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75 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.14)”
Did SGA run the court making the choke sign? 🤭
Was totally wrong. Did not expect OKC to rise to the occasion.
That was their chance. Pacers won’t win this series now.
Nesmith and Nembhard’s success (as role players) in this playoff makes me think not only about Obi, but also Grimes. This team’s bench could have been so much better with a bit more patience.
(For the record I loved Grimes from before the draft but by the time he was traded I was OK with it since he didn’t seem to develop at all).
So we’re going to interview Mike Brown and Taylor Jenkins, with more expected to be added to the list. Of the available veteran coaches, they seem like the two most promising options: Brown because of his flexibility and experience with the GSW offense, Jenkins because of his relative youth and ability to find success even during the long stretches when Ja was away from the team due to injury and/or Ja-ness.
But I’m also curious about this question from last night:
Someone who recognizes their limitations and hires and listens to people to overcome those limitations is a great thing. I have no idea why anyone would think Jenkins hiring an offensive coordinator is a bad thing especially after all our very legitimate complaints about Thibs.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44480928/no-one-was-same-page-memphis-grizzlies-shocking-firing-taylor-jenkins
This article offers a good explanation. Sounds like Jenkins was pressured to fire his own assistants last year and oversee a staff of European assistants hired by Zach Kleinman. They were atually 3rd in the NBA in Offensive Rating back ’21-’22 in their best season under Jenkins.
“There were two architects and one supervisor — Jenkins — charged with blending the competing visions. One was Tuomas Iisalo, a Finnish coach who’d had a meteoric rise in Europe…another was player development specialist Noah LaRoche, whom the Grizzlies had lured from a consulting role with the San Antonio Spurs and charged with teaching an offense that prioritized spacing and largely did away with pick-and-rolls and dribble handoffs.
Jenkins, the fifth-longest-tenured NBA coach, had never met either of the assistants before interviewing them, one source said.
Still, the Grizzlies paid a seven-figure buyout to Paris Basketball, which Iisalo (pronounced EE-za-lo) coached to a EuroCup championship last season. Memphis also gave Iisalo and LaRoche seven-figure salaries. That’s especially lucrative for a second-row assistant such as LaRoche, but it’s also extraordinarily unusual for a second-row assistant to have his fingerprints all over the revamping of a team’s offensive system. In fact, Memphis hired LaRoche first (in May 2024) with the intention of building the staff of assistants around him, one source said. The club wouldn’t bring in Iisalo until nearly two months later.”
Man that was one of the best NBA Finals games I’ve ever seen. That’s what beautiful ugly basketball looks like. Both teams took everything away from each other and they both had to win with their plan Z. That was just a pure battle of will, and it was incredible.
And Lu Dort is fucking insane. Watching him and Caruso take turns wrecking the Pacers reminds me of the Giants deploying Strahan, Tuck, and Umenyiora against Tom Brady.
And I’m sorry but it should be plain as day that the Knicks are not built to play in a game like that. And it largely boils down to KAT. The kind of versatility and optionality we saw last night is simply not available to us when we have a weakness that glaring.
There’s two options I see:
1. Unwind the KAT trade. Do what Minnesota did and bring back the versatility and completeness of the roster before last offseason.
2. Build a team no one can stop by trading OG plus whatever for Durant.
My preferred choice is 1 but Leon seems committed to KAT. And to me, if you’re going to commit to KAT, then commit all the way and build an unstoppable offense.
This team is currently two half measures: a little bit of great defense with OG, a little bit of great offense with KAT. But ultimately neither the defense nor the offense is good enough to win a series like this.
Pick a side now. Not two years too late like you did with Thibs.
This division of labor thing will never work at the ultimate level against teams this complete.
The Extender strikes again.
I would need to see a YouTube clip of the calls to know if this was his finest work. Pacers got a lot of calls. The one Turner block of Chet was the only egregiously bad call that favored OKC that I remember but twitter seems to think he was at it again.
“…it should be plain as day that the Knicks are not built to play in a game like that. And it largely boils down to KAT. The kind of versatility and optionality we saw last night is simply not available to us when we have a weakness that glaring.”
One disconnect here is that folks thought we could beat the Pacers because they have been widely perceived as an All-O/No-D team. The truth is, they beat us more with their defense than their offense.
