What Trade Made/Makes More Sense? The Melo Deal or the Rumored Mitchell Trade?

Z-Man asked:

How analogous is this situation to just before the Melo trade? This question continues to bug me.
-at that time Ujiri was kind of unknown, and we had Donnie Walsh, so while Dolan was more directly involved and the deal seemed imminent, it wasn’t clear that it would be such a massive overpay until the deal was made. Right now, it’s Aller vs. Ainge with less direct involvement and we didn’t just miss out on prime LeBron, so hopefully there is less desperation and a better outcome.
-while most here were not happy with the execution of the deal, when we amnestied Billups and acquired Tyson, and there was some hope that Amare would stay healthy, the whole MTA big 3 thing was pretty exciting…but there was still a feeling that we would never get past the Heat, and that that team was a capped out finished product. Expectations for a post-Donovan trade would be much lower with presumably more deals to come, but now there’s like 8 teams still ahead on paper just in the East of us instead of one or two. And there’s no clear path to leapfrogging any of those teams, other than massive improvements from both RJ and Julius.
-Melo was a bigger star with bigger expectations than Mitchell is right now. I don’t think there would be the same pressure on Mitchell to be who everyone wanted Melo to be, but given the impending overpay to Ainge, I’m not sure there actually won’t be even more pressure on Mitchell, or how he will handle it. Melo handled it pretty well for the most part.
-If we missed out on Melo, odds are we would have overpaid for Deron, which would have ended just as badly. If we miss out on Donovan, there isn’t anyone left out there to overpay.

So I am hoping beyond hope that this doesn’t happen, but if it does, I won’t have as much of a “hard ceiling beneath the Heat” feel, but I still don’t see a clear path forward.

Here’s my take:

It’s truly a fascinating question as to which team was better suited for a trade like this back then. I think that STAT playing like an MVP was really the tipping point back then. Since he was playing like an MVP, it made more sense to go “all in” on a second star, even if it worked out terribly because of STAT’s later injuries. However, Melo also truly upped his game when he got here in a way that many of us were hoping he would (since we were all saying, “If Melo starts shooting more threes, that should help his game and D’Antoni will presumably tell him to shoot more threes” and then Melo ended up shooting a lot more threes as a Knick, especially when D’Antoni got fired, since Melo clearly hated how much D’Antoni was telling him to shoot threes, but once D’Antoni was gone, Melo seemed to absolutely say, “Shit, now if we suck, it’s all on me” and promptly started to do all of the things D’Antoni had always been begging him to do. Granted, you can easily argue that D’Antoni was a dick about how he asked. Blame all around there).

That said, while the Melo Knicks appeared to be more set up for a star deal, you could easily argue that this year’s Knicks are actually better set up because there isn’t a STAT ready to collapse into injury hell on the team, and there will be enough left over to trade (probably, or should I say, “God please”) that they can go out and get a second star later who will want to play with Mitchell. Not necessarily a high usage guy, but someone at the wing or the power forward spot who would compliment Mitchell.

It’s also fair to note that the NBA dramatically changed how it worked soon after the Melo deal, making Melo and STAT a horrible combination (especially when paired with Tyson Chandler), as guys like STAT just couldn’t be traditional fours anymore and, heck, the traditional four didn’t exist anymore. Look at how David Lee went from All-Star to basically unplayable because he was the epitome of the traditional four (post game player who is not good enough on defense to be a center). We literally saw the modern NBA develop in the Heat’s 2012 postseason run as Lebron was, like, “Ah, yes, so I’m the four now.” Look at the Heat from 2011 to 2013. They went from playing a traditional center for about 35 minutes a game in 2011 to 25 minutes a game in 2012 to, like, 5 minutes a game in 2013. Bosh was a traditional four who could make the move to the five in a way that STAT and Lee couldn’t. Then the Warriors kicked that concept into overdrive with Barnes and then Durant as their fours (and most recently Wiggins and Otto Porter Jr).

All of that being said, like Z-man, I don’t think there’s a clear path forward with this Mitchell trade, either, and I’d prefer they just hold on to the gunpowder, as well, but I think it probably makes probably just a little bit less sense than it did to make the Melo deal. It’s all reasonable enough, though. This isn’t like the insane Noah/Rose/Lee offseason. If this was a non-Knicks team, I’d be looking at it and saying, “Yeah, I get it. I don’t like it that much, but I get it.” But I think the Melo trade, as awful as it was, still made more sense at the time, it was just painful to see Masai get every single last asset he wanted in that deal. Ugh.

