The Ringer NBA Show - Chris Herring on the ’90s Knicks, the Current Knicks, and the Chicago Bulls | Real Ones

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

Sports Illustrated’s Chris Herring joins Logan and Raja to talk about the ’90s Knicks teams in his new book ‘Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks’ (0:30), his thoughts on the present-day Knicks team (24:50), and how the Chicago Bulls are making this season count (33:40). Hosts: Logan Murdock and Raja Bell Guest: Chris Herring Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Roger Bell. Hey, Rob. Hey, Rob. Hey, rock. What are doing? What's good? Hey, guess what? We got a guest.

help you know you know you let me in on who the guest is logan or so the guest is um you know he's he's one of my ogies um he used to cover the nicks for the for the wall street journal um used to be at a 538 you know really really smart dude now he's at sports illustrated but most importantly and the reason why he's here is because he has a new book out called blood in the garden which is chronicling the 1990s nix nix new york nix which i know has a very soft spot in your heart, Raja. So you know, we had to have them on to talk about the New York Knicks. We have Chris Herring in the motherfucking building. Chris, how you doing, Doc? Well, it's good, y'all. I'm good. I'm really good. I'm really honored to be on the podcast.

I appreciate you having me. Man, thanks for coming on, bro. So, Raja, quick question before we get to Chris. What is your affinity with the Knicks, with the 90s Knicks? Because, you know, every time we talk about that, I feel like you would have played on that team. I feel like you would have thrown some bowls, you know, somebody coming across the lane. You may have tripped them, you might have tripped somebody or maybe, what is your affinity with that team in that era?

Let me just share something real quick if I might. Like I like to start. Let me just start with this filter that Sasha just put me on to, okay? Oh, okay. This damn Zoom filter, Chris, you weren't in the chat yet. But this has forever changed my life. Like, I need to figure out how I can walk around with this shit on all day

because it's hiding all bags, all wrinkles, like it is really dope. Sasha Mack, thanks for the filter. The New York Knicks teams of the 90s were what I envisioned basketball to be like. It's the way we grew up playing basketball, at least where I'm from.

It was physical. It was take no prisoners, take no shit, hit you in your mouth, unapologetically, like hard-nosed basketball. And if I'm being honest, it's the way I still try to coach kids to at least mentality-wise approach the game. The game has changed a lot in terms of,

you know, when I run into it through Pat Ewing and all these big six, 11 bigs, it's more spread out. But at least in spirit, the competitive nature of those teams is what I think I love so much about them and why I always loved watching them, even though I had to hate them at times

because I was a huge Bulls fan. There was always much love and respect for the way they got down, right? Like, just generally, they got down. Chris, one of the biggest things you said earlier on in the book

is how much the 1990s Nix really captured the love of New York in a way that the 1970s won, you know, the Willis Rie won with the Phil Jackson's.

The championship winning Nix teams maybe it didn't resonate. Why do you think that was the case? Why is a team that, you know, maybe their ceiling was a Eastern Conference finals or why did that team really capture the imagination of New Yorkers in a way,

that the 70s team just maybe more than the 70s team, I guess, is a fair way to assess it. I think Roger touched on a pretty decent amount of it just a minute ago. I think, you know, the contrast that I make, which I think I do in the second chapter of the book is that, you know, if you were to think about, let's put music to it, if you were to think about like what the 90s Nix represented, it was the 90s. It was hip-hop. It was, I mean, the Beastie Boys like had Mason in a video. It was, you know, Anthony Mason was serving as a bouncer at L.L. Cool J's parties.

Like, it was that. Mama said, knock you out was probably, for a minute, I put out a book trailer. I was like begging my book publisher to just front the money to pay for the rights to that song so that we could use it in the background of the trailer because Roger just said it. You know, this is a team that was looking to knock you out. I have a chapter in the book titled Knock Michael Jordan to the floor, which was a directive that Pat Riley had given them in a playoff series, no less. So this was a team that was actively trying to take you out.

Xavier McDaniel acknowledged to me that every chance I got, I was trying to knock Pippin upside his head and take him out. And he did injure Pippin, by the way, in that series. So thinking about that, you know, you have the hip-hop sound with that team, and the 70s was more of like a classical, a team that, you know, that played the right way, if you could really say it that way for a lot of- intellectuals on that team and whatever thing that comes with that.

I mean, you literally had, you literally had a PhD, someone that would later become a PhD. You had people, you know, Phil grew up in the church and was kind of this upright. Now he was also very kind of counterculture, but it was very upright, well-spoken. Bill Bradley ran for president and was a U.S. senator. you had someone that could memorize portions of the phone book.

You had geniuses on this team. And it was a team that Phil at one point said that they would purposely kind of do the deflategate shit, where they would deflate the basketball a little bit because the Knicks were such an unselfish team that they were looking to make the extra pass. They weren't dribbling very much. So when other teams were playing against them and they went to dribble and dribble the air out of the ball, there was no air in the ball because it was underinflated. So the ball went and bounces as what they thought.

