Office Hours: All losses are not the same, dancing on the Heat’s grave & the Wolves whisperer
A look at some Knicks- and Knicks-adjacent happenings around the NBA
Bienvenidos, and welcome to another Office Hours with Professor Moi! Today we touch on a curious Knick trend, whether it’s safe to dance on the grave of an old enemy and a Midwest renaissance led by a former Knick.
Not all losses are created equally
It’s a testament to Cleveland’s regular-season dominance that if you take their record against winning teams this year and project it over 82 games, they’d still win 65 games. Oklahoma City? 63. Even the supposedly sleepwalking Celtics are on a 52-win pace against teams over .500. So what do we make of the Knicks being the equivalent of 36-46 against the league’s better half? I’m of two minds.
Is your first thought, “That proves while Thibs got ‘em to walk, he’s not the one to get them to fly”? Mine was. And I love much about Thibs. But just as I loved Julius Randle – easily my favorite post-Ewing Knicks Knick – I recognized that while he played a leading role in uplifting the franchise from punchline to puncher’s chance, he isn’t someone you ask to lead you a title. Karl-Anthony Towns gets them closer, and I’m not even sure he’s at that level. Not every great player is. Why would it be any different with coaches?
This isn’t a 2025 thing, either. Here are the Knicks’ records under Thibs against winning teams:
2020-21: 15-21
2021-22: 19-35
2022-23: 24-25
2023-24: 21-28
2024-25: 13-27
That’s 87-136, which pro-rated over 82 games is a 50-loss team. I recently advanced from semipro to pro on NBA2K26. On semipro I can beat anybody. On pro, I cannot lay a glove on the Houston Rockets; Alperen Şengün might as well be Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain combined. My first few games against them I kept trying what used to work, and having it fail, and growing more and more frustrated until I accepted that the problem was me, and I had to adapt. I still haven’t beaten them yet, but the games have gotten closer. Sometimes the problem is who you see in the mirror.
Sometimes the problem is thinking there is one when there’s not.
There are 30 teams in the NBA. Know how many having winning records against winning teams this year? Six. Cleveland, Boston, Indiana, OKC, Houston and the Lakers – that’s it. And besides the big boys mentioned earlier, none of those other teams are exactly cleaning up, all only two to five games over in those games. If 80% of the league loses against winning teams, how much does it matter that the Knicks do, too? They were two wins from the conference finals in 2023, falling short mainly because Randle was playing on a twice-effed ankle; they were a win away last year until the plague ripped through their locker room. Did their regular-season performance against winning teams factor in either year?
Make of this what you will. Maybe it’s impossible for a team built to go 82-0 to have enough in the tank to consistently topple the league’s best teams. Maybe Erik Spoelstra isn’t interested in another rebuild, and the Knicks reverse the Riley curse by bringing him to MSG. Maybe once Steph Curry calls it quits in Golden State Steve Kerr does, too, and the Knicks get their man years after they first wanted him. Maybe Rose stands by his man, the way Denver did with Mike Malone, and the champagne is all the sweeter the day they finally pop it.
All I know is the Knicks don’t beat winning teams, neither does most of the league, and I’ve no idea if that matters.
Is it safe to schadenfreude yet?
One of my favorite urban myths is of the teenage girl whose friends insist if you stand on someone’s grave at midnight, whoever is buried there will reach up and pull you down under. The girl scoffs at this, tells them that’s a crock. They give her a knife, tell her to go that very winter’s night and stick it in a grave, to prove she went and to prove she was right. That night she goes to the cemetery, kneels over a grave and plunges the knife into the earth. As she stands, to leave she finds she can’t. Something is grabbing her clothes. When her friends check the graveyard the next day they find her dead, the knife stuck in her skirt, pinning her to the ground. Did she die of exposure? Or fright? I thought of this story as I pondered the Miami Heat.
