[NYTimes] Humbled in the N.B.A.’s Shadows, Tim Hardaway Jr. Returns to the Spotlight (Monday, February 05, 2018 7:58:20 AM)
Knicks fans balked at his four-year, $71 million deal, but Tim Hardaway Jr. has proved his worth the second time around in New York.
[NYTimes] Hawks 99, Knicks 96: Hawks Rally Late to Whittle Away at Knicks’ Lead (Monday, February 05, 2018 6:12:05 AM)
Kent Bazemore hit a 3-pointer with 6.7 seconds left to give Atlanta a 99-96 win over the Knicks, who had led by 6 with 2:16 remaining.
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 9:28:03 PM)
Their All-Star played half the game like he was MIA. They managed, again, to turn certain victory into defeat. Players used words and phrases like “most embarrassing.” There was a call, legal it turned out, unlike anything seen in a while that had a crippling effect on their momentum. But one silver lining emerged for…
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 8:29:49 PM)
Trey Burke shined. Frank Ntilikina got hurt. And so it went in the ongoing point-guard soap opera between the newly signed former lottery pick, Burke, and the Knicks’ prized 2017 lottery pick from France. Ntilikina was shut down in the second half of Sunday’s horrifying, 99-96 matinee loss to with a sore right knee after…
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 2:48:17 PM)
The box score was kinder to Kristaps Porzingis than the eye. Though Porzingis racked up 22 points, eight rebounds, five blocks and four steals — along with no assists and two turnovers — the Knicks’ only All-Star missed three fourth-quarter free throws in Sunday’s 99-96 loss to the Hawks, and allowed the NBA’s worst team…
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 12:06:28 PM)
The Knicks didn’t need help finding a way to lose — just to do it in a way no one had ever seen. A few minutes before the Knicks suffered an embarrassing 99-96 loss to the NBA-worst Hawks, Madison Square Garden was as loud as it had been all Sunday afternoon, following Tim Hardaway Jr.’s…
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 9:56:29 AM)
It was a Super Bowl Sunday implosion of epic proportions. Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said it was the season’s worst. Courtney Lee called it “embarrassing.” Kristaps Porzingis, in hard-hitting remarks, said he still hadn’t comprehended it and feels the team still “doesn’t know how to win’’ close games. And goat Tim Hardaway Jr. didn’t stick…
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 10:27:13 PM)
Tim Hardaway Jr. stormed off the court with his head down, not making eye contact with anyone as he headed to the locker room.
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 9:09:49 PM)
Frank Ntilikina didn’t play in the second half of Sunday’s game because of soreness in his right knee.
[NYDN] Bizarre play confuses Knicks, referees late in loss to Hawks (Sunday, February 04, 2018 9:02:39 PM)
Confusion abounded late in the fourth quarter Sunday afternoon at the Garden.
[NYDN] Knicks blow late lead, fall to lowly Hawks in disastrous loss (Sunday, February 04, 2018 8:34:28 PM)
On Super Bowl Sunday, a couple of crucial video reviews went against the Knicks and resulted in their most disastrous loss all season.
[NYDN] Knee soreness sidelines Frank Ntilikina in Knicks’ loss to Hawks (Sunday, February 04, 2018 12:17:54 PM)
Ntilikina missed the second half of Sunday’s 99-96 home loss to the Hawks because of right knee soreness.
(Sunday, February 04, 2018 6:24:15 PM)
Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis couldn’t “even process that we lost” after New York let a four-point lead slip away with 1:07 to play against the lowly Atlanta Hawks on Sunday. “We don’t know how to win games at the end,” Porzingis lamented.
[SNY Knicks] Porzingis after latest Knicks loss: ‘We don’t know how to finish games’ (Sunday, February 04, 2018 7:23:50 PM)
Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis voiced his frustrations after New York blew a four-point lead with 1:07 remaining in Sunday’s 99-96 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at Madison Square Garden.
[SNY Knicks] Ntilikina says he’ll be ‘all right’ despite missing second half with knee issue (Sunday, February 04, 2018 6:20:00 PM)
Knicks rookie guard Frank Ntilikina told ESPN’s Ian Begley he’ll be “all right” after missing the second half of Sunday’s 99-96 loss to the Atlanta Hawks due to a knee issue.
[SNY Knicks] Struggling Knicks suffer 99-96 loss to Hawks (Sunday, February 04, 2018 3:24:18 PM)
NEW YORK (AP) Kent Bazemore’s 3-pointer with 6.7 seconds left lifted the Atlanta Hawks to a 99-96 win over the New York Knicks on Sunday.
[SNY Knicks] Kanter pleads Knicks front office to keep current roster (Sunday, February 04, 2018 10:33:59 AM)
Enes Kanter agrees with his fellow big man Kristaps Porzingis in keeping the Knicks together ahead of the trade deadline.
[SNY Knicks] Today’s game: Knicks vs. Hawks, 12 p.m. (Sunday, February 04, 2018 11:00:00 AM)
For the Knicks, defense has not been the primary problem. In fact, New York ranks in the top 12 in the NBA in points allowed (105.6) and rebounds (44.4)
122 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.02.05)”
To continue yesterday’s discussion on blocked shots, Max if I’m not mistaken you said 4 of KP’s five blocked shots were useless. That’s simply not the case at all. The Knicks were not there to grab the defensive rebound, but a blocked shot does not reset the 24 second shot clock and teams usually have to either go back up against the trees again or they’re scrambling to reset their offense after they get the offensive rebound/keep possession of the ball.
KP’s blocks yesterday didn’t lead to defensive rebounds, but they weren’t useless. It’s not like he was blocking guys’ first attempt for them to go right up his chest and dunk on him. That would be useless.
Hi Glass! 🙂
I don’t know if you read my last comment on yesterday’s tread, I surrender the point… in a way… 😉
Jokes aside, you’re right and I probably expressed myself in the wrong way (could be, I’m using a foreign language and sometimes the use of a word has different “weight”) I’m sure that “useless” is not the correct one.
But I tried to explain my point multiple times, in general and not only on KP’s regard:
blocks alone are not good for evaluate defense (otherwise we’ll be a very good defensive team) and there are different kind of blocks, a difference that boxscore don’t show.