And here’s the poll:

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

71 replies on “What Trade Made/Makes More Sense? The Melo Deal or the Rumored Mitchell Trade?”

The trades are very analogist. I would put Randle in the stoudemire role. The main difference is with traded pics to clear cap room for 2010. Jared Jeffries trade made it a lot harder to back down from a win now approach. We didn’t have a high draft pick to look forward to. A strong front office still would’ve been like “never mind; let’s stay young” when LeBron went to Miami, but I don’t think you need a strong front office to see and retreat from the foolishness of this Mitchell trade. You just need a competent one. That’s the difference between now and then.

An underrated side effect of the Jared Jeffries trade is that the Rockets used that 2012 pick to select Royce White, whose issues prevented him from ever playing in the NBA [Edited to amend: Whoops, he did play in three games for the Kings in 2014. Nine minutes total spread out over three games], thus making that part of the trade really never feel like it haunted the Knicks (similarly, the Suns trading the pick from the Marbury trade and that pick becoming Hayward hurt less because it was a trade removed and thus didn’t stand out as much as “Wait, we also gave up Hayward?!”). Fournier was picked a few picks later. That might have hurt more to see Fournier on the Rockets with Harden (although you could argue that Fournier would have had to have been included in that Harden trade instead of Jeremy Lamb).

Picks 34, 35 and 39 in the 2012 NBA Draft – Jae Crowder, Draymond Green and Khris Middleton. Wow.

I voted against the Melo trade, unfairly, because I know how it turned out and how much Melo’s stubbornness and overinflated sense of his own game made most of those seasons so miserable. The Mitchell trade doesn’t seem like a good idea, but at least I can hold out hope that it won’t go the same way after he arrives.

I know which way I’d like to vote, there’s always a worst of worse, but I can’t do it.
Answering to these polls makes me feel dirty and guilty, as if somehow I’m “in favor” of those trades and I’m not, no I’m not.

Amare was a ticking timebomb so that pairing was always destined to fail(the anmesty would’ve helped).I also feel more comfortable with this current FO and what we have around Mitchell to put together a nice team.

Theres also more upside with Mitchell than Melo Imo as he compares favorably to Lillard at the same age.
If we manage to keep 2 of the young trio(ideally all of them) and have some picks left to spare I think we are in a good spot going forward to improve the team.

Well I just watched the guy who was actually drafted at #19 twice in Summer League, and I’d pick Cam Reddish over him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

You should have watched Keon Johnson instead. He’s worth more than Kai Jones, Cam Reddish, and the heavily protected Charlotte pick put together.

This should be the Mitchell trade by a landslide because Mitchell is not a free agent in 6 months who have the space to sign outright.

If Donovan is a 2nd star, he’s a better one than Amare. Comparing him to Melo who was by most at the time considered a number 1 option is not really a great compsrison. Amare was both injury prone and 28 when he joined the Knicks, vs a healthy 25 year old Mitchell. Key if we get Mitchell is who can we then get that complements his game well. Could we get a disgruntled Zion; KAT or SGA type player down the line by building a solid team with Mitchell and would we have developed enough assets to do that post trade or cap space via free agency?

Hubert, that’s a good point. Also, Mitchell is under a reasonable contract for several years. That said, I didn’t vote because I hated overpaying for Melo, but don’t want to overpay for Mitchell either (not that we have yet).

If Donovan is a 2nd star, he’s a better one than Amare. Comparing him to Melo who was by most at the time considered a number 1 option is not really a great compsrison. Amare was both injury prone and 28 when he joined the Knicks, vs a healthy 25 year old Mitchell. Key if we get Mitchell is who can we then get that complements his game well. Could we get a disgruntled Zion; KAT or SGA type player down the line by building a solid team with Mitchell and would we have developed enough assets to do that post trade or cap space via free agency?

But then the Melo trade would make more sense, no? Since he was an actual #1 star (at least more so than Mitchell). Going “all in” to acquire a #2 while still hoping to get a #1 later doesn’t make as much sense as going “all in” getting a #1.

