PG Thread: Oh no, we suck again!

[mpharris36]

I know this is REALGM and this place wouldn't be the same without overreactions but I think we will be fine and its better to have this type of performance early in the year then later in the year.

B2B vs a young team that was embarrassed. They wanted this win badly and we took our foot off the gas and settled for a lot of bad shots.

We let Cole Anthony go bananas which is a disgrace and I said in the game thread after Terence Ross made his first shot that he is the guy we can't let get hot because he can win the game for them and guess what he did.

They also played more scrappy then us. Suggs really was a menace on defense holding our guys to 1 for 14 shooting from the floor and WCJ did a nice job limiting Julius Randle to horrible EFF.

They went to the FT line 9 more times because overall they were more aggressive and hungrier then we are.

If we bounce back vs Philly this loss will be forgotten.

[rajajackal]

it was a bad game early in the season against a team we just embarrassed on their home court. shout out to jamahl mosley. the issues that were exposed are real, but they aren't something some more time, experience, and coaching by tom thibodeau can't repair. things were gelling kind of unbelievably early on, but we all knew the roster adjustments might take time to sail at full mast

[robillionaire]

RJ will be fine if he just accepts who he is and plays like he did last year and exclusively shoots wide open shots from his hot spots in the corners which is the only shot he’s proven to be able to make efficiently. He’s trying to shoot from other spots on the floor now and it doesn’t look like he can do it. That’s why he’s shooting 38% FG% and 21% from 3. This is how he played as a rookie and at the beginning of last year too until he restricted himself to almost exclusively shooting wide open assisted catch and shoot attempts from his hot sports

I couldn’t disagree more.

RJ is experimenting with shooting off the dribble and pulling up in the lane for mid-range jumpers. That’s what he drilled on this Summer and when he starts hitting them you’ll be singing a different tune.

I think my take on him is correct. He’s not a naturally spontaneous player, but when he figures something out he can replicate that skill effectively.

So now you want to relegate him to the thing he mastered instead of allowing for him to master another skill he’s already drilled on and is working out the kinks of in true game situations.

Show some vision Rob

sure let him try it but we just have to accept in the short term that it might look ugly. And ask how long we want to let him experiment to the detriment of the current season and team before they tell him to go back to last year’s strategy

[Knicksfan1992]

The zone kind of made us settle for any open jumper we could find. Unfortunately they didn't go down but I didn't love the process of how we lost this game either. It felt like a loss from last year's team where if Randle doesn't have it going we don't really have another answer...I'm going to chalk it up to just a weird sunday NYC game, I just didn't love what we started to settle for in the 4th quarter. But hey even if we shoot just a below average percentage from deep we probably win this game so i'm not going to sweat it too much. Tuesday feels much more like a game we have to win now on National TV to get this thing humming again.

[3toheadmelo]

lol @ you guys **** on RJ. after preseason and game 1 he was the next star and now after two bad games he is a bust? smh hope he turns it around on tuesday.

nobody said he’s a bust. but it’s pretty obvious he’s not a future star.

[Clyde_Style]

RJ will be fine if he just accepts who he is and plays like he did last year and exclusively shoots wide open shots from his hot spots in the corners which is the only shot he’s proven to be able to make efficiently. He’s trying to shoot from other spots on the floor now and it doesn’t look like he can do it. That’s why he’s shooting 38% FG% and 21% from 3. This is how he played as a rookie and at the beginning of last year too until he restricted himself to almost exclusively shooting wide open assisted catch and shoot attempts from his hot sports

I couldn’t disagree more.

RJ is experimenting with shooting off the dribble and pulling up in the lane for mid-range jumpers. That’s what he drilled on this Summer and when he starts hitting them you’ll be singing a different tune.

I think my take on him is correct. He’s not a naturally spontaneous player, but when he figures something out he can replicate that skill effectively.

So now you want to relegate him to the thing he mastered instead of allowing for him to master another skill he’s already drilled on and is working out the kinks of in true game situations.

Show some vision Rob

sure let him try it but we just have to accept in the short term that it might look ugly. And ask how long we want to let him experiment to the detriment of the current season and team before they tell him to go back to last year’s strategy

Hey RJ, Rob gave you his permission to try stuff out. You're on the clock buddy, so pronto!

[robillionaire]

I couldn’t disagree more.

RJ is experimenting with shooting off the dribble and pulling up in the lane for mid-range jumpers. That’s what he drilled on this Summer and when he starts hitting them you’ll be singing a different tune.

I think my take on him is correct. He’s not a naturally spontaneous player, but when he figures something out he can replicate that skill effectively.

So now you want to relegate him to the thing he mastered instead of allowing for him to master another skill he’s already drilled on and is working out the kinks of in true game situations.

