What Each Knick Needs To Work On This Offseason | NY Got Game

What's good everybody welcome back to another edition of New York Got Games. Your boy Dexter Henry alongside my guy Brian Fonseca. We're in the dog days of summer. We're just talking about how hot it is outside. Feels like 101. It's hot. How many days we got till the NBA season starts? Like 76, 77-ish? Something like that. Although if you instead want to count down to training camp, training camp is less than two months away. That's crazy. Training camp is less than two months away. Good thing you brought a training camp. Training camps you go get ready for the season. You're feeling good about the season and so on this episode what we want to do we're kind of going to look a little bit ahead to the season. Too early to get into deep previews but the Knicks are a championship team. They are at the top of the mountain right and now everybody's talking about how can they repeat. One of the things I always like to talk about Brian is you can have some improvement of self. Self-improvement is a great way to get better. Now improvement is not always linear. It can go a variety of different directions but players can improve on things from year to year. We've seen already on this Knicks team we've seen some players improve some things that we maybe didn't see in previous years that we thought they needed to work on. So what we're going to do in this episode is we are going to talk about each player that's currently signed to the Knicks on the roster and what they can improve with their game. Their offseason improvement should be for next season. So how we did this. Brian and I we had a two-man draft. This was Brian's idea and I thought it was a good one. Brian said okay we're going to pick. We had 13 players on the roster. We're going to pick through them. Now we only decided to do 12 people in the draft. Not including. We didn't include the rookies by the way. We did not include the rookies. The only players that are signed to contracts right now on the roster. And who have been in the NBA at least a year because I mean what's Tyler Nichol going to improve on if we haven't seen him in an NBA game. Fair. So we left him. And again he's still not signed and all that. So that too. Now we did 12. The person that we left for the end we will discuss that is Jalen Brunson. We are putting the captain for the end. So if you hear us go through this and you're like hey how come nobody drafted Brunson. We decided to leave Jalen Brunson till the end. We will talk about Jalen Brunson. I had the first pick. I made the first pick. Then Brian made it. We alternated. Went through six rounds. Got out six players each. And here we are. So I'll tip things off. And to be clear in order of players we wanted to talk about. Not necessarily. We did not rank players from best to worst. No just players. In case you're wondering why I took I don't know. Somebody who probably won't even play like that well before the end. Yeah I did it in interest of what I wanted to talk about. And I was trying to avoid mostly the things that we have either talked about with these players before. But try to find something new. Some of it some of it and especially the first one I'm about to talk about is something we've talked about before. There was kind of no avoiding this. And there's a way the person get better. So let me tip things off here. I'm going to start off my first pick was Carl DeTowns. Now this is a very interesting conversation because we just talked in the previous episode about his contract situation and what that should look like for the Knicks. And here's what I will say. We have to look at Cat and say hey Carl Anthony Towns did what he needed to do when he came here to New York. Knicks he got here to New York. Knicks were in the conference finals for the first time in a long time. Second year he's a champion. He's been in at least a conference finals in the last three years right. Two in Minnesota excuse me with Minnesota and New York the last two right. At least been at least been there the last three years. The thing that Brian and I if you've watched the show you've watched watch parties we talked about it a ton through the season last year. What can Carl Anthony Towns do better with this game? How can he get better? For me it's attacking the rim without fouling. This man led the NBA with 65 offensive fouls in the regular season. Almost won a game. It's almost won a game. That is yeah that's a high amount. How many games did he play? Cat played. 70 hold on. I want to say 78. Was it that high? Maybe 75. 75. Almost won a game. And it should be noted led by far. Second place was not even. Jalen Brown. Close to him. 40. Yeah yeah yeah. By 25. By 25. Yeah right. Jalen Brown also played a lot last year. Now look you look at the numbers through the regular season. The 20.1 points. Almost 12 boards. Got to the line five and a half times a game. Shot 50 percent from the field. 85 percent of the line. Highly efficient. All-star production. Average 3.4 personal fouls. 2.5 turnovers and offensive fouls is a turnover right. That's the thing. It doesn't help too. This is a guy who's according cleaning the glass. You know all guys love cleaning the glass. 92. 92nd percentile among bigs in usage. 63rd in scoring efficiency right. 40th percentile in turnover percentage which that's the part where you're like for a second option you'd like that to be a little bit lower. And look he's got to cut down on the offensive fouls. He's a productive and efficient scorer. And we saw this how productive he was in the postseason when he cut down on his fouls. So for me it's that it's just about being under control. Brian always likes to show the the chicken wings and stuff when he's driving to the basket. It's very subtle because people will say like oh Kat never gets called. Right. The refs bully Kat and they call too many things on him and it's like if you actually watch the replay like I can see what the ref is seeing. Like you can see. And it always looks worse in slow motion. Right. Right. Yeah you can see the the rip through that's like excessive. You can see like the hand like how handsy you can be whatever. Like it's it's just there. Like him being number one with the bullet by offensive fouls is not an accident. Like that's not having it out for somebody. No. Watch the games. No you watch these games. So what I'm what I'm saying and I'll toss to you because we're gonna move through these. Yeah. We do not want him to stop attacking. I don't think you would want him either. You actually have to attack under control and we believe that if he attacks under control at least I do he can be a more efficient scorer right without giving away so many possessions that he does. Because we've also seen that and this is what helped the Knicks in the playoff run. Championship run. He didn't give away as many possessions. He didn't kill momentum. You used to call the momentum killers. You would see it with him. You didn't see that. He did get better as the year went along. It was much better as the year went along and he was really good at cutting it down to the playoffs. I think also he accepted his role as the hub of the offense and was looking to pass as well too. I think that helped. But if he can cut down the turnovers and attack the rim without fouling I think that would be a great offseason improvement for Carlton Townsend. He's had more offensive fouls than this in two seasons in his career just so you know. He had 68 in Minnesota in 2018-19. 