June 5, 2025 • 22 mins
Jason reacts to the New York Knicks surprisingly firing head coach Tom Thibodeau shortly after the team lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers. He explains why the Knicks were right to move on and how to maximize a team led by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume, blending Vice's signature dynamic storytelling with the high
octane world of sports. Vice Sports brings an exciting and
diverse range of programming that goes beyond the game, catch
action pack, live events, and exclusive sports documentaries and profiles,
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Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right, weld Hoops toight. You're at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody.
Hope all you guys are having a great week. Well,
we were going to be waiting until the NBA Finals
tipped off tomorrow night, but then Tom Thibodeau got fired,
so we got a bonus episode today. I just want
to kind of dive into my take on the situation,
some of the realities about how far the Knicks are
away from their goals and how a coaching change I
think kind of falls in line with their ultimate goal
(00:56):
of winning an NBA championship and kind of separating that
from some of the realities of the well, what it
was like having Tom Thibodeau as coach of the Knicks.
You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe
to the Hoops and I YouTube channels you don't miss
any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at
underscore JSNLTS. You guys, don't mis show announcements. Don't forget
about our podcast few where we get your podcast on
our hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave
(01:19):
a rating and review on that front. Jackson's doing great
work on our social media feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok.
Make sure you guys follow us there, and the last
but not least, in our live shows, make sure you
guys keep dropping those male bag questions so we can
get to them in our chats at the end of
the shows. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the
first thing that we have to acknowledge before we go
any further is what the Knicks are trying to accomplish.
(01:43):
They're trying to win an NBA championship. They view their
defeat in the conference finals as a failure. I know
that feels weird in the context of them making their
first conference finals in over two decades in defeating the
Boston Celtics, which was kind of the goal of the
moves that were made last summer. But it's all relative
(02:04):
to the Larry O'Brien Trophy. And I'm gonna say something
that I said right after the MAVs lost in the
finals last year, they weren't actually close. Did you guys
think the MAVs were close to beating Boston? No, they
beat a bunch of teams along the way that were
also in that tier, below that top tier, championship contending tier,
(02:25):
but ultimately when they ran into a team that was
actually at a championship level, looked like there was a
chasm between them. I would argue there was a pretty
significant chasm between them and the Pacers this year, and
I think the Pacers have little to no chance to
beat the Thunder, so you could argue the Knicks are
still not close. From there, you have to start asking
(02:47):
yourself why why were the Knicks not close? And this
is where I'm seeing a lot of the issues with
the roster being brought up, specifically in defense of Tom Thibodeau,
and I think all that's fair. It's really difficult to
build a functioning defensive foundation on Karl Anthony Towns and
(03:08):
Jalen Brunson. Their challenge is there. It's all fair, and
we'll talk more about Kat in a bit, but it's
not just the roster. The Pacers outclassed them, and as
we mentioned, the Pacers are below the Thunder so here're
several tiers below where you need to be, and if
we removed the Celtics series, just take that entire two weeks,
(03:30):
set it aside, and look at the entirety of the
next season, I would argue they pretty significantly underachieved relative
to their talent level. They came into the year with
sky high expectations getting Karl Anthony Towns, getting Michale Bridges.
All of a sudden, you have one of the more
dynamic starting five units in the NBA, and they came
(03:52):
right out the gates and got the shit kicked out
of them by the Boston Celtics. They generally underachieved all seasons,
especially versus the good teams in the NBA. They were
oh to ten versus the Celtics, the Thunder and the Cavs.
They were six and six against the other ten or
the other seven teams that were in the top ten
(04:13):
in point differential this year, so they were oh to
ten versus the top three teams and five hundred against
the other good teams in the NBA. They got the
three seed, but they finished ten games below the two seed,
so it is mostly a product of the East being
very weak. They had a mediocre showing against the young
Pistons team that had them on the rope several times.
(04:33):
Knicks fans were incredibly frustrated with the team coming out
of that series and going into the Celtics Series and
then they got firmly outclassed by the Pacers. That's what
happens if we removed the Celtics Series. The NBA Finals
are here. This is your last chance to bet on
the NBA until next season, and DraftKings Sportsbook and official
sports betting partner of the NBA is pulling out all
the stops to make this a finals. To remember, one
(04:56):
team will be crown champ and the other will be
lost to history. You got winning at all. Put your
hoops expertise to the test. All season long, DraftKings has
been the go to spot for NBA player props and
that doesn't stop now. Who's gonna carry their team to
the chip. Try placing a bet on your personal MVP
to drop thirty, forty or maybe even over fifty. Ready
(05:16):
to place your own bet, download the DraftKings Sports Book app,
lock in your bets, and finish the season as a winner.