Show some vision Rob

sure let him try it but we just have to accept in the short term that it might look ugly. And ask how long we want to let him experiment to the detriment of the current season and team before they tell him to go back to last year’s strategy

Hey RJ, Rob gave you his permission to try stuff out. You're on the clock buddy, so pronto!

It’s up to Thibs not me

[Jimmit79]

I think you guys are overreacting too much last night one team could not miss and other could not hit anything in 4th.

Sent from my HD1905 using Tapatalk

[Buttah304]

Have to admit that I’m worried about Kemba as our starting PG.

Kemba is remarkably bad on defense. I mean we could be talking about a Top 3 worst defender at his position in the entire NBA. It doesn’t help that he is also so small and gets punished by bigger guards and he legit gets lost on every screen at the top of the key. His P&R defense leads to so many fundamental breakdowns communication wise with our bigs.

You see a guy like Derrick Rose last night who was a +10 and Kemba a -14. Even during Friday’s blowout win Rose was a +34 and Kemba was a -4 in a game we were up by over 25 at one point.

I’ll never actually “hate” Kemba because he’s a nice guy. Great in the locker room and he’s a damn good 3PT shooter.

He got away with his pathetic defense all these years because he was a dynamic offensive player.

He can’t play that way anymore. You can tell the shiftiness is mostly gone because of his knees. He doesn’t even want to play that way because he will not want to take the chance of putting too much torque into his moves.

This is going to be another season where we LOVE Rose as the 6th man (might be a top 3 sixth man in the league) but yet again no reliable starting PG.

This is why some of us on the board wanted Lonzo. He’s an excellent defender. He’s a big guard with a huge wingspan. Can guard 1-3, is a very good 3PT shooter and he excels in the open court/transition and is a rebounding guard. We know he wasn’t the “ideal” half court offensive PG and he’s not exactly beaming with North South capabilities attacking the hoop. Having said that, there was something to be said about him being a young player who was steadily getting better. To me he had so many qualities of a Thibs player when you factored in his versatility.

This wasn’t even about Lonzo. Just making the point that we’re constantly in the hole with our lead PG. Melo said it best “our least favorite player every year plays the same position.”

That’s an unfortunate truth.

[cgf]

lol @ you guys **** on RJ. after preseason and game 1 he was the next star and now after two bad games he is a bust? smh hope he turns it around on tuesday.

nobody said he’s a bust. but it’s pretty obvious he’s not a future star.

Not without significant improvement to his off-the-dribble game, but it's not at all obvious that won't come in the future. This season his focus needs to be way more on the defensive side, as he's being asked to carry a much bigger load on that end, than he was last year, so I doubt we see much of that development until next year. But it's not hard to picture him continuing to improve season after season, until he's at least a 3rd-star-on-a-contender level player, a la Middleton.

Especially if we don't take as long to give our Giannis & Middleton, Julius & RJ, their Jrue...and Leon can get us a dynamic backcourt guy like Lavine, SGA, Fox, Sexton, etc. over the next 9-21 months.

[snadler]

Have to admit that I’m worried about Kemba as our starting PG.

Kemba is remarkably bad on defense. I mean we could be talking about a Top 3 worst defender at his position in the entire NBA. It doesn’t help that he is also so small and gets punished by bigger guards and he legit gets lost on every screen at the top of the key. His P&R defense leads to so many fundamental breakdowns communication wise with our bigs.

You see a guy like Derrick Rose last night who was a +10 and Kemba a -14. Even during Friday’s blowout win Rose was a +34 and Kemba was a -4 in a game we were up by over 25 at one point.

I’ll never actually “hate” Kemba because he’s a nice guy. Great in the locker room and he’s a damn good 3PT shooter.

He got away with his pathetic defense all these years because he was a dynamic offensive player.

He can’t play that way anymore. You can tell the shiftiness is mostly gone because of his knees. He doesn’t even want to play that way because he will not want to take the chance of putting too much torque into his moves.

This is going to be another season where we LOVE Rose as the 6th man (might be a top 3 sixth man in the league) but yet again no reliable starting PG.

This is why some of us on the board wanted Lonzo. He’s an excellent defender. He’s a big guard with a huge wingspan. Can guard 1-3, is a very good 3PT shooter and he excels in the open court/transition and is a rebounding guard. We know he wasn’t the “ideal” half court offensive PG and he’s not exactly beaming with North South capabilities attacking the hoop. Having said that, there was something to be said about him being a young player who was steadily getting better. To me he had so many qualities of a Thibs player when you factored in his versatility.

This wasn’t even about Lonzo. Just making the point that we’re constantly in the hole with our lead PG. Melo said it best “our least favorite player every year plays the same position.”

That’s an unfortunate truth.

