[NYTimes] N.B.A. Dunk Contest Goes to Donovan Mitchell, and His Homage to Vince Carter (Sunday, February 18, 2018 6:41:02 AM)
Mitchell edged Larry Nance Jr., sealing his victory with a close approximation of the 360-degree spin dunk that Carter used to win the 2000 contest.
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: The N.B.A. All-Star Game Has Shed a Major Distraction (Saturday, February 17, 2018 6:13:30 PM)
For the first time in a long time, the trade deadline has already passed. That means the All-Stars can play without rumored deals getting in the way.
[NYTimes] The N.B.A. Dunk Contest Has the History. The 3-Point Contest Has the Stars. (Saturday, February 17, 2018 2:11:41 PM)
The 3-point shot has increasingly become the signature play of the N.B.A. So why shouldn’t it resonate at the league’s All-Star weekend?
[NYTimes] ‘To Me, It Was Racist’: N.B.A. Players Respond to Laura Ingraham’s Comments on LeBron James (Saturday, February 17, 2018 10:44:12 PM)
In a segment on Thursday, the Fox News host mocked Mr. James and said he and his fellow basketball stars should refrain from expressing political opinions.
(Saturday, February 17, 2018 1:52:16 PM)
LOS ANGELES — Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving thought he would be teammates this weekend with Kristaps Porzingis on Team LeBron at Staples Center. Maybe one day that happens at the Garden. Irving said he has sent his “well wishes’’ to the fallen 7-foot-3 Latvian and revealed he gave Porzingis a personal compliment to him…
(Saturday, February 17, 2018 8:47:34 AM)
LOS ANGELES – After getting drafted by the Knicks in late June, Frank Ntilikina went back to France that night on a red-eye to play in the deciding Game 5 of the French League Finals for Strasbourg. It was quite the whirlwind. After spending a few days at home, he flew back to New York…
[NYDN] Kyrie Irving, Karl-Anthony Towns want best for injured Porzingis (Saturday, February 17, 2018 8:47:26 PM)
Kyrie Irving’s opportunity to toss alley-oops to Kristaps Porzingis was derailed by an ACL tear.
[NYDN] If Jeff Hornacek can’t save season, here’s who Knicks may hire (Saturday, February 17, 2018 3:27:20 PM)
Hornacek returns to work this week he’ll have 23 games to salvage the season and perhaps his job as well.
[NYDN] Jimmy Butler says exiled Knicks center Joakim Noah wants to play (Saturday, February 17, 2018 1:33:17 PM)
Jimmy Butler has been in contact with the exiled Joakim Noah, and he came away with the following impression: Noah wants back on the court.
[NYDN] Emmanuel Mudiay, Knick with sky-high potential, has beaten odds (Saturday, February 17, 2018 7:33:25 AM)
The Knicks traded for Emmanuel Mudiay in a move that gave Mudiay a chance to revive his career after an underwhelming time in Denver.
[SNY Knicks] Smith Jr. on declining workout with Knicks: It ain’t nothin’ personal (Saturday, February 17, 2018 4:25:21 PM)
Dennis Smith Jr. could have been drafted by the Knicks, but he cancelled his workout with them before the draft.
[SNY Knicks] Donovan Mitchell admits it would have been cool if the Knicks drafted him (Saturday, February 17, 2018 10:45:14 AM)
Donovan Mitchell admits it would have been cool to stay in New York and play for the Knicks, but is more than happy with how things turned out.
(Saturday, February 17, 2018 10:52:00 PM)
LOS ANGELES — Kyrie Irving said he was disappointed not to have had a chance to play with Kristaps Porzingis in the All-Star Game and he sent the injured Knicks 7-3 center “well-wishes.”
(Saturday, February 17, 2018 4:41:09 PM)
Knicks rookie point guard Frank Ntilikina grew up in France, after his mother and two brothers had escaped the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
29 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.02.18)”
Trae Young has been struggling as of recent, and there’s been a lot of chatter about how he’s been exposed due to his size. I think if/when we out tank another 3 to 4 teams we’ll be in a position to draft him and end the Mudiay experiment if we so choose. I expect Jaren Jackson Jr and Miles Bridges to rise come tournament time, and Michael Porter Jr is probably going to play in some games while Mizzou is still alive. I’m really interested in seeing if he’s all hype or if he’s really the dominating presence on offense he’s being described as. If he’s the real deal, I think he has to be #2 behind Doncic on the Knicks big board. We need a combo forward more than anything else right now, and his size, skill, and athleticism would allow the Knicks to play KP at both the 4 and 5.
Mikal Bridges is a nice player but do we really need another shooting guard?
Mikal is taller than Miles with a 4 inches longer wingspan.