And boxscore could be misleading on other things, you need to mix “numbers & sight” to have the full painting.
BTW KP’s getting better and better at blocking shots and controlling them, this is a very good trait.
He needs stamina and good coaching, then he’ll be fine (but not max 😉 )
Everything in Colin Sexton’s statistical profile screams bust. Low 2PT FG%, high AST:TO ratio, unspectacular steal and rebound rates, you name it. He should be everyone’s nightmare scenario in this draft no matter how cool he looked going 3-on-5 or how well he theoretically fills a need or whatever. None of this guarantees he won’t be good obviously, but if we stay at 10 there should be 2-3 clearly superior options.
So of course, he’s projected right around 10.
Yeah, Sexton might be as bad as those two sure-fire busts from last year’s draft: Jayson Tatum and Lauri Markkanen.
@4
No one was calling Tatum a surefire bust, and everyone saw Markkanen as a Ryan Anderson clone, not a surefire bust. For what it’s worth, he’s been maybe the worst big defender to come out of the draft since Jahlil Okafor.
Sexton’s numbers do scream bust. If he turns out better than that, good on him. But that doesn’t mean the odds aren’t that he’s a bust. He has all the makings of a chucker at the next level.
I mean, there are significant differences between their numbers and Sexton’s, and I’d say the jury is still very much out on Markkanen, but since you’re trolling I’ll just say that the existence of players who beat their statistical profile in the past doesn’t make it a good idea to draft players with bad statistical profiles.
The value of a block shot varies depending on whether the offense or defense gets the ball, how much time is on the clock, whether the intimidation varies future shots etc.. Most models assign them a value based on the long term and not the results of a single block or game.
All that said, Bill Russell was known for blocking shots softly to himself or teammates instead of smacking them away randomly or into the stands for excitement. So there is a skill to blocked shots that can vary from player to player. I’ve seen studies on it and I’m sure the data is available somewhere. I have no idea how KP rates on that kind of metric.
lauri markannen is going to be a bust… this is about as good as he’ll ever get….
you cannot survive in this league as a big man shooting half your shots in 3p land…. and have such low steal and block rates….
he’s basically kp if he wasn’t 7ft 3….
Thanks all for that Sunday thread to read with my Monday morning coffee.
I believe webandit made only one post, and yet he won the thread in a landslide.
Sorry, but KP is a max player. That doesn’t mean he’s a #1 option superstar; it just means he’s a top 30 or so player right now as a 22 year old. Basically, just re-read wetbandit’s post for all of the reasons trading him are silly, most notably how he’s never played with an NBA caliber starting PG, plus the general dysfunction of the franchise. Nobody seems to get better on the Knicks, so dumping KP for other young players just repeats the cycle, but with lesser talented players.
I love Wendell Carter, but jeez, another center? But if he’s the best player available player then oh well. Miles Bridges – I wanted no part of him last year, but it we’re picking 10-12 and he’s there, well he certainly fills a need both position wise and athletic wise.
I still think we can get high (low) enough to have a shot a Trae Young. Trade Lee and O’Quinn and shut down KP for his elbow surgery, and this team might not win 5 more games this year. We can do it!
Uhm, not to go all Jowles on you, but how do you define a top 30 player a guy who’s currently posting a negative WP48 and a WS48 of .116? I mean, that’s at best a slightly above average contributor.
I mean, these are the guys who are sporting a better WP48 than KP on our own team: Kanter, KOQ, Burke, Noah, Lee, Baker, WHG, THJ, Dotson, Jack, McDermott, Beasley. Basically… everyone but Frank and Lance.
What are we talking about?
Giannis didn’t sign for the max (he let around 14 mil on the table in his 4 yrs extension), after a better third season, but KP is a max player?
Okay, whatever…
Here is my not so popular idea about what we should do at this trade deadline:
Next to nothing.
I’d make a KQ trade and that is it.
In the off season I do nothing except make the draft picks and resign some of the guys whose contracts are up. I would push to bring Kanter back at a reduced price. So extend him at 12 million/year starting for another 4 years. Dude is young and is worth that money IMO. Also, resign Beasley for 3 years and McDermott for 3 years. You can probably retain Beasley with the mid level and McDermott with the mini mid level or in that range. Don’t trade Noah unless you can do so WITHOUT giving up a draft pick or taking on equally long term bad contracts. Resign JJ for the vet minimum and let him be the back up now. Lets come back with basically the same team plus our draft picks.
Frank/Burke/JJ
Hardaway/Ron/Dotson
Lee/McDermott
KP/Beasley/Lance
Kanter/Willie/Noah
Use the draft picks on a SF and maybe another PG or PF.
Oh and extend Hornaceck for 2 more years too. Here is my logic. This team is 2 years away from making noise. We need more young players from the draft, which we will get. And we need the Noah contract (and the Lance/Lee contracts) to be off the books. But Lee could actually be even more tradeable next year as his contract is closer to being done and the same goes for Lance and Noah. And I’d rather we not waste new cap space on free agents when we aren’t ready. So if we’re just patient, we will add players via the draft and in 2 years we will have a nice core of KP, Frank, Hardaway, Kanter, Willie, Dotson, 2018 pick, 2019 pick. 2020 pick, and that is when we’d have cap space from Noah, Lee and Lance open up. THAT’s A MF REBUILD.
Lets have some continuity. And in 2 years you could also really attract a top level coach if you wanted to because there would be a really nice core group of players there.
Continuity is good only if the players are young and held accountable.
I’m so pissed off with this team.
We’ve got one major asset, and we’re totally unclear what his real value is, 28 games before he’s eligible for a $200m contract. When he’s on, he’s awesome (first 15 games). When he’s not, he’s a low IQ player who takes lots of bad mid-range shots, is inefficient, and is an elite rim protector but can’t rebound and won’t play C. Some of this is KPs fault but some is on the coaching and some is on the culture. So we’re stuck there – we probably won’t know what he can be before we have to commit.
We’re 23-31 – basically no chance of making the playoffs but already so many wins that we can limp the rest of the way and do no better than 8th or 9th in the lotto, if we’re lucky.
We’ve got at least one young player on the roster on a great contract and with one more game to the trade deadline we have ZERO idea what his value is. Two if you count Dotson.