I'm definitely not overreacting to Kemba off of 3 games. Here's what I see, Kemba isn't being used properly. Kemba is a penetrator and great pick and roll player, right now he's being used off the ball to shoot 3's and dump the ball down to Randle. He's shooting the ball well especially from 3, but he needs to be used better. He's not a good defender, never has been but he was brought because he can score, if he's only taking 8 shots a game then yes he's a waste..he's too good of a scorer to be used the way he's being used now. Final point, he doesn't start, but Rose is the pg on this team and will be closing almost every game

[thebuzzardman]

Reggie Bullock with another stellar performance 0-3 with 1 point in 18 minutes. Looks like our whole team was full of bullocks tonight lol

Kidd doesn’t know how to use Bullock like we did.

Re-signing Bullock over Burks makes so much since with this roster construction. Burks is so redundant with so many players on the roster already.

I disagree.

Which players on the Knicks can create their own shot?

Randle, but he's a PF
Rose - the best on the Knicks
Kemba - looking questionable.
RJ - Nope. Not really at all.
Fournier - yep.
IQ - not really.
That leaves Burks.

You want the Knicks to rock with Bullocks over Burks version, where an injury to Kemba or Rose (fairly likely) leaves them as essentially the same as last year? Because Fournier is a little better than Burks, but his value is mostly in the fact you can play him 30 or even 40 minutes and get the average of what Fournier is, while peak Burks disappears after roughly 20 minutes.

Again, Knicks need a talent upgrade, and hopefully one day, sooner than later, Grimes can supersede Burks, but that's not a given.

Bottom line, RJ not developing is one of the things holding the Knicks back, which makes it necessary to get a Fournier - though he'd be a solid addition with an actually good RJ - but at this stage in RJ's development (hopefully it's a stage) this team kind of needs a Burks. Of course I'd like it to be a better player than Burks, but he's good as a bench player. Mostly.

[snadler]

I'm very frustrated with last night's loss, it was unacceptable anyway you look at it, especially having a 13 point lead and a 9 point lead near the end of the 3rd, despite playing horribly a good team has to find a way to win that game. With that said, the criticism of RJ is ridiculous, the guy had a very good year last year and it's crazy after 3 games to make such definitive statements about his game. It's 3 games in a new system with basically a new team. Let's give him some time before throwing him away. I still think RJ will be very good.

[thebuzzardman]

I consider this game a favor.

I was guilty of being overenthusiastic in the preseason and after 2 wins.
Sure, this might be overly negative, but I don't think so.

After being a consumer of this sports thing for a while, I've gotten decent at figuring out early when it's not a good thing to get too invested in a team.

Take the Jets, for example. I knew they would be pretty bad. Tons of growing pains. Rookie QB who needed more than a little refinement. But I figured, new coach, new offensive coordinator, new QB, some offensive players drafted for once, it could be "ok" in a certain developmental kind of way.

It took 1/2 of football to see the coach, offensive coordinator and QB were in completely over their head, that the team would suck, not just in that "rebuilding" sort of way, but truly suck. And I was a Joe Douglas supporter up to that minute. Then I realized, in spite of the years of suck that he inherited, he too, sucked. So I quickly divested myself of interest in the season, and like I expected, I was completely correct to do so.
They aren't even an NFL team.

Knicks, it's a little different. I thought they'd be anywhere from as high as 4th (unlikely) to 7th, depending on how some games go, luck, injuries etc. Felt like they were building something. And they might be. But this season isn't really going to be that good.
It's a mediocre playoff team again. It's just a different flavor than the almost all defense, no offense version from last year.
This year it's some defense, some offense, to achieve a similar level of high level mediocrity.

I mean, being mediocre is nice. Two consecutive years of being mediocre is nice. Beats 10+ years of truly SUCKING, interrupted by like 1.5 seasons of "ok".

But a legitimate good team would have taken the chance to notch another win. Had the talent to answer a scrub team's "anger".

This team just isn't that good. It's ok.
Leon Rose better be a master wheeler dealer, because I don't see much in the way of compelling youth the Knicks have to put in a trade.
RJ is a role player. In fact, he's a borderline starter on a truly good team. Obi, everyone is jizzing themselves because he went from abjectly awful to barely decent. IQ is ok.
I mean, it's fine. Knicks didn't totally blow the picks. Part of it is what draft they were in etc. A team has to start somewhere, and at least the Knicks have some cost controlled young guys.
But the team isn't all that. Basically, minus Thibs, it's not even better than what the Nets had before signing the Weird Brothers.
And I'm not Net Nuthugger.

Knicks need a trade in the worst way. Hopefully they'll be patient and execute it at the right time.
40 win team.