And it would basically kind of put them at a disadvantage. And it would advantage the Knicks because they were looking to play a team game. So it was kind of like, you know, there are teams that, you know, that was like old-timers. Like, that's the way I remember the game. That's the way I want to see it. And then you get these Knicks from the 90s that like they don't even look like they're playing the same sport as other teams. And certainly now if you watch it and you've never watched the 90s sport, like, You're like wondering whether, you know, it looks like, I don't know, it looks like it completely, it looks like rugby compared to what you have now.

It's funny because Raja is salivating right now. He's shedding thug tears when you talk about the 90s nix and about how just playing a motherfucker on his back. My heart's smiling, though, because that's, you know, it is a contact sport. While there, while there are, you know, rules in place and things that, you know, would earn you a foul. the essence of basketball is it's contact sports cats like to you know playing tuxedos now man like i had you know i coached a high school game last night where you know we give up we give up a jump shot my biggest kid doesn't box out because why why would i like you know that's no physicality and then their guy jumps on the ball he beats us to the floor right i know you didn't come here chris

for high school basketball but like no go ahead please i'm love you you don't get the box out on the guy he's standing right next to you. He beat you to the floor, which is an effort and hustle and everything that represents the Knicks. And your answer, when he gets it out and they get a timeout, is he traveled.

Like you're missing a point. Are you okay, Roger? That's like Devin Booker complained about the mascot the other day. Yeah, you're missing the whole point of the competitive nature and the competitive spirit that basketball should be about.

And so that's why I smile when I hear him talk about the Knicks. They were just, you know, I got a chance I talk about like NBA players. and where they wind up playing early and who they have as vets and mentors being really integral to their success or lack thereof. And I often talk about my Philly team,

but I was there for a year and a half, and then I wound up in Dallas. And the likes of Mike Finley, Nick Van Exel, Walt Williams, like Adrian Griffin, just real pros. But I had two of those 90s Knicks on the staff. I had Rolando Blackman, right? And I had D. Harp on the booth.

Right. I thought those were the two you're going to say. Rolando, and you could feel what you were saying, Chris, in the way they coach taught and spoke to me, right? And it really did become kind of the fabric of the way I played. Like D. Hart would always talk about, you know, the defensive prowess, what you were allowed to do versus what you were allowed to do when we were playing, how he would, you know, have kind of evolved as a defender, how I could, you know, implement that into my game. I'm talking about gems, things that lasted a career, you know? And Rolando was the most energetic, hardest working fountain of energy that I've ever had as a coach, you know? And you could see why...

You can hear it when he talks to you, too. It's incredible. Just the way he talks, it's like he's like on an energy drink or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I didn't get to be around those teams. But when they had people like that that I did get to be around, it had to be a great environment. No, you're totally right.

I mean, Harper, I didn't even think about the fact that he would have in some ways kind of worked with you, mentored you. It makes all the sense in the world when I look at the way you played. Because Derek Harper, I mean, to give you a sense of, I'm sitting here finishing an excerpt for an outlet that's going to run one for me next week. And I was trying to figure out what to give them. I had one today that ran that was largely about Rolando, actually, in the game seven of the 94 finals and why it played out the way it did with Starks and the two for 18 game. One of the other excerpts I'm running, I was trying to figure out what would be the most interesting thing to kind of sell the readers. And I thought about it. I was like, you know, I'm going to do an excerpt. I'm going to try to stitch a couple chapters together and do an excerpt on kind of the Knicks battles with the league.

So not like the other teams in the league, but the league itself because the league wanted to root out the physicality. They were very conscious of fans, white fans, you know, people that earned a lot of money. that we're going to be at these games that quite frankly were more in line with the 70s Nicks than the 90s NICs probably. And they were kind of petrified of the idea that the NICs were going to just beat up

other teams. The brawls that they were getting into with the Sons in 93 was a massive brawl where Greg Anthony sucker punched Kevin Johnson in street clothes. They had the big fight with Derek Harper suplexed Joe English. Ross is loving this.

But Derek. I mean, so they changed a lot of rules because of the NICs. And, you know, a couple of the NICs players that I talked to for the book called them anti-NIC rules because they felt like they were implementing them strictly because of the NICs. The league denies that and denied it then. But, you know, it's funny because you talk to people from the league. And they're like, so we didn't change the rules because of the NICs, but also we kind of get why they would make the argument that we were doing it because of them. Because, yes, they were at the forefront of it. But the problem was everybody was starting to copy what they did.

So the whole league was becoming about these things we didn't want anymore. And the league had lost Jordan for that year and a half. And so they were struggling ratings-wise. But anyway, the point I wanted to make when you mentioned Derek, Derek Harper, pretty much everybody I talked to, obviously a lot of Knicks people, but even just around the league, Derek Harper was like the king of the hand jacket. Everybody has told me that if you were to play a game with him,

not a basketball game, but just like if you were trying to, you know that if someone tells you to stand up straight and that they try to push you and kind of knock you off your square and if you're really, really have a good center of gravity, everything, they can't move you. People would say that about Derek

when he held up his forearm that you couldn't move anywhere if Derek kind of just held you with his forearm and that if you watch games, he was so good at doing that and he was so strong in his forearm that he could push the offensive player wherever he wanted to.

