Nice pass by Kolek

No clue maker’s mark was doing this for the Knicks!! She’s staying sealed till the next championship!

Honestly, I think Knicks fans and the media need to stop treating last season's championship like it guarantees this team a free pass. Winning it all was incredible, and nobody should forget what this group accomplished, but that doesn't mean we should ignore poor performances just because they're the defending champions.

What I respect about Brunson calling for harsher criticism is that it shows he understands the expectations that come with winning in New York. This isn't a team that's supposed to be satisfied with what it accomplished last season. The goal is to keep winning, and that means being honest when things aren't working.

At the same time, there's a difference between holding players accountable and panicking over every loss. Criticism should be about actual basketball problems, not turning every bad quarter into a reason to tear the entire roster apart.

The championship should raise the standard, not lower it.

I want the Knicks to be confident enough to know what they're capable of, but hungry enough to understand that nobody owes them another title. Last season is proof they can do it. Now they have to prove they can maintain that level.

Why is Andre Drummond, the star of the first game of the season, all of a sudden being benched as the KAT backup? - @NBAStatCorrect

I don’t know, specifically, why Drummond was benched against Orlando on Sunday. But Mike Brown hinted at the reasons behind his decision before the game when he was asked why James Wiseman was playing in place of Drummond against Boston.

"We have our starting five. Other than that, anybody can play," Brown said before tipoff against Orlando. "When you’re a backup in this league, that doesn’t mean you’re always gonna be the seventh man or you’re always gonna be the eighth man. No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s competitive. And it’s less so with the starting group if your starting group is established, which ours is, but everybody else after that starting five, I can throw in front of the next guy in a heartbeat."

Brown then referenced the Knicks' standards, which are spelled out in a document signed by all staffers.

"We will make sure that everybody embraces (those standards), not just accepts (them)," Brown said.

Clearly, Drummond violated one of those standards at some point between the first half of the Sixers game (when he was great) and late in the first half against the Celtics.

Drummond presumably violated one of New York’s agreed-upon standards in the first half on Sunday when Brown pulled him in favor of Wiseman. The substitution happened after Drummond was beat down the floor in transition by Wendell Carter Jr.

After the game, Brown explained that he plans to use Drummond in "spurts" as opposed to long stretches.

"He played well for us in (the game against the Sixers) and I kept him out there, and it was the wrong thing to do. So for me, I'm going to play him in bursts, whether it's three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, but he'll be in bursts," Brown said. “I felt our transition wasn't good during that time (when Drummond was subbed out for Wiseman against Orlando), not just because of him, but I wanted to go with a change. Wiseman's been playing well in practice. I wanted to give him an opportunity and I thought his first stint, he was pretty good. And so I decided to go with him a second stint (in the second half against the Magic). But Andre will go out there as a backup (Tuesday night against Detroit). But again…our starting five is what it is, but everybody else after that, you know, until we can find something where we're consistent, I'm gonna try to give guys opportunities."

Brown’s approach with Drummond is noteworthy for many reasons. One is that Drummond was brought in to replace Mitchell Robinson, who signed with the Celtics over the summer while the Knicks voluntarily capped themselves at the second apron in team salary.

Drummond is a veteran and I’d expect him to bounce back and remain in Brown’s rotation. If I’m wrong and Brown continues to take Drummond in and out of his rotation, the Knicks’ decision to let Robinson go will come under more scrutiny. Maybe even without second apron constraints, the Knicks wouldn’t have offered Robinson the deal he ended up signing with the Celtics (three years, $47 million with a player option in Year 3). But they still needed to adequately replace him once he left. That’s why Drummond’s performance – and role – will be noteworthy during this early portion of the season.

It must be my birthday! Oh wait, it is! 🥹😆🫶🥲 GO KNICKS!!!!! All I wanted for my birthday was a Knicks win, great day!

Friend backed out last minute. Have a free seat for tonight. If you want to buy me a pretzel that would be nice. Just dm me your email if you want to go. First come, first serve

Edit: And it's gone. Lasted about 30 seconds.

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

Championship hoodie came in! Definitely more minimalist style but I really like it!

