Knicks Morning News (2019.07.09)

  • [Hoops Rumors] Knicks Officially Sign Randle, Portis, Gibson, Ellington, Payton
    (Tuesday, July 09, 2019 1:00:04 AM)

    The Knicks officially finalized five of their free agent signings on Monday night, according to NBA.com’s transactions log, which lists the deals for Julius Randle, Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson, Wayne Ellington, and Elfrid Payton as having been completed. Those deals are structured as follows: Randle: Three years, $63MM. First two years guaranteed. (Story) Portis: Two […]

  • [TheRinger] Knicks Officially Sign Randle, Portis, Gibson, Ellington, Payton
    (Tuesday, July 09, 2019 1:00:04 AM)

    The Knicks officially finalized five of their free agent signings on Monday night, according to NBA.com’s transactions log, which lists the deals for Julius Randle, Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson, Wayne Ellington, and Elfrid Payton as having been completed. Those deals are structured as follows: Randle: Three years, $63MM. First two years guaranteed. (Story) Portis: Two […]

  • [SNY Knicks] Scouts weigh in on RJ Barrett’s first two Summer League games with Knicks
    (Tuesday, July 09, 2019 1:39:00 AM)

    RJ Barrett has played in just two Summer League games so far, but here is what some scouts have noticed already about the Knicks’ first-round pick.

  • [SNY Knicks] Knicks among teams that attended Amar’e Stoudemire workout
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 8:12:22 PM)

    Former Knick Amar’e Stoudemire is attempting a comeback to the NBA at age 36.

  • [SNY Knicks] Thunder now ‘receptive’ to trading Russell Westbrook
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 2:15:45 PM)

    In order to complete a trade for Westbrook before December 15, the Knicks would have to renege on agreements with their new free agents.

  • [SNY Knicks] ICYMI: Watch Knicks’ Ignas Brazdeikis catch fire in Summer League game vs. Suns
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 12:35:40 PM)

    The story so far at Knicks Summer League hasn’t been first-round pick RJ Barrett’s dominance, but rather their second-rounder in Ignas “Iggy” Brazdeikis.

  • [SNY Knicks] Knicks talk success of Iggy Brazdeikis, struggles of RJ Barrett
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 9:15:00 AM)

    Knicks rookie Iggy Brazdeikis believes he’s the best player on any court he steps on. That was certainly true at the Thomas & Mack Center on Sunday night.

  • [NYPost] Oregon defensive stud may be Knicks’ next undrafted steal
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 9:22:56 PM)

    LAS VEGAS — When the 17-65 wreckage ended on April 11, Knicks coach David Fizdale promised the club would bring in some defensive-minded players to the roster for 2019-20. Meet Kenny Wooten. Wooten, the power forward from Oregon, has looked impressive as an athletic defender during the team’s first two summer-league games, blocking four shots…

  • [NYPost] Nets owner Prokhorov no longer cares about the Knicks
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 7:28:15 PM)

    LAS VEGAS – When Mikhail Prokhorov first bought the Nets, he immediately vowed to “turn Knick fans into Nets fans.” After last weekend’s free-agency coup of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan, the Russian billionaire told The Post that Brooklyn is aiming a lot higher than just the struggling Knicks. “We don’t set the…

  • [NYPost] Knicks watching Amar’e Stoudemire, Monta Ellis comeback attempts
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 4:54:33 PM)

    The last time the Knicks struck out on the No. 1 free agent, they turned to Amar’e Stoudemire. Nine years later and in a similar position, they may be interested in round two. The Knicks will be among 12 teams watching Stoudemire and Monta Ellis try to resurrect their careers Monday night in Las Vegas,…

  • [NYPost] Knicks’ Dennis Smith Jr. is getting advice from Chris Paul
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 4:50:41 PM)

    LAS VEGAS — Dennis Smith Jr. is making the most of his visit here. According to an NBA source, the Knicks point guard has worked out with Rockets superstar Chris Paul while in Las Vegas, getting tips from one of the smartest playmakers in NBA history. Paul and Smith share a North Carolina connection. Paul…

  • [NYPost] Inside the Knicks’ Ignas Brazdeikis contract numbers
    (Monday, July 08, 2019 12:45:07 PM)

    LAS VEGAS — The numbers are in on Knicks rookie second-round pick Ignas Brazdeikis, beyond the 30 points he put up Sunday night in the team’s second summer league game. The Post has learned the Knicks inked Brazdeikis to a team-friendly, three-year contract at the rookie minimum — with a third-year team option. Brazdeikis will…

  • 214 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.07.09)”

    The Knicks are at least getting the contract details on their second round picks right. Following their awesome contract for Mitch last year, the Knicks signed Ignas Brazdeikis to a three-year deal with the third year non-guaranteed.

    Also, it’s important to note that in all of their free agent contracts (except Bullock’s, whose deal hasn’t been finalized yet for some reason), the last year of the deal is non-guaranteed rather than a team option (important because players cannot be traded with an outstanding team option. The team has to pick it up to deal the player. Not so for non-guaranteed contracts).

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still not a fan of the deals (“Oh man, you got Wayne Ellington to agree to a non-guaranteed second year? How did you pull that off?”), but it is still better that they’re doing it this way that giving out team options.

    sign Monta on minimum deal? Frank unfortunately is a bust and I saw RJ’s first game and he didn’t look like a 3rd pick like Melo

    What would the possible upside of bringing in Monta Ellis be? On a good team, he might actually be an okay 12th man or whatever (sort of like how Joe Johnson was occasionally brought in by the Jazz in recent years), but on a bad team, he’s pretty pointless. It’s not like he’d play well enough to be a trade asset.

    the last year of the deal is non-guaranteed rather than a team option

    It’s especially weird since a non-guaranteed year is perfect for taking on salary dumps with an added pick or 2.

    I thought it might be the case the deals were non-guaranteed instead of team options (not sure why people keep reporting it as a team option). Where did you see that? Any idea if it’s partially guaranteed or is it fully non-guaranteed? If full, helps explain the higher annual cost.

    …with each contract signed at an increasingly small table (corresponding to contract size).

    Thought exercise:
    Let’s say Anthony Davis + Lebron look amazing halfway through the season, making AD leaving LA very unlikely. Meanwhile, Knox, Barrett, and the kids look good, making some of these FA signings less useful, and there are not enough minutes to go around. Our young PGs are not really making progress.

    Is there any way in the world something like this is a good idea:

    Knicks get CP3 + Rockets top-3 protected 2022 1st round pick (double draft year) that becomes just top-1 protected in 2023 and unprotected in 2024
    Rockets get some combination of non-Randle FA signing this year to make the $ work. Say- Ellington, Bullock, and Gibson (I think that would get us there).

    Here’s my rationale:
    I don’t think the young guys on the Knicks get better without someone getting them the ball in the right spots. Even decline-phase CP3 would be by far the best player on the team and would presumably bring accountability on both sides of the ball to the team that maybe Fizdale isn’t really bringing.

    The two major strikes against this are, of course, CP3’s salary and the decline phase which do not match up with the timing of our current roster. I guess it’s hard to know whether CP3 will age like Stockton/Nash who were productive into late- and mid-30s, or whether he’ll fall off a cliff. My inclination is he’ll be closer to those guys – he’s just too smart, and has turned himself into an excellent shooter. And the contract is pretty ugly — he’ll probably provide net even to maybe slightly negative value in years 1-2 and moderately negative value in year 3 (which is probably close to what KD would’ve brought in value — zero value in year 1, slightly-moderate neg value in year two, and hopefully even to + value in years 3-4).

    I dunno, my feeling is Houston would do this just to get off Paul’s $$, and those players would fit really well in HOU. I don’t think i’d to it, but it’s interesting to think about.

    To be clear, I have no interest in Westbrook who is in sort of similar spot to CP3. Russ is more about getting his #s than anything else, although I do appreciate how hard he plays.

    I dunno, maybe I’m just daydreaming about CP3-Mitch Lob City.

    I think CP3 is about to fall off a cliff while making $40 million per. He lost over .100 ws/48 last year. That’s a huge red flag to me. I’d want a few draft picks.

    CP3 is more dependent on his athleticism than Nash. I don’t expect him, as a smaller pg, to age gracefully.

    It’s unfortunate because I love CP3’s game.

    I hate these huge contracts for experienced players. They are almost always being overpaid a lot at the end of the contract. Since the cap limits total spend, other players then get underpaid.

