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85 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.14)”
Deuce-Deuce!
Oh… damn.
These next few days will be nice and peaceful. I will enjoy them. 🙂
Peaceful until Saturday at 6pm….
The Pistons restricting out of state ticket sales is hilarious to me. Just like it was when the Sixers tried the same thing. Knicks should smell blood in the water with it being announced a week before the series starts
guess it was cool to play mikal for a few seconds so he could heep kis streak going cavs did same thing for jarrett so that he could play in 82 games.
What are we going to do to fill the time until Game 1? Make up the best possible 12-man roster from the history of the franchise (but only counting how guys played for the Knicks)? Sharing pop culture opinions we know to be deeply unpopular? Recipes?
Alan, have you reviewed The Bondsman? Can’t decide if I’m enjoying it or not, could use some help with my ambivalence…
CP3 managed to play 82 games this season Thibs has to be scheming to lure him to NY next year.
Have we discussed Orlando becoming the first team since the merger to win their division without a winning record?
Recommending Borgen and Kleo again.
pg clyde
sg riche guerin
sf debussehere
pf willis reed
c ewing
pg sugar ray
sg allan houston
sf bernard king
pf carmelo
c stoudemire
pg earl the pearl
sg starks
Raven, I watched a couple of episodes. I like Bacon, like always, but it feels like a pretty flimsy version of this premise, both in terms of the palpable cheapness, and in terms of how superficially they explore the idea and have fun with the ways he can take out escaped souls from Hell. Bacon’s mom is the most interesting character, and even she isn’t used nearly as well as she could be.
It’s also funny to have this debuting so soon on the heels of Reacher season 3, since both have non-American actors (an English actress on Reacher, an Australian actor here) doing godawful Masshole accents.
We could always relitigate the OG trade…
CP3 playing 2300 mins this year probably being underrated. lebron played about 2450
Thanks, Alan. Helps to clarify my ambivalence. I’ll keep watching, most likely. Since Kevin is charming and there aren’t any Knicks games…
Knick in 2025 — sorry, Carmelo won’t play power forward.
We could try making playoff predictions for teams other than the Knicks
I’ll pick Golden State over Memphis because although they have identical records Memphis was good early in the season and worse late, while Golden State was better late because of the Butler trade.
I’ll go with Orlando over Atlanta, but it’s a weak pick. I’m just going with the home team because I don’t have any better reason.
Are you sure Debusschere was better than King? King was spectacular.
I believe I had that about CP3 when I discussed Booker. Quite a remarkable achievement. The olds are doing some stuff in the NBA lately.
I didn’t like Reacher 3. Reacher 2 was just ok honestly.
If I am honest, I find myself defaulting to Youtube a lot. Prestige Tv seems to put my wife to sleep and I honestly have less interest in it too for some reason. There are a few shows here and there I watch on my own and like but for the most part it’s just too much mental effort.
Any list without David Lee on it is clearly garbage. Greatest power forward in Knicks history.
I have wants, but not one of them is expected.
I want Orlando over Atlanta because Trae, but I suspect Hawks win.
I really want Bulls over Heat because Heat Culture, but probably not.
I want Grizzlies over Warriors because I don’t like Jimmy Butler even a little, but not likely.
And I want Kings over Mavs so Nico will look even worse, but even that might not happen.
I guess my rooting interest in the play in is to have the Magic end up with the 7 seed and face Boston. They’ll get swept or lose in 5, but maybe take a little pound of flesh from the Celtics in the process.
I also want Denver over the Clippers because I think Jokic should win MVP this year so anything that keeps the shine on… (Shai’s team has more wins — seriously, F you Shaun Powell…).