Wow. Surprised that the Melo trade is winning.

We are definitely further from contention now than we were during that Amare/Gallo year but not by much. And obviously we have more trade capital now.

But why can’t we ever engage with teams like Sacramento when it comes to star trades? Or is it just Dolan’s razor that this trade is happening shortly after Ainge joins the Jazz?

Maybe after this fails, Dolan will hire Hinkie? That would be a fun twist.

We lost the Melo trade. Full stop. I’m no stat boy, but I think (Z-Man, Brian?) Gallinari might have been a better player / teammate straight up. Then we gave up our whole bench and our drafts. The Mcnuggets became a perennial contender. We sank. Could the next moves have saved us? Probably, but we handled all that just as poorly. Non amnesty of stat, etc

I think, if Mitchell is a better teammate than Melo. If we have a first round pick in each draft (even unprotected / swapped) If we moved only IQ (a kid I dearly love, but who has no left hand and won’t play enough to develop with DM in the fold) plus Fournier, then I’d do it.

But why can’t we ever engage with teams like Sacramento when it comes to star trades?

Honestly, that really does sort of suck, right? When it comes time to do big deals, it seems like it is always Masi, Morey or Ainge. Blech.

The funny thing is as fond as all of our memories are of the pre-Melo, post-STAT Knicks, by the time they traded for Melo they weren’t much better than the 2021-2022 team. They were 28-26 with a +0.4 net rating.

When you combine that with the fact that 1) they didn’t have any surplus picks, so the core assets were all going to come from the team itself and 2) whatever you think of Brunson/Mitchell, Melo/STAT was such a laughably bad pairing even if STAT was an ironman I couldn’t even talk myself into it as a sophomore in high school, I think we’re better positioned for this kind of trade now than we were then.

This all comes down to whether we can make a trade that leaves us with the ability to make another big trade. The Melo trade sucked because if Melo + STAT + one non-max free agent (and we nailed that part with Chandler) didn’t make us a contender we were shit out of luck. That doesn’t have to be the case this time around.

Per Twitter, Utah is pushing for Obi. I don’t know how true it is, but even though I’m not a big fan of Obi, we are short on forwards and long on guards, so it seems that should be a no go.

Brian the reason why i think this deal isnt done yet is that the Knicks know this cant be their all in move and need to hold onto some assets to make further moves. If I were to guess the Knicks want to hold onto the young guys we have now and are fine with dealing picks to compensate.

If we gave up a big pick package but held onto Grimes Obi and IQ I would be satisfied with that.
Also if Obi is where the Knicks draw the line I suppose that would be a good thing in regards to them wanting to move Randle. On the other hand if we do trade Obi I hope we can get jarred Vanderbilt back in the deal.

The Mitchell trade will be less crippling than Melo’s trade so that’s my vote. Both players bring very similar strengths and weaknesses to the table, good volume scoring on decent efficiency and a bit here and there, Melo rebounded more, Mitchell is a better passer, but I’d say they’re roughly at the same level. The difference really is that we have collected more assets this time and even with a big trade we’ll certainly be left with something, while the Melo trade emptied the cupboard for a player we could have, and should have, signed for free 6 months later.

It’s not close to me, I don’t know if the Mitchell trade will turn out to be significantly better than the Melo trade was, but I really don’t hate it as much as I hate the Melo trade now retroactively.

One difference between the two deals is that the Melo deal was negotiated during the season. The young Knicks were playing very well and then all the trade rumors started. So names like Gallo, Chandler, Fields, Felton etc.. we’re in the press every day. Then the team started floundering a little.

It has to be tough to remain focused under those conditions.

Imagine the current speculation was occurring mid season. How do you think it would impact the play of RJ, Grimes, Obi, Quick etc…. You don’t if you are going to be living in NY or Utah within weeks. That can’t be fun.

I think that STAT playing like an MVP was really the tipping point back then. Since he was playing like an MVP, it made more sense to go “all in” on a second star

not incontrovertible. he was playing well. he was also 39th in the league in bpm (2.2) after 53 games, ie before melo arrived, excluding guys who hardly played. similar ws48 ranking. and this probably flatters him because defense.

