PG: Knicks lose to Thunder

[nedleeds]

Before the complaints start rolling in, please remember this was ONE game. We took on the NBA's #1 defense and went down to the wire. This was NOT a blowout. KNICKS are right in the mix.

On to the next!

We've played the easiest schedule in the NBA and haven't won against a top 4 team in the East or West.

We bank fake wins against Orlando twice with no starters.

We better be healthy down the stretch because the schedule flips.

How many of those top 4 teams did we play at home? Just one....and we were dominating them until we feel asleep at the wheel. But back then Mikal was playing like dodo now hes playing like Chad.0 we also had no other bigs outside of Towns.

The schedule makers love screwing us over, but I guarantee once we start playing these elite teams at home the wins will roll in. They are really good teams ...but so are we.

We were dominating until we had a coach who refuses to realize he needs to sacrifice some regular season minutes to try and find a few bench players.

We have no bigs because we have lots of injury prone players and an griseled orc lord of a coach.

Why is Sims on this roster? Why can't he catch a ball? Why can't he defend in space?

There's just no evidence we are a "really good team" other than bing bong, NYKMentality. We might well be but we haven't shown it at all.

[TheGreenArrow]

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Embarrassing from Brunson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[TheGreenArrow]

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[NoDopeOnSundays]

Thibs plays his bench if they are GOOD. Minutes of previous bench players we used to have:

Immanuel Quickley - 29mpg
Divo - 20
Ihart - 20
Grimes - 20
"MJ" Burks - 25
Josh Hart - 30

The last 3 seasons our benches have been 30th, 30th and 23rd in MPG. Using the MPG of 1 or 2 guys doesn't really mean anything, he has gone into overdrive of playing starters since he got Brunson.


This team is on borrowed time.

Who should have Thibs played more of the last 2 seasons? Feel like it’s impossible to conceptualize where they fell league wide without listing the players they were available to play.

Last season can easily be explained by the freak injuries to 3 of our starters. Moving our bench guys into the starting line up. Grimes, Burks, Bojan they made moves to try to bolster but they were all terrible. Were you really trying to see more Burks? What about Jacob Toppin? Or was it Charlie Brown?

The year prior to that one, IQ played 28.9 mpg, Hart 30 mpg after the trade, Ihart 18.9 mpg, Obi 15.7. All seem like reasonable amount of minutes for bench players. Not really seeing an Issue. So who cares if they were ranked 30th in the league? Were we really missing out on giving minutes to washed Rose or Evan Fournier so we can have a better ranking compared to rest of the league?

I’d like for Kolek to get more minutes but are you running out line ups with Kolek, Deuce, Payne, and precious together? What sort of line up configuration are you surrounding Dadiet with to make him successful? Is getting him those minutes worth less time for the starters playing?

The excuses are getting tiresome, this is since December 1st.






Mikal and Hart are 1 and 2 in the league for MPG now overall.


Yes, I would have liked to see Burks, Milton, Bojan etc last season instead of driving the starters into the ground. This is simple to understand, you're not going to win every single minute or put competitive lineups on the floor for every single second of the game, you're going to lose minutes here and there throughout the game even if your bench is good. The point of a bench is to keep it close enough that your starters can come in fresh and win. We have an elite starting 5, if our bench goes down or loses ground, I'm confident the starters can reel in most teams.

What I'm not confident in is the ability for guys to play 38-44mpg every other game during the regular season, this is not the 90s where you could play 40+mpg because the other team couldn't shoot, the amount of ground these guys have to cover on shooters is taxing. The 4th quarter stats on this team show they're tired, they had a 154 DRTG last night in the 4th and guys are talking about the offense when the defense completely and utterly fell off a cliff because the whole starting 5 was gassed. We go from an elite offensive team in every other quarter to a middle of the road team in the 4th, our defense in the 4th has been bad all season, these are facts.


We haven't had a single healthy playoff run yet, and I doubt we will this season.

