Just Win, Baby

The volume has already been turned up to 11 with the season still weeks away.

Good morning! Can the games get here already? Pretty please???

🗣 News & Notes ✍️

🏀We got our latest round of “How Many Knicks Fans Will Tom Thibodeau Force Into Therapy Before the Season Begins” yesterday, this time with the focus being the theoretical pairing of Obi Toppin and Julius Randle.

Stefan Bondy @SBondyNYDN

Tom Thibodeau didn't sound too eager to use a Julius Randle-Obi Toppin lineup. He said they've looked at it in practice and in small doses last season: "I think the numbers show it wasn't very effective."

There were some other tasty morsels from the head coach’s Q & A, including Thibs being noncommittal on the prospect of Cam Reddish making the rotation, and Cam later saying that he was lifting weights on his birthday when confusing messages started popping up on his Instagram (He summarily denied ever making a trade request and said those rumors are untrue).

But the Randle & Toppin response stole the show. In a way, Thibodeau’s pooh-poohing of that pairing dovetails perfectly with my reaction to the prior day’s soundbite about Evan Fournier likely starting, and what that shows about the coach’s confidence in / reliance on Mitchell Robinson. If we know nothing about Tom Thibodeau, it’s that he always has and always will worship at the alter of rim protection. Asking him to play Julius Randle and Obi Toppin together is like asking Job to renounce his God. Take away his whistle, his clipboard and his track suits, and he will still refuse to go small.

Not that that means he’s right. Playing Randle and Toppin together, even a few minutes per game, would go a long way towards accomplishing several theoretically important organizational goals…finding more minutes for Obi, seeing his ceiling as a rim deterrent, opening up space in the paint for [insert name of Knick who thrives in an uncluttered paint here], etc, etc. If it goes well, it’s a minor ceiling-raiser for the franchise, as it would paint Toppin as more of a multi-positional force than he’s currently viewed.

But it’s also a move that comes with uncertainty. In a minuscule sample size of just over 100 minutes last season¹, the pairing had a barely positive scoring margin, with a 112.9 offensive rating and a 112.5 defensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass. If Thibodeau believes 48 minutes of solid rim protection, with this roster (i.e., no glaring weak spot like Kemba), will get the Knicks back to a top-five defensive rating, and he also believes they’ll be able to beg, borrow and steal their way to a top-20 offense, putting those things together probably earns them a top-six seed in the East.

Is that worth eliminating any possibly fruitful lineup experimentation, not just with an Obi/Randle pairing, but with stuff like running IQ at point or going super small by playing RJ at the four and Obi at the five, just to name some examples? If the mandated goal is to win as many games as possible at all costs, regardless of the process, than the answer would seem to be yes. Or, looking at it from a slightly different angle, if Thibodeau has been told he’s being judged in large part by wins and losses (or alternatively, he hasn’t been explicitly told that more will go into his evaluation than just wins and losses), what is his incentive to think outside the box and operate out of his comfort zone?

Is winning the only goal though? If it isn’t, and the front office has been pleading with Thibodeau since the middle of last season to experiment with lineups and play the kids more minutes regardless of the results, and this is how he responds to questions two days into camp, you’d think that either a) the lines of communication have fully broken down or b) Thibodeau has some X-rated photos of Leon stored away somewhere, ready to use as blackmail.

But we know that the organization’s goals aren’t nearly that complicated (nor would Rose fire Thibs before absolutely necessary). I just hope Leon Rose does his best Al Davis impersonation when he peps up Thibodeau and the squad before the opener.

Just Win, Baby.

That’s been Leon’s M.O. since Day 1, when he hired perhaps the most “win now” coach on the market, and continuing through the Derrick Rose trade, through all the veteran signings and extensions, through all the traded draft picks, and finally with the attempt to ship off the young face of the franchise for Donovan Mitchell. Winning is the thing. That hasn’t changed.

Because Leon knows as well as Thibs does that if the Knicks do just win, all the calls for more Obi/Randle minutes - and anything else for that matter - will be drowned out by nightly cheers emanating from the Garden as crowds get to root for a team that wins more than it loses. It was just a year ago, remember, when a team that finished 10 games over .500 was treated like conquering heroes. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Success often begets more success. The Knicks have won so infrequently that who amongst us can say what more winning might breed?

And if they don’t win, and the inflexibility continues nonetheless? We know Thibs will be in worse shape than Job himself. But unlike his biblical predecessor, the way the coach continues to stick his nose up at any perceived challenge to his basketball wisdom will make him an easy fall guy, at least in the eyes of many fans. The funny thing about Thibodeau is that he embraces all of it, and that’s because - as he reminded everyone on Tuesday - he puts in enough work to be sure he’s right, critics be damned.

For his sake, he better hope his confidence is well-placed.

🏀 A big round of applause to Knicks Twitter, who went full Zapruder film and got the Knicks to acknowledge that Quentin Grimes is out with minor left foot soreness.

Things started early yesterday afternoon, when the Knicks official Twitter account posted a video of the post-practice huddle. Twitter user Sean Christmas spotted Grimes in a walking boot, and then a short while later, user Kunies realized the Knicks took down the video.

This seemingly prompted Knicks PR to inform the beat reporters not only that Grimes was dealing with foot soreness, but that he missed practice altogether yesterday as a precautionary measure and he’s currently day to do.

This also explains why Cam Reddish was seen in the (now deleted) video wearing a grey backup jersey (as was Ryan Arcidiacono. Perhaps Derrick Rose was taking a breather). We obviously wish Grimes a speedy recovery, but perhaps this is the chance Reddish has been waiting for. He said all the right things yesterday; now he just needs to prove it on the court.

🤔 Ask Macri 📬

Using a question from Kyle Hanlon today to tackle the rest of my preseason NBA predictions:

What are some futures bets, over / unders, finals picks, etc, that you like ahead of the season?

If we use history as our guide (and preseason championship odds go back to the 1984-85 season, courtesy of Basketball Reference), long shots don’t have a great track record when it comes to winning the chip.