PG: Awful gameplan, not prepared, not 1 good performance

[HopelessKnick]

Maybe the Pacers are just really good? Remember, last year they didn't have Hailburton for 2 games against Boston. That was like a fraudulent run by the Celtics.

Well they are good, they stomped Giannis and then a 64 win #1 seed on the way here.

Well I find it difficult to judge the Pacers. They have certainly been very successful in the playoffs and under Carlisle in general. I still think the Cavs were at max at 60% strength. If the Pacers make it a series against OKC and win 2-3 games then I will acknowledge that I underestimated them.

I don't think they will be able to. I think OKC will stomp them but we'll see.....

[robillionaire]

Maybe the Pacers are just really good? Remember, last year they didn't have Hailburton for 2 games against Boston. That was like a fraudulent run by the Celtics.

Well they are good, they stomped Giannis and then a 64 win #1 seed on the way here.

Well I find it difficult to judge the Pacers. They have certainly been very successful in the playoffs and under Carlisle in general. I still think the Cavs were at max at 60% strength. If the Pacers make it a series against OKC and win 2-3 games then I will acknowledge that I underestimated them.

I don't think they will be able to. I think OKC will stomp them but we'll see.....

I think OKC is a level above them too and should win handily, but still doesn’t diminish how good they have been to this point

[HopelessKnick]

Everyone relax here.

1) OKC is at least one level, probably two levels above our level of play. Even if we won game 1 and made it somehow to the finals, it would have been 1999 vibes all over again. Basically zero realistic chance at winning the title. Yes making the finals is better than losing in the ECF but to me the difference is marginal.

2) Stop really complaining and replaying game 1 in your heads....we were the Kings of winning undeservedly during this playoff run. Almost all our wins in the Pistons series and 3 out of 4 wins in the Celtics series we weren't outplaying anyone. If all it takes is one bad loss for this team to get eliminated, then they really didn't deserve to make the finals anyways.

3) If this team made the finals they are likely running it back. Losing to the Pacers (a good but not great team really that probably in the west struggles to make it past round 1), opens up the possibility and puts pressure on the team to make changes.

4) It opens up the Giannis window possibly. I personally do not believe the team in its current constitution can truly go all the way and it would be doubtful whether Giannis would even want to join a finals team (Durant vibes). Now the stage is set perfectly---ECF loss, not getting past the Pacers. Giannis comes for the rescue.
The margin is big to a title and this series showed it. For people in doubt about this I'm sure they will come around once OKC has hammered the Pacers in the finals. We profited from an epically bad shooting choke job by the Celtics....nothing more. This is a second round and out team. They look like it, they play like it. Brunson and KAT together is not going to work period. We need 4 strong defenders next to Brunson and we need much much more ball movement and a better offense.

I agree with almost everything you say, however there is something to be said for winning a conference despite it leading to a series demolition for OKC. As far as the Giannis dream, this is not happening, unless Giannis says knicks only which he won't do, the bucks if they move him are going to want good players and picks, the knicks don't have the picks anymore, and other teams will come up with much better offers

And I can understand your viewpoint. To me however---especially if you can't realistically win it all---it comes down to the process and where you are really at. After giving the team 40+ games I started to become more and more dissatisfied with their level of play. We were like 1 game above .500 after the all-star break. The Pistons series was terribly underwhelming. Beating the Celtics had me briefly questioning my assessment but we really profited from multiple factors there.

I try to make my viewpoint clear by this example: If Durant didn't get injured against Toronto the Warriors win it all and the Raptors are "only" finalists. 5 years down the road, does it really matter? A championship matters truly but had the Raptors lost in that finals series by a 4-1 demolition....like would it really have been a glorious thing to remember overall? I guess it is up to personal preference really....

[robillionaire]

Stubborn is as stubborn does.

It wasn’t the minutes distribution. Mitch was a -20 in 18 minutes. If the lineup didn’t work even in limited minutes there’s no reason to think he would have worked in the 4th either

Interesting how we never lost the 1st or 2nd quarter or never trailed going into the 4th in either the 1st or 2nd games with our regular starters and rotation. But the moment we took Hart out of the starting lineup and replaced him with Robinson is when we lost every 1st and 2nd quarter while trailing going into the 4th. Last night we gave up 43 points to them in the 1st quarter.

Quoting just to boost it

[sol537]

Maybe the Pacers are just really good? Remember, last year they didn't have Hailburton for 2 games against Boston. That was like a fraudulent run by the Celtics.

Well they are good, they stomped Giannis and then a 64 win #1 seed on the way here.