[jvsimonetti0514]

I feel like putting a wing on Kat was trying to bait us into playing through the post and we did do it a decent amount. There was a bunch of times it ended up with Kat being triple teams and the refs swallowing their whistles. Kat is obviously great at doing it but his floor spacing is what really open things up for us. I’m sure they’re very happy that he didn’t take a single 3 last night. Thibs should try running him off some screens occasionally to get a different look.

The thing is, his floor spacing isn't nearly as helpful when he's not pulling the primary rim protector away from the paint. Until he forces Hartenstein to switch over to him, that floor spacing doesn't make enough of a difference. You force that switch-up by beating your post-matchup. Granted, the refs really were terrible, but Towns was 7/13 and getting a shot at the rim on every touch. You live with that, especially against a team that doesn't shoot the three as well as most.

I do agree that he mismanaged the rotations in the 4th and thought it was weird that he decided to go through Brunson down the stretch of a game he was struggling. I get that Brunson has been an elite closer for us and did well for the first couple minutes but made us stagnant. The calf isn’t stopping him from getting into the paint but it’s def doing something to affect his jumper.

Yeah, Brunson wasn't himself and it showed in the jumper (and Free throws). Plus, it was taking too long to get into the sets. By the time Brunson or Josh Hart got to a pick and roll, the shot clock had bled out, so there wasn't time for plays to unfold. The first guy to receive a pass HAD to shoot, or the ball handler had to shoot it himself.

Thibs has used the bench in the past when he had guys off there. Rose, IQ, Obi and IQ, Hart, Obi, Ihart were huge parts of our first 3 Thibs seasons. Not sure how he could be okay with iq and Brunson or deuce and Payne but not Kolek and Payne? Just don’t think we’ve got the guys. Especially without deuce and Mitch. Also probably should have kept Ajay Mitchell instead of trading him to the Thunder . Him being 6’5” would have really helped balance out the bench. It’s tough having all your best bench are 6’3”.

I'd believe that Kolek/Deuce/Shamet/Precious can't work if Thibs put them out there and it didn't work. But I actually think that grouping compliments each other in a bunch of ways. Plus, it's not like staggering the substitutions can't happen. If Thibs wants to shorten it an 8-man rotation, for whatever reason, he can't justify playing two of those guys less than 10 minutes and NONE of those guys 15 minutes or more.

Wonder how much better it would have been for towns or Mikal to be the one to go to Jalen when the Thunder doubled? Hart is the arguably the 2nd best playmaker in the started but he’s not really a pull up threat. Def trust Mikal and towns more from the top of the key but the you’ve got hart in the corner. Could see it being better but the Thunder play the passing lanes so well that it might not have mattered.

One of the downsides of Thibs treating every game as the most important. Like on nights against the wizards or even tonight against Chicago, give Shamet, Payne, precious a little bit more burn. Idk why he’s been reluctant to give shamet more minutes. I don’t hate the idea of tightening minutes last night but there’s been plenty of other times that he can let things breath. Just realistically he doesn’t have a ton to work with. Would have loved to seee Kolek close the other night but how realistic was it after him playing in the g league?

[nedleeds]

Before the complaints start rolling in, please remember this was ONE game. We took on the NBA's #1 defense and went down to the wire. This was NOT a blowout. KNICKS are right in the mix.

On to the next!

We've played the easiest schedule in the NBA and haven't won against a top 4 team in the East or West.

We bank fake wins against Orlando twice with no starters.

We better be healthy down the stretch because the schedule flips.

To play devils advocate the Nuggets and Orlando are top 4 teams in their respective conferences and that Orlando team you are calling fake wins without Franz and Paolo has beaten the Celtics and almost beat the team we lost to tonight.

Celtics rested Tatum. Thanks for playing.

[DaGawd]

nedleeds lives to be miserable lol

[jvsimonetti0514]

The last 3 seasons our benches have been 30th, 30th and 23rd in MPG. Using the MPG of 1 or 2 guys doesn't really mean anything, he has gone into overdrive of playing starters since he got Brunson.


