(Regular) Season in Review

There's time for the Knicks to re-write the narrative, but as of now, the '24-25 season will be remembered for the direction it has trended.

Good morning! We finally made it. 82 games in the books, with an indeterminate number of games left to go. Before we get to today’s newsletter, let’s go through the schedule for the week (which of course will be available to all full subscribers):

• Tuesday: Meet the Pistons! What can the Knicks expect from their first round opponent?

• Wednesday: Getting into the matchups that will decide the series.

• Thursday: Top 5 Questions ahead of Knicks vs Pistons (and beyond).

• Friday: Full-subscriber reader mailbag.

If you’d like to get in on all this preview action, plus be here for all the recaps and analysis through the playoffs (including day-after recaps on weekends), become a full subscriber now:

Game 82: Knicks 113, Nets 105

• Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson all sat out, while Mikal Bridges played six seconds before intentionally fouling to keep his consecutive games streak alive.

• Cam Payne had a season high with 21 points, Precious Achiuwa had a career high 18 field goal attempts, and Landry Shamet finished two shy of his career high with 29 points behind 7-of-13 shooting from deep.

• A back and forth game turned when New York went on a 17-0 third quarter run.

• Brooklyn cut the lead to two with four minutes to go, but some strong defense in the closing minutes secured the win.

• This bullet point will be the last mention of this game.

A little more than four years ago, before the Knicks beat the Rockets for their 11th win in 12 games, Tom Thibodeau gave reporters his blueprint for spearheading the NBA’s Cinderella season:

“The important thing when you start your season are all the things you want to happen. You always begin by building the right habits. It’s very easy in this league to get sidetracked.”

It wasn’t the first time Thibs talked about building habits, nor would it be the last.

He talks about building habits in training camp and then reinforcing those habits throughout the year. If you do it right, you will have prepared yourself for the long haul, ideally in the form of a championship.

Prior to this season with the Knicks, Thibodeau’s words proved prophetic. They’ve finished the regular season on a high note for four consecutive years, including the disastrous 2021-22 season, although one could argue that’s the least impressive of the bunch because they had nowhere to go but up.

In 2021, they finished 16-4, going from two games under .500 to the fourth seed in a little more than a month. In 2023, they went 17-6 before dropping two meaningless games in which several starters sat, going from play-in hopeful to a five seed. Last year, a 13-5 finish helped them rise from fourth to second down the stretch.

History has not repeated itself this season. If anything, the opposite has been true.

The cleanest line of demarcation might be February 11, when the Knicks had a strong road win over the Indiana Pacers that brought their record to 35-18. It was their third win in six games over a team that would wind up with a top-six seed, following a convincing victory over the Nuggets and a thrilling fourth quarter comeback over the Rockets. They still held the NBA’s second ranked offense at the time, nearly a full point per 100 possessions over the third place Celtics, and were neck and neck with the Grizzlies for the fourth best net rating in the league.

In the two and a half months since then, they have slowly but surely been taking on water even if the ship has remained afloat. New York ranks just 19th in net rating at a dead even 0.0 in that time, going 13-13 following overtime wins over the Hawks and Bulls by a total of three points. In addition to their offense falling off a cliff, their defense has actually gotten worse despite the late-February return of Mitchell Robinson and 16 games without their defensively challenged point guard. Most concerning is the fact that they were winless in 10 games against teams who entered play on Sunday with at least 48 wins.

Jalen Brunson obviously missed the majority of that time, but that’s where things get really distressing. In the 13 games Jalen played, New York was 6-7. In the 478 minutes he was on the court, the Knicks were outscored by 6.2 points per 100 possessions with a 112.1 offensive rating and a 118.4 defensive rating. In the 896 minutes without him, they were plus 4.0 per 100, with roughly the same offense but boasting a defense that would rank second in the league.

This isn’t a critique of Brunson, but rather an indication that what should be New York’s bread and butter has become anything but. For so long, Jalen was the elixir that cured all ills. That failsafe has been absent for a while now.

Trying to figure out where things have gone awry is even harder because of injuries. Through February 1, the starting five had played 282 more minutes than the next most used five-man lineup in the NBA and 375 more minutes than the third most common grouping. Since then, they’ve played just 134 minutes in total and have been outscored by 9.6 points per 100 possessions. Among 32 quintets that have played at least 100 minutes in that time, only two - from the Spurs and Nets - have performed worse.

It’s hard to pinpoint one culprit, although in a sport that rewards putting the orange ball in the orange hole, it’s hard not to look at the shooting. Through 29 games until Christmas, the Knicks held an effective field goal percentage of 58.2, which over the course of an entire season would have been the second highest figure in NBA history, trailing only this year’s Cavs.

Over the next 25 games, from Christmas to the All-Star break, the shooting began to take a dip. They held a 55.2 effective field goal percentage over this stretch, but even that was good enough for 9th in the league. Since the break though, that number has fallen to 53.5, good for 21st in the NBA.

Looking at the individual players, while a few guys have dropped a bit from unsustainable early-season highs, only one has a decline that mirrors the precipitous team-wide drop:

• Josh Hart eFG% through December 30: 64.9 percent

• Josh Hart eFG% from Dec. 30 to the All-Star break: 56.1 percent

• Josh Hart eFG% since the All-Star break: 50.7 percent

Even those numbers don’t tell the whole story though, as Hart’s much discussed 3-point shooting has rebounded a bit since the break. The issue is inside the arc, where a player who hit an absurd 66 percent of his 2-point field goals before the All-Star game has made barely half of those looks since, when he missed two games due to a balky knee that remains a problem. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s interesting to note that New York is 36-16 in the games Hart has hit at least 55 percent of his 2-point field goals and 12-13 in the games he’s at 50 percent or lower.