77 games he played that year and 67 in 21-22. So this was the first year after COVID where we're back to 82 games after the two years where we weren't. 74 games 67 fouls and he commits at least 40 offensive fouls every season of his career except for two where he was really limited due to injuries where he only played 35 and 29 games in 2019-20 and 20-22-23. So you're looking for him to just cut it down from 65. Yeah that's like that's really it. Yeah. But this is the thing I'm curious to know where he is on like the all-time rankings in terms of offensive fouls committed. I should have dug that up. Because in 11 years he has 547. I don't know what that is relative to others but I'm sure it's not low on the list. Yeah I'm intrigued. All right who's your who's your top pick? Josh Hart. Josh Hart. Oh I wonder what you're gonna talk about with Josh Hart. It's simple. I kept a lot of mine simple. It's just the consistency from three. I had a feeling that's what it would be. And it's it's proving that it's legitimate because 41.3 percent on somewhat limited volume but legitimate volume at the same time. It was 100 for 242 okay during the course of a season. For Josh Hart like that's great. And per 36 is four and a half attempts per game. Which that's a reasonable sample size for somebody who is not a shooter quote-unquote. Like you just want him to be able to knock it down. Before that he was at like 33 percent and 31 percent in two other years with the Knicks before. Not including where he was shooting really well as soon as they traded for him but that was also limited sample. Like very limited and not in many attempts. But shot 39.6 percent from three as a rookie. 41 percent last year. He never was higher in his career other than 37 percent of one season. So eight percent better last year than the year before. That is something that needs to be a little bit more provable. Like can can this carry over to this year where look I'm expecting some sort of drop off from 41 percent. But if it's like 37 38 39 percent that's still really good. And I think I think for me it's like the willingness is always one thing that you're going to look at. But if the attempts stay the same and he's still knocking down 37 38 percent that'll tell me hey okay this is a real thing. Because honestly he needs this consistency from three to extend his career. Because we talk about like how is his playing style going to age because he plays so hard. But he's also very smart. He plays both ends of the floor. But that consistency from three is what could extend his career. Especially as he's playing for a new contract essentially. He has a team option for 27 28. We don't know what's going to happen there. If it gets accepted. Is it something that's going to be moved. Are you going to extend them. Are you going to like we don't know what his future is going to be. So if he can have another year where he shoots really well from three on top of doing all the other intangible Josh Hart things that people love about him then I think that will help extend his career too as he's already in his 30s. I like that one from you there too. I think the thing for Knicks fans too is they're going to want to see him shoot from three close as well in the playoffs because we saw a little streakiness with him. We saw it you know. But then we saw him have some big games. Game two against the Cavs is one that stands out and comes to mind. Josh Hart always hits the shots when he needs to. That's one thing I will say. But like you would like to see because there was a drop off from 41 percent in the regular season. 32 and a half. 32 and a half in the playoffs. There was a definite drop. On a similar volume. Some of that also I want to be clear is like you got to expect a drop off. You are playing better defenses. This is not like where you have games where you're playing the Kings. A lot of people, everyone's efficiency tends to drop in the playoffs. Now this also includes that game against Cleveland where he went crazy and still only was at 32 and a half percent. You won in spite of that. It has to be said. Because he does so much other good things. Right. That's something you do want to see. Like if he is a, doesn't have to be a knockdown three-point shooter, but he's a quality shooter. And teams have to be like oh man we can't leave him open. And then that opens up his drives and we know what he can do in transition or just attacking, getting downhill, finishing at the rim, drawing fouls, making plays for others. Not everyone's three-point shot is that important. His is. Like his can open up a lot of things. It's a game changer. Not everyone's. We'll get to somebody else later who may have established the corner three in his career where I don't think it necessarily matters that much. But you know Josh Hart, Josh Hart's a different story. I know who you're talking about. Okay so that was your second pick. Here's my second pick. OG Ananobi. And here's the thing with Ananobi. Because for years you've heard about he wants to do more offensively. He wants to do more off the dribble. And sometimes that hasn't always looked so good. Sometimes been a little bit of doing too much. But I thought he found a sweet spot in the playoffs. Because OG Ananobi at times was the next second best player for some games. I thought he really found a sweet spot where he was finding, and this was the improvement for me, is can he find easy offense without the ball while expanding isolation and off-dribble scoring. Right now when I talk about isolation off-dribble scoring, I don't want to really see OG Ananobi to tap the key multiple dribbles between the legs and making a move. Can it be one, two dribbles make a move, rise and fire, get to your spots. Can you get to your spots off the dribble and score efficiently. I still think OG Ananobi has that, that he can work in this game. He's been confident about it. He's been wanting to. Sometimes the handle gets a little wonky and you're like, I don't know. But I think those opportunities can become easier for him if he continues to do what we saw from him in the postseason, which was cutting beautifully. And we saw how many times we see Cat find him in the Atlanta series and he was just killing the Hawks backdoor. OG moved so well, also made great reads where he would drive baseline, overpower his man, go up off of two feet, banging it. We saw him do it on Wembley, right? You saw a lot of stuff like this. And when you look at him, he's so efficient in what he does. Cleaning the glass ranked him in the 92nd percentile among forwards in shots, points per shot attempt at 123.6, 54th percentile in usage, 40th percentile in assist percentage, and 40th percentile in turnover percentage. So this is a guy who's been extremely, extremely efficient on cuts. He was 1.53 points per possession in the postseason on cuts. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. This is because that was a stat. I was like, you know, it's one thing that I test said to you, this was good, but I was like, damn, how good was it? And a decent amount of those was the cat working out of the high post. And that was in the 87th percentile. Yeah. Almost 88th. It was that he was in, so it was crazy, crazy, crazy good. And when he does isolate, right, this is in postseason, 1.36 points per possession. That was in the 97th percentile. And for him, I mean, in general, that's really good, but for him, especially. The thing was, so I just want to say this before I move on to you. The thing I think that made it was that he made quick decisions. Yes. So like I said, he was, he was, it wasn't, oh, I'm going to hold this dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble. It was a quick move going up strong, beating this man, getting to the spot. And he was really, really, really good. You know? So when you look at the fact that, okay, he's already in a high level of efficiency among forwards to me, some people are going to look at that and say, oh, well, I want to see a scoring go up. The next step for him is getting more shots. And for me, it's like, no, it's about the diet and how much more efficient he can become with the isolation and with the cutting. So that's why I said, look, for me, it's getting easy offense without the ball. And then when you do have the ball, can your isolation be as effective with quick decisions as we saw in the post season? Yeah. And you know how, when you watch like NBA teams or college teams, WNBA teams workout. And a