small deal at the deadline I’m for it, but I think we should save our remaining ammo for the off season.
Also, I watched a feed last night where I got to watch the footage of Minneapolis during commercial breaks. So I got to see the homage they did for KAT before the game. He is a really good dude. He took the role of franchise player very seriously while he was there and did A LOT for the community. We got a really great basketball player but also just a really nice, good dude.
In the last 4 seasons Hart has played 3 more seasons than Isaac.
In the previous 2 seasons, Hart played more minutes than Isaac played in the 8 years since he was drafted.
If Isaac could stay healthy he’d at least double his money.
Sure but also, it was the 1st game of the season with a completely new team. So I think there is logic to removing that game to show where we actually are. If that poor game happened now, removing it makes less sense as we’re starting to see who this team really is. But it was pretty obvious we were not on the same page with a new team and all that first game.
Lol
KAT has superstar skills that he seems to be realizing, and as always the numbers on the BB-ref page are downstream from basketball skills.
He might even have tentpole status in his future. The trade was a complete heist.
On another note, the Celts and Bulls shot a combined 108 threes last night, with the Celts going 14-56.
To put it into perspective, the fabled Bomb Squad took 14 3PA per game to lead the league.
Fuck Mike D’Antoni.
Overall, even with the somewhat turbulent start to the season, the Knicks are more or less where we expected them to be. We knew Boston and OKC were the only two clearly better teams (though it’s interesting to me that Boston has not been as good this year). The Cavs are a surprise, but they have had by far the easiest schedule in the league and are probably a little worse than their record. Memphis, Houston, New York and Dallas are probably at a similar level as the Knicks.
I believe in their previous home loss to Memphis the Celtics shot 18 for 60 from 3pt range.
Via Tommy Beer
Our December schedule has been ridiculously easy. Beyond ATL and MIN, both of whom are currently in the play-in and a good bet to stay there, and the Pistons who can be pretty good a times (and we are 1-2 in those games) we’ve played the depleted Magic twice, plus the woeful Pels, Hornets and Raptors.
The defense has definitely looked better, but there’s nothing to suggest that we’ve turned any kind of corner beyond last night’s game vs. a listless Wolves team. And even though things heat up a bit in January, we won’t really be tested until February.
The problem with that is that we won’t have a lot of info prior to the Feb 6 trade deadline as to what we need to add for a deep playoff run. Immediately after the deadline, we will have a season-defining run of games.
it really upsets me that Jonathan Isaac is being paid megachurch money for storefront-of-worship playing time
The team with Randle, DDV, and iHart was a lock to make the ECF without injuries and probably would have given Boston a very competitive series. This team is going to need a favorable matchup to get out of the first round (I wouldn’t want to face Giannis or Atlanta).
Now this team after making one excellent trade could have a higher ceiling. That’s not “this team,” though.
Gordon would be some wild fantasy addition.
We only “need” some size and defense next to Towns so when we play against bigger longer teams and need help inside and on the boards we can match up. Ideally though he has to be able to shoot a bit or we are going to be sacrificing spacing.
That’s part of it, but it doesn’t account for over 10 points. Part of any rating includes some bad teams.
Strat, we need someone like Aaron Gordon to win a championship. An 18 mpg, offensively-challenged big that we only run out against a few specific teams isn’t going to change very much.
yes, the team that had Randle, DDV, and a guy who is no longer on the team because he garnered a $32MM/year contract would’ve been a good team!
I do agree that last year’s fully-realized team is probably better on the whole than this team. But I do also think that this team’s ceiling is higher precisely because we can absolutely blow the doors off a team at any given time, far more so than we could last year. For instance, according to StatMuse (cool site!), the Knicks have scored 35+ points in a quarter 25 times already this year (out of a total of 108 quarters played) = 23.1% of quarters.
Compare to last year – a year that we all romanticize -> for the whole season (82*4 = 328 total quarters played), we scored 35+ points only 44 times = 13.4%.
This team just has the ability to go nuclear and absolutely bury other teams in the space of 8-10 minutes in game time.
The defense is getting better slowly — and that’s before Mitch comes back and I think stabilizes the backup unit. I think we’ll be much better in May than we are now.
I think we do the opposite of romanticize it. You’re comparing this team at full strength to a team that only had 69 games of Randle and OG.
If Towns and OG miss 95 games this year, forget about 35 point quarters. We’re handing Brooklyn a lottery pick.
The only thing this team is better at than last year’s team (post OG trade) is staying healthy.