Here's something special for first timers New DraftKings customers bet
five dollars to get three hundred dollars in bonus bets
if your bet wins. Don't miss your last chance to
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app and use code hoops. That's hops. That's code hoops
(05:39):
for new customers to get three hundred dollars in bonus
bets if your bet wins. When you bet five bucks
only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. And even if
we take a closer look at the Celtics series, they
faced massive deficits in five of the six games. Now,
they pulled that series out on the strength of some
(06:00):
incredible runs, but there was also some stuff there with
Tatum and Brown kind of falling apart. I want to
be clear, though, the flashes were real. I'm not sitting
here saying this that the Knicks had a bad season
and somehow made the Conference finals. They made it there
with their flashes. When they needed to be great against
the Pistons, they were great against the Pistons. They were
(06:22):
unbelievable against the Celtics at the tail end of those
games that they pulled out. Even in the Pacers series,
there were stretches. I thought for the majority of Game
one they looked like the better team. They had a
stretch at the end of Game three where they like
were kind of physically overwhelming for the Pacers. The flashes
were real, they were not fluky. I'm not saying this
(06:45):
is a bad team. It's just that that's the talent showing.
They have all these rangy athletes that can fly around
in rotation. Jalen Brunson is still one of the most
gifted half core playoff scorers in the league. When they
were able to keep opponents in the half court, when
(07:07):
they contained the ball, when they flew around in rotation
and didn't make mistakes, when they rebound and ran off
of that stuff, they looked scary good. That's how they
made the Eastern Conference Finals despite all of the frustrations
throughout the season. But overall, what prevented them from sustaining
that was a lack of attention to detail throughout their
(07:29):
daily process, and it made the mistake prone and in
many case. In many cases, it made them play below
what they were capable of. It made them play even
when their best players were trying to operate, and they
were competitive and engaged it made them operate in a
setting that was more difficult than it needed to be.
(07:52):
I thought there were three main areas where they struggled
to reach their potential. First of all, on the defensive
end of the floor, and this gets more complicated with
transition defense, but I want to hit transition defense in
a minute. But overall on the defensive end of the floor,
like Michale Bridges came out the gates this year and
just wasn't very good at the point of attack, right,
Brunson and Cat were pretty much a disaster on defense
(08:13):
the entire season. They failed to sustain any like consistent
defensive level that they needed to reach. Now, one of
the details here that's important to remember is Tom Thibau
is playing all these guys massive minutes, and it was
under this like kind of theory that if they played
massive minutes it would condition them for the playoff environment.
(08:35):
It was even something that became a talking point as
people in the press would ask questions about the minute loads.
But the reality is is that if you're asking a
guy to play extremely high minutes relative to the rest
of the league throughout an eighty two game season, that
player is not going to be able to be as
(08:55):
engaged on a possession by possession basis. So all of
a sudden, you start to build habits, and those habits
are hard to kick. That's why when in a must
win game in Game six on the road in Indiana,
they had their sloppiest game with the details. Your habits
are what carry you. When you hit adversity, when everything
(09:18):
hits the fan and your SHOT's not falling and the
other team's on a big run and the crowd's going
crazy and all of this stuff is just working against you,
you have one thing you can fall back on. I'm
just gonna play hard and I'm habitually focused on these
details that I'm gonna do every single time, and that
will help me restore control of the situation. Instead, the
opposite happened. They fell back on their bad habits, and
(09:44):
so as a result of that, when they hit adversity,
they actually fell apart. They were unable to sustain because
they leaned too much on their top guys in huge
minutes and they all practiced playing mediocre basketball all year. Now,
does the roster have a depth is year?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You know, Mitch Robinson missed a good chunk of the year. Obviously,
once you get past the starting five, there's not as
much talent, but there were some usable guys there. Duce
McBride's a good player, obviously, Mitch when he became available,
really good player. We saw Andrew Shamitt be useful. We
saw Delon Wright be useful. I think Tibbs missed an
opportunity to lean on his depth more in the regular season,
(10:23):
not so that he can condition his stars for high
minute loads in the playoffs, but so that he could
actually teach all of those guys to play with a
certain amount of attention to detail throughout the season, so
that they had these habits in place, so that then
when they ended up in some adversity in the postseason,
they could fall back on those habits. The second piece
of it is spacing. This also falls into the concept
(10:45):
of attention to detail. I thought spacing was the biggest
weakness for the Knicks throughout this postseason run, and it
affected them both on the offensive end of the floor
as well as in their transition defense. I'm not going
to get into too much detail here because we've done
it quite a bit on the show over the course
of this series. But to make a long story, short,
there are simple concepts, simple ideas involving where you need
(11:09):
to be when you're off the ball that one make
help defenders make harder decisions. That two put specific guys
in situations where they can finish plays. And three create
the actual space for an on ball player to operate
so that he can be comfortable. That's just on the
(11:30):
offensive end of the floor. Move it to a step further.
