Breaking: KAT to the Knicks

[E-Balla]

If you're going to sacrifice defense, you go with overwhelming offense and KAT gives us true 5 out, low amount of touches per game relative to output (53 per game vs 72 per game for Randle), and the three point shooting is at 40% on 6 attempts per game the last 5 seasons.

Our halfcourt offense should be an absolute buzzsaw, all they need to do is manage a top 10 defense which they probably will. The Nuggets won the title with the 15th rated defense, and 5th best offense.

KAT averages 19 ppg on 47/35 splits in the playoffs. Be **** serious.

You were fine with playing 5 out with a guy averaging 17ppg on 34/28 in the playoffs and you're telling me to be serious? We're capped out, and Randle was due an extension.


Also, it's not just about KATs averages, it's about the impact he'll have on our spacing.

We aren't a 5 out team at all. You guys said we need to play 5 out now you're pretending I said it we were the strongest interior team in the league for 4 years why the **** are we becoming a team of soft sissies and building the team culture off a career loser like KAT? Same **** that hated Thibs because Thibs tried to make him play hard while he wanted to walk with a switch and squeak while he talked.

[3toheadmelo]

The funniest part about this is it forces both the Mitch and iHart haters to acknowledge how important each was to our success last year.

I'm hoping the other funny part won't be our interior defense somehow.

I kept saying all summer long that even though I’m not the biggest Mitch fan, you need him 200% if KAT is here. KAT’s defense at C is disastrous.

That was funny to me. Sham hasn't mentioned him by name yet but by omission he's also forced to acknowledge ihart's value.

KAT isn't Bargs but he's also not KP, who is an excellent defender. Thibs has his work cut out.

KAT is in the lowest tiers of defenders when it comes to anchoring a defense. It’s not gonna work at all unless we have a healthy Mitch next to him.

[god shammgod]

trade does feel a little bargs-ish.....not that he's that bad lol

[Guano]

What ultimately happens with Mitch could easily determine whether or not the Knicks win their first championship in over a half a century.

Do they wait on Mitch to get healthy and stand pat?

Or do they trade Mitch now due to fears of him being brittle and an odd-ball personality with social media crash-out tendencies?

I think the Mitch outcome is the fork in the road that’ll determine this team’s destiny.

It sucks that KAT is so flawed of a player that we are relying on Mitch’s health to save our defense..

Just based on talent Towns is the best Big in basketball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes better than Embiid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes better Than Jokic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Towns is finally home and will play his true position the 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I see an mvp season from him coming up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cant wait until that first game Towns goes 3/14 from the field is getting cooked on D and see you keep this same energy.

[Jalen Bluntson]

KAT looked good vs Jokic because he was smoking wide open jumpers that KAT as part of their defensive scheme gave to Jokic. He scored 59 points on 55 shots guarded by KAT despite shooting 4-21 from deep. Leaving Jokic to take wide open 3s and praying he misses isn't great defense.

And he guarded KD only in game one. KD had 31 on 11/17 shooting and they took KAT off as the primary defender.

On top of all of that he's not a PF for us he's a C. KAT at C was the worst defensive player in the league for almost a decade. It's easier to hide him with Gobert and Reid behind him but now he's the backbone of our defense.

There's a reason Minny felt safe moving him, and it's because quite frankly if he wasn't on the roster they go to the Finals.

Nah man. The only reason the Wolves didn't run it back after one of their most successful season in their history is the CBA and it's affect on the Wolves keeping Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels, nothing else. The Wolves had the #1 defense in the league and crushed their division. While I'm not 100% with it andwaiting to see what the team looks like, let's not act like KAT didn't contribute to the Wolves success.

You realize we play under that same CBA right?

No one is saying he's not a good player. I'm saying he's on one of the worst contracts in the league, so he's not worth keeping rostered. You just confirmed that, the Wolves dropped him because under the CBA his contract is **** awful and nobody other than his agent would ever trade for it.

No.

[ibraheim718]

The only way this works if it's going to work is if Towns plays the 5 which will leave the bucket way too exposed. They'll score a lot of points and win a lot of games but it won't work in the playoffs unless Towns gets better at defending the rim. You'll have Brunson who is weak defensively at the point of attack and Towns who is weak defensively as the last line of attack.