No franchise has tormented the Knicks longer than the Celtics. No team tortured them as painfully or intensely as the ‘90s Bulls. No team persists in buzzing across their history like a fly out to ruin the picnic than the Pacers. But if there is one team seemingly designed in a laboratory to inflict hurt on Knicks fans from generation to generation, it’s the Heat.
First they seduced Riley into an affair, luring him out of his Manhattan marriage and into their South Beach bed, replete with rose petals and an ownership stake. P.J. Brown’s assault of Charlie Ward killed Patrick Ewing’s last best chance at beating MJ and winning a championship. LeBron not only picked Miami over New York but established a mini-dynasty in doing so. He and Dwyane Wade made it their mission to end Linsanity, at least until James Dolan put on the finishing touches. They knocked the Knicks out of the playoffs two years ago. They knocked Julius Randle out for the season, the postseason and his days in a Knick uniform.
But that was then! Now it’s the Knicks kicking dirt in the Heat’s face, sweeping them in a season series for the first time since 1993. The Knicks are 14.5 games ahead of them; if that holds they’ll finish farther ahead of them than they have since 1995. You’ll note those are years when Riley was still coaching the Knicks, before he learned to love the guiltless guile of the fax machine. So the obvious question of our time: is it safe to dance on his grave?
Other than Davion Mitchell (team option) and Duncan Robinson and Pelle Larsson, whose contracts next year aren’t fully guaranteed, everyone you saw suit up for Miami last night is on the books next year, including $123 million between Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Andrew Wiggins and Terry Rozier. They’ll owe their first-round pick to Oklahoma City (as does every other team in creation) if they make the playoffs. Even amidst an eight-game losing streak, their longest ever under Spoelstra, there’s no guarantee that the Heat will successfully drop into the lottery. They’re 10th right now, too far up on Brooklyn or Toronto to drop out of the Play-In. If the season ended today, the Heat would face the Bulls in the 9/10 game. St. John’s might have a shot at beating Chicago; Miami definitely would.
Then let’s say they get Atlanta in the game to decide the 8-seed. We’ve seen the Hawks the past few years. They are entirely capable of reaching the playoffs and giving the Cavs a fright in the first round or completely crapping the bed and missing the postseason completely. There’s a definite chance Miami could finish this season pissing away their first-round pick before being obliterated by Cleveland in the first round.
So if you’re feeling brave, grab a knife and make for the graveyard. I’m feeling pretty optimistic, but I’ve seen too much to risk Schenectady Pat dragging me down to hell with him.
The Wolves got that dog in them
You’ve probably heard of Cesar Millan, the so-called Dog Whisperer. Did you know there’s a wolf whisperer? And that he’s a former Knick?
Before last night’s overtime loss to Indiana, the Minnesota Timberwolves had won their last 13 games that Julius Randle played in. It’s been a Six Flags season for Minnesota, topsy-turvy both at the ownership level (where Tweedledee and Tweedledum appear to have emerged victorious from their battle with Ebenezer Scrooge) and on the court. The Wolves entered March with only one winning and losing streak longer than three games all year before ripping off an eight-game winning streak that coincided with the return of Randle from the injured list. Oddest of all: while the Wolves have been all over the place, a look at Randle’s splits shows a steady consistency at home or away, before and after the All-Star break, and in wins and losses.
Still, the only number the Wolves really care about is their seeding, where they’re fighting with the Warriors and Clippers to avoid the Play-In. Last night’s loss — care of a game-winning Obi Toppin three (!) — kept them from leapfrogging the Dubs for sixth, the final guaranteed playoff spot. There’s so little space between four teams battling for the 2- through 5-seeds out West that should the Wolves finish sixth, they could face the Nuggets, the Lakers, the Rockets or the Grizzlies in the first round, then another of those teams in the second. If you’re curious, Minnesota is 3-0 against Denver, 2-2 against L.A. and Houston and 0-2 vs. Memphis.
Who do you think has a better shot at the conference finals: Randle’s old team? Or his new one? Could they both make it? Could they both reach the Finals?! Don’t even think it. I’m not sure my heart could survive.