It turns out you can’t recreate Karl-Anthony Towns in the aggregate.
But again, would MJ ever, ever say anything like that? Ant is way over-hyped.
Disagree
You make it sound like Hart is some star offensive player. He’s 5th option. All his replacement has to do is be able to hit 3s at 35% clip and score around the basket here or there in all that space we have and there will be little impact on the offense while upgrading the D and boards where we are weak at times,
January Knicks were awesome but it was one month. Who knows where this team will be in a month. The Knicks last season also started out slow and were slowly getting better even before OG came in. Then OG was a big boost (and RJ was addition by subtraction). But DDV was having an insane month as well.
There is no way to really know how the January knicks would have done if they had started out the season with that team.
KAT is better than iHart and I thinke Mikal has the potential to be better than Randle (maybe not in counting stats but in overall usefulness and efficiency). Hart is playing better than he did last regular season but BRunson is playing a little worse (though some of that is simply him not having to score as much).
Deuce is better than Grimes was off the bench. The team right now is not as deep but we have Mitch coming back. I truly believe they’re just being super extra cautious with him and making him get into better conditioning first before throwing him out there cause they don’t want a repeat.
We shall see. January Knicks were nice too. But the potential here is higher and yes, I’m factoring in the possibility of another move in that potential. But Mitch himself could be the move.
So Precious.
To do an apples to apples comparison of last year’s team (post OG trade) to this year’s team, I omitted any game where 2 or more starters were injured. So, for instance, if Randle was out but Brunson, Donte, OG and iHart played, that game counted (i.e. it’s not just the January Knicks).
Luckily we have almost the same amount of games, so there’s no issue with the sample size.
Last year vs this year
Games: 23 vs 27
Record: 20-3 vs 17-10
Winning percentage: .839 vs .629
Offensive rating: 121.3 vs 120.7
Defensive rating: 107.5 vs 113.5
Net rating: 13.8 vs 7.2
Games missing 2 or more starters: 27 out of 50 (54%) vs 0 out of 27 (0%)
It is overwhelming how much better last year’s team was. Better offense. Better defense. Better at blowing the other team’s doors off. Higher ceiling. Higher floor. There is no romanticizing here. Last year’s team (when not riddled with injury) was incredibly superior in every conceivable way.
The only thing this year’s team has been better at is staying healthy.
I love the Moneyball meme afterlife…
I am ok with things. We could use a big and we are going to win and lose more blowouts but overall I can’t complain.
The point of highlighting this, other than to directly counter the claims of Frank and Swift, is simply to illustrate the importance of fit.
This year’s team is more talented. But it doesn’t fit together as well as last year’s team. That’s why it is statistically inferior in every way.
Fit > Talent
The problem with the Bridges trade was never Mikal Bridges’ early season struggles. It wasn’t even the 5 picks. It was the way it unbalanced the team.
3 of our 6 best players are ideally suited to play SG, and 0 of our 6 best players are ideally suited to play PF. We cannot win a title until that’s addressed.
Source, ras?
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1himhqb/mikal_bridges_last_8_games_2213335_on_69_ts/
Please make us a list of players who:
(1) Shoot 35% from 3
(2) Upgrade the defense, and
(3) Grab more boards than Hart
Everyone is talking about KAT’s revenge but I thought Mikal wanted to show Anthony Edwards how his shot is working after Ant dogged him for it in the preseason.
The thing with the January Knicks is that NO team is as good as the January Knicks were. If you try to extrapolate that team to 82 games they make every other team in NBA history look like a piece of shit. The Showtime Lakers look like garbage compared to the January Knicks.
They were not going to sustain that level of play, because their true level was probably not “greatest basketball team ever assembled.” They were on a hot streak, and they were very good, but they were not going to maintain a +14 net rating or whatever absurd numbers they racked up during that stretch.
Was that a championship level team? I don’t know. They were probably a very good team that was on a hot streak.
We basically have a prime Moses Malone-type playing for us right now:
Last year’s team had a core 6 that preceded the OG trade: Brunson, iHart, DDV, Randle, Hart, and Grimes. Not much had to change when OG arrived, he essentially replaced RJ while Deuce took IQ’s bench minutes. Precious essentially replaced Sims, so no big deal there.
This year’s team has Brunson, OG, Hart, Precious and Deuce. Deuce. Precious missed the first 21 games. Hart is now a full-time starter. That’s 3/5 of the starting lineup that has been overhauled, and OG moved from SF to PF. Deuce’s role is stable, but he’s a bench player.
