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Knicks Morning News (2025.06.21)
06/21/2025 11:00:00
06/21/2025 11:00:00
06/21/2025 04:22:00
06/21/2025 00:00:00
06/21/2025 00:00:00
06/20/2025 22:58:00
06/20/2025 23:30:00
57 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.21)”
I’m of the mind that Thibs contributed to the loss but that the Pacers are a better, more complete team that outplayed us decisively.
The real mismatch is in the front office, where Kevin Pritchard has executed a hybrid rebuild to perfection with far less tools at his disposal than Leon ever did. He never had cap space, never had surplus picks. He just turned paper clips into houses and won the margins.
Too bad he doesn’t have as much media on his payroll as Leon does. That article should have been written about him.
Dropping by just to say that I’ve done a full 180 and I’ll root for the Pacers in game 7 just because they play a better brand of basketball.
Also: I understand that Rose has his share of responsibilities, having built an unbalanced roster, but if we ever got to the Finals we would have been dismantled by OKC only because of Thibs unadaptability on the fly. So I think it’s fair giving a lot of credit to Carlisle.
I’m impressed the Pacers are making OKC play a game7. And maybe they win it, who knows?
Maybe this is good for the Knicks, because last offseason Leon traded a deep roster to have the players to stop Brown and Tatum, and now we’re seeing a team that relies on the bench to help the starters get this far.
Let’s see what will he come up with during the summer.
Still rooting for OKC but I don’t know why other than the choke sign. Pacers are a gritty gutty fun team.
Howdy Farfa, hope everything is running smoothly on your life. 😉
Yeah, i think you’re right. Maybe it was for the best to lose in the ECF, we did better than the previous season and we didn’t get embarrassed by the opponent.
For me we had several problems:
1. Thibs brought us this far, i love him for that, but now details matter even more than before, and he is very bad at this part. Some guys adapt during the game, Thibs needs two Ls to acknowledge something isn’t working. So i was sad to see him go, but we really need to address this, given that the team is a lot better now (although unbalanced).
2. Playing an 8-man rotation in the playoffs doesn’t mean you can have a bench with only 3 playable options. Bench players are inconsistent, that’s why they’re bench players, so you need to have 5 or 6 to play the 3 that are playing good that night. We need to address the bench in the offseason.
3. KAT’s defense, just like Thibs, KAT is good for you to get deep in the playoffs, but then comes the Conference Finals and the Finals, where defense matters even more. As many others i don’t think we can win with KAT and Brunson, and we’re not trading Brunson (he needs to get the team going, instead of going to his own number so much, but he’s not the problem at all). I don’t know what we can do with KAT’s defense, bring in a DPOY level PF, maybe? Bring in a C that is very good at defense, like Mitch, but that can handle much more minutes than Mitch? Or should we trade him and make the team much more balanced, being left with only one All-NBA player?
4. Mikal. I don’t know what to say here, besides that he was my biggest disappointment of the season. And i’m not factoring in the 5 picks, i already know we’re not getting those back. But even if he had cost 2 or 3 picks, i think he was very very underwhelming. What can we do here? I don’t know. Is he tradable? Can he get better in the 2nd season, and he needed the 1st to adapt himself to our reality? I really don’t know what to do here.
I just hope game 7 is not decided by bad “homer” calls or some random great or poor 3 point shooting. The sport is too good and the series too close to be decided by extreme variance or referees.
As smooth as Mitch’s free throw motion!
But thankfully a bit more successful for now 🙂
Dropping by just to say that I’ve done a full 180 and I’ll root for the Pacers in game 7 just because they play a better brand of basketball.
farfa is just future donnie after hillbilly elegy hit big and he pimped out his brand of traitor from man of the people bohemian fickle to smarmy shapeshifting barnacle
I will never stop being fascinated at the psychology of a fan base who spent 20 years wishing they had a coach as good as Thibs, being content with him being fired after making the Eastern Conference Finals because they assume replacing him with a better coach will be easy.
And I can’t wait to read all the praise the next coach gets for doing all the “right” things while he’s less successful than Thibs at actually winning basketball games.
