I get it, its frustrating, I think we all agreed it was an overpay at the time of the trade, so there is no point in complaining about it now. That said, the amount of complaining that I have seen about him is ridiculous. It has been 1.5 seasons since Bridges was doing the things that we need him to do now. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He played 109 games in a role that we all agree was not suited for him. In those 109 games, it’s fair to say he likely developed habits and comfort in that role, regardless of how well he performed. Now, he has to strip some of those habits away and re-adjust to a different role, one we saw him excel in with the Suns. Chances are, he just needs to simplify what he expects of himself within a game. Also, the Nets were dysfunctional last year, so there could an added layer of rust impacting him. Just give him some time! You don't accidentally become one of the league's best role players. Six years of evidence of him being a good player should not be flushed because of 9 games on a new team.
First of all, its Donte, not Dante. Second of all, I really don't understand why it is so hard for some people to grasp the idea that the KAT trade does not happen if the Knicks don't include Donte. It takes 2 to tango - stop assuming that the Wolves would have accepted whatever the Knicks proposed just b/c it makes sense from your perspective. And I think we can all agree that the KAT trade is the trade that looks great, so...
Sorry about the misspelling. And yes, I understand that the KAT trade does not happen if the Knicks don't trade Donte. That's my point. I hate the KAT deal the minute it was made because the Knicks had to give up Donte. I would not have made the deal. I'd rather have Donte, and either found a different home for Randle or another trade.
In my opinion the Knicks are a weaker team this year and the KAT deal is one big reason why. (The other is losing iHart -- and I know the Knicks were powerless to keep him and Mitch's injury.)
I alluded to this in the Substack chat but defensively, there’s a lot of blame to go around, including with Hart. Yes, he continues to make the hustle plays but Riesacher and Mathurin torched him this week and both got comfortable early because Hart was slow on close outs. And let’s be honest - Deuce isn’t the lockdown defender a lot of fans paint him out to be. The team needs to recognize that it needs to focus on that end the entire game or else it’ll be just another playoff team, not one with serious championship potential.
Rick Carlisle coached the Mavericks to an NBA championship and is 11th on the NBA career coaching wins list. Yes we had injuries in the playoffs last year, but Carlisle nevertheless coached the underdog pacers to a victory over us in the playoffs last year. A key part of the series was him complaining about the officiating and getting the refs to permit the pacers to beat the s___ out of Jalen over the last 5 games. Thibs notably did not complain about the officiating and did not protect Jalen. Last night, Carlisle managed to play 10 players even with key rotation pieces out. He managed to play 10 minutes without a center on the floor. He is running a different offensive and defensive scheme than Thibs and trusting his bench. This is what Mazzula does as well with the Celtics. Maybe Thibs needs to learn something from a coach who has achieved more than he has in the NBA.
Just not sure if Thibs is willing to change on his own, at least without nudging from Rose and the front office. The argument that's always been used to defend his overall stubbornness is that it has led to more regular season success (ok, fair) and a team that plays tougher, more cohesive basketball but if the wins aren't coming, then that defense goes away and you gotta start making real changes.
Good stuff . Thibs is in playoff form . 19 year old Jonny Fuphy played 4 minutes, come on man give me a break open your bench , our starters were gassed at the end of game . Same old same old . See the vision just not sure how you get there like this .
Dadiet too. There’s simply no world in which the Knicks’ rookies perform as poorly against opponents bench-heavy units in the 2nd and 3rd quarters as the gassed starters played against Atlanta’s and Indiana’s closing units.
I understand we don't see what goes on in practice, and it's very easy for us to sit here after games and say "Player X should have gotten minutes!" but I'm really concerned about the current state of the rotation. Three starters played over 40 minutes last night (and KAT was close with 39). That's insane. That's not sustainable. The rotation we ran out last night would have been crazy for a playoff game, let alone the ninth game of the regular season.