As such, I don’t think the OG trade was as disruptive to chemistry (and in fact may have improved it by taking RJ out of the mix) as swapping out iHart, Randle, DDV, and Grimes for KAT, Bridges, Payne, and mostly Sims. We are a month away from possibly adding all of Mitch and Shamet (or some other rotation player.)
So I don’t really buy the fit>talent premise, especially how it is being applied here…the pieces on our current team fit just fine. They just need reps and some adjustments. They are 12-4 in their last 16 games. Looking at the upcoming schedule, that could balloon to 20-5. And if Mitch comes back, while it would not have changed much for last year’s team because we had iHart, it could make a very significant difference now.
Now you’re describing someone better than Aaron Gordon!
All we need is Jalen Johnson?
Hubs,
Z makes a great point. You’re pining over a team that was on a hot streak. That happens and they were good but it took them 2 months of playing basketball together and then a big trade to get to that hot streak.
This team came into the regular season having JUST gone through a major overhaul. Seriously, they didn’t even get KAT until after training camp had started. It was a completely different team. To act like they don’t “fit” as well because they didn’t start out as hot as the January Knicks is just silly. I would think you would be above that way of thinking.
Or to put it another way. The 2nd quarter last night looked as dominant offensively, if not more so, than any game in January last year. They were toying with Minny offensively.
Couldn’t watch the game because it was too late for me, but i’ve enjoyed reading the game thread and also this one. 🙂
Are we contenders again now?
Don’t know about the other three, but i’m 100% with you that New York is at the same level as the Knicks. 😀
Hahaha, just kiddin, did you want to list another team or was it only Memphis, Houston and Dallas?
40% of those 23 games last year took place in March and April.
I’m feeling relieved that our defense is getting better, and that Mikal is getting better. And also the fact that we seem to be better at defense with a little more rest gives me hope that during the playoffs we’ll be fine. With Thibs we used to not have the extra gear for the playoffs, but with the way he demands heavy minutes from our top6, i think we’ll have an extra gear in the 2025 playoffs… it’s rest!
By the way, my analysis of where we are in the baseball offseason is that the recent contracts handed out to Max Fried and Nathan Eovaldi have really shaken up the free agent market. Why? Because:
1. Unexpected length and dollars: Fried secured an 8-year deal, exceeding most predictions by 3 years. Eovaldi, at 34, landed a 3-year, $75 million contract, also surpassing expectations.
2. Ripple effect on remaining FA pitchers: These deals have emboldened pitchers like Manaea and Pivetta to seek longer contracts (5 years).
3. Impact on trade values for pitchers on the trade market: Teams are now less willing to part with top prospects for pitchers like Castillo, Lopez, and Keller, as their existing contracts suddenly look like bargains in comparison.
Essentially, Fried’s massive contract has created a stalemate. Free agents are aiming higher, and teams are hesitant to meet those demands or give up valuable prospects in trades. This has led to a slowdown in the market as everyone adjusts to the new landscape.
I am not.
What I’m doing is using 100% of the data that is available when last year’s team wasn’t missing two or more key players.
What you and others are doing is trying to compare this team at full strength to that team when its frontline was Josh Hart, Precious Achiuwa, and Jericho Sims.
You’re also imagining that it was just on a hot streak. While I’m sure the .869 winning percentage wouldn’t have held up over 82, that probably was something close to a 64 win team like the Celtics.
Also, my third point needed to be fleshed out with a more nuanced look at how rising free agent salaries impact the trade market for controllable pitchers. When free agent prices soar, teams become more inclined to trade for pitchers with years of team control remaining. These pitchers suddenly look like a relative bargain compared to the open market.
BUT this increased demand also empowers the teams selling those controllable arms. They know they have a valuable asset and will demand a higher return in a trade. This means top prospects are even more likely to be included in deals.
So, while the rising free agent market incentivizes teams to seek controllable pitching, it also drives up the cost of acquiring those pitchers. It’s a classic case of supply and demand at play where scarcity of top-tier pitching, coupled with inflated free agent contracts, creates a seller’s market where teams holding controllable assets have the leverage…and they aren’t in a rush to give it away.
And why shouldn’t they be? Let the big buyers on the FA pitching market trip over one another to get Roki Sasaski. There can only be one winner in that sweepstakes, with many losers who will come back calling to up the ante for pitchers like Castillo, Lopez, and Keller.