Not that they are a defensive juggernaut or anything, because OKC’s offense is far from all-time elite. But Carlisle has them picking up full-court and pressuring the ball non-stop. They are just swithcable enough to not suffer as much as we do when Brunson and KAT are on the floor together, and they have more quickness than OG, more length than Hart, and more physical toughness and relentlessness than Mikal. The guy on our team that would fit in best with the Pacers is Deuce.
The three weakest links on the Pacers defense are Hali, Obi, and TJ. But their weaknesses are more than made up for with the relentless pace and individual atheleticism. Hali is sneaky long and smart and is one of those players who can run all day and not break a sweat. Obi is long, jumps out of the gym, and plays selective minutes to keep him fresh. TJ is like a soccer player in a basketball uniform, he must be one of the quickest and strongest players in the NBA and just eats up open space on both ends.
Seems like Indy’s defense is committed to not let SGA and JDub beat them, and it is sort of working. Chet made some big plays around the rim but has mostly been silent. iHart isn’t getting to his floater. They are living with whatever Dort and Caruso get. They don’t seem to be all that worried about Cason, Joe, or the deep bench.
One thing that really stands out is how relentless Indy is on the offensive boards. They are good at boxing out and all have a nose for the ball.
They are a supremely well-coached and cohesive team with plenty of talent and oodles of athleticism. Hopefully folks will see that they will be a force in the East for the next few years until the salary cap bites them. And I don’t think our series against them was as close as the 4-2 outcome would suggest. We lost all 3 games that would have tied the series, whereas OKC responded in games 2 and 4.
“1. Unwind the KAT trade. Do what Minnesota did and bring back the versatility and completeness of the roster before last offseason.”
This is the only option that makes sense to me. The problem is, KAT’s market value is not what it once was. He’s sort of like Julius in that he’s similarly in the “fool’s gold” category of all-NBA players. No one is giving up several unprotected picks for him, and probably not 2 vital role players. The most you can get is an aging, or overpaid, or injury-prone superstar with maybe some token sweetener coming back. You’re not getting someone like Giannis with him unless you include two other good players that you can’t replace with zero draft capital.
“2. Build a team no one can stop by trading OG plus whatever for Durant.”
I don’t see any team that has KAT, Brunson, and 37yo KD being unstoppable. I see that team as one which will once again get run off the court by Indy, and possibly other improving teams. Atlanta, Orlando, Detroit, and hey, don’t sleep on 2026 playoff Celts if Tatum recovers ahead of schedule.
My preference is for option 3. Leon needs to admit that he made a colossal mistake with cost the Bridges acquisition, which compounded the mistakes of varying sizes he made before that. He needs to retreat for a year and pivot to a team that has a chance to keep up with OKC, who is only going to get better…not to mention other teams with young talent, cap space, and excess picks. Be on the receiving end of the Obi salary dumps, the Grimes desperation moves, the Dort UDFA finds. Pivot away from deeply flawed fool’s gold players like Mitch and Hart, and to a lesser degree, Mikal and OG. Build a team that can play relentless 2-way basketball with multiple ways to play on both ends like IND and OKC. Maybe one (or several) of the young players can help…can Dadiet be our Nesmith? Can Kolek be our TJ? Can McCullar be our Josh Hart at 1/10 the cost?
But that’s not going to happen, is it?
So I am resigned to concluding that this team is not going to win a championship during the Brunson window because Leon chose to go all in on a player that was nowhere near worth the cost, and compounded that mistake by bringing in a second offensive superstar than in no way complements Brunson when playing teams at the highest level.
That’s especially true without OG and even worse if it also somehow included Mitch as someone suggested yesterday. If we are going to do that, we might as well turn the team over to Isiah.
Idk, last year was all about “build a team to rival the Celts,” and we did that.
You can’t adjust your roster each offseason to mimic a different team. Just pick your stars and build around them cohesively while fitting your coach’s systems.
KAT single-handedly got us one of our Pacer wins. Brunson’s still a stud. Get a new coach in there and let him cook.
The main reasons why I would trade KAT for KD are a) I think KD is still significantly better than KAT on both ends, and b) he has a shorter contract so it adds flexibility. But if the trade was contingent on extending KD, no way. And knowing KD, he will insist on that, just like PG13 insisted on it. But I don’t think it will happen, so whatever.
But there should be some moves to be made out there that can make us at least marginally better. There are lots of teams in the West who are licking their wounds right now…Memphis, Clips, Denver, Dubs, Sacto, Minny….and some young teams who might want someone like Josh Hart as a stabilizing influence, sort of like Detroit brought on TH2, Harris, and Schroeder to stabilize their kids. The margin for error is zero, so whatever Leon does from here on out has to be a clear win.
“Idk, last year was all about “build a team to rival the Celts,” and we did that.”
Not really, we played a Celts team that was maybe 70% of what they were the year before, and their “young Thibs” of a coach was exposed.
“You can’t adjust your roster each offseason to mimic a different team. Just pick your stars and build around them cohesively while fitting your coach’s systems.”
This seems like an oversimplification. If the stars that you pick are not compatible, you don’t just get to pick and choose how to replace them. You have to deal with what’s available and what you can do given what you have. The key is to build a team that can match any other team’s styles. The Celts had that last year, but injury, age, and their coach’s blind spots caught up to them. Indiana and OKC both have that this year. They both have counters for everything we do. Right now we have a roster that no coach can get over the top of those teams without an enormous amount of good fortune.
So sure, pick your stars…but also recognize your ceiling with said stars eating up cap space and on-court flexibility. Brunson and KAT will simply not work at 32+ minutes a game. And if either plays less than that, it’s a waste of money.
The issue for the Knicks all season has been and will continue to be the KAT/Brunson combo. There’s only so many times I can state the obvious. And since we aren’t going to trade Brunson, we have to either ultimately trade KAT or find a coach that can unleash them offensively (possible) and also figure out a way to be good enough defensively to actually contend (much tougher).
So we are back to same place we’ve been all along.
You either find a starting caliber rim protecting 3&D PF to put next to Towns (they don’t grow on trees and who do we trade to get him) or experiment more with the Mitch/Towns combo (may work against some matchups, but won’t against others and doesn’t maximize Towns).
That’s why I’ve been saying forever that even though I like Towns a lot and think he’s better than Randle, he probably ultimately has to be traded because Brunson (the weaker link) is off the table and the fit is not good.
We have a very good team. IMO we have more talent than the Pacers and can add depth in the offseason, but teams like OKC and Indiana have pieces that fit together almost perfectly and have had superior coaching. We can fix some of our issues with a coaching change, off season moves and internal development but we can’t fix players that don’t fit right unless Towns suddenly learns to be a high level defender.
Also, as someone who has watched very little Memphis ball – how are people feeling about Taylor Jenkins? What are his tenets? I’m reading that he was primarily a defense oriented coach who had to bring in an offensive co-ordinator…
it’s difficult to evaluate this because the last time we can be confident jenkins was coaching a genuine nba offense was really 22-23, and it’s possible he’s changed a lot since then, especially given what he was exposed to this year. but 23-24 was maybe the most injury riddled year in nba history and last year kleiman forced not one but two offensive coaches on him, rearranging the entire offense on the noah laroche st joe’s scheme that got so much attention. it was very different than what came before in memphis, especially in eschewing screens. jenkins was a normal to heavy screen user previously (and btw same is true of lisalo, his replacement, so his firing was actually a style revision in many ways).
the two hallmarks of jenkins’ earlier offenses were probably fast pace and crashing the glass. maybe the most impressive feature of those grizz teams is that they managed to do both of those things year in and year out while not obviously seeing the sort of defensive cost you’d normally associate with them. of course as always with coaching some of that is personnel.
i wouldn’t say he ran sets that were extreme in any direction like the 24-25 team, and he used plenty of convention spread pnr, double drag, horns, etc. it’s true that his teams were typically below average in 3pa, but again some of that is personnel. he did sometimes sacrifice spacing more than you’d expected with a lot of brandon clarke in the dunker’s spot with a center in the lane, but it was rarely egregious. he came up under bud and he’s not really anti space or 3. at one point he was famous for constantly screaming let that mfer fly at shooters.
about halfway through he came up with this “three gear” vernacular which mostly seemed like a low content way of separating already obvious categories of play according to how set and prepared the defense was. but it was meant more as a communication / teaching / tracking efficiency approach, and he’s always seemed fairly thoughtful about the gap between clipboard and hardwood in that respect.