I'm not saying Dadiet should be playing 24+ minutes a game. But until the regular bench players get back, I think Thibs is gonna have to roll the dice with some of these other players — if for no other reason than to give the starters a breather and keep them fresh for the 4th quarter. They're "situational," and three of the normal bench guys being hurt seems like a "situation" where they could play. Even if it's just the old Obi stint of a handful of minutes each half. I really, really, really do not want to live in a world where one of the top 6 goes down with an overuse injury.
What's been most frustrating for me is that with the exception of Boston on opening night, I feel like all of our losses were very winnable games. Not saying we should be 8-1, but maybe 6-3? I know we're still waiting on the chemistry and for the guys to get comfortable playing with each other, but how much has lack of depth contributed to some of these losses? If we get off to a lackadaisical start, we don't have a real second unit that can come in and change the energy. It isn't always going to be pretty and we'll have to live with some rookie mistakes, but I think we gotta give Dadiet and Kolek a real opportunity while we wait for Payne and Shamet to get back.
I still believe in this team. There's too much talent on the roster for them to be a .500-ish team for the whole season. There's still a looooong way to go. But I needed to vent after seeing us play 6.5 guys last night.
Win one, lose one. The complete description of a mediocre team. And that’s what the team is right now. They are average. They are similar to the middle class of the NBA: score a lot, play little D (other than OG) and hope you can outgun your opponent.
In other terms, Non-Knicks basketball.
Teams that feature KAT as the center, don’t win a lot. Minnesota proved that and the Knicks are reinforcing that. It’s why I did not like the deal the minute it was made and I dislike even more today.
Rose & Co robbed us of a tough, nasty, defensive force that other teams hated to play and gave us a soft, on/off team that other teams don’t mind playing.
Hopefully, when Precious comes back it gets a bit better; and when Mitch gets healthy that will help too. But a championship contender, this team is not.
Genuine question: how did Rose & Co rob us of a tough, nasty defensive force? Donte was a gritty (if not great) defender and Randle was (at best) an average defender -- and that's when he actually did decide to play defense. They're not responsible for iHart's departure or Mitch and Precious' injuries. Do you mean by trading for KAT rather than, like, Kessler or Nick Richards?
I think Donte was an underrated defender and Randle was similar to KAT in the defensive category aka, as you said, an average defender at best. Also Donte, unlike KAT or Bridges was a very gritty/tough/nasty player, so the Knicks lost that part of their culture.
And yes, I'd rather have attempted to get a Kessler (probably impossible as Ainge wanted two firsts) or another adequate center like Nick Richards or maybe Jonas Valančiūnas ).
The culture issue is absolutely fair, and -- to me, at least -- more compelling than the idea that their defensive capacity has taken a hit. Truthfully, as far as the Nova Knicks mythology goes, my gut is that Donte was more central -- on the court if not off as well -- than Mikal is/was. I was VERY on board to get Mikal, but my worry so far hasn't been that he isn't scoring (efficiently) or defending at a high level or meshing with the team, but that he doesn't have that fire. He and KAT are both super talented -- and I'm sure Mikal's game will come around -- but they're fairly staid characters. KAT can get fiery, sure, but he lacks that ineffable quality last year's team was overflowing with.
Some have speculated that KAT was just acquired for a future trade, but I'm guessing this is the team. It's a learning process. After being a huge #FireThibs proponent for years I've grown to begrudgingly give him the benefit of the doubt. He's like an infuriatingly rigid professor whose class you ultimately get the most out of. These are the guys we have and like everyone else here I'm riding with them...
I think the excuse of new players/new style is a valid one for the first 10 games or so. After that, if the Knicks don't improve, integrating the new players is no longer a good excuse. Look at Minnesota, they traded either their second or third best player and are 6-4. That's not great, but it's better than 4-5.
Actually, I attribute the poor start more to the extremely thin bench than the issue of the issue of integrating two new starters. And the thinness of the bench can be blamed on injuries but also on rolling the dice on the KAT deal that having KAT and not Donte/Randle was more important than a weak bench.