I like Perry and I want to be positive. Things are better than they were. But we’ve really misused this season and the assets that we have and we’re in danger now of being stuck for a good few years.
Yuck.
There are only 2 logical conclusions.
1. KP is wildly overrated by fans, players, coaches, and managements who see the “potential” but are not looking at the actual production
2. Boxscore models do not capture KP’s value correctly (in the same way I have been arguing that they overrate Kanter a bit).
Here’s the NBA Real Plus Minus data.
Kanter
ORPM= -.35
DRPM = -.23
RPM = -.58
KP
ORPM= .84
DRPM = 1.49
RPM = 2.33
I’m not going to argue that RPM is the right answer, but I am going to argue that no single model has a lock on the truth. Measuring everything that’s going on is apparently a difficult task for the brightest math guys even when they also have a lot of basketball knowledge.
However, I do think it’s possible to find patterns in what some of them do wrong because the list of players that don’t pass the smell test and whose impact on the court does not seem to match the model tend to have similar profiles/attributes.
Wins Produced tends to overrate low usage high efficiency scorers that rebound well.
PER tends to overrate high usage inefficient scorers.
I think there are similar issues with WS/48, and BPM. RPM has issues with sample size and controlling for lineup changes.
It’s such a seller’s market, that I doubt we’ll make many moves. I would trade Kyle for a 2nd (or some sort of pick-swap potential) and an expiring, just to get more minutes for Willy. I would only trade Willy for a 1st.
I doubt Lee will be moved, but that’s ok. He’s on a fair contract. I’d love to get rid of Lance, just don’t see it happening. Same with Jack.
We just need to thin out the frontcourt and then get the kids minutes after the deadline. Kyle to the Warriors or Spurs for an expiring and our Chicago 2nd would be fine.
And I like Beas, but it would be nice to get him onto a playoff team for a 2nd. Same with Noah, frankly.
Farfa, our ability to summarize a player’s production into one number just isn’t as great as we’d like to imagine. BPM and WS think KP is an average player worth around $12 million right now, but most of the more recent metrics with superior out of sample r squareds tend like him a lot more. For example RPM think he’s on pace for 8-9 wins, good for 36th best in the NBA and well ahead of all other Knicks. If you dislike RPM’s opacity there are plethora of analogs which tell the same story. For example PIPM has full coefficient transparency and ranks him similarly, on pace for about $25 million in value assuming around $3.1m in marginal value per win over replacement level.
Of course those metrics even if they are more powerful explainers in general are also far from panaceas. And for edge cases, i.e. players with unusual statistical profiles or characteristics perhaps like KP, all metrics might turn out to be particularly misleading. I think it’s a hard an interesting question how good KP has been this year. People think it’s cool to be curt and take haha Potter Stewart approach or scream WS! Or Tall Melo. Sometimes that’s enough when you’re arguing against really low level thinking overvaluing ppg and ignoring efficiency. But other times there really are angels on the head of the pin and you have to count them or at least admit uncertainty. Anyone who has access to second spectrum know that there are some really powerful arguments to be made about KP’s defense this year that go beyond just “shot blocking” or merely assuming his shaky perimeter defense is an important offset to his rim protection.
We know he’s not a superstar but you don’t have to be a superstar to be really valuable. It’s hard to say how valuable and no amount of hubris can change that.
Willy unsurprisingly requesting a trade
Ptmilo, I somehow agree. I’m just scared that this All-Star thing is going to mess with KP’s head. He needs to be willing to go back to second fiddle if we find a star somewhere. Otherwise he’s the best ticket we have to really rebuild, but that’s only if we trade him before he starts sulking.
@ Farfa – What I’m getting at is how do you define a max player? Each team is going to have a max player, and clearly the guys you mentioned are not going to get max contracts. The cap $ has to be filled by somebody, and very few players are without their flaws; I’m not saying max contract equals superstar. Put another way, name 30 other guys in the NBA, taking into account age, skills and production, who should get a max contract over KP?
I’m talking about the reality of the situation, not a perfect world where every team has a perfect player like Duncan or KD or Kawhi.
Please don’t misunderstand that I’m saying KP is on their level – there aren’t enough of those types to go around. The truth is that guys like Duncan, KD or Kawhi are vastly underpaid.
Trade Enes and keep Willy, dang it!
I don’t think there are 30 guys in the NBA who give you good value on a max contract. It doesn’t work that way. There are a few mega-stars at the very top of the pyramid who give you surplus value on a max contract, the Harden/Steph/KD/Brow/Giannis type players. You want to get one of THOSE guys and give THEM a max contract.
Uhm, no, you dole out max contracts because you want to, not because you need to.
Just as JK47 said.
edit to 21 – ptmilo and his thesaurus said it a hundred times better than I did, so I should have scrolled down before I posted, and just said +1
Whoever would’ve guessed that nailing our most productive young player to the bench would turn out to be a bad idea?
Seriously though, reasonable people can disagree about Willy’s future prospects but there is no argument to be made for how the Knicks have handled him this season. I don’t care how crowded the rotation is; you find some fucking minutes for the guy coming off an all-rookie first team season.
Saying “it doesn’t work that way” isn’t an argument. There is a relatively fixed pool of money and a very fixed pool of minutes. Not all max contracts are identical. At the 25pct level, it is highly likely that a few dozen player will produce around fair value. You only need to produce around 8 marginal wins over replacement to be worth around $25 million today. In most years that will mean around 40-45 players.
It shouldn’t be too surprising. Making 1/4 of the team salary at about 1/8 of the minutes only requires a player to be twice as good as average to be minimax worthy. It would be a highly unlikely distribution for this to only be, say, 10 players. Bradley’s Beal is a good example of a fringe max value. He seems poised to earn his contract, despite being very far from an top ten type player. Of course you’d rather have a supermax player like the top ten providing a ton of value, but you are wrong that only a handful of players generate max level production at the 25pct level.
@26
I rather agree with you guys about KP, and now I can point out that metrics with “full coefficient transparency” show KP to be a better player than some here think. That’s gotta be better than “gravity effect,” I would think.
In other news, Chicago is reportedly making Jerian Grant available…
Right, so there’s maybe 7-10 guys “worth” a max. So what do you do if you don’t have one of those guys (and G State has 3 of them) right now, just give up and have a team full properly paid players like Kyle O’Quinn and Mike Muscala and Courtney Lee?
