PG: Lethal Weapon

[Adelheid]

Concerning the thread title: Does anyone have an idea why OG is so much quicker and more explosive lately? It seems like he has gone in the quickness, explosiveness department from 6/10 to like 8/10. Sometimes I seem him slash and am surprised how fluid and quick he is nowadays...

Speed seems the same to me. Can chalk it up to better reaction times.

muscle memory, i would gather. Same motions, but he gets to do it more and more; it just become automatic or second nature or instinct

[rajajackal]

Concerning the thread title: Does anyone have an idea why OG is so much quicker and more explosive lately? It seems like he has gone in the quickness, explosiveness department from 6/10 to like 8/10. Sometimes I seem him slash and am surprised how fluid and quick he is nowadays...

Speed seems the same to me. Can chalk it up to better reaction times.

muscle memory, i would gather. Same motions, but he gets to do it more and more; it just become automatic or second nature or instinct

i think part of it is the approach. he's been cutting for dunks and hitting 3's all year. but early on he was looking for shots by going back to the basket or dribbling in places he had no business dribbling. he's still coughing it up a bit. but now when he's on ball he's taking advantage of his athleticism by using his dribble to cover ground quickly and get directly to the hoop

[LFGK]

Tom gets exposed literally every time we play someone with above average coaching. I'm still stunned we beat Denver.

Team is 50-20 vs the other 26 teams in the god damn league so he's got 50 wins vs bad coaching and 20
Times he's been out coached? I don't get the coach hate man.....

8 wins versus winning teams is an alarming stat for a team that has the talent to be a legit contender.

The stat isn't even correct, they have 12 wins vs teams above .500

[The Vo Show]

Speed seems the same to me. Can chalk it up to better reaction times.

muscle memory, i would gather. Same motions, but he gets to do it more and more; it just become automatic or second nature or instinct

i think part of it is the approach. he's been cutting for dunks and hitting 3's all year. but early on he was looking for shots by going back to the basket or dribbling in places he had no business dribbling. he's still coughing it up a bit. but now when he's on ball he's taking advantage of his athleticism by using his dribble to cover ground quickly and get directly to the hoop

I think he realized that the guys guarding him aren't strong enough. You can see how he's trying to dunk it on everyone. I think he has more dunk attempts than layups since coming back from injury

[Clyde_Style]

We need to do an age check on some of the people thirsting over Sunni Lee. She's only 22.

Well said

[Clyde_Style]

not to triple post on main but one last thing: as someone who thinks thibs is overly criticized by people unwilling to blame the players for their own lack of success, i agree that if we get embarrassed or outed early in the playoffs (which means anything fewer than 7 games in round 2) we should start actively looking to change the head coach. leon cashed the chips in, and now the roster can only be improved in the margins. so if there is a roster/HC mismatch, the logical step is to adjust the one that isn't constrained by the CBA

This is fair.

And this is why people can stop running victory laps for Thibs whenever we win a game.

Just let nature run its course.

If Thibs shows he can outcoach a top team during the playoffs everyone will dap him up like nobody's business.

If he can't, then do as you say.

It's basic logic at this point.

[prophet_of_rage]

Back to back 50 win seasons. 50-28 overall

Here's a breakdown of our record

42-6 vs Teams with losing records
8-22 vs Teams with winning records

84% of our wins have come vs losing teams
16% of our wins have come vs winning teams

Unfortunately in the playoffs we play winning teams

But nonetheless, BEST MID TEAM IN THE NBA!!!

Tom gets exposed literally every time we play someone with above average coaching. I'm still stunned we beat Denver.

Team is 50-20 vs the other 26 teams in the god damn league so he's got 50 wins vs bad coaching and 20
Times he's been out coached? I don't get the coach hate man.....

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

[prophet_of_rage]

Maybe what’s happening is simple — OG grabbing second spot and then stuff falls into place. MB comfortable and Karl sort of plays at same speed no matter but this crowds out the forces from him too. No offense in the NBA that is really, really good will have unclear pecking order.

Not challenging your point about modern teams but did the Chauncey Detroit pistons have a clear order? I ask because I think this team can be a suped up version of that team

Rip on those mid range jumpers coming off the curl screen was one of their primary weapons, but from what I remember, their attack was pretty balanced. Billups, Prince, Sheed all could step up to hit the deep ball too.

It was Rip first, Sheed second, Prince third. Then in the 4th it was Chauncey, Sheed, Rip.

