Suns 116, Knicks 95: What a nightmare
The Knicks ducked back below .500 after a terribly bad defensive second half, highlighted by their head coach and their star power forward’s impacts.
What a nightmare. The Knicks lost their second straight game Sunday afternoon to the Phoenix Suns in what turned out to be a laugher. The Knicks hung around for two-and-a-half quarters before deciding to just not play defense anymore, and lost.
The game
I won’t bury the lede, this game was not all that interesting. The Knicks played a team that has better players who are put in better spots to succeed on their home court, and lost. What a shocker. In fact, if you want to spin it positive, you could talk yourself into the idea that the Knicks were right there in the game midway through the third quarter. And they did so despite shooting far worse! Once those shots begin to fall…
But they didn’t fall. They never seem to this season. And just under 15 minutes after Quentin Grimes hit a shot to tie the game at 60, the Knicks found themselves facing their largest deficit of the game, trailing 105 to 79. Jalen Brunson, fresh off a forgettable performance in Golden State that saw him make just two of his 13 field goal attempts (FGAs), was terrific from the opening tip. He slithered into the paint relentlessly, determined to make up for his poor showing Friday night. Unfortunately, aside from one player (more on him in a bit), Brunson did not receive much help. RJ Barrett and Julius Randle combined to make just seven of their 22 FGAs. And offense was probably the side of the court they were least bad on.
The bench didn’t do much better. Third-year pals Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin combined to go a ghastly 1-10 from the field. Mitchell Robinson, fresh back from injury, spent the game trying to find his sea legs. Really the only player to show up was Derrick Rose, who, fittingly, tweaked his foot in the second quarter and sat out the rest of the game.
If you’re playing a better team on the road and only one player on the entire team shows up, you’re going to have a bad time. The Knicks found that out the hard way.
Quentin Grimes
Which brings us to the bright spot! Quentin Grimes looked excellent in his first real game of the season. Sure, he’s seen spot minutes, but, for all intents and purposes, this was his debut. And boy did he not disappoint. Grimes’ game can be broken into two categories; what you expected, and what you did not expect.
What you expected was for him to be a willing shooter while working his ass off defensively. Grimes was aggressive looking for his own shot. The peak he hits on his jump shot makes him damn near uncontestable. That alone makes him a positive offensive asset to have. And defensively, he was immediately a force. He scrambled around screens, often negating the mere existence of their presence. Grimes was assigned the tough task of guarding Devin Booker and the biggest compliment I can give to Grimes is that there was a noticeable pep in Booker’s step any time he matched up with a defender that wasn’t Grimes. Aside from one back cut, Grimes blanketed him any chance he got.
But it was the stuff you didn’t expect that made this game the most promising. Grimes had two feet in the paint more yesterday than he had in his entire career prior. He attacked close-outs and looked to get into the teeth of the defense, something he is not known for. He had a career-high eight assists, and I’d wager half of them came on baskets that were made inside the restricted area. And when Grimes became a threat as a passer, suddenly lanes to the basket opened up for him. Which explains his relatively abnormal shooting line; he was 4-10 from the field, but only 1-5 from three, which means he was 3-5 from inside the arc. Grimes getting to the basket as much as he shot from beyond the arc was perhaps the most promising aspect of the entire game.
Which is why, as the Knicks walked off the court and the scoreboard read Suns 116, Knicks 95, I wouldn’t blame any Knicks fan for having positive thoughts. We’ll never know the true nature of Leon Rose’s trade negotiations with Danny Ainge over Donovan Mitchell. But if the rumor that the Knicks valued Quentin Grimes over any other asset is true, this game was a heck of a start in rewarding them for their faith.
Julius Randle
“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.”
Is Julius Randle Keyser Soze? Or are we Knicks fans just so desperate to believe in something that we will continuously open ourselves up to getting our hearts broken? Why were we so sure he had changed after just one game?
This game was a calamity. Every positive step forward Randle has taken from a process standpoint was tossed straight in the dumpster. If you showed even the most dedicated of film-watchers this game footage, it would be indistinguishable from his worst moments of last season, consisting of familiar frustrations such as mid-range jump shots early in the shot clock, horrid turnovers, and astonishingly little effort. While there were plenty of moments you could point to (most of which included Torrey Craig), the last aspect was never more clear than in the third quarter when he stood in the paint and refused to rotate onto a wide-open 3-point shooter. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning. Because, as the shot went up, he couldn’t be bothered to box out, nor could he, after the rebound was taken from him, be bothered to contest the second-chance shot.