Well I find it difficult to judge the Pacers. They have certainly been very successful in the playoffs and under Carlisle in general. I still think the Cavs were at max at 60% strength. If the Pacers make it a series against OKC and win 2-3 games then I will acknowledge that I underestimated them.

I don't think they will be able to. I think OKC will stomp them but we'll see.....

I too think OKC in 4 or 5 but crazier things have happened (like our game one meltdown).

[HEZI]

That line up was an absolute negative though. That's not conjecture. They were statistically literally the worst starting group still remaining.

That’s the lineup we won with all regular season and playoffs long. I tried to warn people about looking at net ratings in small sample sizes. We don’t have a bench and we don’t have players on the bench that would be better in starting roles. Look at Robinson, y’all wanted him to start and whined about it. Wanted more two big lineups because of net rating stats. I said Robinson is not a starter don’t start him he’s just an energy guy off the bench. Well you got it and it’s made us worse. Robinson can’t handle the Pacers pace and is getting exposed. Same thing applies to the rest of the guys you might think would look better starting. They won’t.

This is elfrid payton all tf over again. People screamed to bench him. We lose 1 playoff game against the hawks and it’s 1-1 after 2 games, and thibs capitulates to the fans and he benches him. Fans celebrate “he’s finally doing what we wanted wow it’s about time” and then we get blown out 3 games in a row. And the prior sentence just gets memory holed by everyone. Now he finally again did what fans wanted and it’s not working. It didn’t work in game 3 either and the only reason the series isn’t already over is because towns decided to go ham in the 4th quarter without fans preferred lineup and won the game. This is after he tried benching towns in the 4th in game 2, a strategy that was tried and never worked for Minnesota either, and blowing that game.

If there’s a reason to fire Thibs look no further than the fact that when things get tough more than once he has been hoodwinked to capitulate to fans and media and done stupid things that don’t work.

After we beat Boston I praised Thibs and said just do you Thibs don’t ever read this board and just do you. I don’t think he listened to the fans but listened to Josh Hart. It was reported that Hart presented the idea to Thibs about coming off the bench and was willing to make the sacrifice. That was a decision they made internally but it went along with what the fans wanted. It backfired

[Gravy]

Hart is the definition of glue guy. He was holding that group together and the moment he was removed from the lineup is when things fell apart

Everyone focuses on his lack of shooting but he adds many things to the sl; extra ball handling, assists, rebounding, toughness. He is our Draymond.

[Fury]

Hart is the definition of glue guy. He was holding that group together and the moment he was removed from the lineup is when things fell apart

Everyone focuses on his lack of shooting but he adds many things to the sl; extra ball handling, assists, rebounding, toughness. He is our Draymond.

He does add that stuff but he also loses his guy a lot. He's like Drayomd without the defense.

[robillionaire]

Everyone relax here.

1) OKC is at least one level, probably two levels above our level of play. Even if we won game 1 and made it somehow to the finals, it would have been 1999 vibes all over again. Basically zero realistic chance at winning the title. Yes making the finals is better than losing in the ECF but to me the difference is marginal.

2) Stop really complaining and replaying game 1 in your heads....we were the Kings of winning undeservedly during this playoff run. Almost all our wins in the Pistons series and 3 out of 4 wins in the Celtics series we weren't outplaying anyone. If all it takes is one bad loss for this team to get eliminated, then they really didn't deserve to make the finals anyways.

3) If this team made the finals they are likely running it back. Losing to the Pacers (a good but not great team really that probably in the west struggles to make it past round 1), opens up the possibility and puts pressure on the team to make changes.

4) It opens up the Giannis window possibly. I personally do not believe the team in its current constitution can truly go all the way and it would be doubtful whether Giannis would even want to join a finals team (Durant vibes). Now the stage is set perfectly---ECF loss, not getting past the Pacers. Giannis comes for the rescue.
The margin is big to a title and this series showed it. For people in doubt about this I'm sure they will come around once OKC has hammered the Pacers in the finals. We profited from an epically bad shooting choke job by the Celtics....nothing more. This is a second round and out team. They look like it, they play like it. Brunson and KAT together is not going to work period. We need 4 strong defenders next to Brunson and we need much much more ball movement and a better offense.

I agree with almost everything you say, however there is something to be said for winning a conference despite it leading to a series demolition for OKC. As far as the Giannis dream, this is not happening, unless Giannis says knicks only which he won't do, the bucks if they move him are going to want good players and picks, the knicks don't have the picks anymore, and other teams will come up with much better offers

And I can understand your viewpoint. To me however---especially if you can't realistically win it all---it comes down to the process and where you are really at. After giving the team 40+ games I started to become more and more dissatisfied with their level of play. We were like 1 game above .500 after the all-star break. The Pistons series was terribly underwhelming. Beating the Celtics had me briefly questioning my assessment but we really profited from multiple factors there.

