BigDaddyG wrote:

Uptown wrote:

BigDaddyG wrote:

Clean wrote:

Uptown wrote:

BigDaddyG wrote:

Knicksfan wrote:

Knixkik wrote:We need more from Mikal on both ends. He hasn’t been the difference maker he needs to be.

He has been the difference maker, for all the wrong reasons. Honestly so much hate has been directed at KAT that nobody is seeing how terrible Bridges has been?

No one is saying Bridges has been good.But I think KAT's offense has blinded people to his defensive fit. The system doesn't fit the roster defensively. And to be honest, it can be tweaked on offense as well.

Agreed....not fan of having Towns play strictly drop....I explained the other issues I see in the post above.

This is also why I said Kat as a 4 would not work here. Imagine him and Mitch playing deep drop. We would give up even more open shots.

I think KAT at the 4 would work a bit better. KAT is at his best when he's man to man. Even that clip of him on Jokic that had everyone glazing his defense was strictly man coverage. KAT's defensive IQ isn't there and it gets exposed when in drop. There's a reason why the Wolves gave up so much for Gobert.

Kat at the 4 takes away some of the advantages he has on the offensive end at the 5. For example, He blew by Lopez when he tried to man-up on Kat the 3 point line for easy dunks and lay ups. If Kat is playing beside Mitch, Lopez and other shot -blockers will be waiting for him at the rim if he is able to get by much quicker 4's.

Also, the spacing that Brunson enjoys now will be nearly non-existent with Mitch and Hart on the court at the same time. I don't think the front office traded for Kat with the idea of playing him at the 4. The idea was to open up the floor with Kat at the 5.

No doubt. One of the reasons I wasn't in love with the trade in the first place. But, I think you still take advantage of the KAT mismatch by posting him up. KAT will create mismatches no matter where we is. Sure, opposing 5s can help, but that plays into Mitch's strengths as an offensive rebounder. Will JB lose some spacing? Maybe. But we're at a point where his counterparts are matching or surpassing his offense anyway. We need to figure out a way to slow them down.

It's actually one of the reasons I liked the trade. KAT gives us options; he can play the 4 and 5 and I like the advantages he gives us offensively at the 5. I think he and Mitch can share the floor when we need a key defensive stops down the stretch depending on the matchups. Not a fan of them starting and playing major mins together.

Just an FYI, according to statistics, we are a top 3 offense right now. When we are healthy and Thibs has full roster of players to choose from, he has to do a good job of mixing and matching. That will be his challannge. Mitch and and Precious should help on the defensive end and on the boards.

Everyone wants to be Steph, but an offensive game like KD is more well-rounded and usually leads to higher % 3s. I tell kids, if you can't hit lay-ups at a high rate, why are you shooting mid-range shots. When they have that locked up, why are you shooting 3s when you aren't hitting 2s at a high rate. Then you work on the 3 range when you are strong enough to not be chucking and the stroke you learned from other ranges will translate to respectable 3s. And FTs FTs FTs. On D I prefer staying on your assignments rather than switching if you can avoid it. I know we are better than our record shows, especially short handed. Just was expecting more with this high level talent. Losing very top to next tier talent was expected, but dropping games to HOU & ATL, I didn't.

LivingLegend wrote:- starting match-ups had OG/Siakim, Bridges/Hali and Hart/Mathurin
- in 1st half OG/Bridges were solid and Hart was destroyed by Mathurin....leaving him open, losing him blindly (same as Risacher game)
- in 2nd half OG was solid again, Hart I noticed less and Bridges was destroyed by Hali
- All of Bridges/Hart/Deuce are getting roasted on ball --- reaching, off balance, losing focus in simple 1 vs 1 dribble situations
- Brunson/Kat really don't defend squat but we kind of knew that
- Bridges looks softer than Quentin Grimes on offense --- he goes to the line <1 time a game I think and he looks to have little confidence when dribbling/passing

We got killed on 3 pointers again tonight --- very low volume, low makes --- Brunson doesn't seem to be looking for the 3.

Biggest feeling watching this game and we've seen it before already vs Hawks --- we didn't give effort or stay connected defensively and we lost some key rebounds in bad spots.

I find myself frustrated watching Brunson working to get to his spots/shots --- seems to be taking a bit too long at least to me.

Clean wrote:

martin wrote:

Clean wrote:
Stats are great but they can also lie. My eye test been saying the same thing for years. Plus we beat up on a trash Det and Bucks. That will inflate your net rating. It also does not take into account if teams are just missing wide open 3 a specific game. Listen, I would not mind this much if Thibs had a counter when teams are clearly hitting their 3's. He does not. Our plan is if teams are hitting their open 3's just take the loss and try again the next game. Nothing changes.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://www.twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/1854341268752531593

If he would have missed this shot the stats would have pointed to a good defensive possessions. We know damn well that is bad defense. Stats are good but to rely only on them is not smart. We paid the price for it vs the Hawks in the playoffs. All those open 3's teams missed all year went in the second the playoffs started. It's no coincidence we had a scrub of the night that always killed us. These are NBA players. You give them open 3's they are going to make a lot of them. Especially now with the whole league emphasis on shooting.

I am not just talking about this year though. It’s a philosophy and you start at some place and work your way from there.

Stats in 4 out of 5 years is pretty convincing, especially when you are top 10. I’d guess that stats are much more consistent than your eye test?

lets make this as simple as possible so we can get to the bottom of this.

Do you think we are good at defending 3pt shots?
Do you think we have a counter to if teams are hitting their shots?

It’s pretty clear in this game and so far this season the 3 point defense has not been good.

