Erik Spoelstra in an old interview: “What you have to respect about the Knicks, you have to put them away every single possession. You can leave anything to effin’ chance…that’s what they do, what they have is will to win.”
I think he also talked about Knicks fans taking over their arena in this interview.
They always do. It didn’t used to be that way but after CoVid, this is pretty much a Knicks home game whenever they’re in town.
Basically since it became worth it for fans to spend money to watch them play.
Well most of NY and LI moved down to Miami
Wait, what? Maybe like 5% of Long Island, Staten Island, and Westchester. “Most of NY” is a crazy thing to say lol.
8.5 million people used to live here. Now it’s a ghost town.
Miami is the biggest city in America in January lol.
Sure ain’t the biggest city in May/June ahhhh
Its the people that can afford to buy tickets
And many of them are older people who for reasons tend to not be big fans of basketball.
“Reasons”
Lots of jersey people
They don’t count at all.
I’m a Jersey Knicks fan✌️
Same. I’ve been following since I was a kid in the late 90s. I watched way too many garbage teams and rooted for way too many mediocre players for someone to say I don’t count. I also lived in the city for a few years after college before going back to Jersey.
5% is a fuck ton
You heard of hyperbole?
I think they moved to Atlanta too. Never seen so many people from NY except in NY.
hell nah bro, New Yorkers who’ve moved to florida end up moving back or going somewhere else cause it’s hot and expensive as fuck with no public services cause that state is poor as shit
I think it’s also that the first time we had a truly good team that could contend in decades was after Covid.
> … this is pretty much a Knicks home game whenever they’re in town.
Brother, if this post season has shown us anything it’s that barring maybe the Lakers and Warriors, every Knick game is a home game.
They’ve been doing that in Miami for the last 30 years. At one point it was the only real arena they did it in before Brunson came over
I’m not sure when the turn happened, but i have clear memories in the late 90s/early 2000s of american airlines arena being raucous, and at some point I feel like things just went really downhill.
Heat fans are Fairweather AF.
ive never seen anyone praising Mike Browns magic mike halftime adjustments
all i see is will to win huzzah
Mike’s adjustments analytically mindfcked everyone in the playoffs
I give Mike Brown a lot of credit. He completely outclassed Mitch. I also never followed Knicks closely, but I’ve heard how vastly they improved going from Thibs to Brown.
They never would have become what they became under Brown without the Thibs years coming first.
Yeah, the starters have insane stamina. They never look gassed
I feel like Thibs is good at building professionalism in athletes. I mean a lot of the success on the court is the day in day out preparation. I feel like Thibs is great at that.
Yeah however good he is at developing professionalism he is equally as bad at developing a bench.
I mean y’all moved on for a reason and obviously it was the right decision. But there’s a reason he keeps getting hired.
He’s a floor raiser. I think once teams see that he gets results, they up their effort. I figure everyone coached by Thibs on the Knicks will be a fighter the rest of their career.
Also town coached by Thibs too so he fits right in lol
Feel like Thibs would be the ideal guy to coach the Wizards if they ship AD somewhere else, that team sorely needs professionalism
FO picked the right players too. These guys won in college and were successful elsewhere. Thibs made his mark, but it wasnt a huge carry job.
Yeah, I don’t mean to imply it was. But seems like the vibe around your team is Thibs helped them grow.
This is what happened with Liverpool when they won the league last year
Had a coach for years that would run them into the ground and first year he left they won with a solid tactician.
It has nothing to do with Liverpool. Klopp is a world-class manager who took Liverpool to three CL finals and led them to league campaigns of 97, 99, and 92 points. In two of those seasons, Liverpool still finished second despite reaching 97 and 92pts, something virtually unprecedented in English football.
Liverpool didn’t fail to win those titles because Klopp “ran the team into the ground”; they finished second because Pep’s City were even better.
As for Slot, your “solid tactician”, he won the league in his first season with Klopp’s players and the foundations/tactics Klopp had built. Once he began implementing his own tactics and building the squad in his image, the team finished fifth, made little impact in the CL, and he was promptly fired.