I worry about Trae’s size too at the next level but I can’t say no to him at 7.
Alan Houston (who is listed at 6’6″) posted an interesting photo of himself standing next to Frank. It looked like Frank was hair taller. Houston commented “still growing”. Apparently Frank must be a little taller now than when they first met. Maybe, instead of playing SG, he’s eventually going to become our starting SF.
I think the odds are very low we climb 3-4 more places. I can o my really see us catching Chicago (playing well) and maybe Brooklyn (no incentive). I’d guess we’ll end up at 9, best case 7.
If we’re 7 we should be in a position to take one of the upper tier of players. If 8th or beyond, unless someone climbs late to push one of the 7 down, I like Mikal Bridges but i’m nervous of his age. I also think Miles will be a good fit. I’d probably take one of those over Knox, Sexton – not sure about Carter’s position but he may also be the one to make a climb into the top 7.
The winning percentage of remaining opponents for Chicago is .474 compared to .514 for us. We can always hope.
Now that there are some whispers of Trae Young slipping, I’d really like to see us move up. To me, just about all of his flaws boil down to having god awful teammates and through it all he still profiles very well.
Miles Bridges looks good at times but I’m pretty concerned about the lack of a standout skill. I’m not sure how jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none types translate to the NBA. I know he has a very good defensive reputation but the low steal rate concerns me. He’s a good rebounder and profiles pretty decently as a scorer though. Ideally I’d want a better consolation prize for this train wreck of a season.
Assuming we don’t move up I’m pretty sold on Mikal Bridges, Wendell Carter, Robert Williams, and Bamba (probably a stretch) with Knox, Sexton, and Musa being guys we desperately need to avoid.
I don’t think we are going to win many more games without KP anchoring the D and with Frank/Mudiay/Dotson getting a lot of minutes. The games we win will be the occasional nights when one or both of Beasley and/or Hardaway goes off and plays well above average or when the other team randomly has a horrible night from 3. We may even lose on some of those nights like we did against Washington.
Only Phoenix/Atlanta have harder schedules than us the rest of the season and we were never gonna catch them anyways.
Orlando, Memphis, Dallas and Chicago are all top ten in easiest schedules remaining so at the least we’ll be 8th with a chance for 6th.
Not totally Knicks related, but I just gotta say it sucks that DSJ had the best dunk of the night but Donovan Mitchell won the contest. Mitchell had some great dunks for his size, but none of them compared to that sick 360 that DSJ pulled off. Those 2 are incredibly athletic. I didn’t realize that Mitchell was THAT explosive. I’m happy with Ntilikina, but would have been happy with Mitchell as well even if he wouldn’t have developed into the scorer he is now. I do think Ntilikina will eventually make our defense more versatile than Mitchell would have though.
Yeah, it’s kind of frustrating watching such extraordinary athletes that arguably are also further along in their development than Frank. Usually it’s the other way around. The “athlete” is behind in his development and you are counting on that superior natural ability to slowly develop into more. I’m still happy with Frank. He’s just going to be a different kind of player.
Does anyone know the cutoff date when you can buy out a player and he’s still eligible to play in the playoffs for whoever picks him up?
My guess is that we are going to buy out Noah around that time. Naturally, he doesn’t want to give the organization much of a discount, but I’m sure he doesn’t like be banished either. He wants to play. He can collect his full pay from now until then and then still join a playoff team and compete in the playoffs.
I was kind of surprised about the report that Hornacek was the first to get physical. I have this picture in my head of Noah all in his face cursing and Hornacek shoving him off as opposed to actually making an aggressive move. Either way, it never should have come close to that.
Hornacek was given a bad hand to play. We had 4 Cs and a PF that’s used as a C in small ball lineups, but he misplayed the hand terribly also. We wound up giving up on Willy before most would have liked and any small hope of ever moving Noah as part of another deal later were lost. My guess is that Noah it going to be useful to someone off the bench.
March 1st is the deadline.
I see the NY media is starting to talk about Kyrie Irving a lot lately. I guess the Kyrie to NY as a free agent hype is starting early. Someone should tell them good players don’t go from championship contenders to perennial tankers very often.
Except that Kyrie is a little bit of a nut job, so with him, anything’s possible. He just has to be careful not to travel too far and fall off the end of the earth.
Kyrie leaving the Celtics for the Knicks would not be crazy considering his personality. Him with Frank, KP, Mikal and our top 5 pick next year would be real interesting.
@8 – yep, but Memphis, Dallas and Orlando at least are all very bad teams actively seeking high picks… and are 3.5, 4 and 4.5 games behind us. I want you to be right but for any of those teams to catch us they might need to win 8-10 games even assuming we can stumble our way to no more than 5… Not sure it happens.