So when the league changed that rule and they essentially put together VHS tapes to show every team in the league. They went around to every team's training camp right before the season was starting to show what the rules that would be changing were and what it looked like and what would no longer be allowed. It's the points of emphasis meeting.

Yeah. Uh-huh. And the very beginning of the tape, it was like two minutes in a row of Derek Harper. And Derek thought it was funny at first, but then he was like, all right, I get it. Like, enough. But they were, the Knicks were literally the poster children

of everything. they were changing. And so it does send a certain message that, like, you can say all you want about them not being rules directed specifically at the Knicks, but they probably were. And Derek Harper understood that better than anybody, but he was also a really physical, physical dude. I mean, also a very skilled player, but a very physical dude. Derek Harper, Derek Harper once grabbed me in a practice. He was down on the floor. And he told me, he didn't tell me that whole story about him being the points of emphasis, like poster child and stuff. But he literally, it's a, it's, it's, it's, It is an honor. It should be. He took his hand. I had the ball. And, you know, he was walking me through some stuff. And he said, you know, he put his hand on me like this. If you could see like the hand and he put it on my hip, not fully extended, but, you know, not the forearm necessarily. The hand, close. You're right. It was the hand. Not the forearm. You're totally right. And he said, now try to move. And I try to move. And this man had me locked in cement. Like he was just steering me with that hand. And he was like, if I.

I could ever get there on you. It's a rap. And I was like, wow, bro. But the rules had changed, but I thought it was, yeah, it was pretty incredible, the strength that he had in that little bitty space. The team was more skilled than people realized. Like, I get that they were really gritty and they deserve all the credit in the world for that for making it difficult on a team like the Bulls.

But they had skill. A lot of it was on the defensive end in a way that people don't appreciate. This is a question for both of you guys. I want to start with Chris on this. How much did this team really take on Pat Riley's a real person? in a way that, you know, we always think, whenever we think of Pat Riley, we think of Showtime Lakers, we think of, you know, glitz and glamour and just running gun. But when I think about the Knicks and later on with the heat, I think about tough, gritty,

hard-nosed teams who will fuck you up. I mean, for lack of a better term. How are the Knicks the first iteration of Riley's true vision? I'll start with you, Chris, as a as a basketball philosopher and all of these things. No, absolutely. Riley was a get in the mud sort of dude. He, I'll put it this way. At one point when me and my publisher and my editors and stuff like that were trying to think of a title, which to me, it was really clear that it needed to, my idea was blood on the hardwood and then they kind of tweaked it to go with blood in the garden.

It's a hard-ass title, by the way, Chris. Thank you so much, man. I really like it. I love the way the cover came out. I'm biased, obviously. But they wanted me at one point. They were like, how about no layups allowed? And I was like, it's okay.

And they were like, why don't you like it? Why aren't you in love with that? That kind of solidifies what this team was about. I was like, because Riley said that with the Lakers. He initially kind of coined that phrase with the Lakers, which meant that he had that in him before he came to the Nix, not to mention that he played with the Lakers and his task every day. I mean, Riley was one of those guys that was always the best athlete on his team.

got drafted into the NFL, just didn't go and play. I think is a defensive back by the Cowboys. That makes total sense. You can see when a football player is playing basketball. You can sense that, like Roger, for instance, football player playing basketball. Yeah. In real life. Yeah.

And like, so Riley was unbelievably athletic. He was undersized for the NBA, and he wasn't, he was unbelievably athletic for the other stuff that he'd done at Kentucky at the college level and high school, certainly, baseball. but he wasn't like unbelievably athletic for the NBA. So he was undersized and he wasn't that athletic by those standards. So he was one of those guys that absolutely had to grind to kind of keep a spot. He did end up with the Lakers after a certain amount of time in his career. And they basically said, look, you can earn your keep here by just making life a living hell for Jerry West.

So he just beat the hell out of Jerry West every practice. Jerry West didn't like it very much. But that was how he earned his keep. and he was like get in the mud, energetic, kind of frenetic sort of player. And, you know, the Lakers, that wasn't necessarily the style they needed to win with, but I think they were grittier than people gave them credit for. Their offense was flashy, so it got more attention. But when he got to the Knicks, essentially what he did and literally what he told the players is like,

look, we got to go through Michael Jordan and the Bulls to win this thing. We're not shying away from it. But also, we're not going to try to reinvent the wheel here. I can't make you guys the Showtime Lakers with this roster. You know, he did make a little bit of use in Anthony Mason and trying to, you know, to do that and to use them a little bit with the ball on his hands. But, I mean, he didn't have enough ball handlers on that team

and enough, you know, it was a center-dominated team and a guy that had knee problems for most of his career. So he basically looked at what the Pistons had done in the years prior, and he basically said the Pistons strategy is still sound. It's just that they've aged out to a point where they can't carry it out anymore. that's our best chance. We could be a defensive force.