Klopp is a world-class manager who just happened to be competing at the same time as what is arguably the greatest manager of all time.
I need a parallel storyline in Buffalo so bad
Thibs was a great coach for fundamentals and having a high floor. Baseline level of competence. But he was pretty inflexible in terms of rotation and strategy.
Brown experimented all year with different lineups, which we begged thibs to do. Tyler Kolek was one of the best players in the cup final, and he didn’t play in the finals. He got Clarkson to transform into a pest on defense and an offensive rebounder. Alvarado was out of the rotation, and became a key piece in the finals. Obviously, he finally got KAT to buy into a passing hub/offensive rebounder role he had never previously been asked to play. Because he was able to make use of a long rotation, the starters averaged significantly fewer minutes than last year. None of those things happen under thibs.
This. I was part of the fire Thibs contingent but I always appreciated what he did for our culture, work ethic and identity. He was too inflexible and it cost us last year against the Pacers.
This.
I think also not running the starting 5 into the ground made us better in the playoffs. There used to be games where Thibs would play our starters in regular season games for 40 minutes.
I love Thibs he is the one coach you need to squeeze every ounce of talent your roster has, is able to build a culture of hardwork, hustle and defense; That said his offensive sets were so bad compared with the offensive talent we had in his last year, also the bench was alright but only played like 2 players that had his utmost confidence.
Most basketball casuals just say stuff like “wemby go in the paint!!! Go catch a lob!!! Stop shooting 3s!!! Attack Brunson!!! Why can’t they score!!!”
Without ever actually understanding why the things that are happening on the court are happening. Nobody ever stops and thinks “maybe the Knicks aren’t letting them do the things everyone says they should be doing”
We were just better. I told people before the series the Knicks would simultaneously be the best offense AND defense the spurs faced all postseason. They were always in for a rude awakening thinking OKC was their toughest challenge.
Yeah most people literally have no idea about basketball
Which is fine, frankly. You can be a casual. I’m a casual FIFA fan but I still have fun.
But real hoop heads, who’ve had real experience playing organised ball simply see things play out in a way that casual, or even diehard fans, don’t.
Yall beat us in the NBA Cup by sneaking Mitch Rob in the dunkers spot and daring Wemby to bite on drives. It worked. He fell for it like 2-3 times a quarter.
We closed up that hole by the time G1 game around, but then yall had KAT spread Wemby out. We tried switching Wemby out but that made an exploitable gap for KAT to attack, and freed up Hart to crash the boards. Mike Brown played chess there - he anticipated that Mitch Johnson would plug one gap, so he made two others.
G2 yall played some brilliant offense. JB shot pretty bad but consistently got dribble penetration, and yall swung and attacked gaps beautifully. All 5 of our defenders were scrambling to get a decent contest and it tired us out. Make or miss, yall executed very well.
You only see that if you can actually see the game from a strategic lens. Otherwise its just “Wemby is 7’4” he should dunk it”
I think Mike Brown looked at the OKC series, compared KAT to Chet and knew where he had the advantage. Where OKC lost, we kind of won.
Wemby is great and this finals run probably makes him way better in the future. Once he gets a couple of more go-to moves y’all are going to be even more scary.
Wemby with a Garnett 18 foot middie would have stopped the bleeding for the Spurs sooooooo many times during Knick runs.
What gets me is that pretty much everything casuals on here are accusing Mitch Johnson of not doing he actually did. Or I can easily explain why he did not.
The only one I do think was stupid was playing Wemby 44MIN Game 4, but I think considering the combo of Knicks insane runs and the PTSD from OKC Kornet +/- it’s a tough call
> They were always in for a rude awakening thinking OKC was their toughest challenge.
That’s their own (and the media in general)s fault though. Wemby was crying like he won the finals thinking his team would dog walk the Knicks. Every betting up and market consistently had the Spurs between the heavy favorites and the favorites right up until G5.
