Throwing in the Towel

We've seen enough.

Game 56: Cavs 142, Knicks 105

• Largest margin of defeat of the Thibodeau era

• Largest deficit of the Thibodeau era (42 points)

• Worst loss to Cleveland in franchise history

• Most points allowed in regulation by the Knicks this season

• Best shooting game of the season for the Cavs at 61 percent

• Cleveland had 66 points in the paint, including 38 in the first half, tying their season high for a half

• It was worse than any of these numbers suggest

Full disclosure before we get started:

I started writing this newsletter at halftime.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for five and a half years, and it’s the first time I ever began penning one before the end of a game. I’ve never walked out of a movie before it ended either, so I guess this is a first on more than one front.

I’ll start with the most encouraging thing from this game, which is that from the opening tip, the Knicks as a team displayed negligible amounts of fight, energy, pride, attention to detail, awareness, and were generally abhorrent at executing even the most fundamental of defensive concepts, to say nothing of a sloppy, often incoherent offense that amounted to little else beyond Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns being very talented basketball players.

What…that doesn’t sound encouraging to you?

Perhaps to my detriment, I believe this team is not what it showed in Cleveland. In my galaxy brain, them coming out and being the very worst version of themselves is actually a positive. You see, they inadvertently left open the door of hope, even if that is quickly becoming the wrong kind of four-letter word ‘round these parts. Surely, they are not this bad, right?

With as much confidence as one can muster in the immediate aftermath of such a beat down, I can say that no, they are not.

Road back to back, everyone coming off 40-minute games, OG knocking off rust, no Hart, starting someone who will not touch a healthy playoff rotation with a 10-foot pole…throw it all on the pile.

And that’s where the positives end, because right now, it all feels like a cool pillow on a bed lorded over by a priest preparing to give last rights.

Hyperbolic? Surely. But that’s the mood, at least where this season’s title hopes are concerned.

I’ve written open and honestly about what this season represented for me: stage one of what will hopefully be a four-year title window. The goal, of course, is a championship. It has to be when you make the moves the front office made this summer.

But goals are different than necessities, and at the very least, the Knicks have to exit this season knowing which tweaks, if any, need to be made to elevate this roster from an 8 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10.

I use the word “tweaks” intentionally, because if the evidence of 82 games plus the playoffs suggests that something more than a tweak is required, well, that’s a bit of a problem. Yes, they’ll get some more flexibility to make moves in the coming years, but the likelihood of wholesale changes is minimal.

Hence, “all in.”

We haven’t gotten to the end of that evidence-gathering period yet, but we’ve now used up a healthy portion of it. Saturday against the Cavs, even with all of the above asterisks, was another chance to accumulate potentially valuable data. What we got was a fire in the lab and an outbreak of airborne hemorrhoids.

For all the data and statistics we like to rely on when we talk about the NBA, this is still a “you know it when you see it” league. On Friday night - just like the nights the Knicks played the Celtics and Thunder - we saw one, and only one, championship contender. The degree of difference between New York and those other teams has been exaggerated to a comical degree in these games, which is probably the best cause for optimism if you’re still hoping (there’s that word again) for a deep playoff run. Despite what we saw yesterday, these guys do have pride. A few months of hearing that they’re better off not even showing up for the postseason might be the thing that motivates them.

Unfortunately, they need a lot more than motivation, which is rarely an issue to begin with for this group. Fundamentally, there is no universe where we can take what we’ve seen through 56 games - and in the games against top tier competition in particular - and project a championship caliber defense in the coming months.

None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Bookmark this newsletter and toss it back at me if we’re all preparing for a ticker tape parade come June, but I’m calling my shot. These Knicks ain’t winning shit this season.

That alone isn’t what bothered me about this loss though (and if I’m being honest, it’s a fact I’ve slowly come to accept over the last few months, mostly because I had a feeling it would be a quiet deadline and that they’re at least a piece or two away). I’ve waited more than 30 years already. One more won’t kill me.

But for the first time all season, I found myself questioning whether their blueprint - “the theory of the case,” as I’ve come to calling it - will ever pass inspection.

It starts with a defensive foundation bookended by two faulty pillars and without a truly disruptive stopper at the point of attack. That they came out half asleep in this game only distracts from their soft underbelly. When it matters, they can’t get stops. Not as currently constructed, and not for large stretches of games against top offenses. To say the infrastructure is broken suggests there is a fixable infrastructure to work with, and right now, I’m not sure that’s true.

The offense was particularly putrid, and that’s putting aside the Precious impact, which gets exponentially worse against teams that matter. I’m less worried about this end of the floor, even if Cleveland’s switch-everything D once again ground them into a fine powder when Brunson sat. The fact remains that they lack a second player who can create and play-make in the traditional sense. The impact of that missing piece showed itself again here.

As much as anything though, I’m left wondering how a team that spent years redefining and rediscovering what it meant to play Knicks basketball can suddenly go out on national television and play like they have no idea what that means.

That’s my biggest takeaway, at least until we see them come out and show some goddamn resistance against one of these top teams. The level to which they came out of the gate like dead men walking was staggering. It’s not something I ever thought I’d see from a Thibodeau team, and I do not think it was a coincidence that Josh Hart - this team’s leader in so many ways - was absent. I wrote a whole spiel yesterday about the argument for Deuce starting over Hart. Consider this performance Exhibit A of why those notions should be taken with extreme caution.

I feel compelled to add my usual disclaimer that all is not lost. They’ll get healthy, they’ll figure some stuff out, they’ll certainly play better, and they’ll probably will their way into a tight playoff series with Boston if that’s what it comes to. Even on unsteady ground, the last two years have bought them enough good will in my book that a handful of games aren’t going to wipe it all away.

But after every one of these ass-kickings, we’ve heard the same song about looking in the mirror and figuring it out. Well, at some point, the most valuable takeaway one can get from seeing one’s own reflection is acceptance.

This is what these Knicks are. Between now and whenever this season ends, they have to figure out who they want to be and what they need to do to get there.

Sounds easy enough, but they’re no closer to finding the answer than they were on opening night.

At this point, they might be farther away than ever.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ You: for being a loyal subscriber to this well of eternal optimism.

Final Thought

I’d love nothing more than to eat my words starting on Sunday at 1pm.

We shall see.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”