For the situation we’re in now, we have to roll the dice on KP and hope we get a real PG and coach sometime in my lifetime and strike gold in the draft, or just give up and become Celtics or Spurs fans.
@27
Hornacek has made comments about defense in regards to Willy not playing. However, he continues to give significant minutes to Jack and Beasley, who are terrible defenders.
If the front office has any sense of humor at all the deal will be Willy and Timmy for Grant and Rolo.
@18
I think all the box score models are flawed in some ways (some blatantly).
The problem is that some of the same and different problems cloud the adjusted on/off data.
The better I understand the game, box score/on and off model flaws, and the more I observe the on court results, the more I think the models are a basic starting point that requires a deeper analysis.
It’s a lot like speed figures in horses racing. A speed figure will tell you how fast a horse ran in a specific race, but if you want to know how good he actually is you have analyze the pace, competition, trip, bias, etc… in a more subjective manner. His actually performance could be way different than how fast he ran.
I totally agree with this.
There is a difference between saying player “X” deserves a max contract and saying he’ll add value at that price. If some teams have the max players that actually add value at that price and you don’t, you are already at a disadvantage. That’s what matters.
If we trade Willy and keep Kanter, I may have to take a break from basketball for awhile. There are limits to the level of stupidity I can tolerate.
I would not trade KOQ for a 2nd. If he exercises his option, he’s a steal next year at $4.2M. If he does not, there’s still a chance to add years at a reasonable rate. I’m hoping the lack of trade interest in him will equate to less FA buzz. He’d be a steal at $7M.
The risk is he walks and you lose the 2nd round pick. You can buy one of those.
I would not, however, extend Kanter. I don’t see him doing $12M / yr for 4 years. if he opts in, he’s going to make $18.6M next year….$12M / 4 would be the equiv of opting in and then doing $10M / year for 3 years. no way is he doing that. I bet he thinks he’s worth $15M now. If he wants to extend, fine, let him be an expiring next year.
So Willy wants out, which obviously devalues his worth as an asset even more… great job by the coaching staff, I love it! Accountability, veteran leadership, new culture, all we like to see!
No, it’s just the same old Knicks. I kinda secretly hope he gets traded for a second rounder and becomes the next Marc Gasol for a smart team.
The conversation about the max is very relevant: yes, there’s only about 10 players who’ll give you great value for a max and probably 10 more that will be fair value, but the issue is that there’s no leverages to be had for a team whose best player is a non-max young guy like the Knicks.
Like I said before, I’m not comfortable with Porzingis being paid the max, however, I also don’t care much. A team can surely handle one overpaid star and still build around it well, it’s not a gigantic issue. The issue is paying Joakim Noah + Lance Thomas + Ron Baker or Courtney Lee + THJ what would be a max contract, because it’s frankly only about talent.
For me it’s really so obvious, the Knicks suck at developing talent and keeping talent and they suck, albeit probably less, at finding talent. Everything else only matters with the talent is available. Continuity without talent gives you best case scenario the Hawks of the last 10 years~ or worst case the Hornets now.
Bring continuity when you have promising young players or potential stars, not when your superstar is a 22 year old dude who can’t shoot efficiently and the next most promising young piece is a 19 year old french kid in his rookie year.
The Knicks are not making the playoffs, but unfortunately Hornacek probably thinks he’s coaching to keep his job, so he’ll continue to play guys like Jack and Thomas because somehow he believes they give us a better chance to win meaningless games.
Play Frank, Dotson, Trey and Willy and let the chips fall where they may. It should be all about developing young players, not running out the corpse of Jarrett Jack because he provides “veteran leadership” and Lance Thomas because of his overrated defense.
Yes’ I’m trolling. But if you go back to the threads around draft time, the consensus of the KB brain trust is that both players had the highest bust potential of any of the high lottery picks. Some thought that Fox and Monk would be busts as well, but Monk got drafted later than expected so he wouldn’t be labeled as a bust any more.
@39
That’s it, and that’s the issue.
When we heard all that talk by Mills and Perry about working with young players, creating a promising core and etc, we knew it was bullshit, and it proved to be bullshit.
They’re not tanking and they’re not rebuilding, because if you do, you either fire Hornacek and get a stable coach guaranteed to stay throughout the effort, or you come to him and tell him he’s safe on the job and he’s playing the youngsters, either because he wants to or because you trade the older useless dudes.
But once more, and I can’t believe it keeps happening, the Knicks are stuck in the same fucking limbo between pretending to compete and pretending to rebuild at the same time. Yes, I’m fully aware this is slightly better than usual because we actually have picks and some young guys, but honestly it feels like the same bs.
Willy wanting out has no affect on us whatsoever. He is under contract for two more years after this one. He’s a young player who wants more PT. If we hold on to him and eventually play him more he will get over it. This is a nothing burger.
And him wanting out does not affect his trade value at all either because he is under contract with us for 2 years. He can want out all he wants. We don’t HAVE to trade him and since he is still so young and is so cheap, he is still an asset IF WE WANT TO TRADE HIM which we are UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO DO!!!
Bruno it only feels like the same BS because the old BS was not that long ago. I know its hard to have faith and patience but until Perry makes some dumb move like trading away draft picks for a season rental on Kemba Walker or whatever, there is no reason as a fan base for us to panic. Our win record is in the range that most people though it would be. I guess the early season success gave some of the optimists more hope and now they are being more negative and some of the pro tank people are pissed because of that early season success, but at the end of the day record wise we’re about where most thought we would be. And yeah it would be dope to get a top 5 pick (that could still happen by the way) but we got here without Melo taking away from KP’s development.
We’re a decent PG and a good SF away from making noise. Compared to last year the win total will be about the same but overall I feel like we’ve been way more competitive in a lot of our losses.
We all just need to be patient. Until perry makes a noah like signing or trades away picks I’m not gonna panic. It just feels like the old BS because we have yet to see the tangible results of the rebuild but again…THAT TAKES TIME.
I think Phil actually was on the right track until we panicked with the rose and noah move. If he’d just stayed the course (we would have had enough money still to grab Lee if he wanted)…we’d be where we are but with Rolo instead of Noah and Grant would be on the team.
