There are much easier things that could be done to take this team to the next level.
A) When Brunson gets doubled behind the 3 point line this should be an amazing insane opportunity to score easy points with the passing and the shooters that we have. Easy peezy. Instead? We are scrambling to help him, he is stressing, it results in turnovers more times than not and our morale sinks. OKC game is a good example of many in the last couple of mins. This should be easy to address. This is on Thibs.
B) When KAT has the ball I want to see cuts to the basket. Inexcusable. Makes a difference between ISO and team ball.
C) We need PnR. Again, like in years before, we get the pick part down. But noone ever rolls to the basket to take advantage of Brunson passing and to open the midrange for him too. He is pretty good from there
We played one of the best defensive teams ever and held a 10 point lead most of the game. Nothing is "wrong" with anything. We just lost against the best team in the league.
we have one of the best offenses in the league.
ramtour420 wrote:There are much easier things that could be done to take this team to the next level. A) When Brunson gets doubled behind the 3 point line this should be an amazing insane opportunity to score easy points with the passing and the shooters that we have. Easy peezy. Instead? We are scrambling to help him, he is stressing, it results in turnovers more times than not and our morale sinks. OKC game is a good example of many in the last couple of mins. This should be easy to address. This is on Thibs.
B) When KAT has the ball I want to see cuts to the basket. Inexcusable. Makes a difference between ISO and team ball.
C) We need PnR. Again, like in years before, we get the pick part down. But noone ever rolls to the basket to take advantage of Brunson passing and to open the midrange for him too. He is pretty good from there
We have been doing all those things you suggest all season. We did it for 3 quarters of this game. We had 1 bad quarter. Our offense and passing has been amazing.
We are top 5. So pretty good.
Just need to improve against teams that double team and get the ball out of JB’s hands.
And get the bench healthy.
ramtour420 wrote:There are much easier things that could be done to take this team to the next level. A) When Brunson gets doubled behind the 3 point line this should be an amazing insane opportunity to score easy points with the passing and the shooters that we have. Easy peezy. Instead? We are scrambling to help him, he is stressing, it results in turnovers more times than not and our morale sinks. OKC game is a good example of many in the last couple of mins. This should be easy to address. This is on Thibs.
B) When KAT has the ball I want to see cuts to the basket. Inexcusable. Makes a difference between ISO and team ball.
C) We need PnR. Again, like in years before, we get the pick part down. But noone ever rolls to the basket to take advantage of Brunson passing and to open the midrange for him too. He is pretty good from there
Part of the problem of having a short point guard. Even if he sees the open shooter, it's no guarantee that he can make the pass.
Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I am very well aware of what the statistics say about our offense. Anyone who says there is nothing wrong with it... How about this. When I was in college, one of my professors gave us a little hint on how to write tests. Any answer that had words like " always", " never" , is automatically wrong. Because there are always exceptions in real life. I have watched every game so far this season and yes, when Brunson gets doubled he swings the ball and sometimes it just so happens that the ball goes into the middle of the court where Josh picks it u and drives it into the hoop for an easy score. That happens about once in 20 times that Brunson is doubled. You know what I have not seen once? A freaking play designed with Brunson being doubled as a starting point. You know, Brunson has 2 defenders occupied by midcourt line. We are playing 4 on 3.Thats a wet dream scenario to run a play. We need to work on this.
At this point not being able to take advantage of Brunson being doubled by midcourt is the easiest problem to solve and also one that will pay the largest dividends. Imagine a Knick opponent being down 10 points in the third. Really need something to pick them up and swing momentum. How about we double Brunson hard? This usually results in 4-5 possessions of turnovers, crappy shots because the clock ran down etc. Now the opponent has "solved" the Knicks and they have a strategy to hang their hat on. We , on the other hand are demoralized, Brunson had the ball taken out of his hands and therefore rendered useless( his 3 hasn't fallen for like a month).
The flip side of the coin is : Brunson doubled, we run a play for an easy score 2-3 times. Now it's the opponent who is demoralized and we have all the momentum imaginable with our confidence sky high.
The problem with our offense?
1. Our defense. When we fail at defense it impacts our ability to score on fast breaks and get easy buckets. And it affects our offense because we now have our best offensive players burning energy on defense which affects their legs and shooting, especially Brunson and KAT.