That spacing is what allows you to get back and
transition defense. I can't tell you how many times in
this postseason run I would see multiple players in and
around the paint off the ball while no one's above
the break. Or you have a guy driving into a
(11:53):
guy in the strong side dunker spot instead of the
weak side dunker spot, or a guy standing where he
can't be a threat versus another guy who is a
shooting threat standing in the dunker spot, and you're like,
this is just making it more difficult than it needs
to be, and then you straight up lost the Pacers
series in transition, that's where you lost that series. And
(12:16):
one of the consistent themes that I saw was a
complete lack of understanding of floor balance. To make a
long story short, whenever the ball is moving through a defense,
whether it's through the drive or through the pass. As
the ball moves through the defense, the off ball guys
have to relocate. You can't just stand still right So,
(12:37):
for instance, if I'm driving off the left wing and
you're in the right dunker spot and I cross the midline,
you have to relocate to the left dunker spot so
that you can pull that help defender away right by.
If I cut through along the baseline, then the guy
who's in the corner I'm cutting two needs to relocate
(13:00):
up to the top of the key. Everyone needs to
be whirling around the ball into appropriate spacing. And it's
not just play finishing. Play finishing is a big part
of it. You don't want to have the above the
break line wide open. Why because if no one's up there,
you're making your team easier to guard. You want to
(13:21):
have a player situated above the break on the opposite
wing so that he is a threat, so that he
can pull a defender out there, and if they're going
to sink into the paint, you have an easy kickout opportunity.
And then if for whatever reason, you miss or you
turn the ball over. Having guys above the break those
are literally the dudes who have to get back in
transition defense. They lost the Pacers series in many cases
(13:45):
because you'd have a guy driving off the top of
the key, with the guy who set the screen for
him rolling off the top of the key, with two
guys in the corners and a guy in the dunker spot,
and now everyone's below the foul line. So not only
are you making yourself easy to guard because all five
defenders don't have to worry about half of the half court,
(14:05):
they don't have to worry about anything above the foul line.
And then in addition to that, all it takes is
one guy leaking out who gets behind all those five guys,
and now you're giving up a dunk. They were a
poorly spaced, poorly disciplined basketball team that made it to
the conference finals sheerly on the strength of their talent.
(14:30):
The third piece of it was offensive variety. The upside
of getting a guy Lego Jiananobi is he can put
the ball on the floor against the mismatch draw out
get a bucket. The upside with McHale bridges you can
come off of a ball screen and look to score.
The upside of having Karl Anthony Towns, and Jalen Brunson.
(14:52):
So you have four players in the starting lineup that
are all legitimate shot creators. And there were times where
it looked really good good. There's you know a lot
of the times when Jalen Brunson would come out of
the game, the ball would move around a little bit
more freely and guys would get more involved. I thought
in game six of the Pacers series, they finally started
to understand like, oh wait, like these guys can't guard
(15:14):
Ojannanobi when he's on the side, Let's go to him
more frequently. Right. We saw big stretches of the Celtics
series where Michale Bridges took over, But there was never
a point where you felt like the Knicks were operating
like the Pacers operated, meaning when you're playing against the Pacers,
they just they didn't. Every game looked different every every
(15:35):
night they kind of found the hot hand. On any
given night, they might have four or five different guys
score twenty points because their offense was geared towards keeping
everyone involved. Action was constantly moving side to side. This
is modern five out basketball. Modern five out basketball is
(15:55):
trying to get into multiple actions on the same possession,
getting the ball at the more quickly with pace getting
into that first action. If the first action creates an advantage,
you just play drive and kick off of it. If
it doesn't create an advantage, it flows into an action
on the other side of the floor. The more ball
in player movement that you have on any given possession,
the more advantages that are naturally created. The more you
(16:17):
cultivate an environment where everyone feels like they can be aggressive,
the easier it is for everyone to stay in rhythm
throughout a game. That is Pacers basketball. That is how
they beat you, guys. That is how they're in the finals. Now, now,
you don't want to go as far as the Pacers
did because you've got Jalen Brunson and he's one of
the best singular offensive talents in our league. But if
(16:41):
you don't go trading a bunch of draft picks for
a bunch of forwards that are capable of being super
versatile offensive players and then marginalize them, go for Dorian
Finney Smith instead, if that's what you're looking for. This
roster was constructed with a lot of aggregate ball. Take
(17:01):
advantage of it. So taking it back to self awareness,
you don't have a top tier superstar. Jalen Brunson is
definitely good enough to win a championship as the best player.