And I really want Wolves over Lakers because a) I HATE the Lakers, b) I still have a soft spot for Randle and DDV, and c) I feel for Cdiggy.
east:
magic over atlanta for 7
miami over chicago
heat over atlanta for 8
cle over miami
bos over magic
knicks over detroit
milwaukee over pacrs
cle over mil
bos over nyc
cle over bos
west:
griz over warriors for 7
sac over dallas
wariors over kings for 8
okc over warriors
griz over houston
wolves over lakers
clips over nuggets
okc over clips
wolves over griz
okc over min
Thunder over Cavs for chip
I love bernard king, but he played less than half the games that DeB did for the Knicks. That gave Dave the nod.
I’m 100% with you in wanting Wolves over Lakers for all the same reasons.
Had to do OPS because of some dumb private function at Lucali. Lo and behold, the ramp and asparagus pie is breathtaking. Thick ribbons of grated cheese and olive oil anointing a perfect puff of Neapolitan bread. The chew is for measure only. But… later while at Animal saying hello and farewell to some mates, a scrappy gent turned to me at the trough urinal and surprisingly said “eww.” Asparapiss…
Probably the least surprising firing of this NBA cycle
I’d like Memphis to beat GS because I think OKC/GS and Houston/Memphis would be the most fun matchups, I don’t really have an opinion either way on the east play in
The best Prince album is a toss up between Purple Rain and Sign O’ The Times. Purple Rain, short and sweet at 9 songs, is the pick if you love the big iconic singles. Sign O’ The Times, a sprawling double album with few hit singles, is the pick if you’re more of a deep cut kind of person.
Most underrated album is probably Lovesexy. Most overrated is Diamonds and Pearls. It’s not terrible but it seems a little dated to me.
I would have thought they’d wait till after the draft lottery to see if he could get absurdly lucky one more time.
I watch and enjoy a lot of shows, but my girfriend is very tough to please. She’s enjoying it. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s probably a plus.
She also didn’t fall asleep during Reacher.
Strat, all the men are evil dicks, so maybe rethink the ‘plus’ part…
What I enjoy about reacher is all the guys my size who for some reason want to fight him
I don’t want to fight him. I want to look like him so I have a shot with some of his female leftovers. 😉
Agreed. Prince is my personal GOAT. Dude was mega talented and even though single-wise there were alot of misses, his catalog is still incredible. I was commuting to work on the day he died, and Purple Rain came on the radio. Pulled over and cried like a baby until the song went off on the side of the highway lol. If you don’t feel anything by the time that song gets to his guitar solo, you have no soul. That shit gutted me that day
I was always partial to Controversy….probably because that was the first album of his I got…and wore it out in my turntable…
Sign O’ The Times for me.
RE: Reacher
I haven’t started that show yet, but I desperately need to. Maybe I’ll find the time this week to start a show or 2. What’s keeping me from it is Cyberpunk 2077, my gf wanting to watch The Last Of Us before season 2, finishing the last season of Evil, and finding time to squeeze Harley Quinn, Creature Commandos, What If, the new Spider Man series, and Daredevil in. But I like Alan Ritchson in those type of roles. I wanted DC to bring him back as Aquaman until Momoa put his stamp on it
I also never finished Designated Survivor, and I don’t know why. I really liked that show.
You can add Budenholzer to the list of available head coaches this summer.
Not a surprise but Phoenix fired Budenholzer: https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania/f9c91f3606151
I think Budz got a raw deal. FO made bad moves and pinned it on the coach. I’d like to see him resurface in Toronto or Washington
Well, if we want there will be 2 coaches who have “championship experience” available this summer if we want – Bud and Miller.
Not sure if either are “better” than Thibs. But maybe “better” in the way we need a coach to be better with this team right now.
IE, maybe better as far as being more creative with the offense and line-ups and also giving more burn to the bench guys and young players.
I feel like Bud got a raw deal in Milwaukee. If I remember they lost to Miami in the first round that year Miami just went nuclear from 3 and beat us and got to the Finals. And his brother had died right before the playoffs started?
He seemed like he kind of took that bucks team to the next level when he first got there.
Yeah, Phoenix is definitely just lookin for a scapegoat. You gave up picks to get Bradley Beal. Ya done messed up!