lot of times when they practice isolation scoring, they'll do it with the countdown. They'll do it with five seconds. They'll do it in limited dribbles. Like you could dribble two or three times. They'll count down five, four, three. Like I want to see how he does in those situations. Like if he gets the grenade and there's five seconds left on the shot clock, okay, what's the shot he creates? What does he do? I think maybe part of the next step for him too could be that in-between game that we've talked about with him. Cause obviously we know how he is in attacking the basket and cutting to the basket and obviously the three point shooting, but that in-between game, like that's something that could help him out as well. Though I don't think it's something you want to lean on a ton, but that that's an element. I think he's clearly, he's talented enough to add and refine a little bit as he ages. I like that one. All right. Who's your second pick? Deuce. Another, another easy one for me, just play-making. He's essentially a three and D point guard and he's six foot two. Is he a point guard? Well, you know, it's true. It's true because, but some of it's because of the lack of play-making. It's a valid point. Now on a, on a team with Jalen Brunson, you can kind of get away with that. You're going to be in lineups with Jose Alvarado, who's a legit point guard. You can kind of get away with that. But let's remember Deuce is also playing for a new contract. So this is more specific to almost Deuce than it is the Knicks. Deuce is playing for a new contract. Deuce is trying to get like a legitimate deal, whether it's staying in New York or somewhere else where he could potentially have bigger role. And if he's going to have a bigger role, it's going to have to do a little bit more with the ball in terms of proving that he's a playmaker. And he's not just a three and D guard who is six foot two, which teams may look at that and be like, I'd rather get a three and D guard who is, or a three and D wing who is six, six or six, seven or six, eight, as opposed to somebody who's six foot two, even though he's extremely complimentary and an on off monster, as we've talked about, but you're looking at it from your standpoint, just to be clear, you're looking at, okay, this is the off season improvement he has, this makes him more valuable. Yes, I got it. Yes. Because then, I mean, he, he is undoubtedly your six man, if that's the case, he probably is already. But there are going to be times as we saw in the playoffs where, hey, you may only play 14 or 16 minutes tonight if you just don't have it going. And if your defense is just not up to the level that you typically expect. In terms of assist percentage, last year, he was at 13.5, the league average is 16.2. To give people an example, or several examples of what that is compared to others, the league leader was Nicole Jokic at 50%, which is ridiculous. Right. And this is not assist per game, this assist percentage is different. Six in the league, Isaiah Collier, backup point guard, backup guard, 39, 39.2. Jamal Shedd, who's 19th in the top 20, 30.6. Both guys probably have reputations as maybe two of the better backup point guards in the league. Dennis Schroeder is another one who is a quality backup point guard, 29th, and he was 27.7. So like, Deuce is like not even really in the top 100. If you if you really look through it, or just like in that area, notable players with better assist percentage than him last season, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikael Bridges. Karl-Anthony Towns, when they weren't doing the- Right, most of the season, they weren't running at the top. Right, they weren't they weren't doing the cat hub offense. They weren't doing cat ball, as I call it. And then Mikael Bridges is another one. Kyle Filipowski, had a better assist percentage than Deuce McBride did. Wow, would not have guessed that. R.J. Barrett, old friend of the of the of the team, obviously. Collin Sexton, who- Was more of a shoot first. Who's more, yeah. Josh Hart, probably not as surprising. That's not surprising to me. Also, Reed Shepard. And Deuce McBride's basically where like Marcus Smart and Jordan Goodwin are. So I think that's something that, you know, I don't think he's averaged even three assists per game at any point in his career yet. And if he has, it's not much more than that. So I think that's something that like that's that's clearly the next step for me. It's just the play making. I like that. No, I like it. It's a good point. And I like that also it helps his value long term, whether with the Knicks or elsewhere, it would help the Knicks a ton too. 2.9. That's his career high. This leads me to my third pick, because you talked about a guard and mine is Jose Alvarado. Now, the thing for me with Jose is I need more consistency in certain things. This is more so going to go to outside shooting than anything, because the thing you do get with this man that you know you get, he's going to give you as much defensive effort as you can being another undersized guard that the Knicks have. He had moments of where he shot the ball really well when he first came to the Knicks. Then he had a valley and he was out of the rotation. And then he came back as Mike Brown trusted him. So again, we saw Jose in a... Which has happened in New Orleans before. Right. So we've seen the streakiness before too. No, you're right about that too. This wasn't a specific thing to the Knicks. He's had these peaks and valleys. The thing that you get consistently with him that you mentioned that you're not getting reduced is he's one of the best backup point guards in the league. He is going to take care of the ball. He is going to give you a high assist percentage. He ranked in the 93rd percentile in assist percentage here. His assist to usage ratio, which is the other thing you'd like to look at. Another state looked at how much is the ball in his hands coming off the bench and how much is he able to distribute? 95th percentile, right? His scoring efficiency only ranks in the 33rd percentile. And the reason is because you look at the numbers, you'll say, oh, he shot a little over 41% from the field. He shot around league average from three, but he also shot... The numbers did dip when he came to the Knicks. It came when he came to the Knicks. It started out really strong and then it dipped. This is also why it comes off the bench. And this is right. Now, when you look at his stats overall, you're like, this is fine for my backup point guard. Again, you can do a lot worse. I back a point guard and you can't probably actually do much better than I can get Jose Alvarado. And you know, you know, I love Jose. Yeah. So, well, you're going to wave, you're going to wave the Puerto Rican flag and all that. We understand you. But like, hopefully he plays in August. Streakiness, I can give you all those stats and streakiness is something that, you know, you see more with the eye test, you see the ups and downs and yet the numbers dip. And sometimes I want to give some, he came to a new environment, he's coming back home, he's getting adjusted and with a full training camp with him coming back, which is assigning you and I both love. Especially at that number. Yeah. I think what you want to see is, can you be a little bit more consistent with the shooting? The one thing I think, like I said, it's never going to waver with him is his ability to get others involved in the offense, distribute the ball. I mean, pretty much when he was out the rotation, there were times in the Atlanta, I remember sitting here with you in the Atlanta series in the first couple of games. And we were like, oh, this bench unit, the offense doesn't look good. Yo, bring Jose in and Mike Brown did that because Mike Brown is always willing to do that. And you saw how he was able to just change the vibe of the offense because he is a really, really good floor general as a backup point guard. If you could just hit the shots a little more consistently, not be a streaky and just keep it a little more level throughout the season. I think that's a huge improvement for Jose. Yeah. And he's not like a high assist guy either. You know what I mean? But he is a floor general. 