This team is on borrowed time.

Who should have Thibs played more of the last 2 seasons? Feel like it’s impossible to conceptualize where they fell league wide without listing the players they were available to play.

Last season can easily be explained by the freak injuries to 3 of our starters. Moving our bench guys into the starting line up. Grimes, Burks, Bojan they made moves to try to bolster but they were all terrible. Were you really trying to see more Burks? What about Jacob Toppin? Or was it Charlie Brown?

The year prior to that one, IQ played 28.9 mpg, Hart 30 mpg after the trade, Ihart 18.9 mpg, Obi 15.7. All seem like reasonable amount of minutes for bench players. Not really seeing an Issue. So who cares if they were ranked 30th in the league? Were we really missing out on giving minutes to washed Rose or Evan Fournier so we can have a better ranking compared to rest of the league?

I’d like for Kolek to get more minutes but are you running out line ups with Kolek, Deuce, Payne, and precious together? What sort of line up configuration are you surrounding Dadiet with to make him successful? Is getting him those minutes worth less time for the starters playing?

The excuses are getting tiresome, this is since December 1st.






Mikal and Hart are 1 and 2 in the league for MPG now overall.


Yes, I would have liked to see Burks, Milton, Bojan etc last season instead of driving the starters into the ground. This is simple to understand, you're not going to win every single minute or put competitive lineups on the floor for every single second of the game, you're going to lose minutes here and there throughout the game even if your bench is good. The point of a bench is to keep it close enough that your starters can come in fresh and win. We have an elite starting 5, if our bench goes down or loses ground, I'm confident the starters can reel in most teams.

What I'm not confident in is the ability for guys to play 38-44mpg every other game during the regular season, this is not the 90s where you could play 40+mpg because the other team couldn't shoot, the amount of ground these guys have to cover on shooters is taxing. The 4th quarter stats on this team show they're tired, they had a 154 DRTG last night in the 4th and guys are talking about the offense when the defense completely and utterly fell off a cliff because the whole starting 5 was gassed.


We haven't had a single healthy playoff run yet, and I doubt we will this season.

You’re the one demanding changes to the rotations. I’d like to know what changes you’d make. Not really sure how you can say it’s an excuse to ask you who should play instead and what line ups they should play in.

How many wins from last season were you willing to sacrifice to see more of Burks and Bojan? Just to remind you that Burks shot 30% from the field and 30% from 3. Bojan had a negative 14 net rating. I do agree that shake shouldve been given a shot but if he was as bad as the other two would it be worth it to keep trotting him out there? There was only a 4 game difference between being the second seed or the 8th seed. Idk if last season would be remembered as fondly if we were a playin team that got crushed in the first or second round.

[Jalen Bluntson]

I was certainly not pleased earlier in the season when we were losing games we could and maybe should have won. The starters score damn near 100 pts every game. We should be leading the league in PPG. Somehow we have the worst bench in the league scoring wise playing the least minutes in 20 years. While our starters are playing gassed to win these games against bums. Something isn't working right.

I mean wouldn’t you say that Deuce McBride and Mitchell Robinson are our best bench players and neither of them played. How many teams benches look good without their two best players?

Its kinda obvious if you breakdown the game properly that this was the type of game where missing some depth killed us.

We have depth. Thibs refuses to use it.

[RHODEY]

Good car listen by Macri. His sentiments about this game mirror mine almost identically.

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[knicksNOTslick]

Read on Twitter

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Embarrassing from Brunson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of those Hartenstein blitzes were fouls though. Yes Brunson needs to play better and he'll be better. But the Thunder were super physical daring the refs to call them and the refs swallowed their whistles. IHart has played with Brunson a lot and set screens for him, he is familiar with his game and took advantage of it.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

Who should have Thibs played more of the last 2 seasons? Feel like it’s impossible to conceptualize where they fell league wide without listing the players they were available to play.

