PG: Out of our Misery

[3toheadmelo]

Sucks - we should be getting up for a game 7 today.

At least we witnessed an epic Brunson run

Read on Twitter

Youre not wrong - but its hard not to be a lil bummed thinking about how awesome it would be to watch a game 7 tonight in msg

Yeah it sucks. But on the bright side, the last 3 teams to make it to the ecf got to the finals the next season. So next year might be ours

[WaltFrazier]

We've seen awful defensive lapses from everyone on the starting 5 all season long. Yes, OG included.

KAT aside, Brunson and Hart are just as bad at times if not worse.

they're not trading brunson though. maybe hart will get traded. but the two stars together do not work. i posted this in another thread.

The fact is the Knicks just spent $152 million on a lineup that yielded the second-worst defense in the conference finals since NBA lineup tracking began in 2008. The lineup of Brunson, Bridges, Hart, Anunoby and Towns hemorrhaged 126.1 points per 100 possessions to the Pacers, the second-most points allowed per possession among the 63 lineups with at least 50 minutes played in the past 18 conference finals.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/knicks-trade-ideas-giannis-kd-a-mavs-deal-3-moves-that-can-get-new-york-over-the-top-190720651.html

i would love to trade mikal too but his value is too low right now compared to what you paid for him. you gotta give him some more time with the hope that either you want to keep him or he at least gets you 75 percent of what you paid for him. you'll never get 100 percent. right now i think the most you could get for him is 2 firsts. think about what pascal was traded for and what you could probably get for him now. you gotta hope you can rebuild his value. let's face it, the knicks really f*cked up over the summer. they should have done nothing except gotten a decent defensive center and held their chips until a big fish was available.

Agree about the defensive C and wait. That would have given Randle and a chance to show what he could do, and let Donte continue as a three point threat.

I just read the Yahoo piece myself, after the Giannis and KD proposals the third idea is Mikal for Gafford and Caleb Martin. Not so bad, or is it?

[prophet_of_rage]

We've seen awful defensive lapses from everyone on the starting 5 all season long. Yes, OG included.

KAT aside, Brunson and Hart are just as bad at times if not worse.

Funny how a coach with bad defenders has a bad defence and a coach with good defenders looks good.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

[cgmw]

Pretty sure I saw you under the basket. A spot of orange in a sea of yellow. Respect.

There was another guy much uglier than me wearing an identical outfit with similar hair one section to my left. I need to go through and zoom in but I’m definitely on sports center. My friends and family texted me during the game to say hi.

we need to see it. What you did was legendary and you will roll with me court side next year I dont care that we lost the game...

Thanks bro. It was fun and honestly a little humbling to hear how loud it was compared to MSG. Still not the same atmosphere but damn they got loud.

I have a screen grab from Pacers IG of me being a lone blue dot in a sea of gold, will try to upload.

[FrozenEnvelope]

I'm still really disappointed how this season ended. We should've been getting ready for a Game 7 tonight! Hell it shouldn't even have gotten to 7 if we took care of business in Game 1! And that's what makes this all so disappointing! Cause this season will now be remembered for that collapse and choke of Game 1! It will tarnish the resumes of all these players and also Thibs for the rest of their careers and will define them unless they somehow win the whole thing. They will replay Hali doing the choke sign all summer and all of next season and foreseeable future too which is going to kill me. @Guano please dude I'm begging you to please change your avi!

I'm just so angry at these players and Thibs for allowing that to happen. Real talk I would've preferred if we just lose to the Pistons in the 1st Round. The season, even though it was the most successful in 25 years, had the worst possible ending imho.

[Context]

There was another guy much uglier than me wearing an identical outfit with similar hair one section to my left. I need to go through and zoom in but I’m definitely on sports center. My friends and family texted me during the game to say hi.

we need to see it. What you did was legendary and you will roll with me court side next year I dont care that we lost the game...

Thanks bro. It was fun and honestly a little humbling to hear how loud it was compared to MSG. Still not the same atmosphere but damn they got loud.

I have a screen grab from Pacers IG of me being a lone blue dot in a sea of gold, will try to upload.

salute to you bro...If it wasn't such short notice I would have went to Indy but I was deluding myself- there just wasn't enough time.
Hopefully, Thibs or the Don figure out our coaching issues and hopefully the players soul search and get better. Regardless, I'll let you know
when I go to one game next year...