3.4 last year, but he makes the right pass and feel the impact. He settles the offense. And this is something that I'd like to see Deuce do more often as a matter of fact, because I feel like low key, if you look at the bench and this was the case last year, and it worked out for them in the finals, Jose is like really important to that bench, really important because you don't have another like real point guard. I mean, Tyler Kolek, I suppose. But you know, that's if you trust him to play significant minutes. But Jose is like your lead guard coming off the bench. And that's what you sign for him to do. Which is also why I mentioned Deuce earlier. So yeah, I agree with all those points. I also think the shooting does have room to get better. Sure. It's not. It's fine. Yeah. He's around league average. But like. From three. But I think in general, the shot selection is fine. You know what I mean? It's just really, it's just a make or miss thing with him. Yeah. I don't think he takes bad shots. There's a very good awareness of self, of who he is and what shots he's taking, his diet. That's not the issue for me. It's just make or misses, like we're saying. And some of it's just, can you be a little bit more consistent? And we'll be good with that. Who do you have as your third pick? And clearly he cares about winning, which is the most important thing you want from a backup point guard coming off the bench. Moe Diawara. Oh, okay. So this should be interesting. Yeah, I mean. There's a lot of ways you can go with him. A lot of things you can go with him. You know, second year. A lot of things you can go and improve. And really, my answer probably would have been different of pre-summer league. But I do think, I don't want to overreact to what we saw. I do think the shot creation is going to be important. So I'm coming into the season while he's on the contract. I mentioned this already. He's been paid like a essentially late first round pick. Like he's not somebody who's making a ton of money. He doesn't have the type of contract where you absolutely have to play him or else. Let me just say one thing that you said just before you go. Just so we can add context for the viewers. You know, and I didn't find this. I think this came out recently. But he did suffer a fracture to his left ring finger during summer league. So I have a feeling you maybe didn't see that. I wonder how much of that impacted what we saw from him. Which ring finger? Left. I know it's not a shooting hand. Yeah. Still. I mean, ultimately. I just wanted to put that out there. But even in the regular season. So look, the highlights were better during the last regular season than they were in summer league, obviously. But we've talked about the role changes because in the summer league, you're the guy now. You're the guy that's being targeted. You don't really have, you didn't really have a point guard until KO started playing games. And then you saw how it looked. Even so, he had seven points in about 50 minutes of summer league play. It was just two games. Very tiny sample size. But he shot one from 14 and one from 10 from three. Like he couldn't have done much worse. Even with the injury. And the reason why I think this is going to be so important is because if you look at their bench unit, because the starting five is locked in. We know who's in it. If you look at their bench unit, you have Jose, you have Deuce, you have Landry Shamit. You have Andre Drummond for now as your backup center. You don't have another wing. So basically, it's either Mo Diawara or somebody we're going to get to later. Or maybe somebody we're not even going to talk about today. Like, that's it. You have no backup wing who's going to play like a ton of minutes. And you're putting a lot of faith into, obviously, Mikael Bridges' durability, which has been the case forever. He's never going to get injured. It's just not going to happen. And then OG Ananobi, who's had some injury issues, as we've noted, but has mostly been healthy, you know, recently. But with Mo Diawara, it's like, there's going to be a lot put on him if he's in the rotation in terms of being the only real, like, wing there. Like, true wing. Landry Shamit, to me, is still like a guard, for the most part. Obviously, he can guard up a little bit and Deuce McBride is very much a guard, as is Jose. So he's your only real wing with size. And the shot creation is going to be important, because when you look at the lineup, and yeah, they'll do some staggering, obviously. Like, if he's in the rotation, he'll be out there with, like, Brunson and Hart, you know, Cat. Like, that will help. But ultimately, I do think they need some creation coming off the bench. If you look at how Deuce McBride scores, how Landry Shamit tends to score, those guys aren't creating a ton of offense. Jose Alvarado's setting up some offense. He's not always going to break guys down off the dribble. You don't really have that coming off the bench. So that's where Mo Diawara could be the spark plug and potentially do that, because he has the talent to do it. And we saw it at times last year. So I think the shot creation is going to be really key for him specifically this year, taking that next step in his development. I agree. They need him. You can make an argument, his offseason improvement could be one of the most important on this, of these people that we've talked about. I would also, I love what you said about Deuce with the playmaking. So I would probably add that too. But I think his could be, it could be one of the most fruitful impacts to the way this especially on that contract too. Yeah, especially on this contract. It could be, it could be huge. All right. So my fourth pick, the guy you just mentioned, Landry Shamit. The improvement for me is, and let me start by this. The things we saw Shamit do amazingly well last year, obviously shoot the ball, obviously shoot the ball, move without the ball, hit some big shots, came back late in the season, was out the rotation, get great point, not great, but very good point of attack defender, and help defender also, and somebody who Mike Brown trusted a lot and was rewarded for that trust. Here's the thing. When you watch sports, and when you watch basketball in particular, people, there's people got tape on your game and the game, they know what you're going to do when they're going to try to take this away. Everybody knows that man is the shooter out there. And everybody's going to try to run him off the line. You're going to see, I think people are going to be more aggressive. We're trying to run Shamit off the line. So what does he do when that happens? Right? Is he able to make a dribble, make another move? Not just dribble, head fake, sidestep, and put up another three. Can you step in? Can you step in between the line? Are you comfortable to get maybe into the paint? Use the floater? Is that something? We haven't seen this from Shamit. That doesn't mean it's not possible. It should be something to me he's working on to try to get comfortable, because guys are going to aggressively try to run him off the line. Right? Especially because he's a guy that already runs around without the ball. He's going to make other guys work. So people are not going to want to see him get clean looks. And the other thing is most of the shot diet is threes. Yeah. So you would like to see something else in his shot diet when that's taken away from him. So those things take confidence, time, and reps. So you got to practice, you know, those one dribble pull-ups. Right? And again, not just sidestepping and then pulling up. Right? Are you willing to step in and go get a higher percentage shot? Are you willing to do that? Do you have the confidence to do that? Even off of doing