I think it is high time that I come out of the closet and reveal my true self. Though I will likely be banished from my family, I am tired of all the pretending and faking. Here goes… Prince is overrated, even more so in death than he was in life. (Okay, gotta, go. Getting on a plane to the Philippines now. Should be safe to return home in 5 to 10 years (about the same time the Knicks will be making a first round draft pick.))
This is the answers to so many questions about our culture. (Not you personally, Poindexter).
Prince is pretty good. The Charlie Murphy stories about him and Rick James are gems.
I don’t believe Frank Vogel is working anywhere so he’s a 3rd coach available. And I think Nick Nurse might shake loose also. Personally, I’m a bit more interested in Taylor Jenkins.
Firing Budenholzer is idiotic. He got a bum deal for the Bucks also.
The Suns put together a team that made no sense and then when they couldn’t compete because no one plays defense they fire the coach?
I think top tier coaches have to do a better job of selecting teams with competent owners, presidents and GMs etc… If you work for someone that doesn’t understand how to build a team it’s going to be on you when it fails.
I feel the same way about Prince as I do about many other great musicians…I respect his greatness more than I like his music. Maybe that will change someday…it did with Led Zeppelin, who I didn’t care for nearly as much prior to recently seeing the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin.
thibs is definitely feeling the heat his pressers have been much more agitated and confrontagional lately
the additon of many coaches who could take his place next year is probably not making him feel any bettre
My mom was very much a you either like The Who or Zeppelin kinda gal. I have never been able to like the Who. I’ve always loved Zeppelin.
I will say this. I think a non-Thibs coach could squeeze more out of this roster during the regular season with some more creative line-ups, offensive sets, shoot more 3’s, etc.
So I could see this exact team (assuming same amount of injuries) winning, say 55 games instead of 51.
But I don’t know if that would really make a difference come playoff time? Like I just feel the gap talent wise between us and Boston/Cleveland/OKC is too wide for a coach alone to make a difference.
Definitely rooting for Randle, DDV and the Twolves out West. Seeing how badly the KAT trade was perceived the first half of the season, feels like it’s evened out a lot more this last half. Part of it being KAT having cooled off but it looks like DDV and Randle have settled in there. I read an article the other day where Randle said he would love to resign with them and they might be open to it.
It’s a situation of his own making, his extreme rigidity is why so many people are really jumping on him. The lineup data for the team is pretty crazy. Our most used 5-man lineup is our starters which has played 940 minutes this season. The next most used lineup are the Minnesota starters which only played 714 minutes, nearly 5 full games less than us. There’s not another lineup in the league that has played more than 500 minutes.
Thibs is so unwilling to try different lineups that somehow Jericho Sims is in the 4th most common lineup this season.
it’s official there were 19 players in the nba who played this season with the name jalen, jaylen, jaylin, etc.
Oh good lord.
“trade Zion”
Let’s not. Unless we can get RJ back.
But you know he’s going to the Lakers.
It’s not just that a better and more adaptable coach could win more games, it’s that they could do it with less mileage on our key pieces. Thibs has absolutely shit the bed this season. The complete refusal to even attempt KAT + Mitch, the failure to use KAT’s one elite skill offensively combined with the insistence on relying on his largest deficit defensively, over and over and over…
We need to lose in the first round to ensure he’s gone. We don’t have BOS/CLE/OKC talent, but we should have a puncher’s chance. With Thibs we have none. Luckily our matchup with DET going much like our 2022 matchup with ATL is pretty much written in the stars at this point.
LOL
Don’t look, but I am seated behind you on that plane with a purple rag full of chloroform
How does Joe Dumars still keep getting important jobs in the NBA?
Am I missing something other than he was a very good player and may be a very likable person?
Wasn’t Dumars the GM of the last Piston’s championship team?
He did build a championship team in the 2004 Pistons, who beat the Shaq/Kobe/Malone/Payton Lakers.
