Knicks Morning News (2025.04.05)

36 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.05)”

As a point of order, we banned Doogie. Not my call, so don’t give me the credit/blame, but just figured I’d let you all know, especially because he’s almost certainly going to try posting another name, so it’d presumably come up.

Brian, it’s never a celebratory moment for me when someone gets banned, even when they obviously deserve it. But never was it more deserved than in this case. Doogie was given a lot of grace, and even applauded by some when he toned down the schtick. Sadly, the chronic tone-deafness was just too detrimental to the quality of the dialog to defend his “KB free speech” rights.

If he does sneak back in, hopefully it will be in a refreshed package…bob n and dogrufus are examples of successful re-entrants…not that they are beloved or forgiven by all, or don’t still have their moments, but at least they are significantly less toxic than they were prior to being banned. I’m pretty pessimistic that Doogie has that in him, but hey, you never know!

As I believe d-mar recently pointed out, it’s insane how much is still up in the air regarding playoff seeding in the Western conference, while the East is almost set in stone. Ignoring tiebreakers, the following teams are all within 2 games of each other: LAL, DEN, GSW, MIN, LAC, MEM..meaning that these last 5 games can determine whether these team have home court advantage in round one as a 3-4 seed or have to play 2 play-in games to stay alive. Wild!

If anything, it sort of validates the play-in system. I doubt these games would be as meaningful of competitive if it was not instituted and just raw seeding was on the line.

This is exactly why I don’t engage in any back and forth following some toxicity. At some point we all have to take accountability for our involvement in it. That said..some folks either go too far or or get too aggressive in their comments too often- and that is why people EARN bans.

tin soldiers and nixon’s coming

heading off this morning to my very first protest today over at the rancho cucamonga city hall with my 80 something year old ma and 11 old son…

got some supplies but still need to work on our signs over breakfast…

hopefully done in time to catch our early game today 😊

little knicks basketball, little bit of protesting, oh yeah, all in a day’s work…

not that things were always perfect before, but hopefully as a collective we can move forward…

no joy from it, just a thing that needed to be done…

I’ve been here for a very long time, can it be close to 20 years? under three different usernames and seen many trolls deserving to be banned. Doogie was the worst of them.

It’s so quiet in here…

Well I tried.

Congrats, Geo. I’ll be doing the same, so likely to miss the game. Slam the heck out of the game thread, gents, and I look forward to a post hoc assessment…

if Brunson plays, he’ll start. But do you think he’ll be on a minutes restriction?

he hasn’t been active for a few weeks, so hopefully so…

ha raven, it was your post from a week or so ago reference you attending an event that got me excited to go 😊

see, you never know who’s listening to you, or how what you say or do will affect others…

You’d think Brunson’s fitness would be a bit under what it normally is.

Cam Payne has also been upgraded to questionable.

I think Brunson will take a couple of games to acclimate, but ankles are usually not as bad to recover from and he plays mostly on the ground, so I’m expecting 30 minutes or so. Just hoping that he’s fully recovered, unlike Randle two years ago. Meaning that he isn’t rushing back to qualify for postseason awards.

Now this is how you do Liberation Day.

Brunson needs 4 games to be eligible for All NBA. Hopefully they’re not rushing him for this reason.

I dunno man. To go back to the previous thread… I really like Wright over Payne on this team. Feels like Payne’s essential value is his semi automatic trigger finger. Brunson is such a Helio-centric point guard that if the team is not gelling and just lights out, when he substitutes out, so does the vibe. Payne’s shot selection is more of a compulsion but it does inject some familiar ghost of an organizing principle on offense (this a Thibs issue ultimately) that can bridge the gap. Wright is putting up numbers that seem to align with the best version of himself and not his terrible recent years. I like him. I hope that Thibs has to play him with Brunson now.

C: KAT 24, Mitch 24
PF: OG 32, KAT 16
SF: Hart 38, OG 6, Shamet 4
SG: Bridges 38, Deuce 10
PG: Brunson 40, Payne 8

You can quibble with the minutes

that looks way off EB, maybe something closer to:
C: KAT 24, Mitch 24
PF: OG 32, KAT 16
SF: Hart 38, OG 10
SG: Bridges 38, Deuce 10
PG: Brunson 40, Payne 8

and you can quibble with my quibbling with the minutes if you’d like…

These are both reasonable, but I’m hoping that none of the starters average 40 mpg. I get that Thibs is gonna Thibs, but in the past couple of years there were both depth and injury issues. I would like to see something like:

Brunson: 38
Mikal: 38
OG: 36
KAT: 34
Hart: 32
Mitch: 24
Deuce: 18-20
Payne and/or Shamet: 10-12
Precious and Delon situational for the last 8 minutes, in that order.