that, it doesn't mean you have to take the shot. Could you step in, force the defense to collapse again? Can you kick it out? Those are things that I think you would like to do. Shamit's been an efficient player for them. I'm not asking him to change his game. I'm asking him to basically expand the value of his shooting is what I'm saying. Expand the value of your shooting without becoming a completely different player and understand what defenses are going to try to throw at you. And okay, you got to have the... We always talk about coaches. You got to have the counter to the counter and players have to have that too. Well, this is it. The counter is you have high energy. You run off. You get good looks from three off the screens. You'll be ready if it's open. People are going to be a little more aggressive with you. I can see this for Shamit this year. Now, what's his counter? To me, it's being able to put the ball on the floor. Either attack the rim, even if you do that. Or have a flow to have something. Where's the in-between game? You brought up an OG. Can you have an in-between game that really keeps defenses honest? Yeah. Adding versatility is never a bad thing. Nah. So never too. All right. Who's your fourth? That's also life advice. This is true. Mikael Bridges. I mean, what else can you say but just attack the rim? Like 20% of his shots. 20% of his shots came from three feet in last year. Which is actually his highest, believe it or not. In his career? No. Since 21, 22. In Phoenix, he was at like 38%, 27%, 28% of his shots coming three feet in. Knicks fans would go crazy if they got that 38%. Yeah. So 38 was one year. But there was a couple years where it was like in the high 20s. But that's really what it is. It's like it's attacking the basket and not just in transition. And the free throws, we talked about them all year. But it really is a thing. If I can run a couple numbers for you. 98 free throw attempts last season. And we know he played all 82 games. That's crazy. 98 free throw attempts. I remember the beginning of the year. I was like, oh, this is starting off good. He's getting to the line more. Yeah. 1.3 attempts per 36 minutes. 1.8 per 100 possessions. Less than two free throw attempts per 100 possessions is nuts. Also in the playoffs, 25 free throw attempts in 19 games. So I think that is going to be important for their regular season offense in terms of consistency. He doesn't need to get to the line like four or five times a game. I'm not saying that. He did that in Brooklyn or something close to that, at least around there. Right. But I don't know if it can continue to be that. You know what I mean? And just looking at how the regular season went and not much change in the playoffs. Things changed around him. And he was able to benefit from that. And he did have some really good games at different points in the playoffs. But for him, I think it's mainly just attacking the rim, getting those free throw numbers up that can add another element to the offense in terms of and including some of the other things we've talked about with, you know, Cat with the fouls and Josh Hart, you know, with the three point shooting, improving that's legitimate and OG with the in-between game. I think for McHale, the free throws would help, obviously, and not just fading away from 14 feet or getting to that sidestep pull up, you know, like in all these different combinations that he likes to do from that mid-range area. I think it shouldn't be a surprise for us when we see him attack the basket. And then it's like, oh, he went all the way to the rim. I said that a lot through the postseason because the times it happened, you were like, oh, man, I can't believe this happened. No, I agree. I think that would be nice. I feel like it can't be anything else. Yeah, I feel like that was the same with Cat. It couldn't be anything else. It's just an interesting thing to talk about. Yeah, they, yeah. Four attempts per game would be like, oh, that'd be golden. Given that you're getting one and a half per 36, not even one and a half per 36, I think you'll take three a game. Sure, sure, sure. Sure, I'll take three a game. All right. Three a game, you'll wind up with a lot more than 98 total on the season. I'll sign for that, sure. My fifth pick was a point guard on this roster, Tyler Colick. Now, look, this is a good one. We had the Colick hive out here in some of our shows. They went away with their tail between their legs. Yeah, I haven't heard from them. Oh, once Jose got it going. Here's the thing, if we're going to talk about Tyler Colick, we know what his elite skill is, and that is passing the ball. You'd love to sprinkle a little bit of his playmaking on the Dukes McBride. You would love to. Yeah. Right? You combine them. Yeah. This guy was, according to cleaning the glass, it's a 585 minute non-garbage time sample. We'll have it here. 94th percentile in assist percentage, right? Yep. 32.4%. Really good for a backer guard. 99th percentile in assist to usage ratio. The 1.61. Exceptional. Right? Fantastic. 10th percentile in turnover percentage. Could clean that up a little bit. That would be better. So that's one of my things. Cut down on the turnovers. I don't want to talk about what he does with the ball in his hands. What I want to talk about is how he gets better with the ball out of his hands on the other side of the ball. He's got to get stronger navigating screens, in my opinion, and seriously become a serviceable defender. Excuse me. Can't talk. Serviceable defender. Now, some people will look into individual defensive rating, a stat I don't like because it's way too based upon who you play with and what lineups you play with, and I could look at all the on-off data and that. But if you're just watching the games with the eye test, you can still see last year, and I went back and looked at some stuff, even early, even in the NBA Cup game, which he played really well. Final game, he played really well. You still see teams were still hunting him. We talked about this a ton at the time. And they will continue to do so. And they'll continue to do it. And some of it with him was, it's not effort. Because I know lack of effort when you see it in basketball. You can't hide that. It's just, it's strength. Some of it is you got to get a little stronger in fighting over screens because teams are going to come at him. And then when he gets open in space, moving his feet a little bit better, taking better angles on his defender. These are things that are going to keep on the court because the one skill, the passing, the setting teams up, and sometimes maybe not being a little careless because the turnover percentage got a little careless sometimes where that got exposed. But the passing is elite. The playmaking is elite. It's his elite skill. What keeps him out off the floor is lack of strength navigating screens and just defense. A lot of people are looking at him the way Jalen Brunson looked at James Harden in the first couple of games against the conference finals. They're looking at him that way, right? Like he's food. So you got to, he has to be better at it. And I look at it the same way as you. Kind of reduce. This is about what can improve Tyler Kolick's value. What can actually keep him on the floor, give him opportunities. It's defense. Everybody's going to point to offense. It's defense with Tyler Kolick. It is nothing more than that. Because he actually shot the ball pretty well. And you saw that. Limited sample. Limited sample size. He shot the ball fine. Three-point shooting was fine. He took good open shots. Up and down, but yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it would be like the in-between game or the floater stuff where he missed some at the rim where you thought he could be better because he's not really an elite finisher at all. But forget all that. It's the defense that you're really going to look at. Look, he played 62 games last year. Shot 43.5% from the field. 