more like Domantas Sabonis.<\/a> Some get on Josh Hart for the bad stretches when he misses an assignment off-ball defensively, and his reluctance to shoot. And then, of course, there\u2019s criticism of Bridges and Towns for being soft.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Are some of these criticisms warranted? Sure! The Knicks are far from perfect, but they\u2019re still a damn good basketball team. But some of these narratives are silly, especially the small, small sect that calls Brunson a ballhog and shows misleading on-off numbers.<\/p>\n
But honestly, the most frustrating part about this stuff is glorifying the past. And no, I\u2019m not talking about the 1990s or the 2013 Knicks, I\u2019m talking about the recent teams. There was an unironic tweet during the 11-game skid that the 2021 Knicks, because of the defense and physicality, would beat this team in a playoff series.<\/p>\n
(Speaking of the 11-game skid, this is possibly the worst tweet I\u2018ve ever seen.)<\/p>\n
Nostalgia is a real virus. That 2021 team was the first playoff team for an entire generation of Knicks fans, but they were tremendously flawed. Once the Hawks learned to turn Julius Randle\u2019s water off, it was over. Do we really think that team would be able to score enough in the playoffs and lock up Brunson and KAT? Seriously?<\/p>\n
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The more sensible nostalgia acts are coming from the 2023-25 teams. The Knicks played with a certain level of grit then, but people forget how things went for those teams.<\/p>\n
The 2023 Knicks were an inspiring group that was genuinely ten-deep. The problem? The team\u2019s second-best playoff performer was 23-year-old Quentin Grimes. Randle, RJ Barrett, and Immanuel Quickley were terrible against the Heat.<\/p>\n
The 2024 Knicks might\u2019ve been the most fun team to root for, and that\u2019s what this boils down to. You love to root for the undermanned underdog with likable players and personalities, who play with a certain level of nastiness. But that team had a ceiling; their second option was Donte DiVincenzo. Now, if you want to talk about the January 2024 Knicks, I\u2019m listening. They were special. But you were never getting that team again, not with the CBA forcing Isaiah Hartenstein to OKC.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a lot of comparing Tom Thibodeau to Mike Brown, some reasonable, some not. But let\u2019s not act like the same people who are yearning for Thibs weren\u2019t the ones begging for him to be fired midseason last year.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s my point. There has always been something to complain about. In 2021, they couldn\u2019t score. In 2023, they had no offense aside from Brunson in the playoffs. In 2024, a similar story. Then, when you add the offensive firepower, the pendulum swings the other way.<\/p>\n
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Make no mistake, this is the best Knicks team since Patrick Ewing was wearing orange and blue. They\u2019re on pace for 52 wins. While they\u2019ve had frustrating losses to Detroit and San Antonio, they\u2019ve beaten Boston, Cleveland, Houston, Toronto, and Denver. They went 0-10 vs the top-three teams last year and 5-14 against teams that won at least 50 games. This year, they\u2019re 7-5 (technically 6-5 but the NBA Cup counts to me, dammit) against teams playing at a 50 or more win pace. It\u2019s a Pistons issue right now, not a crippling league issue.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing when the likes of Draymond Green or Charles Barkley use buzzwords to insult this team. They\u2019re outside media personalities who benefit from clicks. It\u2019s disingenuous when it\u2019s our fans doing it, pretending that we aren\u2019t less than six years removed from Mo Harkless starting games with regularity and less than eight years removed from Allonzo Trier being our most promising player.<\/p>\n
You know what, maybe I just need to get off social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This hasn\u2019t been the dream season we envisioned entering the year. If you came from the future and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[81859,7,45,136,305,301,4672,372,200,677,194,3715,949,288,327,376,563,304,1260,6,1136,191,3810,3806,297,4155,1041,969,396,680],"class_list":{"0":"post-621508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-knicks","8":"tag-allonzo-trier","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-cavs","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-denver","14":"tag-domantas-sabonis","15":"tag-donte-divincenzo","16":"tag-draymond-green","17":"tag-hawks","18":"tag-houston-rockets","19":"tag-immanuel-quickley","20":"tag-isaiah-hartenstein","21":"tag-jalen-brunson","22":"tag-josh-hart","23":"tag-julius-randle","24":"tag-karl-anthony-towns","25":"tag-knicks","26":"tag-mikal-bridges","27":"tag-nba","28":"tag-new-york","29":"tag-new-york-knicks","30":"tag-newyork","31":"tag-newyorkknicks","32":"tag-pistons","33":"tag-quentin-grimes","34":"tag-rj-barrett","35":"tag-san-antonio","36":"tag-team","37":"tag-toronto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116124726466155887","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621508","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=621508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}