A Whole New World

The Knicks are winning. Let's take a look at what they're doing differently during the recent hot streak.

Good morning! One more friendly reminder that we’re having our one-year anniversary watch party tomorrow night at T2 Social, during which we’ll be giving away a Fanatics Mystery Jersey Box containing a signed jersey from one NBA player. Just show a five-star rating for T2 and the KFS Pod for a chance to win.

Hope to see everyone tomorrow night!

One more note before today’s newsletter: be sure to check out my interview with SNY’s Ian Begley (and subscribe to the KFS YouTube channel while you’re there). In the spot, he shared a few notable insights:

• He expects the Knicks to move on from Jericho Sims prior to the deadline

• Jonas Valančiūnas would be a player of interest if the Knicks have doubts about Mitchell Robinson’s ability to come back and contribute

• Robinson’s status remains up in the air despite Thibodeau’s recent comments that he’s running, jumping and taking controlled contact. Begley would be surprised if they moved on from Mitch with his value being so theoretically low at the moment.

One last note: don’t rule out the possibility that a rookie is dealt. While Begs cautions that the Knicks are not approaching this deadline with desperation, including a rookie like Pacome Dadiet in a trade could be a way to make up for the draft compensation that they currently lack.

Again, you can check out the full interview here. Let’s get to the newsletter.

A Whole New World

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Knicks have won five consecutive games.

We’re going to end the week by looking at some of the data behind that winning streak, but before we do, let’s take a moment to appreciate the accomplishment and put it in its proper context.

Since Leon Rose took the job and hired Tom Thibodeau as his head coach, this is New York’s ninth winning streak of at least five games. In the six seasons prior to Rose and Thibodeau arriving, the Knicks had zero winning streaks of at least five games. Going even further back, in the previous 20 seasons before this regime took over - from the ‘00-01 season to the ‘19-20 season - New York had just 15 winning streaks of at least five games, more than half of which came in the three-year stretch from ‘11-12 to ‘13-14.

On the flip side, the current iteration of the Knicks has had just three losing streaks lasting at least five games, two of which lasted exactly five games (and one of those was during Thibodeau’s first month as coach). That’s the same number of 5+ game losing streaks as they had in the season before Thibs took over. The season before that, they had seven losing streaks of at least five games¹.

Suffice it to say, these are heady times compared with our reality from not too long ago.

That’s the macro view. For the micro, let’s take a look at three interesting trends from these recent wins and think about what they might tell us about the bigger picture.

Turnover City