I try to make my viewpoint clear by this example: If Durant didn't get injured against Toronto the Warriors win it all and the Raptors are "only" finalists. 5 years down the road, does it really matter? A championship matters truly but had the Raptors lost in that finals series by a 4-1 demolition....like would it really have been a glorious thing to remember overall? I guess it is up to personal preference really....

If Covid didn’t happen and Kyrie didn’t get injured against Milwaukee and Durant didn’t toenail it Giannis is just perennial 1st or second round fodder like Embiid not some guy that we hope can propel them to a championship. There are so many tiny things that can totally change the perception of a team or player

[Chanel Bomber]

Hart is the definition of glue guy. He was holding that group together and the moment he was removed from the lineup is when things fell apart

Yeah the lineup change felt a bit pointless to me.

I think the real move was swapping Mikal and Deuce, including their minutes. We'd at least inject more 3-point shooting in our lineups.

I don't think it was ever on the table for political reasons though.

There was a point to it. The point was to improve the defense and I suppose add some offensive rebounding. Rebounding hasn’t been improved. Defense hasn’t been improved. They calculated after game 2 that towns was the reason we were getting cooked on defense. After 2 games with Mitch in there, it’s clear that he wasn’t the biggest reason for the ongoing defensive failure by a long shot.

Mitch wasn't going to have more impact by playing the same amount of minutes imo. At best the difference would be marginal.

Brunson is the common denominator for our defensive struggles in this series. He's completely exposed by the Pacers offense.

If we are serious about improving our defense, Jalen would play less in game 5. But we treat him like LeBron James so it's not going to happen.

[Chanel Bomber]

Spoiler:

Why do you hate good players chanel???!!!?!??!?!?!?!?!

WHY?!?!?!?

"Good players"

You hate Brunson!!!!

Sorry I prefer two-way players like KAT!!!!

[sol537]

Hart is the definition of glue guy. He was holding that group together and the moment he was removed from the lineup is when things fell apart

Everyone focuses on his lack of shooting but he adds many things to the sl; extra ball handling, assists, rebounding, toughness. He is our Draymond.

He does add that stuff but he also loses his guy a lot. He's like Drayomd without the defense.

Draymond without defense indeed

[HopelessKnick]

Well they are good, they stomped Giannis and then a 64 win #1 seed on the way here.

Well I find it difficult to judge the Pacers. They have certainly been very successful in the playoffs and under Carlisle in general. I still think the Cavs were at max at 60% strength. If the Pacers make it a series against OKC and win 2-3 games then I will acknowledge that I underestimated them.

I don't think they will be able to. I think OKC will stomp them but we'll see.....

I too think OKC in 4 or 5 but crazier things have happened (like our game one meltdown).

This was our only bad loss in this year's playoffs and essentially every game except 2 in the Celtics series have been close....so for me...if that is all it takes to eliminate us...then we were frauds anyways...rode high on some lucky wins and flamed out after facing the first adversity...nothing to lose sleep over...the Knicks are a good, not great team...borderline top 10 team maybe...

AND KEEP THIS IN MIND: We are talking a really weak weak eastern conference. In the west both the Knicks and Pacers are likely first round and out teams so in the grand scheme of things I'm not even bothered much:

OKC, GSW, Rockets, Lakers, Wolves, Nuggets, Clippers.....I truly don't know if we even beat a single one of those teams....Memphis was the only team I could have seen us beat....maybe just maybe the Rockets although I thought they played pretty strong against GSW. We aren't anywhere close to where people assumed after the Celtics series....And of course a healthy Celtics team beats us 8 out of 10 times. We are a borderline top 10 team where everything aligned for us to make the ECF (Atlanta like):

Epic Pistons meltdown in game 1
Epic blown whistle in game 4

just to have us barely beat a mid team. A good team does not get stomped like we did in game 5 at home against clearly inferior competition.

Historic Celtic shooting choke job. Missed 60+ open 3s in two games and we BARELY won. It wasn't like they missed record number of 3s and we hammered them. They missed record number of 3s and we barely won on the last play. Still without Tatum they destroyed us by close to 30 points at home.

[robillionaire]

Well I find it difficult to judge the Pacers. They have certainly been very successful in the playoffs and under Carlisle in general. I still think the Cavs were at max at 60% strength. If the Pacers make it a series against OKC and win 2-3 games then I will acknowledge that I underestimated them.

I don't think they will be able to. I think OKC will stomp them but we'll see.....

