A few notes from the Knicks’ loss to Toronto on Thursday:
This year, maybe more than others, there are many NBA-ready free agents looking for jobs. If you watched the Knicks shoot 3-for-36 from three on Thursday and are wondering whether they’re looking to add any shooting, keep mid-January in mind.
Entering the season, some Knick decision-makers wanted to assess the roster at the 15-20 game mark before considering any roster changes.
That doesn’t mean that the roster is going to change at the 15-20 game mark. It just means that the Knicks, entering the season, wanted to take a few weeks to assess the roster before considering any moves.
New York currently has 15 players and two two-way players on the roster. So the club would need to release a player to add a free agent.
The Knicks are without several guards due to injury (Immanuel Quickley, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr., Alec Burks) at the moment, but none of the injuries are believed to be significant.
QUICKLEY CONTINUES TO PROGRESS
Immanuel Quickley missed Thursday’s game, but it sounds like he’ll be back on the floor soon.
“Each day he’s done quite a bit more, more contact, that sort of thing,” Tom Thibodeau said Thursday. “He’s not quite there so we felt let’s wait another day or two and see what it looks like.”
The Knicks play Indiana on Saturday and then Atlanta on Monday.
Smith Jr. will re-join the Knicks during their road trip but will need to work on his conditioning once he’s cleared for practice.
“It’s a contusion that’s pretty deep,” Thibodeau said. “So once he’s ready to go, there’s the conditioning part of it, which is important. So we have to get him back into practice and work on that as well.”
THIBS’ PHILOSOPHY ON THREES:
On New Year’s Eve, the Knicks gave their fans one final reason to hate 2020.
New York had one of the worst-perimeter shooting nights in NBA history on Thursday.
Their starters went 0-for-23 from beyond the arc, setting an NBA record for futility.
ESPN Stats & Information says no NBA starting five has ever shot more threes in a game without a make. Reggie Bullock (0-for-9) and RJ Barrett (0-for-8) became the first pair of teammates to go 0-8 or worse from beyond the arc, per ESPN.
This was John Starks Game 7 bad.
Watching from the sidelines, Thibodeau said he thought the Knicks took mostly high-quality attempts. But he wanted to watch the tape before he made a final assessment.
“I think we were shooting 47 percent from three the first four games and we got high-quality shots (during those four games),” Thibodeau said. “I thought we got high-quality shots again tonight. But again, I want to look at the film before I comment further on that.”
The Knicks came into the game as the league leader in three-point percentage. They certainly regressed to the mean against Toronto. After his 0-for-8 Thursday, Barrett has missed 21 straight threes overall; he’s 3-for-24 on the season.
The Knicks were missing Burks and Quickley due to injury. Both players project to be among the club’s top three-point shooters.
One positive for New York heading into 2021? The Knicks defended well for much of the game against Toronto. New York held the Raptors – who were without Pascal Siakam - to 32.7 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Toronto shot 41 percent overall.
“You hold a team like that to 100 points, you should have a shot to win it,” Thibodeau said. “If we would have made some of our threes, we probably would have had a good chance to win it. Our defense is something that we have to continue to work on. Containment on the ball, ball pressure. We’re not perfect. I think if we put forth the effort, we fly around, put pressure on the ball and our weakside is aware, we can cover up from mistakes.”
According to NBA.com, New York ranks ninth in defensive rating entering 2021 – one spot behind the Brooklyn Nets.
With regard to the Knicks’ three-point shooting, Thibodeau doesn’t have a problem with his club taking a ton of threes – as long as they are quality shots.
“If you get the right play, if you get the movement, if you force the defense to collapse, you kick it out, and if one of your shooters is open, that’s all I go by,” Thibodeau said in response to a question after the Knicks missed 33 of 36 3-point attempts on Thursday. “When you rate your shots, which we chart and rank, if it’s a high percentage play, before you know what the result is, what you try to determine is if it’s a good shot or not. So if a guy’s wide open, there’s no one within five feet, you gotta shoot it.”