And Riley came in that first year with the Knicks, and they had the second best defense in the league, efficiency-wise. And then each of the next three years, they were first in the league and efficiency defensively. And they beat the crap out of teams to the point where Charles Oakley had more than twice as many flagrants as anybody else. He had more flagrants than 15 teams by himself one season. And they were the reason that the flagrant foul rules changed,

that they started implementing flagrant one and two, that they started putting in place suspensions. But this was what Riley wanted. Again, he told them to knock Michael Jordan to the floor. He would make them watch pregame videos in the locker room before they took the court of Rams headbutting each other and car crashes.

Like, he wanted them to be violent. It was exactly what he wanted. And this is exactly who he was. He grew up in a blue-collar town. This was who Riley was. Absolutely, this is who he was. Roger. Roger. What is a Pat Riley?

What do you think? Build it off of that. What is Rob? I don't really know Pat well. Like I never got to play for him. But, you know, it just solidifies and reiterates for me that if you're a great coach, you're flexible and you're able to kind of work with what's handed to you. And you're able to put that in the best position to be successful. And so, you know, when he was in L.A., while they probably were really good defensively, you could see the offense was oozing from the pores.

It was going to be showtime. You could resist it and not be good with it or you could just embrace it and try to make it a good defensive. sound team and just ride. And so, you know, that's what great coaches do. It's not always about reinventing the wheel. It's about figuring out, you know, what you have, how can it be successful? And then selling that, right? And then you got to give guys a lot of credit. Like Mike DeAntoni was kind of like this for all of the shit that he sometimes gets for lack of defense. We didn't always have great defensive personnel. And so Mike's thing was like, look, we can spend all this time on defense and still be mediocre or we could just really buy into being awesome offensively

and see where that goes, you know, because our pieces were more offensive. And so that's what I take away from Pat. Like, you know, that's probably who he always was. And he couldn't really be that guy in L.A. to the degree that he wanted to. And then he got a roster where it just kind of fit and aligned with his philosophy a little bit more.

You kind of answer my question, Chris, and I'm really curious because on a team full of bad dudes, was there one that stood out as the baddest dude, right? Like, because you, man, you talk about answering. to be Mason, Charles Oakley, Derek Harper. I mean, there are some names that, you know, Doc Rivers was a bad. There are a lot of bad dudes. Was there one?

I have my own, but I don't even want to steer you. So was there a guy? It's hard to get away from Oakley just because he was so physically imposing, you know, but people feared Mason. I've got a detail in the book about during Mason's first training camp with the Knicks when he was not a lock to make the roster by any means that he scared one of the assistant coaches so much that there was a drill. Raj, I don't know if this was during your error, if it was before and if it was not done by the time you were in the league, that they

would make guys run 17s where you had to run side to side line to sideline 17 times over the course of a minute. And at least Riley had guys trying to make it under a minute. If you didn't that you had to keep running it until you could do it. Jerry Sloan did it too. Yeah, for sure. Makes total sense. And so, you know, it might have been more of an old school thing where the old school coaches were doing it. So Mason didn't make it. He made it in like 102. And the assistant coach told him, you know, you didn't quite make it. And Mason said, fuck you, I made it to the assistant. And the rest of the practice, every time he would get within really shouting distance of that assistant, he would just, even once they moved on to other jails, he'd be like, fuck you, I made it.

And he just repeated it like nine, 10, 11, 12 times. And the coach was like, all right, Mason, enough. You're freaking me out. And to the point. where, and I actually, I wasn't hesitant to include this because it's like I need to take myself out of it enough to where I'm letting people have the floor and like what they think and what impacts their mindset. I need to let that breathe. So I did include it. Kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit just because I'm like, you know, you don't want to make black people ought to be scary when it's just that they're saying something. But Mace wasn't imposing guy. The assistant coach went to the front desk of the hotel where they were staying for training

camp and asked for a room change because he thought Mace would like take it out on him. for having told him that he finished after, you know, after, like, he thought Mace was that scary. But then again, you know, in fairness to that coach, Mace did, and I have this in the book, too, Mace did leave essentially a written death threat for Don Nelson. Oh, my God. After a game where I'm pretty sure Mace played like 38 minutes. It was a year where Mason led the league in minutes, Anthony Mason led the league in minutes, It's like not Michael Jordan, not Patrick Ewing, Anthony Mason, but he still was complaining about playing time in a game where he didn't play particularly well.

And so Don Nelson went and spoke to the media. And then by the time he went back to his office, he came out and went into his office and was trying to figure out who the hell left this note. But a couple of the assistants had seen Mason storming out of Don Nelson's office before Nelson got back there. So everybody kind of put two and two together that it had to have been Mason. and the message was like scrawled on a piece of paper like if you fucking take me out of a game ever again I'll fucking kill you sort of thing so. Signed is the one. Signed anonymous. Signed anonymous.

