Unbelievable!! a Star Knicks player just announce resignation from the team today’.See Why;
Now that their important work is done for the next couple of months, perhaps the gang at FiveThirtyEight might want to compile a new set of polls in an attempt to determine Tom Thibodeau’s approval rating among Knicks fans.
Actually, I can save them the bother.
Compared to Thibodeau, every politician you can name — red, blue, purple, any hue you choose — is more popular than free ice cream. This isn’t to say Thibodeau is on the griddle just yet, because fans — especially Knicks fans — have learned across the years that they do not get a vote in this. The Knicks’ gerrymandering involves a constituency of one, and James Dolan has yet to indicate that he has Thibodeau in his cross-hairs.
That’s today, anyway.
Tomorrow could be a different story. Or a week from Friday. Or by the time this seven-game crawl through a fiery, furious gauntlet ends. The Knicks begin a five-game Western swing in Salt Lake City on Tuesday night, and at this moment the Knicks and the Jazz have exactly one thing in common: neither employs Donovan Mitchell.
The Jazz have won 10 of their first 15 games and have discovered life after Mitchell (and Rudy Gobert, and Quin Snyder) to be every bit as prosperous as it was with them. The Knicks’ only opulence is in their spirit of generosity: any team that plays them is welcome to hoist as many unguarded 3-pointers (and a fair amount of wide-open 2s, too) as they want, free of charge.
It is untrue that the last Knick to successfully contest a shot was Dave DeBusschere getting in Gus Johnson’s way.
It just feels that way.
“We have to take a hard look at it and evaluate everything to find out what’s our best chance at being successful,” Thibodeau said, verbally grasping for straws after the Thunder thrashing Sunday. “We’re capable of doing better and have shown times where we’ve guarded extremely well. What I’m concerned with is the up and down of the last four games.”
That is the nicest way possible to say what Thibodeau would surely say if he sprinkled a little truth serum into his Wheaties: “We play defense like we don’t give a [darn/damn/pick your escalating expletive of choice].”
Because that’s sure what it looks like.
Nobody is expecting the Knicks to wake up and magically transform into the 2004 Pistons — or even the ’94 Knicks, for that matter — and suddenly become fearsome defenders.
Which, for the record, allow you to guard people if you want.
And “want” is the key word here: the Knicks and their coach can insist that they really are giving effort but the eyes tell a different story and, more tellingly, the results do, too. Right now, you can predict the outcome of a Knicks game using two easy steps:
1. Is the opponent splashing the open 3s? Then the Knicks have no chance.
2. Are they missing them? Now we can talk.
It’s not supposed to be that way. It’s just not.
