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