Great points but just a nitpick. Going by the numbers the Knicks were the best defense they faced but OKC’s offense was better if we go by ORTG. I actually thought it’d be the opposite so a bit of a surprise there
Also it’s a combination of Wemby’s frame and Mitch but it was always gonna be hard for Wemby to get in the paint from the 3pt line. If he was gonna get to the paint he needed to start near the traditional mid post spots on the floor. Knicks did a great job swarming and recovering but that’s where Wemby’s frame mattered since he couldn’t hold position and Mitch was kinda hamstrung by his guard rotation featuring reluctant or not great shooters so scheming against it was harder than it should.
That being said the Spurs having huge leads in every game is a testament to how good their defense was and how quick they swung the ball to create quick driving gaps. Spurs have a very bright future
Well I don’t think most people understand basketball fundamentals: just did shots go in or not, did people look open or not, maybe a nice pick and roll. And I’m by no means great either but watching coaching breakdowns of the playoff games on YouTube has been eye opening about the various subtle adjustments and schemes going on constantly
He watched and was part of the devil magic that was the 3rd Quarter Warriors
Lets go MIKE!
Not to discount whatever adjustments Brown was making, but I think a lot of their advantages in the second half was being a lot fresher than the Spurs. You can attribute that to a deeper bench, more rest, better conditioning, what have you, but the Spurs were flat-out gassed at the end of these games in a way the Knicks were not.
It was wild watching him pull deep into the Knicks bench when KAT sat in less than a minute in G5 with 2 bs fouls and still pull of the win. The man is a certified magician.
When you think about it, coaching had no impact at all. It was all will to win. Honestly the best thing the Knicks can do right now is fire him
The spurs were definitely not listening
I honestly think they thought the real Finals were the WCF, in the pregame interviews before game 1 of the Finals, they genuinely talked about the Knicks like they did with the Blazers, they even showed the Wolves more respect, they thought the Knicks were just another team, and their body language showed it as well, and it backfired.
I think that dunk by Vassell end of game 7 epitomises their mindset about that series, being the biggest hurdle to them winning the championship, which it obviously wasn’t.
I love when the sports fans try to apply some deeper meaning to every little thing that happened. In reality dude could’ve just dunked because he was happy in the moment but we’re sitting here talking about it as the epitome of a broader mentality issue that we’re just sorta assuming they must have had because they lost lol
No way the Knicks were just a more experienced and better tactical team. That explanation isn’t fun enough. We need to also say the Spurs didn’t take them seriously
Lmao spurs stormed out to leads in most of the games yet they “didn’t take the Knicks seriously.” The dialogue about this Knicks team is the most nephew shit I’ve ever seen on this sub. They’re a great team, a great story, we don’t need to be making shit up about other teams to give then their props.
It’s incredible. And in those same breaths they’ll find a way to say the world is finding ways to punch down on the talents of the spurs/wemby/et al. by way of citing public record of events/video what have you that merely objectively document something the Knicks happened to have irrefutably done well of their own accord, talent - individual and collective - or contrarily, something irrefutably poor or the Spurs on their end of things. In the same breath folk are gonna be like, “Aiii, we gonna let y’all have it… you honestly deserved it… but the truth of the matter is that you kind of sort of didn’t, and you never even alleging as much (cus real ball knowers don’t gotta say shit), just letting the proof be in the pudding and speak for itself, makes me feel oppressed.”
Okay, I agree with you that obviously I don’t know that’s the reason he dunked it specifically. I’m just saying it represents their mindset about it.
No one is dunking the ball like that at the end of the game unless they felt a certain way. Like Zion against the Suns, it was due to the series they had with the Suns the previous season. THey obviously thought their series with Okc was gonna be their hardest one.
They beat the defending champs on the road in Game 7 to make the NBA Finals in their first playoff run together in a season where Vegas had them winning 44 games. I think that’s more than enough to explain the obvious jubilation behind that dunk.
