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00:12what's good everybody welcome back to another edition of new york got game we're now in the
00:16first week in november the knicks they've already played one nba cup game for those that care
00:20and the bachers they got the win against brooklyn on monday night but are they closer to finding
00:25their game seven games into your title defense the knicks are three and four so which early
00:30struggles deserve patience and which require an adjustment joining me this week is new york post
00:35knicks beat writer stephan bondi as we will discuss the biggest questions facing this team from
00:39mikhail bridges struggles to mike brown's rotation decisions plus later we're going to take a look
00:43into my clipboard take a closer look at what's happening with the knicks offense but first
00:47let's chat with my guy steph you see him right there steph what's going on man how you doing
00:51what's up man yeah i'm doing well how's your um beginning of the season going it's going good
00:57man it's going good i feel like i'm in better form than the knicks are right now you know knicks
01:01are
01:01three and four you i of course i know in terms of writing you're still in championship form because
01:06we'd expect nothing less here i i assume you're doing that level of quality championship quality
01:10writing for us i appreciate that but uh you know i i'm knocking a little rust off myself okay you
01:16know
01:16what we all had a long summer we're all still a little tired short summer it was a short summer
01:22sorry i don't know why i said that because it wasn't long it was a short summer you were right
01:26about that it was a very short summer so we are still tired and you know we're we're pushing through
01:31all right steph the knicks they are four and excuse me three and four not four and three three and
01:36four after beating brooklyn what did that win if anything did it change your assessment of this team
01:40and and what did it leave unanswered coming out of that game no it kind of reiterated what we've
01:46been seeing early on in the season which you know is they're not shooting very well their offense
01:51um is inefficient um mikhail bridges has been struggling but they've been able to get um some
02:00some productive play from landry shamit from jordan clarkson from miles mcbride at times so they've
02:06been able to make up for that uh but i think the defense is ahead of the offense um and
02:13you know i think
02:14you know they got to find a rhythm you know there's a couple factors and they talked about it and
02:18it's
02:19true they they still are playing their way into shape um you know josh hart said we're all feeling
02:24it and it was a short summer like you just said it was a celebratory summer um and they're still
02:30getting back into it so you know the nets are not a good team and the knicks took a while
02:35to get going
02:36and there were times and during that game we're like oh man if they lose this game you know we're
02:41gonna have to start throwing up some flags but they pulled through when it mattered in the fourth
02:45quarter um you know jordan clarkson was a big part of that um ojan and obi was a big part
02:51of that josh
02:52hart was a big part of that and they pulled it off against a bad team so you just mentioned
02:55that
02:56stuff about josh hart acknowledging fatigue after the very short offseason from what you're seeing
03:02what your eyes are telling you and then just hearing from the guys talking in the locker room
03:06how much does that explain to start and where does it stop being a reasonable explanation
03:10and maybe some people might look at it an excuse yeah i you know it's up to you whether you
03:16want
03:16to look at it as a reasonable explanation or as an excuse but it's reality right now and even you
03:22know
03:22yesterday mike brown said it he's got to divvy up his minutes better he was running with he said he
03:28was running with the stars for too long and that played a factor in them being fatigued we saw
03:34mo diawara get his first basically rotational run of the season yesterday we saw him go with
03:40jose alvarado and tyler kolik um you know one thing that remains an issue is backup center um you
03:49know andre drummond's had his ups and downs but you know uh mike brown lost faith in james wiseman
03:56almost immediately and he has not played since so that's still hanging over everything jalen brunson
04:02not finding his shot is still hanging over everything i mean there are a lot of issues right now
04:06yeah can't just point it at one person but you know fans like to do that sometimes and
04:10one of the players that's going to get a lot of the ire here is mikhail bridges he did play
04:1416
04:15minutes against brooklyn this was coming after he had 13 in chicago just a couple of games ago
04:20what are you seeing at the root of his struggles and how does mike brown what you just talked about
04:24balance rewarding the guys playing well with helping bridges find his rhythm early on in the season
04:31yeah it's i i can't get in his head but it feels like it's mental um because those shots are
04:36just
04:36falling short it's not like he's getting bad looks he's getting open looks and they're just not falling
04:41um and the defense has not been there either so you know mike brown has a very very short leash
04:49with mikhail bridges those that 13 minutes that he played in chicago was the shortest amount of time
04:55that he played as a nick other than those two times when he just subbed himself out right away
05:00to maintain his consecutive game streak so mike brown has shown we know he loves landry shammett
