“Thibs featured Barrett on or about the first of the year. Stats have been great! Team goes into a funk vs. better teams. Randle, first frustrated by EF 1st two months and then Burks at PG boils over and is having a hard time adjusting to facilitating RJ. Not envious, just technical. JUles has his money and the nature of the contract number indicates he is not thinking diva max type player.

Pace: If Obi gets the rebound, he brings it up. This is not just Randle. Everyone brings it up but Mitch. Last night GSW had its bigs bringing it up. Save for Joker at denver. Thibs has pace issues, I get that. Randle Gets a lot of rebounds at times.

If Randle does well without RJ, its not a trade that solves it. Its him having to figure it out. While he was available for trade I agree with knicks best to not dump him. Fans may want to start over but then its a new cycle of despair.

Hope: Portand dumped contracts at a high price and opend up a ton of space. Dallas ate the cost of KP and are moving foward. Remember, this was a a previous FO that bought in KP. Make no bones about Cuban is very active owner and it falls on all of them!!! They did a good thing by trading for Luka and that offsets mistakes. All teams make them.
Nets looked phuched and really the deal for Simmons might be massive for them. Adding Drummond and curry really is good look. simmons can play 5 positions for them.

I think we have more flexibilty than some fans think we do.

The way the team played and especially Randle, was different than the previous month.
It seems to me the trade deadline chatter and fans booing combined to get in the players' heads.
They all seemed more relaxed, yet focused.

Kemet wrote:Thibs rotation should stay at 10 or more players until the Knicks are 8 or less seed playoff team.
Randle played more relax in the game vs the GSW, because he didn't have to give the 3rd draft pick 15 to 20 shots in the game. Randle teammates in the 10-man rotation felt more relax knowing they could look for their shots because the ball facilitator Randle's not looking to pass the ball to the 3rd pick in the draft every other offense-possession.
Cam Reddish & Grimes performed 10 times better on offense/defense in the 3rd draft pick position against the GSW trio backcourt of Curry, Klay, Wiggins/Poole.

Wow - sounds like you are a Randle lover. Happy they won and glad Randle is trying/playing harder the past week. If we are going to put this much stock in the GSW game - what do you think about the rest of the season and Randle's regression?

One thing we may agree on is that the pairing of Randle and RJ is not ideal and they may play best in separate lineups... guess we will see as RJ is probably out for at least a few more games.

HofstraBBall wrote:Entire team had more energy and played hard for most of the game. Possibly because of the bigger challenge. Good start helped keep that energy as well.
3pt shooting was good. EF had big buckets as did Randle.
Think if we shoot the 3 well and play this hard we win regardless if RJ is in or out. The NBA is an effort and 3pt league. Teams that are consistent in both win a lot of games.

This team not good enough to be consistent on office. But if we are consistent on defense then we can win more games. When the offense is clicking that’s a pretty win. We need ugly wins when the offense isn’t clicking but the defensive is.