That’s more than any Knicks GM in the last 50 years has ever done, I mean Isiah Thomas is still pulling strings with an NBA team…
“Dumars became the Pistons’ president of basketball operations prior to the start of the 2000–01 season. He was voted the league’s Executive of the Year for the 2002–03 season and quietly went on to build the team that won the 2004 NBA championship. With the win, Dumars became the first African-American executive to lead a team to an NBA championship. During the 2005–06 season, the Pistons had its best regular season record in franchise history (64–18). The Pistons made it to the Eastern Conference Finals six straight years (2003–2008) under Dumars’ watch.”
Dumars had clearly lost his fastball by the end of his time in Detroit and the Darko pick cost him his chance to build a true dynasty but that Pistons team was still one of the more impressively assembled championship teams of my lifetime. One of the rare examples of a team that didn’t have the benefit of an all-time great and one of the rare examples of a team with a major in-season acquisition playing a critical role as the Sheed trade totally changed their destiny.
I wouldn’t want him GMing my team in 2025 but he deserves a lot of respect for the accomplishment of building that team (which made 6 consecutive conference finals) completely from scratch and out of odds and ends.
On the other hand:
‘Yes, Dumars built the Pistons’ last championship team. And yes, he won Executive of the year wayyy back in 2003. But as that core aged, Dumars floundered. They failed to make the playoffs at all from 2009 until 2016, and by the time he left in 2014, the cupboard was largely bare of talent.
Since then, things haven’t improved much in Detroit, and this season is the first time in a long time that there’s legitimate hope in the future of the franchise. Much of the last decade-plus of Pistons futility can be chalked up to Dumars and his successor’s flailing after their run of glory in the early 2000s.
His brief, inauspicious stint with the Kings was even worse; those three years were marked by continued flailing and struggles in Sacramento, as the team tried and failed to find a consistent identity under Luke Walton. Yes, Dumars wasn’t in charge, but he was one of the lead decision makers in the Kings front office during a time of particular futility.’
let’s get becky hammon in here that would shake things up a bit
Coaches, GMs, Presidents etc… get fired now for 1-2 bad seasons that have nothing to do with them. I will give Dumars credit for adding Billups, Wallace and focusing on defense in that first job, but he wasn’t any good after that. I think his time is past.
“I mean Isiah Thomas is still pulling strings with an NBA team…”
And he should be playing pickleball in some Florida retirement community.
I don’t agree with all of the Thibs criticisms. He played his starters a lot of minutes this season because they stayed healthier than the bench. I would have loved for this team to play basketball that was as fun to watch as last year’s team but that was never going to happen since they lost Hartenstein and most of Mitch’s season. KAT was the front office’s solution to not having a starting center. Thibs did ok with the new team. Things weren’t as good after KAT injured his thumb and maybe Thibs could have compensated better, but since I never expected more than fifty games this season, I’m not going to complain too much.
ESPN just put out their analysts picks for every 1st rd series and I was pretty surprised that all 10 picked the Knicks. I mean the Knicks should be huge favorites but with the way the national media has been shitting on the Knicks all season long I figured at least a few would’ve picked the Pistons to pull off the upset.
Those “first year here” teams just rarely ever win their first series in the playoffs, so I don’t think they ever get picked in these sorts of things.
The Thibs minutes issue is more nuanced than some let on IMO. I’ve been critical at times for sure, but there have also been times he’s taken flack when I thought his hands were pretty tied.
What’s been inexcusable on Thibs’ end this year has been the Xs and Os, which I’m usually extremely hesitant to critique too strong but this year feel like a job in active sabotage. On defense we stubbornly kept KAT in drop, completely neglecting the strengths OG/Mikal/Hart should have in switch heavy scheme. On offense we were a completely inexcusable 28th in 3PAr, an issue exacerbated by the fact that we traded a boatload of assets for the right to be able to go toe-to-toe with the Celtics with regards to shooting talent.
The playoffs can redeem anyone, of course, but if things play out in predictable fashion (i.e. 2nd round elimination) I’m of the opinion we need to see this group with a different coach.
