The Knicks came into Chicago on the second game of a back-to-back and played sluggish on their way to a 110-102 loss to the Bulls, but the rotations from head coach Tom Thibodeau are also becoming more concerning by the day. Could a few adjustments have helped the Knicks sneak a win?

“KYP - Know your personnel” — Bulls announcer Stacey King 

That quote is the topic of the day for many a Knick fan questioning Coach Thibodeau’s odd minutes distributions (expected, to some degree) and weird recent substitution patterns (very uncharacteristic).

That quote was also uttered by Bulls announcer Stacey King, once Immanuel Quickley came in and scored his first basket, in reference to how much Thibs has trusted him of late. Despite yet another jolt from our erstwhile and hopefully temporary backup point-guard, who executed arguably his most impressive display of facilitation of the year today, the Knicks fell to the Chicago Bulls, 110 to 102. 

Let’s get this out of the way early: there was plenty of blame to go around on for this one. The Knicks were playing on the back end of a back-to-back, after a hard fought loss versus the contending LA Clippers, and it showed in the first half. With a few exceptions, most of the Knicks had neither their feet nor their wits about them.

The Bulls were eager passers early on, assisting on the first 11 baskets, moving and grooving with energy off-ball and making the Knicks defenders track multiple actions on every play. The chief offender among sluggish Knicks was Elfrid Payton, per usual, but he was not alone in culpability here. Lauri Markkanen took full advantage, pouring in 20 first half points, almost all of which were created by off-ball movements or poorly-defended pick-and-pops.

The hype train appears to have left Lauri behind, likely in no small part due to the poor play of the Bulls, but he’s putting up a quiet 20 points per game on 66 TS% (50/40/85 splits) this year. The Knicks — plural, but most often Julius Randle — lost him time and time again, and he made them pay. Fortunately for New York, despite being fairly agile, Markkanen had no shot guarding Julius Randle, who put up a quiet 18 in the first half to almost match the Finnish sniper. 

The Knicks also let the Bulls shoot 80% at the rim in the first half, almost entirely due to an absolute parade of backcuts dunks and transition dunks. Thibs was visibly irate. They ended up 25/38 at the rim for a tidy 65%, likely the highest number anyone has shot all season versus the Knicks. 

We’ll get to Thibs rotation decisions later, because I don’t want to bury the lede here. Payton played 17 minutes and didn’t have the worst +/- on the team, but was jarringly terrible even by his standards. He got started immediately, accomplishing the stunningly difficult task of neutralizing an elite roll-man despite only having two (poor!) defenders guard your pick-and-roll.

I have several different strings of nigh incomprehensible notes from the first and third quarters chronicling a stretch of dying on picks, turning the ball over carelessly, completely giving up on help defense, getting back cut, and more. In case children are reading, I will not clip all of them.

Thibs ended up benching him for the entire second quarter to let IQ cook, and Elf responded by beginning the third quarter with a temper tantrum of lazy defense and uninspired offense, culminating in a step-back midrange brick early in the clock shortly after abandoning his assignment on defense and abandoning Mitch to defend two Bulls, ending with Gafford getting an uncontested dunk. His minutes may be ticking down, and IQ may be inspiring trust around the league, but we can’t sunset his time in orange and blue fast enough at this point. It’s malpractice right now.

OK, now that’s out of the way so where was I — ah, yes, blame to go around.

RJ Barrett had a quiet (but not bad, per se) first half (four points), taking some time to get up to speed after spending the prior afternoon dealing with the brutality of Kawhi.

The Knicks’ “shooting guards” continued to do anything but shoot:

New York ended up 6-29 from three on the game, which will lose you most games in this league.  

Julius, and IQ (!) hand delivered MANY corner threes to our guards and wings, who were unable to convert. We’re used to seeing Julius set up those shots, but the frequency of the drive-and-kick counter from IQ was a pleasant surprise, and hopefully a harbinger of point-guarding to come. 

Other first half observations:

1. The Bulls’ broadcast volume mixing was all fucked up. You couldn’t hear anything but the announcers, so it sounded like I was watching the Masters (I think that’s an important golf tournament?).

2. Otto Porter really looks like every uncle who used to play D-1 or semi-pro sports and is a little out of shape for the first time in his life, but fully intends on still giving his nephews work at the cookout.

3. The Bulls employ an alarming number of vets who I have long admired from afar: Otto Porter Jr., Thaddeus Young, Denzel Valentine.

4. In the Strickland Slack channel, Stingy described Austin Rivers’ increasingly useless crossover as “the Leandro Barbosa,” and i am disappointed in myself for not seeing the similarities. To be clear, Leandro used it to full effect, whereas Austin never does anything with it unless he has all seven Dragon Balls, all seven Chaos Emeralds, the power of the Avatar, and is playing the Utah Jazz.

