Lethargic Knicks Lose Another Home Game

Was the increased playing time for the Knicks key cogs over the past six week a factor in their poor performance Wednesday night? Are we allowed to acknowledge that's a possibility?

Competing in an NBA game is tough and taxing, especially in today's NBA, which features far more possessions per contest than in years/decades past. 

I'll dedicate a whole column to this at some point soon, but it's why comparing playing 40 minutes in the 1990s to playing 40 minutes in 2023 is a false equivalency. 

On Tuesday, former coach and current analyst Stand Van Gundy tweeted: "90's NBA teams had just a trainer and a strength coach, they practiced more often and harder and played more back to backs. Teams now have huge medical & "performance" staffs and value rest over practice. Yet injuries and games missed are way up. Something's not working!"

Well, an average game during the 1998-99 season featured fewer than 90 total possessions. This season, an average contest consists of more than 100 possessions. That's nearly a full quarter of additional wear and tear on a player's body, against athletes who are typically quicker and stronger than they were 25 years ago. 

Now, I know that even mentioning playing time will lead to the cool kids calling me the "minutes police," but I do think it's worth discussing. 

Prior to Wednesday's game vs. the Wizards, when asked about sticking with a nine-man rotation, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau replied: "I know you guys like to create the narrative for your stories, and you don't look at it in totality. I don't think we have anyone in the top 20 in minutes played. So it is what it is. I think you look at the people in your division and your conference. You look at how they're playing their guys. More often than not, you're thinking about the matchups going into the game. When this guy's on the floor, we're going to have this guy matched up with him. So that's what you're doing."

I've seen Thibs and other Knicks beat reporters retort in a similar fashion, pointing to players' MPG over the entire season. To me, the fact that no Knick is in the top 20 highlights just how many minutes they've logged since December. Heading into last night's game vs. Washington, only three players averaged more than 39 minutes per game in 2023. Two of them are Knicks (Brunson and Randle). Over the past month, five of the 40 players in the NBA averaging 35+ minutes per game were Knicks (Randle, Brunson, Barrett, IQ and Grimes).

Over the first six weeks of the season, Randle averaged 33.1 minutes per game. Over the past six weeks, he's north of 39 MPG. 

Over the season's first six weeks, Brunson averaged 32.5 MPG. He's played at least 38 minutes in every game in January and is averaging more than 40 minutes a night since returning from his hip injury. 

That doesn't necessarily mean that Thibs should be excoriated for his rotation decisions. But making the argument that New York's winning streaks in late December and early January (against an easy stretch of the schedule) means Thibodeau is above reproach seems short-sided. At some point, a bill will likely come due. Was Thibs robbing Peter to pay Paul? We shall see.

Was that massive increase in workload necessary to push the Knicks five games over .500? Yes, probably so. Was it worth keeping the pedal to the medal and running at a sprinter's pace in the middle of a marathon? We shall see.  

An hour after Thibs berated the "minutes police," Bradley Beal knocked down a short jumper to give the Wizards a 2-0 lead over the Knicks. Washington would never relinquish the lead. A few minutes later, New York was down 14-3. The Knicks would never get closer than seven points.