You know what would be really Knicksy.
We buy out Noah, trade Willy, O’Quinn gets an offer and leaves, and we have Kanter left who gets hurt. Then we are in the market for a C and overpay. lmao
+1
I would call it Melo appeasement instead of panic, but same thing. I don’t think he liked Grant and he wanted a starting PG. He took a gamble that Rose might recover further after playing a little better in the 2nd half of the prior season knowing he’d get the cap space back the next year if it didn’t work out, but he took a monumentally dumb gamble that Noah still had a few good years left by giving him 4 years. He blew apart the sensible rebuild that was already in progress. He should have just kept adding sensible pieces on good/attractive contracts until he had picks to work with again.
@ 46 – I know. Its very frustrating. I’ve always liked Rolo and thought he worked well with KP because he was a bruiser/enforcer type who also blocked out for rebounds and scored near the basket. Grant was whatever, but having another PG on this roster right now would be a good thing and he’s gotten better.
There is no reason for us to appease Willy. Second year players don’t get to dictate trades especially when they are under contract for 2 more seasons.
to me one of the more disappointing aspects of the season is that i don’t think hornacek has demonstrated that he is a competent nba coach…
granted – without a decent roster it’s pretty difficult to look competent as a coach…i’m sure the fans of the other dozen or so teams in the league with equally or nearly as crappy a record as we have are thinking the same thing – get a new coach…
i wish we could keep the coaching staff around for another couple of years, the organization is in desperate need of some type of stability – i just don’t think we do a very good job at player development and maximizing our crappy roster…
I think there is a reasonable (25% or so) probability that we end up the 6th or 7th worst seed. CHI (post-Mirotic trade) and PHX are long shots to catch, but if CHI wins tonight vs. SAC, they are only 3.5 games below us. I can easily see us going 2-8 in our next 10 games.
Yeah my reason for wanting to keep Horns isn’t because I think he is awesome but honestly the team hasn’t underperformed and coaching decisions look weird/bad in losses when you have a flawed roster. But we’re about 2 years away from really being able to compete and he hasn’t been horrible. Give the team some stability and also I want the players and other players to know that they can’t dictate who our coach is by being disgruntled or whatever. 2 years means he can have next year knowing his job is secure and then he’ll have his final year. At that point we have the money from Noah, Lee, Lance coming off the books. KP will be 24 and hitting his prime. Frank will have 3 seasons under his belt and we’ll have added 3 first round picks to the roster. Then you look for a nice FA signing and see if a higher level coach is available to take the team to the next level or maybe Horns has grown on the job and gotten better.
I don’t have a strong opinion on Hornacek one way or the other, but I think there are some remnants of Phil’s philosophy in our our current offense or Rambis still has some influence. They are fine with shooting midrange shots and Kanter going for offensive boards.
The trade deadline is the thing, wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the Head Coach and Front Office.
Come Sunday’s game, If Jack and Thomas are getting 25+ minutes, and Burke, Willy and Dotson are getting splinters in their asses, and Lee and O’Quinn are still on the team, then I’ll be on board with firing the whole lot of them. I’ll also start worrying about the Yankees at that point, and think about the Knicks again when draft season approaches.
@53
+1.
I was fine with players getting time based on merit until now and I’d be ok with no significant moves before the trade deadline if nothing attractive is on the table. However, we are now approaching the point in the season where you can go to players with options or veterans that have earned their minutes and tell them the team is going to put developing young players first and everyone will be fine with it.
Willy, Dotson, Frank, and Burke should be playing regularly shortly.
What PTMilo said….
@53
Love the Hamlet reference.
To all, agree on the frustration. At the very least, even if no trades are made, I’d hope that mgmt. would speak to H and the players, then have a press conference where you basically say, “hey we tried to make a playoff run, but it is just not happening. So now, we’re going to play the kids…”
Yeah, the media will accuse them of tanking, but so what? Play the kids. I’d seriously release Jack and Beas (let them try to hook on with a playoff team, if they want) and bring up the two-way guys. OQ can just go to third string (sell it to him as it’ll keep him safe from injury prior to becoming a FA).
Let Noah rot.
In all likelihood we will continue to fight for the 10th seed in the East.
If the Knicks are considering trading Willy (and I don’t think they should be trying), if they could get Julius Randle out of the deal I’d explore what else it would take.
LA reportedly wants to move on from Randle. He concerns me b/c he’s reportedly not at all popular with his teammates.
Not that SA would do it, but supposedly they might not want to pay Kyle Anderson this offseason. What if they offered him for Willy?
I still hope they can find something satisfactory for OQ, though.
By the way, I didn’t see any discussion about Frank’s sore knee. He said it has been an issue for about a month. That could explain why his minutes are not going up.
I don’t know his game, but I like the numbers. SF, young, improving, rebounds…
@61 Smart player, good fundamentals, system player, not a 3pt shooter (less than 1 per game, and declining). Above average defender with occasional lapses, doubled his minutes this season.
Nickname “Slo Mo” and that says anything you need on his athleticism.
I think SA will match any reasonable offer for him (He’s restricted this summer).
At this point, if we get offered a middling 2nd rounder for KOQ, we should take it. The market for centers sucks and he’s only hurting the tank if he stays here. If he’s gone, Horny will have the freedom to play Willy. Right now he’s probably afraid to bench KOQ because it would look bad in the locker room, since he’s been one of our best players.
I understand the market for traditional Cs is dead in general and there are other Cs available right now which makes matters worse. But O’Quinn is a productive player. He’s an energy guy. So there are some night he’s doesn’t bring the same intensity when you need it. But still, if someone gets him from us for a single 2nd rounder, it’s a gift to them.
How about KOQ and B-Easy to OKC for Ferguson and Collison’s expiring?
Yeah I don’t get it, KOQ would help GSW, OKC, BOS, MIL, DEN, POR, LAC (if they send away DeAndre), NOP, CLE and maybe other teams so much that I’m speechless at the fact they’re not throwing something in our direction to get him before the others do.
Without that stupid PO (that our beloved management seems to give away to everybody)
O’Quinn is absolutely a keeper, wonderful contract, maybe the best we have.
But with the option you risk to lose him for nothing (I think on the market he can command Dedmon numbers, 7 MIL/year).
