04/12/2025 11:06:16
04/12/2025 11:00:02
04/12/2025 11:00:00
04/12/2025 10:21:53
04/12/2025 10:30:00
04/12/2025 10:03:26
04/12/2025 10:05:45
04/12/2025 09:13:00
04/12/2025 08:43:25
04/12/2025 08:08:00
04/12/2025 06:01:51
04/12/2025 05:40:41
04/12/2025 04:53:16
04/12/2025 04:41:00
04/12/2025 05:34:26
04/12/2025 04:06:00
04/12/2025 04:19:21
04/12/2025 04:00:13
04/12/2025 03:44:27
04/12/2025 03:57:16
52 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.12)”
Reasons for playoff optimism(?):
Mitch seems to be rounding into form
Brunson will find a way to return to his post season self
OG will play as he did during JB’s absence
Hart and Mikal will give full effort 100% of time
KAT takes twice as many 3’s as he did during regular season
Deuce takes minutes from Hart.
Reasons for playoff optimism:
We’ll shit the bed so bad that Thibs will have to go.
I have nothing against him and he brought us back to respectability, but this is as far as we can go with him. We desperately need something different to justify this roster.
I am feeling swayed by the arguments about taking more three point shots. You have to get the absolute max out of KAT on offense because the defense doesn’t play.
I don’t know that firing Thibs will make a huge difference but I won’t mourn either….
My personal opinion (and just opinion):
-The Minutes Police takes are ridiculous. The team is healthier than nearly every other team going in to the playoffs and will have a week of rest before the games start. The team rarely practices between games. Then there are no back-to-backs in the playoffs. It sounds to me like folks trying to sound smart despite all the actual evidence to the contrary.
-The Knicks are not burnt out. They are not highly motivated right now and their flaws are being exposed. Those flaws? We are not all that big or athletic. Bridges is soft. OG is lumbering. KAT plays smal and dumb on defense. Hart is undersized and can’t shoot. Brunson is a below-the-rim player. Deuce is undersized. Shamet is undersized. Payne is undersized. Precious sucks. Mitch is on a minutes restriction and can’t shoot. In other words, we don’t have a coaching problem. We have a personnel problem. That said, there’s plenty of talent, physicality and mental toughness, and when the playoffs start, I’m expecting them to be far more energetic and motivated than they have looked lately, and to take care of business in the first roung vs. DET. But the flaws are real, and if they arent in peak form, they could definitely lose.
-KAT has to prove to me that he is not a fool’s gold player. He’s fun to watch when he gets on an offensive roll, but there are far too many times when he looks like a dumb, whiny goofball out there. For me, there’s no grace period for him. Either he shows up big time, or he needs to be moved.
-My biggest worry right now is that Brunson looks pretty far from 100%. It sort of reminds me of how Randle looked in 2022 when he returned from the initial ankle injury. When he tweaked it again, he was pretty much done, and had surgery right after we lost to Miami. Hopefully he just needs a bit more time and reps to get back to his old self. But the Pistons are going to try to beat him up.
I agree with Z-man’s view for the most part. My biggest takeaway however–if you can’t beat the best teams, you’re not one of them. Sure, the playoffs can be different, but the mounting evidence is damning. Which brings us around to personnel, chemistry and coaching. I think a reasonably healthy Mitch solves some of the biggest issues, including terrible rim protection, a soft-porous defense and the need for more offensive rebounding. However, if he can’t be fit in with Kat, that will sink us IMO. Of course, if Brunson is suboptimal, we are also kind of screwed. I am usually optimistic, but I am not at this point.
Any word on Huk’s timetable, Z-man?
Clarence, last I heard, Thibs said Huk was nowhere near close to returning. My guess is that he’s done for the season.
Was hoping you would tempt the fates on that one. We could certainly use a lively, willing big to back up Mitch. Towns likes to clown.
This ship be sinking. Kinda hoping we lose to the Pistons so we can move on ftom Thibs and it’s pretty likely that happens. If it doesn’t, a sweep by BOS almost a lock. No punchers here.