If true it’s monumentally thick since they were 1-2 vs the Knicks during the season including the Cup of all games. I think they went in confident and high off of beating the defending champs. The idea of them not taking the team that beat them for the Cup seriously (and then improved at the deadline) seems wild.
I’m sure they convinced themselves the Cup was a fluke because of Wemby’s grandma passing that morning and the March game was just weird because they were on a long win streak and it was a noon game after being in NYC over the weekend from Brooklyn. There’s no way this team could just be better than us.
To be fair the cup game I get why they’d think that, but the regular season blowout game has no excuse imo, not to mention the one time they beat the Knicks in the regular season, they needed to shoot like 65% from three to do so and even then they only won by 2 points.
Which is funny because it felt exactly the same in game 4 where they hit everything at the beginning and we won that in the end by 1.
Cup one does make sense, as Wemby was visibly shaken. Deservedly so, not a slight to him in the slightest. But idrk how anyone can take a finals series not incredibly seriously. I’ll just file it under Spurs being a really inexperienced team.
Y’all also played lights out and just outplayed them in almost every facet. It was incredible to watch how y’all just adapted tk everything they threw at you.
Fuck you we lost our pick to be bounced out the first!
Yeah why didn’t the spurs understand the Knicks were a good basketball team. They must be a bunch of morons. Maybe they need to hire more reddit users
The Spurs underestimated the Knicks so hard they built first half leads in every game. Then started taking them lightly in the 4th. It was a delayed disrespect…….
I know, right. They were just inexperienced and couldn’t take the heat when things got down to the wire. So many bad shots, Wemby bricking both free throws two games in a row down the stretch. They were overwhelmed out there.
Any coach with eyes should have realized that’s a scouting report point on the Knicks
I looked back and I only really see one strategy. There’s no team that beat the Knicks more than the Pistons in the regular season. They played rough, borderline dirty, and psychologically penalized the Knicks and it payed off. Wemby tried to do that for a while and it actually worked decently until the refs began to punish that, they should’ve had a bench player doing that instead of the main star player.
I have no idea what anyone else was doing. Kept treating it like a regular game. Like the Knicks weren’t just training to shoot over a ladder tall as Wemby with his arms stretched. Like Jeremy Sochan wasn’t going to tell everyone all their drills and common plays. Like they weren’t laser focused on this one game and all the people in it.
It felt more like they figured beating the a Thunder was all that mattered and didn’t really start to play until game 3. There wasn’t as much fire.
That being said it’s hilarious to see everyone dogging on the spurs like the Knicks didn’t just come off an undefeated run with a cavs sweep in between. Like this team didn’t improve over last season where they didn’t even make the playoffs. The boys earned their flowers
I remembered Spoelstra’s post game interview after the Heat took the Knicks out the playoffs a few years ago in 2023. It was Brunson’s first full season as a Knick. He spoke highly of Brunson and the Knicks. He’s a class act and obviously a damn good coach.
Brunson didn’t make the All Star team or All-NBA that season and Spoelstra was borderline offended on his behalf
I mean Spo doesn’t have a COTY so he understands the snub.
Spo is constantly overlooked. Tragic.
I wouldn’t say constantly overlooked. He’s a top 15 Coach of all time and he was the architect for how basketball is played today. The NBA would look different if Spo never introduced Switch-and-Space Basketball
He still doesnt have a COTY.
at this point he doesn’t need one. he’s got plenty of coaching masterpieces compared to (and some against) the coaches that won it over him
it’s just gonna be one of those fun facts you bring up like 5 years after he retires and people naturally start assuming he’s got at least one COTY
Yeah he doesnt need, but it proves the point that he is overlooked.
He won a NBCA COTY. This is an award given to him by other NBA coaches.