    I thought it might be the case the deals were non-guaranteed instead of team options (not sure why people keep reporting it as a team option). Where did you see that? Any idea if it’s partially guaranteed or is it fully non-guaranteed? If full, helps explain the higher annual cost.

    A few of the links above have the details on the contracts.

    As for why people were reporting team options, I think it’s honestly as simple as stupidity. Beat reporters rarely know shit about shit when it comes to cap stuff.

    The fact that we’re talking about the 2nd and 3rd year of these contracts to mediocre veteran players is revealing. We seem to be at the beginning stages of a rebuild when we should be deep into the process. Sobering.

    Oh, totally. That’s why I think that the Knicks were still definitely “losers” this offseason, since you have a team like Memphis kickstarting their rebuild (with not exactly a ton of assets to begin with, either) while the Knicks decided to just…I don’t even know what the fuck I would call this offseason plan. Punt, I guess? But to extend that football analogy, it’s a 24-0 game and it’s the start of the fourth quarter. You cannot afford to punt the dang ball!

    Punting is better, than, like, just tossing the ball to the opposing team like previous decision-makers did, but it’s still not a good strategy, either.

    This is what needs to change before we can really get it on with a real rebuild:

    1) Dolan
    2) Dolan
    3) Dolan
    4) Dolan
    5) Dolan

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    They value cap flexibility, which is not a problem. I value cap flexibility also. The problem (as I’ve been saying since the day we opened a ton of a space for KP) is that most of the evidence indicates that very good players don’t like to go to bad teams. That evidence has been especially strong in NY where the default position should probably be “show me you’ve got your act together first”. That goes triple when the former star player just asked for a trade under current management because he didn’t believe in the plan.

    Getting better by draft takes eons and some good luck and getting better via free agency is partially dependent on already being good. That’s why I keep saying you have to try to keep getting incrementally better using every option available instead of all out tanking or swinging for the fences. You have to accumulate good players on fair contract, picks, maintain flexibility etc… Then at some point be competent enough to pull off the move that changes things because you are in a position to do so.

    Asset accumulation and cap space are both overrated, IMO. Miami didn’t have either and they’re going to wind up with Westbrook and Butler. The Knicks had a bunch of both and wound up with bupkas. The object of GMing isn’t accumulating assets. That can be one means to a successful end — but only one means. Modern day NBA following sort of fetishizes GMing and attributes various “philosophies” to various GMs as if they’re auteurs like Kubrick or Scorsese or something. But a “plan” is nothing more than that. Just bloviating about having one really doesn’t mean a thing.

    And this offseason also shows that the media/Twitterverse grapevine is almost entirely BS. The Nets were barely mentioned until very late in the game for KD/Kyrie and I don’t remember a single mention anyplace, anywhere about Kawhi recruiting Paul George or any of the Thunder’s efforts to move him. It’s virtually all clickbait.

    The Nets were mentioned as a possible destination for both Durant and Kyrie back during the season. In fact, Kyrie was seen as a lock to the Nets as far back as early April.

    There was no talk about the Thunder trying to move George because they weren’t trying to move him. They literally had no idea he wanted out until he told them less than a week ago. This is why the Thunder actually told the two free agents who signed with them earlier this month (so clearly as recently as earlier this month they believed George was staying) that if they wanted to back out now that circumstances had changed, they would allow them to (Alec Burks took them up on it, while Mike Muscala stuck with them).

    There’s way too much “the emperor has no clothes” about the media while they typically are wearing very nice clothes.

    This isn’t to say that they don’t get stuff wrong on occasion, but these guys are typically just doing their best with the information that they have available to them.

    I really hope Wooten ends up on the team, kid is young and already shows legit defensive skills at the 4. Numbers at Oregon indicate he could be a high efficiency low usage rim protector pretty quick out of the gate and there is plenty of time for him to work on complementary skills.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    I didn’t notice that Kyle O’Quinn wound up with the 76ers on a minimum deal. That’s a very good pickup for them. Embiid is inevitably going to miss games due to injuries and load management. Horford can switch to C when necessary, but having KOQ is a nice insurance policy for them as a backup.

    The loss of George was a blessing in disguise since it was unlikely that OKC would surpass the revamped West. Presti used that to jump-start a rebuild and might lose the albatross RW contract as well.

    There’s only one guy who I would bet on to win the men’s championship at Wimbledon. There are another, maybe two, who have a chance. You all know the names if you follow the sport. I’m not even gonna say who I’m thinking because anyone who follows the sport knows.

    That’s the NBA. There’s a few guys. You win if you have one of them. You don’t if you don’t. This is compounded in the NBA by the fact that those guys are the de facto GM’s. They team up with other’s in that exclusive club and they have more power than the franchise that presently employs them. They are also a draw for good role players who are willing to play for the minimum.

    The Knicks have, in the past, fallen into the trap of thinking that they had such a player but getting a player that is not in fact that. CP3 and RW are quintessential Knicks. I think it’s a step in the right direction that we didn’t pivot from getting spurned by the real guys to giving up major assets for someone who will not be a difference maker moving forward.

    The problem is that, in lieu of a max contract, we need to make high quality smaller level calculations. I think we’ve been a C+ at that. (My opinion might change if Barrett stops looking like barf.) Our draft picks aren’t that good. Our FA’s aren’t that exciting. We’re really not closer to becoming a place where the next true foundational piece will come.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    @17

    100% agree. I loved what I saw from Wooten. Typically, you want a high energy defensive specialist like that to be able to do “something” other than defend. That’s usually where 3 point shooting and space come in. He’s not going to do that, but if he can be efficient around the basket on low usage he’d be fine to add to the team and see what else he can develop over time.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    Melo may still wind up with the Lakers.

    https://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/114978/20190709/nba-rumors-carmelo-anthony-lakers-deal-happening-thanks-to-lebron-james.htm

    It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy that always put money ahead of basketball success, but I’ve softened a little over time. At least he had the balls to play in NY through some terrible years and take endless heat while he still had his skills. He could have asked for a trade to a good team. It was unfortunate that after his injury and surgery he started declining quickly. Lots of players remain productive past 30 these days. And since his game was not really based on athleticism, he probably should have lasted longer. But he can’t move or defend at all anymore.

    That we were allegedly planning to take Wooten with the 55th pick before the trade up to get Brazdeikis suggests he has some kind of future with the organization, even if it’s extended time in Westchester. Allen and Kris Wilkes are on 2-ways, so they don’t have to count for our roster. We still have an open spot, right? If I’m remembering correctly, our current players under contract are (starting with the bigs and working our way down the positional scale):

    1. Mitch
    2. Randle
    3. Portis
    4. Gibson
    5. Knox
    6. Brazdeikis
    7. Ellington
    8. Bullock
    9. Barrett
    10. Trier
    11. Dotson
    12. DSJ
    13. Payton
    14. Frank

    I leave anybody out? Berman has suggested we want to sign a vet (Lance, Vince Carter) for that 15th spot. At this point, I’d rather keep it open to see if any of the Westchester kids deserve a promotion by mid-season.

    Watching summer league one thing that occurred to me is that while Robinson is still doing the things we liked last year, I haven’t seen signs he added anything to his game. This is different from Knox, who looks smoother and more in control and may have improved his three point shooting. Does anyone think differently?

    All that being said, I’m now moving on to Knicks talk, not talk about what the Knicks are not.

    SL first quarters have been great. Knox’s stroke has been pure. Let’s get the ball in RJ’s hands consistently and see if he can attack and facilitate. Iggy has been the best feel good story. Mitch blocked Zion’s three pointer and got a dunk on the other end. I think he had two blocks on Zion the other night.

    I enjoy watching a lot of these players. I’d like to see them show improvement in this tournament (that is execute in the 4th quarter) and I’m looking forward to seeing if it works better once the team has it’s starting PG out there this fall.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    @15

    I was probably the only person that defended Riley for not all out tanking DESPITE the fact that he clearly gave out some terrible contracts that were tying his hands badly in deal making. You have to avoid the really bad contracts and he screwed the pooch a few times. lol But he’s still a basketball savant and you knew he was sitting there waiting for the opportunity to get a star player to get the ball rolling again. He may not get there again, but he’s getting himself back into position to try.

    I leave anybody out? Berman has suggested we want to sign a vet (Lance, Vince Carter) for that 15th spot. At this point, I’d rather keep it open to see if any of the Westchester kids deserve a promotion by mid-season.

    No, they definitely have an open spot.

    Watching summer league one thing that occurred to me is that while Robinson is still doing the things we liked last year, I haven’t seen signs he added anything to his game. This is different from Knox, who looks smoother and more in control and may have improved his three point shooting. Does anyone think differently?

