Rick Pitino has some high praise for the Knicks this season.
During an appearance on the “Roommates Show” — a podcast hosted by Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart — on Thursday, the St. John’s head coach said the Knicks are “much better” than they were last season.
“I really think that you guys have the potential to do great things this year,” Pitino said while talking to Brunson and co-host Matt Hillman. “This is, in my opinion, a much better team than last year.”
Pitino said his opinion does not have anything to do with the coaching changes this offseason, and added that the Knicks will “have all of the answers” — if Karl Anthony Towns can stay healthy.
“Nothing to do with coaching or anything like that, I think you’re a much better basketball team,” Pitino added. “I think you have all of the answers, if the big guy can stay healthy.”
Pitino, who was on the Knicks’ coaching staff as an assistant from 1983-85 and later as their head coach from 1987-89, also described some of the differences between this season’s team and when he was at the helm, saying that his teams shot a lot of 3-pointers.
“We were known as the bombinos,” Pitino joked, referring to the “Bomb-squad” Knicks teams of the late 1980s. “We were averaging 117.8 points per game, and we were pressing a lot … Offensively, we shot a lot of threes — you guys are a better offensive team than us, but we had Patrick [Ewing].
“We had a very good defensive team, but the game was different back then.”
With the first month of the NBA season underway, the Knicks currently have a 9-5 record, sitting third in the Eastern Conference behind the Pistons and Raptors.
The Knicks narrowly escaped with their ninth win of the season on Wednesday with a 113-111 victory against a Mavericks team that is a bottom-feeder in the Western Conference.
Dallas guard Brandon Williams seemed to have made the game-tying shot in the game’s final seconds, but he was ultimately hit for hooking the Knicks’ Landry Shamet, so the basket was waved off.
“I give the referee credit. It was a hook. And a lot of people might not have called it down the stretch but it was the right call,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said following the game.
“And he definitely took [Shamet’s] left arm and I had a great view of it, and I’m glad the official did, and more importantly I’m glad he made the right call.”