2. We have a defensive coach. This is why he needs high IQ offensive players like JB to be a coach during the game.
Thibs gives the offense freedom to read and react, which is why players love his system. But I love candy and you eat too much your teeth will fall out.
Getting more bench help is a simple solution. The question that we all ignore is will Thibs open his rotation? Regardless who we add to the team, will Thibs play his starters less mins? Will Thibs go to a 10 man rotation? Will our starting 5 continue to lead the league in mins played?
Mark Jackson set the warriors up to win multiple chips. Him and his staff built that team. But could mark jackson do what Steve Kerr did? And win multiple chips? Probably not.
I don’t have a replacement in mind for Thibs which is why I’m not saying fire him. But I’m not ignoring the fact that you have development coaches and championship coaches. Which one is Thibs?
The one thing I like about Thibs and his staff? They self correct. So let’s see how we look on Monday. I’ll continue to hold the minutes police back as long as I can. But I can’t hold them for too long. Monday now turning into a must win.
blkexec wrote:The problem with our offense?1. Our defense. When we fail at defense it impacts our ability to score on fast breaks and get easy buckets. And it affects our offense because we now have our best offensive players burning energy on defense which affects their legs and shooting, especially Brunson and KAT.
2. We have a defensive coach. This is why he needs high IQ offensive players like JB to be a coach during the game.
Thibs gives the offense freedom to read and react, which is why players love his system. But I love candy and you eat too much your teeth will fall out.
Getting more bench help is a simple solution. The question that we all ignore is will Thibs open his rotation? Regardless who we add to the team, will Thibs play his starters less mins? Will Thibs go to a 10 man rotation? Will our starting 5 continue to lead the league in mins played?
Mark Jackson set the warriors up to win multiple chips. Him and his staff built that team. But could mark jackson do what Steve Kerr did? And win multiple chips? Probably not.
I don’t have a replacement in mind for Thibs which is why I’m not saying fire him. But I’m not ignoring the fact that you have development coaches and championship coaches. Which one is Thibs?
The one thing I like about Thibs and his staff? They self correct. So let’s see how we look on Monday. I’ll continue to hold the minutes police back as long as I can. But I can’t hold them for too long. Monday now turning into a must win.
We can all complain about Thibs not giving starters less minutes. All complain about his short rotations. But we all knew that’s what we were getting.
But can’t start the another coach talk when Thibs has the team playing top 5 in both offense and defense.
Last two games Knicks shot 27% from three.
Brunson had a stinker against the Thunder. Bridges disappeared in second half.
Three point defensive rotations were terrible against Bulls. Maybe due to back to back.
Our “on court” coach needs to get better navigating through double teams and not trying to do so much when playing elite teams. He thinks it’s 2024 playoffs.
Not saying Thibs can’t also get better (mentioned on other thread) but we need to see the bench get healthy and players start hitting more shots consistently before we start looking for other coaches.
They did this in the playoffs. When they doubled Brunson then they flashed Hart on the top of the key where he passes for a corner 3 a pass to the dunkers spot or takes a shot from the FT line.. they will get it. They had IHart and DDV to take those shots before. It will come. Not worried.
The thing is , the reason why teams try their hardest not to double team dudes is because it creates 4 vs 3 situations , which in turn should result in easy points. Doubling is a last resort. Not in our case tho. Double Brunson BY THE HALF COURT should not be a good idea, like ever. But it works so great against us. I wonder why ? Don't give me the " he is too short, his head is too big, or whatever else" we are simply not prepared to take advantage
ramtour420 wrote:The thing is , the reason why teams try their hardest not to double team dudes is because it creates 4 vs 3 situations , which in turn should result in easy points. Doubling is a last resort. Not in our case tho. Double Brunson BY THE HALF COURT should not be a good idea, like ever. But it works so great against us. I wonder why ? Don't give me the " he is too short, his head is too big, or whatever else" we are simply not prepared to take advantage
I can hear Clyde’s voice… “somebody’s open!”
double creates opportunities but its not like Brunson or anyone doubled can make the pass given there is two guys on him. So yes, its effective.
Brunson needs to execute a pass sooner but the defense knows its coming and thus one guy can protect two lanes?
Its not like we all that smart and knicks coaching is not.
Brunson being onto short side does limit the passed he can make.
If the defense executes well, its a problem. We can write the antidote into existence but its far from that simple.
Thibs is one of the most thorough coaches by reputation. WE really think we got this as fans, and he don't?
