DLeethal wrote:

gradyandrew wrote:

DLeethal wrote:I mean ... this was discussed to death throughout the latter part of the season, playoffs, and the thickest of the "fire Thibs" discussions revolved around this.

The tandem worked well until January-ish, when the offense looked ELITE the starting lineup looked elite. Then Thibs turned us back into the grinding Knicks of the last 4-5 years, the offense fell off a cliff, and they didn't have enough defensive chops to make up for it. Many fans blamed the lack of a true 5-out lineup, essentially neutering Towns' presence by allowing teams to hide opposing Centers on Josh Hart to roam freely on defense.

If you are going to maximize Towns impact on offense, you need to force opposing Centers to guard him and form an elite offense. If not, you need to be able to form an elite defense (Ala Minny a couple years ago). You can't go in between which is what we kind of did all season.

I dont know if this is exactly true. Knicks had 87 FGA per game in Dec and 91 in Jan. and 92 in Feb. I think the difference was more about 3PA and 3P% going down. Opponents shot 35% from 3 in Dec and 41% in Jan.

Re: LBJ, just a thought. I dont think LAL can get through in the West but I could be wrong. I think Ayton is highly underrated- PHO won his minutes during the Finals but the Bucks went on a run everytime he sat. I think CP and Booker were "Mean Girls" in the locker room. Knicks would give LBJ a good shot at making the Finals. Plus, lets be honest, the TV ratings would be absolutely through the roof.

I would assume every passing / assist stat for the team also went down during that period. And yes 3PA was a massive factor and usually an indicator in today's NBA of how the offense is flowing.

If you defended the Knicks well in the first 15 seconds of the shot clock the ball stops moving and goes to an iso player namely JB or KAT

martin wrote:

Alpha1971 wrote:Can Hart increase his volume at high rate. Team needs Harts energy and rebounding in the starting line up. When other teams place their center on Hart, he needs to make them pay, so Towns can continue to exploit his outside shooting.

It’s infinitely harder to make that defensive switch onto Hart once Josh comes off the bench.

Problem not solved but it’s certainly a different dynamic for opposing teams and the Knicks alike.

Having Yabu in the mix will also help alleviate this.

I think Dadiet will also emerge to play rotations minutes at some points adding another shooter that the defense has to account for, off the bench

martin wrote:

Alpha1971 wrote:

martin wrote:

Alpha1971 wrote:Can Hart increase his volume at high rate. Team needs Harts energy and rebounding in the starting line up. When other teams place their center on Hart, he needs to make them pay, so Towns can continue to exploit his outside shooting.

It’s infinitely harder to make that defensive switch onto Hart once Josh comes off the bench.

Problem not solved but it’s certainly a different dynamic for opposing teams and the Knicks alike.

Having Yabu in the mix will also help alleviate this.

I think Dadiet will also emerge to play rotations minutes at some points adding another shooter that the defense has to account for, off the bench

🤞

I think Dadiet gets traded TBH. The salary cap math ain't matching and I think he ends up being the casualty. I want them to keep him so I hope I'm wrong.