“KAT single-handedly got us one of our Pacer wins.”
Who cares? Aaron Nesmith single-handedly got the Pacers one of their wins. Does that justify paying him $50+M AAV? OTOH, get me KAT on Nesmith’s salary and I’d be thrilled with having him on the roster!
PS you could argue that Nesmith was actually better/more impactful overall than KAT was in that series, even with his sprained ankle.
Just for the record, at the start of the season I said I thought Towns looked too heavy. I still think that. The extra weight may make him stronger, but if he came in 20+ pounds lighter I think it would help defensively. If I were in charge, I’d tell him to drop 20 or more pounds, put him on whatever diet Mitch is on and see if that helps his quickness and energy.
I’m no Austin Rivers fan, so take this with a gigantic grain of salt, but it’s fascinating seeing him bitch about the Knicks here.
https://xcancel.com/NBA_NewYork/status/1933620981891018985
His bit about his first talk with Thibs being Thibs telling him, “I wanted Derrick [Rose], but you’ll do great” (and then they traded for Rose and buried Rivers) was hilarious.
That’s my position.
I hate trading away players I really like, but I like Mitch, KD, OG, Bridges and Brunson a lot better than what we have now. Mitch is a good fit with Brunson defensively, KD is more creative than Towns on offense and less of a problem to deal with defensively.
The problem there is that it was reported that the Suns are not interested in Towns, the Durant window is short and we may have to extend him and get stuck with a bad situation as he’s deteriorating.
I’d be against almost any other trade for Durant. I’m not killing an already bad defense by including one of our very good defenders.
It’s KDS (Knicks Derangement Syndrome)
A lot of people in media and elsewhere hate NY, Dolan, Knicks fans etc.. and will never be capable of finding reality.
I’m very much on the fence about the Knicks interviewing Brown and Jenkins. I think those two are good coaches and would be good for this team, but I would like a young and fresh voice at this point. There are only 5 retreads that I’d be all in on hiring; Thibs, Pop, Lue, JVG, Spo. All of whom are very much unavailable- one of which we’ve hired and fired in the last 5 years. I wouldn’t be mad at either hire out of Brown and Jenkins, but they’re just not my preference now. I fully understand the team wanting a veteran coach, because I think we are right there with the right hire and smart bench additions. But give me a fresh, younger voice with a strong coaching staff.
I am strongly opposed to Brown. He’s had repeated chances and failed multiple times with multiple teams. I think he’s probably more likely to get hired though. The Knicks were interested in him when they hired Thibs and he’s supposedly friends with World Wide Wes.
To me Jenkins is a fresher newer voice.
He’s young. He had a very good record with Memphis prior to the injury riddled year. The conditions of his firing don’t suggest a problem with his coaching. They suggest a problem with management/owner. He was essentially forced to fire members of his own staff and bring in offensive coordinators with different views about how to run the offense. That ultimately lead to problems with Morant who didn’t like his role in the offense.
He comes out of the Spurs organization (which can’t be a negative) and was an assistant under Budenholzer for successful runs in Atlanta and Milwaukee. He also has a reputation as being a good development coach.
Unless they have someone else in mind, I think this would probably be a good hire, but this is a case where I’m expecting them to screw up and hire Brown. We’ll be solid with Brown. He’s a good coach. But imo no way is he a top coach. At least with Jenkins there is a chance we are getting a very good coach with some upside potential who may have actually learned a few tricks in this last year.
Despite sharing the Jenkins name?
8 winning seasons in 9 years is not “failing multiple times”, even in a theoretical NBA vacuum where good coaching has a correlative relationship with winning.
It’s probably not fair to blame Brown for being fired from the Kings, given their general ‘dumpster fire’ management vibes.
Ha!
Just want to point out that OKC won down the stretch through the offensive wizardry of running a PnR with their 2 best players.
I hope that our new coach can study and figure out such sorcerous methods.
From Edwards’ story on Jenkins and Brown: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6425152/2025/06/13/knicks-coaching-search-taylor-jenkins-mike-brown/
If I were a bettering man like Strat, I still would wager heavily that they will hire a veteran, but they’re at least going to try to pick the brains of smart young assistants. Maybe one of them will be so dazzling in the room, they’ll leapfrog the retreads?