We need to get out 3 point shooting back on track. Its normal ebbs and flows of the season. We were very hot from 3 early and have now been dreadful for a couple of weeks. We faced a really good team and then a Bulls team that shot over 50 pct on volume and we lost a couple.
Other than that, our biggest issue continues to be teams blitzing Brunson at the half court line. To me the best way to play this is with 2 PGs or another good ballhandler/initiator. Brunson needs to make a hot read and dump it off quick - the 2nd guy needs to find the open man. Either that or we need to run. We cant use 8 seconds to bring it past the timeline and then another 8 to get it out of the trap. Too many possesions end up with OG dribbling when the shot clock is winding down and he is not the type of player to create or hit step backs or contested shots.
VDesai wrote:We need to get out 3 point shooting back on track. Its normal ebbs and flows of the season. We were very hot from 3 early and have now been dreadful for a couple of weeks. We faced a really good team and then a Bulls team that shot over 50 pct on volume and we lost a couple.Other than that, our biggest issue continues to be teams blitzing Brunson at the half court line. To me the best way to play this is with 2 PGs or another good ballhandler/initiator. Brunson needs to make a hot read and dump it off quick - the 2nd guy needs to find the open man. Either that or we need to run. We cant use 8 seconds to bring it past the timeline and then another 8 to get it out of the trap. Too many possesions end up with OG dribbling when the shot clock is winding down and he is not the type of player to create or hit step backs or contested shots.
This may be a weakness for the Knicks IDK. Josh is OK as is Mikal but really Mikal is not a ball handler per se and Josh more of a straight line transition guy, OG and KAT are not. This is something the Knicks miss.
VDesai wrote:We need to get out 3 point shooting back on track. Its normal ebbs and flows of the season. We were very hot from 3 early and have now been dreadful for a couple of weeks. We faced a really good team and then a Bulls team that shot over 50 pct on volume and we lost a couple.Other than that, our biggest issue continues to be teams blitzing Brunson at the half court line. To me the best way to play this is with 2 PGs or another good ballhandler/initiator. Brunson needs to make a hot read and dump it off quick - the 2nd guy needs to find the open man. Either that or we need to run. We cant use 8 seconds to bring it past the timeline and then another 8 to get it out of the trap. Too many possesions end up with OG dribbling when the shot clock is winding down and he is not the type of player to create or hit step backs or contested shots.
This should be Mikal. Why is he not being used that way?!
Bridges is not a PG or point forward.
Just have Josh bring the ball down and this helps with them doubling Brunson when he walks the ball to half court.
Mikal has been a turnover machine when he has been dribbling and passing. He has done well coming off curls, on cuts or in post ups where he hasn't had to put the ball on the floor and create.
Josh is the best secondary creator right now - his passing has been really solid and he's a decent ballhandler, but I don't know if you want him facing ball pressure. McBride is a potential solution here. There was also a period where McBride was out the first time and Shamet was on the shelf where Payne played minutes next to Brunson. I thought we looked really good in that lineup as it gave Jalen more catch and shoots and Payne is a more sure ballhandler who can increase the pace. I don't think we'll go back to that as we are too small defensively and I think Thibs seems less inclined to use Payne as the season goes on.
Deuce is gonna need to step up in this role for sure. Brunson is also smart as hell and he usually figures out a way to beat the defense as time goes on. But right now, big defenders + pressing/trapping full court or at the timeline is the way to defend him.
VDesai wrote:Mikal has been a turnover machine when he has been dribbling and passing. He has done well coming off curls, on cuts or in post ups where he hasn't had to put the ball on the floor and create.Josh is the best secondary creator right now - his passing has been really solid and he's a decent ballhandler, but I don't know if you want him facing ball pressure. McBride is a potential solution here. There was also a period where McBride was out the first time and Shamet was on the shelf where Payne played minutes next to Brunson. I thought we looked really good in that lineup as it gave Jalen more catch and shoots and Payne is a more sure ballhandler who can increase the pace. I don't think we'll go back to that as we are too small defensively and I think Thibs seems less inclined to use Payne as the season goes on.
Deuce is gonna need to step up in this role for sure. Brunson is also smart as hell and he usually figures out a way to beat the defense as time goes on. But right now, big defenders + pressing/trapping full court or at the timeline is the way to defend him.
I've always view Mikal with that perspective. He is not the guy you want the ball in his hands when extreme pressure is what the defense is bringing.