[FrozenEnvelope]

I'm all for firing Thibs but it depends on who we replace him with. If you're telling me we can replace him with Spo, cool! LET'S DO IT! If you tell me we're replacing him with an unproven rookie coach like Johnny Bryant or some college coach, THEN HELL NO! But Thibs needs to be better. Not sure if he can at 67 years old but his coaching this season was not good enough.

Same can be said for every single player on the roster. Just not good enough. Even the Captain! Even Brunson was good but not good enough. He was not clutch enough in this series and he had his chances in Game 1 and Game 2 to hit the winning shot and he missed. His defense must get a lot better and you cannot get shutdown by Andrew **** Nembhard in a must win Game 6! I really like KAT and root hard for him cause he seems like such a good dude with a big heart and I can relate to the tragedies of losing family and being Hispanic but I come away from his first season here still wondering if he can be a key player on a championship team.

The chemistry issues and lack of communication problems are alarming. You should not be questioning this **** in the playoffs! Maybe it gets better with more experience together but maybe it doesn't. I'll leave that to the smarter people in the front office to figure it out. I do hope we do not make any panic moves like trading for KD.

[cgmw]

we need to see it. What you did was legendary and you will roll with me court side next year I dont care that we lost the game...

Thanks bro. It was fun and honestly a little humbling to hear how loud it was compared to MSG. Still not the same atmosphere but damn they got loud.

I have a screen grab from Pacers IG of me being a lone blue dot in a sea of gold, will try to upload.

salute to you bro...If it was such short notice I would have went to Indy but I was deluding myself- there just wasn't enough time.
Hopefully, Thibs or the Don figure out our coaching issues and hopefully the players soul search and get better. Regardless, I'll let you know
when I go to one game next year...

Plenty of Knick fans, but didn’t see any others flying solo like this. 99% of fans were cool, and the other 1% were easy enough to avoid/STFU since I’m a bit of a larger, obviously crazier dude.

I had an extra ticket and invited multiple friends but nobody else has the freedom or insanity to do something like this last minute.

[MrDollarBills]

We've seen awful defensive lapses from everyone on the starting 5 all season long. Yes, OG included.

KAT aside, Brunson and Hart are just as bad at times if not worse.

Funny how a coach with bad defenders has a bad defence and a coach with good defenders looks good.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

My issue with Tom is using drop coverage too much. Otherwise the defensive stuff falls back to the players.

Karl, Josh, and Jalen are the most serious offenders. The impulsiveness and lack of attention to detail is inexcusable.

Also, if Karl remains here, he needs to lose weight.

[sol537]

On the one hand, if you keep this team together, they should theoretically get better with more familiarity and chemistry (like Indiana, OKC, etc.). But... we have to ask ourselves the serious question if we can become good enough to topple the OKC's of the world... or do we need tweaks/changes?

I'm of the opinion that KAT/JB must be broken up in the right trade. I'm also of the opinion that this group won't get truly unleashed until there's a coaching upgrade. That game 1 collapse should be enough to get Thibs fired even though there's plenty of other reasons to can him.

[Context]

Thanks bro. It was fun and honestly a little humbling to hear how loud it was compared to MSG. Still not the same atmosphere but damn they got loud.

I have a screen grab from Pacers IG of me being a lone blue dot in a sea of gold, will try to upload.

salute to you bro...If it was such short notice I would have went to Indy but I was deluding myself- there just wasn't enough time.
Hopefully, Thibs or the Don figure out our coaching issues and hopefully the players soul search and get better. Regardless, I'll let you know
when I go to one game next year...

Plenty of Knick fans, but not too many flying solo like this. 99% of fans were cool, and the other 1% were easy enough to avoid since I’m a bit of a larger, obviously crazier dude.

Ha!
Lets go!

[god shammgod]

We've seen awful defensive lapses from everyone on the starting 5 all season long. Yes, OG included.

KAT aside, Brunson and Hart are just as bad at times if not worse.

they're not trading brunson though. maybe hart will get traded. but the two stars together do not work. i posted this in another thread.

The fact is the Knicks just spent $152 million on a lineup that yielded the second-worst defense in the conference finals since NBA lineup tracking began in 2008. The lineup of Brunson, Bridges, Hart, Anunoby and Towns hemorrhaged 126.1 points per 100 possessions to the Pacers, the second-most points allowed per possession among the 63 lineups with at least 50 minutes played in the past 18 conference finals.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/knicks-trade-ideas-giannis-kd-a-mavs-deal-3-moves-that-can-get-new-york-over-the-top-190720651.html

i would love to trade mikal too but his value is too low right now compared to what you paid for him. you gotta give him some more time with the hope that either you want to keep him or he at least gets you 75 percent of what you paid for him. you'll never get 100 percent. right now i think the most you could get for him is 2 firsts. think about what pascal was traded for and what you could probably get for him now. you gotta hope you can rebuild his value. let's face it, the knicks really f*cked up over the summer. they should have done nothing except gotten a decent defensive center and held their chips until a big fish was available.