I think he's proven that. It's not like Brunson is
the reason why they're losing. But what he's not is
the indomitable type of talent that we see at the
(17:22):
top of our league. He is not a top tier superstar.
He's not Shake Gildess Alexander right. He's not a guy that,
regardless of surrounding circumstances, is gonna get off. There were
times in this Pacers series where Nie Smith kind of
had him under lock, like in crunch time. So like
(17:42):
accepting that you have kind of a second tier superstar,
your margin for error is smaller. I don't think they'll
be able to reach a championship ceiling unless they make
a pivot to the coaching staff and the roster. It's
gonna be both again, acknowledging self awareness that your multiple
tiers be where you need to be when you're in
(18:04):
this coaching search. The two primary things the Knicks have
to be looking for is someone who hunts margin, who
hunts the low hanging fruit in basketball, someone who understands
we give ourselves a better chance, not just in the
regular season, but in the postseason to win games if
we are a team that takes advantage of the low
(18:25):
hanging fruit and that prevents other teams from taking advantage
of the low hanging fruit. That means you force turnovers
and you don't turn the ball over, you corner crash
and clear as many offensive rebounds you can within the
context of your transition defense while also keeping the opponent
off of the offensive glass or like it's the it's
(18:47):
the pushing in transition whenever you can to get that
extra twenty percent out of every possession while also being
a great transition defense that prevents the other team from
getting an extra twenty percent out of every single possession.
These are all readily achievable things that basketball teams can
take advantage of. It just has to be drilled down
(19:10):
from October through to the middle of April when you
start this process. The second piece of it is they
need to find someone who can build the offense around
a more equal opportunity. Approach someone who advocates for maximizing
the aggregate offensive talent on this team, and I'll just
be really curious to see who they end up tracking
(19:30):
down on that front. And then, lastly, before we get
out of here, the Karl Anthony Towns thing. I've talked
about this before. The problem with Karl Anthony Towns is
he is obscenely talented, and the upside is there, and
there were points in the Pacer series where he kind
of just realized no one could guard him and he
looked like a force to be reckoned with. But when
(19:52):
I watched Game six of the Pacers series, he was
front and center for the majority of the issues they
were having in their transition defense and in their half
court defense, and not in like a oh he's limited
kind of way. I've seen some talk about, you know,
his athleticism and his ability to like cover ground and
all this sort of stuff that I think is certainly
part of the issue and that'll prevent Cat from ever
(20:13):
becoming like a dominant defensive player. But the main reason
why he is a bad defensive player is his just
his natural defensive instincts, his overall just he's just kind
of aloof you're above the break, dude, you can't be
crashing the offensive glass. You have get back responsibility, Like, dude,
(20:36):
you're in a ball screen with three people and the
role man's getting behind. You can't just be dancing out
around twenty five feet from the basket throwing the worst
headg I've ever seen. There's a certain amount of like
Cat just kind of feels like he's freelancing all the time,
and so like, Okay, if you decide to bring Cat back,
you can try to drill that down with a better coach.
(20:59):
But the reality is is we've had multiple stops in
his career in big spots where he struggled to be
as attentive to detail as he needs to be to
be a strong defensive foundation. That is to say, I
think tying up fifty million dollars in salary on an
inconsistent offensive player who is a bad to awful defensive
(21:20):
player who specifically is bad in terms of just his
ability to make basic basketball decisions on that end of
the floor, I think you're kind of handcuffing yourself if
you tie yourself to him. So I do view him
as the primary pivot point. But I believe that Jalen Brunson,
with Josh Hart and Mikale Bridges and og Anobi and
(21:41):
a competent coaching staff that has attention to detail that
maximizes the overall aggregate offensive talent on this roster. I
do believe that championship ceiling is in there. And it
takes a lot of guts to look at a guy
in Tibbs who just led the most successful next season
in decades, who is below his players and in general
(22:03):
is just a legend of this era of NBA basketball.
