Knicks Morning News (2018.01.04)

KP is beginning to remind me of the banter on the great CSN&Y album 4 Way Street where Stephen Stills says, “”We’d like to introduce our friend, Neil Young.” “Here’s a new song guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s called Don’t Let It Bring You Down. Sort of starts out real slow and fizzles out altogether.”

I’m sure KP is under a doctor’s care, but I still suspect he wears down so easily partially because he’s not strong enough yet and gets banged around by defenses TRYING to take him out of his game but also because he still has issues with anemia. This is the 3rd season in a row he came out like gangbusters but faded. It could be a coincidence, but more likely there is a reason.

There probably IS a reason but anemia isn’t it. This isn’t the 1700’s where medical conditions are treated with “eye of newt!” This guy has been under optimal medical care for 2.5 years . If had had anemia, it has been treated. Anemia is treatable whether through change in diet, folate (or additional supplementation) or even through the use of genetically engineered medications like EPO that supplement the amount of kidney hormone endogenously produced to stimulate bone marrow to produce more RBC’s.

EPO works as I use race trotters at the Meadowlands YR/RR for decades and we used to treat the horses with EPO and raise their hematocrit from 35% to 50%! That stops them from getting tired 🙂

And if he is still anemic medically after 3 years of top flight medical treatment, I can’t think of a better reason to market him.

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve never seen another professional athlete fade 3 years in a row and complain about being tired like this. It seems very similar to his experience as a teenager, though not as extreme. The demands on the bodies of professional athletes are unique. Something is amiss.

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve never seen another professional athlete fade 3 years in a row and complain about being tired like this. It seems very similar to his experience as a teenager, though not as extreme. The demands on the bodies of professional athletes are unique. Something is amiss.

I am not a doctor either but I am penning a book on optimal human nutrition with a pretty fair background in biology and the odds of him having some chronic anemia the all the medical geniuses in Manhattan can’t solve is pretty far down the list says William of Ockham.

I’m guessing they have run the battery of tests checking for parasites, autoimmune diseases, etc. Jesus , I hope they have checked him for Marfan’s syndrome and done a full cardiac work up.

Maybe he should try getting fat adapted with an ultra low carb diet and see if he utilizes ketones better than glucose……

Kristaps needs to man up, put on his big boy pants, fill up his lunch pail and rub some dirt on his “tired” legs.

As my old football coach used to say…” Tape and aspirin to i!” if you had a minor injury.

I’m guessing Horny had it right last year with the pu**y comment…..

KP’s conditioning is definitely worrisome. There definitely seems to be some kind of chemical imbalance. Maybe he needs to play shorter shifts. On the other hand, he’s recovered nicely from some injuries. Go back to when Melo fell on his neck, or when he mangled his ankle, or his knee, shoulder, hip, and calf issues, and he’s made quick comebacks from all of those things.

@12 I absolutely advocated a while ago that KP play shorter shifts. Playing him 12 straight minutes is a mistake and he should not be playing more than 28-30 minutes a game. This is obvious.

And this whole thing is so Knicks it’s comedy.

The real question is, what is the cause, is it just iron-deficiency, is the rest of his body healthy, does he have an autoimmune problem related to his tall marfanoid habitus, will it be chronic, and IS IT FIXABLE. If he can get the OK to use Epo at the doses he needs, I’m sure he will on his own.

Hi doc,

I mentioned these as possible reasons in @8 but is it reasonable that a multi billion dollar organization with unlimited resources with a potential multi hundred million dollar asset with a history of anemia hasn’t explored possibilities that a 65 yr old non physician could divine in 30 seconds? I just can’t imagine they are that dumb.

I’m guessing if he has a physiologic issue it isn’t anemia. Maybe something more like a kin to a mitochondrial disorder like MELAS.

I wasn’t kidding when I said he might want to look into keto-adaptation like Kobe and LeBron

This is all so freaking depressing, can’t Knicks fans ever have good things?

@16

Wasn’t the Knicks medical staff supposed to be pretty bad or am I misremembering?

@20
Yeah, I’m a Mets fan, and that team’s medical treatment of players has been a running joke for many years now. So, I wouldn’t assume at all that the Knicks are state of the art in diagnosing and treating the players.

I seem to recall Phil not being allowed to overhaul the Knicks medical staff when he took over (the explanation at the time was that that was not a “basketball” decision that he had power over), though that was several years ago, now.

For starters, many of us have long wanted H. to ease off of KP’s minutes. Top him at about 6 minutes per shift, 30 minutes total. PLAY WILLY!

Who knows, maybe the Knicks medical staff is run by Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/40-best-saturday-night-live-characters-of-all-time-20150216/28-theodoric-of-york-20150216

Well we do have someone who won physician of the year.
http://www.nba.com/knicks/dr.-lisa-callahan-named-nba-team-physician-year

In other news…

@SBondyNYDN
Some in Knicks organization want to call up Trey Burke but they’d first have to clear roster spot http://nydn.us/2CSTjsO

So, as if this 22 year old doesn’t already feel the weight of the world on his shoulders, now KP is being blasted for not being a real man. Real men don’t get tired!
Add it to list of why an athlete may take PED’s.