Not to relitigate the mostly terrible 2010s again, but do we feel like Melo actually was capable of being the number one guy on a contender? I know he made the conference finals once in Denver, and the Kidd/Felton/Pablo team here got bounced in the second round due to an unfavorable matchup (and ridiculous refereeing). But didn’t that era kind of prove that circumstances had to be exactly right just for a team with Melo as its alpha to be in the upper tier of its conference, nevermind to be a legit threat to win a title? Melo’s reputation was stronger than Mitchell’s is now, and he made a bunch of All-NBA teams that Mitchell has not yet. But he was always on the second or third team.

Or maybe, again, I am letting how frustrating that era was color my Melo feelings. (That, and that he was a tremendously un-fun player to watch, despite his scoring wizardry.) The initial trade was at least partially his fault, because he and his agent (what was his name again?) didn’t want to risk waiting for free agency in the event of a massive CBA change. But the rest of it was bumbling by Knicks management: giving Billups the amnesty rather than saving it for Stat, the Bargnani trade, the refusal to lean into the things that made the 54-win team so good, Mega-Max Melo + Triangle Power, etc. I’m not saying that we’d have won a title with a better front office, but perhaps we could have been like the Dominique Wilkins-era Hawks, where we consistently made the playoffs due to having one of the more unstoppable scorers in the game and a good-enough supporting cast.

I’m not 100% sure MItchell can’t be a the #1 option on a contender. At 25, he may not even peak for another 2-3 years. Second, he was the #1 option for the Jazz. They regularly looked like contenders. The real question is why they flamed out in the playoffs.

IMO, if he is the #1 option, what he needs is a #1a option. Then you have a situation kind of like Boston with Brown and Tatum. Neither one of them is a super elite efficient scorer. But together they enough.

What the Knicks could use this year is a breakout year from RJ where his efficiency rises into the 56% range with further upside potential. Then while they look for an upgrade, there’s still hope they may not need one. We’ll see how much better teammates helps him.

Of course the difference between Boston and NY is that Boston has a great size and defense and we are going to be small with highly suspect defense. That’s the reason I am skeptical.

Ignoring the asset side of things this front office is just objectively better at finding talent than the Melo led teams. Mostly solid-good drafting and finding quality free agents relative to those teams.

If you look at the Knicks transactions list post Melo trade he really should’ve just stayed in Denver cause this FO did him no favors.

Not to relitigate the mostly terrible 2010s again, but do we feel like Melo actually was capable of being the number one guy on a contender? I know he made the conference finals once in Denver

I mean, that’s the answer right there, no? He had already made a Conference Finals by the time he was 24, while Mitchell has never made it that far. Had Melo not already been to the Conference Finals at the time, the hype on the Melo deal would have been a whole lot different. Instead, he was coming over as a superstar who had already led a team to the Conference Finals, losing to the eventual champions.

Ignoring the asset side of things this front office is just objectively better at finding talent than the Melo led teams. Mostly solid-good drafting and finding quality free agents relative to those teams.

If you look at the Knicks transactions list post Melo trade he really should’ve just stayed in Denver cause this FO did him no favors.

If you go back a decade, there are literal posts from current Knickerblogger posters saying stuff along the lines of “I trust Glen Grunwald to make the right call.” Landry Fields was a #39 pick, Steve Novak and Jeremy Lin were waiver claims, Chris Copeland and Pablo Prigioni were undrafted free agents. The Knicks found plenty of talent in weird places back then.

>>>Per Twitter, Utah is pushing for Obi.<<<

I tend to assume whatever Danny wants, Danny will get. Leon is in "prove me wrong" territory.

I really, really hope that Randle is in the middle of these deals. He has got to go, and Obi has to stay.

Since the Mitchell trade still has not happened and its details are not yet known, it can hardly be considered worse than the Melo deal which was total evisceration.

And although the Knicks are now in negotiations with a man who’s eviscerated a team or two in his day, it’s hard to imagine the outcome being quite as bad as the Melo deal. The mitigating factor may well be the relative reputations of the two players. At the time of the trade, Melo was widely considered one of the NBA’s A-list stars whereas Mitchell is not. And while such superficial classifications may matter little to those of us who dwell inside the KB bubble, they very much matter to a starfucker like Dolan.