Spo is honestly one of the most influential coaches of the last 15 years because he keeps adapting and pushing the game forward: he helped revolutionize modern small-ball with the Heatles by using Chris Bosh at center, LeBron at the four, switching defensively, spacing the floor, and proving you could win championships without traditional size; then in 2016-17 he took a team that started 11-30 and somehow finished 30-11 with Goran Dragic, Hassan Whiteside, Dion Waiters, James Johnson, Tyler Johnson, Wayne Ellington, and a bunch of role players, which is one of the greatest turnarounds ever; and now he’s still evolving with Miami’s low-screen, motion-heavy offense built around constant movement, cutting, pace, and read-and-react basketball. The fact that he still doesn’t have an NBA Coach of the Year award doesn’t really matter, because awards are narrative-based, while Spo’s real legacy is that you can look across the league and see teams borrowing ideas Miami already proved could work.
As a NO Saints fan, it’s the same with Drew Brees never getting an MVP. He doesn’t need it to validate his amazing, arguably top 10 QB of all time career… but it sure would have been nice lol.
Sloan Syndrome
It’s the nature of the award, the COTY is the “team that nobody expected to be this good this year, so the coach gets the award”, Spot has been so good and so flexible with his coaching that he is automatically out no matter what roster or adjustments he makes.
I remember coming away from that series with a respect for Brunson. It was never easy to beat him
Brunson had 41 points in the final game of that series, when the Knicks as a whole scored 92. He basically did what he did in Game 5 this year.
I remember a lot of Heat fans, including myself, respecting him afterwards. Dude is clutch.
I was so stressed watching those games because of him. I became a Brunson truther after that series. Dude just kept coming back possession after possession.
This guy knows ball
Spo always knew ball, respect
When was this interview?
December regular season game this year.
December 21st of this season. Brunson dropped 47.
Right lol if this is 10 years ago it doesn’t really apply
i mean hes not wrong, i dont think theres been a single heat knicks playoff series that wasnt an absolute slugfest
hmmm, that 2012 series begs to differ (yall destroyed us)
That one doesn’t count lmao
You know it’s lopsided when the winner says it doesn’t count.
As a Cavs fan, this is such a compliment that never attributed to my team
Spoelstra is a legend, he always shows respect. I thought it was funny when he was talking about how his son’s favorite player is Jalen Brunson and he absolutely hates that lol.
If Spoel’s annoyed that the Knicks won (I don’t actually think he would be), it would be because his son admires Jalen even more now, if that’s possible.
If Erik coached Spurs, they go at least to game 7
They would have won lol
They had the lead in all 5 games, coaching was a huge part of their collapses, especially the big one where they missed a huge opportunity to tie it at 2-2 and have the next game at home, putting all the pressure back on the Knicks
If they didn’t have the refs help, they would have been destroyed. Games would not have been nearly as close.
Eh I tend not to get into ref stuff
Not trying to insult you but fans always think things are rigged against them
I’m just saying the coaching was a bigger gap than the players out there
Pretty rare to see in a finals imo
watch the game. if spurs fans can notice the bias, then it’s clearly there.
NBA is an entertainment industry at the end of the day and they want more games.
I thought I was being biased and then I see Celtics and Pacers fans out of all people saying the refs were robbing the Knicks. There was clearly an agenda to push more games in the series.
Castle said in an interview during the OKC series that if they “punched” them first they would shrink back (specifically about game 6, but the psychology probably applied all series). Knicks felt like the opposite where they thrived fighting back
Knicks were like a pro boxer, taking the opponent’s haymakers in the early rounds and letting him tire himself out, and then going for the kill.
😄 Go back way BACK in time and see: Big George Foreman against Mohammed Ali…Where Ali took Foreman’s hey-makers for 8 rounds Foreman got tired AND BANG just like that Ali took him out
Spoelstra knows ball.
Thibs put them through boot camp last season
Thibs is such a great coach, if he could learn to trust more than 5 guys on his roster, he would have multiple titles.
Hence why the Cavs never stood a chance in hell
Whoa he nailed it way before the Knicks Championship…Wonder if Mitch Johnson agrees
He said this in December after we came back on them and Jalen had 47
Unless they play the Pacers
pacers fans still clinging onto that miracle run last year lol