Off and Running

The Knicks open their season tonight. Plus, a new Embiid rumor, and I look into my crystal ball.

Good morning! The basketball season is officially underway, and tonight, so will the Knicks march to (hopefully) their second consecutive playoff appearance. Let’s get ourselves ready.

Game Night

Who: Knicks vs Celtics

When: tonight, 7 pm, ESPN

Where: MSG

Halftime Zoom: We’re back! I’m probably going to be scaling back the halftime zooms to about 50 games this season, but I will be on tonight. Here’s the link for tonight.

What to watch for: Will the defense improve? The Celtics led the preseason in 3-point attempts at 45.4 per game, which would tie the previous NBA record. Boston was 33-1 last season when they shot 39.5 percent or higher from deep, so the Knicks will have to figure out what they want to do with an offense that could go five-out for all 48 minutes.

🗣️ News & Notes ✍️

🏀 Keith Pompey of the Philly Inquirer had a report on the future of reigning MVP Joel Embiid yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it, the Knicks were mentioned.

According to Pompey, should Embiid become available, Leon Rose has made obtaining him his top priority. No surprise there. In terms of a trade package, the Sixers would be able to pick up to three of the following four names: Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Evan Fournier and Mitchell Robinson. First round picks would also be a part of the deal.

Nothing about this report should be much of a surprise. New York’s interest in trading for a star is as open a secret as there is around the league, and if the right star becomes available, everyone on the roster not named Jalen Brunson will be made available.

Is there any significance to the report coming out now? A popular theory is that this was leaked from Philly to sow discord within the Knicks locker room.

Anything is possible, but I’m not terribly concerned. These guys have all been mentioned in rumors before, and they know how the game works. More importantly, the Knicks under Thibs have done a pretty good job at blocking out potential distractions. This should be no exception.

🏀 Speaking of potential locker room issues, it sounds like Immanuel Quickley is taking his lack of an extension in stride.

Not that we should be surprised. Quick has personified professionalism from the day he stepped foot on an NBA court. My guess is that this is the last we’ll hear about the lack of an extension until we get much closer to the trade deadline, when it could certainly become relevant again.

Looking into the Crystal Ball

Why do I do this to myself.

Last year at this time (just like the year before that…and the year before that), I wrote many words about what I thought would happen in the 2022-23 NBA season.

Some of those absolute gems:

• The Knicks would win 43 games and finish 8th or 9th in the East

• Giannis would win his third MVP

• Milwaukee would top Philly for the East crown, the Clippers (!) would beat the Warriors in the West, and the Bucks would raise their second trophy in three seasons.

• Jaylen Brown would be on a different team by opening night of 2023.

On the bright side, I correctly picked Malcolm Brogdon to win 6th Man of the Year and first overall pick Paolo Banchero to win Rookie of the Year (I know…long limb to go out on there). So there’s that.

My guess is that I’ll have about the same hit rate today as I did last season, which is to say I should be sent to the minors.

Let the embarrassment begin in 3…2…

🏀 We start with our beloved Knicks, who will be a dependably decent, reliably resilient, solid group. On some nights, they will seem like a contender. On others, an also-ran or worse.

In other words, they’re an NBA team.

With the change in the lottery rules, the introduction of the play-in tournament and the advent of harsher penalties for teams above the first and second tax aprons, the league has entered an era of virtually unprecedented parity. Throw in the new pushback against resting star players, and not only will the vast majority of games be played between two teams trying to win, but between teams that are actually putting their best foot forward.

The superteam era - for now - is over. More importantly, the exponential influx of skilled outside shooters means that even the worst teams can score like a world-beater on any given night. The league just had its best offensive season in over 50 years. Defending even mediocre offenses has become an exercise in triage.

The Knicks have some very real stuff going for them and some very real stuff going against them. On the downside, none of their best, second best or third best players are in the top half of the league for those respective designations. More often than not, New York will face off against someone better than Jalen Brunson, a co-star better than Julius Randle, and a third banana better than whoever you think the third best Knick happens to be. Historically, that’s not a recipe for a winning record, let alone where this squad hopes to end up.

But Tom Thibodeau’s Knicks have bucked the trend more than once. For whatever faults he may have, Thibs is still among the very best at preparing a team to win, as much in Game 82 as in Game 1. If consistent competence from October to April is the goal, he remains an asset.