    No, I think that’s been fair through two games.

    If the Heat do in fact land Westbrook, it’ll be largely by default. Teams aren’t lining up around the block to give Westbrook and his .555 –> .524 –> .501 TS% trend the remaining 4/$170M on his deal.

    I can admit that getting Westbrook and Butler is certainly a better situation than it seemed like they could wind up with, but if they trade any assets at all for Westbrook (I don’t think it’ll be a pure dump, the Pistons and Rockets seem to be involved too) their team will be those two and nine knickerblogger posters. I don’t view it as an enviable situation or one to emulate.

    If Westbrook and Butler are together this coming season, that is sort of like having George and Westbrook together last year. It’s probably a playoff team, but not a real title contender. There is nothing wrong with aiming for that if you are Miami.

    I’d hate it if the Knicks get either RW or CP and I want a full rebuild but we do have Riley’s way and he built two and a half championship teams by going for stars almost at all cost. I’m doing a logical jump here but maybe it’s not the quality of the plan in the abstract but the willingness to single mindedly pursue it.

    The half championship I refer to was the excellent Zo and Hardaway team Riley built out of next to nothing.

    They value cap flexibility, which is not a problem. I value cap flexibility also. The problem (as I’ve been saying since the day we opened a ton of a space for KP) is that most of the evidence indicates that very good players don’t like to go to bad teams.

    Yeah. And the only way that we stop being a bad team is that we find some players that are worth having on a team. We can do that by drafting well (which we’ve failed at) or signing young FA’s that we can keep.
    We lost KP (how much of a loss that is remains to be seen) because Frank and Knox were duds. The fact that we blew both picks resulted in him forcing a trade. We need to hit on our picks a couple of years in a row before we become attractive again.

    I was just kind of re-hashing in my head the state of the Knicks and how we got to where we are today:

    June 2015 – Knicks draft Kristaps Porzingis. Turns out to be a great pick
    June 2016 – no draft pick because, you know, Andrea Bargnani
    June 2017 – Knicks draft Frank Ntilikina. Pretty much a bust
    February 2018 – Porzingis tears his ACL. Knicks go into full tank, still get 9th pick
    June 2018 – Knicks draft Kevin Knox. Jury still out, but definitely better picks after him
    2018-2019 season – Knicks again in full tank mode, finish with worst record in the NBA just in time for lottery rules to change.
    February 2019- Knicks trade Porzingis and open up two max slots.
    Spring 2019 – rumors flying that KD and Kyrie to Knicks is a “done deal”
    May 2019- New Orleans gets the #1 pick, Knicks get #3
    June 2019 – Kyrie and KD to Nets, Knicks get Julius Randle and pu pu platter of free agents
    July 2010 – RJ Barrett so far makes Kevin Knox look like a seasoned NBA veteran

    What sticks out to me is that still to this day, we have never moved up in a lottery (since 1985, anyway). So yes, we’ve generally had incompetent management, but it only takes one game changing, odds defying lottery win to turn things around. New Orleans lost Anthony Davis and then proceeded to win the lottery. The Lakers moved up to #4 and that facilitated the AD trade. Going back a few years, the Bulls get Derrick Rose even though they were slated to pick 9th and it totally changed their fortunes.

    Think about if we had somehow moved up in the 2018 drafts and gotten Doncic or Ayton or Trae Young. It would have totally changed the direction of the franchise, and maybe top free agents would have taken a closer look.

    Basically, it sucks to be a Knicks fan

    Well, it’s not like Robinson needs to add something to his game. He is already a beast, what he really needs is to avoid going space cadet now and then. Knox, instead, was a terrible player last year and looks like he has worked a bit on his tendencies (and his shot) to become a catch and shoot player.

    A random thought on Kevin Durant:

    Does this guy realize what he’s done to himself?

    This is a guy who was in the best basketball situation in the world but wasn’t happy bc it wasn’t his team.

    Now it’s not his team or his city.

    Everyone knows Kyrie called this shot. And Kyrie has a year to establish himself before Durant comes back. Durant is the beta dog in Brooklyn, the beta team of New York. I totally get why he didn’t sign with the Knicks, but why the hell didn’t he re-up with Golden State?? He took $60mm less, too, to do it!

    He was mad bc Steph was bigger than him in the Bay Area. I can’t wait to see how he feels when Julius fucking Randle is bigger than him in NY.

    What was his upside? He gave up the best basketball situation, the most money, and took the job with the least amount of potential adulation.

    Is Wooten signed to an Exhibit 10? I don’t believe he is because he was talking about feeling like he earned a spot in training camp, which I think would be pretty much guaranteed on an Exhibit 10. If the Knicks were serious about picking him at 55 I don’t see why you don’t at least offer that to him, gives the opportunity for a 50k bonus and guarantees you get his Gleague rights. I suppose if Wooten is holding out for a potential two way contract or an NBA deal from another team he might not commit to the exhibit 10… but actually I’m not sure, does signing an exhibit 10 block a player from signing a higher level contract with another team? Like could we potentially sign Tacko Fall or is he on the clippers unless they cut him?

    mitch’s progression is all going to be mental…. it takes awhile for bigs to learn the ins and outs of defense… proper positioning… communicating… working angles on the pnr…. you go from just a guy who blocks shots to a guy who is an actual presence on defense…. that takes a long time if it ever comes…

    not fouling as much…. contributing as a passer… not trying to block every shot… these are all very hard to notice things than a jumpshot… which everyone seems to want for him to develop…. but there’s a ton of time for him to be able to hit a 15 ft footer… let alone a 3pter…. having to sit him vs championship squads is seriously not that big a deal at this point… that can come much later when we actually care about that….

    being a center means first and foremost being a defensive presence…. i’d much rather have a tyson chandler than a meyers leonard…. mitch’s value is gonna be tied up in his defense and he needs to learn to be a great defender or he’s just gonna be another ed davis…

    Oh, totally. That’s why I think that the Knicks were still definitely “losers” this offseason, since you have a team like Memphis kickstarting their rebuild (with not exactly a ton of assets to begin with, either) while the Knicks decided to just…I don’t even know what the fuck I would call this offseason plan. Punt, I guess? But to extend that football analogy, it’s a 24-0 game and it’s the start of the fourth quarter. You cannot afford to punt the dang ball!

    It’s really hard to compare Memphis to NY, though.

    For one thing, under the league’s corporate socialist system, Memphis can make as much or more money when they’re terrible as they can if they’re good. The Knicks lose money when they’re embarrassingly bad.

    And for another, Memphis has zero chance of ever signing a premier free agent. Whereas the last two offseasons proved that if you’re in a big market, it’s imperative that you demonstrate competence on the court to attract free agents.

    I definitely admire what Memphis is doing and would prefer to be in their position, but it’s apples and oranges. We can’t play that game without losing a shit ton of money and potential franchise altering free agent signings.

    There is nothing feel good about Iggy…

    Dude, Bob.

    Iggy had 30. Just sayin’. 30 feels good.

    mitch’s value is gonna be tied up in his defense and he needs to learn to be a great defender or he’s just gonna be another ed davis…

    While Ed Davis is actually a useful NBA player (unlike *cough* Bobby Portis *cough*), Mitch is Ed Davis only when asleep. Ed Davis wishes he could be the type of player Mitch already is.

    For one thing, under the league’s corporate socialist system, Memphis can make as much or more money when they’re terrible as they can if they’re good. The Knicks lose money when they’re embarrassingly bad.

    The Knicks’ franchise value has, what, tripled under Dolan? Maybe even quadrupled? So come on. They were top ten in the NBA in attendance last year!

    Everyone is quick to provide examples of players who dominated Summer League but never panned out in the career but what would provide better reassurance that Barrett could pan out in his career is an example of good or great NBA player who badly sucked in Summer League. Is there such an example?

    Kevin Durant shot 5-17 with 1 rebound and 0 assists in his summer league debut. Derrick Rose scuffled through an injury. And Carmelo Anthony was badly outplayed by Nikoloz Tskitishvili.

    A random thought on Kevin Durant:

    Does this guy realize what he’s done to himself?

    I think few elite pro athletes have the kind of self-awareness that allows for that kind of reflection. Do you think Durant (or any other MVP-level player) surrounds himself with a management team that reminds him of his limits? A team hat reminds him that he’s not in his athletic prime anymore? Does he realize that his body, like every player’s before him, will not hold up in a league of 450 players that injects itself with 60+ young prospects every year, without fail? That an Achilles tendon rupture is one of the worst injuries a basketball player can have? That going to a less-stacked team necessarily means putting up bigger numbers, or having less success as a consequence?