4.4 points, 2.7 assists. Defense. Defense, defense, defense. Get stronger navigating those screens. Get better defensively. And I think you can find time for Tyler Kolick on the floor. If he were a better pervert or defender, they might not make the Jose trade. Facts. You know? Facts. I think the front office- But it's the whole reason we wanted him to get Jose. And it's the whole reason that I think, kind of like what we'll see maybe with Andre Drummond this year, we had a trial of, can Tyler Kolick actually win the backup point guard spot? Yep. And even despite the highs that he had, it was still the same story on defense for the most part. Yep. So then they were like, all right, we need somebody more reliable. Bang, here comes Jose Alvarado. Facts. Like, this is why I'm also speaking about it from a player's perspective, not just from a standpoint of evaluating the Knicks. It's also from the standpoint of like, I'm trying to get these players paid more. Yeah, you want- No, but that's what's going to get him the next contract. Tyler Kolick got two years left on his contract. That fourth year will likely be accepted. The team option year. Because it's such a low number. So as a result, you are extension eligible next summer, Tyler Kolick. Next summer, you're extension eligible. So I think with that being said, I don't know if he's going to get that because I don't know if he'll have the opportunity to prove it. He may end up just being a trade chip. We might not see much of him this year. I don't know. But if you're at another destination, if you're at your next destination, Tyler, the defense is going to be what gets you paid and the consistency with the jump shot too. Yeah, it's what's going to matter. All right, who's your fifth pick? Fifth, almost last, but not quite. Um, Pacom Dadi. Ah, your boy. This is, uh, I don't know if this is a really good answer or bad answer, but this is really interesting. Become playable is really what it is. Wait, offseason improvement. Become playable. Because- Which is how? Because there are many things that can get him there. It is, but it has to be because he's been there for two years and hasn't been in the rotation. And there have been opportunities to put him in the rotation. We've not seen that yet. This is Brian Sanat. Do something. Pacom Dadi, do something. Yeah, I'm the dude with the stick and the meme, you know, poking at the dead body there. Um, yeah, it's just become playable because Tom Thibodeau, no surprise, didn't see a reason to really play him last year. And with Mike Brown, we know that they tried to showcase him. That didn't necessarily work. And then he was on the bench again. He has a $5.3 million option for 27-28. We've talked about this. Halloween is the deadline for that to be accepted. And you and I don't think it's going to be, which means Pacom Dadi could be entering this season pending free agency in 2027. Like this, like he could be a free agent after this year. And if you're a first round pick, you never want to have that last year option decline because your value immediately goes here. It goes straight down. You could be redeemable potentially, like a Jalen Smith was and become a decent role player in spite of that at times, but still it is what it is. They have until about Halloween to decide that. And it's like, whether it's the shooting finally comes around because it hasn't that any level yet, whether he levels up defensively and is able to guard wings guards, is able to switch on multiples positions, potentially maybe even guard some fours because he has the height to do it at the very least. Whether it's, you know, he adds a level of playmaking, whether it's like secondary playmaking, whether it's cutting, which probably the thing that you and I were impressed the most with in the summer league was how he moved without the ball. Yeah. And also the rebounding, like whatever it is, he just needs to produce. And he actually has an opportunity because Mo Diawara is not set in stone yet. Like I know he got paid, but he didn't get paid that much. Like it's, he's a beatable guy. And I think to me, if I'm just looking at this roster, to me, you have your starting five set. We don't need to name all of them. You guys know who they are. You have Jose Deuce, Landry Shamit, Andre Drummond. That last spot needs to be a battle between Pacom Dadier and Mo Diawara, not just handed to Mo Diawara. Pacom Dadier has to make that a fight. He's fighting, he more than anybody else on this roster is fighting for his career. Yeah. More than anybody. Tyler Kolek might be second on that list. Yeah, I'd put him number one. But Pacom Dadier is fighting for his career with a team option at 5.3 million next year. That probably won't be exercised given what we've seen and what we haven't seen so far this year. How that, to your point, how that will get exercised is by him, what'd you say? Find a way to be playable? Be playable. Be playable if he has a great training camp and let's say he beats out Diawara. Well, now you give the team something to think about. I'm not saying they will pick up the option. I'm saying you give them something to think about. And it's a good problem for the Knicks to have because it's like you still have Mo Diawara under contract. He's really, really young. Dadier is really young too. Some wings take a longer time to figure it out than other positions. But he needs to be at the point where Mike Brown's like, I gotta find 12, 14, 15 minutes for this guy. I hope he has it soon. It would be a good problem to have. I hope it happens. All right, my last pick that I made was Jordan Clarkson. The improvement for me with Jordan Clarkson is improve his catch and shoot three-point shots. The veterans are always the tricky ones, but this one makes a lot of sense. Jordan Clarkson, now you have to have context with Clarkson talking about last year. Shot over 32% from three, okay? 45% from the field. He really reinvented himself. He really didn't shoot a lot of threes toward the end of the season. There was a time between, I don't remember what game it was in the playoffs. He hadn't hit a three since March 20th of the season. I remember when he hit a three, which I think came against Cleveland when he finally hit a three. It might've been San Antonio. I think it was against Cleveland. I think he had a second one against San Antonio. He just wasn't even taking them. Yeah. Okay? He was what he was doing well defending, probably better than I'd ever seen him defend in his career. And he was giving the Knicks another option of a person who could just get into the paint. Yes. And get those sprays, as Mike Brown likes to say. Yeah. He was just getting these paint touches and he was really helping the team. Now, in the post-season, the shooting from three was almost non-existent, but it wasn't good. Limited sample size, 21%. Okay? You want him to do, what I'm asking for is, can you be a more efficient bench player? And this is a guy we're talking about. I don't want to go too crazy. He's going to be the 10th man on this team. Right? Maybe. I mean, he should be the 11th man. Because Dadier and, I mean, Clarkson's not a backup four. No, and there's sometimes, basically what I'm saying is, you're right, probably more the 11th man. Sometimes he's not going to play. Yeah. And he's known this. We talked about this when we talked about this in free agency. He knows this. But when he does play, I need it in a situation, can you hit the corner three? Can you get some catch and shoot opportunities? Especially for other guys, he's playing like off of a Jose or somebody like that, that can help. Even a Tyler Kolek, if he's out there, that can help. This is going to help this Knicks team a lot, if he's able to hit some threes. Yeah. You don't want the 21% from downtown that you saw in the postseason. Yeah. Now I do like things about how he was playing, because I thought he still is another guy. If he gets the ball in his hands, he can get to the paint, make some things happen. But if he can stretch the