Knicks, Josh Hart, Julius Randle discussed on Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
I want to talk about Chris herring's favorite team, the New York Knicks, they are surging right now. Winners of 9 in a row, they are sitting in the number 5 seed at the moment in the Eastern Conference. They just won a thriller in Boston a couple of days ago, being the Celtics in double overtime. Manual quickly, a tour de force in that game, just a ridiculous performance by Emmanuel quickly. The Knicks are in, I believe, as we speak, the top 5 or 6 in offensive rating, they are top 15 in defensive rating. They're playing with confidence, they have all stars and Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle, Julius Randle rather Dylan Brunson on that level. I guess the question I'm going to ask you herring is that two years ago we kind of saw this, right? We saw a great Knicks regular season team. Is this team different? Does this team have playoff success potential or at least more playoff success potential than the team we saw a couple of years ago? Yes, just to put it bluntly, yes. I think two things. One, yes, they are not an elite team defensively on paper. They are a lot more formidable when Mitchell Robinson is there. And he missed a lot of time and they were playing 500 ball. During the time he was out, which for them is not bad, but they are an elite team, defensively, especially now with Josh Hart. They've got so many wings they can throw out there. That are disruptive. They've got everybody kind of playing on a string, playing hard. Hot heart was a sneaky good pickup. Josh Hart. Thank you. He was. And to Chris point, I don't give a damn the Knicks win, lose, what have you, but I do pay more attention to them just by having covered them before. I follow so many Knicks fans who were kind of like angry that the Knicks were giving up on reddish, angry that they're giving up first to get Josh Hart, and I was like, have you watched him play? Like the team struggled particularly with Mitchell Robinson was out with rebounding. Josh Hart is great at rebounding. He's great and transition. He was one of the best single transition players in the league just coast to coast. He's a guy that hustles like he's Tom thibodeau's fever dream. Like he's perfect for them. And that's even if he's not shooting well, he has a role on that team. Not to mention that I think advertently inadvertently he's someone that went RJ Barrett is shooting you out of a game that you can plug in. And it puts pressure on RJ Barrett that he doesn't just have carte blanche to shoot poorly to not play with effort. It is a great pickup for them. And so I think the addition of him and their rotation, Quentin Grimes has obviously been there. It also puts pressure on him from time to time when he's not playing well. You know, you don't have to use Barrett, who was shot poorly at times, but has been okay lately. And, you know, to the other part of Chris's question, do they have more of a ceiling than last time, yeah, they have a point guard now. They don't have to rely on Derek rose playing 35 minutes in a playoff game off the bench or having to start him all of a sudden when he's come off the bench all season because you have Alfred Peyton as your point guard.