    I would guess that he (like most stars) has a bunch of yes-men behind him, telling him that he can do no wrong. Kobe helped usher Shaq out of LA and got to deal with the consequences. LeBron chose stage lights and red carpets over winning basketball. The self-absorption that leads to sub-optimal basketball decisions is not without precedent, and I think it’s going to drive Durant even crazier than he apparently is.

    Dude needs to find happiness off the court. If the Warriors’ dynasty was not enough for him, nothing in Brooklyn ever will be, either. He sure as hell isn’t going to have an easy road to another ring there.

    Random thought on Rowan Barrett Jr—

    For the entirety of RJ’s career up till college, he was basically playing with a “redshirt” advantage, being probably the oldest player among his grade level (June birthday, in most US school districts he would be a senior his junior year). He then forgoes his senior year of high school and becomes a very young freshman playing against older players at a higher skill level. He is now a young 19 year old playing at an even higher skill level. I think our expectations for how he handles this transition and for how his production this year projects to the future should be very measured and I think the best we can hope for is progress rather than actual positive production. I hope Fiz doesn’t force him into a starting role. I think RJ would benefit from time to learn and mature. He does read as coachable and like he cares and makes an effort, even if he doesn’t look quite in shape for summer league.

    yes mitch is better than ed davis now but if he doesn’t improve his defense.. he’s just another guy who grabs boards… blocks shots and cleans up around the basket…. that has value but every team has like two of those guys….

    yes mitch is better than ed davis now but if he doesn’t improve his defense.. he’s just another guy who grabs boards… blocks shots and cleans up around the basket…. that has value but every team has like two of those guys….

    In the shot clock era, here are the players who played >1000 MP and had an ORtg of 140 or higher.

    Steve Kerr, 1995-96
    Mitchell Robinson, 2018-19

    Mitch doesn’t only clean up around the basket. He’s an awesome menace on the lob. If only we had a ball-handler who could a) pass the ball on the spot and b) stop on the dime for a midrange jumper…

    DJ- you are right that mitch’s current skill set is undervalued, but if Mitch can do those things at a high enough rate, that differentiates him from the rest of those guys and becomes unquestionably valuable. No one is telling Rudy Gobert to take threes. The question is whether it is more beneficial to keep him working on what he is already good at in hopes he can get even better and more consistent, or have him work on a new skill that could open up potential value but also potentially be inefficient and take away from development of his inside skills. Personally, I don’t really care what they try in summer league but I don’t think it’s time to take Mitch away from the basket yet.

    I think Mitch is amazing and doesn’t need to improve to still be amazing, but at the same time, yeah, it’d be great if he improved and he hasn’t looked improved in these first two Summer League games. Again, if he never gets better than he is right now, I’d still love the guy and be perfectly thrilled with him as a player, but I think it is also fair enough to note that he hasn’t improved from last year (in the very small sample size of two games).

    Let’s say that I wish we would see the Knicks employ some semblance of organized offense before saying he’s not improved.

    Sorry DJ just saw you were only talking about D not 3s. I think Mitch does contribute on D and though he has room for improvement I think even if he largely repeats what he did last year per minute for more minutes, that is more valuable than Ed Davis

    538’s newly updated model says Mitchell should produce 181 million dollars in value over the next five years, so I think we shouldn’t trade him.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    538 created a new defensive metric for shot defense.

    In my own very brief research, it was obvious there was value in it. The big problem was that it could vary significantly from year to year. But I came away convinced that with a large enough sample covering multiple years and some subjective analysis about the player’s improvement/decline and role in general, the data has plenty of value despite the criticism from others.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-better-way-to-evaluate-nba-defense/

    @54 THJC I completely agree with your sentiments in this post. I find it very hard to reconcile this post with all the posts saying that the Knicks are not near the point in the win curve to be making moves to compete and that
    adding a star would be pointless because you need two stars to attract good contracts. Mitch is our second star and is on a crazy beneficial deal, I don’t see why you don’t think the window of the next few years is an opportunity rather than a write off.

    Russ really does maximize his stats, maybe now that this stat exists he won’t be so sucky at it?

    That’s the NBA. There’s a few guys. You win if you have one of them. You don’t if you don’t. This is compounded in the NBA by the fact that those guys are the de facto GM’s. They team up with other’s in that exclusive club.

    It’s remarkable how concentrated the league’s stars have become. By my count there are 31 players who could plausibly be the #1 or #2 guy on a championship team. Of those 31, 21 are on teams that are guaranteed to make the playoffs. Another 6 have a very good shot to make the playoffs.

    DRAYMOND seems to be good at measuring the effects of individual defense, not so much team defense (doesn’t take into account a failed rotation or box score stuff like DRBs, for example.) But nice to see this kind of stuff added into consideration, since lots of other defensive stats seem to overvalue the box score proxies (see: RWB having a 3.5 DBPM in 2018-19, lmao). That said, having equal R squared on a DRAPM sample (around .60) to DBPM isn’t that much to write home about, probably. But it’s a nice tool to have in the toolbox.

    I sifted through the data set, and saw our boy Frank (who for some reason isnt included on the web page applet) had a +1.8 DRAYMOND rating. His defense is probably worse than that, because he’s an anemic rebounder, but if DRAYMOND is to be believed hes still a good defender (contra his DBPM) despite the lack of box score production. Now if only he could learn to do everything else.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    I agree that Robinson’s major flaw is his foul rate.

    Most models look at per 36, per 48, per 100 possessions etc.. to even things out. But if you foul a lot and can’t stay on the court for 36 minutes, all else being equal, you aren’t as valuable as a player that stays on the court. Even inferior players can be more valuable.

    So the question becomes can he remain as aggressive defensively blocking shots and still manage to reduce his fouls. Personally, I doubt it. I think he’ll learn when to be aggressive and when not to, remain a terrific shot blocker, reduce his fouls, but not block quite as many.

    The other question I have about him is his playing style. He plays a super high energy game on both sides.

    Can he sustain that productivity over 36 minutes over a long season playing that way?

    Most players can, but not everyone plays like Robinson.

    IMO, any model that says he’s a superstar now is broken. His low usage high efficiency scoring (dunking) adds plenty of value, but there’s no chance it adds as much value as the real superstars in the league that can score efficiently on high usage in a variety of ways. Any good defense could pretty much neutralize Robinson on offense the way he plays now. There are plenty of players out there that don’t score quite as efficiently because they have way more skills, a much larger role, and CAN’T be stopped very easily.

    All that said, I’m sure glad we have him.

    Of course Robinson will cut his foul rate down. He might not block quite as many shots per 36, but he’s starting from a baseline of 4.3 blk/36 so you could lop a full block off that and he’d still be elite.

    I also believe that elite rim runners like Mitch have value that doesn’t show up in the boxscore. You have to account for the lob and dunk at all times, it keeps the opposing defense honest. You might not get many of those shots during a game but you’re forcing the defense to deal with trying to prevent a shot attempt that is more or less an automatic basket.

    IMO, any model that says he’s a superstar now is broken.

    IMO, your opinion is broken.

    but there’s no chance it adds as much value as the real superstars in the league that can score efficiently on high usage in a variety of ways

    lol, do you actually believe that the stats say that a guy shooting .692 TS% on low usage is more valuable than a guy shooting .600 TS% on 30% USG?

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH cuz, uh… they don’t

    yeah, your opinion? it’s broken

    538’s newly updated model says Mitchell should produce 181 million dollars in value over the next five years, so I think we shouldn’t trade him.

    @56 Dred

    I’m not even sure the Carmelo model is newly updated, or if it was it had already been updated as of July 6.

    BJ
    July 6, 2019 at 3:53 pm
    538 projects a return to form for Russ next year and a much more gradual decline than most here have him pegged for. Their 5 year market value for him is 234.2 Million US Dollars. I understand if you are worried Presti would fleece us perhaps with an assist from Dolan, but do you really think two 1RP would give us more value than Russel Westbrook’s contract? I think Russ + Mitch + the rest of the cap to build around them is worth two draft picks that IMO wouldn’t be lottery picks anyway.

    Westbrook has the biggest negative adjustment for defense but his five year projection is the same. The Carmelo page says it was last updated July 8 so either these DRAYMOND changes haven’t been put in yet, or they were in at least by July 6 and Nate is just letting us know now. Also Mitch’s name didn’t seem to be included in the list of adjustments to CARMELO defense rating despite 2nd highest DRAYMOND, would this be because his d rating is so high or because of a relatively small sample size? Since Gobert went up from a high baseline with a lower DRAYMOND, I’m assuming the latter, which means that if Mitch can keep it up for more minutes he’s even better than the 538 projection.