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[LFGK]

Tom gets exposed literally every time we play someone with above average coaching. I'm still stunned we beat Denver.

Team is 50-20 vs the other 26 teams in the god damn league so he's got 50 wins vs bad coaching and 20
Times he's been out coached? I don't get the coach hate man.....

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

[spree8]

I swear, the Thibs fanatics are like the dude back in the day who’s ass you whooped, that starts talkin shyt again when you’re a block away and he’s just gettin back up off the ground.

You just can’t win against them

[prophet_of_rage]

Team is 50-20 vs the other 26 teams in the god damn league so he's got 50 wins vs bad coaching and 20
Times he's been out coached? I don't get the coach hate man.....

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

Then they will change their tune.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

[LFGK]

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

Then they will change their tune.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

No the Thibs haters won't, it'll just turn into" the teams high end talent won them games despite a bad coach" lol

[ctorres]

Back to back 50 win seasons. 50-28 overall

Here's a breakdown of our record

42-6 vs Teams with losing records
8-22 vs Teams with winning records

84% of our wins have come vs losing teams
16% of our wins have come vs winning teams

Unfortunately in the playoffs we play winning teams

But nonetheless, BEST MID TEAM IN THE NBA!!!

I was speaking of the trajectory they were on and I was speaking in probabilities based on their performance at that time.

If you're going to be a receipts clown take it to the chitposting thread next time. TY

You know what? No!

Clyde_Style and Spree2Houston, both of you were flat out wrong. You guys were very emphatic about the Knicks not being able to make it to 50 wins, and the team proved you wrong. You wanted them to fail, and they didn't. Then you want to pull some fancy arguments to try to justify your position. Nope, you are not going to gaslight me or anyone on here!

If I ever wholeheartedly predict something on this forum, repeatedly tell you all it's going to happen, brag about how it's going to happen, and then I am flat out wrong, any of you all can feel free to call me out for being wrong. I'll be man enough to admit and say "my bad, I really got it wrong you guys".

Shoutout to tkknicks1 to being a real one and not trying to pull a whole bunch of mental gymnastics like you two.

[Clyde_Style]

Back to back 50 win seasons. 50-28 overall

Here's a breakdown of our record

42-6 vs Teams with losing records
8-22 vs Teams with winning records

84% of our wins have come vs losing teams
16% of our wins have come vs winning teams

Unfortunately in the playoffs we play winning teams

But nonetheless, BEST MID TEAM IN THE NBA!!!

I was speaking of the trajectory they were on and I was speaking in probabilities based on their performance at that time.

If you're going to be a receipts clown take it to the chitposting thread next time. TY

You know what? No!

Clyde_Style and Spree2Houston, both of you were flat out wrong. You guys were very emphatic about the Knicks not being able to make it to 50 wins, and the team proved you wrong. You wanted them to fail, and they didn't. Then you want to pull some fancy arguments to try to justify your position. Nope, you are not going to gaslight me or anyone on here!

If I ever wholeheartedly predict something on this forum, repeatedly tell you all it's going to happen, brag about how it's going to happen, and then I am flat out wrong, any of you all can feel free to call me out for being wrong. I'll be man enough to admit and say "my bad, I really got it wrong you guys".

Shoutout to tkknicks1 to being a real one and not trying to pull a whole bunch of mental gymnastics like you two.

Predictions and guarantees are two different things.

Brunson was out and they were playing below .500 ball over the previous 10 games while everyone in neighboring brackets were playing above .500 ball so the trend did not look like it would get them to 50 wins.

You did not predict OG dominating games anymore than I did.

There are ups and downs along the way and the happy result is they may be healthy and ready to peak at the right time.

That should be something we can all enjoy. I'm not interested in fighting with you.

The mods have sunset this juvenile receipt nonsense.

Let it go and enjoy the playoffs.

[HopelessKnick]

The Pistons were much much better defensively. In fact they may have been the best defensive sqaud in the past 25 years. I remember the 3-peat Lakers entering the finals as heavy favorites and the Pistons basically destroyed them with their defense alone. Kobe pulled a miracle comeback finish in game 2 and everyone was thinking the Lakers are back on track. The Pistons then proceeded to beat the heck out of the Lakers in 3 consecutive games. The next season they were back again in the finals but lost in 7 to a strong Spurs team.