I too think OKC in 4 or 5 but crazier things have happened (like our game one meltdown).

This was our only bad loss in this year's playoffs and essentially every game except 2 in the Celtics series have been close....so for me...if that is all it takes to eliminate us...then we were frauds anyways...rode high on some lucky wins and flamed out after facing the first adversity...nothing to lose sleep over...the Knicks are a good, not great team...borderline top 10 team maybe...

AND KEEP THIS IN MIND: We are talking a really weak weak eastern conference. In the west both the Knicks and Pacers are likely first round and out teams so in the grand scheme of things I'm not even bothered much:

OKC, GSW, Rockets, Lakers, Wolves, Nuggets, Clippers.....I truly don't know if we even beat a single one of those teams....Memphis was the only team I could have seen us beat....maybe just maybe the Rockets although I thought they played pretty strong against GSW. We aren't anywhere close to where people assumed after the Celtics series....And of course a healthy Celtics team beats us 8 out of 10 times. We are a borderline top 10 team where everything aligned for us to make the ECF (Atlanta like):

Epic Pistons meltdown in game 1
Epic blown whistle in game 4

just to have us barely beat a mid team. A good team does not get stomped like we did in game 5 at home against clearly inferior competition.

Historic Celtic shooting choke job. Missed 60+ open 3s in two games and we BARELY won. It wasn't like they missed record number of 3s and we hammered them. They missed record number of 3s and we barely won on the last play. Still without Tatum they destroyed us by close to 30 points at home.

I don’t think the west is that good either. A mid 49 win Timberwolves team is in the conference finals, the rockets were proven to be 1st round frauds, the warriors are washed, OKC for the world beaters they’re supposed to be needed 7 to get past a janky Nuggets team who fired their coach a month ago

[Wildcat]

That’s the lineup we won with all regular season and playoffs long. I tried to warn people about looking at net ratings in small sample sizes. We don’t have a bench and we don’t have players on the bench that would be better in starting roles. Look at Robinson, y’all wanted him to start and whined about it. Wanted more two big lineups because of net rating stats. I said Robinson is not a starter don’t start him he’s just an energy guy off the bench. Well you got it and it’s made us worse. Robinson can’t handle the Pacers pace and is getting exposed. Same thing applies to the rest of the guys you might think would look better starting. They won’t.

This is elfrid payton all tf over again. People screamed to bench him. We lose 1 playoff game against the hawks and it’s 1-1 after 2 games, and thibs capitulates to the fans and he benches him. Fans celebrate “he’s finally doing what we wanted wow it’s about time” and then we get blown out 3 games in a row. And the prior sentence just gets memory holed by everyone. Now he finally again did what fans wanted and it’s not working. It didn’t work in game 3 either and the only reason the series isn’t already over is because towns decided to go ham in the 4th quarter without fans preferred lineup and won the game. This is after he tried benching towns in the 4th in game 2, a strategy that was tried and never worked for Minnesota either, and blowing that game.

If there’s a reason to fire Thibs look no further than the fact that when things get tough more than once he has been hoodwinked to capitulate to fans and media and done stupid things that don’t work.

After we beat Boston I praised Thibs and said just do you Thibs don’t ever read this board and just do you. I don’t think he listened to the fans but listened to Josh Hart. It was reported that Hart presented the idea to Thibs about coming off the bench and was willing to make the sacrifice. That was a decision they made internally but it went along with what the fans wanted. It backfired

In fairness, the lineup change is negated if Hart comes in far too early because of KAT's fouling in yesterday's game. But also Thibs sub patterns are dog ****.

[robillionaire]

This is elfrid payton all tf over again. People screamed to bench him. We lose 1 playoff game against the hawks and it’s 1-1 after 2 games, and thibs capitulates to the fans and he benches him. Fans celebrate “he’s finally doing what we wanted wow it’s about time” and then we get blown out 3 games in a row. And the prior sentence just gets memory holed by everyone. Now he finally again did what fans wanted and it’s not working. It didn’t work in game 3 either and the only reason the series isn’t already over is because towns decided to go ham in the 4th quarter without fans preferred lineup and won the game. This is after he tried benching towns in the 4th in game 2, a strategy that was tried and never worked for Minnesota either, and blowing that game.

If there’s a reason to fire Thibs look no further than the fact that when things get tough more than once he has been hoodwinked to capitulate to fans and media and done stupid things that don’t work.

After we beat Boston I praised Thibs and said just do you Thibs don’t ever read this board and just do you. I don’t think he listened to the fans but listened to Josh Hart. It was reported that Hart presented the idea to Thibs about coming off the bench and was willing to make the sacrifice. That was a decision they made internally but it went along with what the fans wanted. It backfired

In fairness, the lineup change is negated if Hart comes in far too early because of KAT's fouling in yesterday's game. But also Thibs sub patterns are dog ****.