05:05we've talked about a lot here he's showing he will run with landry shammett and i do wonder now i
05:10don't
05:10think this is going to happen anytime soon but i do wonder if this continues at what point does he
05:14say
05:14all right you know we're getting into these holes we got to switch up the starting lineup well you know
05:20it's funny that was so much of a conversation last year and then obviously into the playoffs and
05:24mike brown stuck with it after game three against atlanta so i do wonder if he would do that or
05:29what
05:29it would take for him to get there would be very interesting now another decision for mike brown
05:33steph jose alvarado he returned against the nets to the backup point guard role but we did see mike
05:40brown turn to tyler kolik to start the fourth quarter how do you think he should weigh kolik's
05:44playmaking against alvarado's defensive pressure especially now when both are available and he's
05:49saying that he needs to divvy up the minutes a little bit better it needs to be situational in my
05:54opinion and yesterday they needed offense and tyler kolik is a better offensive player jose alvarado
05:58is a better defensive player so you know the right now the offense is stuck you know you could say
06:04maybe it's chris jent chris jent is away from the team kind of definitely with a personal problem
06:10personal issue so you know he was the he was the playmaker he i mean the the play caller for
06:16the
06:16offense he was the guy that was basically the offensive coordinator so he has not been around um i you
06:23know i don't know how much of a factor it is i did talk to a player yesterday who said
06:26his presence
06:27has been missed um and so you know they need offense and they needed offense yesterday in the
06:33fourth quarter and they went to tyler kolik and it worked because tyler kolik is a better playmaker
06:38i think one you know the some of the biggest issues with this team's offense and they figured it out
06:43in
06:43the playoffs obviously with the transformational um championship run but you know you have jalen
06:50brunson who can create for himself and and off the dribble and then after that it's like who else
06:56can do that cat can create you know from the from the from the elbow and do stuff like that
07:02but you
07:03don't have another ball handler that can create offense that you can give the ball to and say hey go
07:07make a play um so i i think that that that has been an issue as well and it leads
07:13to shots late in
07:14the shot clock um the knicks have had too many of those and um just the overall inefficient offense
07:21i'm glad you brought that up about the extra shot creation i'm gonna get back to that in in a
07:25second
07:26uh about the offense but when you talk about this knicks offense steph mike brown has said look the
07:31knicks they're generating more of the three-point looks that they want and you know he always talks
07:35about his sprays when you watch this offense how do you separate good possessions ending and misses
07:41from possessions that from what i'm seeing doesn't really put pressure on the defense all that much
07:46how are you separating what the good that you see in the offense from the bad that you're seeing right
07:50now yeah i mean it's it's tough to me to say i i have to go play by play to
07:55say all right well this
07:56guy just missed a wide open look as opposed to they just couldn't generate a good shot early in the
08:02shot clock and we're for and somebody had a grenade and had to launch something i tell you what
08:06watching the games live i do see a lot of that where it's like that was just a bad possession
08:11um and you know you you're you have somebody in a corner getting the ball who's contested with
08:16three seconds left in the shot clock that's not a good possession uh i have seen those now granted
08:23you know they're like i said conditioning could be a part of it they're just not cutting as hard they're
08:28not just not running as hard right now and you have a team that looks like it's playing its way
08:32into shape um you can if you look at it from that angle like all right this is gonna fix
08:37itself
08:37uh you look at it from mikhail bridge's mental standpoint all right you know he's shown the last
08:43two seasons he struggled during the regular season but he picked it up in the playoffs and that will fix
08:47itself um so you know we we have to see you obviously put faith in this team based on what
08:54they did last
08:54season but this three and four is not a championship start no definitely not at all whatsoever uh at all
09:01now the offense you talked about the shot creation and we know what jalen brunson can do in crunch time
09:06and i do not have the stats through yesterday but through six games cat had taken only two shots in
09:12eight minutes of crunch time do you think the knicks should be playing through him more late in games
09:17just to give some diversity some variety to their late game offense um you know it depends it's it
09:23depends on the matchup i i still think i've said this forever um you don't take the ball out of
09:28jalen brunson's hands down the stretch it's just it's not winning it's not a winning decision
09:31um you have somebody whose strength is coming through in the clutch who has whose strength is
09:37having nerves of steel and that's the guy that's your big advantage and that you want to flex that
09:43advantage as much as possible now i get it sometimes defenses understand that and they're going to load
09:47up on him and then you have to figure something else out but i want the ball in jalen brunson's
09:51hands
09:51a start and let him figure it out as opposed to cat no that's that's fair he's proving it time
09:57and