Howard Beck on the Pacers, with some comments from Mike D’Antoni
https://www.theringer.com/2025/06/16/nba/indiana-pacers-nba-finals-2025-seven-seconds-or-less-suns-mike-dantoni-offense
While I understand the “run it back” premise, I was not happy about KAT even at the exact moment of the trade – I have a very specific taste in players (selfless, smart, caring, selfconscious and hardworking – raw talent is overrated), and KAT just doesn’t fit.
I thought Mikal would, and boy was I wrong. Shame on me for not having watched him enough in Phoenix and Brooklyn, going only with the narrative and that absurd (in retrospective) DPOY second place a few years ago.
So, even though Thibs had to go if only because you can’t win a title with him at the helm unless you have a bulletproof favorite team to win it all, I don’t think we should feel obliged to commit to this roster and see what happens.
If I were calling the shots, I’d try to parley KAT and Mikal into three to four apparently just a bit above average guys (a wing, a backup PG, a serviceable shooting big) who could fit better with Jalen and OG. Keep Hart and make him your Iggy like 6th man. Have a Mitch/Unknown C tag team. Keep Delon. See what you have in the youngsters.
Make us have fun.
This is a very cool plot for Looper 2
It will be hard to find a better regular season result-oriented coach than Thibs.
But once you factor in that Leon takes roster decisions not 100% aligned with Thibs, there was almost zero hope that Thibs was the right guy to help us win.
I supported Col Kurtz-Thibs till the very end
He had to leave
I largely agree with you on all points, cyber. I also agree with hubert that Prichard has done a masterful job of the hybrid rebuild, much better than Leon.
Presti has been playing 4-D chess and has his team set up for the next decade or more. Win or lose, there will be continual retooling and coaching adjustments. They don’t really have to worry about the aprons in the same way that other teams do. They can just continue to draft good players and trade guys for more picks. Jeremy on KFS likes to use the “continuous soup” analogy. It really applies to OKC. Indiana as well, although they will have more work to do as some of their guys age or become more expensive.
Leon could have had that going, but he turned the flame up too high and fucked it up with a bunch of suboptimal moves, culminating with the Bridges fiasco. Alas…
Hollinger ranking the free agent centers, and calling this by far the deepest FA position group: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6433786/2025/06/21/nba-free-agency-centers-players-ranked/
So if we do wind up trading Mitch — or KAT — the TPMLE options are more enticing than for wings in that same price range.
Hey cyber, we are going to be in Porto on September 5-8, hope we can grab a drink!
We should start searching for the teams who are a KAT away from contending and try to make a good Trade.
They have to decide whether they think they can win a championship with Brunson/KAT combo given the defensive concerns and their lack positive synergy on offense so far.
If yes, how do they firm up the defense?
If no, how do they trade him and are they confident in Mitch?
I would leave the rest of the team alone.
IMO Brunson, Bridges, OG are fine. Deuce is fine.
Hart is very good, but if we want to optimize the offense we could probably look for an upgrade at SG or PF using Mitch+ or as part of a Towns deal that brings back multiple useful players plus a pick or two. I still prefer Hart on the bench.
The idea would to either upgrade from Hart in the starting lineup and/or be satisfied with the fit at C with Brunson.
Despite the general perception here that Bridges is a disappointment, i do like many parts of his game and expect him to have a better 2nd year if he stays
I concur. I think Mikal made much more sense in a team with Randle and Divo than with KAT. To me, KAT raises our floor but caps our ceiling. There will always be some way to pick our defense apart when he is part of it. You can fool your opponent for a game if you plan it well, but not for a whole series.
I would like to run it back with a new coach, and maybe trade KAT if a good opportunity arises (but I’m ok with bringing him back). I also hope we play a little bit smaller next year, with more Deuce or Wright in the mix together with Brunson.
I agree, KYN. Bridges has to get back to attacking the paint and drawing some fouls. That soft pull-up game is not good enough. I think he also has to work on his body to toughen up.
Honestly, I hope he tweaks something where he has to miss a game or two and that iron man streak is no longer a thing. Even if it’s not a conscious decision, I wonder if he subconsciously avoids contact with that streak in the back of his mind.