Agree about the defensive C and wait. That would have given Randle and a chance to show what he could do, and let Donte continue as a three point threat.

I just read the Yahoo piece myself, after the Giannis and KD proposals the third idea is Mikal for Gafford and Caleb Martin. Not so bad, or is it?

If you think about it as 5 picks for those two it’s beyond awful. That’s why you just can’t trade him now. You need to try to rebuild his value.

[Galvationknicks]

i usually watch this dude's streams, even the non-knicks games. And while he is way too hysterical, he brings up most defensive mistakes in good detail,
and in from the knicks games i watched before, pretty much everyone makes serious mistakes, even from the likes of OG and Mikal

So its quites surprising the singling out of KAT and his defensive' woes, when everyone else is also making mistakes

I think I recall this guy's videos from last season, critiquing other teams, but having a lot of praise for the Knicks scheme and rotations. This was in the glory month of January 2024. I think I'm remembering right. What a difference a year makes. You can't overestimate what the loss of Hartenstein meant

I remember that, he called Thibs the goat defensive coach. Ihart is the star of the video.

Watch on YouTube

IHart sucked in the playoffs last year

[Zenzibar]

Thibs doesn’t have a system. There’s nothing to learn.

Look, you can make all the excuses in the world - a team with Karl Anthony Towns as its second best player will never in any lifetime win an NBA title. If this franchise wants to waste the rest of Brunson’s prime trying to building around KAT’s many flaws then there’s no reason to care about them.

Continuity is fine when you’re building a roster of high IQ, hard working players who are mentally strong. KAT is not that. Mikal is not that. Can Payne is not that. The roster construction was a complete 180 from what we had before and it shows. Building upon this roster and wanting continuity for this specific roster is a recipe for failure.

KAT and Brunson is still better than Randle and Brunson. While flawed, KAT at least tries slugging towards the 3 point shooter, I recall where Randle wouldn't even try.

Thibs has improved our positioning every year since Brunson's arriva Furthermore, I believe that within the next couple of years this Brunson-led team willl hit the Finals with a chance to win one.

How are we ever going to reach the Finals with allowing wide open kick out 3s, wide open transition dunks (Pacers had 5 baskets within 3-4 secs off our made basket in G6) ??

It's one thing to contest their shots and they still made them, but most of their baskets on critical runs were wide open. Thomas frickin Bryant had 3 wide open 3s, and I bet he won't even get a shot off vs the Thunder. Their team had no pressure whatsoever about having to make shots because if they missed they knew they're gonna plenty more/ abundance of wide open shots the rest of the game/ series.

No deep playoffs runs are ever guaranteed, the 94-95 Magic went to the Finals and they were never able to do it again. Even the Warriors were beaten by the Cavs, and the 80s Celtics by the Lakers or vice versa. If being in the ECF (with a possibly one in a lifetime chance to make the Finals and possibly win a chip) didn't make the team to play its best honest defense to AT LEAST BE COMPETITIVE DEFENSIVELY/ ENSURING NO WIDE OPEN SHOTS AND CONTEST SHOTS then nothing will.

And somehow we're supposed to keep Thibs and all of a sudden these defensive problems will magically disappear next season? The same defensive problems since the Thunder shot us out of their gym in Jan? The same defensive problems that persisted all season and remained all the way up to the most important games that were ECF... somehow next season would be different... WOW

Did Thibs missed all those free throws or threw the ball away, time and time again, in that game 6? Then yes I agree wholeheartedly but the Team fked up. Like I said, those top team have the #1 key ingredient for success and that is cohesion.

We have to give this another run and if we don't reach the next level then yes changes should be made.

Before Thibs, when have we had a playoff run like this?

[WaltFrazier]

KAT and Brunson is still better than Randle and Brunson. While flawed, KAT at least tries slugging towards the 3 point shooter, I recall where Randle wouldn't even try.

Thibs has improved our positioning every year since Brunson's arriva Furthermore, I believe that within the next couple of years this Brunson-led team willl hit the Finals with a chance to win one.

How are we ever going to reach the Finals with allowing wide open kick out 3s, wide open transition dunks (Pacers had 5 baskets within 3-4 secs off our made basket in G6) ??