About yesterday’s thread, which i’ve read only today, it’s great to have Jowles back. Let’s hope he’s here to stay and not just a christmas miracle. 😉 😛
Howdy Geo, yeah i had another email as my gravatar in the beginning, although at the time the picture was the same as the one i use now. But then i needed that email to make more “formal” comments on other websites and i needed to have a more proper pic. LOL
Oh, that’s a very cool pic, your family seems happy and having fun. I love it. You didn’t even forgot the dog. ❤️
In my mind i pictured the dog as a big dog, don’t know why. 😛
Yeah, i hope someday soon we can meet. 😉 And now we don’t have to hold a card with our name anymore. 😀
howdy cyber, I hope all is well for you today sir…
mister jowles linked an old thread yesterday, and while looking through it I noticed at the time you had a personal pic as your avatar…
you’ve inspired me…
very cool, I don’t know why but it’s nice to have a face to link to folk’s name and words…
for a while then, i will share myself and my happy bunch…
daughter getting older, so I don’t get all 3 together so often…
hoping life is good for you cyber…
holy cow, took me a while to write the above post – just doing stuff around the house…
soooooooo funny though that we were thinking the same stuff at the same time – shoot, what’s half a world away mean anyway 😊
thanks for the smile…
Wow, that is… crazy! 😱 😀
Maybe we’re twins* that were separated at birth! 😉
*we’re not even from the same year, but let’s not get lost in the details. LOL
Hubs, you’re using data without any thought to the context of when the games were played. Completely ignoring that it took last years Knicks until January to hit that level while not giving this year’s team the benefit of the doubt that maybe making a huge change to the starting five right before training camp might have cause the team to take a step back chemistry wise while they acclimated new players into their team.
The current team could easily pull of a stretch like that here soon.
Hmmmm… I wonder if you feel as bad about Zion Williamson’s 6,000 minutes as Isaac’s 5000 while Zion ate his way onto the DL while Isaac actually had a career threatening injury?
I was never worried about Mikal’s offense other than questioning why he made a form change. It seems I was right about that.
Now I’m forming a more solid opinion about his defense.
I think he’s going to be the defender we need him to be on most nights (very hgh level), but he may have trouble with small super fast guys like Trae Young. Maybe he always did or maybe no one can stay in front of guys like Trae, but even if he lost 1/4 step, there aren’t that many guys we have to be very worried about.
My thinking is that we should probably play Deuce more minutes on nights like that and let him handle Gs like that.
I think we can put all the worrying about Mikal to rest.
Isaac is hated by some because of his politics.
In any event, we all know he’s an injury risk and is not available anyway. I was just pointing out he’s the “type” of player we need at PF. His salary is 15m for next year – which is not much different than Mitch’s 13m for next year.
We can’t get good value on a Mitch now because he’s been out so long and had two surgeries. But if he comes back in Janury and looks good for the rest of the season, his value will return and he’ll become a solid trade asset for the off season.
It would be nice to be able to make a move ASAP, but as I keep saying I suspect they are going to take a look at Mitch and the Mitch/Towns combo a little for the rest of the year and decide after that what they need and how to do it. I’m not expecting anything too major at the deadline.
Saying that for an NBA team fit > talent is an absolutely wild take. This is not even remotely close to be true. This is a 5 on 5 sport where top players can play up to 90% of the minutes in the game and the one sport where stars have the most impact by far because they’re always on the floor on both sides.
Talent is 100% the king in the NBA, every team should be looking to stockpile as much talent as possible and figure out the fit later. Remember when we heard for months that Wade and Lebron wouldn’t fit together because they both need the ball? Remember the years we heard discussions about the Celtics breaking up the Jays because they play the same position and couldn’t fit together?
Great players find a way to fit together, and having more great players will always overpower the best fit on a less talented team.
Obviously fit can matter, if you think of a scenario like having to choose between too equally good players on a role, like let’s say Milwaukee going from Jrue Holiday to Damian Lillard, both highly impactful stars that play the same position in opposite ways.
If you guys wanna keep harping on the clearly, painfully obviously unsustainable January Knicks performance, I guess keep doing it, but the discussion should absolutely be whether the players we have now are better than those we had back then, not that fit is more important than talent because that is crazy.
That’s sorta on them, isn’t it? He a bleepin basketball player. The only things I’ve read about him (other than hoops) is he seems like he’s pretty serious about his religion.
As a back up big and defensive player/rim protector you could do a lot worse for 18mpg. I don’t give two poops on a rainy day about his politics or religious beliefs.