Maybe they talked with his agent and “illegaly” agreed on a longer extension, otherwise you try to get anything you can… and free Willy
Based on the rumors, the PO is why other teams are not so eager to pay a meaningful price for him.
Yes, he’s a good value for a 2nd rounder. But if that’s the best we can do, we shouldn’t care that the other team “won” the trade. Trading him for anything is better than not trading him at all. He’s hurting the tank with his quality play. And he’s blocking Willy.
More fake trades:
KOQ + Beasley to New Orleans for Ajinca, a 2018 2nd rounder, and a 2019 2nd rounder?
NO is trying to win now and they don’t value draft picks. They need a backup big and a bench scorer. Seems like a good match.
And yet it continues…(via Ian Begley, Espn)
Jeff Hornacek said today that Jarrett Jack will continue to start ahead of rookie Frank Ntilikina. “Frank’s still developing. Trey(Burke) is coming in there. But I think the thought at the beginning of the year was maybe Frank at some point would become that guy. But he’s still trying to grasp having to go out there every single night and play so I don’t know if we’re quite there. But he’s learning from Jarrett, he’s learning from Trey – things that they’re doing.”
Apparently this “Willy is demanding a trade” stuff is being misreported. His agent said that if he’s not going to get more playing time he’d like the Knicks to trade him. That is WAY DIFFERENT than him demanding a trade.
Just a reminder, Chicago’s tank is underway again. The ship is going to take on more water if they trade the rest of their good players for picks. Their 2024 rebuild plan is on course and our pick is gaining value.
I agree all stats are flawed as single measures of a player. Im pretty sure WS overvalues players from winning teams and undervalues players from losing teams. I don’t know much about BPM, but plus minus in general overvalues players with lousy backups and undervalues those with good backups.
KOQ is not gonna opt in. And if he doesn’t get good offers and you want him, I’m sure you can sign him this summer whether you trade him or not.
@73
WS doesn’t have anything to do with how much a team wins, that’s a common misconception (it’s not the case that you take total team wins and divide them and then apportion them to each player—it’s actually the opposite, where the wins are built up from each players individual contributions taken from the box score formula. Real-season wins and total wins as calculated by WS are not equal.) What WS does do is overvalue volume scoring (but not as badly as PER) and uses team defense as a proxy for individual defense, which rewards bad defenders on good defensive teams and penalizes good defenders on bad defensive teams.
BPM (confusingly) isn’t actually a +/- metric despite having ‘plus-minus’ in its name. It has issues calculating defense (it just uses the remainder from calculating OBPM and total BPM as DBPM) and by my eye at least it seems to put a high purchase on DRBs as a proxy for individual defensive contribution. DRBs are very valuable for individual defense (they end a possession—this is why Jokic is actually a good defender by every metric despite league-worst rim protection), but it overly penalizes poor DRBers like KP who is clearly a significant defensive plus (as the +/- based stats like RPM and PIPM make clear) despite his rebounding and perimeter issues.
I think we need to remember that a team trading for OQ is renting a backup center for less than half a season (plus playoff run). A 2nd might be all that they can get. Maybe the Knicks are holding out for two seconds?
#74
He loves NY. There could be a small home team discount too. However, clearing out the logjam at C comes back into play.
I may be crazy, but I think it’s a no brainer to make trading Kanter the priority (if possible). He’s overrated by boxscore stats (possibly very overrated) and he’s massively more expensive that the other guys. I like his energy and all that, but imo it’s the right move.
@75
Good summary.
I think all the boxscore metrics overvalue players that get a lot of OREBs and score off them, but we had that conversation recently.
Denver reportedly looking for help at guard. Courtney Lee would be a good fit, we’ll even throw in Lance Thomas….. Perry should be on the phone right now
Silky, as you said, WS doesn’t use wins per se, but, it does use some team based statistics (you cited team defense). My intuition is that this does help players from winning teams, but that could just be my impression from limited data.
Thanks for the explanation about BPM.
On another topic, i will be really surprised if the Knicks make a significant useful trade before the deadline. Its a buyers’ market, and the Knicks are sellers. So a good value trade is unlikely to materialize. I hope Perry and company keep their cool and don’t feel that they have to do something.
I find that as I compare the results of various models I slowly see patterns to which types of players each model tends to fail with.
I know we aren’t supposed to trust the eye test and our general sense of a player from observation, but there’s a point at which the difference is so large you simply know a rating is wrong because you are looking at real world results on the court. It’s not some theoretical value that’s right in aggregate but very wrong in some specific cases.
Dumping Lee’s salary for nothing is still a huge positive for the Knicks as the buyer’s market isn’t going away until next summer most likely when teams have a little more cap room and the bad deals from summer 2015 and 2016 start to expire. Lee is a huge risk to just become useless at any moment given his age. Why carry that risk when all it does is hurt your draft pick and when there is no real upside of him becoming significantly more valuable? Like… do you really think we’re gonna get anything meaningful for Lee *next* summer when he’ll be heading into his age 34 season?
As for O’Quinn, he’s gone this summer. If you can get anything for him, even like a top 50 protected 2nd rounder, you do it.
Who gives a shit if Willy demanded a trade? He’s on a rookie-scale contract and played very well last year. His lack of PT would be inexplicable if it weren’t the Knicks.
He wants to get paid and you don’t get paid by riding the bench.
@80
At least from my layman’s understanding and after doing some reading up a few months ago about how the canonical BREF advanced stats are calculated, team quality doesn’t really affect the calculation of OWS since OWS doesn’t actually use any team offense stats (just league-wide stats to compute marginal production) while DWS does (it uses team DTRG iirc), which explains why DWS rewards players on good defensive teams and penalizes players on bad defensive teams. So yes, in a sense WS calculation is weakly predicated on the quality of your team, but only on the defensive end of the equation.
It’s weird, but reading my note above, I’m wondering if we should be buyer’s, since there are so many sellers out there. Maybe we could get someone very undervalued. New Orleans might have done ghat with Mirotic.
Interesting interview with Derrick Willians:
http://hoopshype.com/2018/02/05/derrick-williams-china-cavs-michael-beasley-nba-return/
Interesting read on 2nd round picks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/7v1syd/oc_the_value_of_second_round_draft_picks/?st=JDAW1JD1&sh=02d2e164
Yep.