We’ve reached the point of no return with Randle. This is simply who he is. He will have good games and he will have bad ones. And sure, as someone who is always aware that with every event, there is a range of outcomes, maybe one day I’ll look silly writing this. In fact, I hope I do, because it will likely mean the Knicks are thriving. But until that day comes, Julius Randle can no longer convince me that this side of him does not exist. It’s too familiar. This performance coming just four games after the famous players-only meeting is horrifying. Which makes it paramount to me that the team find a new home for him. I have no delusions of grandeur about this iteration of this team. But cutting ties with Randle increases the possibility of a true meritocracy with consistent standards and principles. Until the Knicks move on, they will be stuck in purgatory convinced the devil inside Randle does not exist.
The slumping kids and their creator
There is no way around it. This team stinks offensively right now. Like with most polarizing issues, there are two potential parties at fault here, and I want to make one thing very clear; this is one of those examples where any person who is sure one side is entirely to blame, is an asshole.
Let’s start with the players. How can the players not take some of the blame? Barrett, Quickley, and Toppin are 10-50 from the field their past two games. Barrett alone has made one 3-pointer in his last 25 attempts. Quickley has struggled from the floor all season long. These are professional basketball players. We can talk about mental intangibles or schematic shortcomings all we want, at the end of the day, these guys have to be better.
Barrett looks completely lost. It’s like he’s determined to shoot himself out of this cold streak, team results be damned. Late in the Jets/Patriots showdown earlier on Sunday, Jets quarterback Zach Wilson blew a 3rd-and-1 by missing a wide open Elijah Moore crossing over the middle. Barrett has made Knick fans long for him to have Wilson’s vision. Where early in the season Barrett showed real progress as a passer (both his willingness AND ability to pass), he has seemingly forgotten that part of the game. He is simply not good enough at the basket to miss the kinds of passes he’s been missing as of late.
As for Quickley and Toppin, the two who have been linked since the day they were drafted by the same team in the same round of the same draft, they find themselves in similarly precarious spots. The easy excuse to make is the lack of potential upward mobility that exists for either player. Almost every player enters the NBA near the bottom of a treacherous ladder, but the hope is that as they rise higher and higher their place becomes more and more secure. But Quickley and (especially) Toppin are being told that, regardless of what they do, they will always restart at the bottom. Neither minutes nor role are theirs for the taking.
Toppin, who was drafted eighth overall, has been “the other power forward” his entire Knicks career. He has spent most of his time in New York looking over his shoulder, waiting to be pulled after any turnover, bad shot, or missed close-out. Meanwhile, the guy he backs up is given endless rope to make whatever mistakes he wants. As it always has been, with Thibodeau there are two groups; the haves and the have-nots. The haves get eternity to prove they don’t belong while the have-nots need to scrap and claw to prove they deserve more than 15 minutes on the court.
Take Quickley, who was probably the team’s most valuable player in the 2021-2022 season. He sat and watched the team prioritize Kemba Walker, Evan Fournier, and, eventually, Alec Burks over him despite the writing of the season being printed in bold on the wall. Never one to quit, Quickley put his head down and accepted his role, making leaps almost across the board. His reward? Three different players have started at shooting guard between Brunson and Barrett in 17 games, none with the last name Quickley. At a certain point, this will impact even the most mentally tough of human beings.
Which brings us to the head coach. Thibodeau’s refusal to see his players as anything other than cogs in his meticulously-crafted machine will eventually be his undoing. We haven’t even gotten to his offensive schemes, which have aged worse than the New York Times proclaiming in 1903 that man wouldn’t fly for over one million years. Read and react is defensible when you have multiple elite advantage creators. The Knicks don’t have that. To begrudge “well this would work better if the players were better” is nonsensical. How many non-elite advantage creators do we have to watch dissect the Knicks’ defense until we realize that there is a spectrum in which coaches can impact the game? And that Thibodeau falls at the very bottom? Do we really think Cam Payne was “reading and reacting”? Or do the Suns deploy crazy, futuristic concepts like off-ball movement and multiple actions in the same set? Is it not blatantly obvious that a better coach would have these guys’ shooting percentages out of the gutter?
It’s never been more clear to this writer that it’s time for Thibodeau to go. There is no further purpose for him with this franchise. Every one of his deficiencies is something you should never want in the head coach of a team with a roster like the Knicks’ roster. His rigidity and lack of rotational creativity suppresses the team’s diversity. His basic schemes make elevating non-elite talent unlikely. And his refusal to be consistent with accountability has created an aura of uncertainty around the team. What Thibodeau represents is the franchise’s inability to look itself in the mirror. The first step to solving a problem is identifying it. This problem is simple; this team is not winning anything meaningful this season. The solution? Not so simple. But it seems apparent that the team needs a new voice and, more importantly, someone whose strengths align with the direction this franchise seems destined to take.
Time to look in the mirror, folks. The clock is ticking.
