For 3 quarters they let us play tough defense then in the fourth they only called it one way. Knick's shot like 20 free throws in the fourth. Completely changed the game.
The refs are always going to be a problem on the road. They didn't cost us the game, Ime's rotations did. If Sengun played we would've won by 20 with Amen at the point. FVV can't play without Sengun, but Sengun can play without FVV.
I can't wait until he is 25 so people can quit using that excuse like they have for 4 years counting. He's Mr. Up and Down yoyo man. I'd never count on him in playoff clutch time. It just depends which guy shows up. The chucker and turnover man or the guy who hits his shots and doesn't turn over the ball more than everyone else. The team player or the selfish guy taking a ton of shots even when playing like crap. You never know which one will be playing.
Brunson took it to our best defender and beat him time and time again. Last time Amen shut him down. Not this time. Brunson just played great, but even with that we would've won the game if we just kept Jalen from running the offense when he obviously was being manhandled. That is completely on Ime. The players can't always adjust to the referees, because they have the same skillsets regardless of how the game is being called. It's the coach's job to recognize how the game is being called and putting his players in the postiion to win. I love Ime, but sometimes his bench coaching is bad and tonight was one of those times. We are not going to do well in the playoffs if we don't get some shooting. Everyone gets fouled consistently in the playoffs and only a select few (Lebron, Tatum, Curry, Brunson) will get the calls. In the playoffs, Jalen is going to be held, punched and pummeled, just like tonight and he won't sniff the FT line.
No I don't think so. What I saw was they both made a ton ton ton of mistakes down the stretch and Amen had the better game and Green had more turnovers. Neither of them made me feel like they can run the team without Fred. No way in the playoffs. What we needed Fred for was to calm the game down when we needed a simple good attempt instead of something flashy and remain off ball the rest of the time. He also would have brought a shooting threat which would have opened the driving lanes more for the team. He would have been able to guard Brunson a little too which no one seemed to be able to do.
I disagree that he took it to amen. He kept getting screens and was going at Jalen which was the matchup he wanted.
I don't agree he should start flopping like Brunson but Morey used to be great at pushing the league to call fouls for his players, maybe Stone can do something about it. Green should have had 4-6 more points tonight honestly.
This is an old problem, he's been fine in the fourth for over a quarter of the season and he's one of the most clutch players on the team. Those two are being drama queens. I do wish he had more assists but it's not going to be an assist party with the worst shooting around him. This whole team is last or near last in assists and shooting. Knicks were just sitting back and daring us to shoot, nothing more. It's not Sengun/Amen/Tate's strength. Jalen still shaky. It's the other 2 that need to bust those types of defenses with 3pt bombs. When we don't have that, you can watch the game, you can't even see the paint from how many defenders they have packed in there. Of course our backcourt won't hold up under pressure with that kind of unusually high pressure. Jalen drove 10+ times and got 2 FT's btw. They waved off a totally legal continuation (2pts) and one of his TO's was a BS offensive foul call on a leaning Brunson. He had too many turnovers and not enough assists but let's be frank it's bad shooting, 3 starters missing, against the Knicks and Amen Thompson looks hopeless guarding Brunson. The Knicks have elite perimeter defense. If you had asked me before the game if a $30m scorer could overcome those circumstances, I'd have told you no they would struggle to be efficient. Doesn't mean they're not worth $30m at age 23.
WAH WAH WAH...his little booo booo hurts too. Jalen should take on the contact, EXPLODE through it, instead, he shies away like a panzy..... He jumps in the air contorts his body away from contact....you don't get calls being a coward...you get them by GOING TO THE RIM and force them to call it. Jalen is what he is....a decent scorer when not under pressure, he makes the game hard on himself and more often than not in important moments he fails. DD
Yikes... I retract what i said in the game thread. Maybe they DONT need to go to him more down the stretch.
Facts. But Brunson is a legit star player. Guys like that, shot ot trapping/doubling them. It really doesnt matter who you put on them most times when their in that mode. These team is poised to take the next step as soon as we have someone like that emerge.
Posted in game thread so i thought id put it here too: So i often see in game threads complaints about Jalen not getting foul calls. And then hes compared to other players .. like Brunson tonight, who gets those calls all the time. Well, just out of curiosity i looked up drives per game and Green leads the team at only 9.8 per game. Thats really low compared to the top penetrators in the league. For instance Brunson averages 18.9 drives per game. Almost double. Brunson gets a foul 7.7% of the time and Jalen 7.9%. The leading driver in the nba is Shai and he gets a foul called 8.7% of the time. So is only about .008 fouls/drive behind Shai, pretty much negligible. So no, such and such may not have gotten whatever call you think Jalen shouldve gotten. He just doesnt drive the ball enough to the basket. Theres really only a few outliers that get fouls at an abnormally high rate when driving (like Paola, Zion...) Jalen is either higher than most or not too far behind as fare as the rate he gets a foul call. Question is, why doesnt he drive more? Lack of spacing? Not crafty enough? Low IQ? Too many cooks in the kitchen? Some combo of all the above? https://www.nba.com/stats/players/drives?dir=D&sort=DRIVES&TeamID=0
Everyone has off nights against elite scorers though, Amen guarded him well last time. I wouldn't bet on Brunson doing that again, Amen is an obsessive defender and looked livid after the game.
It's 10000% lack of spacing. Your analysis leaves out that Green is our leader and our 2nd best finisher on drives among those with high volume. He was at just 6 drives before January, as soon as the offense opened up he drove more. He's doing the right thing, he's become wiser about attacking a crowded paint. That was almost half of his 2nd season with Silas number of drives. FT's down from Silas era too. I don't think it's a refs thing (mostly, he is younger so needs respect) but I think it's mostly a spacing and muscle thing. I don't know why people want to close their eyes but we're one of the worst shot-making teams and we have some of the worst spacing in the NBA - to an unfair level on our perimeter scorers. You can at least get your shot in the post if it's crowded, it's much harder to beat your man and the rim protector AND the paint is crowded. You can prove this by watching our games and seeing that every single team packs the paint and rarely ever leaves it against us. We've never witnessed that, it's not normal. We've not experienced normal, average spacing except in spurts (we've done well in all of them). In reality you can track almost all of Jalen's scoring streaks to changes in the lineup that increased speed or shooting. All the perimeter players are underperforming on drives relative to our expectations and it can't be a coincidence it's happening for all at the same time. In your link: Sengun on 7.6 drives made 52.7% Jalen on 9.8 drives he made 47.8% Amen on 5.9 drives making 45.7% FVV on 2.6 drives made 47% Brooks, Whitmore and Eason below 40% on drives Jalen and Sengun are the only ones keeping this afloat at a decent volume and %. Amen climbing fast but once you take out the putbacks and cuts, his drives are still improving on the go. I think he's ready now to join the ranks. This is what collapses defenses, this is the gold of an offense. Someone like Fox gets like 12 a game. Ours is split a lot of ways but we should be able to eventually get 30-40 drives out of the 3 of them. We're not doing anything to help them right now. Thankfully it sounds like reinforcements are coming. It BETTER be shooting help. Amen can't shoot but he's not an inextricable part of the core so it's just time we get realistic about the obvious thing we're headed towards: we need 2 elite shooters who can defend and can pass safely around Sengun/Amen/Green. That's what we should inch towards. We're talking about something like Derrick White and an optimistic future version of Jabari Smith (great defense, 8+ 3PA on great efficiency). Reed and Whitmore have a chance to crack it. Something like that.
Amen also got a key stop on him, you're never gonna be 100% successful. The difference is even Amen was on him he was taking more difficult shots than when anyone else was on him.