Imagine the current Knicks with Towns playing DPOY level defense and Brunson also being a strong defender...then you have reached the level of defense the Pistons had.

How the times have changed though...back then Billups was their only really good 3-point shooter. Ben Wallace was a non shooter, Sheed was a good midrange shooter but iffy from 3. Prince was ok from 3 but very low volume (like 3 3 pointer per game or so). Rip was a midrange assassin but basically didn't shoot any 3-pointer.

I really really loved that Pistons team. Was always jelaous of them...felt that that's what the Knicks needed to look like.

[spree2kawhi]

I can't find the usual wins prediction thread (did we have one?), but I thought we'd hit 60 wins in the beginning I believe. The Brunson injury killed any chance of that. But this is a 60 win team on paper. I just don't know if they've got the f you mentality to win it all. The talent is there.

According to some posters this is a very mid team with a very flawed roster. One flaw supposedly is that we only have Mikal Bridges as one of our role players and not Zach LaVine who (regardless of being paid twice as much and currently only looking at the play-in tournament) just won a single game against Cleveland with his team. This place is just full of actual morons.

[spree2kawhi]

Team is 50-20 vs the other 26 teams in the god damn league so he's got 50 wins vs bad coaching and 20
Times he's been out coached? I don't get the coach hate man.....

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

This 0-8 talk is a **** argument anyway used mostly by people who have embarrassed themselves with their cluelessness on this board before and are now scrambling for SOMETHING left in order to save face.

This is the first year of this team, they have had very, very good stretches, the talent is there, our “flaws” convincingly carried us through a longer stretch without our best player, Towns arrived here only 5 months ago, and a championship has never been won that quickly by any team outside of Kawhi’s Raptors.

The assumption that we could have magically got better return on our moves or - get that - be better with Randle still around ( ) is so ridiculous that it hurts. But these people just don’t care, they are full of ****.

[HopelessKnick]

I can't find the usual wins prediction thread (did we have one?), but I thought we'd hit 60 wins in the beginning I believe. The Brunson injury killed any chance of that. But this is a 60 win team on paper. I just don't know if they've got the f you mentality to win it all. The talent is there.

According to some posters this is a very mid team with a very flawed roster. One flaw supposedly is that we only have Mikal Bridges as one of our role players and not Zach LaVine who (regardless of being paid twice as much and currently only looking at the play-in tournament) just won a single game against Cleveland with his team. This place is just full of actual morons.

People just like to tend to go to extremes. I personally knew and predicted that the start of the season (first 20 games) were going to be more difficult than people assume (this has always been the case with newly assembled teams no matter how good they look on paper--ask the Lebron Heat who started 9-9 before winning 26 of the next 27 games). But I did think we had a realistic shot at 55-58 wins.

I was however assuming we'd have Mitch back by December so that was the biggest unexpected to me. Without Mitch for 60 games, 50-52 wins is not unrealistic. The second unexpected thing has been Mikal's play.....I wasn't expecting 25points-Mikal but a better version on both ends. To me I feel like we have gotten 70%-80% of what I thought we'd be getting with him.

Leon has done a solid/good job during his tenure but there is a big big sin committed repeatedly and that's the complete disregard of the draft. We had multiple picks in the 10-20 range and we really could have been in a much much better position today if there was some willingness from the FO and coach to take the draft seriously. Many players drafted in our range people would today give up 3 FRPs to trade for them. In terms of ranking:

OKC and Boston and (Cleveland) are currently the top 3
The Knicks are in that second ties with 5-6 other teams....but I personally would rank the Knicks currently more at 7-8 than 4-5.

[HopelessKnick]

It avoids admitting the team is flawed.

Sent from my SM-S9080 using RealGM mobile app

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

This 0-8 talk is a **** argument anyway used mostly by people who have embarrassed themselves with their cluelessness on this board before and are now scrambling for SOMETHING left in order to save face.

This is the first year of this team, they have had very, very good stretches, the talent is there, our “flaws” convincingly carried us through a longer stretch without our best player, Towns arrived here only 5 months ago, and a championship has never been won that quickly by any team outside of Kawhi’s Raptors.

The assumption that we could have magically got better return on our moves or - get that - be better with Randle still around ( ) is so ridiculous that it hurts. But these people just don’t care, they are full of ****.

I think you are being way to overly harsh. The 0-8 argument is valid. It is not about being 0-8 per se, it is more about being blown out 7 out of 8 times. I think if say 5 out of those 8 games were closely contested 5 point losses things would be different.