09:57time again back to cat when he sits or as we've seen sometimes gets to foul trouble how confident
10:04are you right now because it doesn't seem like mike brown is how confident are you in the knicks
10:07options at center and what do you think mike brown should prioritize when he handles chooses who handles
10:14those minutes because like you said it doesn't seem to trust james wiseman james wiseman hasn't played
10:18again since he played against that was orlando i believe where he had that stint where he came in
10:22against orlando we haven't seen him since then how should mike brown be handling the center minutes
10:27right now especially when andre drummond's been still a little shaky it's tough i mean there's there's
10:33no options they have they have three centers on the roster um one is cat an all-star the other
10:40is
10:40andre drummond who like you said is up and down and has defensive lapses and he had a he had
10:45a kind of
10:46a push shot yesterday that um just hit nothing but air yeah and then you had and then you had
10:51james
10:52wiseman who like you said he got into that game in orlando because um andre drummond had been had
10:59gotten back on defense lazily so mike brown took him out put in james wiseman james wiseman quickly went
11:05oh for five and then that was it we haven't seen him since basically so um this is the problem
11:10when
11:10they gave when they said you know what we're not going to the second apron uh we got we're not
11:15going
11:15to re-sign mitchell robinson we're not going to re-sign ariel hookporty and now you have this
11:21situation where it's like we have a problem at at center with our depth og ananobi has played it a
11:28little bit i don't think he you know i don't think that should be his position uh very regularly and
11:34this is something that that not is to me in my opinion is not on mike brown but is on
11:39the front
11:39office to figure that out i agree and i thought that this would come up at some point in the
11:45season let me ask you this are you shocked that they've seen this backup center issue so early in
11:50the season you know i maybe thought okay maybe this rears his ugly head december maybe january
11:55closer to trade deadline are you surprised that we're here already no i mean listen i think andre
12:01drummond is capable and i didn't know exactly what we were going to get out of him but you know
12:07we
12:07talked about it i remember we talked about it on the draft night it was like what do you have
12:11to go
12:11in the second apron this is a championship team um this is the reason these this is the reason why
12:17you go into the second apron because you have a core that is ready to win a championship and you
12:22don't want to lose any pieces and they did and they decided you know we don't want to spend for
12:27mitchell robinson and you can argue that that was the right decision he's certainly not playing well
12:32in boston right now but um i'm not surprised that this is a problem right now because you know we
12:38looked at what the options were and how they handled it and we we predicted all right this is this
12:44is the
12:44the one thing that that could derail this team right now yeah it'll be interesting to see how soon
12:49i mean we're not we'll got to get past december 15th the knicks will try to upgrade here at the
12:54back center position all right the knicks have already lost twice to philadelphia um what did those
12:59matchups reveal about their margin for error against other contenders and how much weight
13:03if any do you give to those results against philly early in the season i don't give much weight to
13:09them i mean we we've talked about a million times as a regular season often doesn't translate to the
13:13playoffs and if if these two teams get involved in a um in a seven game series we've seen what
13:19what
13:20jalen brunson can do when he gets joel and beat in a pick and roll and that's obviously a great
13:24advantage for the knicks it did show me all right well maybe the knicks should have went for lebron
13:29james a little bit harder because he's still playing at an extremely high level despite his
13:34age and uh we know that he would wanted to come come to new york and play and he would
13:39have come
13:39for a minimum because he came for the minimum with philadelphia so that that was one thing that that
13:44stood out to me with those matchups because lebron lebron james played really well um they won
13:49without jalen brown and they won pretty handily without jalen brown the second thing is tyrese maxey
13:54is a hell of a player um and he's getting better and the knicks have no answer for him
13:59so i i think that those are the things that that if you're projecting going forward how do we stop
14:04tyrese maxey and uh will lebron james slow down it's gonna be interesting going forward but you
14:10were right you were right regular season doesn't always translate to uh playoff success so we will
14:15see how that goes down the road uh last thing for me steph looking ahead over the next five to
14:20ten
14:20games what would you say that you need to see that the knicks are making real progress here because
14:24as you said three and four not a championship start but making progress even on a night when
14:29their shots aren't falling because we've seen the offense struggle so what do you need to see
14:32from the knicks over the next five to ten games or so a faster offense faster pace move the ball
14:38um it's it's become stagnant and i you know and predictable and i and you can blame you can say
14:46well they're just giving the ball to jalen brunson and letting him you know dribble dribble dribble