I don’t sweat those things long term cause the Knicks work those things out. I can tell because their NET rating across the years with that same philosophy has worked.

The team is very new and has a lot of things to work out. I wouldn’t worry about a sample size of 10 games and extrapolate that to an entire focus on one thing like 3point defense. Especially when your defense guys are not around.

For me, point is to win games, not win the 3point defensive contest.

martin wrote:

Clean wrote:

martin wrote:

Clean wrote:
Stats are great but they can also lie. My eye test been saying the same thing for years. Plus we beat up on a trash Det and Bucks. That will inflate your net rating. It also does not take into account if teams are just missing wide open 3 a specific game. Listen, I would not mind this much if Thibs had a counter when teams are clearly hitting their 3's. He does not. Our plan is if teams are hitting their open 3's just take the loss and try again the next game. Nothing changes.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://www.twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/1854341268752531593

If he would have missed this shot the stats would have pointed to a good defensive possessions. We know damn well that is bad defense. Stats are good but to rely only on them is not smart. We paid the price for it vs the Hawks in the playoffs. All those open 3's teams missed all year went in the second the playoffs started. It's no coincidence we had a scrub of the night that always killed us. These are NBA players. You give them open 3's they are going to make a lot of them. Especially now with the whole league emphasis on shooting.

I am not just talking about this year though. It’s a philosophy and you start at some place and work your way from there.

Stats in 4 out of 5 years is pretty convincing, especially when you are top 10. I’d guess that stats are much more consistent than your eye test?

lets make this as simple as possible so we can get to the bottom of this.

Do you think we are good at defending 3pt shots?
Do you think we have a counter to if teams are hitting their shots?

It’s pretty clear in this game and so far this season the 3 point defense has not been good.

I don’t sweat those things long term cause the Knicks work those things out. I can tell because their NET rating across the years with that same philosophy has worked.

The team is very new and has a lot of things to work out. I wouldn’t worry about a sample size of 10 games and extrapolate that to an entire focus on one thing like 3point defense. Especially when your defense guys are not around.

For me, point is to win games, not win the 3point defensive contest.

We agree then. So why are we arguing? Just had to cut the fluff to get to the main point.

Pathetic D all night --- don't like the we are going to play D when we feel like it.

Pacers were missing Nesmith, Nemhart, I-Jackson and basically McDonnell who was supposedly playing sick ---- so don't really buy the we are tired excuses due to short rotations especially given the way Mathurin was tuning us up in 1st half.

Never a good thing when you are rooting for a team that is going to rely on offense over defense.....hopefully we turn that somehow without collapsing on offense at the same time.

A couple small tweaks can fix things a lot because we are a bad 4th quarter away from winning almost every game besides Boston.

martin wrote:

Clean wrote:

martin wrote:

Clean wrote:
Stats are great but they can also lie. My eye test been saying the same thing for years. Plus we beat up on a trash Det and Bucks. That will inflate your net rating. It also does not take into account if teams are just missing wide open 3 a specific game. Listen, I would not mind this much if Thibs had a counter when teams are clearly hitting their 3's. He does not. Our plan is if teams are hitting their open 3's just take the loss and try again the next game. Nothing changes.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://www.twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/1854341268752531593

If he would have missed this shot the stats would have pointed to a good defensive possessions. We know damn well that is bad defense. Stats are good but to rely only on them is not smart. We paid the price for it vs the Hawks in the playoffs. All those open 3's teams missed all year went in the second the playoffs started. It's no coincidence we had a scrub of the night that always killed us. These are NBA players. You give them open 3's they are going to make a lot of them. Especially now with the whole league emphasis on shooting.

I am not just talking about this year though. It’s a philosophy and you start at some place and work your way from there.

Stats in 4 out of 5 years is pretty convincing, especially when you are top 10. I’d guess that stats are much more consistent than your eye test?

lets make this as simple as possible so we can get to the bottom of this.

Do you think we are good at defending 3pt shots?
Do you think we have a counter to if teams are hitting their shots?

It’s pretty clear in this game and so far this season the 3 point defense has not been good.

I don’t sweat those things long term cause the Knicks work those things out. I can tell because their NET rating across the years with that same philosophy has worked.

The team is very new and has a lot of things to work out. I wouldn’t worry about a sample size of 10 games and extrapolate that to an entire focus on one thing like 3point defense. Especially when your defense guys are not around.

For me, point is to win games, not win the 3point defensive contest.

Bridges, Hart and OG are great at rotating to the ball.
Problem is that JB and KAT are not. Perhaps because they expect those two to do the rotating.
That has to improve.

Still feel that this team cannot be judged until we have a full roster and capable bench.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://www.twitter.com/nahitsjaycee/status/1855772653426266467

Clean wrote:

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://www.twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1855971711222526201

I remember people coming at me in preseason when I warned about all the damn open 3's we were giving up. Bro, 44 of 46 was open(4 to 6 ft) to wide open(6+ ft). WTF? The thing people don't get is even if I have a problem with how things are done I give everyone a fair shake. I just call games how I see them. SO please stop jumping down my throat for pointing our clear flaws we have. How could I forget about the amount of open 3's we gave up to BOS. At some point we have to stop giving excuses to crappy gameplans.

But, we have wingstop?

Fire Thibs?

Thibs is not confident with this bench as configured. We can say he need to play them more but we don't know the outcome.
"Well, has to be better, right?" We'll never know. A tired OG/Bridges better than a fresh Ryan? Might be. They on the road not having full practices and Ryan defense might not be up to par yet.