Going Small

A revealing interview sheds light on how the Knicks could play this year.

Good morning! We actually have some basketball to talk about today. Talk about a September surprise…

Going Small

The Thibodeau has spoken.

NBA.com released a short but dense interview with Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau yesterday in which he gave several revealing comments on what we might see in the upcoming season. There were several interesting responses, but the ones that garnered the most attention pertained to the possibility that we may, finally, see some #meaningful minutes featuring small ball.

Small ball sightings (aka, “we’re not playing with a nominal center”) have been about as prevalent Bigfoot ‘round these parts, prompting many to wonder whether this head coach would rather take a vow of silence than eschew a traditional rim protector.

On one hand, I get the angst, mostly because Obi Toppin was relegated to a dozen minutes a night despite flashing enticing potential when he played. On the other hand, the Knicks have never had a roster built for going center-less. The desire to see Toppin and Randle together was mostly about getting Obi more playing time, not about what was best for the team. Neither forward is the sort of floor spacer that makes small lineups hum. More pertinently, not only was the Randle/Toppin pairing untenable on defense, but going to it would have meant taking away from one of New York’s strengths. In Mitch and I-Hart, New York had 48 minutes of top notch play both on defense and on the boards.

But with Hartenstein now gone and with two of the most versatile wings in the league on their roster (see yesterday’s newsletter), the equation has changed, both in terms of what the Knicks possess and what they will have to do without. Thibs admitted as much in his first response of the interview:

“…We lost [Isaiah] Hartenstein, which is what we’ll have to replace. But I think we have versatility, where we can play smaller at times because of OG’s ability to guard big. Julius and [Josh] Hart can guard big as well.”

It’s not an accident that he mentioned Anunoby first.