I'm personally no Randle fan at all but I think that argument is about the huge sacrifice in depths and FRPs last offseason. And despite disliking Randle's game and character myself, I think questioning giving up DD, Randle and the 17th pick is not outlandish. I personally would have probably still done the trade but with the Detroit pick turning out soo good in a deep draft it is not lopsided at all anymore IMO. BTW when the trade happened 99% thought the Detroit pick was not going to convey because the Pistons really didn't have any eye-popping acquisition and came of that 27 games losing streak...I'm sure that our FO was surprised as well. But given the fact that Randle was a 3 times all-star and DD has 6th man of the year potential, giving up that pick was excessive. Leon generally was way too careless with the picks last offseason and he overestimated Mikal's ability.

Like take a step back. If you had to choose between having Hartenstein, Randle, DD, 17th pick, 18th pick, 25th pick + our 2027,2029,2031 unprotected picks back or KAT and Bridges...what would you choose? I know the Hartenstein situation was sort of unpreventable with OKC's huge offer but I think the pessimistic guys around here feel that from last offseason to this we haven't put ourselves in a decisively better position despite trading virtually all our assets. If you had told me prior to last offseason we'll trade all our picks and Randle and DD are gone as well I would have easily expected a true title contender this season already. Not a team that hopes not to get embarassed vs. Boston.

[spree2kawhi]

All teams are flawed man, Thibs has had this Knick team in the top 10, top 5 even I think defensively we just haven't had Mitch(look what they've done defensively with him
Back). Even the mighty Thunder are flawed and it will
Show come playoff time when they don't get out of the second round. Ppl can look at 0-8 all they want, in 2 weeks that sh*t means nothing when the real season begins, this team healthy(with this version of OG) will be a nightmare out.

This 0-8 talk is a **** argument anyway used mostly by people who have embarrassed themselves with their cluelessness on this board before and are now scrambling for SOMETHING left in order to save face.

This is the first year of this team, they have had very, very good stretches, the talent is there, our “flaws” convincingly carried us through a longer stretch without our best player, Towns arrived here only 5 months ago, and a championship has never been won that quickly by any team outside of Kawhi’s Raptors.

The assumption that we could have magically got better return on our moves or - get that - be better with Randle still around ( ) is so ridiculous that it hurts. But these people just don’t care, they are full of ****.

I think you are being way to overly harsh. The 0-8 argument is valid. It is not about being 0-8 per se, it is more about being blown out 7 out of 8 times. I think if say 5 out of those 8 games were closely contested 5 point losses things would be different.

I'm personally no Randle fan at all but I think that argument is about the huge sacrifice in depths and FRPs last offseason. And despite disliking Randle's game and character myself, I think questioning giving up DD, Randle and the 17th pick is not outlandish. I personally would have probably still done the trade but with the Detroit pick turning out soo good in a deep draft it is not lopsided at all anymore IMO. BTW when the trade happened 99% thought the Detroit pick was not going to convey because the Pistons really didn't have any eye-popping acquisition and came of that 27 games losing streak...I'm sure that our FO was surprised as well. But given the fact that Randle was a 3 times all-star and DD has 6th man of the year potential, giving up that pick was excessive. Leon generally was way too careless with the picks last offseason and he overestimated Mikal's ability.

I think you’re underestimating what we have acquired and how this needs time to grow. Even with Mikal Bridges, what he’s done recently is unappreciated. He has been very, very good lately, very efficient and especially great on defense. But people cannot see it, they can only see what they are told - yet they will be the loudest voices in an online forum. You can tell they never handled a basketball. You do the Towns pick 10/10 times and not look back. The fact that we already outperformed last year’s team after missing Brunson for 15 something games and Mitch for 60 or whatever it was is a more telling marker to me. This will be a much improved team next year and we haven’t even lost a playoff game yet.

What is more, it’s easy to say we overpaid for Bridges. But he fits in, literally, with his 24 million deal, and posters have failed at providing feasible alternatives, especially considering that fact. Dollar for dollar, Bridges has been one of the very best players in the league at his position, especially lately. Name other players who can be great defenders, secondary ball handlers and fourth options or, if needed, highly efficient 22 ppg scorers - at 24 million and 25 million secured through next year. I kinda suspect people do not understand that.

And I don’t mean you when I say that and I don’t even know if I’m really using the plural form.