Our complete futility against contenders; s actually really impressive. A normal team would at least win one by accident.
You think it’s likely we lose to the pistons? Based on your gut or the numbers?
We have one of the most talented starting teams in the NBA. The bench is a little weak (especially before Mitch), but we are close enough to the best teams that we should beat teams like Boston and OKC via randomness once in awhile and definitely beat the Cavs at least 50-50.
We can’t beat the best teams because we run an unimaginative stagnant offense with little purposeful player and ball movement that can beat the bad teams but that gets exposed by the better defenses.
We can’t beat the best teams because the Towns/Brunson combo gets attacked and Thib’s defense schemes, well, I’m not even sure what they are because we don’t guard the 3 point line and unless Mitch is playing we don’t protect the rim either.
We don’t beast the best teams because our coach is not flexible with lineups and doesn’t make as many or as good adjustments as other top coaches.
We look like shit the last couple of games because even though we are healthy, we are a tired team. Teams like Boston, Indiana, Milwaukee and Detroit are all peaking NOW. Even Orlando, Chicago and Miami are putting it all together the last few weeks. There are so many good teams out west taking turns beating each other it’s hard to tell who’s peaking, but certainly the Clippers, Lakers and Houston are and OKC is still playing great with all the depth they used all season.
We were trying to win last night. We just got gassed.
We peaked somewhere before the all-star break even before we had Mitch back. We are a tired team. Hopefully we’ll be freshened for the first round and we have so much more talent and experience than the Pistons we should win round 1. But if we don’t, the first big change is to get rid of Thibs.
I’m mind melding with Strat again….I think a coaching change is happening regardless if we squeak by Detroit…as pags said…there is no fantasy of beating Boston…Dolan will want someone to be the fall guy and if he isn’t ousting leon…Tommy T is the fall guy…and deservedly so…
Roster reconstruction should be interesting….if none…better get a creative coach…I would give Jenkins a shot…
The Knicks are one of the worst fourth quarter teams in the NBA. They lose fourth quarters by an average of -1.0 points, that ranks 25th in the league. The five teams that rank below them are all lottery teams.
That seems like an incredibly bad omen.
Seems to me like a few posters are wilting under the pressure of having a 50 win team entering the play-offs at virtually full health. The last 2 years we had the in-built excuse of injuries to key players so we could just sit back and enjoy the ride. But even before the first jump ball we have a bunch of I told you sos, I knew this would happen. Chill out–there is enough bandwidth to be able to complain after the games.
Certainly seems like it could be a lack of depth problem.
Since they fired Jenkins the Grizzles are 3-5 and have dropped from having home court advantage to the #8 seed. Seems like that move could have waited til the off season.
Coaching creativity notwithstanding, no one is turning Towns or Brunson into even average defensive players. I have trouble evaluating Bridges, but he is inconsistent, maybe soft and doesn’t seem to really move the needle on either end. IMV, there are two really good defenders, OG and Mitch, and one good, albeit undersized defender, Deuce. Hart is OK on the defensive end. To me, this indicates some major personnel issues that are beyond coaching schemes. I don’t really think this is a tired team, but one whose flaws have become more pronounced as the season has progressed and other coaches and players have had time to study film. And for a nice Passover treat, it’s freaking snowing!!!
Seems like some folk feel compelled to say others are wilting or panicking or some other crap….please …
Sure you can always dream…but being factual isn’t akin to whatever else you want to frame it as. ……perhaps you can say it is being harped on too much…but you are doing the same…
The thing where all 30 teams played last nite and all 30 teams play again tmrrow, but there are no games today is different. Wish they’d staggered these last games a little more
Happy to be taking our shot with Postons rather than Milwaukee. Bucks are really peaking right now
This is a big Thibs issue. Whether you think the roster construction is bad the coach has not used his roster properly at all this season. Just zero imagination to try different things.