The notion that Jowels is somehow offended by Isaac’s salary to production ratio as stated in his post is comical. But he can’t help himself.
You’re taking it in a different direction than it was intended, Bruno.
We all know Jimmy Butler is more talented than OG Anunoby. Was it really “an absolutely wild take”
that no one on the blog thought the Knicks would be better if they made that trade?
Zach Lavine is more talented than Derrick White but I don’t think the Celtics would be better if they traded Derrick White for Zach Lavine. Do you think that’s wild?
Etc etc
interested to see this bucks/cavs matchup…
haven’t watched a cavs game in a while…
The Knicks would obviously be better if they traded OG for Jimmy Butler. It’s not seriously debatable. The only possible thing to quibble about is their respective ages.
The Knicks are on the fringes of quasi-contention now. With Butler they’d be a very serious real contender.
I’m not.
It took one day for those 5 guys to gel.
It was the same with the Celtics. They added two new starters and started dominating on day 1 bc they were perfect fits.
If they had traded for Lillard instead of Holiday they would’ve struggled bc Holiday’s fit > Lillard’s talent.
The January “signal” went unconfirmed —and was therefore vitiated — by the playoffs.
The semi-mythical January Knicks went 14-2. The current Knicks are 12-4 over their last 16 games.
I used a 23 game sample that spanned January, March, and April. Only 12 of the 23 games were in January.
Gonna go ahead and get a head start on my New Year’s resolution
(Lights Nag Champa)
(Puts on playlist of pan flute music)
(Inhales deeply)
(Begins to recite mantra)
Must ignore dumb shit rather than respond to it
Must ignore dumb shit rather than respond to it
Must ignore dumb shit rather than respond to it
Must ignore dumb shit rather than respond to it
(Takes sip of green tea)
I don’t think so Hubert, specially since I don’t think Lavine is more talented at all than Derrick White. Lavine is at most a more talented scorer, while White is far more talented at every single other thing a basketball player needs to do on the court. White, who is a very redundant player with Holiday, they both contribute in similar ways to the team, like the Jays do between themselves, but these guys are so good at what they do that they figured out how to work together.
The Butler case is specifically because he’s old and has a very publicized case where he threw KAT under the bus and made it a whole scene that lasted so long KAT is still called soft to this day. If we were talking about 27 year old Jimmy Butler I’d pack OGs bags and drive him personally to the airport with a one way ticket to Miami.
The thing with KAT and Thibs didn’t linger and KAT’s a grown-ass man now — no reason to think the Butler/KAT thing would linger, particularly if there’s a chance for serious ring chasing and particularly if Thibs is around to manage the situation.
It’s fair to worry about Butler having turned 35 within the last two-three months, but there’s no doubt they’d be a way better team this year and at least next if they made that move.
I see no purpose in echewing a significantly better roster, and actual contender to hang on to a near-max guy who’s got 4.5 years left on his deal because he *might* one day be a good fit as a 4th/5th option once a hypothetical move that might not even happen is made. Serves zero purpose.
I think you’re being a little difficult here, Bruno.
Is it really hard to understand that a team with a talented PG, two talented wings, and two talented bigs would be better than a team with 5 talented wings and no PG or bigs?
I’d love to have Isaac as a player. My only point was in response to Strat’s implicit claim that players like Isaac are available and only making $15M/yr. He is currently making $24M this year btw.
He’s getting paid $15M despite never playing and it’s not clear that Orlando would trade him even with all those issues. He’s that good.
Of course, Isaac doesn’t even meet Strat’s 35% shooting criterion.
Please find all the readily available PFs who can shoot 35%, protect the rim, and rebound better than Hart. They’re incredibly rare and usually difficult to acquire.
If that was your argument then maybe yes, I’d be less difficult to argue with. Anyone with brains can agree that a team can’t have 5 wings and 0 PGs or bigs. Is that the current Knicks team? No, so what’s the point?
Saying 3 of our best 6 players are wings is extremely disingenuous when the 2 best guys out of those 6 are our Point Guard and our Center. You are complaining that we have overlapping skills on our wings when the Boston success case shows that there’s not problem at all with overlapping skill sets as long as they the key spots you need on a court and those guys are good enough to make it work.
Again, I’d be fine if you said you don’t believe we have good enough players to win it all. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having your best 3, 4 and 5 guys be wing players in a league where these guys go at a premium rate and everyone needs talented two way wing players.