It takes a lot of guts to sit down there
and be like, he's not the guy that can bring
us to the championship. And I thought it was completely
defensible to move on from him. All right, guys, That's
all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you
guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I will
see you guys tomorrow night after Game one of the
(22:24):
NBA Finals live on YouTube. I cannot wait. We'll see
you guys then
The volume, blending Vice's signature dynamic storytelling with the high
octane world of sports. Vice Sports brings an exciting and
diverse range of programming that goes beyond the game, catch
action pack, live events, and exclusive sports documentaries and profiles,
only on Vice TV.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right, weld Hoops toight. You're at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody.
Hope all you guys are having a great week. Well,
we were going to be waiting until the NBA Finals
tipped off tomorrow night, but then Tom Thibodeau got fired,
so we got a bonus episode today. I just want
to kind of dive into my take on the situation,
some of the realities about how far the Knicks are
away from their goals and how a coaching change I
think kind of falls in line with their ultimate goal
(00:56):
of winning an NBA championship and kind of separating that
from some of the realities of the well, what it
was like having Tom Thibodeau as coach of the Knicks.
You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe
to the Hoops and I YouTube channels you don't miss
any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at
underscore JSNLTS. You guys, don't mis show announcements. Don't forget
about our podcast few where we get your podcast on
our hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave
(01:19):
a rating and review on that front. Jackson's doing great
work on our social media feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok.
Make sure you guys follow us there, and the last
but not least, in our live shows, make sure you
guys keep dropping those male bag questions so we can
get to them in our chats at the end of
the shows. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the
first thing that we have to acknowledge before we go
any further is what the Knicks are trying to accomplish.
(01:43):
They're trying to win an NBA championship. They view their
defeat in the conference finals as a failure. I know
that feels weird in the context of them making their
first conference finals in over two decades in defeating the
Boston Celtics, which was kind of the goal of the
moves that were made last summer. But it's all relative
(02:04):
to the Larry O'Brien Trophy. And I'm gonna say something
that I said right after the MAVs lost in the
finals last year, they weren't actually close. Did you guys
think the MAVs were close to beating Boston? No, they
beat a bunch of teams along the way that were
also in that tier, below that top tier, championship contending tier,
(02:25):
but ultimately when they ran into a team that was
actually at a championship level, looked like there was a
chasm between them. I would argue there was a pretty
significant chasm between them and the Pacers this year, and
I think the Pacers have little to no chance to
beat the Thunder, so you could argue the Knicks are
still not close. From there, you have to start asking
(02:47):
yourself why why were the Knicks not close? And this
is where I'm seeing a lot of the issues with
the roster being brought up, specifically in defense of Tom Thibodeau,
and I think all that's fair. It's really difficult to
build a functioning defensive foundation on Karl Anthony Towns and
(03:08):
Jalen Brunson. Their challenge is there. It's all fair, and
we'll talk more about Kat in a bit, but it's
not just the roster. The Pacers outclassed them, and as
we mentioned, the Pacers are below the Thunder so here're
several tiers below where you need to be, and if
we removed the Celtics series, just take that entire two weeks,
(03:30):
set it aside, and look at the entirety of the
next season, I would argue they pretty significantly underachieved relative
to their talent level. They came into the year with
sky high expectations getting Karl Anthony Towns, getting Michale Bridges.
All of a sudden, you have one of the more
dynamic starting five units in the NBA, and they came
(03:52):
right out the gates and got the shit kicked out
of them by the Boston Celtics. They generally underachieved all seasons,
especially versus the good teams in the NBA. They were
oh to ten versus the Celtics, the Thunder and the Cavs.
They were six and six against the other ten or
the other seven teams that were in the top ten
(04:13):
in point differential this year, so they were oh to
ten versus the top three teams and five hundred against
the other good teams in the NBA. They got the
three seed, but they finished ten games below the two seed,
so it is mostly a product of the East being
very weak. They had a mediocre showing against the young
Pistons team that had them on the rope several times.
(04:33):
Knicks fans were incredibly frustrated with the team coming out
of that series and going into the Celtics Series and
then they got firmly outclassed by the Pacers. That's what
happens if we removed the Celtics Series. The NBA Finals
are here. This is your last chance to bet on
the NBA until next season, and DraftKings Sportsbook and official
sports betting partner of the NBA is pulling out all
the stops to make this a finals. To remember, one
(04:56):
team will be crown champ and the other will be
lost to history. You got winning at all. Put your
hoops expertise to the test. All season long, DraftKings has
been the go to spot for NBA player props and
that doesn't stop now. Who's gonna carry their team to
the chip. Try placing a bet on your personal MVP
to drop thirty, forty or maybe even over fifty. Ready
(05:16):
to place your own bet, download the DraftKings Sports Book app,
lock in your bets, and finish the season as a winner.