I also hope our next coach carefully studies what Carlisle has the Pacers doing on defense, where as on offense, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Of course, he doesn’t have KAT and Brunson mucking things up.
(edit: I see iserp beat me to it!)
I won’t commit seppuku if Kat appears in our starting lineup next season but i definitely prefer getting a more D-oriented more athletic C tbh.
The game has become Athletic First as it seems
One game off will get things done!
Crazy but it may be the Solution to his “don’t touch me” driving approach!
Farfa gets us!
Cyber gets us!
Owen begrudgingly gets us!
Ptmilo especially gets us!
Good basketball if more fun to watch and root for than laundry. Let’s all stop the granfalloonary and enjoy life a bit.
I guess with Bridges you have to believe in the back of his baseball card. He had some really good seasons with Phoenix (3 consecutive years of TS% over .620) and his last year with Brooklyn he had 258 FT attempts vs. 96 with the Knicks this past season (and yes, I know he was their #1 option but it does show he’s at least capable of drawing fouls)
There’s a really good player there somewhere, hopefully the next coach can unlock it.
At least, I want Brunson, Deuce, Bridges, OG & Mitchell back next season. I dont mind trading KAT, but he has a huge salary, and it is difficult to think of scenarios in which a trade makes sense for both teams. So trading him would require patience. Josh Hart might be a trade piece if we want to shake things up, because is a PF masquerading as something else, and his salary is easier to fit in trades. But I like him, and he might be important for team chemistry.
Okay, I’m going to throw a hot take out there, not even sure I believe it, at least entirely, but curious to hear others on it. Brunson’s D gets hammered, and there’s talk of his needing to get teammates involved more, but most people end with “Brunson’s not the problem.”
What if, in fact, he is? Remember when he was out in the middle of the year, and the team suddenly played Beautiful Basketball and won a bunch of games on the back of Assists for a bit?
None of our wings are good at slow, half-court play where they have to make something happen on their own (especially with five seconds left on the clock). However, they’re all really good athletes who are good at transition (but looking at your hands, OG).
There’s nothing more fun than Brunson in the last five minutes of a close game. But the other 43?
I think he’s not, while certainly he is a trade-off that needs to be accounted for.
His offensive talent is pristine, probably top 6-8 in the League right now (better than him: SGA, Jokic, Durant, Luka, Curry?, Ant?, Tatum?), and that’s the main ingredient to win since 1946. Add to that a high character, a golden aura, and a wealth of huge moments in NY, and you *have* to build around him.
Problems arise when you build a roster that doesn’t account for that (or you can’t coax the best version out of that roster).
So yeah. Brunson is not perfect. But he’s the best offensive player I’ve seen don the Knicks jersey in the last 25 years and that’s the hardest thing to find in the NBA.
This would never happen, so I’m just spitballing. But Donovan Mitchell signed a three-year extension in 2024, I think. He has a player option for 2027-2028.
So would you straight up trade KAT for Donovan Mitchell, with both about $50M/year? And then we’d need to shop for a utility-not-boutique Big to play alongside Mitch.
We would have scoring and onball wing action to burn. The Cavs of course wouldn’t do it. But Donovan is 100% a NYer and he really both wants and deserves a championship.
And I totally agree with you, Farfa.
I guess the questions are a) how bad a problem is the lack of ball movement, and b) how can you fix it.
Last thing I want to do is see Brunson gone. Just wondering if there’s a big patch that needs fixing.
If Brunson is A problem it will come up like a dead body thrown in the Dead Sea.
Love, money and Egoist nbaers cannot be hidden forever!
Till then HE’S THE MAN
Yesssss, but Cavs wouldn’t to it. To trade KAT you need:
– Matching salary: So either a true max player that asks out, an old player still being paid the max, or multiple players.
– A win now team without a C: because KAT is mostly valuable to those teams. It can be as a 3rd team.
– Not to be outbid: which means targeting lesser players, or waiting for a true max player to ask out when the market has dried, or fooling an idiot GM
Besides all this, there is the apron, which I do not understand, and have decided not to care enough to do. But I guess it might make some trades difficult.