I like Z-man’s distribution although I think those last 8 minutes will go to Brunson and KAT in any playoff game that we are losing.

OKC Houston would be a really fun matchup but I have a feeling Houston might be too young to make it to the conference finals

“I like Z-man’s distribution although I think those last 8 minutes will go to Brunson and KAT in any playoff game that we are losing.”

…or winning, given the coach!

https://x.com/KnicksJedi/status/1908471359744680175

It’s such a different feeling going into these playoffs….on one hand, no drama about seeding, no lamenting over injuries (fingers crossed!)…on the other hand, no telling which KAT, Mikal, Hart or Mitch will show up (I feel pretty confident that so long as they are healthy, we will get the expected play from Brunson and OG), no idea how Thibs will employ the bench…but the roster is as “whole” as we could have hoped for going into it.

And to be quit candid, I was far more confident in getting to the EC finals going into last year’s playoffs than I am this year.

But hey, we here!

pepper, that’s funny!

KAT 28 Mitch 20
OG 36 KAT 12
Hart 32 Mikal 16
Mikal 20 Deuce 28
Brunson 40 Cam 8

I lowered Hart’s minutes to avoid too many Hart/Mitch lineups. I gave Deuce a bunch of minutes and moved Mikal to the 3 more often.

Problem is that you still have 4 Hart/Mitch minutes. So maybe it’s better to throw Precious in for 4-6min at the 4 than to trot out the two non-shooters?

Feel like I’d rather take my chances with Hart/Mitch.

If Brunson, Payne and McBride are all coming back and ready to go before the playoffs, we’ll go into the playoffs fully healthy, outside of whatever dings KAT and Hart might be dealing with, which hopefully can heal with the week off between the end of the regular season and the playoffs. That alone makes this exciting bc the last two seasons we went into the playoffs with our second best player (Randle) either completely out or seriously compromised.

I have no problem with players playing a lot of minutes in the playoffs. Last year, there were 14 players who averaged over 40 mpg and only one was a Knick. The playoffs are when you’re supposed to ramp up the minutes for players.

I like your new plan better, EB, especially with Deuce getting 28. I have faint musty memories of some fairly recent (some weeks ago) story highlighting a variety of really significant lineups with Deuce in them, in terms of good offense-killer defense. Stuff that was sort of eye-testy, but way more than even I was giving him credit for.

Of those 13 non-Knicks players, only the following played beyond the first round:

Doncic
Ant-Man
Tatum
Kyrie

2 others who got past the first round played 39 or more: Brunson and SGA

2 more played 38 or more: Murray and Spida

4 more who played 37 or more: Jrue, JDub, Brown, and Gordon

Players playing big minutes is hardly the norm. I don’t have a problem with it per se, but it is more of a desperation thing than anything else unless guys are totally healthy like Tatum and Brown were. KAT, Hart, and OG are all susceptible right now.

Stuff that was sort of eye-testy, but way more than even I was giving him credit for.

It’s more than eye-testy. There’s have been a bunch of articles about his positive effect, including this one:

https://www.thestrick.land/strick/just-let-deuce-mcbride-loose

When he’s point of attack, the defense is much much better, and he provides spacing that increases both Jalen’s and KAT’s efficiency. There’s plenty of evidence that he should be getting 30mpg at least.

@JK, last day in LA. No worries about not connecting; Geo and I exchanged emails, but today is my first free day, and I’m flying out at midnight, so he and I didn’t connect either. It was an intense trip. But things went pretty well, so I’m optimistic I’ll be back in a couple months.

All due respect (sorta) to Doogie, but this site is already 1000% better.

It’s like finally being rid of a nagging cold…

if Brunson plays, he’ll start. But do you think he’ll be on a minutes restriction?

Yes

48 minutes unless it goes to OT. 😉

I’m a huge Deuce fan also. It’s just less clear to me what will happen on the boards if he replaces Hart in the starting lineup. That’s why I was in favor of starting Hart in the beginning of the season. OG and Mikal are not going to make up much of the rebounding gap. Maybe we have to play it by ear and see how the matchups are going. We can also hope OG gets more aggressive in that area also.

This Boozer kid looks like his dad so much.

What do our rebounding numbers look like with Deuce in the lineup instead of Hart? Is anyone able to pull that data?… I miss Doogie like a toothache.

My guess at our most effective lineup would be

Mitch
KAT
OG
Deuce
Brunson

I’d like to see 15mpg from that group

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36 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.05)”

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