Right now, he is not as good a player as Donte. Giving up 6 first round picks for Bridges is going to haunt this team for years. When they made that trade, I thought it was a good one as it was going deeper into the Villanova stuff with Donte/Hart/Brunson/then Bridges. But they turned around and dealt Donte so it meant the Knicks were not really going for the four Villanova guys specifically.
I hate to say it but if this doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t play up to his career and walks - losing all those picks will push the Knicks back towards the ‘LOL’ again - especially if the Nets are getting decent players from the picks.
Lets be real - if that disaster scenario happens then the best course of action will be the Knicks moving Brunson (and others but Brunson would easily get the best return) to get a haul of picks back. I also don't think Thibs will still be the coach 2 years from now if they fail to at least make a Conference Championship: the offseason moves significantly intensified the scrutiny he will face if they underachieve.
With his current role and production, at this point, you also have to doubt he is a sure thing to resign unless he’s getting the max, forget a discount.
These 6 man rotations are completely unsustainable, the volume of 3 point shots is way too low, and the defensive scheme (especially the amount of drop being played) simply does not look suited at all to the current personnel on this team. Johnny Bryant was a really costly loss to this staff, especially when Thibs brought on 68 year old Mo Cheeks instead of hiring a forward-thinking assistant to replace him.
The team needs to go on a run in their next 5 games because the schedule starts getting way more difficult after that, especially when you consider they've only played 1 game against the Western Conference thus far.
I'm curious AG...can you point to a single piece of reporting that indicates anything Bryant contributed? Yes, we've heard he connected well with players, but anything else?
I'm not sure there are ever NBA assistant coaches who we as fans know enough about to assess with 100% certainty (kinda like we never knew exactly Kenny Atkinson did as an assistant under MDA from 2008-12 but it was impressive enough to attract attention across the league, similar to Bryant). We have to judge based on limited information - what we know is he was Walt Perrin's signature hire who has a proven track record in development and obviously had a key role in helping to rebuild the Knicks player development. Equally important, he was a new-era coach who young and veteran players alike swore by (substantiated by past reporting on his work with Randle and IQ's players tribune article) and was always the first coach in Thibs' ear when it came to in-game developments.
I'll acknowledge that perhaps the losses of these things are overblown though and somebody like Dice or a future outside here can eventually take over a similar type of role.
Not worried about this team yet. Visible growing pains for sure, but I expected that. This is what "figuring it out" looks like, especially with the limited rotation. I said we'd be close to .500 after 20 games and I'll stick with that. But I will never get the complete faith Thibs has in Sims over Huk. JS isn't doing things explicitly that cause losses, but he's not adding anything either. Why not roll the dice on the other big at this point. Would it really look worse?
The roster has been assembled with a lack of quality depth. They don’t have high-quality offensive players to bring off the bench to relieve the starting five. Precious will help a little bit, but there does not seem to be the depth of players that you need to succeed in this league.
Halliburton reminds me of a guy who wildly celebrates the other team throwing the ball out of bounds when Halliburton's team is down 40. And Joel 'the fans let me down ' Embiid is up next. The Knicks gotta win that one to restore my faith in humanity.
If the ship isn't headed in the right direction by the 20 game mark, I wouldn't be surprised if Deuce replaces Hart in the starting lineup, allowing Bridges to slide down a spot defensively. Or maybe this is what tells the FO/Thibs that the ultimate path forward will be with KAT at the 4 and a traditional big at the 5.
Or maybe - just maybe - the ship starts to move in the right direction and we build some momentum 🤞
I want to make a quick point on Mikal.
I get it, its frustrating, I think we all agreed it was an overpay at the time of the trade, so there is no point in complaining about it now. That said, the amount of complaining that I have seen about him is ridiculous. It has been 1.5 seasons since Bridges was doing the things that we need him to do now. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He played 109 games in a role that we all agree was not suited for him. In those 109 games, it’s fair to say he likely developed habits and comfort in that role, regardless of how well he performed. Now, he has to strip some of those habits away and re-adjust to a different role, one we saw him excel in with the Suns. Chances are, he just needs to simplify what he expects of himself within a game. Also, the Nets were dysfunctional last year, so there could an added layer of rust impacting him. Just give him some time! You don't accidentally become one of the league's best role players. Six years of evidence of him being a good player should not be flushed because of 9 games on a new team.