    Fivethirtyeight’s political polling stuff is useful but their sports stuff seems kind of like garbage to me.

    I think 538’s sports work has not been a strong as some of their other work but they show the most openness to change and to incorporating new data, while most other public analytics come up with their model and then mostly just defend against criticisms and just provide a calculation service so that you can track their metric. I understand the impulse to want a statistic to stand for something and be consistent, but if your statistic is purporting to explain contribution to wins, or to project contribution to wins, I think it makes sense to take into account any and all data that are available to you.

    @64 I agree 100% – the looming threat of a lob to Mitch has value even if he’s not dunking ten times a game. If we ever get a real offensive system, that should become even more apparent.

    I wrote quite a while back that both KD and KI are kind of malcontents. Having them both on the same team leaves me with a lot of concern for the Nets. I mean, not personal concern. Just like, this won’t end well.
    Looking at 538, I was surprised to see KP so highly rated. Not surprised, maybe. Maybe just bummed. I think that guys will be great. And I’m going to hate it that he’s not being great for the Knicks. More important I think a lot of NBA players see him as someone they would like to play with.

    lol, do you actually believe that the stats say that a guy shooting .692 TS% on low usage is more valuable than a guy shooting .600 TS% on 30% USG?

    This is sort of like how Joe Morgan believed that Billy Beane wrote “Moneyball,” and nobody was gonna tell him any different

    my point is that yes mitch is very valuable as is… but his real upside is doing the things that he does better…. not in the getting more blocks and dunking more balls kind of way… but going for a block without having to give up offensive rebounds… contesting without fouling…. making more baskets that aren’t dunks… and then you have all the other things that make a great defender… rotating on switches… guarding out on the perimeter… holding his own in the low post…

    his absurd block rate and shooting is not going to continue and it shouldn’t if he’s going to get better and if he wants to stay on the floor… what separates someone like tyson chandler or rudy gobert or joakim noah or marc gasol from guys like capela or jarrett allen or ed davis? it’s all those little things that make them defensive anchors….

    and that’s really what we want out of mitch…. a future defensive player of the year candidate… and my point is that a 3p shot or a midrange game isn’t really necessary at this point since we should be developing his strengths since a)he has a good chance to get there and b)it will have way more aggregate value and c)a shot can be developed in a few offseasons much later anyway…

    The Knicks’ franchise value has, what, tripled under Dolan? Maybe even quadrupled? So come on. They were top ten in the NBA in attendance last year!

    Franchise value is a paper number, though. Revenue is real money.

    If they went full process, they would lose more real dollars than Memphis would.

    Mitch doesn’t have close to the usage rate necessary to be a superstar. He can’t even create a shot on his own. He’s an extremely promising player, but there’s no need to exaggerate. Whatever metrics are calling him a superstar aren’t taking ability to get one’s own shot into account enough. He would never have those shooting percentages at higher usage levels.

    The indispensable prerequisite to superstardom is to be able to create shots on your own. That’s what I was getting at with Knox, not the idea that shooting 30 times makes you more skilled than shooting 20 times.

    My hope is that a full season of at least semi competent PG play (Elfrid, a hopefully improved DSJ and Frank) will mean more lobs and pick and rolls for Mitch. I would love to see him add a little 10 foot jump shot or a corner 3 and a few post moves but that can wait for another season. What I would like to see this season is being able to play starter’s minutes without fouling out, a few more rebounds and a few more points from lobs, pick and rolls and put backs. If Randle can keep his 3 point shooting up, they could pair very nicely together on offense and defense.

    And I think RJ maybe should come off the bench to start but if that happens, we gotta brace ourselves for the LOLKnicks articles about how they picked a bust with RJ because starting out as a 6th man means he will never get better or improve. But I honestly don’t understand this idea that all lottery picks have to automatically start in the NBA.

    He can’t even create a shot on his own.

    So jumping really high and dunking on literally anyone in the league is not shot creation?

    2012-13 PTSD vibes intensify

    Other areas of improvement for Mitch: communication and help positioning on defense. He’s obviously an absolutely insane playmaker on the defensive end already – it sometimes looked like he was playing a different sport than other guys with the shots he would block. But the best defensive Cs contribute tons of incremental defensive value outside of making plays through both constantly cutting off access to the basket with their positioning and by moving around the other players to support in that. I don’t think Mitch does either of those things particularly well right now and that’s why I don’t think he’s quite the superstar level defender (yet!) that the box score stats would make you think.

    So jumping really high and dunking on literally anyone in the league is not shot creation?

    No, of course not. That’s someone helping him create a shot by doing all the ballhandling. Someone needs to pass him the ball in the right spot for that to happen. And, moreover, he isn’t *that* great even at that.

    Creating your own shot is having the ball on the wing with 8 seconds on the shot clock and making some kind of offensive move yourself and getting an effective shot off. It’s doing the ballhandling and the shooting and the scoring. Mitchell Robinson can’t do anything like that. If you gave him the ball 20 feet from the basket and said, “Here, Mitch, there’s five seconds left on the shot clock, you need to beat your man and score,” he couldn’t. He has no offensive game of any kind in that scenario. Which is why he will never have the usage rate necessary for superstardom. He can certainly be a Gobertian, Capelainian star.

    If they went full process, they would lose more real dollars than Memphis would.

    They’ve inadvertently done the full process (just without the actual benefits of the process) and been fine, revenue-wise. It’s not even slightly an issue. That’s basically Isiah-level “You can’t rebuild in New York” stuff.

    I don’t understand why people think the Knicks would lose money by rebuilding. We’ve been terrible for basically 20 years now and the Knicks don’t lose money. We had the two worst seasons in Knicks history happen within a couple of years of each other and the Knicks don’t lose money. Why would doing an actual rebuild mean that the Knicks lose money?

    They’ve inadvertently done the full process (just without the actual benefits) and been fine, revenue-wise.

    You know that isn’t true. We talk about it all the time. We’ve always chased marginal wins and 8 seeds. We’ve inadvertently been shit, we’ve just never been shit enough. That slight difference, though, allows the team to appear like a potential playoff team during offseason ticket sales times and the first two months of the season. How many times did one of our shitty 35 win teams fool people for a while? Many.

    That’s basically Isiah-level “You can’t rebuild in New York” stuff.

    It really isn’t. All I’m saying is it costs more money to do it in NY than Memphis.

    They totally tanked this season and were completely fine in revenue. It’s not even remotely an issue.

    Just glancing at the DRAYMOND ratings looks like it has DSJ as a pretty decent defender.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    Hey @mcuban what do you think of 538’s new defensive stat? It has @kporzee in the top 3 defenders in the league the last 6 years. It also has @MaxiKleber as a top 5 defender last year.

    Mark Cuban retweeted.

    lol, do you actually believe that the stats say that a guy shooting .692 TS% on low usage is more valuable than a guy shooting .600 TS% on 30% USG?

    @THJC I mean it depends on how low of a usage. Kawhi last year was .606 TS% on 30.3 USG. There were literally 35 players in the league that hit .600 TS% over a good sample size of shots, literally 4 players hit 30% USG. Harden, Giannis, Steph, Kawhi. The next closest are KD, KA Towns, Julius Randle. You don’t have to hit 30% USG to be valuable but if your TS% is .600, a USG of 30% provides more value offensively than say Mitch’s .692 at 12.1% USG. There are only 5 players on the court at a time, if your USG is well below 20% then where does the rest of the USG go? If the answer is a high efficiency USG soaker then it’s probably not worth sacrificing marginal TS% for additional USG, but if you don’t have Harden on your team then expanding your skill set is probably beneficial.

    @THCJ actually I’m not sure what your argument even was through all the Strat trolling… reading it again, I think you were saying that the models account for low USG and that despite the low USG Mitch still is and projects to be a star? I would agree with that if that is your take.

    “All-in-one stats are garbage except for the ones that reinforce my preconceived notions”

    You know that isn’t true. We talk about it all the time. We’ve always chased marginal wins and 8 seeds. We’ve inadvertently been shit, we’ve just never been shit enough. That slight difference, though, allows the team to appear like a potential playoff team during offseason ticket sales times and the first two months of the season. How many times did one of our shitty 35 win teams fool people for a while? Many.)