floor a little more for the Knicks, that really helps him. So for me, it's real simple. I'm not going to go too long. Catch and shoot threes, be better at them, take them, and help the Knicks by being efficient from downtown. If he does that, and when he plays, I think it's huge for this team. I even think they could still use his creativity. Especially if... Oh yeah, I think so. Especially if Deuce and Shamit don't add to their shot creation, Deuce in particular. They may need Clarkson maybe a little bit more than we think, at different points. Especially if somebody goes down. He's kind of next guard up, but we'll have to see how that goes. All right, who's your last pick? Andre Drummond. There's nobody else on the board. Similar to Fekom Dariye, be playable, but be playable in the spring. That's the key. But that's the thing everybody wants to see. That's the key. Like, Andre, my third overall pick in terms of playing for his career. But he's done a lot, so like, you know, like... He's at a different stage. Stages are different. Him and Clarkson are at the point where any year could be the last year for them. Like, any year at this point. With Andre Drummond, who is right now the backup center on the roster, he needs to hold that spot down. Because we've seen some examples in the NBA where a backup center gets brought in, and the team has an entirely different backup center toward the end of the year. One example that comes to mind are the heat of a few years ago where they signed Dwayne Dedman after he had a good year post-COVID. Then he was terrible. And then they got Cody Zeller and Kevin Love. And obviously, Kevin Love was like the starting four. But like, they figured it out and ended up going to the finals because of that. Dedman was awful with them. Indiana, when they went to the finals, they played with that backup center spot as well. Because there was Thomas Bryant, there was Tony Bradley. Like, they kept flipping back and forth. They tried different things. So like, Drummond, to me, it's like, hold that spot down. Because your career, what's left of it depends on it. I don't care about the quarter three. I know a lot of Knicks fans are like, yo, he can shoot now, whatever, whatever. He was 32 for 90 from three last year. He never took up, by the way, 35.6%, which is about league average, not bad. Especially for somebody who doesn't shoot them. He's never taken more than 38. But like, I don't care who's out there with Andre Drummond. If the offense is, hey, Andre Drummond's gonna get a bunch of corner threes. Every defense in the NBA will be like, all right, cool. Like, that's why I don't care about the corner three. It's not actually doing anything to the defense. It's a nice break glass in case of emergency. Right, it's a nice wrinkle. If you can make the shot with four seconds left, Jalen Brown will pat you on the ass and be like, good shot. We're running back on defense. But if they're staggering a lineup, and it's Jalen Brunson, it's Deuce McBride, it's Landry Schammett, it's OG, and it's Andre Drummond, they'll welcome the Andre Drummond corner three, the opposing defense. They're like, we'd rather him shoot than anybody else there. That's why I don't care about the corner threes like that. Like, yeah, it's cool. And on 2K, his three-point rating will probably not be that bad. It might be like a 77 or something like that. Somebody on 2K is gonna play in parking. You know what I mean? But like, I just, it's whatever. Like, to me, it's like, he has the rebounding credentials. You deem that. He's mainly there for rebounds. You want him to finish around the rim. You want him to finish around the rim at a high rate, which he's done in the past. And that touch has to be there. But you really need to just hold down that backup center spot. Because if they're scrambling for a backup center, then that could, this roster is not right now built for a problem at backup center. Before you had Mitchell Robinson. No, the third center is gonna be. Right. Before you had Mitchell Robinson, obviously, and even that was an adventure, given the availability questions, how limited he was in terms of minutes. Andre Drummond, we know in space, defensively is an adventure. That's another thing. He has to protect the paint and also be able to survive in space. Like, you're losing a lot with Mitchell Robinson. That being said, Drummond, I think, has the basketball IQ to figure out how to make this work. It's just the body has to be willing also, not just the mind when you're at this stage of your career. I'll say this real quick, and then we're gonna do one more wrap. I'm very confident that if we're sitting here in December. They'll make something happen. Yeah, and we're just like, you know, you've got through the, whatever, the NBA cup. We're just looking at each other like, that doesn't look good. Let me ask you this. I think they will make something happen. Let me ask you this because of what you've intimated a couple of different times the past few weeks. If I made you give a prediction, do you think Andre Drummond is the backup center where we're heading into the playoffs next year? I do not. I didn't think you were. I'm not trying to. I don't, I don't. I just don't think so. I don't think so. I think he's gonna get you through the regular season. And I think the Knicks have been proactive. But you don't think he's gonna get you through the regular season if you're saying they're gonna make a move at some point? Because what I'm saying is, I'm just going off of what this front office has done. They've been proactive at times. And Sixers fans could not stand him. When there's been needs, and they've made that December trade, you know, they're going for Derrick Rose. I know this is a different iteration of where the Knicks were, as opposed to doing that. You did it last year with Yabusele. Right. And then turning that and picks Daylon Terry. And then you end up getting Jose Alvarado. I could see a December trade. I could see it. Like, I could see it. I could see them being like, okay, we've seen 25, 30 games of this. We have enough to be like, that ain't gonna work against the league. They added six second round picks. Yo, I, like, would it surprise you if, it's, it's like, you probably wouldn't even trade Drummond at that point because I don't know what other team is, I think they'll kick down the Yves Misey door again. Yeah, like, it'll be some form, Kolek, Kolek, Dadier, one or both of them, a bunch of the second round picks. Or here's the other thing, and I won't go too long, because we'll get into this later. The other thing is, you suggested this. You were the one who said this. They either sign another guy, like a Nick Richards, who's still a free agent out there, or somebody else, another guy to come in and compete at training camp. And we'll see. So we're penciling him a backup center right now because he's on the roster. But I think there's going to be a competition. I have a feeling that I'll get to media day in early October, and Mike Brown is like, no, nothing's settled at backup center. We have a competition, and I will like it, and I will welcome it, and I think that's a good thing, good problem to have. There's been under-the-radar signings deep into August and even September that have made impact. Listen, would I be feeling better had the Mavericks not matched the offer sheet from Ustasey? Yes. But I think that... That's a good indicator. Yes, that's my point. That indicator was like, oh, they know that this isn't secure and we need to sure things up. That was the tell for me. To the point of going out and looking for a restricted free agent. That's the tell for me. So if you see that, that tells me all I need to know, right? That action told me how the Knicks look at this and how they're probably going to play going to training camp and how they might play it with an early seed. Right. They got their eye on this, people. That's what I'm saying. I don't care about the corner threes. Yeah. All right, last