{"id":876320,"date":"2026-10-09T13:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T13:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876320\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T13:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T13:08:19","slug":"still-working-out-the-kinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876320\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Working Out the Kinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning! The Knicks still don\u2019t have a preseason win, but they are defending NBA champions. All in all, not the worst trade off. <\/p>\n

PSA: there will be NO NEWSLETTER on Monday, barring any news between now and then of course. The next edition will come your way on Tuesday morning recapping Monday night\u2019s Wolves game (7:30 pm; MSG & NBA TV). Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!<\/p>\n

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Sound the alarms. The Knicks can\u2019t win a game.<\/p>\n

There was probably a time when I\u2019d be even one percent serious with such talk, but thankfully those days are long gone. After the \u201clongest, shortest summer ever,\u201d as Jalen Brunson said on media day, the players are very much still working their way back into game shape. Mike Brown admitted<\/a> as much yesterday before the game when he said he encouraged his veteran players to get away from it all this summer and go enjoy themselves. \u201cThey needed to go fill their cup, however that may be.\u201d They did, and now it\u2019s time to get back to work.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re seeing the fruits of that labor play out now, albeit in drips and drabs. After a modestly paced opening game against Philly, there was definitely an uptick in tempo last night, although it resulted in some sloppy ball early with plenty of missed threes and unrefined offensive possessions. The starters looked a bit more like themselves to close the half, with special kudos going to Josh Hart for the dime of the game\u2026<\/p>\n

\"X<\/p>\n

Rit Holtzman@BenRitholtzNBA<\/p>\n

Only Josh Hart could turn a free throw defensive rebound into a fastbreak dunk. <\/p>\n

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12:36 AM \u00b7 Oct 9, 2026 \u00b7 8.89K Views<\/p>\n

11 Reposts \u00b7 194 Likes<\/p>\n

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\u2026and Jalen Brunson for reminding anyone who needed reminding that he\u2019s still quite good at this game of basketball:<\/p>\n

\"X<\/p>\n

Teg\ud83d\udea8@IQfor3<\/p>\n

Phew <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1:02 AM \u00b7 Oct 9, 2026 \u00b7 15.2K Views<\/p>\n

7 Replies \u00b7 72 Reposts \u00b7 889 Likes<\/p>\n

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I thought it was interesting that Brown used almost all of the starters minutes to play them together, as opposed to mixing and matching with the bench as we\u2019ll see in the regular season. The message, it seems, is that he\u2019s prioritizing getting those five on the same page ASAP.<\/p>\n

Even if they haven\u2019t looked quite like themselves, either individually or collectively, no one should be concerned about the first unit. Ditto for co-sixth men Landry Shamet and Deuce McBride. Shamet was on fire last night while McBride was ice cold from deep, but both provided great energy and look more than ready for the bright lights of opening night.<\/p>\n

As for everyone else, your milage may vary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning! The Knicks still don\u2019t have a preseason win, but they are defending NBA champions. All in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-876320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}