Last season can easily be explained by the freak injuries to 3 of our starters. Moving our bench guys into the starting line up. Grimes, Burks, Bojan they made moves to try to bolster but they were all terrible. Were you really trying to see more Burks? What about Jacob Toppin? Or was it Charlie Brown?

The year prior to that one, IQ played 28.9 mpg, Hart 30 mpg after the trade, Ihart 18.9 mpg, Obi 15.7. All seem like reasonable amount of minutes for bench players. Not really seeing an Issue. So who cares if they were ranked 30th in the league? Were we really missing out on giving minutes to washed Rose or Evan Fournier so we can have a better ranking compared to rest of the league?

I’d like for Kolek to get more minutes but are you running out line ups with Kolek, Deuce, Payne, and precious together? What sort of line up configuration are you surrounding Dadiet with to make him successful? Is getting him those minutes worth less time for the starters playing?

The excuses are getting tiresome, this is since December 1st.






Mikal and Hart are 1 and 2 in the league for MPG now overall.


Yes, I would have liked to see Burks, Milton, Bojan etc last season instead of driving the starters into the ground. This is simple to understand, you're not going to win every single minute or put competitive lineups on the floor for every single second of the game, you're going to lose minutes here and there throughout the game even if your bench is good. The point of a bench is to keep it close enough that your starters can come in fresh and win. We have an elite starting 5, if our bench goes down or loses ground, I'm confident the starters can reel in most teams.

What I'm not confident in is the ability for guys to play 38-44mpg every other game during the regular season, this is not the 90s where you could play 40+mpg because the other team couldn't shoot, the amount of ground these guys have to cover on shooters is taxing. The 4th quarter stats on this team show they're tired, they had a 154 DRTG last night in the 4th and guys are talking about the offense when the defense completely and utterly fell off a cliff because the whole starting 5 was gassed.


We haven't had a single healthy playoff run yet, and I doubt we will this season.

You’re the one demanding changes to the rotations. I’d like to know what changes you’d make. Not really sure how you can say it’s an excuse to ask you who should play instead and what line ups they should play in.

How many wins from last season were you willing to sacrifice to see more of Burks and Bojan? Just to remind you that Burks shot 30% from the field and 30% from 3. Bojan had a negative 14 net rating. I do agree that shake shouldve been given a shot but if he was as bad as the other two would it be worth it to keep trotting him out there? There was only a 4 game difference between being the second seed or the 8th seed. Idk if last season would be remembered as fondly if we were a playin team that got crushed in the first or second round.

I would have been playing Kolek and Pacome against the teams who put G-leaguers on the floor against us, and that would have started weeks ago when we were blowing teams out. I wouldnt do the platoon change lineups Tom does, I'd go with Kolek on the floor only when Mikal and OG are there with him, and Pacome would be the release valve to get one of the 3 wings more rest. The Thunder are the second best team in the league, they have been playing a second round pick 16mpg from essentially the start of the season, he was -4 last night, did that kill them? Jaylin Williams was -10 last night, they played him regardless. You're not going to win every minute of every game.

I'm willing to sacrifice regular season wins as long as the team gets to the playoffs healthy, which they have not done once under Tom. Burks also shot 50% from the field and 43% from three in 20mpg against the Pacers, he averaged 15ppg in that series but apparently, he could give us nothing after the trade deadline. There are only 13 teams in the NBA that have a positive net rating with their benches, and shockingly we are one of them, the problem is ours just doesn't play enough.






415 minutes is completely hilarious for a bench that actually wins the minutes they're on the floor, albeit they can't score, but you can't score when they're out there.

[Jalen Bluntson]

I just want to thank Context for the amazing job he did rallying the troops for that 9 game win streak!! Excellent work sir. I really wanted 10 in a row. We will get back on track and learn from this loss. I didn't get to see this game but, the comments sound all too familiar. Oh well. On to the next one.