Here's something special for first timers New DraftKings customers bet
five dollars to get three hundred dollars in bonus bets
if your bet wins. Don't miss your last chance to
bet on the NBA this season. Download the DraftKings sportsbook
app and use code hoops. That's hops. That's code hoops
(05:39):
for new customers to get three hundred dollars in bonus
bets if your bet wins. When you bet five bucks
only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. And even if
we take a closer look at the Celtics series, they
faced massive deficits in five of the six games. Now,
they pulled that series out on the strength of some
(06:00):
incredible runs, but there was also some stuff there with
Tatum and Brown kind of falling apart. I want to
be clear, though, the flashes were real. I'm not sitting
here saying this that the Knicks had a bad season
and somehow made the Conference finals. They made it there
with their flashes. When they needed to be great against
the Pistons, they were great against the Pistons. They were
(06:22):
unbelievable against the Celtics at the tail end of those
games that they pulled out. Even in the Pacers series,
there were stretches. I thought for the majority of Game
one they looked like the better team. They had a
stretch at the end of Game three where they like
were kind of physically overwhelming for the Pacers. The flashes
were real, they were not fluky. I'm not saying this
(06:45):
is a bad team. It's just that that's the talent showing.
They have all these rangy athletes that can fly around
in rotation. Jalen Brunson is still one of the most
gifted half core playoff scorers in the league. When they
were able to keep opponents in the half court, when
(07:07):
they contained the ball, when they flew around in rotation
and didn't make mistakes, when they rebound and ran off
of that stuff, they looked scary good. That's how they
made the Eastern Conference Finals despite all of the frustrations
throughout the season. But overall, what prevented them from sustaining
that was a lack of attention to detail throughout their
(07:29):
daily process, and it made the mistake prone and in
many case. In many cases, it made them play below
what they were capable of. It made them play even
when their best players were trying to operate, and they
were competitive and engaged it made them operate in a
setting that was more difficult than it needed to be.
(07:52):
I thought there were three main areas where they struggled
to reach their potential. First of all, on the defensive
end of the floor, and this gets more complicated with
transition defense, but I want to hit transition defense in
a minute. But overall on the defensive end of the floor,
like Michale Bridges came out the gates this year and
just wasn't very good at the point of attack, right,
Brunson and Cat were pretty much a disaster on defense
(08:13):
the entire season. They failed to sustain any like consistent
defensive level that they needed to reach. Now, one of
the details here that's important to remember is Tom Thibau
is playing all these guys massive minutes, and it was
under this like kind of theory that if they played
massive minutes it would condition them for the playoff environment.
(08:35):
It was even something that became a talking point as
people in the press would ask questions about the minute loads.
But the reality is is that if you're asking a
guy to play extremely high minutes relative to the rest
of the league throughout an eighty two game season, that
player is not going to be able to be as
(08:55):
engaged on a possession by possession basis. So all of
a sudden, you start to build habits, and those habits
are hard to kick. That's why when in a must
win game in Game six on the road in Indiana,
they had their sloppiest game with the details. Your habits
are what carry you. When you hit adversity, when everything
(09:18):
hits the fan and your SHOT's not falling and the
other team's on a big run and the crowd's going
crazy and all of this stuff is just working against you,
you have one thing you can fall back on. I'm
just gonna play hard and I'm habitually focused on these
details that I'm gonna do every single time, and that
will help me restore control of the situation. Instead, the
opposite happened. They fell back on their bad habits, and
(09:44):
so as a result of that, when they hit adversity,
they actually fell apart. They were unable to sustain because
they leaned too much on their top guys in huge
minutes and they all practiced playing mediocre basketball all year. Now,
does the roster have a depth is year?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You know, Mitch Robinson missed a good chunk of the year. Obviously,
once you get past the starting five, there's not as
much talent, but there were some usable guys there. Duce
McBride's a good player, obviously, Mitch when he became available,
really good player. We saw Andrew Shamitt be useful. We
saw Delon Wright be useful. I think Tibbs missed an
opportunity to lean on his depth more in the regular season,
(10:23):
not so that he can condition his stars for high
minute loads in the playoffs, but so that he could
actually teach all of those guys to play with a
certain amount of attention to detail throughout the season, so
that they had these habits in place, so that then
when they ended up in some adversity in the postseason,
they could fall back on those habits. The second piece
of it is spacing. This also falls into the concept
(10:45):
of attention to detail. I thought spacing was the biggest
weakness for the Knicks throughout this postseason run, and it
affected them both on the offensive end of the floor
as well as in their transition defense. I'm not going
to get into too much detail here because we've done
it quite a bit on the show over the course
of this series. But to make a long story, short,
there are simple concepts, simple ideas involving where you need
(11:09):
to be when you're off the ball that one make
help defenders make harder decisions. That two put specific guys
in situations where they can finish plays. And three create
the actual space for an on ball player to operate
so that he can be comfortable. That's just on the
(11:30):
offensive end of the floor. Move it to a step further.