Of the 12 teams that failed to reach 40 wins last year, I looked at how many games they won post all-star break. The least amount was 6 (Phi, Phx), the most was 12 (Chr). All 12 teams were pretty much eliminated from the playoffs by the break and all the teams except New Orleans (11 wins) and Brooklyn (11 wins) had their first-round pick. So that’s 10 teams looking to tank. If you look at those 10 teams the average amount of wins was 8.5.
That means most if not all of the teams with 18 wins will probably end up with somewhere between 24-30 wins. With Brooklyn and Chicago at 25-31 and 26-32 respectively. So even if we win 6 games, the low end of the spectrum, we will end up with 29 wins and at most pass maybe 2 teams and might not pass anyone.
The only way we really have any chance of moving up is winning 4 or less games. That seems unlikely so 8-12 is very much our most likely landing spot.
Of the 12 teams that failed to reach 40 wins last year, I looked at how many games they won post all-star break. The least amount was 6 (Phi, Phx), the most was 12 (Chr). All 12 teams were pretty much eliminated from the playoffs by the break and all the teams except New Orleans (11 wins) and Brooklyn (11 wins) had their first-round pick. So that’s 10 teams looking to tank. If you look at those 10 teams the average amount of wins was 8.5.
That means most if not all of the teams with 18 wins will probably end up with somewhere between 24-30 wins. With Brooklyn and Chicago at 25-31 and 26-32 respectively. So even if we win 6 games, the low end of the spectrum, we will end up with 29 wins and at most pass maybe 2 teams and might not pass anyone.
The only way we really have any chance of moving up is winning 4 or less games. That seems unlikely so 8-12 is very much our most likely landing spot.
Agreed…Kevin Knox anyone?
Maybe this is the year we move up spots in the lottery instead of down. Not holding my breath though ha ha
Also, has anyone else not been interested in the All-Star weekend this year? I usually try and catch at least some of it, but I have had very little interest this year. I think once KP was out that was me done.
It seems like Hornacek is a relatively sharp basketball mind who hasn’t been able to implement his vision and struggles badly to connect with players. All things considered you could do a lot worse, and I’m definitely afraid of exactly that if the Knicks fire him (hello, Mark Jackson), but it’s hard to see him lasting much longer for better or worse.
If the Knicks draft Michael Porter Jr and win the RJ Barrett lottery next year, I could definitely see Kyrie jumping ship to sign a huge deal in New York. Who the hell wouldn’t want to play with RJ Barrett, Michael Porter Jr, and Kristaps Porzingis?
Also, I like the Knicks odds to move up to 6th. We are truly terrible and have the best tank team of any team in the NBA. Mudiay, Beasley, and Kanter is like the Big 3 of tanking, and then we have Lance Thomas who is the most useless player in the league. As much as I like Courtney Lee and Kyle O’Quinn, there just isn’t enough production between those two to stop the huge amount of losses that are going to come.
Even Frank who appears to have hit the wall will contribute to the tank. Hicks too but he might be better than Lance by virtue of not being Lance.
Our Knicks are tanking not because we have a tanking roster. It helps, sure. But we are tanking because Hornacek sucks at adjustments, KP is hurt, and we are starting THJ at the 3. The perfect stealth tank. The big combo of Kanter and Beasley will give up a lot of points, but they play well enough to win us some games. Not that I’m complaining, but Hornacek’s inability to adjust and maximize his players’ strengths undermines the talent that is on the team. Trust- if D’Antoni were still the coach, he’d be winning some ball games with this roster. Hornacek does have a good mind for basketball, but his adjustment issues prevent him from using it in games. Maybe it’s because he’s still learning how to be a head coach. Maybe he needs another year or 2 as an assistant.
So the question is- who would we like as the next head coach? I’m still a fan of grabbing a young, brilliant college coach like Shaka Smart. I am totally against Mark Jackson right now, and ambivalent on David Blatt. Mark Jackson may be a decent coach, but I need to see more.
Fergie should be ashamed of herself…the worst rendition of the star spangled banner I have ever heard!
I’m confident that Mike Beasley and Kanter can score 55 points combined every night and the Knicks will still lose every game barring TH2’s April foolishness. Those two are probably the worst defensive frontcourt in the league. Ironically enough, Mudiay, 32 year old Courtney Lee, TH2, Beasley, and Kanter seem like a team Isiah Thomas built.
that anthem was epic
fuck kneeling, I would have laid prostrate if I were there
He’s going to be 26 in a few weeks. That will make him about 31-32 before that team us ready to contend.
I’ve had the misfortune of watching the Black Eyed Peas live in a festival, so it’s mindboggling to me how anyone expected anything different from Fergie. At least this time I laughed quite a bit.