They're anonymous. Yeah. You know, like so I I don't know like there was that aspect of him. Nelly Nellie didn't really make a big deal of that. It wasn't public because you don't want to look as if you don't have control of your team. Sure. But then when Mace got traded, later to Charlotte for Larry Johnson, a really high-profile trade. The trade was held up really, really briefly, and it wasn't, you know, they weren't going to sign off on it, Charlotte,

because they had heard through the grapevine that basically they were worried that Mace might have had like Royd rage because Nellie essentially told Dave Callens, the coach there, who he was friends with, like, he'd have these emotional outbursts that couldn't tell where they came from. And so, you know, there wasn't any evidence to that necessarily. Obviously, Mace was built a certain way. I did ask questions around that. Nobody really had any clear definitive things or, you know, nobody knew anything definitively. So people were kind of afraid of them. Other guys swore by him, loved him. He had different sides to him. But Oakley was so imposing. And, you know, there were people that told me over the course of the book, with the Knicks generally, you didn't think they were

necessarily out to hurt you, but you also kind of weren't sure that they weren't out to hurt you. And so I think the whole team was just kind of really fearsome when you think about it on the court, sometimes off the court. But just, you know, to me, I was, I really liked the subtitle of the book, the flagrant history of the 1990s, Nix just because I kind of feel like they were on the court and off the court. They kind of had a lot of stories to tell, a lot of stories they were part of and a lot of people that were afraid of them. I will talk about this book all day long. This is great. I do want to juxtapose that with the current Nicks, right? because there was actually a trade.

There was actually a trade today. Kevin Knives going to the Hawks for Cam Reddish. I don't know. It's too soon for me to have an actual reaction about that trade. I don't know how to, but I want to say this iteration of the Knicks, I was watching them last night against the Mavs. And every time I've seen them, I know, I think that they're a great team for New York. I know the record doesn't show that, but I'm only saying this as an outsider

from the West Coast. And I want to ask you this, Chris, why did you think last year, you know, with a team built around Julius Randall and R.J. Barrett and really tough, hard-nosed dudes,

really resonated with that city so much. It seemed like it also got comparisons to the 90s, NICs. How does this current iteration of the Knicks kind of capturing the hearts of New York right now? Yeah, no, I think there were some similarities last year.

I thought it was a little bit overblown at times. I mean, I think the one kind of threw away that fits is that, and I kind of mentioned this at the very, very end of the book in the epilogue, when they lost Van Gundy, when he resigned abruptly in the middle of his season in 2001, they lost really the last bit of their DNA. Because, you know, Van Gundy was a Riley disciple and someone, you know, that literally Riley had exit meetings with his assistant coaches as well. And he would ask them what their thoughts were, what they thought they did well, what they wanted to improve. on what their aspirations were. And so Riley asked Van Gundy, because Van Gundy was basically the youngest coach in the league when he got hired by far. I think he was like 34.

He might not have even been that old. I can remember. But when he was an assistant, you know, Riley asked him, like, do you want to be a head coach in this league? And he said, well, you know, I guess so. I hadn't really thought about it. I never imagined that I could because I don't have a playing background. I never played in the league.

And Riley told him, you don't need that. Really what you need to start doing is dressing better if you want to be a head coach. you know and work on the appearance a little bit. But he told him he was like, look, if you're competent and you work your tail off and the guys respect you, it doesn't matter how tall you are. It doesn't matter whether you played or not. I see the way you work around here. I see the way these guys respect you because you come in early.

You leave late. You work hard. You know your stuff. You've been around the sport for a long time. Like, that's enough. You just have to kind of sharpen some of the other stuff that you probably don't think about in terms of the way you carry yourself, the way you talk, the way you look, you know, to some of the extent. But anyway, so he trained Pat, or I'm sorry, he trained Jeff to kind of be ready for that. And he wanted to bring Jeff with them to Miami. The Knicks said no, because, you know, there was

obviously tampering involved with Pat's exit and Pat was still under contract. So was Jeff. So they didn't lend him go to Miami. But when Jeff resigned from the Knicks really unexpectedly, that really took the last bits of really what that era was with them. And so the connection that I draw now, you know, is that Tom Thibito was an assistant under Jeff during those years. And he came back into the organization. They were a team that worked extremely hard, that when you watched them, they were closing on on every shot extremely hard. They didn't have, I mean, maybe they do have talent, but it's raw talent still. It's, you know, they're young guys, a lot of young guys on their roster. But also, I'm watching guys that I have not, you know,

maybe Roger feels differently, but like, I watched Derek Rose. I watched him for plenty of years here in Chicago, you know, and he was never a special defender. I still don't think he's a special defender, but knows how to operate within what Thibito wants to do and can play within a team system. They played within a really great system. I do think there was some good fortune. I won't necessarily call it luck, but you looked at the metrics last year and you looked at, you know, how teams were shooting on wide open shots and stuff like that.

And not just that, but I think I remember doing a story on this at one point, I think they had of the 13 guys in the league that had the biggest three-point percentage improvement last year, the Knicks had like five of them. It was like Rose, Randall, Barrett, Bullock, and I'm blanking on maybe one other guy, maybe it was four. But they had a lot of guys kind of have career years from three last year. And they were really, really great at defending the three, but also even when they were leaving guys wide open, they were missing a lot of three. So there probably was some good fortune involved with that. And then this year, you know, so there were similarities

in terms of like the defense keeping them in games last year that they could win even when their offense wasn't there. That was what the 90s Knicks were all the time. They didn't have much offense. So their defense was keeping them in games all the time or winning games for them all the time. And last year's team did that too.