You can slice this however you want, but “Maybe we’ll get it together enough to beat the Pistons in the first round before we get mercilessly crushed in the second” was not the outcome we were hoping for. And that’s pretty much what the consensus is here.
Thibs’ best teams have given us the sense that they were closing the season strong, that they were going into the playoffs with some momentum. This team does not have that kind of energy. Everybody is healthy, but nobody is playing very well (except OG) and the vibes are bad. A deep run does not seem to be in the cards. Beating a Detroit team that was miles behind us just a year ago does not seem like a foregone conclusion. Add it all up and it’s not really a whole lot of fun. I’m thankful for the back to back 50 win seasons but I really hope we haven’t already reached the peak.
Sure you can always dream…but being factual isn’t akin to whatever else you want to frame it as. …
JK posted something factual. And Z man peppered (no pun intended) facts in his post to support his views. Zero other facts (not a bad thing, as this blog is about opinions). I wasn’t targeting either of them in my post…
Fact – Eddie Murphy’s Boogie in Your Butt is objectively good.
I agree with most of this. Their offense is quite frankly offensive. Almost no ball movement or continuity.
The “tired” argument is, IMO a load of crap. Bridges leads the league in minutes and 4 games ago he was playing the best ball of the season and OG the best ball of his career. They all of a sudden got ‘tired’ when JB reentered the line up.
This team is just playing out the string with no discernable difference between the 3 or 4 seed. Their effort level will go way up during the playoffs. That I am 100% sure of as we saw last year.
The question is, if this mix of good players playing in a sort of non system is up to the task.
Warriors situation is interesting, if they win tommorow against the Clippers they play the Lakers in the 1st round. If they lose they drop to the play in and have a chance to play the Rockets . I wonder if they end up tanking.
Warriors situation is interesting
Silver needs a Warriors-Lakers matchup, the later the better. Conundrum for him too. Wonder what he tells/instructs/ mandates/threatens the refs to do?!
One of the traits that seems to characterize this team is that several key pieces ( notably Hart and Bridges) seem to modulate their effort based on what I surmise is their perception of what is needed to win each game. They are often wrong.Hart’s comments during the season where he claims the team knows what its doing when it seems to be falling short of reasonable expectations supports this. The other factor which seems to impact OG and Bridges is their lack of involvement in the offense when JB is playing which in turn effects their defensive effort ( although OG seemed to really be busting his butt vs the Cavs last night). KAT’s effort at least on the offensive side seems consistent, but his physical limitations and his penchant for dumb fouls seem to place a hard cap on his defensive contributions. That said, I agree with Bob’s premise and that JB will find a way to get more out of OG and Bridges. I’m cautiously optimistic that we beat the Pistons in 6 and take the Celtics to game 7 before losing. ( Absent a serious injury Boston’s O & D is just too much for Knicks to overcome, especially with Thibs’s lack of ability to adapt to what Celtics are doing).
Wildly optimistic to think we can rake 3 games iff if BOS when we’ve mostly been effortlessly blown out by them in most games with us playing our game 7 rotation and them cruising, depleted, or both. A sweep is far more likely.
The Celtic aren’t sweeping anyone outside of the first round If Brown is hobbled. You don’t take pain killing shots to your knee a week before the playoffs for a minor issue. Boston is known for playing fast and loose with injuries and player’s careers.
Brown is their weakest starter and worst shooter. Pritchard is putting up BPM comparable to Brunson rhis years and BOS probably improves by starting him
We’d be lucky to lose in 5 if we even make it there.
giannis averaging 31 15 12 over his last five. glad we’re not seeing him
Must be an anti-tank measure. Makes marginal sense, kind of. A bunch if teams threw games on the last day last season to get the matchup they wanted.
Pags, we’re 7 or 8 days from game 1 vs Detroit, maybe you can take a break from the constant posts about how badly Boston is gonna kick our ass?
There will be plenty of time for your gloom and doom shtick when the time comes.
