Big wise, rob Mahoney, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me on this festive occasion. The greatest holiday of the year. In argument, inarguable. Aren't you? It's the hands down. It's not even. It's completely centered around food and comfort. I don't know what more you could possibly want. Comfort, family, you know, yeah, it's the best. I mean, I might argue that those are aspects of every holiday. And what we have with Thanksgiving is just dinner. Is there anything special in addition to that? I mean Christmas is not about family. It's about price couching and $700 flights to New York or maybe I'm just talking about my own personal problems. And the problems of Christmas itself. I just want to show up and eat or make my food and eat without the pressure of having to buy other people gifts. That's what I want. Okay, that's fair. I love this. And ball finds energy style of a holiday tidings we have here to open up this. This is good. All right, so this is the potluck we've done this once before a couple of years ago. But the shtick here is that everybody is bringing to the metaphorical table. One team they want to discuss one player and then one take, let's start with the team portion and let's start was with your man on the New York streets, just POV on the New York knickerbockers. Things have been a little dicey lately, but they did win last night. So where are you on everything? Where do you want to start with them? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, guys. After a 5 and one start, I'm basically convinced that the Knicks are a play in team. There's 6 in the conference right now. There's at least four teams behind them that I think are gonna leapfrog them sixers, bucks, obviously the hawks, and I think a missing one more in there who I think is going to leapfrog them. But, you know, they're ten and 8 right now. They're about to play Brooklyn, the hawks. They got a crazy schedule coming up. They're about to be something like ten and 12. You know, they're playing as well as they can, right? I think they updated upgraded their talent in the off season, their a more well rounded offensive unit this year, but the defensive magic has kind of run out their 17th in the defensive efficiency right now. That's not gonna cut it for a group that relies upon Julius Randle for consistent high end offense. I just see it as a play in team. I know Knicks fans because I know a lot of them were expecting a lot more especially after the way they came out the gate, but I'm not seeing it for them. You know, much has been made about the starting lineup just thinking up the joint and recent weeks. I think that'll improve itself with minor tweaks, RJ Z in a horrible shooting slump, which again, another thing I think will even itself Fauci, I don't think he's gonna shoot 31% from three all season. I just think that Nick sir, you know, we're running up the Middle Eastern Conference team. They'll fight for that tenth seed and move on. Let's talk about the disparity, though, because this is the big talking point for probably about a week now here. Basically, the plus minus and eyeballs quite frankly have shown that the bench is a huge plus the starting lineup is a huge negative. Rob, is there any specific thing going on there that's leading to that as a specific players or is this just I don't know what's going on there? Well, I think this is where those two conversations come together that was outlined. There's the defense not holding up this season. There's the starter's not holding up this season. These are one and the same in a lot of ways. And it's a case where guys like us are on podcasts or writing articles about how, oh, this offense first team needs to level out, get more defense. This defense first team needs to get more scores. It kind of feels like they zagged a little too hard in their starting lineup toward trying to get offensive talent, but they haven't actually gotten the benefit of that offensive talent. Like Kemba has not delivered in the way that he needs to, which puts a lot of pressure on Evan four and a all of a sudden. So if those guys aren't scoring for you, we know they're not defending for you. And that's where that opening 5 against the best players in the NBA just has not been able to stop anybody. Well, here's my question because Kemba among all of the starting players has been the biggest negative. He's a -12.4 net rating. I think it's worse among all of the regulars on the Knicks. Is it as simple as just demoting Kemba either to the bench or maybe even to just like spot duty? Maybe to third point guard, dude, because it's not like they don't have options. Derrick Rose didn't play last night against the Lakers, but he does have a stabilizing effect for this team. Can he be in the starting lineup and then can a menu quickly come off the bench or can quickly start and rose still come off the bench? I don't know, I feel like there's still a move here before we can say that this unit as in a whole, all 5 parts of this is the problem. I think there might be a move here with a different coach, but he likes his old guys. He's gonna play the proven vets. He's not gonna start Emmanuel quickly over kimber walker. It'll be a cold day in hell before that happened, right? And so I don't think the fixes are there and then of course there's his just devotion to always playing a traditional big man, right? You never gonna get Randall at the 5. So maybe if Randall was playing around a lot more spacing him not making those really tough shots that he made all of last season wouldn't be such a problem, but I don't see tibbs changing the way that he plays. They're going to play too big at all times, and they're going to play the vets. The only caveat to that is that the only thing that Tom thibodeau loves more than a veteran is a veteran named Derrick Rose. And so you could quickly judge just based off last season. How long it took for quickly to even get consistent minutes? Right. Crazy. Crazy. And they brought in Derek rose as competition for those minutes mid season. I could see rose getting that promotion at some point, but I think this is where it gets a little sticky politically speaking. With a veteran guy with a proven guy, 20 games into a season, I think it would be a hard sell to pull that plug. Unless you're ready to just cut bait on that relationship. But I think they're going to need Kemba in some capacity. And I think they're going to need to play a wait and see a longer game to see if maybe something with the starting lineup can come together. Yeah, and Kemba did leave money on the table, got out of his deal with the thunder specifically to come to the next. He signed a relatively bargain deal, so I wonder if there was some sort of agreement made. But I guess it's a good way to talk about the other guys in this starting unit because as waz kind of alluded to, RJ Barrett has just been brutal. It seemed like he was ready to turn the corner. He had like three really good games where it's just like 35 against the pelicans. That was nice. We found out that maybe it was just like the competition there because over his past 9 he's shooting about 30% from the floor. I'm still decent volume on 13 shots of game. So he's still getting fed, but he's just not shooting well enough. Do we think, I don't know, do we think that there's something up with his shot? Do we think it was just fool's gold? This like the flashes we've seen for him, the season and maybe even last season. What do we think? I mean, you follow guys that are covering the team like.