Ok, don’t come at me with pitchforks but I’m gonna wear this to watch tonight’s game from my couch. I think some reverse juju may make us go 6-0 in our next 6 games. I mean we gotta try something to win a game and I can’t see it making things any worse. Plus it’s pumpkin season and I truly like this color-way. Fight me.

Loved this clip from Brown during the Finals and hope it helps people relax a little.

Went off but tl;dr the regular season is for figuring stuff out! Our starters may be asleep, but it’s because they know October games have NO BEARING and they’re not the ones figuring shit out.

—

When is this last time any of us cared this much about the first three games of any season? Other than the home opener and purely because I went to that game, I can barely even tell you who the Knicks played the first few games last year.

Every team in the league wants to show off against us now and we’re using the early season as it should be: to figure things out, temp check our new guys, and shake the dust off.

It’s annoying to watch Bridges make stupid choices or go cold offensively, Hart always end up with the ball as the shot clock is expiring and take a dumb shot when he’s the last one that should be shooting, OG go from being the crown jewel of NY to missing threes, KAT getting in foul trouble, Brunson trying to play hero ball and absolutely failing. Sound familiar? We’ve been here before!

It’s clear we have a lot of newcomers who haven’t endured the ups and downs of this particular squad, let alone the historical anguish of being a Knicks fan. Without bashing each other, let’s educate them on the joys (/s) of regular season basketball.

Oh, you wanna trade Bridges? We’re saying “fuck them picks“ for a reason. Bridges has been on and off my shit list plenty of times, up to and including the Hawks series. Maybe the guy has an humiliation kink, who knows. What I do know is that when it time to lock in, he did (just a bit late). You know Maxey, the actual best player on the team we‘re overreacting to losing to on opening night because they added a geriatric with a helicopter and a bad vibes All Star in the social experiment of the year? Bridges guarded him flawlessly when we SWEPT that team when it mattered. He gets less frustrating, don’t blow your load in October.

Hart sometimes infuriated me most. Journeyman made good because of his college bestie and allowed to be a starter when no other team would put him there. Then what happened? The Cavs treated him as such in Game 2 and in a game that I started by screaming, ”Not you! Don’t take that!” He was our LEADING SCORER and we had an 18-0 second half run. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and think that’ll happen again, but I do at least know he’ll frustrate me less. And remember what happened? We swept them too!

Brunson was truly a shell of himself in the Finals, until you know, he willed us to victory and became the king of New York. Nobody seems to remember that OG and KAT were tossing Finals MVP talks back and forth like a hot potato. But when Captain needed to Captain, he did.

We somehow worked around a godawful whistle, endless KAT foul trouble, and survived a regular season that had some high highs and some painfully low lows. Once I saw that Brown clip, I understood. He has to know what his team‘s weaknesses are, so he can fix them. None of them are going out intending to lose, and our starters are truly only gonna occasionally give it more than 50-75% til after All Star break if we’re lucky, but as some of us have experienced, they’ve often entered the playoffs having recently played like dog shit.

They. Know. It. Isn’t. Serious. Our starters are sitting pretty and this is way more about figuring our bench. Drummond is no Mitch, we knew that. We all wanted to be excited after that opening night first half. But just last year I saw him in person and my friend and I said to each other, “He’s slow as hell. He looks like an old man out there, how old is he?” Not old enough for all that. Any long term basketball fans haven’t even given him a thought since what, Detroit? He’s since added a three, but Knicks fans will eat him alive if he ever tries to shoot through a slump.

But you know who is trying to figure it out just as much as Mike Brown? Leon Rose. We took the best that we could at the time, but y’all, do you really think there won’t be moves before the deadline? Let them figure out what the smartest moves are with this intel. IT’S OCTOBER.

Green looks fugly!!!!

As someone who has been a knicks fan for the past 20 years and really only follows this team in all of sports I used to let knicks losing and winning regular games change my mood. Winning last year championship has made not give a damn about regular season games lol. We got a good team they’ll figure it out eventually. Everyone needs to calm down. These aren’t the Phil Jackson days. In Leon we trust