thing. We left the captain off of this, Jalen Brunson. Now... Nothing. Some of you are going to say, well, what are you going to tell Jalen Brunson to improve upon? He won Finals MVP. He was Eastern Conference Finals MVP. He's the Knicks' best player. His number's going up in the Raptors. We know all this. It's true. But... He could retire now and be set. But I'll tell you this. If Jalen Brunson was sitting right here, Jalen Brunson would be sitting here saying, oh, this stuff I can improve on. There's always something I can improve on my game. Right? There's always a way to get better. Yeah, but what do you think he would actually say? Curiosity. Is he going to say what you're going to say? Yeah, he might say what I'm going to say. Okay. I think he might. I think, and my thing for me with him is, and we talked about this a lot during games, sometimes you'd watch stuff and there'd be Jalen Brunson turnovers and there's Jalen Brunson. That's really not a good turnover because you were trying to do a little bit too much. And I think for him, it's more so, and we saw in the postseason against better defenses, when teams are really aggressive and trapping, sometimes like either over-dribbling, not giving it up to get it back a little bit later, just passing a little bit better through some situations where he's trapped, or pressure if you want to call it. I think he could, I think that can get better than him where he can cut down a couple of turnovers. Now look, I also want to add context. Sometimes I see this stuff and I see it happen with him and I saw in the postseason, I'm like, that's a product of his height against the length that's being sent against him. So I do understand that all these situations aren't the same because I do think Jalen Brunson, I know sometimes people may say they want to see the assistant numbers go up and I'm sure you and I would like that a little bit too. Yeah, we've talked about that. But I think some of it could even be better if some of the turnovers, especially where he's trapped and pressured or sometimes dribbled into the sideline, things that I know he's been better. And the reason I say this is I've seen Jalen Brunson in the locker room after games where he's had high amounts of turnovers, talk about that. Like you can see he's mad at it. This would probably be his answer. Yeah, I should be better. I should cut those turnovers down because he understands that the game of basketball is about winning possessions and valuing those possessions. So if I go and say this about Cat with him attacking the rim, the same applies to Jalen Brunson. The Knicks can become a better team if they just are better at taking care of the ball. And they're one of the better teams in the league at taking care of the ball, to be clear. But it can always get even better. You want more chances to win possessions. So for me, it's like cut down the turnovers a little bit. The silly turnovers too, especially when pressure comes. Be better against passing when it comes to passing against traps and pressure. That's mine. Yeah, I agree with that, honestly. Like that should be it. You know, like we could talk about defense. We could talk about the playmaking. I feel like everyone will. And I think those things are a little too obvious. Like granted, yes, the assist percentage, as I talked about earlier with Deuce, is actually down to 31%. It was 32% before that. It was 33% before that. So like that is something that's dropped a little bit, but that's still like well, well, well above league average. It's better than some of the other guys I've talked about. Like it's actually higher in the NBA than you would think, given that he has a reputation for being a very much score first point guard. But and it was down to 27.7 in the playoffs. We saw why that was the case. You know, like he kind of needed to put the team on his back more than you may have thought going in, but they won a title. So it is what it is. I agree. I think it's mainly that. It's the turnovers and the timing of somebody's turnovers. Yeah, but because they were so elite in the fourth quarter, they were able to navigate that glowingly. That's another thing, though, this year, like I know they're going to have that mindset and being the fourth quarter team and whatnot, but I mean, can you do that again for a second straight year? It's going to be very difficult, especially when you were the best fourth quarter team by margin, like by an entire point, basically, than everyone else. I think you can. I think it can become part of your identity. The caveat I will say to that is you can do it again, but you can't get down as big as you did again. Like ranking on that is a lot. I do think there's an identity to that. Especially when we talk about film being put out on you. Teams will get in the lab, probably already have, and we'll figure out what are they doing in the fourth other than wanting it more. Yeah, but you know what? You know what's funny? It's so funny you say that. The other day I turned on and I was watching game one against Cleveland in that fourth quarter comeback. And no, because I had something and I was glad I watched it because something that stood out to me as I was watching, I was like, damn, they were so good at taking care of the ball in this comeback. And of course the Cavs did everything wrong and your boy didn't call timeouts and all that other stuff. Three of them. Right? But the Knicks did a fantastic job taking care of- I do like Kenny. Of the ball, particularly Brunson in that, who was in attack mode. Yeah. He did a fantastic job of taking care of the ball. Now you saw Harden- As his usage was going up. Yes, which was wildly impressive. It was almost one of these things that just really stood out to me. So I think they have the profile to do it. Even other players took very good care of the ball, hit their free throws. There was just a lot that went well for the Knicks and a lot that went wrong for the Cavs. But the Knicks made the most of their possessions, which is the point I'm making before. When you make the most of your possessions, you could almost, you saw it again. I hadn't rewatched that game in a while, just how the confidence was increasing. And so yes, I think when they get into tight games in the fourth quarter and the post-season next year, will the confidence level be high? Yes. You just want the games to be tight. You don't want to go down 22 and 29 again. And Jalen Brunson as a leader, captain and point guard, you want him to be the guy who's setting the tone. And it's difficult to do that if you're turning the ball over. Not that his turnovers are where prime James Hardens were, but at the same time, yeah. If you're going to point out anything, that's probably the main thing. I think even he would say- I think he would. Yeah, I think even he would say, got to take care of the ball better if they're not in those positions at the end of games where they have to claw back because it does get tiring after a while. Absolutely. I agree. All right, that's going to do it. I think we had some good off-season improvements for all of the Knicks players. We'll see what the Knicks do, what players do improve on this. Let us know what off-season improvement that we mentioned do you think is most likely to happen, right? What do you think is not most likely to happen? What improvements do you think the Knicks players need to make this off-season? Yeah, we'll probably get some interesting answers. There'll be some interesting ones. Look, this is the time players should hopefully, you know, we always say it, hopefully they're in the lab cooking up what they need to cook up with their games. Improvement isn't always linear, but you have a chance to do it in these off-seasons. And for some guys, which I do agree with Brian, some off-seasons can be bigger than others. So we're going to see. That is my guy, Brian Fonseca. I'm Dexter Hamley. We'll catch you next time on another edition. And thanks for watching New York Cup game.