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