Knicks Future

[Jeff Van Gully]

future? championship.

[sol537]

I hope you’re right. I know the potential is there somewhere… I’m not confident Thibs is the one to coax it out of this squad.

I’d move Mitch to the starting lineup if he looks healthy and I’d make Hart the 6th man a la Manu who gets 30+ minutes.

Those two moves could solve some of our biggest issues.

[vallen]

Defense wins championships. Look at the Eagles.

This KAT-Brunson-Hart experience is doomed to fail. Send Hart to the bench and send KAT out in a trade for a 2-way guy. You can hide one guy on defense but you can't hide 2-3.

While I get your general sentiment and tend to agree with the defense first sentiment, I believe history actually suggests otherwise. There may be exceptions to this (Pistons, Spurs) but I believe if you look at past champions, especially since 2000, you'll find that most champions were elite offensively (top 5 or even top 3) while being good but not great defensively (like top 10). I remember the 3-peat Lakers were like that, the Mavericks were like that. I believe the Heat and Warriors as well. Denver certainly wasn't elite defensively.

In any case, I think you need to give the team 2 full seasons before engaging in any chore-changing trades. Anything else would be really way too rushed. I always defended the NY fanbase as passionate but over the years I have come to appreciate the often criticism that NY is a tough place to be in because there is very little patience. We are sitting on a 36-18 record and literally only two teams have made us look bad---Boston and OKC. And we haven't faced either of them (nor any team this season) with a basic ingredient of a successful basketball team, namely an elite rim protector. Patience guys, patience.

I think Denver was the only "weak" defensive team in the last 10-20 years. All the other squads had no more than one defensive black hole that I could recall. EG Curry was often targeted but even he played decent defense for some of those runs. My estimate is that every finals winner other than Denver had a top 8 defense with no more than one black hole on defense. We have two... and neither of our guys are Jokic level. Maybe it could work if we move Hart to the bench and get another OG-level elite defender/rebounder 3&D guy in the starting line-up. Maybe. Finding those guys is really hard.

I thought that guy was Brikal? The board insisted we had the defensive combo needed to compete with Bostons after that deal. In truth we are missing the rim protector/offensive rebounder that made us so good defensively last season, and allowing the team to guard the 3 spot where elite teams destroy us this year. Not to mention the second and third chance buckets.