Now it came back to bite them in the ass when they played a team like the Hawks that have a lot of offense and a lot of creators. So I think that was kind of the similarity that I took from it was that they very much had a ceiling with that team last year. And I think they tried to address it they certainly tried to address it with Kimba and Evan Forney.

I don't think that's necessarily the answer. I think we've kind of seen that. But you can see what they're trying to do, and you can see what Tom's trying to do sometimes, and you can see some of the similarities, but the physicality is still on a different level from the 90s. And I think that that's the major difference. Like, it's not, they work hard,

and they worked really hard last year, but it was more than just a work hard thing. The 90s teams were feared, and there was never going to be that comparison, I don't think. Yeah, and quite frankly, the league's never going to let anyone get to a point. Never going to physically where someone else fears you. They've just taken that completely out of the game. And what I hear in when you're saying that is kind of the way I felt.

They were both kind of underdoggy type of teams. You know what I mean? Like they were both kind of like overachieving. Like I think the 90s, Knicks probably have more star power overall, like guys that were, but but they're overachievers. And Tibbs, the system is one that I think city. like New York, Philly, Chicago, like just,

like it's in the DNA of the city to respect the way he gets his teams to play, right? The problem with that is in a league where you're normally going to get 60-some points home on you in the first half of a game. I mean, that's only half the equation. You've got to be able to just put the ball in a bucket. Yeah, right, right.

What do you think about the trade? What do you think Cam Reddish can do for the Knicks? Well, Cam Reddish is interesting, right? Because like earlier in the season, I watched him on a little stretch. I think they were undermanned and he was getting the ball in his hands. And he was lighting it up. I might have caught his career game. But he was, he's shooting over 40% from three.

But then when you look at him, he's averaging like 11, you know, 12 a game. So, you know, it's hard to tell if that's lack of role in Atlanta. And you just need to put him in a better in a better role and see if he can kind of grow up, grow a little bit. Or if that's kind of who he is. But they don't really use Kevin Knox. Like, he's never really been. somebody that they've found out how to kind of use. So for me,

I think it's a good move for the Knicks. I don't know what it means for Atlanta, because I don't know what Kevin Knox is. Admittedly, I don't know. You know what, man? I had this thought and I said this before the year when I was doing podcast. I did a podcast with Zach Lowe, and he was kind of throwing teams at me.

Do you think they're going to be better than expected or worse? And I the Hawks were the first team that I said worse with. And part of it was that people looked at how much talent they had and how young those guys are. And so many people assume that like, you know, that it's just a linear path that, oh, because they're young and they were good last year, that they're going to be better this year. And it's like, no, they're going to have a lot of guys budding heads just in terms of role.

And last year, they had so many injuries for a lot of that year. And then they started to get healthy and they really hit this really great, you know, happy medium with everything. Nate McMillan was new. Stuff was new. They were doing different stuff. And I was just kind of like, I don't know how it gets better than what they did last year. I just don't see it. And guys are going to want the ball now that they've had some success. Now that money's on the line, Cam Reddish, Kevin Herder just got paid some. But DeAndre Hunter is going to have a payday coming soon.

And it's like, you know, John Collins got paid. But at a certain point, it's like who somebody's going to lose out here. And that hurts feelings. And it impacts stuff in the locker room sometimes, not all the time. But I just kind of saw it coming. And so it doesn't make a whole lot of. of sense to me on paper as far as the Hawks doing that. I didn't see what the pick compensation was or anything like that. But I, if it's just to try to ease things up so that there's not

confusion about role, I kind of understand it a little bit, even though I don't like it from a talent standpoint. I don't think Kevin Knox is better than Cam Redish at all. But I think if it's just to lose a log jam, maybe, maybe it makes more sense than we think. Yeah. I don't see, I do want to, before we get you out of here, I do want to talk about the Bulls since you are in Chicago. Now, I mean, Rajah talked about the Bulls. Roger loves the Bulls. I see where he's headed in this direction,

but my critique, and I think it played itself out last night, about the Bulls is when they do, they're a really, really good team, but if they, I don't think that they have the biggest ceiling in the Eastern Conference. And I think you see that when they play against a Nets team, a fully available Nets team or a Milwaukee, I just don't see them as being one of the,

top-tier teams in the Eastern Conference. Am I out of base on that? Is that just a one-gamer last night? Is that an anomaly? Or how can the Bulls take the next step to actually be a legit contender in the Eastern Conference and go to the finals? Yeah, no, I don't think you're off.

I mean, that same thing I was just telling you about a minute ago where I was really low on the Hawks. The team I was highest on that I couldn't understand for the life of me why people didn't like them more was the Bulls. And I begged Sports Illustrated to write a lengthy piece on how good, basically, I thought the Bulls would be and why, before the season started. So I was high on them. I never thought they'd be, you know, first in the East, you know, in mid-January. So they've out kicked my coverage and my expectations.