You gotta figure Budz will go to San Antonio to be Pop’s successor, right? Maybe the lead assistant for next season if Pop wants to go one more year, and they can pay him like a head coach.
A lot of the recently fired head coaches want to wait for another head coach position, but if they are willing to be an assistant coach, it can be a good hire. Steve Kerr had both Mike Brown and Kenny Atkinson as assistant coaches and I think it helped the Warriors. If we hired, say, Mike Vogel, to help coach defense, it could be very good for us.
i can still hear mike budenholzer saying in a interview how much phoenix was his dream job, because he was from the area…
it’s a business, and in his case, a passion as well…you would think some of these just fired coaches would take some time off, maybe go on tv, local or national, maybe do some assistant coaching for a friend…
Budz is Pop’s biggest success story from his coaching tree, so I think he’d love to succeed his old mentor.
I don’t know about a whole bunch of other things Yankees related, but I’m buying Ben Rice. Dude smokes the ball.
Ben Rice is also sporting an excellent chase rate and walk rate, indicating that he has legit plate discipline. Walk rate is up 50% from last season.
Hitters who have been old for their minor league levels can be difficult to evaluate, but Rice’s peripherals are outstanding across the board so far.
cromulent
I am (and have largely been) pretty ambivalent about Thibs. I don’t feel qualified to get into the weeds about his X’s and O’s. The team is performing about how I would expect them to perform given the talent on the roster. I don’t think there’s a magic coach out there that would turn us into a 60-win team or make us more likely to beat the Celtics (or Cavs or OKC). Maybe our ORtg and Drtg would be different, but at the end of the day, the least of our problems in terms of the standings is the coach.
I compared Thibs to Mike D’Antoni on several occasions. Firing D’Antoni didn’t make the team any better, or any worse. Like this one, that roster had a hard ceiling a good bit below “likely NBA champion.”
But sometimes, change for change’s sake needs to be considered, and changing the coach is the easiest move a team can make. Personally, I would prefer a coach who plays the kids a bit more, who benches the starters who are underperforming a bit more, who pushes his team to play at a higher pace, who doesn’t bellow as much, stuff like that. Will it make any differences in the standings or playoff success? Probably not, but who knows?
As to things like KAT playing in drop more or less making much of a difference, I’m giving Thibs the benefit of the doubt on stuff like that. YMMV.
i wonder how long trent grisham is gonna stay hot at the plate like this…didn’t realize he’s won 2 gold gloves in his career…under 30 gold glove center fielder who can now hit…that’s too much to ask for there…
goldschmidt has started off well, looks good at the plate…haven’t really taken time to slow down and watch a game all the way through to check out our pitching…
Many do, and do so in an absolute manner. This is what sometimes makes KB threads frustrating to read.
things i’m curious to see:
– when/if does thibs put mitch in to the starting lineup
– does landry stay in the rotation now, eating up deuce minutes, or as a legit 9 man rotation
– can OG contain cade one on one, for four games
– can mikal impact at least a single game
– does KAT get a single 30 point 20 rebound performance
– can jalen put in a couple of 40 points 10 assists games
– does josh get himself a triple double in a game
– will mitch look like the most dominate defensive player in the series
as shitty as our second round matchup may be, this is about as good a first round matchup as we could have hoped for…
yeah, those are some titanic, hey look that iceberg don’t look so bad, kind of words…
Before the season, ESPN’s Basketball Power Index predicted the Knicks to win 40.6 games this season and have the 19th best record in the NBA.
Knicks won 51 games and were the 5th best record in the NBA.
Now, I hear a leading 2028 presidential candidate, – Mr. SAS talk about how he’s worried to face Detroit. lol
ESPN’s power rankings, though, had the Knicks as #3 overall heading into the season. How odd. And they actually underperformed Vegas’ 52.5 wins predictions. But you’re right, the BPI haaaaated the Knicks, and still doesn’t like them very much (they’re still just 9th in BPI).
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