Also, as uneasy as I feel about the idea of the Thunder kicking off a dynastic run (on top of not wanting good things to happen to a franchise that was stolen from a basketball-loving city), good lord would it be satisfying to see the Pacers lose the franchise’s best-ever chance at an NBA title because they choked away that game last night.
I just had a thought- I would actually trade Anunoby for JJJ. Let me be clear, I’d much rather keep OG, but a starting 5 of KAT/JJJ/Bridges/Hart/Brunson would be just as good if not better of the current starting 5. For one, there would be no fighting for shots off of broken offense between Bridges and JJJ. And defensively, JJJ can definitely do alot of what OG did for us while being a better rim protector and slightly better rebounder. I realize this would require Brunson to improve at the POA and spend more energy on defense, but I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask. Given the Grizz have Aldama to replace JJJ next to Edey, I think that’s a very fair trade. Keeping Bridges is not necessarily a bad thing because he’s better on offense than Anunoby and can be just as impactful on defense if he’s not the primary POA defender. I kinda like that idea- what say the good folks of KB?
Imagine if Indiana, after getting swept by Boston in the conference finals, had decided to trade Hali bc they’d “never be able to win a championship with him.”
IMO, this finals is proving the opposite to me. We should keep our core, get a coach who will implement a better/more egalitarian offense, address our bench depth in the off season, and develop our bench and young players during the next regular season.
Like Swifty and JohnLocke and a few others, I am firmly Team Run It Back With a New Coach and a Better Bench. To the latter point, who is a free agent we can reasonably get with the taxpayer midlevel? And what kind of free agent would you prioritize? On the latter point, I’m torn between either:
A 3-and-D wing who will actually shoot, and is bigger than Deuce, so Hart can come off the bench; or
A stretch 4 who can shoot and defend, who would slide OG down to the 3, Mikal to the 2, and Hart to the bench.
Depth at other positions wouldn’t hurt, especially with some question about how much the kids (Dadiet in particular) might be ready to contribute, but we need someone who can make the starting lineup make more sense, even if that player isn’t as good overall as Hart. Almost no teams have cap space, but a good number of them will have access to the full midlevel. Who’s a realistic target who fulfills one of those two archetypes?
I agree. There’s a lot of variability and parity in the NBA. A coach that gets 10% more out of this roster could win a title. Stay the course. OKC offense is incredibly unimpressive.
I think the Knicks would have had a lot of trouble with OKC, but they were very clearly good enough to beat the Pacers.
I think Hart needs to play way less of a role and for damn sure should not be leading the NBA in minutes per game. Also this is Mikal’s contract year so you need to figure out what to do with him.
I don’t know if I really want to bring the WHOLE band back.
“I agree. There’s a lot of variability and parity in the NBA. A coach that gets 10% more out of this roster could win a title.”
Vehemently disagree. I would liken it to a chess match where there were blunders committed that resulted in a significant imbalance of opposing pieces left on the board. Any top player could beat even a grandmaster once that imbalance is established.
We have glaring holes:
-A superstar PG who is a massive liability on the defensive end due to his physical limitations
-A faux superstar stretch 5 who has mental and physical shortcomings along with deeply ingrained bad habits on both ends
-A big 3-and-D wing making a lot of money who has very iffy ball skills beyond straight line power drives and who doesn’t rebound or pass
-A smallish 3-and-D wing who has limited creation skills, never gets to to the line and doesn’t rebound
-A Swiss army knife short wing with an irreparably broken jumper and no creation skills but is high on intangibles
-A C who is elite at offensive rebounding and defending at the rim and in PnR coverage but who can’t score outside of 3 feet, or put the ball on the floor, or make anything other than a rudimentary pass, or make a FT
-An undersized defensive combo guard who is strong at the POA but can’t get to the rim with any frequency or hit a floater or defend larger players in the post
-An assortment of vet’s minimum scrubs and rookies
If a coach gets some theoretical 10% out of this roster in one area, there is going to be 10% lost in some other area. The whole will never be much more than the sum of the parts due to the assortment of flaws.
“…they were very clearly good enough to beat the Pacers.”
Well there are a whole lot of smart folks who think that they were clearly NOT good enough to beat the Pacers. And again, we have games 2, 4, and 6 as hard evidence. I doubt that any coach would have made much of a difference in that series.
Give it a rest, Z-man. This is a very good team!
