What Now?
Assessing the damage before whatever comes next.
Good morning. Or is it? We’ll find out at 7:30 tonight.
What Now?
There’s always a solution.
Of all the disagreements I’ve had with my wife over 11+ years of marriage, this statement was at the heart of most of them.
As many of you know, our journey over the last few years has taken a long and winding road, in large part because of KFS. Almost five years ago we moved from our quaint house in Long Island to a fourth floor walkup in Brooklyn, where we had no family and no support to help with our then 3-month old daughter, all so I could be around the corner from my teaching job, enabling me to do that and this at the same time. We remained in Brooklyn for four years, and while we made some incredible friends and had some amazing experiences, the relative solitude put a massive strain on us individually and collectively from time to time. Every time frustrations got the better of us, I would always lean back on the same thing:
This isn’t forever. It will get easier. And of course, There’s always a solution.
I can now happily report that we found that solution (yay for driveways!) but that isn’t the point. In those stressful moments, I always wanted to skirt past the reality of the present moment, as if acknowledging it was purely a waste of time. In my haste, I failed to realize that most people are not cut from the same cloth as Thomas J. Thibodeau. Human beings have feelings and emotions, and when those things are imperiled, sometimes the most productive thing to do is honor that state of being rather than immediately trying to figure a way out of it.
It is in that spirit that I want to start today’s newsletter. However people are feeling, whoever you’re mad at, and whatever you want to see changed, every ounce of it is valid. The precipitous fall from grace warrants it, as does the manner of the decent. Even after a second-round out, the Knicks were the feel good story of the NBA less than two years ago. Today, they are verging on becoming its most preeminent disaster.
If that seems overly harsh for a team that would still host a first round playoff series if the postseason began today, my response would be that a significant drop can only happen after you’ve reached high heights. The Kings (remember, the team that whupped us last week?) might be a perennial laughingstock, but there’s not much further down you can go if you already live in the basement.
New York, by contrast, entered this season as Eastern Conference favorites for the first time in over three decades. Today we are talking about firing a coach, moving the team’s highest paid player, or both. Worse yet, it all stems from a series of easily avoidable decisions. Even if you could see the logic behind each of those decisions at the time they were made, it doesn’t lessen the pain they are now inflicting.
So yeah…feel those feelings. Let them out. There likely won’t be a more appropriate time, especially since something seems like it has to change one way or another, and soon.
That’s where we’ve arrived in the middle of what was supposed to be a ho hum January en route to 50-something wins and a top seed: the most important crossroads of the Leon Rose era1.
But is anything actually going to change? To answer that, we have to recap the assorted tidbits that have emerged over the last ~24 hours:
James Edwards III finally reported what I’ve been saying in this newsletter and on KFS airwaves since the summer, which is that James Dolan asked for Tom Thibodeau to be fired, and Leon Rose and the front office merely acquiesced his wish.
Ian Begley reported that the Knicks are “not tied together in the way that their early season success would suggest” and that “players haven’t fully bought into their roles under head coach Mike Brown,” but that these issues “existed to a degree in the locker room last season.” Begley later went on Katz & Shoot and said that last season, the concern was that it was not “we above me” for everyone in the locker room.
Steve Popper added to his KAT trade commentary from late Monday night by saying a deal was “unlikely to happen” and that the Knicks were “not openly shopping” him and that “anything outside of Giannis downgrades talent.”
Stefan Bondy wrote that “it would be a shocker, reactionary and ill-advised to fire Brown just three months into a four-year contract. But the trade deadline certainly looms large for Leon Rose”
Fred Katz went on his podcast and said he’s asked people around the league about what KAT’s trade value would be, and the most common response he’s gotten is that the Trae Young deal is a good comparison. Young, for those who may have missed it, was salary dumped to the Washington Wizards for solid players on expiring contracts a few weeks ago.
Ramona Shelburne of ESPN reported that Jalen Brunson led a player’s only meeting after the game, and that the organizational message of the moment is that they have to figure out a way to make this work.
Given all of this information, the Knicks would seem to have six options at their disposal. In increasing order of magnitude:
Maintain the status quo, get past the trade deadline, confirm from above that the coach is not going anywhere, and pray that the finality of these players knowing they need to figure things out will bring out the best in them, lest they be forever reviled as the team that brought down New York’s best hope of an NBA Championship.
Make a small trade around the edges with the hope that the right addition to the locker room can galvanize the group.
Fire Mike Brown and hope that a different voice can bring the players together in a way that Brown (and Thibs, for that matter) could not.
Trade a non-Towns member of the core to improve depth and quell some of the locker room issues.
Trade Towns for the best deal you can get.
Completely clean house, fire Brown and trade anyone who you suspect isn’t putting the team before themselves.
Let’s go through each of these options, shall we? And then have some real fun with four fake trades based on the reporting that is already out there.