I believe the Mitchell deal is going to happen and that it will be an overpay so the only slim reed of hope left for me to cling to is that Dolan won’t be quite as horny for a second tier star as he once was for (fake) superstar Melo so there may actually be some limits on the number of assets he’s willing to surrender this time around.

In the crying over spilt milk department, it really upsets me now that we didn’t go for Murray. Mitchell and Murray is a championship caliber backcourt with years of great play ahead of them. I liked the Brunson signing but I like it a lot less if we’re getting Mitchell.

And I don’t buy the argument that we couldn’t have done both. IQ, the 13th pick we traded to Detroit, and one unprotected pick, would have easily surpassed the package Atlanta sent out. We’d still have plenty of picks & players left to get Mitchell.

As always, with Leon, it’s less about what he does than what he could have done if he didn’t have tunnel vision for his CAA guys.

Melo seemed to legitimately want to come to the Knicks which is why it was so infuriating to me at time that he just didn’t wait for free agency (although in the case there’s probably a good chance he winds up in Miami). Granted it’s not my money, so it’s easy for me to say

Melo seemed to legitimately want to come to the Knicks which is why it was so infuriating to me at time that he just didn’t wait for free agency (although in the case there’s probably a good chance he winds up in Miami). Granted it’s not my money, so it’s easy for me to say

He was afraid that the new CBA would gut max contracts. I have no idea why he thought that, as it wasn’t a very logical concern (the mid-level guys were the ones who had to worry, not the max guys), but it was his concern and why he wanted a trade and extension locked in before the CBA. So while he wanted to be in New York, he was willing to go to Brooklyn, instead, since it was obviously still New York technically.

***do we feel like Melo actually was capable of being the number one guy on a contender?***

I’m sure Hakim Warwick was important and all, but Carmelo Anthony was a proven number one guy on a national champion.

“But didn’t that era kind of prove that circumstances had to be exactly right just for a team with Melo as its alpha to be in the upper tier of its conference, nevermind to be a legit threat to win a title?”

This. People bray that if the Knicks only ‘did it my way’ we’d be assured of winning a chip. But things have to happen so perfectly for that to happen. Every single year is littered with great teams lying broken on the side of the road, derailed (if I may mix my metaphors) by Michael Jordan, or an injury, or a bad match-up, or a thousand other things.

To me it’s about putting a competitive team out there, not a championship team. There have been about three clear championship teams in my lifetime (Bulls, Heat, Warriors). Every other time it’s been a hope and a prayer, and a host of things going right that could have gone wrong. And for most other teams, things didn’t go ‘exactly right’ (90s Knicks anyone?).

Just a minor whinge. I’ll be quiet now.

Also, the 2010 Knicks weren’t playing well at the time of the trade. They had paid a premium to clear tons of space and had very little to show for it. They went on a nice winning streak early in the season, but before the trade they had lost 11 out of 14 games. Meanwhile the Heat, who had started slowly, had started to gel with all of the fun toys that Dolan had wanted. So it made SENSE that he would be unsatisfied with the plan to that point. Add that Anthony, who had a true top-tier pedigree, was the closest thing LeBron had to a “rival” in the league. Tossing in Mozgov and other marginal stuff wasn’t “nonsensical”, it just wasn’t the best use of resources, especially in hindsight.

It seems like currently the Knicks have been swiping right for a while while everybody swipes left for them. Now with Mitchell they have a BOOM! and want to marry him before the first date. That makes less “sense” to me.

Yeah, it’s like I’ve been saying, it’s all about the spectrum. If the Knicks give X draft picks, they want to give Y players and if the Jazz want X players, then the Knicks will only give Y draft picks. With a spectrum like that, it makes negotiations drag the fuck on, since it’s, like, “Okay, we’ll give you five picks if you take only IQ, but if you want IQ and Grimes, then it’s three picks” or whatever. It is the sort of thing that will take soooo long to come to an agreement on. And that’s not even getting into the possible protections on the picks!

That said, it’s interesting to see the Knicks’ perspective on the Gobert deal. The Knicks seem to think that the Gobert deal was all about the picks, but I don’t think Ainge saw it that way.

By the way, this whole “Trust Aller” stuff is kind of premature, no? I mean, I think Scott Perry is not great, but it’s not like Scott Perry would be all, “Please, Utah, take all of our picks and our young players!” but Aller is, like, “No, no, Scott, let’s only offer some of our picks and young players.” “Shit, thank goodness we have you in charge of negotiations, Brock.”