But I, even with that, I think there's something to be said for the fact that, like, okay, Milwaukee didn't have their foot all the way on the pedal. Drew Holiday and Chris Middleton played in the Olympics after a long season. So they're resting those guys up, Yonis missed time. That's probably the team that's least concerned about their record right now. The Nets, obviously everything with them, Harden being, you know, starting slow, Kyrie not even playing until a week and a half ago or whatever it was, only being able to play on the road, Philly having Philly things and Ben Simmons things and everything else. The Bulls have probably benefited from some of that.

The Bulls beat the Nets the first two times and the Nets are still rounding in the form. Even with all that, you could still kind of see there's something. missing, that the Bulls have kind of really taken advantage of kind of caught other teams off guard, frankly, too, with how good defensively they've been with certain lineups with Caruso and with Lanzo Ball. Lanzo Ball shot the ball extremely well. And so at a certain point, you were kind of expecting there to be a regression, even though the Bulls haven't been fully healthy. Last night, they were not even close to being fully healthy. They lost Derek Jones Jr. 30 seconds into the game. Caruso's not there. Patrick Williams is out for the season.

That was, you know, a week into the season. So there's a lot missing there, but I do think that I would take them, because I wouldn't right now say that I could see them winning a title with this roster. But I think I would take them more seriously. If you see them in the running for Jeremy Grant for Harrison Barnes, I would like that for them, frankly. I think now would be a time to take a swing. Anytime you can make it halfway into the season and be the one seed,

why wouldn't you take a swing at this point? given who you've got, you know, and DeMarter Rosen, certain guys aren't getting any younger. It's not an old team at all, but why wouldn't you take a shot? So I'd like to see them make some sort of upgrade like that, and then I would take them more seriously.

I still don't know that you favor them over a full-fledged Nets team, but I do think that they're better than what they showed last night defensively, but they do have holes. And I think one of them is that they could use one other guy on the wing, I think, other than Levine,

other than DeRosen, where teams are going to start to, defending you differently when you get to the playoffs. What did I tell you, Roger, about the Bulls last night? It was interesting because it's, it's, you were correct. I think the, you know, Brooklyn was obviously locked in trying to prove a point. I was less correct. But I do think what I said still holds true.

Like, I wouldn't necessarily take them over Brooklyn or Milwaukee. But if Brooklyn and Milwaukee weren't locked in like Brooklyn got in the third quarter of last night, they could catch them slipping and they could make it more than you think it should be right like that's the way i see the bull so i totally agree with chris like and when he says that wing defender you're talking about the four wing defender like not a not a not a small two three wing like a four like a six eight six nine perimeter switch everything um and they're missing that and what it what stood out to me yesterday was you know it's just cut and dry and i it's it's hard for me because i often oversimplify the game or at least I feel like I do, especially when I'm dealing with my teams. This comes down to

defending. It comes down to in the third quarter, Brooklyn came out and strapped up, and Chicago wasn't able to meet that. Now, some of that is you've got two of the best players on the planet, or three offensively. Two of them were cooking last night. There's nothing you could do with Kevin Durant on a pin down. I don't care. I don't give a shit who switches on him. There's nothing you could do. He's going to raise up and shoot the ball. There's some of that. But if you're not going to be in that top tend defensively in terms of defensive efficiency. You can be a great story. You can be an overachieving team,

but you've got to be prolific offensively to a point where the Bulls just aren't going to be to overcome it. That's where they got to pick that up. They got to really be sound, principled, effort defensively every night. Their margin for error is just smaller than those other two teams. The Bulls remind me of what the Bulls have

kind of always been during this era, or even the Tips era, a really, really good team with a bunch of, a really, really good dudes. That's probably a star away, like a generational star away, and that's no lacking, right? Like, when you saw,

we saw, like the Derek Rose Bulls, really good team at the best record in the East, I think in 2011. Twice, you know? The Miami Heat just went right through them. I think they won in five games.

And I think that that's what the ceiling for this team is. And I think they're really, really good. I think they're a really good team. I just don't know. I think if they go against a team, I think,

I don't even know if it takes all three of the nets, players win? I don't know. But I do think if they play against the team that is of that top tier, I don't care about records, I don't care about all that. The top tier, I don't think that they're going to, they could win a seven game series, Chris. No, I mean, it's fair. I mean, it's, I think,

you know, those teams have proven something, even the Nets, I think, last year, I think even without winning the East, kind of prove that they could do it. I mean, because they were doing it with one and a half guys with Kevin Durant and, you know, one leg of James Hardin and no Kyrie. They still almost,

took out Milwaukee, who then did win the title. So I think we've seen enough from them to know they're capable. You know, look, I'm right there with you. I think that they, I think very quietly, they've overcome so much from an injury perspective. They just went on a nine-game run without, basically without Caruso, with guys in and out of health and safety protocols. And they lost Patrick Williams at the very beginning of the season,

who I think if they do make a move for a grant for a Harrison Barnes type player, they will very likely have to part ways, which is a big step to do that for someone that's very, very talented and was only in a second year. So I'm right there with you that I think they need more. And even if they do make a move like that,

I'm still not sure it makes them a favorite. I think it closes the gap some. But it's a gamble. I don't know that they expected to be here this fast. When I talked to Karnasovas and I talked to Billy Donovan and DeMar and everybody else, you know, before the season, and nobody was even willing to put estimates on how good they thought they could be.