I like Thibs a lot, but Towns and Mikal were badly misused on offense, and he refused to deviate from a defense that made no sense with KAT as a starting center.
He played literally ZERO zone defense with this group! Not even for a different look now and then.
We definitely need more ammo coming off the bench, but I think a new coach can get more out of this group.
“Give it a rest, Z-man.”
No, YOU give it a rest with your fanbois takes.
“This is a very good team!”
No disagreement there. But you think this is a championship-level roster, you are wrong until proven otherwise. I, for one, think it is painfully obvious that it is not. I wish it were, really I do! But it isn’t.
“Towns and Mikal were badly misused on offense, and he refused to deviate from a defense that made no sense with KAT as a starting center.”
First, KAT was acquired to be the starting C. Second, Mitch bring with him a bunch of problems that some folks here are blind to. He’s not Rudy Gobert, and even Gobert brings a host of problems. Not to mention that KAT has problems at the 4 as well. If we keep the roster the same, the next coach will find that out the hard way.
For somebody who often acts as the adult in the room, that is very childish thinking Alan.
Last night’s game wasn’t too different from game 3 of the ECF, except that the Pacers are playing a much better team. There is no shame to losing to anybody in the finals (or CF), especially not as a -17 win underdog. That said, it is 2-2, so the schadenfreudeal grave-dancing is not only 3 weeks late and a dollar short, but the Pacers should have shown you by now that they are never, ever out.
Was that explicitly stated somewhere? I remember Thibs saying “our starting center has been out all year” when referring to Mitch.
And of course all our players are flawed… that’s why they were available! Even Luka has his flaws. But the right system can minimize those flaws.
As for “championship level,” who knows what that is—it changes every year, and luck has a lot to do with it. We were a few bad bounces from playing in the Finals. That said, we obviously need more to work with and a coach who can maximize the current players.
I’m not that convinced that we actually could have beaten Indiana.
In 5 of the 6 games they beat us very convincingly whenever Brunson & KAT played together.
I know I suck at analogies (the mezzanine, the marathon, to name a few that were terrible), but this morning I came up with a good one to demonstrate just how far a team that was two wins away from the NBA finals can actually be from winning the NBA title.
10 out of 16 wins = 62.5%.
But common sense tells us those wins aren’t equal weighted, right? We should all know that the next 6 wins are much harder than the 10 we already banked.
So without further ado, I present the analogy you’ve all (definitely not) been waiting for:
Mount Everest
It’s 29,032 feet tall.
Its base camp is approximately 18,000 feet off the ground. That is 62% of the journey.
A team that is two wins away from the NBA finals is just as far from a championship as someone standing at the base camp of Everest is from the summit.
That’s the Brunson-Bridges-KAT Knicks. They’re “a very good team.” They’re not a team that can summit.
Try a new coach but IMO this team is more likely to backslide. Leon got the mix of players wrong. And I wouldn’t waste another year getting more proof.
Maybe Chris Boucher?
The lemon fresh trucks in the French quarter are surprisingly refreshing.
I’m chuckling at how confident some of you are that the Knicks are condemned to purgatory without a major trade when there is zero information on what this team looks running a 5-out offense for any serious amount of time.
Do you know how many minutes we played a true 5-out lineup this season? NINETY in the regular season and ZERO in the playoffs.
But sure, undo the KAT trade and trade for KD.
I know this is a side point to the coaching search and the trade hypotheticals, but I absolutely felt this way as well from day one.
So — I’m really hoping to read a puff piece in pre-season about KAT reporting to camp in the best shape of his life thanks to our new physio team. Flexibility and quickness.
Re: Everest
I like that you’re still trying, but there is no rival mountaineer racing you to the top and/or trying to knock you off it. Thibs was fired for not beating a team in his path, not for not knowing the path. The teams the Knicks had to beat were really good at tossing rivals off the mountain. He got past a few if them, but Indiana and OKC are the Yeti and the big mean snowguy that protects Queen Elsa, respectively. It doesn’t matter who the coach is when you encounter that guy.
Plus, if it was a good analogy then the obvious next coach of the Knicks should be a nepalese sherpa because they have no problem guiding a bunch of rich westerners to their glory.