I’ve been hearing/seeing a lot of reports that teams are valuing 1st round picks very highly right now (no one wants to be the next Nets). My inclination would be to consider trading a future 1st round pick for a quality young player, but I don’t expect that to be a popular idea on a Knicks board with our history and with people that want to tank. In general, to find value in finance you have to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. Similar in basketball. It’s just very hard to value players vs. picks.
I don’t really understand all this discussion about all these metrics. It’s just a bunch of different paths to reverse engineering the eye test. If you know enough to be talking about statistical modeling in the first place, you have to believe that Professor Berri is either just plain incompetent or just plain lying for this all not to be asked, answered, and moot. I’m curious as to which of these seems plausible to anybody else because neither seems especially so to me.
I think even our second round pick from Chicago has a lot of value. If we packaged it with a useful role player, we might get a good return..
@90
imho
The Wins Produced guys know a lot more about advanced statistics and mathematics than I do, but it’s fairly obvious they went into that project without much expertise in basketball. Then when they started getting called out on some of their results, they went into that defensive mode that triggers all kinds of cognitive biases. Even now, they have players rated as stars that can barely get off the bench. Instead of trying to find the problem in the model, they assume that every coach, GM, basketball player, and experienced observer is an idiot and if they would only play that player the team would be a lot better. I’m sure there are plenty of mistakes made by coaches, but when your theory is not matching reality often and widely maybe it’s your theory that’s wrong.
I guess the Bucks don’t want Kanter after all. Apparently they just got Zeller from the Nets.
i’m not really seeing a ton of potential trade partners…. milwaukee already made a move and so what little possibility of a trade there is gone…. i think the following is it….
3. denver – they clearly want to win and are going for it…. they have zero defense…. koq is i think a very natural fit here for what is hopefully a first but probably a 2nd….
2. portland – i have no idea what they are doing but harkless gets mentioned a lot …. i don’t think we’re interested in taking on the years since i think we’re actively trying to open up more cap room for next season…
1. minnesota – these guys are def buyers… and have potential contracts to match just about any possible trade…. the only question is if they want lee, thomas or koq….
beasley could get traded anywhere and absolutely should get a 2nd rd pick …. there’s absolutely no reason to hang onto him so if he doesn’t get traded then we should riot….. zeller just went for a 2nd….
The issue with WP is that it has poor fit on the available data and yields highly counterintuitive conclusions on the basis of suspect equations (most notably via their weird and unmotivated positional adjustment coefficients). This is just another way of saying WP is a bad metric and that Dave Berri didn’t do a particularly good job at fashioning it despite his evident mathematical ability.
ex., taken from Brefs article on BPM calculation and its fit vis a vis other advanced stats to a 14 year RAPM sample (taken to be the most complete metric of player performance at the expense of any kind of explanatory power, or at least that’s how I see it.):
(Bolded emphasis in quote is mine.)
If we can take this table as representative, it’s the case that WP fits the data less than even PER! Being beat out by PER is pretty bad, all things considered.
@94
Zeller went for a second and former 17th pick Rashad Vaughan! Vaughn has been pretty terrible but two assets for Zeller means we should be getting Luka Doncic for KOQ if the market has any actual sense of his value (obviously being hyperbolic but you get the idea), which idk if they actually do or not given the relative lack of rumors swirling around Kyle.
That’s an amazing trade. The Nets actually traded a 28 year old center, despite the glut of centers, and got something back for him. On the other hand the Bucks got a useful player for what they probably feel is almost nothing. A second round pick and a player you have given up on for a good quality role player?
From the Knicks point of view, there is nothing encouraging about the trade. It suggests that if we, say, traded O’Quinn, we’d get something like what the Nets got, which really isn’t very much. And I don’t see useful role players out there on rebuilding teams that we could trade for in the way the Bucks just traded for Zeller.
Imagine looking at this 23-31 capped out team and being like “we really should be buyers”
Strat, the reason trading a first round pick won’t be popular is because you keep talking in generalities instead of engaging with the context of the actual market. Obviously if the Nuggets wanted to trade us Gary Harris (“quality young player”) for our 2018 first everyone here would be on board. The problem is nothing remotely close to that is on the table. If a team is moving anyone even resembling a “quality young player” there’s a clear reason they’re doing so.
I mean, do you want to trade our first for Aaron Gordon, who might not be good and is probably about to get a max contract? Elfrid Payton, who plays the same position as the guy we drafted a few months ago and is also about to be a free agent? Julius Randle? Nerlens Noel? Rodney Hood? I could go on, but notice that all of these guys are either bad, about to be free agents, or both.
So no, we should not trade our first round pick for any of them
I’m not sure we want to sell low on O’Quinn. Let him opt out and either let him walk or offer to re-sign him to a Lance-type deal…if he says no, so what? As a positive, he’s a decent backup that doesn’t mind being a backup. If we can get something useful for him, sure, but he’s exactly the type of guy you hope you can steal for a 2nd rounder.
I don’t have any problem whatsoever with WP or any other stat having a poor fit to RAPM. Unless the stat is actually attempting to explain RAPM, in which case I guess it would be an issue by definition. I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about this.
You have to find the right team to be a buyer. The Nuggets want to win now, so they are not the right team. The Suns, for example, don’t want to win now, so they might be sellers.
@102
RAPM is generally accepted to be an all inclusive account of player productivity since it basically just takes (regularized, adjusted) plus minus stats, but doesn’t explain why the players who are good or bad on the model rate as such, and it doesn’t predict out of sample, so its usefulness as a stat for predicting player productivity and for statistically profiling and comparing productive players at the same position in a fine grained way (since it doesn’t tell you why x player is good) is limited. When evaluating the relative quality of advanced stats, you need to fix the data set. There’s no better public all in one capturing of what a player does on the court than RAPM, so it’s the best basis of comparison amongst advanced stats that sacrifice capturing the total picture of productivity in exchange for more explanatory power and stronger predictiveness out of sample. That’s why fit to RAPM is a relevant standard of comparison for the other basketball advanced stats.