That spacing is what allows you to get back and
transition defense. I can't tell you how many times in
this postseason run I would see multiple players in and
around the paint off the ball while no one's above
the break. Or you have a guy driving into a
(11:53):
guy in the strong side dunker spot instead of the
weak side dunker spot, or a guy standing where he
can't be a threat versus another guy who is a
shooting threat standing in the dunker spot, and you're like,
this is just making it more difficult than it needs
to be, and then you straight up lost the Pacers
series in transition, that's where you lost that series. And
(12:16):
one of the consistent themes that I saw was a
complete lack of understanding of floor balance. To make a
long story short, whenever the ball is moving through a defense,
whether it's through the drive or through the pass. As
the ball moves through the defense, the off ball guys
have to relocate. You can't just stand still right So,
(12:37):
for instance, if I'm driving off the left wing and
you're in the right dunker spot and I cross the midline,
you have to relocate to the left dunker spot so
that you can pull that help defender away right by.
If I cut through along the baseline, then the guy
who's in the corner I'm cutting two needs to relocate
(13:00):
up to the top of the key. Everyone needs to
be whirling around the ball into appropriate spacing. And it's
not just play finishing. Play finishing is a big part
of it. You don't want to have the above the
break line wide open. Why because if no one's up there,
you're making your team easier to guard. You want to
(13:21):
have a player situated above the break on the opposite
wing so that he is a threat, so that he
can pull a defender out there, and if they're going
to sink into the paint, you have an easy kickout opportunity.
And then if for whatever reason, you miss or you
turn the ball over. Having guys above the break those
are literally the dudes who have to get back in
transition defense. They lost the Pacers series in many cases
(13:45):
because you'd have a guy driving off the top of
the key, with the guy who set the screen for
him rolling off the top of the key, with two
guys in the corners and a guy in the dunker spot,
and now everyone's below the foul line. So not only
are you making yourself easy to guard because all five
defenders don't have to worry about half of the half court,
(14:05):
they don't have to worry about anything above the foul line.
And then in addition to that, all it takes is
one guy leaking out who gets behind all those five guys,
and now you're giving up a dunk. They were a
poorly spaced, poorly disciplined basketball team that made it to
the conference finals sheerly on the strength of their talent.
(14:30):
The third piece of it was offensive variety. The upside
of getting a guy Lego Jiananobi is he can put
the ball on the floor against the mismatch draw out
get a bucket. The upside with McHale bridges you can
come off of a ball screen and look to score.
The upside of having Karl Anthony Towns, and Jalen Brunson.
(14:52):
So you have four players in the starting lineup that
are all legitimate shot creators. And there were times where
it looked really good good. There's you know a lot
of the times when Jalen Brunson would come out of
the game, the ball would move around a little bit
more freely and guys would get more involved. I thought
in game six of the Pacers series, they finally started
to understand like, oh wait, like these guys can't guard
(15:14):
Ojannanobi when he's on the side, Let's go to him
more frequently. Right. We saw big stretches of the Celtics
series where Michale Bridges took over, But there was never
a point where you felt like the Knicks were operating
like the Pacers operated, meaning when you're playing against the Pacers,
they just they didn't. Every game looked different every every
(15:35):
night they kind of found the hot hand. On any
given night, they might have four or five different guys
score twenty points because their offense was geared towards keeping
everyone involved. Action was constantly moving side to side. This
is modern five out basketball. Modern five out basketball is
(15:55):
trying to get into multiple actions on the same possession,
getting the ball at the more quickly with pace getting
into that first action. If the first action creates an advantage,
you just play drive and kick off of it. If
it doesn't create an advantage, it flows into an action
on the other side of the floor. The more ball
in player movement that you have on any given possession,
the more advantages that are naturally created. The more you
(16:17):
cultivate an environment where everyone feels like they can be aggressive,
the easier it is for everyone to stay in rhythm
throughout a game. That is Pacers basketball. That is how
they beat you, guys. That is how they're in the finals. Now, now,
you don't want to go as far as the Pacers
did because you've got Jalen Brunson and he's one of
the best singular offensive talents in our league. But if
(16:41):
you don't go trading a bunch of draft picks for
a bunch of forwards that are capable of being super
versatile offensive players and then marginalize them, go for Dorian
Finney Smith instead, if that's what you're looking for. This
roster was constructed with a lot of aggregate ball. Take
(17:01):
advantage of it. So taking it back to self awareness,
you don't have a top tier superstar. Jalen Brunson is
definitely good enough to win a championship as the best player.
