Knicks Morning News (2025.09.24)

Fuck John Hollinger. And that’s not to even argue with his conclusion that the Knicks will not get to 53.5 wins. His reasoning is so fucking shallow and smacks of his long-running disdain for the Knicks.

Yes, the Knicks’ top seven players are good and the East is weak, but New York was also mostly healthy last season (Mitchell Robinson being the main exception); the five starters missed a total of 40 games.

So Mitchell Robinson missing nearly the entire season is sort of a parenthetical afterthought? Not to mention that Precious Achiuwa was also injured to start the season, leaving the team with Jericho Sims and Ariel Hukporti as the only bigs behind KAT for the first 21 games? And it’s not like Achiuwa was that good to begin with. This year we have a healthy Mitch, a guy in Yabu who is much better than Precious, and a Hukporti who is not a wide-eyed rookie.

Meanwhile, any upside of this roster already seems pretty much locked in, right? All the key players are either in their prime or turning the corner out of it, except reserve guard Miles McBride. There are no notable young players waiting in the wings, and New York has no assets left (or space below the collective bargaining agreement’s second-apron payroll threshold, for that matter) to acquire more.

Neither is the roster is not the same as last year’s (healthy Mitch, Clarkson, and Yabu plus more potential in players 10-14) nor is there zero room for upside. KAT was acquired on the dawn of training camp, Mikal was new to the team…and we had a coach that may not have utilized either of them optimally.

As a secondary consideration, the depth situation beyond the top eight players looks somewhat dire, particularly at forward. The Knicks are forced by their second-apron situation to keep only 14 players and may need to backstop the last two roster spots with late second-round picks who normally would be on two-way contracts. Pacôme Dadiet and Tyler Kolek don’t exactly seem primed to take the league by storm either. Should injuries hit, this could slide downhill fast.

Well any team is susceptible to injuries to key players…but last year we lost our best player in Brunson for 15 games and went 9-6. Mitch is as key of a player you could have and he missed most of the season, meaning our bench depth was Payne, Shamet (he missed almost 3 months as well) and Precious fucking Achiuwa plus 4 rookies and Jericho Sims who turned into Delon Wright. What the fuck is he talking about?