Well said sir. And timely.
Knicks made it more difficult from an adjustment period with the KAT deal. If we kept Dante, he would have adjusted faster, and better.
First of all, its Donte, not Dante. Second of all, I really don't understand why it is so hard for some people to grasp the idea that the KAT trade does not happen if the Knicks don't include Donte. It takes 2 to tango - stop assuming that the Wolves would have accepted whatever the Knicks proposed just b/c it makes sense from your perspective. And I think we can all agree that the KAT trade is the trade that looks great, so...
Sorry about the misspelling. And yes, I understand that the KAT trade does not happen if the Knicks don't trade Donte. That's my point. I hate the KAT deal the minute it was made because the Knicks had to give up Donte. I would not have made the deal. I'd rather have Donte, and either found a different home for Randle or another trade.
In my opinion the Knicks are a weaker team this year and the KAT deal is one big reason why. (The other is losing iHart -- and I know the Knicks were powerless to keep him and Mitch's injury.)
All good! I didn't realize you were against the idea of the KAT trade from the get-go. While I disagree, I get what you are trying to say.
Thanks Jonas.
I alluded to this in the Substack chat but defensively, there’s a lot of blame to go around, including with Hart. Yes, he continues to make the hustle plays but Riesacher and Mathurin torched him this week and both got comfortable early because Hart was slow on close outs. And let’s be honest - Deuce isn’t the lockdown defender a lot of fans paint him out to be. The team needs to recognize that it needs to focus on that end the entire game or else it’ll be just another playoff team, not one with serious championship potential.
I'm starting to worry about Bridges defense on the PG. If it breaks down there, it breaks down everywhere.
Yes, it’s been sporadic at best (pretty good against Lillard).
Rick Carlisle coached the Mavericks to an NBA championship and is 11th on the NBA career coaching wins list. Yes we had injuries in the playoffs last year, but Carlisle nevertheless coached the underdog pacers to a victory over us in the playoffs last year. A key part of the series was him complaining about the officiating and getting the refs to permit the pacers to beat the s___ out of Jalen over the last 5 games. Thibs notably did not complain about the officiating and did not protect Jalen. Last night, Carlisle managed to play 10 players even with key rotation pieces out. He managed to play 10 minutes without a center on the floor. He is running a different offensive and defensive scheme than Thibs and trusting his bench. This is what Mazzula does as well with the Celtics. Maybe Thibs needs to learn something from a coach who has achieved more than he has in the NBA.
Just not sure if Thibs is willing to change on his own, at least without nudging from Rose and the front office. The argument that's always been used to defend his overall stubbornness is that it has led to more regular season success (ok, fair) and a team that plays tougher, more cohesive basketball but if the wins aren't coming, then that defense goes away and you gotta start making real changes.
Good stuff . Thibs is in playoff form . 19 year old Jonny Fuphy played 4 minutes, come on man give me a break open your bench , our starters were gassed at the end of game . Same old same old . See the vision just not sure how you get there like this .
ATL and IND were both lost in the 4th with starters running out of gas.
Week 3 of the season is 100% the right time to get Kolek minutes, Hukporti too.
Dadiet too. There’s simply no world in which the Knicks’ rookies perform as poorly against opponents bench-heavy units in the 2nd and 3rd quarters as the gassed starters played against Atlanta’s and Indiana’s closing units.
I understand we don't see what goes on in practice, and it's very easy for us to sit here after games and say "Player X should have gotten minutes!" but I'm really concerned about the current state of the rotation. Three starters played over 40 minutes last night (and KAT was close with 39). That's insane. That's not sustainable. The rotation we ran out last night would have been crazy for a playoff game, let alone the ninth game of the regular season.