Despite all that, the numbers say that since the break, the Knicks are a slightly better team with Hart on the floor than when he’s off it.

How does this all jive with the concept of building good habits? That’s hard to say. The habits that worked over the first third of the season, when Hart was one of the most efficient players in the league, may no longer apply. It’s not a coincidence that their drop-off in 3-point volume from league-average to nearly dead last began around the end of December, when Hart’s hesitation began. The wide open court they seemed to operate on over the first few months has felt more and more constricted, and especially so against the best teams.

There have been other issues. Second half injuries and a lack of depth have resulted in far more minutes for Precious Achiuwa at the four than would be ideal (which is to say, any minutes at all), and no player has had a more negative impact on New York’s efficiency than Achiuwa. There’s also Brunson’s injury, and even though the numbers may not reflect it, it’s hard to imagine the shooting dip would have continued on a downward trend if he hadn’t gotten hurt.

But that just leads to different questions about the other end of the floor - questions that may be even more troubling. The defensive issues that were present in Game 1 were just as present in Game 81. We may have a season’s worth of film to chew on, but unless the Knicks plan to play the majority their playoff games without either of their two best offensive players on the court, that film reveals far more problems than solutions.

Even with this cavalcade of negativity, we are talking about a team that just won its 51st game. Fraudulent teams rack up wins every season in every sport, but it’s not like the Knicks haven’t had their moments. They’re 19-12 in games featuring clutch situations, good for the fifth best winning percentage in the league after the Cavs, Celtics, Thunder and Pacers. Those wins matter. They don’t happen without good habits, somewhere deep within the brew.

The same goes for the individual accomplishments of the players. The ‘24-25 campaign will be defined by how those players come together as a collective, but its notable that Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby have had the best seasons of their careers, while Josh Hart has statistically reached his peak, even if his impact has been more complicated. Jalen Brunson was making a run at First Team All-NBA before his season was derailed. Even Mikal Bridges, as underwhelming as he has been at times, has had his moments.

And yet, it does not feel like this group has had their signature moment. Individually, yes…so many Brunson clutch shots, OG’s month-long explosion, KAT’s stretches of dominance, Hart’s triple doubles, and Mikal’s game saving defensive plays (not to mention the single biggest shot of the season).

But as a group? It’s hard to point to one out of the 51 that rises above the rest - a moment that made you feel like, yes, they finally figured it out.

Maybe that’s the biggest reason why those 51 wins feel so hollow. I said and wrote before this season that the Knicks didn’t need to win a title, or make the Finals, or even make the conference finals for this season to be considered a success. There was but one requirement: by the time their journey ended, we needed to know what their blueprint for success looked like, even if that blueprint required a few offseason alterations.

After 82 games, it doesn’t feel like they’re any closer to the answer. Is it as simple as a new coach? Would that improve Mikal’s fit? Is five-out the way? Does KAT need to start next to a traditional five? Which defensive scheme will yield the most success? Did they lose something irreplaceable when they swapped out last season’s toughness for this season’s…well, whatever this is, exactly?

Because of these questions, the playoffs are about a lot more than beating Detroit and pushing the Celtics to 6 or 7 games. They are about clarity and hope. The former was ever-present last season, the latter overflowing last summer. Neither is in high supply right now.

Thankfully, there’s still time for all of that to change.

The regular season - perhaps mercifully - is over.

Let the real games begin.

💫 Stars of the Weekend 💫

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: The fact that he played 33 minutes against the Cavs is enough to get him this spot, but he was also damn good in the first quarter on Friday night. New York just needs to get a little better at navigating how defenses will guard them when Mitch plays in place of Towns, although having four shooters on the floor around him is probably a good start.

⭐️ ⭐️ Deuce McBride: This is mostly for Friday’s effort, when he scored a dozen points and was a plus-13 in 18 minutes. It’s fitting that a season that began with questions over whether McBride should start over Hart (a minus-16 in 34 minutes) ended like that.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Landry Shamet: It was only a few weeks ago that I bet Andrew Claudio a beverage of his choice that Landry Shamet would not be a part of the playoff rotation. Thankfully for me, GMAC is not a big drinker.

Shamet was comfortably New York’s best player over the weekend, and it wasn’t just the “what” (a dozen threes), but the “how.” Landry hunts triples, which isn’t something anyone else on this team can say. While his teammates often view 3-point attempts like elementary school boys looking at the opposite sex, Shamet is like a college freshman just dying to get it in. Anywhere, anytime, he’ll be ready, cooties be damned.

For months I’ve written off Landry’s near-team-leading on/off differential as a product of playing with Karl-Anthony Towns. Now, I’m not so sure.

Don’t be surprised to see him lead all Knick bench players in minutes during a few games of the first round.

Final Thought

In my favorite movie, A Few Good Men, Demi Moore’s Lt. Cdr. Jo Galloway makes an egregious error while objecting to the qualifications of the prosecution’s medical witness, “strenuously” objecting to his qualifications to the point that the judge was building him up. In response, Kevin Pollak’s Lt. Sam Weinberg briefly loses his mind, berating her on the difference between paper law and trial law. Things seemed bleak.

Thankfully, as he often is, Tom Cruise was there to the rescue, calming the situation and telling everyone to take the night off before the defense opened their case after the weekend. Feeling bad for his outburst, Weinberg added some reassuring words for Galloway on the way out of the courtroom:

Don't worry about the doctor. This trial starts Monday.

Like with their case, New York’s season hasn’t unfolded without hiccups. But also like it was in A Few Good Men, the real trial hasn’t yet begun.

The first 82 games don’t have to mean squat. Let’s hope they’re up for the challenge.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”