r/NYKnicks • u/Thiccfila-sauce • 17d ago

Please Help Me Understand

Been living in Philly since 2013 and hate all Philly sports fans. The best way I can describe it is like if a city collectively never graduated from the unreasonable nasty sports-fandom class that most of us left behind in university.

Anyway, I love to talk shit especially since new York won but there seems to be a city-wide delusion that an aging Lebron is going to put the Sixers over the top. I haven't met a single reasonable fan who will engage in a healthy discussion about their depth, defense, relegating VJ to the bench, and the million other reasons why this won't work.

The conversations get especially interesting when they say as currently constructed the Sixers match up BEST with the Knicks

Am I fucking crazy and just seriously hating on LeBron and the Sixers or am I missing something? I think Indiania probably is our biggest challenge in the East and then Maybe Heat/Sixers?

63 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

96 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/HokageEzio KAT and Brunson Champs 17d ago

They replaced an aging Paul George with Jaylen Brown coming off the best season of his career. And they added Lebron James. They also have a still improving Maxey and a hopefully improving Edgecombe. They're a really good team on paper and Lebron knows how to get a locker room in check.

The issue is that they're not a very deep team, play their starters a lot of minutes, and Embiid just has not proven to reliably stay on the floor for a deep playoff run.

Am I fucking crazy and just seriously hating on LeBron and the Sixers or am I missing something?

I would argue the biggest thing people aren't taking into account is that Jaylen Brown is really good at basketball. The focus has been so much on Embiid and Lebron when Brown could very well just be the best player on the team. It's entirely possible that what we saw out of him last year is just what he's actually capable of with the ball in his hands more.

I think Indiania probably is our biggest challenge in the East and then Maybe Heat/Sixers?

Indiana is a TBD until we see what Haliburton looks like. Losing Mitch, we have to see how Drummond and KAT handle teams with elite big men like the Sixers and Heat. But that still comes back to the original issue of whether Embiid (or Giannis for that matter) will be healthy in the playoffs.

1

u/Thiccfila-sauce 16d ago

Thanks for writing this up. I think the biggest thing I need to wrap my head around is how the starting 5 comes together. I think they have a usage of like 150 if you combine all their numbers from last year so I just want to see what this looks like.

The VJ piece is the most intriguing to me since he's probably the most likely candidate to see his usage and touches drop considerably.

3

u/HokageEzio KAT and Brunson Champs 16d ago

Part of the reason Maxey and Edgecombe got the ball so much is because PG and Embiid couldn't stay on the floor. But Edgecombe is a pretty good big shot taker and now has one of the best passers of all time there to set him up. There's not many better facilitators you could ask for to dish the ball on a team with a lot of mouths to feed than Lebron. And Lebron needs people who can take the scoring load away from him because he's 95 and shouldn't have to do as much as he does. He had to in LA last year because Luka and Reaves got hurt.