14:52but as i said on this show it they don't have anybody else that can create off the dribble so
14:59you need to figure out ways to diversify the offense and i'm not talking about crunch time
15:05that's still when i want jalen brunson the ball i'm talking about earlier um in the uh earlier in the
15:11game and i frankly want to see more jordan clarkson when he's been in the game they have
15:16looked you know tremendous and you talk about guys that create he can create so i'd like to see
15:22more of jordan clarkson um to see what he can do and see if he can jolt this offense hey
15:27jordan
15:27clarkson with the best on off numbers on the team right now has been looking really good i'd like to
15:31see that too plus he's got some shot creation ability by the way steph a source told me you're
15:36very excited about a football game this coming weekend between the uh philadelphia eagles and new
15:42giants uh i i heard you're very excited about that game i'm uh i'm taking a year off i'm very
15:48busy
15:48i'm not watching any football this year i don't even pay attention i don't know what are you talking
15:53about you don't even know what i'm talking about okay that feels that feels real convenient man
15:57real real convenient something tells me uh you might be doing a little watching a little watching
16:02on sunday we'll see everybody that is my guy stephan bondy does a great job covering the nicks for us
16:07here at the neopost steph appreciate you coming on with me and new york guy game as always thank
16:11you bro all right time for dex's clipboard the first one of this season seven games in as we
16:19talked about the next day are three and four so here's what we're gonna do let's go beyond the
16:23record with three things that got my attention and we're gonna do it by looking at some stats
16:27from cleaning the glass first up the offensive trouble is scoring closer to the basket now new
16:33york they're shooting 36 from three that ranks 12th in the league but the nicks are 29th at the
16:39rim and dead last in short mid-range accuracy at the rim they're making 58.2 percent of their shots
16:45last regular season they made 66.1 percent that's almost eight percentage points lower and their half
16:53court scoring efficiency ranks 28th compared with seventh last season now that's a full season versus
16:59seven games so we got to keep the sample size in mind now as i watch more film i plan
17:05to dive deeper
17:05into how much of this is difficult shots and how much is missed makeable ones because those are two
17:11different problems but my take here is simple i want to see them create cleaner opportunities inside
17:17the arc make the defense rotate cut with purpose use a paint touch or sprays as mike brown likes to
17:22say
17:23to create the next advantage basically give yourself a better chance to finish the play
17:30secondly value your possessions possessions they are not to be party favors that you just hand out
17:37that's not what you want to do here the nicks rank fourth in offensive rebounding rate that's something
17:41that i think they can build on they're creating second chances but here's the thing their turnover rate
17:46is 16 that's up 13.9 percent last regular season an increase of more than two percentage points going
17:54from 13.9 to 16 that's not what you want and they rank 27th in forcing turnover so they're chasing
18:02extra chances on the glass while giving some away with the ball there's actually an encouraging
18:08foundation here new york ranks seventh in defensive efficiency overall so my ask is and i'm sure it's
18:13mike brown's ask as well sharper decisions to support that defense value the simple pass when
18:19the first option is covered keep the ball moving make the defense earn to stop you worked the next
18:24to get that possession you can't be out here handing possessions over like they're free gift bags
18:29that's not going to work now the last thing for me is the bench it's actually showing us some
18:36positive play the starting five that's brunson hart bridges and anobian towns they've scored just
18:4199.5 points per 100 possessions in 190 possessions together on the court meanwhile landry shaman he's
18:48shooting a blistering 45.7 percent from three and here's the number that makes you check your screen
18:53the next scoring margin per 100 possessions is 52.8 points better with jordan clarkson on the floor
19:00than off you heard steph talk about it there yes 52.8 now let's pump the brakes as that comes
19:08from
19:08just 54 minutes small sample size theater people teammates and opponents matter and that split
19:13doesn't isolate clarkson's individual impact so my take here is that mike brown should do exactly
19:19what he's used the regular season for we saw last season keep testing the combinations check out
19:26shaman shooting more clarkson scoring colex playmaking i'd keep looking at how those skills that we've seen
19:32from those bench players fit alongside the starters the question that i put to mike brown is which
19:38combinations give you shooting and decision making while also getting the stops that you need seven
19:45games is an early checkpoint for me the next step is seeing better possessions stack up whichever five
19:51guys are on the floor and that's going to do it for this episode of new york got games special
19:57thanks
19:57to the great people here that make this show look as amazing as it does my producer nick federico
20:01editor antonio olivares nicole technical director brian rukowski and associate producer jeff stansbury
20:06thank you to my guy stephan body for joining us on this one we'll catch you next time on another
20:12edition
20:12of new york got game and thanks for watching new york got game
20:18boob shakalaka
20:20you