Until we actually see what kind of deal Aller negotiates here, it’s hard to say how much we should trust him. He didn’t sign 15 power forwards when the team was awful, so that puts him ahead of other guys on the executive team, for sure, but I don’t think he’s in “Just trust him” territory as of yet.

For sure Brian and how this trade goes will be his most important move yet. Just based on reports we’ve seen on him hes been one of the smarter members of the FO with his focus on asset maximizing and pushing back against Thibs poor decisions.

Its moreso I trust him more on this type of transaction than say Leon running it completely.

The Melo trade was a disaster. Signing him in free agency was the right thing to do, for him and the Knicks. And they muffed it.

Obviously I never wanted him here but the fact we paid up also was infuriating.

Said my peace on Mitchell. If Randle is still here what is the point? He is a nice player on a reasonable deal and in some circumstances I think trading for him would be fine. Just not for the Knicks now.

The longer this drags out the more it works to the Knicks benefit, no? As many here have already opined, Mitchell could wind up responsible for getting Utah some marginal wins in a season that Ainge would much rather tank. Preventing that from happening by getting him off the roster before the start of the regular season may well be viewed by Ainge to be of at least equivalent value as any of the individual assets that come back in a trade package.

I find this to be plausible. I wonder if Aller does, too. If so, he would have a strong incentive to drag negotiations out for as long as possible, believing that each day closer to the regular season adds incrementally more leverage to the Knicks side of the ledger. And, if the accounts are accurate, such a thing would be right in Aller’s wheelhouse. Reports are he likes to fuss over even the most microscopic details of each & every aspect of a deal. That suggests the possibility of a long, drawn out negotiation – especially one with as many moving parts as this figures to have,

So, yeah, if it really is just a matter of ratcheting up Ainge’s motivation to sell at a lesser price by dragging things out to as close to the start of the regular season as possible then having the talks led by some annoying dude who relishes haggling over Every. Insignificant. Detail. is probably a pretty smart move.

I want a Gibson SG. But I already have a Stratocaster. I don’t need an SG. But I see a nice SG Junior. One pickup. One tone knob. Nice and minimal. Light!

I do have the means to pick one up. Not a great vintage one, but a sweet little reissue. But I do have a Stratocaster. And the Strat is no re-issue. Will I play two electrics? Maybe I should look for something I really need. But I keep clicking on the SG JR links…

lol

DRed
February 21, 2011 at 10:46 pm
That’s an awful lot to give up for Renaldo Balkman and an overpaid chucker.

If they’re going to do this Mitchell trade they will end up with a very small back court. Not even getting into the potential defensive deficiencies of Mitchell or Brunson, they need to keep Obi and Grimes to have some size to put on the floor. Including one or both of those guys is going to leave few options for some longer defenders on the perimeter ( Feron Hunt come on down?). I like IQ but given the numbers at guards his size I think it makes sense to include him, along with Fournier, Cam and 4 firsts (5 if you have to, but less players then?). Throw in some seconds, McBride, perhaps Rose, rejigger if necessary, but keep one of the 2023 picks as that draft is allegedly loaded.

If something along those lines doesn’t get it done well then fuck Danny Ainge and move on. Keep the assets and the powder dry and roll with this team until something better comes along. A massive overpay would be so Knicksy and not what other smart teams would do.

I agree CDP its to the Jazz benefit that this deal gets done before the season as Mitchells value will likely decrease not increase. If he gets hurt or the Jazz look like a bottom 10 team people will start to realize that Gobert was the real engine behind their regular season success. Hes a walking top 5 defense on his own.

The arguments for another team stepping in at this point look really weak as Mitchell would have to want to stay for them long term and that team would have to be able to beat our package. As of now the closest team is Miami who Mitchell would be happy to go to but their package is laughable at best. The jazz probably dont want to pay Herro and dont want anything to do with Duncan Robinsons contract.

Keeping Mitchell would screw up the Wemby tank and his value goes down the less years you have him under control. I think we get the deal done that is satisfactory for both sides unless Dolan steps in which I doubt will happen.

“ Going “all in” to acquire a #2 while still hoping to get a #1 later doesn’t make as much sense as going “all in” getting a #1.”