Seems like KP’s also losing weight and muscle mass pretty quickly, and apparently it’s difficult. Both his training during the season and his diet aren’t working. Should be a solvable problem but you probably can’t know until you get into the season if your approach is working. And once you’re in the season switching it up is complicated by how long you have to wait to see results, lack of downtime for refining, ect. Hopefully they’ll figure it out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took another couple of seasons. He’s got a fairly unique combo of body type/medical issues/activity schedule. If there were a template for this shit they’d already have it sorted.

Or maybe he’s just not enough of a ROUGH RIDER.

Yeah KP looks visibly thinner than in June. I’m sure it’s hard for him to get in the weight room during the season, but he needs to make it a priority (along with diet). I think he’ll get there, maybe not this year, but soon. He’s a hard worker.

Thanks guys ( esp wetbandit the doc), as I’ve been begging for some discussion/info on here regarding KP’s anemia.

I’m also in agreement with those who have been calling for limiting the duration of KP’s shifts, and even giving him some nights off like they do for less durable baseball players. He really is a unicorn, and one with obvious durability/conditioning issues, so he needs to be treated like a unicorn. Calling him a pussy or whatever isn’t going to help if he has legit issues. It’s like telling a person who suffers from depression or anxiety to just get over it.

……
“Who knows, maybe the Knicks medical staff is run by Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber:”

I’m gonna go with Marqui de Sade or Dr. (K)Nick. I have no confidence in their medical staff, or in anyone else the guy who hired a sexual harasser to run his women’s basketball team would employ.

Good stuff, chris.

I think that there’s still a chance that some team might be willing to part with a late first for Lee. Fingers crossed!

Sure, I’d be down with that if Milwaukee wanted to get rid of him that badly.

I think we will might do better if we trade Lee or O’Quinn for some young player who is already drafted than trading for an actual draft pick. For example, do you think we could have gotten the number three pick, the number eleven pick and a top second round pick for Melo? I think probably not, but that is what we actually got except that Kanter and McDermott were already drafted at number three and number eleven. Maybe your chances of hitting it lucky with a pick aren’t as good this way, but you can still get quality players and the overall value might be more.

What about that ridiculous Nurkic trade? I guess it didn’t take place around the trade deadline? Oh, wait a sec, google is right over here…..

on 02/12/17…
According to Adrian Wojnarowski the Denver Nuggets have traded Jusuf Nurkic to the Portland Trail Blazers for Mason Plumlee. The Nuggets will also send the Memphis Grizzlies first round pick that they own to Portland and receive a 2018 second rounder and cold hard cash in return.”

So Portland got Nurkic AND a #1 for Plumlee and a #2,

I think the moral of this trade is how low the trade value is for bigs who don’t stretch the floor.

Given what Lee and KOQ are as players, I would take either a late first or under 25 player/s and maybe some 2nds. Ultimately when you look back in hindsight, you probably aren’t going to sweat too much if you miss on the player you draft with a potential pick or a young player doesn’t work out like you would if you traded a franchise player. I mean you obviously want it to work, but really when you talk about moving Lee and KOQ it’s about giving yourself the opportunity to add more youth to the core and take a bit of cash off the books.

If Zing truly is worn out, it has to be a medical condition. No NBA player hits a wall after 20 games. Better conditioning or “manning up” is not going to solve the problem.

While the medical staff tries to figure it out, I strongly encourage them to SIT HIM every few games to keep him fresh. This is precisely the kind of thing that smart teams do when the win total doesn’t mean that much. Sacrifice the meaningless present for the meaningful future, and if you add a couple ping pong balls along the way, even better.

I think we could get Vonleh and a 2nd from Portland for Beasley. The Blazers would be smart to get under the tax line, they need bench scoring, and Vonleh is more of a true 4 and has been pretty good thus far (Portland is deep at the 4).

The Cavs and Wiz could both use a rim protector like O’Quinn. I would do Frye, Osman and a 2nd for O’Quinn and the chance to dump Thomas’ contract.

The Bucks could use Lee’s shooting, but they probably won’t give up anything worthwhile unless Parker became an option.

Lee has at least been decent in a position of need. We really need to dump Lance and thin the herd at the center position. That should be the priority.

The Lou Williams trade last year is helpful in measuring Lee’s value. Lou is slightly better than Lee overall, 2 years younger, and making $5m less per year. So overall his value was higher then than Lee’s is now. But all the Lakers got back for him was a very late 1st, while also having to take back Corey Brewer’s bad contract.

By that measure, the Knicks won’t even get a 1st for him. We’re looking at a 2nd rounder and matching salary. Kind of depressing.

@ 44 – we’re close to halfway through the season, that’s more than 20 games.

I think he just made an off the cuff comment. I don’t feel like his drop off this year is due to him being anemic. I think its due to him being the number one option, facing more double teams and not having Hardaway to lighten the load offensively. This is all good for him.