I’m starting to wonder if the reason we’re kinda backing into the playoffs is because we’re focusing on bringing Brunson up to speed more than actually winning. There’s little to no practice time at this point, so maybe these last few games were really chess not checkers? Or is it that my glasses are a little too rosy? I dunno..but we’ve been waiting all season long to see what this roster can do at full strength. We finally have it, and the playoffs are here.
I’ve seen pundits talk about how Detroit probably can beat us in the 1st round all because of the physical win they pulled off the other day. I can’t see that happening with all of our guys available. It may take us 6 games, but Detroit goes down in round 1. I still think the Bucks are a better matchup for us though. 4 or 5 games, that series.
Seems like Pete Alonso is good.
Put a little tiny MAN in your butt
Yup…. and boy genius must be a moron for signing him for eleventy billion dollars for the next 4 years. He also stumbled into being the finals MVP last year…. but they will be better off without him…. got it!
Alonso’s batted ball profile so far is downright freakish. He has hit zero infield fly balls, has made soft contact on only 2.4% of batted balls, has a 65.9% hard hit rate, and 29.3% of his batted balls have been barreled. He has also struck out in only 8.9% of his plate appearances.
Obviously this is not going to last, but wow. It certainly hasn’t hurt that he has had runners on base in 62% of his plate appearances.
Ok d-mar, switching gears to talking about how we likely won’t get past DET with a side of pointing out that they’re already a better team since the start of 2025 and will be rocketing past us next season given their substantial internal upside and our total lack thereof
given their substantial internal upside and our total lack thereof
Ugh? Please explain what you mean by internal (rookies etc analysis please)and our total lack thereof, including why we can’t change our FO or our coach or trade anyone of our top six players for upside…or you can STFU.
I vote for STFU.
Boring, Ostentatious, and Annoying. The Pags Trifecta.
Ok constructive ideas for how we actually become championship contending – what are they? Replacing Thibs, yes, but it’s not just the coaching it’s the roster construction. Too many 1 way players or players with glaring flaws. Last year we had a starting team of two way players and Brunson as the offensive engine, esp after Randle went down. This year disproved the hypothesis that we can be an elite team with OG and bridges, making up for brunson and towns’ one way play. The dream to contention would be move off of Towns+Bridges+McB for Giannis and whatever? We can take a swing for Durant — likely won’t work out. I don’t think we have assets to get Booker. We’re stuck in 2nd round purgatory with the current roster construction. Maybe we could go all offense and add more shooting in the lineup and bring Hart off the bench , but Thibs will never do that. Tough
So many things wrong with johnlocke’s post. Let’s start with the fact that we’re one game away from the start of the playoffs, so the timing of the question is completely off. This is a question for if/when we get bounced, not before anything actually happens. Because, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen because it hasn’t happened yet (except for Pags, who knows all and it’s all bad all the time).
Second, I’m staring at last year’s roster, searching for two-way, unflawed players. You mean RJ? Randle? Jericho/Shake/Malachi?
Third, you look at pretty much any of the champs the past decade and they mostly all lost in the second round, often repeatedly, before coming back and getting a chip. Once purgatory here was 41 wins. Now it’s losing in the second round. Hmm.
Look, I’m as depressed as the next guy because this team has yet to realize the sum of its parts, much less being greater than the sum of its parts. And this recent giving up big leads in the second half habit makes me concerned that maybe they’re a bunch of gutless wonders.
But I want to see what they do in the playoffs before I call for flushing this iteration down the toilet. Even if they’re not hitting on all cylinders (which honestly they’ve mostly only done for a quarter here and there), we should gentleman’s sweep the Pistons.
After that, it’s probably the defending world champions with another year of seasoning (while we’ve mostly had just this year if that of seasoning, total). I wouldn’t be deflated if we lost, although I would be if we’re not highly competitive.