Here’s where I feel a mixture of today’s trade “prices” and our Knicks PTSD is messing with us: with the excess of 1RPs we have with the amount of young talent we have, we could come up off a bunch of these without going “all in” even though it’ll feel like A. #lolKnicks overpays of years past, and B. We’re selling the farm.

@danvt. I’m looking to buy a Stratocaster. Any tips? I currently play a Rickenbacker 360.

As a sidebar: I don’t think we should dismiss Julius yet. I think he heard the noise. I just saw some recent pics of him and he looks like an absolute beast right now.

I’d love to see this trade end up with just a couple players and 3 picks just to see the reactions on Twitter.

I can’t compare the Melo trade with the Mitchell trade, unless we trade Fournier, RJ, Quick, Grimes, Obi and all our available picks (8) for Mitchell and Gay. That way we’d be left with a “shaky” starting 5 (Brunson, Mitchell, Gay, Randle, Mitch) and almost no bench, much like after the Melo deal. But even then it wouldn’t be the same, because right now we need to trade for Mitchell or he won’t come, and in 2011 we could have just waited for the end of the season and free agency to sign Melo.

As a sidebar: I don’t think we should dismiss Julius yet. I think he heard the noise. I just saw some recent pics of him and he looks like an absolute beast right now.

You mean like the hoodie Melo on the offseason was a sign that Melo was going to dominate again? 😀

Voted for Mitchell. Disagree with labeling it all-in, at least until we know the details. For Melo we cleared all our tradable assets, or at least most of them.

With the Mitchell trade we should have assets left. We should be deeper even under the most Jazz favorable scenarios. We played Jared Jeffries in the playoffs. He played admirably in that series. He’s still Jared Jeffries.

We also aren’t relying on an uninsurable player to be healthy.

and in 2011 we could have just waited for the end of the season and free agency to sign Melo.

Melo would then have been traded to Brooklyn and signed his extension there. He was not going to go to the lockout without an extension signed.

I like the metaphor. I also like guitars 😉

So you’re in favor of the trade, you’ll go for guitar “Brunson” (Rickenbacker 360) and guitar “Mitchell” (Stratocaster), and you’re going to play them both at the same time. ;D

Melo would then have been traded to Brooklyn and signed his extension there.

It’s the same risk now, if at a maximum we stop at 1 good young player and 5 picks, or 2 good young players and 4 picks, maybe Ainge doesn’t accept and makes the deal with some other team (Miami?). But should we go again for the all-in on a team with a need for more roster moves before becoming a contender? I didn’t agree with the all-in back then, and i don’t agree now.

It’s the same risk now, if at a maximum we stop at 1 good young player and 5 picks, or 2 good young players and 4 picks, maybe Ainge doesn’t accept and makes the deal with some other team (Miami?). But should we go again for the all-in on a team with a need for more roster moves before becoming a contender? I didn’t agree with the all-in back then, and i don’t agree now.

Sure, I’m not saying to agree with it, just saying that the situation was the same in terms of either trading for the guy or not getting him.

Just watched Trevor Keels summer league “highlight” videos. He is not going to make it in this league.

Yeah I’ve been optimistic to some extent about most of the Knicks moves so far but Keels just doenst look the part. He was the youngest player in the draft but you should still be able to show something in Summer league.

@cyber: **So you’re in favor of the trade, you’ll go for guitar “Brunson” (Rickenbacker 360) and guitar “Mitchell” (Stratocaster), and you’re going to play them both at the same time. ;D**

Yes, within any given 48 minutes 😉

And, since you put it that way, if it’s up to me I definitely prefer to hang onto guitar “Quickley” (Telecaster) and guitar “Obi” (Les Paul Custom) bc I think they will both go up significantly in value by the time my son inherits them 😉

Cyber, KB, Brador, Thanks for saying hi.

As to guitars, I’m not a fetishist. I have one of each thing I need. A bass (beater), banjo (nice but lonely lol), 12 string (also nice, also lonely, who wants to tune all that? lol)

My main axes are a nice, small body steel string acoustic, an American made Strat And (something that will never leave my living room) an antique nylon string acoustic. I have a little reissue Princeton reverb amp which I LOVE. Makes me think reissue might not be a bad way to acquire instruments.

