{"id":553690,"date":"2026-01-22T18:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/553690\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T18:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:28:17","slug":"knicks-need-to-shake-off-slump-and-prove-they-can-be-big-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/553690\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks need to shake off slump and prove they can be big time"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Dolan had a lot to say about the Knicks<\/a> on Craig Carton\u2019s radio show not long ago, about Tom Thibodeau and championship banners and team chemistry and many other insights about professional basketball he seemed to consider fascinating. One of the insights was this:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did come to the conclusion that we had an idea how we wanted to organize the team. And that meant we needed to evolve. Actually beyond the old traditional coaching formulas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolan then added one more thing about Thibodeau, the coach he fired<\/a> after he\u2019d taken the Knicks to their first conference championship series in the 25 years since Dolan became the big boss at Madison Square Garden:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou needed to be more of a collaborator than Tom was.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how has all that collaborating been working out for the Knicks lately, at least when the Brooklyn Nets don\u2019t show up at the Garden<\/a> like the Red Cross?<\/p>\n

Maybe the Knicks can once again figure things out, before the trade deadline and beyond. Maybe they can once again start looking like the team that beat the Spurs \u2014 who\u2019d just beaten the Thunder \u2014 to win that NBA Cup<\/a>. We\u2019re sure about to find out over the next six weeks or so, as they\u2019re looking at a schedule that has some soft places to land on it, but also includes the 76ers (Saturday night in Philly) and Spurs and Thunder and Pistons.<\/p>\n

Did the Knicks put it on the 12-30 Nets<\/a> on Wednesday night? They did, beating them by 54 points that looked like 154 by the second half. They passed the ball and treated on-the-ball defense like something more than a hobby, and had all those guys in double figures. In the process, they got a game they badly needed no matter who it was against, especially after the way they\u2019d just looked at the Garden against the Mavericks<\/a>. That was a stink bomb that had Jimmy D. doing what a lot of other Knicks fans did that night, which means rushing for the exits before it was over as if somebody had pulled a fire alarm.<\/p>\n

And even when that game was over, guess what? The Knicks were still closer to the Hawks in the Eastern Conference than they were to the first-place Pistons.<\/p>\n

It was clear listening to Dolan on the radio, if you stayed with the whole thing before feeling yourself start to black out, that he was the one who\u2019d decided that Thibodeau \u2014 the coach who finally brought the Knicks back \u2014 had taken the team as far as he could. And had clearly decided that one upset victory over the Celtics in the conference semis, even though Jayson Tatum blew out his Achilles before the end of that series, should have had the Knicks halfway to the Canyon of Heroes.<\/p>\n

You know what happened after that. The Pacers once again sent the Knicks home, Dolan got mad, Thibodeau got gone, baby, gone. Now Mike Brown is coaching the Knicks. And after that fast Knicks start to the season, and that rousing victory over the Spurs in Vegas, the Knicks have looked like a complete mediocrity so far in 2026, with slightly less than half a season still left to play. And even though Dolan talked about how much he liked his team and didn\u2019t expect any big changes at the deadline, well, we\u2019re going to see about that, aren\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

The Knicks certainly evolved under Leon Rose and Thibodeau. But the permanent government at Madison Square Garden still has Dolan running it. The Rangers are once again a nowhere team, moving further and further away from winning Dolan his first Stanley Cup. You can only imagine what kind of panic might set in \u2014 and perhaps has set in already \u2014 if the Knicks aren\u2019t as good as Dolan told everybody they were going to be.<\/p>\n

Of course there\u2019s still time. Year after year, we see the Yankees experience some kind of mid-season malaise and somehow manage to come out of it. They had one the year before last and still made it all the way to the World Series. There is still enough talent in the room for the Knicks to come out of theirs before it\u2019s too late, even though last year\u2019s talent has suddenly started looking a lot more mismatched lately.<\/p>\n

And yet: Sometimes teams don\u2019t come out of their slumps, and if you don\u2019t believe that, ask Steve Cohen about the 2025 Mets. They fell down and never got back up, and that\u2019s the reason why David Stearns has clearly decided to start all over again.<\/p>\n

It is up to Collaboratin\u2019 Brown, a very nice guy, to figure this out. It is up to him to get the Knicks to defend against someone other than the Nets. We\u2019ve heard as much about his \u201csystem\u201d as we heard about \u201cculture\u201d with the Jets when they brought in a new coach. But maybe it\u2019s the system that has to change. It\u2019s on the coach to get his passers \u2014 especially his perimeter passers \u2014 to not only be better moving the ball but smarter. Maybe then Jalen Brunson wouldn\u2019t have to talk about how the current edition of the Knicks needs to care more. I don\u2019t know about you, but they sure seemed to care last spring when Thibodeau was still the coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts with pace,\u201d Brunson said after the Nets game. \u201cObviously getting stops and running helps, but our pace offensively was great. We got in the paint, made plays, and just made a lot of good reads tonight. I think us focusing on the things that matter, like the little stuff that allows us to kind of play free on offense\u2026 It\u2019s big time for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big time. Maybe by the beginning of March, we\u2019ll see if that upset of the Celtics was the beginning of the biggest possible time for the Knicks. Or just a lucky punch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Dolan had a lot to say about the Knicks on Craig Carton\u2019s radio show not long ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,288,3237,304,3357,9483,6,671,1136,191,3810,3806,1416],"class_list":["post-553690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-knicks","tag-basketball","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-james-dolan","tag-knicks","tag-mike-brown","tag-mike-lupica","tag-nba","tag-nets","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkknicks","tag-tom-thibodeau"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115940170541125527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}