I think he's proven that. It's not like Brunson is
the reason why they're losing. But what he's not is
the indomitable type of talent that we see at the
(17:22):
top of our league. He is not a top tier superstar.
He's not Shake Gildess Alexander right. He's not a guy that,
regardless of surrounding circumstances, is gonna get off. There were
times in this Pacers series where Nie Smith kind of
had him under lock, like in crunch time. So like
(17:42):
accepting that you have kind of a second tier superstar,
your margin for error is smaller. I don't think they'll
be able to reach a championship ceiling unless they make
a pivot to the coaching staff and the roster. It's
gonna be both again, acknowledging self awareness that your multiple
tiers be where you need to be when you're in
(18:04):
this coaching search. The two primary things the Knicks have
to be looking for is someone who hunts margin, who
hunts the low hanging fruit in basketball, someone who understands
we give ourselves a better chance, not just in the
regular season, but in the postseason to win games if
we are a team that takes advantage of the low
(18:25):
hanging fruit and that prevents other teams from taking advantage
of the low hanging fruit. That means you force turnovers
and you don't turn the ball over, you corner crash
and clear as many offensive rebounds you can within the
context of your transition defense while also keeping the opponent
off of the offensive glass or like it's the it's
(18:47):
the pushing in transition whenever you can to get that
extra twenty percent out of every possession while also being
a great transition defense that prevents the other team from
getting an extra twenty percent out of every single possession.
These are all readily achievable things that basketball teams can
take advantage of. It just has to be drilled down
(19:10):
from October through to the middle of April when you
start this process. The second piece of it is they
need to find someone who can build the offense around
a more equal opportunity. Approach someone who advocates for maximizing
the aggregate offensive talent on this team, and I'll just
be really curious to see who they end up tracking
(19:30):
down on that front. And then, lastly, before we get
out of here, the Karl Anthony Towns thing. I've talked
about this before. The problem with Karl Anthony Towns is
he is obscenely talented, and the upside is there, and
there were points in the Pacer series where he kind
of just realized no one could guard him and he
looked like a force to be reckoned with. But when
(19:52):
I watched Game six of the Pacers series, he was
front and center for the majority of the issues they
were having in their transition defense and in their half
court defense, and not in like a oh he's limited
kind of way. I've seen some talk about, you know,
his athleticism and his ability to like cover ground and
all this sort of stuff that I think is certainly
part of the issue and that'll prevent Cat from ever
(20:13):
becoming like a dominant defensive player. But the main reason
why he is a bad defensive player is his just
his natural defensive instincts, his overall just he's just kind
of aloof you're above the break, dude, you can't be
crashing the offensive glass. You have get back responsibility, Like, dude,
(20:36):
you're in a ball screen with three people and the
role man's getting behind. You can't just be dancing out
around twenty five feet from the basket throwing the worst
headg I've ever seen. There's a certain amount of like
Cat just kind of feels like he's freelancing all the time,
and so like, Okay, if you decide to bring Cat back,
you can try to drill that down with a better coach.
(20:59):
But the reality is is we've had multiple stops in
his career in big spots where he struggled to be
as attentive to detail as he needs to be to
be a strong defensive foundation. That is to say, I
think tying up fifty million dollars in salary on an
inconsistent offensive player who is a bad to awful defensive
(21:20):
player who specifically is bad in terms of just his
ability to make basic basketball decisions on that end of
the floor, I think you're kind of handcuffing yourself if
you tie yourself to him. So I do view him
as the primary pivot point. But I believe that Jalen Brunson,
with Josh Hart and Mikale Bridges and og Anobi and
(21:41):
a competent coaching staff that has attention to detail that
maximizes the overall aggregate offensive talent on this roster. I
do believe that championship ceiling is in there. And it
takes a lot of guts to look at a guy
in Tibbs who just led the most successful next season
in decades, who is below his players and in general
(22:03):
is just a legend of this era of NBA basketball.
It takes a lot of guts to sit down there
and be like, he's not the guy that can bring
us to the championship. And I thought it was completely
defensible to move on from him. All right, guys, That's
all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you
guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I will
see you guys tomorrow night after Game one of the
(22:24):
NBA Finals live on YouTube. I cannot wait. We'll see
you guys then
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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