HopelessKnick wrote:GONYK wrote:HopelessKnick wrote:
Fair enough. The bolded leads me though to the question which I asked numerous times since Mitch's return. I remember just prior to his return Thibs gave an interview saying that he hasn't had his projected starting Center the entire season etc. It sounded like, after an initial ramp up etc. he would try the line-up with Mitch and KAT but it never happened. Why? Some guys that like and defend Thibs sid he is likely saving it up for the playoffs to have that surprise effect but clearly this is not the case. 
What adds to me being frustrated by this is: The team has been playing progressivley worse since december. We are a .500 team after the all-star break while being pretty much locked into our position for months. He had ample opportunity to try stuff like Mitch in the line-up. Heck we had OG out, we had Brunson out but he simply refused to do it after complaining not having his projected starting Center. Really made zero sense and I have yet to see anybody make any sense out of it. Has Precious been so bad that he is truly unplayable off the bench (even for 15minutes) that he needed to keep Mitch as the only bench big?
Personally, I always took the "projected starting C" comment to mean that Mitch was the projected C before we got KAT. The whole point of KAT is to play him at the 5, where he's a walking mismatch. If we traded for KAT just to recreate the Timberwolves, that is a failure, so I don't think the plan was ever for Mitch to start. I do think the plan was to lean into Mitch lineups when the matchups/siutations called for it though. 
We have been playing progressively worse because we haven't made any adjustments to counteract teams guarding KAT with a wing. There are things to counteract that and get us back to a great offense and there are things to do on defense. Thibs has chosen to do neither nor experiment with lineups to know what he has in his back pocket. He's basically asked KAT to become a different player and I think the team's inconsistency all kind of stems from that particular point of stubbornness. 
Instead we got a bastardized lineup where Hart is the 5 instead of Mitch or KAT, which has effects on both ends.
 
Ah ok, I really got this differently but like I said in my previous post---not following the "around the game" as tight as others here so I may have missed it. If what you are say is true I genuinely have to say I feel even more negative on the whole direction the team has taken:
The Wolves took KAT with the first pick of the draft and played him at the 5 for like 6-7 straight seasons (with LaVine and Butler at times in the line-up and Thibs as coach) but they had little to no success with it really. They decided KAT could only work at the 4 because he provides zero rim protection and little defense....like you could hide those deficiencies next to a true starting 5 providing rim protection and defense. And it worked out for them. They won close to 60 games and went to the WCF. That was literally their most successful season since they went to the WCF with Garnett. Something even KG accomplished just once in his tenure there I believe. 
So why would the Knicks go back and try something which the Wolves tried for 7 straight seasons, with very good star players around KAT but failed to make work? I truly hope this is not what the FO is envisioning because if that is the thinking they'll likely throw away next season as well. KAT at the 5 is NOT going to work out. The defense with him there looks completely putrid. Like I have zero confidence of the Knicks making stops there. Damn GoNYK, you made me even less confident about the Knicks going forward. I at least hope this is only a Thibs thing...but given his preference for defensive 5s , even I have trouble attributing this to him alone. Depressing. Wow...I was waiting for Mitch back because I thought the idea is to impose size and wing-stops on the Celtics:
JB
Bridges
OG
KAT
Mitch
with Hart, Deuce, Precious, Payne off the bench....looks I have completely living in an illusion....
 
I think the bet is that to beat Boston, you have to be able to score with them. Even our squad last year was not going to be able to put up 125ppg. You have to play 5 out really and you have to shoot with volume. Mitch will get played off the floor in a Boston series. 
So they got KAT, who is the best offensive stretch 5 they could have possibly hoped to acquire. He's a bad fit defensively, but the gamble was that Mikal and OG are switch enough to keep wings from consistently breaking down the defense. If we would just get to a top 15 defense in the league, then we're following the Denver model pretty closely. 
Thibs did not adjust his gameplan to this philosophy. He continued to play drop defense, which is probably because he didn't want to run two defensive systems all season (one without Mitch and one with Mitch), but it put KAT in a bad position, which means Mikal had to become a POA defender when he's really better on the wing, which then has affects all down the line, because Jalen is now on a wing. 
Then Thibs didn't adjust when teams started guarding Hart with their C. 
So all in all, we only had KAT as true 5 for the first 3 months of the season, where we were the 2nd best scoring offense in NBA history, and then after that the league adjusted and we didn't counter. 
So I don't think the Knicks FO will feel like they really got to prove out the concept this season.