They do need a trade and I would consider RJ, and picks and maybe even Quickley.
It breaks my heart to even consider trading away two of my favorite Knicks but if we can get Damian for that I think we pull the trigger.

Dame is a great player, but I'd be hesitant to trade RJ for a PG whose wheels might be ready to come off.

For someone like SGA? In a heartbeat. Though Dame is far more proven, the age scares me.

[WajaBawl]

If Kemba's defense doesn't improve we might have to start thinking about starting IQ at PG and let Rose close out games. Walker's defense is that bad right now.

[thebuzzardman]

Man IQ looks like Knox out there when he's not hitting his shots. I would love for Thibs to start experimenting some of his minutes to Grimes and see what he can do.

IQ often looks like our worst player. not kidding here

So negative. This place sucks.

[louisorr]

A lot of us are desperate for RJ to be a star since he was the only top pick we've had since Ewing. The fact of the matter is he is a dedicated hard working kid, but he's not even the athlete that John Starks -an undrafted grocery clerk- was. fact is, he's short and non bouncy for the NBA and all his strength and determination won't make up for that. I think as a lot of you guys have said, that this loss is on Thibs. The team is what it is, but not giving Duce, Grimes or even Knox a chance during an early season game against a team playing mostly kids is a missed opportunity. eh, can't win em all.

[thebuzzardman]

I know this is REALGM and this place wouldn't be the same without overreactions but I think we will be fine and its better to have this type of performance early in the year then later in the year.

B2B vs a young team that was embarrassed. They wanted this win badly and we took our foot off the gas and settled for a lot of bad shots.

We let Cole Anthony go bananas which is a disgrace and I said in the game thread after Terence Ross made his first shot that he is the guy we can't let get hot because he can win the game for them and guess what he did.

They also played more scrappy then us. Suggs really was a menace on defense holding our guys to 1 for 14 shooting from the floor and WCJ did a nice job limiting Julius Randle to horrible EFF.

They went to the FT line 9 more times because overall they were more aggressive and hungrier then we are.

If we bounce back vs Philly this loss will be forgotten.

A good, tough minded team says f*ck those angry kids and steps on their neck a second time, especially since vets should know they have to bank wins in front of that brutal stretch upcoming in Jan/Feb or whenever it is.

[GONYK]

I know this is REALGM and this place wouldn't be the same without overreactions but I think we will be fine and its better to have this type of performance early in the year then later in the year.

B2B vs a young team that was embarrassed. They wanted this win badly and we took our foot off the gas and settled for a lot of bad shots.

We let Cole Anthony go bananas which is a disgrace and I said in the game thread after Terence Ross made his first shot that he is the guy we can't let get hot because he can win the game for them and guess what he did.

They also played more scrappy then us. Suggs really was a menace on defense holding our guys to 1 for 14 shooting from the floor and WCJ did a nice job limiting Julius Randle to horrible EFF.

They went to the FT line 9 more times because overall they were more aggressive and hungrier then we are.

If we bounce back vs Philly this loss will be forgotten.

Even if we don't beat Philly, but just play better, we're fine.

Yesterday was about effort, not about missing shots or Kemba's defense, or whatever.

We just didn't feel like playing and expected Orlando to roll over eventually. By the time we got some urgency, it was too late.

[mpharris36]

I know this is REALGM and this place wouldn't be the same without overreactions but I think we will be fine and its better to have this type of performance early in the year then later in the year.

B2B vs a young team that was embarrassed. They wanted this win badly and we took our foot off the gas and settled for a lot of bad shots.

We let Cole Anthony go bananas which is a disgrace and I said in the game thread after Terence Ross made his first shot that he is the guy we can't let get hot because he can win the game for them and guess what he did.

They also played more scrappy then us. Suggs really was a menace on defense holding our guys to 1 for 14 shooting from the floor and WCJ did a nice job limiting Julius Randle to horrible EFF.

They went to the FT line 9 more times because overall they were more aggressive and hungrier then we are.

If we bounce back vs Philly this loss will be forgotten.

A good, tough minded team says f*ck those angry kids and steps on their neck a second time, especially since vets should know they have to bank wins in front of that brutal stretch upcoming in Jan/Feb or whenever it is.

I agree last nights loss was pretty pathetic and I have been pretty clear about what I believe the expectations of this team are. We should be a farely good regular season team but unless we make changes I still see us struggling come post season time because we don't have that #1 option.

So you don't want to risk that "treadmill" team that Thibs is squeezing every bit of potential out of at the risk of not having a chance to take the "next step".

While the "team" and sum of its parts is solid...I think we all see the clear limitations on where this team can go without a true superstar.

I just wouldn't overreact to one loss this bad. Its still the same team as before. We will have good wins and for the most part limit bad losses...but the playoffs are def a concern.