All in all, it is not easy to come up with reallistic scenarios. Giannis/Jokic/Spida are too good to be true, but we could try to be patient. It would be easier to find some downgrades that fit the team better, maybe we could get back Hartenstein if OKC loses tomorrow, or Quickley+Poeltl because Ujiri is feeling the need to shake things up.
Spyda for KAT is bad for both teams.
Makes Cleveland too center-heavy. Can’t see how KAT/Mobley/Allen works.
Makes the Knicks too small in the back court.
KAT’s offensive talent is arguably even higher than Brunson’s.
thinking over and about these suggestive roster changes and the thing that sticks with me – i like our first seven better than any other team other than the cavs and thunder (and potentially the rockets if they bring in KD or giannis)…
center: mitch, huk
power forward: KAT, need help
small forward: OG, josh
shooting guard: mikal, deuce
point guard: jalen, delon
there may be some teams with equal overall talent (wolves, nuggets, boston with a healthy kp – good luck with that), but yeah – no real teams to be too worried about (even those with nearly unlimited draft assets)…
hopefully we can catch up with the rest of the top teams and add a few players to our standard rotation…
other than adding another shooting big (backup power forward), i think we’re in a good spot roster wise…
well, mike and taylor interviewed last week…imagine this week they’ll be a few more – we’ll see if we get the announcement for our coach towards the end of this upcoming week…
i did not realize allie reynolds threw 2 no-hitters in the same season for the yanks…fair point, i did not know who allie reynolds was when his name flashed on the screen during the yankee game…
Thibs never adjusted the offense to accommodate having extra scoring power. It’s still set a screen for Brunson, then let him iso. Watch the off-ball movement and picks set by Indy to see how they take advantage of multiple scorers/ball handlers.
This was less of a problem last year because Donte could always get open running to the top of the arc and iHart was an easy outlet who could orchestrate from the high-post. The outlets were easy.
I still think Orlando could be a sneaky good trade partner for KAT. They desperately need shooting and stable offense, and they have a glut of centers/useful bench pieces to trade back to us as well as the personnel to help minimize KAT’s defensive lapses. They also just shot their load in terms of draft picks, so they don’t have a ton of other ways to upgrade their team.
The Pacers defense has been impressive in the finals and the playoffs overall except when they played the Knicks, and one of the reasons for that is they had absolutely no answers for JB & KAT. Now, obviously their defensive shortcomings had a lot to do with why we had no answers for Indy, but they did that on offense with a coach who is apparently very uncreative and was running sets from the 90s. And we still could have beaten the Pacers with a bit better shot making.
Now we also could have lost to the Pistons pretty easily, so it’s not all rosy, but I would try for more than one season to get something out of that very talented duo unless we’re trading for Giannis
I don’t really know what the trade market is like for KAT so I’d be prepared to ride a little further with him, if there arent any options, although I fear what a disaster giving him a long term deal might become.
Re Brunson, it’s a lot simpler to hide a defensive liability at point guard. That’s the conventional wisdom and I think it’s still correct, although the three point shots raining in over his Dino-arms has tested that assumption a bit.
I do think you could build a championship team around Brunson though. Doing it with KAT too, while possible, feels very high difficulty.
Kaminari, Orlando has Franz, Paolo, and now Bane. Fitting in KAT’s salary right as they’re about to get super expensive would be… tough.
I am not going to be irate or despondent if Leon decides to run it back with KAT. Assuming some tweaks, t’s still a very good team, probably 50-55 wins and a favorite to be alive in the second round. I just think it’s starting to look a lot like the 1990’s, and not in a good way.
KAT’s contract is not so onerous that Leon won’t be able to trade him next year in some kind of asset-positive, or at least asset-neutral way. And in 2026, the 2033 pick gets freed up and maybe there will be a better opportunity to package him for a true superstar than there is this year. Or get back a couple of players and picks for him. In other words, I’m NOT advocating for selling low on him. I just think he should be dangled to see what kind of return you can get for him, and sooner is likely better than later.
In the playoffs we had a 113.3 offensive rating and a 113.3 defensive rating. The playoff average was 113.1.