And I kind of took that to mean like, we think we're a playoff team, but we don't want to come off too cocky and then look stupid, like when they wouldn't answer the question directly. And now they're for right now the one seed. So, you know, it's a lot to kind of go from the one speed to the other and to kind of really put your money on the table to say, we're going to go for it. I don't know if they do, but I would like to see it just because it'd be cool to see it, but it's not my house money that I'm playing with.

just watching that game last night. And I've said this before. Like, they don't have a true number one. I don't mean any shade. And when I say it, I'm always going to come off like I'm throwing shade, but I'm not. Like,

a number one is rare air as an NBA player. Like six of those dudes in the league right now. Yeah, because not everybody who's the number one on their team is a number one on a championship team. Like, they're the number one on their team. They don't win shit, right? So, like, I see Demar de Rosen, Zach Levine,

and Vucevich as like, awesome top tier best in the league type of twos, you know? And so I just think that the balance is a little skewed right now towards Damari's been so good and Zach's been so good that you've lost what Nick could be as a number two in that equation. And I think in a game like last night, it doesn't have to be every night because those two have clearly, they're first in the east. You're beating a lot of people like that.

But when you get that small ball from another team and you're at a lot of. as the Bulls are going to keep Vucevic on the floor, you've got to be able to make that quick switch to take advantage of what he really can do. You can't just have him floating around the perimeter, not making them pay for being small. I get the feeling that this is the year they have to make a run. I just feel like with, just with Damar and just kind of the aging,

I feel like this is just the year where it's all coming together type year where you want to take advantage of this because there's no going. There's no guarantees after this season. But we'll see. Before we get out of here, it's time for a little segment that we like to call. Real one of the week. I'm going to go first, man. I'm going to go with the Vegas, Oakland, Los Angeles Raiders.

Big win last week to get into the postseason. I'm going to watch a playoff Raiders game, Raja. I'm going to watch the Raiders in the playoffs this year. I've only done that twice since I was like eight years old. So, you know, I'm going to do that this year. I'm very excited about this. The Oakland, Vegas, Los Angeles Raiders. We'll see what happens.

They're probably going to lose, but we'll see what happens. Roger, who is your ruin of the week? Yeah, it's a tough week, man. It's got to be football-centric, right? So I'm going to go with Big Ben Rafflesberger and the Steelers for his farewell tour, getting him into the playoffs. It's going to be a quick exit. Yeah.

But, I mean, they were down and, you know, out and just dysfunction. And I've already given Mike Tomlin flower. on the show. But I'm going to give Big Ben and the Steelers real ones at a week for getting into the playoffs on his farewell tour. Chris, who is your real one of the week? I'm going to break the mold just a little bit. Not a team, not even a player. Spike Lee. The man shouted me out yesterday with the book. He apparently, from what I was told, sent an assistant to Simon & Schuster's office to get an early copy of this book that comes out in a couple of days because he wanted it. He saw it. He saw a

circulating, he wanted it and needed to have a copy and then posted it on his Instagram and then said, Brother Herring was kind enough to get me a copy of the book, called me Brother Herring. And I immediately went back to Malcolm X and was just thinking about, you know, all the scenes in that movie and being a Muslim in the whole night. I was like, man, I was so honored. And it just means the world to me that he would want to read it. And I hope that he gets a chance to. and I hope someday the book becomes a documentary, because I really do feel like teams like that. I don't think you should have to win the whole thing.

I mean, Rajah was part of a team that was fascinating, and I've compared the Knicks to some of those Dantone teams, certainly the Rockets, where people didn't like the way they played necessarily, but they absolutely changed the league in a way that is unmistakable. And I think with the Knicks even more so visually, just as far as the fighting and the physicality and stuff, Spike was right in the middle of that.

So the fact that he wanted the book and is trying to read it and trying to get his hands on it early could not be more honored that he that he gave me the love and the shout out and very appreciative of that. That's dope. So Spike Lee told you to do it. So go get blood in the garden. It's supposed to come out January 18th. Make sure you go get that everywhere.

Your barnets and noblades, you know, your Amazons, everywhere you get books. Make sure you go tap in on the Ringer side. Make sure you check out everything on the Ringer NBA feed. That is upside high. That is group chat. Make sure you also check out the mismatch feed, which also has a mismatch. You know where to go. Make sure you go fall in the void with Kevin O'Connor.

Make sure you go check out the answer with Siritt. Make sure you also go check out Black Girl's songbook with Who, Roger Bell. Town legend, Daniel Smith. Make sure you go check out. We're going to keep the Bay Area propaganda going. Make sure you check out R2C2 with. Who, Roger Bell. I hate that you make me do it.

It's like in my job. I get paid to do it. So I, therefore I must. It's the crest-sight clown Vallejo legend. C.C. Sabathia. We're in a motherfucking house. Holler.