I just completely disagree with the idea that fit is ever more important than talent, I would rather have 3 great wings than a mediocre PF or Center.
We’ve discussed as Nassim why OG was able to fit in so well to that team but the simple fact of it is he was joining a team that had been playing together for several months and RJ was addition by subtraction.
Very different situation than adding two new starters at training camp. If you can’t see that I don’t know what to say.
I don’t think Zach Lavine is better than Derrick White.
I laughed harder than I should have at as nassim
I agree with Swifty that the player that Strat is looking for could be Precious. He’s definitely a plus defender and I think he’s capable of improving his 3 pt shooting. He’s going to be totally ignored. It will be very difficult to find a better player who is available during the season.
As nassim is a big part of what we do around here
🤦🏻♂️
We’re a team with no rim protection that’s undersized.
Last year’s team (when healthy) didn’t have anyone as talented as Towns but it didn’t have these glaring weaknesses.
That’s why the statistics show last year’s team, when healthy, was better at everything than this year’s team, including offense.
(Now’s the part where someone hand waves the statistical dominance away bc reasons.)
Trust in the wisdom of Junebert
Hubert IVsays:
June 25, 2024 at 11:37
Yes, but there are people who think we shouldn’t consider this. We shouldn’t only consider the January run but the idea that it shouldn’t be considered at all is also foolish.
We should consider it but we should also consider how common it is for ordinary teams to have spectacular runs.
The Cavaliers had an 18-1 stretch.
The Clippers went 25-5.
The Rockets went 13-1.
The Magic went 13-3 and 9-0.
You guys need to realize that Hubert is just as big a troll as E he just disguises it better.
I have the memory of a goldfish so the way people pull
old threads out of hats always astonishes me…
Surprised how well the Heat are playing OKC
still crazy to me that the Lakers just let Caruso walk
“You guys need to realize that Hubert is just as big a troll as E he just disguises it better.”
No comment
Cavs just crushed the Bucks. Hard to believe that we don’t play the Cavs again until April 2.
I’ve posted on a Rangers site for double digit years — posting during tonight’s game — and my posts barely even get any attention. Don’t care. No idea why they do here.
Dred you seem to be working very hard to be ignorant.
The sample I cited wasn’t “a run.” Those 23 games were literally every game these guys played together when they weren’t crippled by injury.
JK47, I think I’m ready to join you in that resolution. But there’s just so much dumb shit.
I hats the void business with Jimmy B about?
Right they played 23 games, so we don’t know if they would have kept doing that. As Hubert points out, teams that aren’t actually dominant can play dominant basketball for 25 or 30 game stretches.
You cherry picked the January run plus a sprinkle of a few more random games later to try and prove some point. All of the games you picked happened on January or later. All of the games this season have happened in November and December.
If you don’t see the logical fallacy of your weak argument I don’t know what to tell you. We had a completely new team this year. KAT was traded so late he literally missed the first day of training camp.
Give it up dude. You lost.
Thunder outworking the heat in crunch time in the last game of a 9 game road trip is impressive, even if Miami is missing Jimmy
By definition, using 100% of the sample is not cherry picking.
The confederacy of dunces is undefeated.
If a team that’s not great, like last years Clippers or Magic, can be great for 25 or 30 games, how can you be sure that a team that played great for 23 games was a great team? You can’t. I get you’re constitutionally a contrarian, but you’re literally arguing with yourself while saying anyone who disagrees with you is a dunce.
“Thunder outworking the heat in crunch time in the last game of a 9 game road trip is impressive, even if Miami is missing Jimmy”
Not really, 2 of their last 8 games have been in OKC (12/3 vs UTA and 12/10 vs DAL) and two in Vegas, which were neutral.
enjoying the fact that we no longer rely on “merc” players…
second team for jalen, KAT, and OG…third for mikal and precious, first for duece and mitch…
we’re josh’s fourth team, in a very short time, he already feels like a knick for life…
we’re trying to get rings now though, we have some players whom can back up our starters at guard and wing…
and i guess KAT has proven to date we are okay at center, for the moment, and with a healthy mitch return…if josh though can help get us a young capable 4…that would be a tough front office discussion…
ha, campayne and KAT are the two old guys at 30 and 29, that’ll work, especially with the team captain at 28…seems like a recipe for good team dynamics…
cam being the most merc feeling guy on the team, and he’s fun to watch, same will be true for shamet when he’s hopefully available to come off the bench…
other than that though, feels like a young organic knicks’ team…
This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.