I hate whammy bars (tuning nightmare), locking nuts (would you believe they used to sell that shit to children?) and effects pedals (just my preference, no axe to grind there, no pun intended).

As to Stratocasters, Matt Umanov, who wanted to trade me a vintage Stratocaster for a 67 Ford Mustang (and I should have said yes! FUK), gave me interesting advice. He said, you can tell a great electric because it’s a great acoustic. Play it without the amp.

Right now, I’m standing pat with my assets. Maybe I’ll restring the banjo. I actually need a surfboard but I’ll get one more season out of my present one.

Yeah I’ve been optimistic to some extent about most of the Knicks moves so far but Keels just doenst look the part. He was the youngest player in the draft but you should still be able to show something in Summer league.

Yep, one of the only things that matters about Summer League is seeing whether players look like they belong.

Brian, thanks for creating the thread, I’m honored! It’s really a tough question for me. The Melo deal probably made more sense in context of the MO of that regime. The thing is, you can’t really make a fair comparison until the Mitchell deal is executed because it’s so close that it really comes down to the price. If Aller overpays, the Melo deal made more sense because he’s the better player (imho) and the team already invested a max contract in Amar’e. But I have more confidence in this current FO to not overpay because the circumstances aren’t as urgent.

BTW, I 100% agree that Melo would have signed with the Nets and then we would have signed Deron to a similar deal, which also wouldn’t have turned out well. Once we amnestied Billups instead of Amar’e (and I don’t hate that they did that given that it would have been a real FU to STAT) it was bound to turn out much as it did.

In other words, if Aller can get it down to two of ours and two protected plus only one of Obi, IQ or Grimes, it would definitely make more sense. Throw in another pick or another player and it’s a wash. Thriw in a pick and a player and Melo made more sense. That’s sort of where I am.

One thing that hasn’t been brought up is that in both cases we had a rigid, stubborn coach who wasn’t suited to the personnel or situation.

Royce White briefly tried MMA and is currently Steve Bannon’s choice to unseat Ilhan Omar. Certainly an interesting journey

The way Deron Williams fell off the map was pretty impressive. I remember gong to a game when he and Boozer were In their primes and they dominated.

I hadn’t heard about Royce White running for Congress. Weird choice by Bannon.

I just read through his entire campaign website and still can’t explain any of his positions, except maybe globalism = bad, though it’s not clear why he feels this way.

Hey Brian, for tomorrow’s thread can you do a “let’s expand the what makes less sense discussion” and add a third option to the poll?

Which makes the least sense:

1) the Melo Trade
2) the proposed Mitchell trade
3) Jordan Peele’s “Nope”

I’m not totally sure what Hahn meant in that tweet that was referenced above

The player swap in the Gobert deal was NOT minimal — it just didn’t include the 3 best players on the Wolves (KAT, Anthony Edwards, and Jaden McDaniels). I am sure Ainge had no interest in D’Angelo Russell, but he basically got 3 very useful vets — Beasley + Vanderbilt + Beverley — and the last 2 first round picks the Wolves had — Kessler + Bolmaro. IN addition Ainge got 3 totally unprotected 1sts and a top 4 protected 1st + and unprotected pick swap. I sure hope that that is not the model.

the analogous trade for us =

3 rotation players –> Rose, Fournier, and Obi
Last 2 1st round picks –> Grimes + Quickley
plus 4 picks and a swap?
no thank you

Minnesota basically was allowed to keep 1 young player and barfed up every other asset to Ainge. No. Thanks.

Hey Frank, so if it was Orlando it’d be Wagner and Banchero to “balance” Vanderbilt and Bolmaro (who??) ? LOL

I will say I think we do romanticize the stat led pre Melo team in 2010 a bit. Stat was incredible, they all seemed to enjoy playing together and the young players especially gallo and Wilson had some great games. But they were sliding right before the Melo trade and of course stat still would have fallen apart regardless of the Melo trade. So while I always will feel like we gave up too much to get him, I have to remind myself that if we had done nothing, I am not sure how much that team really had left in them.

So I think our situation now pre Mitchell trade is actually way better than it was pre Melo trade. Not just having so many picks but the team itself. Our season last year was disappointing but I don’t think we were really nice worse than that stat led team and that’s without Brunson, who is way better than Felton and won’t be traded for Mitchell.

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