If their assumption was that the main problem on defense is towns, which after game 2 I believe was their thought process, then no, the lineup change isn’t negated by his 2 fouls. In fact the defense should have been even further beefed up with Mitch out there and Hart coming in for towns. Instead, we gave up 43 pts with zero resistance

[Mattatron]

You know what the worst part is for me?

Realizing Brunson isn't the seemingly perfect player who would always make the right play and never let us lose big games

He seemed when he first came here he could do no wrong, and I don't mean that in a rose tinted glasses kinda way, I mean it literally, like when he first got here he just always seemed to come up big at the most important times, or if he didn't we always had some way to logically excuse him for it

But now? I really don't know man, he's my favorite Knick of the last 20+ years, he took a huge pay cut, etc but man.. we've routinely **** the bed against teams we could/should beat or there's an opportunity to come up big and we never capitalize on the series.

Started with the Heat series years ago, then last year I know injuries but still we had a shot and blew it, now this year, Pacers are not more talented on paper, they have B level stars, we have 2 A level starts IMO, yet we come up short again.

I'm sad because I had such assurance in my mind that Brunson would lead us to the promise land if we gave him a talented roster around him, but once again he comes up short as the leader and loses to a clown like Haliburton.

It's just disappointing man, I want to believe in him but year after year I'm realizing he is a normal player with flaws and stuff, I thought his life long of growing up with basketball and how level headed he is would assure us he would always come up big and never let stuff like this happen to the team, but he doesn't prevent it, it keeps happening now every year ends up disappointment and feeling like "we should have beaten that team they weren't better than us" it's never "damn that team just was so much better than us that we lost" were losing series we should win.

"they have B level stars, we have 2 A level stars"

Who the f*** are the "2 A-Level Stars" ? Neither KAT nor Brunson are A Level Stars and never have been. How delusional lmao they're b-level stars. They are sidekicks at the very best. Hali is a much more polished player than Brunson, Siakam = KAT (But siakam has mental toughness and champion
pedigree while KAT....)

[HEZI]

Everyone focuses on his lack of shooting but he adds many things to the sl; extra ball handling, assists, rebounding, toughness. He is our Draymond.

He does add that stuff but he also loses his guy a lot. He's like Drayomd without the defense.

Draymond without defense indeed

But better offense

[Fury]

You know what the worst part is for me?

Realizing Brunson isn't the seemingly perfect player who would always make the right play and never let us lose big games

He seemed when he first came here he could do no wrong, and I don't mean that in a rose tinted glasses kinda way, I mean it literally, like when he first got here he just always seemed to come up big at the most important times, or if he didn't we always had some way to logically excuse him for it

But now? I really don't know man, he's my favorite Knick of the last 20+ years, he took a huge pay cut, etc but man.. we've routinely **** the bed against teams we could/should beat or there's an opportunity to come up big and we never capitalize on the series.

Started with the Heat series years ago, then last year I know injuries but still we had a shot and blew it, now this year, Pacers are not more talented on paper, they have B level stars, we have 2 A level starts IMO, yet we come up short again.

I'm sad because I had such assurance in my mind that Brunson would lead us to the promise land if we gave him a talented roster around him, but once again he comes up short as the leader and loses to a clown like Haliburton.

It's just disappointing man, I want to believe in him but year after year I'm realizing he is a normal player with flaws and stuff, I thought his life long of growing up with basketball and how level headed he is would assure us he would always come up big and never let stuff like this happen to the team, but he doesn't prevent it, it keeps happening now every year ends up disappointment and feeling like "we should have beaten that team they weren't better than us" it's never "damn that team just was so much better than us that we lost" were losing series we should win.

"they have B level stars, we have 2 A level stars"

Who the f*** are the "2 A-Level Stars" ? Neither KAT nor Brunson are A Level Stars and never have been. How delusional lmao they're b-level stars. They are sidekicks at the very best. Hali is a much more polished player than Brunson, Siakam = KAT (But siakam has mental toughness and champion
pedigree while KAT....)

Haliburton isn't better than Brunson and Siakam isn't better than KAT

[Jadoogar]

Carlisle is no HOF coach, but as the first NBA coach of Brunson he has his expertise on how to wear down our cap and lead this series.

Roster and talent wise we may have an edge, but in the playoffs it's always a battle between the coaches.

Carlisle beat the Heatles with Dirk Nowitzki and a bunch of role players. Are you sure he's not a HOF coach?