And now, he has the best roster of his Garden tenure. There are no weak spots in the rotation. No guesswork in who should play. Barring multiple injuries, New York will get 48 minutes of solid play, every…single…night.

More than any single player on the roster, they are banking on that depth to be their Jokic, their Giannis, their Embiid. It’s a valid plan, and one that will carry them through 40+ minutes on a lot of nights. When nut-cutting time arrives though, they’ll still need a guy. That’s where Jalen Brunson comes in. He scored the fourth most “clutch” points in the league last year, and might need to score even more for New York to repeat its success. I can’t find Brunson’s odds to win the Jerry West award, but I like his chances.

They will be in almost every game. That much we know. How many they can close out will determine their regular season fate. Home-court advantage, a top-six seed, a play-in nailbiter….all are on the table. #ThisTeam in #ThisLeague makes almost anything possible.

The journey starts this week. And while I don’t know how it will end, I can promise you it won’t be boring.

I have their final record at 47-35, good for 5th in the East...so the exact same thing as last season. This time thought, they’ll face off against Joel Embiid’s Sixers in the first round, and once again, they will emerge victorious, although it’ll go at least six games. They’ll fall to Boston in six games in the conference semis, losing at least one home game when Kristaps Porzingis hits six threes at the Garden. I will have a double that night.

🏀 I don’t have many specific Knicks predictions other than what I’ve already said, mostly because I think this team is going to be very much what we’re expecting. Not exactly fertile ground for hot takes.

But I do have one that would probably be considered out of the box, which is that Thibs will go small more than he did at any point when Obi was here.

That’s an incredibly low bar, but I’m betting on between 100 and 150 minutes where Julius Randle is the only big man on the court. I think given their current depth, Thibodeau feels more confident in their ability to survive defensively without a traditional rim protector, whereas he never remotely trusted Julius and Obi together as a defensive pairing.

We shall see. As for non-Knicks predictions…

🏀 For the second consecutive season, no team will win at least 60 games, although Boston will come close.

🏀 James Harden will find his way to the Clippers.

🏀 Besides Harden, the best player to be traded before the deadline will be DeMar DeRozan.

🏀 Zion Williamson, Karl-Anthony Towns and Kyrie Irving will all be on new teams by this time next year, and in a shocking turn of events, Donovan Mitchell will sign an extension to remain in Cleveland.

🏀 LeBron James will become the first NBA player to score 40,000 career points on February 25, on national television, in Phoenix, against Kevin Durant and the Suns. Then 15 months later, he’ll become the first guy to get to 50,000 points between the regular season and postseason combined, capping perhaps the greatest career in North American professional sports history.

The debate about who is the greatest basketball player ever will, of course, rage on.

🏀 Adding to his case as the best player of his era, Jokic will reclaim his spot as a 1st Team All-NBA center. He’ll be joined by Giannis, Tatum, Luka and Steph, who will join Kareem, Duncan, LeBron and Karl Malone as the only players in history to make 1st team at age-35 or above.

🏀 The race for the All-NBA guard spots will be more competitive than ever, with Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, Tyrese Haliburton, Trae Young, Jamal Murray, De’Aaron Fox, Devin Booker, Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and our own Jalen Brunson making compelling cases for the final four spots after Steph and Luka. Edwards, Booker, SGA and Haliburton will take the four remaining guard positions, with Brunson just missing out. He will, however, make his first All-Star game.

🏀 The Pacers will be in the running for a playoff spot in the East all season long, with the sixth seed coming down to them and the Hawks.

🏀 The Sixers will have a surprisingly good regular season campaign.

🏀 Boston and Milwaukee will go seven games in the East finals.

🏀 The West will go as follows: [gesticulates wildly before passing out]

🏀 Somehow, some way, we will get a rematch of Nuggets vs Suns. The outcome will be the same, but the series will go down as a classic.

🏀 Barring major injury, the Denver Nuggets will be the first team since the KD & Steph Warriors to repeat as NBA champions when they defeat the Milwaukee Bucks in an NBA Finals for the ages.

That’s all I got. Feel free to go against any or all of these to win yourself some money.

The party starts tonight.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”