That’s why they play the games.
what, no nba basketball today?!?!?
so cool that this time next week we’ll be in to playoff basketball…
hopefully the knicks don’t ruin the whole experience…
Thank you Raven. Great take. Reasonable take. “That’s why they play the games.” Of course. I’m off the ledge. Sometimes being negative is just a natural defense to avoid disappointment. Go Knicks, straight up, no chaser.
I guess I’m in the minority, but I don’t think the regular season against the Pistons means much. I’d be surprised if it takes us more than 5.
The Celtics are another story.
Unlike Z-man and a few others, I do actually believe it comes down to coaching. The roster is certainly flawed, and quite thin. But as someone who predicted 48 wins before the season precisely because of those flaws, I do believe our top end talent is elite, and that’s what counts in the playoffs. We can beat the Detroits of the world without great coaching. Anything more, though, and it’s going to take a coach who can mix and match according to the opposition, who can change strategies, who can throw new looks at teams. Who somehow gets players to embrace the motion offense that worked so well for awhile, until people’s feelings got hurt or whatever. No, I don’t think the vibes are good, but like the Yanks in the 70s, I don’t think it will much matter in the playoffs. They’ll beat who they should, and, unless the coaching is superb, lose to those they should.
https://x.com/_prezidente/status/1911137509024682135 night time thread to read
Listen I wouldn’t be shocked if we lose to Detroit but those stats are over pretty meaningless samples
I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest we should lose to the pistons. If we do, it would be surprising.
Honestly, neither the optimistic nor pessimistic takes really mean anything right now. At the end of the day, we’re right where we were when we traded for KAT on the eve of the season. The needle hasn’t really moved in either direction, beyond wishing that we weren’t in the same round 2 bracket with the Celtics.
I don’t think there is a single poster here that deep down felt then that we were going to have a strong chance of beating them. Maybe a decent chance, but most of us felt back then that it was strictly a puncher’s chance.
As to round 1, there’s legitimate reasons to be pessimistic, but also to be optimistic. We can make predictions, but the proof will be in the pudding. To each their own!
What bugs me about Pags is the same thing that bugged me about Doogie. His schtick has been so played out that nothing he says can be taken seriously. And that’s a shame because he brings up decent points from time to time. But mostly he’s been just a badly sanitized version of dogrufus, sort of like that shirt that festered in your gym bag for a week…even though it smells good coming out of the wash, the minute you trust it at a sweaty workout it reeks to high heaven.
So yeah, Pags, why don’t you find out where Doogie hangs out these days and pollute that blog instead of this one?
Way too many times this season I found myself thinking ‘this is not a Tom Thibodeau team’ by the way they are playing. Too many times this team has shown no grit, no swag, no tenacity. Too many times players don’t play well but stay on the floor. It could be the lack of depth, or it could be the star power and politics that come with it what prevented Thibs from making lineup changes. I don’t know.
I am still of the view that the roster has been poorly constructed. It is not a bad roster, but not an elite one either. I am thus not on the fire Thibs camp. I am not on the certainly losing to the Pistons camp either. Let us see how the playoffs go and take it from there. Time is obviously is running out. Can they Knicks finally find that extra gear they have been missing all season?
rama, just to be clear, I am not a fan of Thibs as much as I think that his coaching is not inferior to others when it comes to what he does with this particular roster.
Meaning, it’s a 48-55 win roster, which by definition is not “a coach away” from beating the 58-65 win rosters.
If we lose to the Pistons, or any other team in our “roster” bracket, sure, go ahead and blame the coach. But I think the talk about how shooting more 3’s would change our fortunes all that much is pure speculation, and mostly misguided. Same with the talk about minutes. I don’t think there’s a coach out there that would squeeze more wins out of this roster, either in the regular season or the playoffs.
With all due respect, I’m not going to take much stock in what the armchair QBs here at KB have to say about his coaching. Not with this bunch. Not when excellent coaches like Taylor Jenkins and Mike Malone are getting fired. No coach that ever lived has a significantly better chance of getting these Knicks past these Celtics. Detroit is a different story, let’s see how it plays out before passing judgement.
This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.