It's one thing to contest their shots and they still made them, but most of their baskets on critical runs were wide open. Thomas frickin Bryant had 3 wide open 3s, and I bet he won't even get a shot off vs the Thunder. Their team had no pressure whatsoever about having to make shots because if they missed they knew they're gonna plenty more/ abundance of wide open shots the rest of the game/ series.

No deep playoffs runs are ever guaranteed, the 94-95 Magic went to the Finals and they were never able to do it again. Even the Warriors were beaten by the Cavs, and the 80s Celtics by the Lakers or vice versa. If being in the ECF (with a possibly one in a lifetime chance to make the Finals and possibly win a chip) didn't make the team to play its best honest defense to AT LEAST BE COMPETITIVE DEFENSIVELY/ ENSURING NO WIDE OPEN SHOTS AND CONTEST SHOTS then nothing will.

And somehow we're supposed to keep Thibs and all of a sudden these defensive problems will magically disappear next season? The same defensive problems since the Thunder shot us out of their gym in Jan? The same defensive problems that persisted all season and remained all the way up to the most important games that were ECF... somehow next season would be different... WOW

If Thibs missed all those free throws or threw the ball away, time and time again, in that game 6. Then yes I agree wholeheartedly but the Team fked up. Like I said, those top team have the #1 key ingredient for success and that is cohesion.

We have to give this another run and if we don't reach the next level then yes changes should be made.

Before Thibs, when have we had a playoff run like this?

Ok but is there any way Thibs plays more guys next season, and cuts starters minutes. Kolek Dadiet and Huk will be second year, will they get in the rotation? Will he use guys like Wright and Shamet more after their good showing in the playoffs? There's two main complaints about Thibs, his schemes and his minutes distribution. If he would just change the latter it would help, by keeping starters fresher and getting more young guys developed and ready when needed. But is there any evidence he'll ever change?

[Galvationknicks]

This is 1st time OG played this many games season/playoffs 74/18. I really think he was tired. I didn't use to care about the mins in the regular season. Thibs gotta change that. Front office ain't firing him so we are stuck with him. To me alot of them looked off from the regular season even in the Detroit/Boston series.

We gotta give the bench more run.

[kNicksGmen]

I'm looking forward to regular season basketball. I know a lot of fans (especially casual ones) just want to fast forward to the playoffs when "the games matter" - but man the playoffs were stressful. Every game felt like do or die.

I'm looking forward to a more casual viewing experience next year. I'll still get stressed watching games in the regular season but it's easy to move on afterwards - always another game a day or 2 later against a different team.

Some people might have higher expectations - but to me I'm more at peace with what this team is/isn't. We'll see if they make any needle moving deals in the offseason - but if the team is largely the same next year, same core/coach - I'm going into it trying to appreciate them for what they are and not allowing myself to be letdown on the delusion that they're an elite team (what many of us thought going into this season).

[Reign23]

towns plus minus is a reflection of him playing with the bench unit in this series. mcbride has the best and mitch had the 2nd best until they made him a starter. landry shamet played a total of 83 minutes and is 3rd best and wright played 48 minutes and is 4th best. context matters.

and you think that guys would be at the top without Towns basically scoring 10 points at the beginning of each 2nd/4th quarter?

well they were before we started doing that

the only plus minus that really matters is brunson and kat on the floor together. you can't play them separately that much to avoid that. if you want to say we should trade brunson instead that's fine but i disagree.

I obv think you don't trade any of them, because they are all nba players in their primes. If you somehow get an upgrade (Giannis, Ant, SGA...) you obv do it, but I don't see that at all. So you build around the edges. Add more good defenders to surround them.

[Reign23]

1. Thibs needs to go. Get a more modern coach please.
2. KAT needs to go. He and Brunson just don't work and his value is solid around the league.
3. Mikal and Mitch need to be extended. Both can be had on nice deals.
4. I'm not crazy about Hart so he can go too, if needed.
5. Retain Wright/Shamet for another season; Get CP3 for back-up PG duties for 1 year.
6. Get Giannis if he's available... otherwise, explore other trade options for KAT.

We can get to 55-60 wins and the 2nd seed next season.

you've noticed that we went to the conference finals, right? so we need to trade everybody and fire the coach? alright then. Really some of you deserve the Isiah Thomas days over and over again. jesus christ

[Jeffrey]

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1l1mh77/highlights_all_the_78_fouls_by_karlanthony_towns/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Did y'all see this on Reddit. Someone posted all of KAT's 78 fouls.