Re: Frozen
But who’s the mail slot in this analogy?
not sure player weights are all that accurate…his height and weight are pretty much still the same as when he was in college???
hopefully the plan going forward will be to have OG and KAT in their preferred roles (at the 3 and 4 ), so the notion of the extra weight/size benefiting them while competing against bigger players won’t seem to make as much sense…
i’ll tell ya donnie poser fan, as much as i’d like to share with you how much i DON’T think those hosiers will replicate the last 2 seasons performance come next year – unfortunately it’s really hard at the moment to talk too much shit, because they are still playing basketball…
and only two wins away from the summitt…so close…what a heartbreak if they can’t close the deal…
That’s the kind of compassion I’m here for
100%
Now I’m kinda hoping we run it back with a better coach just to shut people up. It was pretty obvious that we left food on the table, and No, the Pacers didn’t dominate us. We should have won game 1, and that alone would have made it a very different series. And some of the lineups Thibs put out there, I can only assume he was trolling management and its command to play more guys.
hubert i already did that math for you if 16 games = 100 percent and each game won was equal to a percentage of the total based on which game it was then 10 games won would be 55 out of a total of 136 or in other words 40.44 percent
Actually Thibs was fired for not knowing the path.
Sure, but the firing was inane because there was no path to the summit short of injuries to key opponents. The yeti wasn’t injured, so that was that.
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I don’t think the firing was insane it was just too late.
100% of the reasons cited for firing Thibs were evident back in the 2021 series vs Atlanta. I can understand not firing him then but when they reared their ugly head again against the Heat in ‘23 that was the time.
Instead the Knicks let the same exact thing happen in ‘24 and ‘25. And suddenly they became shocked that there was gambling in this establishment.
You need to be decisive when the die is cast. Not after the battle is lost.
The Knicks could not compete with a team that outscored them by 8 points over a six game series while they were being badly coached. Is that your argument?
I kind of like mezzanine better than Everest, but it’s close. Everest does hint at the level of difficulty of achieving a championship. But mezzanine seats are comfortable ones where you enjoy the show, but you are not as close as you want to be. I think everyone hated “mezzanine because it implies you are stuck there. At least Everest implies you are still climbing.
analogies are like boxes of chocolates. some people will abuse the fuck out them.
The idea we couldn’t have won that series is totally ridiculous.
Yeah, I think that’s fair, in the sense that, if you were ever going to fire Thibs despite him plainly succeeding here, then why not last year? In other words, if Thibs’ performance wasn’t the issue, then how did we even get here?
JJJ has been one of the players I’ve heard rumors they are interested in going back to last year, but coming up with trade has been an issue.
I’ve been saying that for awhile.
What makes their offense good is their defense and ability to generate TOs. If you can keep your TOs down and slow them down a bit their offense will be less impressive.
I don’t know how anyone can think that.
We lost 4-2 and were one of the flukiest shots you are ever going to see and an incredible 4th quarter shooting run away from winning game 1 and having a game 7 in MSG where we would have been the favorite by several points.
If you want to argue the Pacers defense has stepped it up a notch or with Thibs as coach we would deserve to be a underdog or that they are a better matchup against OKC than us, those are all reasonable positions. But we definitely had a chance to beat them with sub optimal coaching.
I think most of us agree that if we played 5 out we have the potential for an elite offense.
There are a couple of problems with that.
1. We would need a replacement for Hart in the starting lineup. I’ve argued we should have used Deuce more to create a 5 out lineup, but that was an argument for this year and the payoffs and not as an ideal long term solution.
2. The Brunson/Towns combo almost guarantees a mediocre defense to go with that elite offense even if we figure out how to add a starting wing that shoots.
Bring back Crazy Eyes. He shoots, defends and rebounds. With healthy Mitch, it allows KAT to move from Center to PF depending on playoff matchup & pernamently moves Hart to the bench.
I don’t think Portis is the defender you think he is, and I still don’t know that we could get him for the taxpayer exception.
My argument is that the Knicks were not a championship caliber team this year and I don’t think it was because of the coaching. They were, what, 0-16 against the top teams in the league or something? And nobody here seemed to even like the team that much up until game 4 of the eastern conference semi-finals. Every game it was “how are we gonna find a way to blow this?”, “here comes the inevitable collapse”, etc… They had a very good playoff run that transcended any reasonable expectation, and I believe it is bad business to fire a coach on such grounds. That is all.
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