    The Knicks have been one of the five worst teams in the NBA for the past 20 years. Their popularity has nothing to do with ‘fooling’ ticket buyers into thinking they might be an 8th seed or whatever. It would’ve been difficult for any rebuilds to make them worse or less popular over that span.

    It really isn’t. All I’m saying is it costs more money to do it in NY than Memphis.”

    I don’t think this is true at all, due to the TV money. The Knicks own the network that broadcasts their games, the Grizzlies do not. The difference in the size of their respective TV markets is big enough where the Knicks are pretty much guaranteed to have more people watching them on TV than the Grizz no matter the circumstance.

    eading it again, I think you were saying that the models account for low USG and that despite the low USG Mitch still is and projects to be a star? I would agree with that if that is your take.

    I was saying that there’s no offense statistic that would say that a low-usage guy at .692 TS% is more valuable than a guy like Kawhi or Durant or Steph, despite their objectively-lower efficiency.

    The best O players in the league score a lot and do it efficiency.

    Like, would I rather have a 7% yield on $1000 or a 6% yield on $3000? No-brainer

    @THCJ so you were dunking on Strat for having a broken opinion, and then also for making an obvious argument? Sorry for assuming the rest of your post was you explaining why his opinion was broken.

    I sifted through the data set, and saw our boy Frank (who for some reason isnt included on the web page applet) had a +1.8 DRAYMOND rating. His defense is probably worse than that, because he’s an anemic rebounder, but if DRAYMOND is to be believed hes still a good defender (contra his DBPM) despite the lack of box score production. Now if only he could learn to do everything else.

    By Draymond Frank was the worst defender of all our point guards last year. He was very good (+1.8) in his rookie season but last year he was basically neutral (+0.007) while DSJ and even Burke and Mudiay put up better numbers. Maybe because he played more 2? Who knows. Anyway, Draymond seems heavily weighted towards bigs- 22 of the top 25 guys were either 5s or 4s (23 if you count Durant as a 4) so either Draymond is still missing something or (more likely) wing/point defense just isn’t nearly as valuable as paint protection.

    Mitch had a .692 TS% last year with a FGA/36 rate that Rudy Gobert, who is absolutely a star unless you’re insane, didn’t reach until his 4th season. His DBPM would’ve lead the entire league if he qualified (5.2 to Gobert’s career high and league leading figure of 5.1). What the hell are we worried about?

    I was saying that there’s no offense statistic that would say that a low-usage guy at .692 TS% is more valuable than a guy like Kawhi or Durant or Steph, despite their objectively-lower efficiency.

    The best O players in the league score a lot and do it efficiency.

    Like, would I rather have a 7% yield on $1000 or a 6% yield on $3000? No-brainer

    I mean I’m not sure if anyone takes it seriously anymore but a boxscore stat like Wins Produced pretty much marginalizes USG and emphasizes TS% all other things being equal.
    http://wagesofwins.com/how-to-calculate-wins-produced/
    https://www.boxscoregeeks.com/players?sort=per48_wins_produced&direction=desc&minimum=true

    If this DRAYMOND stat says KP is good but Frank is wildly overrated, is Strat’s head gonna explode?

    I’m guessing it “only works for evaluating big men” or something else you can only learn from horse racing.

    They totally tanked this season and were completely fine in revenue. It’s not even remotely an issue.

    It tends to show up the followng season. And if their revenue doesn’t go down after this season I’ll be shocked.

    If this DRAYMOND stat says KP is good but Frank is wildly overrated, is Strat’s head gonna explode?

    I’m guessing it “only works for evaluating big men” or something else you can only learn from horse racing.

    While, as I stated above, I think paint protection is a lot more valuable than wing defense I do think that Draymond doesn’t pick up Frank’s best attribute which is forcing guys to give up the ball and not shoot in the first place.

    While, as I stated above, I think paint protection is a lot more valuable than wing defense I do think that Draymond doesn’t pick up Frank’s best attribute which is forcing guys to give up the ball and not shoot in the first place.

    Last year players Frank defended shot 7.1 times per game. This tied Allonzo Trier for 10th overall on the team. Frank’s man shot about 1% than their average when defended by Frank. Mitch’s man shot 6.2% worse, for reference.

    Ummm….

    ESPN Sources: The New York Knicks and free agent Reggie Bullock are re-working an original two-year, $21M deal, with both sides motivated to find an agreement with new terms. Agent David Bauman and the Knicks are re-evaluating Bullock’s fitness to play a full season in 2019-20.

    Thanks, Woj?

    What on Earth does “re-evaluating Bullock’s fitness to play a full season in 2019-20” mean?

    I assume that’s basically agent spin for “he failed his physical”? I know he has had injury issues throughout his career but hadn’t heard anything about them being this serious.

    Last year players Frank defended shot 7.1 times per game. This tied Allonzo Trier for 10th overall on the team. Frank’s man shot about 1% than their average when defended by Frank. Mitch’s man shot 6.2% worse, for reference.

    Ha- my eye test foiled again!

    . He was very good (+1.8) in his rookie season but last year he was basically neutral (+0.007)

    So Frank was well over 75th percentile his first year and at the median his second year. (2019 median was 0.01 and 2018 75th percentile was 1.04). It sounds like something went wrong his second year, most likely his injuries hampered him, but it could also be that, as suggested, he had to guard more 2’s, 3’s and 4’s last year.

    By the way, that twitter video of him shooting threes was impressive. Thanks to whoever posted the link. Was it NBA three point distance or FIBA three point distance?

    @wojespn
    Following Following @wojespn
    More
    ESPN Sources: The New York Knicks and free agent Reggie Bullock are re-working an original two-year, $21M deal, with both sides motivated to find an agreement with new terms. Agent David Bauman and the Knicks are re-evaluating Bullock’s fitness to play a full season in 2019-20.

    Hey, the Nets signed Kevin Durant and he’s hurt, so why can’t the Knicks sign an injured Reggie Bullock? If you have a chance to lock in an injured Reggie Bullock, you have to get that shit down on the first day of the offseason.

    I’m going to crowdsource a project to determine how many players got their highest career AAV contract from the Knicks. It is beyond me why the Knicks would pay Bullock that kind of money. Give me a bit. Gonna need the help of my fellow Knickerblogger work procrastinators on this one.

    this helps us unintentionally tank… not like bullock was gonna be amazing but there’s a high likelihood that knox now sees major minutes…

    Darn, how will our 25-win team survive with only Ellington, Trier, Dotson and Frank to play the 2? We need a veteran fifth shooting guard!

    So I’m chillin on Montauk town beach on a 10 beach day. Shame I’ll be missing SL#3!

    gotta hand it to 538 for data mining an r squared entirely in-sample (see eg footnote 3) and still failing to beat dbpm’s out of sample r squared. i could do that with player birthdays. they claim draymond’s rsquared captures non-overlapping phenomena to drpm but suspiciously don’t show a higher rsquared from combining the two over the sample period. wonder why.

    marcus morris julius randle bobby portis and we are guaranteed at least one newsbreaking practice fight this year. throw in iggy (gut feeling).

    Signing Bullock gives you a better chance on signing other star-role players. These guys always recruit one another ! ” Lets Go to NY ! Steve & Scott are having a FA opening party and give away Millions “

    Dick move by Morris to renege on his Spurs contract to go play for the shitty Knicks. The Knicks want to try to run an all-power forward lineup out there. Knox/Morris/Portis/Randle/Gibson.

    You know how Woj got his start through Joe Dumars? How Dumars essentially established Woj as “the man” with other executives, and as such, Woj has been more than willing to write numerous glowing articles about Dumars over the years? Well, guess who was on staff with Dumars back then. Scott Perry. Then you read Woj tweets like…

    “In a brief conversation with ESPN, Bauman was complimentary of how the Knicks handled this emerging situation with Bullock. He cited how accommodating ownership, front office and medical staff had been in dealing with new issues facing deal: “First-class throughout,” Bauman said.”

    and

    “This isn’t the free agency that New York fans imagined, but Knicks gathering group of serious-minded, professional players: Ellington, Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson and Julius Randle. No stars, but Randle’s young and talented. It’s a hard-playing, competitive group for David Fizdale.”

    And it sure makes you think of that C+C Music Factory song, no?

    The Knicks need more cowbell (PFs).

