BigDaddyG wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BigDaddyG wrote:

franco12 wrote:

Kemet wrote:
Having a healthy D.Rose leadership, along with Brunson & Quickley creativeness in the 48 min rotation.
The Knicks may play above .500 B-ball however, head coach Thibs strategy will never make it to the 2nd round of a playoff in the New NBA. Look at Thibs postseason career at making it pass the first round in the old NBA .. No coaching strategy in a series !!!

I don't think that is why Thibs struggles in the post season - and very few coaches have winning records in the post season.

It's not strategy, though that could be part of it- I think he grinds guys so hard during the regular season that they have no extra gear when they get there, and other teams do.

It's a little bit of both. It's like pulling teeth to get Thibs to make adjustments unless there's an injury. He has it in him. He took an offensive minded Wolves team to the playoffs. He also did with Chicago teams. But, again, he was kinda forced to do things like ride high with Nate Robinson because of injuries. On the flip side, he does get max intensity from his players during the regular and you can argue that's the first step toward culture building

sorry what "struggles" in the post season are we talking about? It was Thib's lack of adjustments and player overuse that led to playoff losses?
Or was is thins like Lebron's Heat 2x, losing Derrick Rose in the first game of the playoffs? We calling the Twolves loss to the first seed Rockets on Thibs?

I love the imaginary narratives that folks run with... closest thing to an upset was losing the 4-5 first round match up where Wall/Beal went off and earned contracts that would look good lol

There is no flip side. Only the bold. When he's getting beat by Xs and Os we can talk.

First real coach we've had since Riley

Yeah, seeing Julius repeatedly getting blasted on backdoor cuts, failing to make rotations in defense or push the tempo of the game with a pass and doing nothing about it are perfect examples of Thibs willingness to make adjustments. Maybe I just imagined those nights turning off the TV screen after watching that BS. I never said the reason Thibs lost in the post season was lack of adjustments. I readily admit that he got those teams to outperform their talent level and I'll even admit that his losses were to better teams. If anything, you just created an imaginary narrative. And yes, I don't care how many times you guys keep repeating Randle's laughably inefficient 20 and 19 season, you're still not going to convince me that Randle isn't trash.

Maybe he's trash maybe he's not... but it seems like if he is (above mentioned instances) you put that on Thibs? I am not sure I follow... Randle's role should be much more clearly defined. A lot of what seemed to mess him up last year should be a lot better this year. Dumping him for nothing is cutting the nose to spite the face. Lets see if we can get this guy right and see where we are. If not we move on. Randle is not #1 on the pecking order anymore. It will be a telling season

I'd say that this is easily a .500 team with upside. A lot in contingent on having not dipping into our 3rd options at any position for any significant period, particularly at PG. If Brunson for whatever reason misses games (covid, injury, whatever), we're not really in a better position than last year to do damage in the east - that is, unless we can trust that one of Quickley/McBride/Montero can step up and play like starter quality player.

Last season was a mess, with Kemba/Rose both missing the majority of the season. It took a while for Thibs to feel comfortable deploying Quickley as a PG (and even then, was he really that comfy)?

There's a tremendous amount of parity in the east. The best team only won 53 games. A lot of the standings are based on how healthy the teams are.

On one hand, the Knicks have a lot of depth, so we can withstand 1 injury per position without terrible drop off. On the other hand, our best players (last year) were not consistently awesome (Randle/RJ), so unless they both take steps forward again, that limits our team's upside a bit.

So if the other teams suffer injuries in a similar way to last year and:
1) we stay mostly healthy (we have at least one 1st or 2nd stringer at each position healthy at all times)
2) at least 2 of our young players - particularly RJ, Brunson, and Quickley - take steps forward. If any of these 3 adds 3-5ppg to their scoring average (or if RJ/Quickley manage to improve their FG% to 45%+), they'd be strong candidates for MIP. (Brunson is most likely to look like a star)
3) Randle doesn't have a meltdown (yeah, perhaps the most risky of these 3 requirements)

...we should be in the mix for a potential 50 win season, which would put us in contention for best in the east.

Players like Giannis, Embiid, Durant, and Tatum are really the stand out players in the east, but all but Tatum are treated like national treasures and their teams like to play it safe from an injury maintenance standpoint.