[E-Balla]

KAT looked good vs Jokic because he was smoking wide open jumpers that KAT as part of their defensive scheme gave to Jokic. He scored 59 points on 55 shots guarded by KAT despite shooting 4-21 from deep. Leaving Jokic to take wide open 3s and praying he misses isn't great defense.

And he guarded KD only in game one. KD had 31 on 11/17 shooting and they took KAT off as the primary defender.

On top of all of that he's not a PF for us he's a C. KAT at C was the worst defensive player in the league for almost a decade. It's easier to hide him with Gobert and Reid behind him but now he's the backbone of our defense.

There's a reason Minny felt safe moving him, and it's because quite frankly if he wasn't on the roster they go to the Finals.

A massive portion of this board is ignoring this fact.

Are many of his defensive metric this year a fabrication and/or irrelevant? His no doubt about it elite defensive performance vs Jokic in the playoffs too? Randle could only dream of playing this kind of D in recent years

Opponents shoot 0.4% better with KAT guarding them at the rim than on all shots combined at the rim. Meaning an average player at 6'7 possibly not even considering the shot does a better job guarding the rim than KAT. Be **** serious man you don't watch basketball stop talking to me.

[iLLmatic860]

Read on Twitter

[god shammgod]

you know damn well every team is just gonna dare josh hart to shoot anyway and play off him......and that works more than it doesn't. won't be no 5 out.

[ezmoney707]

Talking about cap flexibility with a team that’s already capped out for the foreseeable future and would have to give the guy that’s making a 30 million a raise under the current CBA is interesting

[mpharris36]

i can't disagree with any of this. i was trying to be more positive yesterday but i'm having a hard time today.

Vegas has us as the 3rd best odds to win the entire thing! 3rd best!

Why all the doom and gloom???

Vegas loved KD and Kyrie to Brooklyn too. Vegas doesn't know ball, I do, so yes I'll be gloomy because I know basketball enough to know we **** up. Like bad. This is one of the worst trades we've ever made.

True but if Kyrie doesn't go down and KDs foot isn't in the 3pt line they probably have a championship.

[aggo]

Defense is overrated.

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[NoDopeOnSundays]

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KAT from deep the last 9 games of his playoff run. So overwhelming offensively I mean what are they going to do when Big Purr is shooting 20% from deep. So fearful.

But, you said to just run 5 out with Randle who is shooting .283 from three in his playoffs career.

No tf I didn't. You said we can run 5 out with KAT. I pointed out we can run 5 out with Randle ineffectively just like we can run 5 out ineffectively with KAT. 5 out isn't what this team is built for, this is a Thibs squad. Rebounding and interior defense were our two strongest strengths the previous 4 years under Thibs.

I don't get it, the only person we could have gotten that's better than KAT requires a time machine, go back and trade for Kristaps, outside of that we weren't going anywhere with Randle.

You don't get it. NOBODY is better than cap. Having $60 million in flexibility is better than having $60 million in a player worth $30.

If we have a top 4 offense and a top 10 defense we're going to go further into the playoffs than we would with Randle, just like the Wolves got further with KAT as their second best player. If you're going to flame out, at least do it in the conference finals.

We had a 3rd ranked defense in 2023 and the 7th ranked in 2024 with all the injuries including Randle. You're basically saying after all this **** and sending all those picks and killing our flexibility you don't even think we've improved.

We haven't even played a game yet and you're implying that we'll be ineffective in 5 out In no world is a guy that shot 31% from three and demands the ball as much as Randle going to lead to an elite 5 out offense.


What flexibility? Randle & Mikal are due extensions, we were going to be over the cap no matter what we do. Do you think we'd have $40 million in space to go out and sign somebody if we kept Randle? We have $120 million tied up in 4 players right now even before Bridges gets his extension which will kick that up to $160 million. You don't get that we had no other avenues, there are no other big names on the market, there are no free agents, Bridges and KAT are it.


I do think we have improved, for playoff basketball. Our half court offense has been trash in the playoffs, because it relies on junk offense, such as putbacks which really just means you're missing a lot. The second somebody could stop us from getting offensive rebounds our offense fell apart, this move for KAT is to make sure Brunson and Bridges have room to operate and the ball is in Brunsons hands as much as possible.

[3toheadmelo]

trade does feel a little bargs-ish.....not that he's that bad lol

Knicks trading for bargnani went completely away from our identity in 2013. It’s basically the same schit with KAT, but he’s an souped up version of it

[god shammgod]

trade does feel a little bargs-ish.....not that he's that bad lol

Knicks trading for bargnani went completely away from our identity in 2013. It’s basically the name schit with KAT, but he’s an souped up version of it

yep. it gives me them feels.

[iLLmatic860]

Vegas has us as the 3rd best odds to win the entire thing! 3rd best!

Why all the doom and gloom???

Vegas loved KD and Kyrie to Brooklyn too. Vegas doesn't know ball, I do, so yes I'll be gloomy because I know basketball enough to know we **** up. Like bad. This is one of the worst trades we've ever made.

True but if Kyrie doesn't go down and KDs foot isn't in the 3pt line they probably have a championship.

If kd and Klay never got injured, Raptors would have never won a championship

You see how that works?

We can go for days lol

[aggo]

Bully ball Randle worked so well in the playoffs his our last 14 playoff games:


DNP

[Knick4Real]

Read on Twitter

that's a pretty bad bench. i don't know about this. this might be one of those classic knicks big trade mistakes.

That’s why I’m surprised the board isn’t as apprehensive about this move as I am. We went from having a 9 man playoff rotation down to a 7. Maybe 8, if you think precious or Payne will be able to play. Kat and OG have missed a ton of games and our bench cavalry is washed Mook and a never good Shamet. We almost need to start Precious next to Kat to have our rotations make more sense.

Bench line up is probably Payne, deuce, hart, Mikal, sims? I like Deuce, a lot but going from 8th man to 6th man is a lot of added expectations and responsibility for him. Especially since he’s now expect to replace what Donte would have gave them off the bench. I’ve doubted him before and he's just kept developing. So maybe he’ll just rise to the occasion.

All we did was lose Donte and we replaced Randle with KAT so our rotation shouldn't have gone down from 9 to 7. It depends on how you look at it. Mitch was still injured regardless so we were also going to start Randle with Precious or Jericho before the trade and I still envision Thibs doing that actually. Just because KAT is a better small ball 5 than Randle is doesn't necessarily mean we'll start him there

THIS!!

We replaced 3-time All-Star Julius Randle (who we were at risk of losing for nothing) with FOUR-time All-Star and legit franchise star Karl-Anthony Towns. We replaced DDV with All-Defensive first team player Mikal Bridges. Yet, fans are having a hard time seeing this as an improvement???

Only a few days ago, we were here discussing playing Julius at the 5 or potentially having to start Sims due to Mitch being out. That experiment was NEVER going to work but now, that problem is solved. Also, why is everyone so sure Hart will start? Hart, Deuce, and Mitch (once he returns) could STILL come off the bench just like last season. We may also have one more trick up our sleeve to finish off the roster.

So, the complaints that we're worse now than before are just plain nonsense. Unless you seriously believed we were a legit championship team with Julius and Sims at the 5.

[bronxknicksfan1]

trade does feel a little bargs-ish.....not that he's that bad lol

Knicks trading for bargnani went completely away from our identity in 2013. It’s basically the same schit with KAT, but he’s an souped up version of it

So a souped up version of Bargs is better than Randle?

[E-Balla]

Anyone disappointed KAT still hasn't said anything other than his emo "...".

Dont think hes trilled about the trade. Minnesota was his home last 9yrs, it’s a low key city. Now there is a microscope on Kat and the pressure just went up many notches

Not thrilled to join the team of childhood fandom …cmon

It's not NY it's Thibs. Thibs loves KAT's talent and wants to coach him to have him play up to his potential. KAT hates that Thibs wants guys to play hard and practice hard. He's a lazy, soft career underachiever.