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Knicks Morning News (2025.09.15)
09/15/2025 11:00:02
09/15/2025 11:00:00
09/15/2025 07:01:53
09/15/2025 06:30:33
09/15/2025 03:59:00
09/15/2025 03:16:00
09/15/2025 02:10:57
09/15/2025 00:28:37
09/15/2025 00:29:59
09/14/2025 23:13:43
8 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.09.15)”
I’m with Geo about the Knicks big men. We probably don’t have enough of them. Every year we’ve had injuries to centers and typically carried four of them. Now we have three real centers and one of them doubles a a power forward. Maybe you could say Hart plays power forward sometimes since he both rebounds and defends, but it wound nice to have another backup.
Instead, we are working out DSJ.
I would welcome folks to look at rosters around the NBA and find teams other than OKC with more than 4 serviceable bigs.
Well we are also working out Alex Len if that makes you feel any better.
it doesnt
On another topic, I’ve listened to a bunch of podcasts on the Kawhi situation and they are all over the place in their reporting on what other owners think of this. Simmons thinks that owners do stuff like this all the time while Lowe reports that lots of owners and/or team execs are outraged. I’m not sure what to think. I do believe that teams wine and dine and do favors for players in the same way that companies selling annuities buy people dinners and pharmaceutical companies create “conferences” for doctors that are basically boondoggles. I also think teams encourage players to get local endorsement opportunities that might keep them close to home. But those opportunities, while nice, are still probably real endorsement work that pays a market rate. Kawhi’s deal was clearly not that and I suspect that other owners don’t think of it as business as usual at all.
So…
(1) Trey Jemison
(2) Alex Len
(3) DSJr
(4) Brogdon
(5) Shamet
(6) Garrison Matthews
Is this due diligence or is there a bigger trade in the works than we think?
Looks like DSJr played 4 games for Real Madrid. His stats look awful.
However, he was one of the better defensive PGs in the NBA before he left and we could use some PoA defense.
He’ll be 28 in November.
My history of advocating for Dennis Smith Jr. on Knickerblogger is long, contains multiple chapters, and is almost entirely humiliating. Lord forgive me, here I go again.
A little-watched development occurred while he was toiling away in obscurity in Charlotte and Brooklyn–according to both the best metrics and the eye-test of people I trust, he became an absolute demon on defense.
He was in the 99th percentile of defensive EPM in both 2023-2024 and 2022-2023, and his DBPM figures were 1.8 and 1.2 respectively. The Hornets were 11.5 (!) PTS/100 better defensively with him on the floor, and the Nets were 4.5 PTS/100 better even with him only getting to play 269 minutes with both Bridges and Claxton.
No, I did not observe much of Dennis Smith Jr.’s defense on the Hornets or Nets sans Horns, but I recall Zach Lowe saying he would’ve voted him to an all-defense team if he played more and that’s the best eye-test validation I can muster here.
The elephant in the room is obvious here: the less I say about his offense the better. But I mean, is there a better use of the 13th/14th roster spot than a legitimately elite POA defender we can use situationally? He’s such a train wreck offensively that I’m not asking that rhetorically, the answer may well be “yes, on a guy who can throw the ball in the ocean from the beach.” But I don’t have nearly the same blanket opposition to the idea as others, and am probably even partial to it over Brogdon and/or Shamet.
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