    (By the way, complete dick move. They traded Bertans away)

    I legit don’t get this Morris deal. It seems mind-boggling. Their asset collection strategy seems to be, “Is he mediocre and a veteran? We’ll fit him in somewhere, while paying him $15 million for a season!”

    we’ve carefully constructed a team of redundant rentals to skim playing time from our shitty prospects

    Yeah, at least with Bullock, you could say that he’s a better 3-point shooter than most of our wings and could help with spacing for Knox and Barrett and Mitch. Morris is just gonna soak up minutes that should go to guys with more of a future with the team. Even if the plan is to try to spin him at the trade deadline… yeah, I dunno.

    I also find it hard to believe that Marcus Morris making $15 million will be much of a trade asset at the deadline.

    I think the idea would be that you pair him with a cheap young player whom the other team wants and get a genuinely good veteran who makes closer to what Morris earns.

    But, again, that’s me desperately searching for some kind of logic in this. Morris isn’t bad. He’s just… more pointless than anyone else we’ve signed. Even with Portis, which I’ve railed against at length, you can wishcast on the idea of him being relatively young with the ability to get better.

    Yeah, Morris is not awful or anything. He made sense for San Antonio. He’s a decent player (no longer a good player, though, which is why his market was not exactly…robust). He just makes no sense here, especially considering their glut of power forwards, which should include Knox but now clearly can’t include Knox. They really needed to add a big man who could be a power forward and/or small ball center and they added four. All veterans and all making $10 million or more. It’s just…dumb.

    Overpaid veterans that would be the 7/8/9 player on a good team are the new market inefficiency.

    Typing that out I just had flashbacks to Scott Layden.

    There’s a certain point in each offseason where the Knicks lose me, this is it. Even with Portis you squint and see a player- overpriced, but a player. But Morris makes no sense. He doesn’t fit, he’s not young, he’s not good. Morris only plays if Portis is a center. Portis only plays center if Mitch doesn’t and that’s worse than the pointless Morris.

    Playing-wise MMorris is redundant.
    But his toughness and leadership will be very needed this year.
    I like it !

    They’re even redundant when it comes to signing guys to be “tough” and “veteran leaders,” with Gibson and now apparently Morris (who never seemed like the “leader” type to me. He is tough, though, I’ll give him that).

    During the 2019 Boston playoffs Morris was clearly ‘ the Balls ‘ of the team while Kyrie was singing ‘dont cry for me Argentina’ and the other ‘stars’ were hiding behind bushes when it mattered most…

    All these PFs bring back the good old days of Clarence Weatherspoon, Othella Harrington and a young Kurt Thomas

    Marcus Morris. Kind of hilarious.

    No way that Iggy the Viking is only bringing fists to the fight. I picture him with at least an atgeir or a sax.

    Ptmilo, I don’t understand you’re comment on the new five thirty eight rating system. My understanding is that they used different data than the data used in defensive metrics such as box plus minus. It’s actually very nice to have a stat that depends on different data. And it’s clearly measuring something different because the r squared with other metrics wasn’t that high.

    What I didn’t like was that they had one fittable parameter, which was the difference in make percentage between an open shot and a defender shot. Instead of trying to measure that empirically, they just set it to get the best correlation with another metric. What’s the point of trying to make new data match other data? Just try and see what the new data says. And they could have tested it. They seem to have information on how close a defender was to a shot taker, so presumably they could sort that by the shot taker instead of by the defender and find out the difference between a defended and a free shot for each NBA player. My guess is that the difference is a lot bigger than the eight percent they settled on. Just think about the difference between an open court undefended layup and defended one and you will see what I mean. This could have something to do with how big man defense seems over valued in the metric.

    @133 they only had five years of data. they admit that they tweaked their model, such at the 8 percentage point assumption, by trial and error to maximize the rapm regression. this is known as data mining. other models were also formed this way, but they were tested on a different rapm sample to determine their r squareds. big fucking difference.

    low correlation with other models doesn’t mean it explains different things. it could mean it captures some of the efficacy of other models while capturing differing noise. when you datamine your model you increase your likelihood of becoming an expert noise vacuum. there are multiple teams who currently use the second spectrum dfg% data with fairly simple methodologies yet would laugh at this attempt.

    I think Morris is more likely to have trade value than the others b/c he’s much more of a wing-style PF than the others and the flexibility of wings means that they’re both more needed generally and easier to plug in a bunch of places. Almost every team in the league would have a fairly significant place for Morris in their rotation I think, whereas the same can not be said for, say, Portis. What he’s missing is the youth and corresponding possibility that he might pop. I guess maybe he has a nice year shooting the 3 (he was red hot the first half of last year if I remember correctly) and that gives his value a nice bump? It’s all pretty weak I admit. Our Knicks have got me reaching for answers, that’s for sure.

    If that is what data mining is, I agree, it’s bad. I don’t know why they did it. I’d actually like to know how much good defense affects different shots, even though I know it’s a function of many different things. Then you could address questions like when is an open two point shot more productive than a contested three.

    It may just very well be that these chucklefucks really just have no fucking idea what they’re doing at all.

    How many angels can you fit on a pin? How many mediocre free agents can an NBA team sign in one offseason? Two previously unanswerable questions, but the Knicks are answering the second one.

    Knicks could probably get D’Angelo from GSW depending if Gibson and Morris have a solid start to the season. Attach a pick. Gets GSW to lower their tax bill, get them some playoff veterans, and they get a future low cost asset with a protected draft pick.

    Actually Z-man, it turns out we agree. I just didn’t understand what he meant at first.

    Steve: Reggie didn’t pass the test. What do you say ?
    Scott: Let’s go back to plan B.
    Steve: Ok. Let’s do it !
    Steve & Scott together: Rock ! Scissors ! Paper !
    Rock wins again ! We ll get Morris.

    Knicks could probably get D’Angelo from GSW depending if Gibson and Morris have a solid start to the season. Attach a pick. Gets GSW to lower their tax bill, get them some playoff veterans, and they get a future low cost asset with a protected draft pick.

    Why would they have sign-and-traded for him in the first place if they were already looking to unload him from the tax bill? They traded for him to (1) see if he could thrive in their offense so as to not waste another year of Curry and Draymond and/or (2) have his salary slot to trade for a position of greater need.

    They could have just let Durant walk if they were concerned about their tax bill.

    Yeah, and even, Woj says that working something out with Bullock comes first

    Plan A: sign two max free agents!
    Plan B: power forwards!

    Actually, if MM does sign, it is more like Plan 9 From Outer Space, the NBA equivalent of raising the dead to try to take over the world.
    🙂

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    I have mixed feelings about Morris.

    On the one hand I think he’s become overrated defensively and as a player in general. He’s also another PF (even though he may be able to play some SF).

    On the other hand we were accumulating glut of SGs and if Bullock winds up being out, that frees some playing time there.

    Are we going for some sort of record for ‘most pointless free agent power forward signings in a single offseason’?

    Gibson, Portis and potentially Morris – I don’t know if I can remember a team signing three pointless free agent power forwards in a single offseason before. That’s also not even counting Randle.

    The Knicks are building a decent defensive line but they need some skill position players.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    @65

    If you took a garbage team and put Robinson on it, do you think he would make the team better by an equal or greater amount than let’s say Paul George who is also a high level defender but a much higher usage scorer?

    If you say yes, I’m going to spill my drink.

    Teams game plan to stop George, but he’s still a force to be reckoned with against the best defenses in the league. Under the same conditions Robinson would be shut down on offense and they’d abuse him on the other side. On a really good team, he’d be slowly working his way into the starting lineup as he became a less raw and more complete player.

    The models you admire are more or less garbage in some cases and his is one of them. Robinson is not a superstar. He may become one eventually, but he’s not one now.

    We’re going to play four PFs and Mitch at once and form a fucking wall around the basket. On every play. Stan van Gundy might just cream himself watching us.

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    If this DRAYMOND stat says KP is good but Frank is wildly overrated, is Strat’s head gonna explode?

    The major problem with the stat is volatility from year to year because of the sample size of shots. Using multiple years of data will help with that problem. That’s why they looked at multiple years in the study. Frank was rated quite well over 2 years even though he was better in year 1 than year 2.

    This kind of metric is clearly not going to get at all aspects of defense, but measuring man defense is the tough job and all the +/- data has huge holes here or there. So seeing a metric like this that looks at multiple years is another tool in the kit.

    I figured out the strategy. The Knicks are cornering the market on PFs to raise their value in anticipation of the trade deadline.

    Honestly, I like Morris. He’s another “real” player. I’m not saying he’s a star, but he can play some.

    Did anyone hear what’s wrong with Bullock? It sounds pretty serious if there are doubts about him being able to play a full season.

    During the medical tests they found out that Bullock was not a PF so they backed off !!!