WP48 rates Enes Kanter higher than James Harden, and says O’Quinn and Giannis are about equal. Boston just picked up Greg Monroe, who’s not only slightly better than Al Horford, he’s WAY better than Kevin Durant. Oh yeah, he’s better than LeBron too.
Give me PER any day over this bullshit.
I stopped reading at RAPM is generally accepted to be.
@106
Ok, now I know it’s safe to ignore you, since it’s clear you have no interest in actually discussing things, preferring instead to repeat “muh Professor Berri” over and over.
But how about this: “RAPM is the single most complete, publicly available measure of player productivity” , because that’s almost definitionally what it is as a minimally interpreted plus-minus stat. I put generally accepted in there just to hedge a bit, rhetorically, sorry if that made the sentence too semantically complex to parse for you.
WP48 does not rate Enes Kanter higher than James Harden. WP48 does not rate players. This is a tired, silly argument that has been thrown at literally every stat ever. Kanter has a higher WP48 than Harden this season. That doesn’t mean the model or any proponent thereof is claiming that Kanter is better than Harden. It’s just easy to pretend that it does because that’s easier to argue with than what the model actually says, which is basically just, this is what happened. Everybody understands that a list of a given season’s passing yardage totals isn’t the same thing as a qualitative ranking of quarterbacks, and isn’t supposed to be. I don’t really get why this is different.
I think WP had a lot of utility when it was first released and some of its logical conclusions were gradually accepted into the larger analytic discourse. The problem is its creators/advocates have been shockingly lazy or stubborn about updating it as the game fundamentally changed and as new information began to trickle out.
I still don’t think it adequately adjusts for diminishing returns on rebounds (hence 8 of the top 10 players in WP48 being bigs), and its adherence to a heavy positional adjustment feels pretty outdated.
Still, it’s done a good job of finding some low minute players who went on to replicate their production in larger samples. These days I mostly view it as an almost niche stat for identifying those guys more than anything else.
If your metric is only stating the bare fact that “x player scored better than y on this one particular metric, which has no connection to whether or not the player was in fact more productive” that just means your metric is functionally useless as a method of evaluating productivity, since the whole raison d’etre of advanced stats is to more accurately compare players so you pay money to the right ones. And, if your metric has Enes Kanter posting better metric-numbers than James Harden and the other metrics don’t, that’s reason for some serious skepticism about the metric’s calculation and priors (if it has any) and its understanding of “what happened.”
There’s a reason we don’t use RAPM as a way to decide the best players and that’s because we have no idea 1. How the productive players are productive by the models lights and 2. Whether they can be reasonably be expected to continue to be contributors since the model doesn’t predict out of sample. Metrics can’t afford to punt on explanation and predictiveness and still be considered useful, and if your metric does do that it’s not going to remain in use for much longer, and for good reason.
Okay. Kanter’s WP48 being a staggering .338 to Harden’s .328 is reason for serious skepticism but arbitrarily selecting RAPM as a proxy for ‘true’ value via appeal to authority (of those doing the general accepting, presumably) raises nary an eyebrow. I am a relative novice at this but just come on.
@109
Is it possible that 8 of the top 10 players in wins produced being bigs is the result of tall people being good at doing things that win basketball games rather than of a purported failure of the model to account for diminishing returns on rebounds?
@112
So WP does track player productivity in the form of contributing to wins? Or does it not? Make up your mind. Enes Kanter is a stand in for all the batshit insane results of WP, this list a case in point:
https://www.boxscoregeeks.com/players?sort=per48_wins_produced&direction=desc&minimum=true
And do you understand what a plus minus metric is? If you dont, there’s no point in me reexplaining everything I just explained to you in terms you’ll understand. The fact that other metrics fit to data better and don’t have Salah fucking Mejri (a good player but not top 10 material on any rational reconstruction of the data) in their top 10 for their rankings should be enough to dissuade you from using WP. You’d literally be better off using MPG to form a winning team, that’s how comically bad WP is.
I agree that conclusions drawn from WP48 are about as valid as those drawn from passing yardage totals.
I agree with this as well.
It’s a false dichotomy. What is much more likely is that the WP model captures (and exaggerates) some of the things that win basketball, and egregiously diminishes or completely ignores others.
@109, very well said, although I would argue that WP has always grossly exaggerated the value of rebounding relative to other variables, as Kanter’s and Monroe’s high numbers would suggest. Kanter is a WP48 wet dream…high-volume efficient scoring with high-volume rebounding and SUPER high-volume offensive rebounding. Yet any serious defensive analysis would conclude that he gives back much of what he gets due to his defensive ineptitude, and that this has become far more of an issue in today’s 7SoL-spinoff world. Although I would argue that in any era, Harden would produce more wins than Kanter in the sense that just about any team would win more games (i.e. produce more wins) with Harden (or Durant, Or LeBron, Or Steph) than with Kanter, all else being equal.
Jevon Carter had 8 assists and 6 steals tonight against Trae Young and Oklahoma. I really like the idea of him as a 2nd round pick. If he gets that shooting efficiency to a decent level, you’ve got yourself a stud on defense who isn’t unplayable offensively.
@113
One more time, slowly. They. Aren’t. Rankings. Nobody says there aren’t reasons Salah Mejri doesn’t play more despite his per-minute productivity. Nobody says field a lineup with five centers because they have high WP48. Nobody says actively ignore context. Except you, but you kind of have to with where you’re at on this.
No, I’m saying that the whole conception of productivity that WP forwards is completely, utterly erroneous, with zero basis in the reality of nba basketball. It is a bad metric, functionally useless, with zero to recommend to it. There’s no possible context in which WP is a useful advanced stat for evaluating productivity unless you want to make that year’s all rebounding team. In which case, you’d be better off with TRB%
And I am saying that you, sir, are a charlatan.
Sorry I stopped reading at “And”
Good article on the state of the trade market.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22336760/zach-lowe-2018-nba-trade-deadline-preview-cavaliers-deandre-jordan-more
Based on that article, what about a trade of Lance Thomas for Mo Harkless. That would save the Trail Blazers from the luxury tax, and it works in the trade machine. We’d get a younger power forward and they might give us a future second round pick for our trouble.
First I thought that nets and Pels did some kind of a trade, but then I saw it’s Emeka Okafor playing NBA basketball. Again. Was inactive for four years. Neck hernia. A minor miracle.