Trust is a must with Tom Thibodeau, so for now Knicks are sticking with their starters
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns shoots past Toronto Raptors forward Bruce Brown and forward Scottie Barnes for a basket in the first half of an NBA game at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
It takes a while to earn Tom Thibodeau’s trust.
The Knicks coach is not one of those guys who likes to play rookies or anyone else he doesn’t have complete faith in. Thibodeau needs to have a full feeling of what a player can do before he lets them participate in anything but garbage time. He wants them to prove themselves in practice or, if need be, playing some big minutes in G League games.
Nothing demonstrates this more on the current Knicks team than the journey of Miles McBride from seldom used rookie to the Knicks most important player coming off the bench.
McBride saw very limited minutes in his first two season with the Knicks. Last season, his third, he averaged close to 20 minutes, started 14 games and was a major factor in the postseason as the Knicks dealt with a plethora of injuries to their starters
While Thibodeau’s earn-my-faith approach may be a solid way to develop the kind of player Thibodeau wants, it puts a lot of pressure — minutes wise — on the elite group who have earned a place in his inner circle.
And, unless the Knicks find a way to expand that elite circle, the team could be in trouble as the season wears on.
The Knick starters have been putting in the kind of minutes that just don’t seem sustainable over the course of the season. Heading into Wednesday night’s 112-98 win over the Toronto Raptors, the top three players in the league in total minutes played with Mikal Bridges leading the list followed by Josh Hart and OG Anunoby. A fourth, Jalen Brunson, ranked seventh while the remaining starter, Karl Anthony Towns ranked 23rd.
With McBride missing his fifth straight game with a sore hamstring, it didn’t seem terribly likely that the Knicks starters were going to get much of a rest against Toronto as the team ended its three game losing streak after winning nine in a row.
It’s understandable that Thibodeau would want to get the most he can out of his starting group as this may be the most talented first unit that Knicks fans have seen in a generation. The problem is that in compiling its first five, the Knicks have pretty much decimated their bench.
Talk about disparity. The Knicks entered the game with the highest scoring starting lineup in the game, averaging 97.3 points per game. The bench? They were averaging a league-low 19.8.
Of course, there are other ways of doing things. Witness the game that was played Wednesday night in Cleveland between the two best teams in the NBA.
Cleveland’s Kenny Atkinson, a former Knicks assistant who interviewed for the head Knicks job when the team hired Thibodeau, has helped take Cleveland to the top of the Eastern Conference by using an 11-man rotation. Atkinson did the same thing when he was the head coach in Brooklyn, developing castoffs like Spencer Dinwiddie and Joe Harris.
The top team in the West, Oklahoma City, often uses 11 or 12 players and frequently changes up their rotations.
In the Thunder’s win over the Knicks last Friday, the Thunder bench outscored the Knicks bench, 44-5. Oklahoma City got a total of 70 minutes from their bench, while the Knicks got 30 from theirs. No surprise then that the Knicks looked completely gassed in the final quarter as they were outscored, 37-19, in the final period.
The Knicks followed that defeat with losses to the Bulls and Orlando where they also looked depleted late in the game after getting little from their bench. The Bulls bench outscored the Knicks bench, 31-17, while the Magic reserves outscored the Knicks reserves 50-18.
The Knicks have been pretty lucky so far to escape major injury to their starters. So far, Bridges and Anunoby have played in every game, Hart and Brunson have missed one and Towns three. It’s hard to see this lasting the whole season and it’s hard to imagine what the Knicks will do if they lost one of their stars for significant minutes.
This is a problem with no easy fix.
It would help to get Mitchell Robinson (foot surgery) back, though that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon. It would also help if they can pull off a trade to bolster that bench, which won’t be easy considering they gave up a lot of their assets to bring in Bridges and Towns. Of course, Thibodeau could lower the entry-fee into the inner circle or at least give a few more minutes to young guys like Ariel Hukporti and Pacome Dadiet.
If the Knicks want to contend this season and not peak in midway through the year, something will have to happen.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