5. Lauri and LaVine are both putting up 50/40 lines, along with what feels like a lot of other guys in the league. The level of shooting around the league right now is so extraordinary that sometimes we have to recalibrate, so here’s three examples: Kristaps Porzingis is not an elite shooting big, Austin Rivers and Reggie Bullock are not plus floor spacers at the shooting guard, and Kevin Knox is a below average shooter for a bench player of any position.

During the second half, some things were the same:

Some were different, though:

We’ve known RJB has hops exclusive for transition, so it’s a pity the Knicks haven’t created chances for him to use ’em. Our Canadian Captain had a quiet offensive game, his first game with more field goals attempted than points in what seems like at least two weeks. Despite that, his defense was predictably great all game.

I alluded to it before, but this clutch sequence was only one of many IQ corner passes that were exceptional. Seven dimes to one turnover, solid decision making on the ball for the kid. He learns fast.

The defense also tightened up for stretches in the late third, powered by Julius and RJB and moments of action by Nerlens. I will say, Mitch only played 20 minutes and I think Nerlens’ great ability to generate blocks and steals sometimes overshadows very unspectacular ways he just can’t touch Mitch on defense. Even when Nerlens is fine, he doesn’t have the deterrent effect Mitch does. PBPstats.com backs that up — opponents shoot more frequently at the rim with Nerlens on the court than off by a few percentage points, and the reverse is true with Mitch. The perfect example of this is Nerlens’ impressive block of Markkanen’s ambitious dunk attempt.

It was a great play, but I don’t think Lauri has the stones to try that vs. Mitch, who has a few inches and 40 lbs on Nerlens. I went through all of the Bulls’ FGA at the rim for shits, and not many involve Mitch at the rim. This isn’t to say the defense didn’t tighten up when Nerlens came in, because it did (five blocks matter!), but more to point out that when he plays well, he still is giving up some significant things. Daniel Gafford was a menace late in the game muscling the Knicks, and Mitch was nowhere to be found. 

Anyhow, our boys tried and tried to grab the elusive lead until they had a few possessions in the fourth up one, but couldn’t hit that knockdown three they needed to extend the lead further. RJB had two open threes that fell short. On the other end, the Knicks got burned switching their coverage with Nerlens to blitzing rather than dropping thanks to continued impressive passing by the wily Thaddeus Young (8 AST, 1 TO), who was deployed at the 5 for almost all of his minutes.

Nerlens swung too far to the other end of the spectrum in the end, dropping too far back on the game-sealing 3-pointer from Zach LaVine, who rose up and gave the Bulls a six point lead with under a minute left. 

It takes a special center with special agility to balance contesting jumpers and anchoring the paint, and Thibs left that special center on the bench for the duration of the fourth quarter.

He also continued to play Rivers at the 2, despite Austin not doing much of anything (0-4, many crossovers leading to resets). Similarly, Bullock ended up 1-7. Both of them provide constant effort on defense, but like I said before, the bar in the NBA is too high to really leave shooting off the table the way Thibs does by playing Elf and these two so much (Austin in particular).

Two days ago, Thibs said that Frank Ntilikina is “getting there,” and, “when you go through those things it takes some time. But he’s moving well in practice.” I have no ides what to make of that. I know Thibs doesn’t expand rotations beyond 10 players in any given game and only changes the makeup of those 10 players between games, and I have no idea if Frank is available, but not really, or what.

The Knicks sure could use a big guard point of attack defender who can knockdown threes respectfully right now to take minutes from Elf, Reggie, and Austin.

The Knicks sure could use IQ with the starters to provide much-needed spacing and scoring for Julius and RJ. By the same token, the bench unit could use some penetration, so why not let Elf try his fuckery with them?

On top of all that, Obi — who played a nondescript 10 minutes — can and should get some meaningful tick where he gets to be a small-ball 5 (or at least play with Julius). It’s not going to win you a championship, but Thad Young and the Bulls showed exactly how Thibs should use Obi:

(Please follow Coach Jones if you don’t.)

Thad is stronger and more experienced than Obi, but both are about the same height with similar levels of skill when it comes to putting it on the floor, and passing or finishing using a mix of strength and finesse.

That, of course, is made easier by playing shooters, but surely there’s some explorable grey area between what the Bulls do with Thad and the Knicks do (i.e. nothing, with no plan) with Obi that Thibs and the Front Office Who Picked This Kid can explore.

So, does Thibs know his personnel? The Knicks are clearly beating expectations and almost certainly play like more than the sum of their parts, and Thibs has already blessed us with development of our three most important players, but there’s still quite a few low-hanging fruits left for our hoarse-voiced coach to pick. It’s easier to ignore those decisions when you are winning in spite of them, but as the threes allowed pile up and the Elf stinkers become harder to ignore, the cries for adaptation and evolution will only get louder.