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    This kind of metric is clearly not going to get at all aspects of defense, but measuring man defense is the tough job and all the +/- data has huge holes here or there. So seeing a metric like this that looks at multiple years is another tool in the kit.

    Ideally, I would like to see it all adjusted for the player being guarded.

    For example, if Curry or Harden has a good game against you, but way below average for them, you’ve done a terrific job even if their FG% was still higher than the NBA average. The best versatile defenders will sometimes get the tougher assignment. I don’t believe a metric like this will capture that aspect of it correctly.

    My fan level approach is to look at the defensive boxcsore data at the NBA.

    That’s why on one night where Harden had a huge game and people were trashing Frank (who guarded him when he was in the game) I was quick to point out that Harden shot terribly against Frank and he kept forcing him into TOs with his length.

    Of course, unless you are employed by an NBA team making piles of money, no one is going to compile this data for fun (unless they are also using it for gambling purposes). But as a fan it’s worth it to glance at the defensive boxscore once in awhile.

    ptmilo: This stat has serious and laughably obvious errors, no one should take it seriously even though the underlying data is useful.

    Strat: The problem with this stat is that the underlying data is too noisy, which is why Frank looks worse in his second year, but overall it is a useful tool unlike BPM/RPM/RAPM/PIPM which you can tell are objectively bad because they under value Frank [cough] I mean defense. Little slip of the tongue, almost spilled my drink.

    There is no plan, other than we have X amount of money to spend – who will take it the fastest?

    Redundant? check
    the lesser of 2 or more brothers? check
    takes time from the kids? check

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    @160

    I just finished saying the same thing.

    This kind of metric is very noisy, but so are all the variations of plus/minus. That’s why it makes sense to look at multiple years of data. That increases the sample size and will tend to make the result more reliable. Of course, that opens another can of worms. Players can improve or get worse from year to year.

    At some point you have to simply acknowledge that almost all these metrics and models are flawed. They are just tools. You have to use your eyes and more importantly your brain to look at it all and make some sense out of it.

    I try to understand the strengths of weaknesses of each model from the cases that look so ridiculous, they can’t possibly be right. After awhile, I start to recognize the profile of player each tends to overrate or underrate. Then I use the models/metrics as tools in a subjective way (by avoiding the major errors) so I can at least approximate reality to the best of my ability.

    That’s the way the very best handicappers do it. They have all kinds data, statistics, and models, but at the end of the day, they make human judgments because they know all the data has limitations.

    The final time of a horse race adjusted for the speed of the track is the most critical piece of information you can have. Every statistical study will show that. But it can be less useful on a rainy day when the amount of moisture in the track was changing from race to race and the wind was gusty on and off. Then adjusting the times becomes more of a guessing game.

    So you throw that model away and look at one that works better on days like that.

    If some model tends to wildly overrate bad defenders or vice versa, if some player just happens to be a terrible defender, don’t use that model to evaluate him.

    @158 LOL.

    This team is starting to take on the pungent odor of the ’08, no maybe ’09, Sacto Kings. Musty.

    But maybe this Morris tease is a favor to an agent? Otherwise, just kill me already.

    The new stat may be noisy, but It has never rated Frank as a lousy defender.

    We’re going to play four PFs and Mitch at once and form a fucking wall around the basket. On every play. Stan van Gundy might just cream himself watching us.

    this is why i check in 🙂

    Stratomatic: Management consists of talent evaluation, fitting pieces together coherently, & contract/valuation level decisions. The Knicks are bad at all three.says:

    ?
    Verified account
    @ShamsCharania
    Sources: Center Willie Cauley-Stein’s contract with the Golden State Warriors: Two years and $4.4M, with a player option in the second season.

    I like this one.

    So I’m chillin on Montauk town beach on a 10 beach day. Shame I’ll be missing SL#3!

    How long are you out there, Z-Man? I live out here during the summer, but I just took off for the week. Heading back Sunday for the John Legend concert.

    If you’re there tomorrow, check out Nancy Atlas at Surf Lodge.
    She goes on around 6pm every Wednesday.

    I try to understand the strengths of weaknesses of each model from the cases that look so ridiculous, they can’t possibly be right. After awhile, I start to recognize the profile of player each tends to overrate or underrate. Then I use the models/metrics as tools in a subjective way (by avoiding the major errors) so I can at least approximate reality to the best of my ability.

    Nah, you just decide via eye test who you like and don’t and toss out the models that disagree.

    You have to use your eyes and more importantly your brain to look at it all and make some sense out of it.

    Can’t, my headache from rolling my eyes at your posts has left me blind. I’m typing this out on a braille keyboard. I also threw out my TV and only listen to games on the radio now. It’s a more pure experience, unclouded by the errors of judgement you sighted fools are prone to. It helps that I can read auras. Adjusting BPM to account for the effects of Venus rising in the Fourth House (rookie mistake, basketball reference) also solves most of it’s issues modeling defensive impact. Incidentally, the same thing accounts for left-hoofed horses being slightly slower than right-hoofed horses during misty conditions when the track is still dry. It all has to do with how gravity is caused by how much water loves earth.

    re: rj’s right hand – i don’t think it’s that big a deal… many players at this age are a lot more dominant on one side than the other…. even pg’s….

    Anyone look halfway decent tonight?

    RJ not bad. Filling the box score to a degree.

    Mitch is fouling everyone and everything. Nights like this may make it slightly non-ridiculous that the team signed a million big men.

    It’s a more pure experience

    in my haste I read “moist pure experience” and I was about to say, damn I know that feel

    Damn, did you see how Barrett created that nifty layup from Mitch? He passed him the ball!

    that was an ok half by rj…. when he’s not forcing things and actually looking for the right play instead of what will get him a bucket… he’s not doodoo…

    If Barrett was having the game Boucher is having, Knicks fans would be having a collective orgasm.

    in my haste I read “moist pure experience” and I was about to say, damn I know that feel

    Now I’m upset I didn’t lean into the wet/dry stuff more. Sigh.

    Summer League basketball is really hard to watch.

    Try to unfocus, like it’s magic eye picture. They’re less depressing as blobs.

    Beautiful move by Miller, there. Matador D from R.J.

    Aside from the shit play by the Knicks tonight, it’s pretty amazing how different this game looks from NCAA ball.

    Lol we were favorites to win summer league because we had “NBA starters” on our SL team. Well when your starters are sub-replacement-level outside of Mitch it appears you can’t win much

    This game is seriously hurting my eyes. If Knox takes another terrible floater I might disassociate.

    Apparently Knox has superstar potential but is also a replacement-level player in the SL

    I watch Knicks Summer League basketball in my free time AMA about being the embodiment of sunk-cost fallacy, existential nihilism and self-flagellation

    Summer League has an important purpose. It’s to let Braz run around a little before he gets buried behind 42 other PFs during the season.

    Today I learned that the Jazz have a “bright horizon” with Mudiay as Conleys backup. I’m assuming it’s a picturesque sunset.

    You know it’s bad when fucking Malcolm in the Miller is lighting you up.

    Who was saying that the networks bring in ex-players (or coaches) as color commentary for the galaxy-brain insight? Steve Smith: “Good pass.” [re-folds arms, looks down at table]

    Idk I think Payton/Ellington/Bullock/Morris/Randle is maybe a 25-win team, and there’s no reason any of these children should start.

    @45, yes Frank hit x in a row. But he doesnt seem to know how to practice. Those movements from station to station should be cat quick, to simulate game speed. He doesnt get lift or move quickly enough to get open.

    RJ has been much better tonight. Not good, exactly, but he’s hit half his shots inside the arc, got to the free throw line, and he’s made some plays with his passing.

    Nice game from RJ. I foresee a few triple doubles from him this season.

    RJ might be a chucker, but Knox is absolutely a black hole. Maybe the worst passer I’ve ever seen at the wing. Just a totally irredeemable pick at 9

    RJ rebounded well again too. If he plays under control and doesn’t force up too many shots he can have productive games even when shooting poorly.

    What was that bush-league move by the Knicks not shaking hands about?

    i only counted 4 bad shots from rj… which is about a 1/4 off the pace the first couple of games…. progress…

    he also had some strong drives to the rim which was a real good sign and even finished with his right a couple times… it seemed like he turned into the de facto pg since kadeem has been so terrible… and that probably made him look for others…. whatever the case may be he should keep that up….

    all in all… that was a very solid game… and there were some flashes of the promise he has…

    @212 Zion does look like he put on more weight. Can’t be good for the knees.

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