Again, if this was a warriors blog midway through Curry’s third season we’d all be talking about how he’s injury prone and not a franchise player. Lets chill out a bit.

@ 44 – we’re close to halfway through the season, that’s more than 20 games.

His slide started much earlier. He’s only admitting it now, but we all saw it happening before.

In fact, I overestimated when I said 20 games. Looking at his game log, his performance actually fell off after 11 games. After Game 11, he didn’t hit more than half of his shots again until Game 23.

I wonder if the Cavs would trade Osman and Shump (one year left at $11m) for Lee. Lee would help them. Shump might not even play in the Finals.

Osman and Frye would be a sweet deal for the Knicks, especially if they could get a second thrown in there, too.

Less than halfway through the season and KP is tired already and wearing down? SMH.

I don’t recall this particular issue with any other professional athlete. Maybe Jowles can check his archives to see if there is another similar case.

@ 51 – sure I can. I just did. : )

My point is just that we shouldn’t throw him under the bus bc he’s struggling as the number one option for the first time in his career and has played the last month without our second option (and our best 3 point shooter, best fast break guy, best dude who can attack the rim, etc.) Hardaway being out has REALLY hurt us and I think we are just kind of glossing over it like its not a big deal. We all want KP to pass more out of the double team but when you pass it to JJ or Lance and they brick an open 3 or worse don’t even take it…that’s just as bad. Hardaway not only provides outside shooting, fast break opportunities, etc…but it also means less minutes for Baker (and Lance).

Also I bet KP’s minutes have gone up in the last month since Hardaway has been out. Horns needs to rest him more I believe.

I don’t know. I guess this is all good for us in the long run as if this slide continues we’ll go into tank mode and maybe trade some dudes away for picks or prospects. But I think his comments were off the cuff cause he was legitimately tired after two losses back to back and traveling. He’ll be fine.

KP played the entire first quarters of both of the last two games- that’s the first thing I’d change. Have him play no more than 8 minutes at a stretch, cap him at 30-32 minutes a night and then see where he is at the all-star break. KP’s basically stunk since mid-November (.495 TS% on 31% usage, 11% rebound rate) so it’s not like you’re making the team that much worse by not giving him 36 minutes a night.

I’m glad I never had to deal with this kind of pressure at 22.

At age 22 I was making like $200 a week and happy to have it! Kinda hard to relate to the “pressure” of being a millionaire star athlete.I also have it on extremely good authority that KP is getting lots of “action” at night. Maybe that’s why he’s so tired.

To whine about being tired while guys on your bench would gladly play 48 minutes per night is an incredibly stupid PR move.

I also have it on extremely good authority that KP is getting lots of “action” at night. Maybe that’s why he’s so tired.

OK, so maybe I would have been willing to deal with a little extra pressure for that reward. 🙂

At age 22 I was making like $200 a week and happy to have it! Kinda hard to relate to the “pressure” of being a millionaire star athlete.I also have it on extremely good authority that KP is getting lots of “action” at night. Maybe that’s why he’s so tired.

Can you imagine how guys like Clyde Frazier would do nowadays when athletes only have to go into their DMs to find hookups?

wonder how much of kp’s “I’m so tired” was directed at horny?

So right now, we are 3 games in the win column out of the 8 spot in the draft, and 5 wins out of the #6 spot. this next two weeks is critical in terms of possibilities for tanking. We’ve quietly lost 7 of 9, so you could say that the tank is on already. I think we have an outside chance of going 4-13 during the upcoming stretch, which would put us at 22-33 at the trade deadline. If we dump some vets, maybe we are 22-37 at the break. That would be something! But most likely we’ll be something like 24-31 at the deadline, which is really no-man’s land..not low low enough to give up on playoff hopes. It’s almost like we need a rash of minor injuries to happen in the next couple of games.

I mentioned these as possible reasons in @8 but is it reasonable that a multi billion dollar organization with unlimited resources with a potential multi hundred million dollar asset with a history of anemia hasn’t explored possibilities that a 65 yr old non physician could divine in 30 seconds? I just can’t imagine they are that dumb.

What scares me is, and I’m not even making the easy “lol knicks” joke here, I can imagine them being that dumb. We’ve never been known to place emphasis on our medical staff and with all the front office turnover this summer it very easily could’ve been overlooked. I really, really hope they’re at least looking into whether or not there’s a real problem.

Other than that, I fully support having Porzingis on the Embiid schedule indefinitely. Basically have him be questionable more or less every game. It’s not like we need to win and if he’s going to be Carmelstaps Anthingis he doesn’t help much with that anyway.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/meet-personal-trainer-tasked-keeping-porzingis-healthy-article-1.3710055

This is a bit scary to be honest.

Yeah that article didn’t really worry me at all. Unless KP is dumb enough to get caught up in some supplement scandal.

That was a great game, and the way I loved the game to be played! Every hoop earned!

I actually really liked the honesty. Not some platitude, just admitting what everybody can see.

Can KP get proper sized beds on the road? Is he chartering his own plane to have space for a 7’3″ lay flat?

Who was that told me I had to own how bad OKC was?