When You Know, You Know

Yuck.

The second bonus newsletter in as many weeks, for all the wrong reasons.

When You Know, You Know

There’s always a moment when you know that it’s over.

Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows exactly what I’m talking about.

The most memorable one for me came back in my freshman year at Fordham, about a week after I’d moved into my dorm and left my long time high school girlfriend back in Staten Island. Our intention was to keep it going, but in the first few days of college, we started having fights on the phone about God knows what. The specifics didn’t matter. It was just clear something was off.

The moment when whatever was holding us together unofficially evaporated was a Friday night - my first Friday night out with my new dorm-mates, or so that was the plan. As you might imagine, I was excited to see what the Bronx nightlife had in store for me, but had to “check in” before heading out. That “check in” turned into a knock down, drag out argument. Again, the specifics of the fight didn’t matter. All that matters was the feeling I had as I held that phone in my hands:

God, please let this conversation be over now so I can leave. I’ll do anything. Just make it stop.

At some point, mercifully, it did, and I was out the door before the sound of the dial tone kicked in, probably with an illicit beverage in my hand. I knew the repercussions would be severe. I didn’t care. I just wanted out.

The next day, I drove back to Staten Island and ended things - not because of whatever it was that we were fighting out, but because I no longer cared enough to make things right.

Yesterday, the Knicks showed everyone that they, too, no longer cared about making things right.

There was something poetic about Frank Ntilikina entering the game and bringing the ball up against Svi Mykhailiuk as MSG Network flashed the second half scoring totals on the screen. Both teams called a truce midway through the fourth, although the game was decided well before that, sometime around when Luka Doncic and Tim Hardaway Jr each outscored the Knicks in the third quarter (Yes, you read that right).

Ntilikina himself probably has a lot of memories where New York no-showed right from the start, but this was arguably worse. The Knicks were up by 15 in the first half, which at times contained some of their best play this season. The Mavs then woke up, hit the home team in the mouth to start the third, and watched as New York shriveled into a corpse before turning to ash.

Frank, for many years, was the cause célèbre for this fan base, until the writing on the wall was finally etched in permanent ink with the hiring of Tom Thibodeau. That move set the unmistakable tone for how this front office would operate: wins come first, everything else comes second. Somewhere very far down that list was the notion of giving minutes to players who might benefit from more playing time, and who the organization might also have an interest in developing. Far, far down the list.

And for a while, it was all worth it. Wins ensued, and more importantly than that, a consistent effort not seen since the 90’s. It’s why, when popular opinion started to turn on Thibs early last season and it was clear that something was amiss, I found myself repeating the same refrain:

Be careful what you wish for. Coach after coach has come here and failed not only to win, but to engender an effort that didn’t make you embarrassed to be a Knicks fan.

Even as the season dragged to a close and huge lead after huge lead was lost, it didn’t feel like we were watching a team that had quit on its coach. If anything, it felt like we were watching a coach who had lost his grip on reality. The decisions got more baffling, not less. But through it all, there were reasons for hope if you wanted to see them, none more impressive (to me, at least) than the top post-All-Star defense in basketball. That’s not the sign of a team that has quit.

Yesterday was a different story. This season, as a whole, has been a different story.

When a team has designs on winning enough games to bust into the play-in and maybe do some damage when they get there, they can’t be a bottom-five defense. That would be bad enough. But when the only teams below them are the four already elbowing each other on the way down the standings as they Brick for Vic, it’s beyond egregious. It’s embarrassing, and worse, emblematic of deeper issues.

A team with a sound defensive scheme that puts forth the requisite effort on a nightly basis can’t be 26th in defense. It isn’t possible. Whether the bigger issue is the effort or the scheme itself (and I would argue its a bit of both, as the only way to make a defense like Thibodeau’s work in the modern game is to give maximum effort) is immaterial. We are 23 games in. The results are what they are.

Which brings us to the ultimate irony. After all the issues that fans have had with this coach over the entirety of his tenure, the thing that might get him canned is the thing that was on the radar of skeptics before he ever took the job: had a post-3-point revolution league passed this coach by, to the point that his scheme was now a relic?

Those fears looked foolish initially and even for stretches of last season, but there’s no more hiding from the truth. Eight times this season a team has made at least 23 threes in a game. The Knicks have allowed it to happen three of those eight times - first against Cleveland, then against Boston, and now yesterday. No other team has allowed it to happen more than once.

Fred Katz @FredKatz

You just aren't going to survive in this league giving up an endless amount of 3s. The Knicks give up the most 3-point attempts and the second-most makes in the NBA. They give up the third-most wide-open 3s. Tonight, the Mavs are 24-for-60 from deep.

So here we are. The coach who I defended by reminding people of how bad the old days were is making everything old new again.

Does this team have any fight left in them for the man who guided them to the fourth seed a year and a half ago? It seemed like we were heading in this direction once, only for the Knicks to pull off back to back wins to start their west coast trip last month.

Maybe they have another surprise in them. Jalen Brunson, who immediately took on a much-needed leadership role almost immediately after arriving, seems to think so, saying these issues “can be fixed.”

He’s not wrong. But he’s also been around long enough to know that anytime a player openly admits that the other team wanted it more - as he did yesterday - it’s hard to come back from the brink.

Knicks Videos @sny_knicks

"I know he's going to get a lot of the blame. It's on us. We're the players out there battling. His job is to put us in positions, which he's done" - Jalen Brunson on Tom Thibodeau

Yes, Thibodeau continues to put them in positions to be successful, provided they try their asses off. But motivation, fair or unfair, remains the top line on a coach’s job description in any sport. If guys are no longer willing to go the extra mile for him - and by the looks of yesterday’s second half implosion, they aren’t - well, I’m not sure what else is left to be said.

Does he deserve all the blame? Of course not, and at some point, the front office will have to pay the piper as well. But for right now, the spotlight is squarely on the man with the clipboard.

There’s always a moment when you know.

It feels like ours may have just past.

🏀

That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter