ToddTT wrote:Click here to vomit.

https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/knicks-point-differential-against-cavs-and-celtics-and-thunder-this-season

Cavs are good. We have no chance without Hart, a healthy OG and Mitch. I love KAT but we can't beat them with him at Center. They pick and roll us to death and we have no answers.

Now 0-6 against the top 3 teams. It's discouraging and disappointing. Still got a lot of basketball left. But the defense needs to get a lot better.

THE KNICKS ARE PRETENDERS.

This year, at least. But the changes that need to happen are so drastic that I don’t think they happen. And the main one, sadly enough, is our coaching staff. A whole season, up to this point, and even more if you count previous years, and we are still pathetic in defending the 3pt line. We have done nothing about this and don’t seem to. When your strategy is hoping for a team to have an off-night out of nowhere, you are pretending to contend.

Our offense is easy to defend against the best teams. Hey, not many are elite on it so we will have a decent record and go into the playoffs where hopefully the first series is against one of those such mediocre teams. We are the best of the mediocre, nice, but this team is a joke of a title contender.

Teams have evolved. Just look at what Cleveland has done with the right voice, right strategies and the right personnel. It’s quite astonishing. They are what we hoped to be but clearly by now won’t even be close to sniffing this season.

I’m not a Thibs hater, by the way. He has done great things in helping turning this team into the right direction. Great job by him. But now, unless he goes into an amazing transformation as a coach, which he has shown little signs of being able to with his stubborn old-school strategies, he is our main problem. Yes, the roster isn’t perfect either, but outside of probably OKC, no other roster is perfect, yet you have elite teams behaving as such. The Knicks, unfortunately, are the champs of the mediocre, but chumps when going against the elite. A clear change needs to happen but I highly doubt it does. We’ll head into the playoffs, get bounced in the second round and give Thibs another chance until probably the same thing happens and we finally move on.

Let’s enjoy the wins against lesser teams as much as we can.

Or "Cavs are really good"!!!
We are not elite. We lack depth, They had all their guys? What ever, they are really good.
They come at you in waves. We don't have that depth. They Drafted Garland and Mobley. We did not draft any of our starters.
Bickerstaff a good coach, took them as far as he could, then they bought in Atkinson a good coach who infused the Kerr goodness in his repetoire. I love Thibs and hope it does not come to that.
We all knew from day one it would take more than one season to get depth given the CBA and salary constraints.
If you angry, I understand. This team flirting with being elite at times but we are not there. The really good teams know we on the rise and we don't get them on a down night because they get up for the challenge.

That was a damn good team that shot really well last night. WE did not let them. They earned that ****. That combo of Garland and Mitchell is like Clyde and Earl. They both are paid well and are deferring for the greater good. Mitchell is a star and deferring also keeps him healthy.
The Wing play? Who the **** is TY Jerome? Kicked our ass dude is who. They have Hunter who is smooth and has some bite to his game. Jared Allen and Mobley is a hell of a tandem. Allen always getting hurt though.

Kudos to Koby Altman and ownership for paying the bill on this team also. They had the balls to change coaching too.

This is not the team we beat two years ago. This is not the Same Donovan Mitchell either. Foolish to think the past will repeat itself. This is a really good team. Does not mean they win a chip. Why? Other teams might be better. They have an achilles heal. All teams do in the age of parity. On the surface we don't have the guns. I think we can play with Boston in a series. both teams are built similar. Boston still has a bench that is confident. We don't. We might be getting closer.

OKC and Cav's are relentlessly deep for now.

Im still entertained. I might not "believe" but im not that despondent. I never expected to be elite yet in year one of the KAT era.

Chandler wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

Clean wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

WP76 wrote:Why do teams like the Cavs and Celtics always just rip us a new one from deep? I can't believe how they just can't miss from three point range.

Cavs are running a motion offense. We are running a PnR ISO. I don’t think we make it past the first motion offense we see in the playoffs. I think Kenny Atkinson is a drastically underappreciated coach. And I think Johnnie Bryant was a tremendous loss. I don’t want to be a hater but I just think that our offense has incredible personnel that are forced to create ont heir own by virtue of the lack of a cohesive system. We have some of the best midrange shooters in the league but are going to struggle with elite motion offenses that prioritize the 3.

Doesn’t help that we are catching Cleveland on the second half of a back to back.

This is exactly why I wanted him as a coach. However, we went with Thibs. Thibs is not bad but he has clear flaws that he just will never fix. Any good shooting team will kick our butt unless they are just off that night. I came to terms with this a long time ago.

I genuinely thought we would be running a 5 out or 4-1 motion offense. But we are consistently running a PNR / ISO heavy scheme. We have almost exactly the same talent as the Cavs, though their addition of DeAndre Hunter was a coup. I don’t want to cry gloom and doom with OG’s first game back, Hart on the bench and MitchRob loading up in the queue.

That said, the offense looks a bit disjointed. The passes are finding the seats. The shot selection includes a tremendous number of 18 foot jumpers - perhaps the least efficient shot in the game. The offense is stagnant and watching players work. Basically Brunson or KAT pick up the ball at the top of the key and go. Or Mikal shoots a fadeaway from the block.

They are using the shot selection that should be the last 7 seconds in the first 7 seconds. The best part of a motion offense is that it allows the ball movement to wear out the defense while looking for a defensive collapse. ISO ball lets the defense rest. If ISO ball results in a mid range shot, you are gifting DeFG to the opposing team.

I really want to see them put the WildCat into action here. They have elite personnel to carry it out.

you guys are some of the posters I respect the most from a basketball knowledge perspective. but was our problem offense? we're like second in the league or whatever. I'm more of a passionate fan with limited strategic knowledge. to me it seemed we couldn't stop them at all. We took nothing away from them that I could see

I also felt like they had multiple axes to grind, whether it was prior defeats, Allstar snubs, thibs getting hired over Kenny (don't remember if we interviewed him; I do recall many here including me wanting him because we had a young team and thought he would be good at developing0. that said, they did try to run up the score and that is very dangerous. if you don't break the opponents spirit you just provided more motivation and fuel for the next match

paybacks are a bitch and I look forward to playing them again

My biggest problem with Thibs is on defense also. However, back then I drank the cool-aid that Thibs was a defensive mastermind. So I never would have thought his teams would consistantly one of the worst at defending 3's. Thibs defense was great back in the day but it no longer works for the modern day NBA where everyone can shoot. On both ends we had players who masked Thibs problem areas. I been having arguments on here about this since the Knicks vs Hawks playoff season.

Before this season our offense was not good in a sense. It was made good because we had Mitch and iHart gobbling up offensive rebounds. Both players gave us so many offensive rebounds that even though our offense was not great we staistically had so many more attempts that the second chance points made it one of the best in the league. On offense, Ihart was also amazing off the short roll. He was like a pg at finding the right person when teams took Brunson out of the game.

On defense Thibs has a philosophy. Protect the paint and scramble out to the shooters. I have posted many opposing coaches interviews where they say exactly that. To the point of them saying they know the open 3 will be there we just need to hit them to win. That worked last season because ihart was a damn demon at protecting the paint. So even though teams still shot well from 3 we locked down the paint. This year we giving everything up. So even though offense is great we still can't consistantly blow out even bad teams like real elite teams should because we can't get any stops.

Why does Thibs continue to start Precious when we are down with an injury when teams are just doing to double off him and pack the paint? The point of the KAT trade was space and Thibs spits on it everytime he does this. McBride starting has produced better results vs actual good teams.

Chandler wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

Clean wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

WP76 wrote:Why do teams like the Cavs and Celtics always just rip us a new one from deep? I can't believe how they just can't miss from three point range.

Cavs are running a motion offense. We are running a PnR ISO. I don’t think we make it past the first motion offense we see in the playoffs. I think Kenny Atkinson is a drastically underappreciated coach. And I think Johnnie Bryant was a tremendous loss. I don’t want to be a hater but I just think that our offense has incredible personnel that are forced to create ont heir own by virtue of the lack of a cohesive system. We have some of the best midrange shooters in the league but are going to struggle with elite motion offenses that prioritize the 3.

Doesn’t help that we are catching Cleveland on the second half of a back to back.

This is exactly why I wanted him as a coach. However, we went with Thibs. Thibs is not bad but he has clear flaws that he just will never fix. Any good shooting team will kick our butt unless they are just off that night. I came to terms with this a long time ago.

I genuinely thought we would be running a 5 out or 4-1 motion offense. But we are consistently running a PNR / ISO heavy scheme. We have almost exactly the same talent as the Cavs, though their addition of DeAndre Hunter was a coup. I don’t want to cry gloom and doom with OG’s first game back, Hart on the bench and MitchRob loading up in the queue.

That said, the offense looks a bit disjointed. The passes are finding the seats. The shot selection includes a tremendous number of 18 foot jumpers - perhaps the least efficient shot in the game. The offense is stagnant and watching players work. Basically Brunson or KAT pick up the ball at the top of the key and go. Or Mikal shoots a fadeaway from the block.

They are using the shot selection that should be the last 7 seconds in the first 7 seconds. The best part of a motion offense is that it allows the ball movement to wear out the defense while looking for a defensive collapse. ISO ball lets the defense rest. If ISO ball results in a mid range shot, you are gifting DeFG to the opposing team.

I really want to see them put the WildCat into action here. They have elite personnel to carry it out.

you guys are some of the posters I respect the most from a basketball knowledge perspective. but was our problem offense? we're like second in the league or whatever. I'm more of a passionate fan with limited strategic knowledge. to me it seemed we couldn't stop them at all. We took nothing away from them that I could see

I also felt like they had multiple axes to grind, whether it was prior defeats, Allstar snubs, thibs getting hired over Kenny (don't remember if we interviewed him; I do recall many here including me wanting him because we had a young team and thought he would be good at developing0. that said, they did try to run up the score and that is very dangerous. if you don't break the opponents spirit you just provided more motivation and fuel for the next match

paybacks are a bitch and I look forward to playing them again

You get that all from the broadcast? I did not see a team we could not stop, I saw a team that shot a silly high % rate and then opened up the lanes. 7 dunks in the 1st half?
I saw a team superior to ours. I did not see knick failure. The criticism is value but thats assuming we have the personal to execute. We might not.
We discount Donovan Mitchell and mobley, while we perhaps inflate our own guys.
If anything we embarrassed them in the playoffs two years ago and that might be the chip on their shoulder.
Leon pretty much had Thibs in mind for many reasons.