If we want to win a championship while employing Brunson and KAT, we need to be better than that.
Even in a pretty good offensive series against the Pacers, is the offense we saw good enough to overcome the Pacers picking apart Brunson and KAT?
Of course we can. 😉 So good you’ll be here. 🙂 We can’t watch the Knicks together, but i’ll check* if there’s a game of my other team (FC Porto) on those dates and take you to our beautiful stadium.
*when the schedule for next season comes out
during some media talk today:
pascal siakam – “it’s just ball”
without question from a sitting in front of a microphone standpoint, pascal has really shined during these finals…
big time international star getting even brighter…
“…but i’ll check* if there’s a game of my other team (FC Porto) on those dates and take you to our beautiful stadium.
*when the schedule for next season comes out”
OK but based on the asterisk use you have to first swear to me that you’re not really cybersozE…
I am a Pascal Siakam fan. Assuming he was available, Leon definitely should have gone for him instead of OG, even at a higher price.
How can it be both true that Thibs’ inflexibility is the reason the Knicks lost to the Pacers AND this is a flawed team that can’t win with the liability of Kat+Brunson? If Kat+Brunson is so bad or a team built around them is so exposable they can’t win a title, then it wasn’t Thibs fault the Knicks lost to the Pacers. So then Thibs wasn’t out-coached by Carlisle.
Given that the Knicks were so close to beating a team that is in a game 7 of the Finals, I don’t think the team needs to retool the roster since in theory they’re going to hire a coach that will hopefully get more out of their players. Not that I expect them to completely stand pat, but I don’t think they’re doomed with their core.
Vecenie finally did his pod on the Knicks and it was an interesting perspective. They basically thought we should run it back with tweaks and a new coach (Sam preferred Jenkins to Brown). But both agreed they could test the market for Bridges because his extension is going to suck.
That said, barring injury, they also felt that all of our main 4 guys (even Bridges w/ extension) will have positive value. So if next year is a flop, we can reset with a trade or two.
They also want to draft an older guy at #50 who’s ready for minutes and think Leon will just have to (his words) “win at the margins” with his 2 vet mins and the taxpayer mle.
Definitely worth a listen.
I believe that the series vs. Indy was not as close as many folks would like to believe it was. I think a small part of that was due to Thibs, and a vastly larger part of that was due to the Knicks’ personnel.
The notion of being more successful by “essentially standing pat” than we were this seasons seems misguided to me. There would be lots of baked-in assumptions…most notably, a) that the next coach could do more with this group than Thibs did (and note, this is not to say that Thibs should have been retained or that the team would be more successful next year if he were retained), and b) the playing field would be the same as it was this year, meaning not only would the Pacers not get better, but teams like Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta, and Orlando, plus hypothetically whatever team in the east lands Giannis, would not have answers to whatever we threw at them.
If Fizdale coached the current Wizards roster against the Pacers, I find it highly likely that both (1) Fizdale would be easily out coached and (2) the Wizards personnel would be incapable of winning. Both things can be true.
However, if there was any chance of winning the series, Thibs blew it by sticking with a lineup that hadn’t worked in 5 months. It’s at least conceivable another coach makes the defense passable or the offense good enough that it doesn’t need to be.
Julius Randle is a very similar player, and possibly better – and he rarely missed time, whereas Siakam was injured a bit during the the preceding years. It would have made no sense whatsoever.
“Believe” has nothing to do with it; statistically, it was close. We were leading by 14 with minutes to go in the first game before imploding, in part due to poor coaching.
Did someone here liken Thibs’s strategic approach to Bart Simpson playing rock paper scissors? I can’t shake the thought: “Good old rock, nothing beats rock…”
I think this is demonstrably false. Game 1 the Knicks were up 14 with 3 minutes to go. Swap the W/L of that game, and it goes to 7 games. The ORating of the 2 teams for the whole series was 117.8 to 115.9, less than a 2 point difference. There’s nothing statistically to indicate these teams weren’t close.
And if you are using the eyeball as your metric, I go back to seeing the failures in games 1 & 2 on Thibs unyielding lineups, not the players.