I'm not saying Dadiet should be playing 24+ minutes a game. But until the regular bench players get back, I think Thibs is gonna have to roll the dice with some of these other players — if for no other reason than to give the starters a breather and keep them fresh for the 4th quarter. They're "situational," and three of the normal bench guys being hurt seems like a "situation" where they could play. Even if it's just the old Obi stint of a handful of minutes each half. I really, really, really do not want to live in a world where one of the top 6 goes down with an overuse injury.
What's been most frustrating for me is that with the exception of Boston on opening night, I feel like all of our losses were very winnable games. Not saying we should be 8-1, but maybe 6-3? I know we're still waiting on the chemistry and for the guys to get comfortable playing with each other, but how much has lack of depth contributed to some of these losses? If we get off to a lackadaisical start, we don't have a real second unit that can come in and change the energy. It isn't always going to be pretty and we'll have to live with some rookie mistakes, but I think we gotta give Dadiet and Kolek a real opportunity while we wait for Payne and Shamet to get back.
I still believe in this team. There's too much talent on the roster for them to be a .500-ish team for the whole season. There's still a looooong way to go. But I needed to vent after seeing us play 6.5 guys last night.
Win one, lose one. The complete description of a mediocre team. And that’s what the team is right now. They are average. They are similar to the middle class of the NBA: score a lot, play little D (other than OG) and hope you can outgun your opponent.
In other terms, Non-Knicks basketball.
Teams that feature KAT as the center, don’t win a lot. Minnesota proved that and the Knicks are reinforcing that. It’s why I did not like the deal the minute it was made and I dislike even more today.
Rose & Co robbed us of a tough, nasty, defensive force that other teams hated to play and gave us a soft, on/off team that other teams don’t mind playing.
Hopefully, when Precious comes back it gets a bit better; and when Mitch gets healthy that will help too. But a championship contender, this team is not.
Genuine question: how did Rose & Co rob us of a tough, nasty defensive force? Donte was a gritty (if not great) defender and Randle was (at best) an average defender -- and that's when he actually did decide to play defense. They're not responsible for iHart's departure or Mitch and Precious' injuries. Do you mean by trading for KAT rather than, like, Kessler or Nick Richards?
I think Donte was an underrated defender and Randle was similar to KAT in the defensive category aka, as you said, an average defender at best. Also Donte, unlike KAT or Bridges was a very gritty/tough/nasty player, so the Knicks lost that part of their culture.
And yes, I'd rather have attempted to get a Kessler (probably impossible as Ainge wanted two firsts) or another adequate center like Nick Richards or maybe Jonas Valančiūnas ).
The culture issue is absolutely fair, and -- to me, at least -- more compelling than the idea that their defensive capacity has taken a hit. Truthfully, as far as the Nova Knicks mythology goes, my gut is that Donte was more central -- on the court if not off as well -- than Mikal is/was. I was VERY on board to get Mikal, but my worry so far hasn't been that he isn't scoring (efficiently) or defending at a high level or meshing with the team, but that he doesn't have that fire. He and KAT are both super talented -- and I'm sure Mikal's game will come around -- but they're fairly staid characters. KAT can get fiery, sure, but he lacks that ineffable quality last year's team was overflowing with.
Some have speculated that KAT was just acquired for a future trade, but I'm guessing this is the team. It's a learning process. After being a huge #FireThibs proponent for years I've grown to begrudgingly give him the benefit of the doubt. He's like an infuriatingly rigid professor whose class you ultimately get the most out of. These are the guys we have and like everyone else here I'm riding with them...
I think the excuse of new players/new style is a valid one for the first 10 games or so. After that, if the Knicks don't improve, integrating the new players is no longer a good excuse. Look at Minnesota, they traded either their second or third best player and are 6-4. That's not great, but it's better than 4-5.
Actually, I attribute the poor start more to the extremely thin bench than the issue of the issue of integrating two new starters. And the thinness of the bench can be blamed on injuries but also on rolling the dice on the KAT deal that having KAT and not Donte/Randle was more important than a weak bench.