[JayTWill]

The contrast between the 2 coaches was glaring. One coach has been willing to go 10 deep all year no matter what while starting the game with their center on our wing and their wing on our center, switching, trapping, playing zone, playing with no bigs on the court at times etc vs the other coach who methodically does the same thing game after game.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other but I sure wish we used the regular season as an opportunity to experiment, grow, and develop even if it came with more ups and downs. I feel like it would be much more beneficial in the end. It's not like having a higher seed has led Thibs very far in the postseason.

I'm very curious to see what adjustments if any that Thibs and the team will make next week. Hopefully McBride and Caruso are back for that game and we have another competitive match up with the Knicks performing better in the second half. It's just frustrating to see that Thibs' answer seems to be to shorten the rotation and give Brunson the ball so often no matter the situation.

[Jose7]

We choked down the stretch..no excuses we lost.

Few keys…

Loved running offense through Mikal, why stop?

Brunson is hilariously slow getting the ball out of pick and roll or pop with Kat. It doesn’t many any sense at all

KAT no threes?

The Ihart out of bounds save was the game changer.

We will be a monster team once Leon and Co send a professional to get to thugs about the rotation madness.. 35 games in to the next 4-6 year core..they doing well

[thebuzzardman]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s what I’ve been saying all year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kind of rooting for Brunson to miss 25 games with an injury so you can see how sh*t your takes are.

Dude u can finagle it however you want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But the facts are the Facts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brunson cost us the game in the 2nd half!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Terrible start to the 3rdqt trying to get him in rhythm and him ballhoging in the 4thq sealed the loss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's hope he sits tonight so the player you hate so much won't be costing the Knicks the game.

And everyone's beloved bench gets that chance to "contribute"

[Fury]

Spoiler:

We choked down the stretch..no excuses we lost.

Few keys…

Loved running offense through Mikal, why stop?

Brunson is hilariously slow getting the ball out of pick and roll or pop with Kat. It doesn’t many any sense at all

KAT no threes?

The Ihart out of bounds save was the game changer.

We will be a monster team once Leon and Co send a professional to get to thugs about the rotation madness.. 35 games in to the next 4-6 year core..they doing well

Thugs lol

[thebuzzardman]

That was the best NBA game of the season I've watched so far. Knicks looked like contenders against a top team on the road just could not hold on at the end. JB was rough but shout out to him for playing if he's injured, he is usually great when healthy. Leon needs to get some more bench depth, 5 points from the bench is pathetic. Get better Deuce and Mitch.

No, you can't appreciate Brunson if he played through being hurt. You have to pile on saying he sucked. This is the way.

[NYKinMIA]

I really wanted this one.

how the fuq does KAT get iced out in the 4th?!

[thebuzzardman]

Woke up feeling pretty good. We were able to execute flawlessly for 3 quarters against the best team in the west. Sometimes you get out played by one of the best teams in the league and there’s nothing to be ashamed about. I think people are forgetting we’ve got these starters locked in for years and clearly we’ve got a starting line up of a title contender. Let
Me emphasize again, we’ve got a bunch of guys in their prime for a solid 5 year window that battled the top 3 team in the league.

Last night we looked like a team that made 2 major trades in the offseason. As of right now we’ve got 3 guys in our rotation that basically have one foot out of the nba. The guy that was the best off the bench last night, shamet signed an exhibit 9 deal. We are thin and even thinner without deuce and Mitch. Payne was originally signed to be the 10th man of this team. I’m just not surprised that their minutes were a disaster against the Thunder. It’s now up to the front office to fill out the rest of the roster.

Kolek looks like he’ll be a player and it’s up to the coaching staff to develop dadiet but there’s potential there. There’s a Mitch trade still to be made and maybe you can bring over Rokas. This isn’t a one year opportunity. We’ve got way to replenish our depth.

Kolek and Dadiet should be rotation players next season which will be huge. And maybe Hukporti too.

Dadiet can't even put up big numbers in the G-League. He's a year away from being two years away.