FWIW - Pacers smoked us with Hartenstein and Mitch in multiple games last year.
I wasn’t referring to last night specifically but rather the overall, mediocre 4-5 record we are.
Mikal isn’t looking close to being worth 2 first round picks at this point.
Right now, he is not as good a player as Donte. Giving up 6 first round picks for Bridges is going to haunt this team for years. When they made that trade, I thought it was a good one as it was going deeper into the Villanova stuff with Donte/Hart/Brunson/then Bridges. But they turned around and dealt Donte so it meant the Knicks were not really going for the four Villanova guys specifically.
I hate to say it but if this doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t play up to his career and walks - losing all those picks will push the Knicks back towards the ‘LOL’ again - especially if the Nets are getting decent players from the picks.
Lets be real - if that disaster scenario happens then the best course of action will be the Knicks moving Brunson (and others but Brunson would easily get the best return) to get a haul of picks back. I also don't think Thibs will still be the coach 2 years from now if they fail to at least make a Conference Championship: the offseason moves significantly intensified the scrutiny he will face if they underachieve.
I agree with that totally. He’s gotta step up his game because his production on either side of the ball doesn’t justify the cost.
With his current role and production, at this point, you also have to doubt he is a sure thing to resign unless he’s getting the max, forget a discount.
These 6 man rotations are completely unsustainable, the volume of 3 point shots is way too low, and the defensive scheme (especially the amount of drop being played) simply does not look suited at all to the current personnel on this team. Johnny Bryant was a really costly loss to this staff, especially when Thibs brought on 68 year old Mo Cheeks instead of hiring a forward-thinking assistant to replace him.
The team needs to go on a run in their next 5 games because the schedule starts getting way more difficult after that, especially when you consider they've only played 1 game against the Western Conference thus far.
I'm curious AG...can you point to a single piece of reporting that indicates anything Bryant contributed? Yes, we've heard he connected well with players, but anything else?
I'm not sure there are ever NBA assistant coaches who we as fans know enough about to assess with 100% certainty (kinda like we never knew exactly Kenny Atkinson did as an assistant under MDA from 2008-12 but it was impressive enough to attract attention across the league, similar to Bryant). We have to judge based on limited information - what we know is he was Walt Perrin's signature hire who has a proven track record in development and obviously had a key role in helping to rebuild the Knicks player development. Equally important, he was a new-era coach who young and veteran players alike swore by (substantiated by past reporting on his work with Randle and IQ's players tribune article) and was always the first coach in Thibs' ear when it came to in-game developments.
I'll acknowledge that perhaps the losses of these things are overblown though and somebody like Dice or a future outside here can eventually take over a similar type of role.
Really well said AG, and agreed!
Not worried about this team yet. Visible growing pains for sure, but I expected that. This is what "figuring it out" looks like, especially with the limited rotation. I said we'd be close to .500 after 20 games and I'll stick with that. But I will never get the complete faith Thibs has in Sims over Huk. JS isn't doing things explicitly that cause losses, but he's not adding anything either. Why not roll the dice on the other big at this point. Would it really look worse?
The roster has been assembled with a lack of quality depth. They don’t have high-quality offensive players to bring off the bench to relieve the starting five. Precious will help a little bit, but there does not seem to be the depth of players that you need to succeed in this league.
Transition defense is horrendous
I’m starting to think Precious is more hurt than they let on because it’s well past the re-evaluation time table that they originally set.
Halliburton reminds me of a guy who wildly celebrates the other team throwing the ball out of bounds when Halliburton's team is down 40. And Joel 'the fans let me down ' Embiid is up next. The Knicks gotta win that one to restore my faith in humanity.
If the ship isn't headed in the right direction by the 20 game mark, I wouldn't be surprised if Deuce replaces Hart in the starting lineup, allowing Bridges to slide down a spot defensively. Or maybe this is what tells the FO/Thibs that the ultimate path forward will be with KAT at the 4 and a traditional big at the 5.
Or maybe - just maybe - the ship starts to move in the right direction and we build some momentum 🤞