(Saturday, March 10, 2018 12:36:31 AM)
MILWAUKEE — Talk about rubbing it in.
(Friday, March 09, 2018 10:31:12 PM)
(Friday, March 09, 2018 10:45:10 PM)
The Knicks dropped a back-and-forth game to the Bucks, 120-112 , in Milwaukee.
(Friday, March 09, 2018 6:30:49 PM)
New York has dropped 13 of its last 14 games overall including five in a row, are is 1-9 since Kristaps Porzingis was lost for the season with an ACL injury in a Feb. 6 loss to Milwaukee.
[NYTimes] The Raptors End the Rockets’ Winning Streak at 17 (Saturday, March 10, 2018 3:27:37 AM)
In a matchup between the respective conference leaders, Toronto topped Houston, 108-105.
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Markelle Fultz Lost His Shot. Will He Ever Find It Again? (Friday, March 09, 2018 5:27:56 PM)
Fultz was the Philadelphia 76ers’ top pick in the draft last summer, largely because of his jump shot. It has now gone missing and nobody knows why.
[NYTimes] New York Today: New York Today: Beneath the Big Foam Head (Friday, March 09, 2018 1:28:03 PM)
Friday: College mascots reveal themselves, what to do this weekend, and a marathon soccer match.
(Friday, March 09, 2018 8:30:04 PM)
MILWAUKEE — Tim Hardaway Jr. didn’t appreciate being the butt of a T-shirt joke. While Hardaway leads the Knicks in taking charges, he was physically unable to take one Feb. 6 at the Garden when Giannis Antetokounmpo — “The Greek Freak” — jumped over him on a fastbreak to throw down a wild dunk that…
(Friday, March 09, 2018 6:14:14 PM)
MILWAUKEE — The Knicks will never have to see Bradley Center again, but will have to deal with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and, perhaps, Jabari Parker for many more years. Though the Knicks hung with the Bucks for the first three quarters, “The Greek Freak’’ was too much of a force to withstand. Antetokounmpo poured…
(Friday, March 09, 2018 4:09:26 PM)
MILWAUKEE — Tim Hardaway Jr. has improved his defense, notably leading the Knicks in taking charges. But he was physically unable to take one Feb. 6 at the Garden when “The Greek Freak,” Giannis Antetokounmpo, jumped over him on a fastbreak to throw down a wild dunk that made all the highlights — even on…
(Friday, March 09, 2018 11:30:27 AM)
MILWAUKEE – Last time the Knicks visited the Bradley Center, on Feb. 2, the standing ovation was long and loud. Jabari Parker checked into the game midway through the first quarter and the Bucks crowd erupted, his one-year absence from a second torn left ACL ending. Next winter, there will be a thunderous ovation at…
[NYDN] Giannis Antetokounmpo dominates again as Knicks fall to Bucks (Friday, March 09, 2018 8:48:04 PM)
Antetokounmpo, who finished with 10 rebounds and five assists, attempted 18 free throws including nine the fourth.
[NYDN] Knicks tormentor Giannis Antetokounmpo talks Porzingis ACL injury (Friday, March 09, 2018 8:47:34 PM)
Giannis Antetokounmpo leads the NBA in inflicting more pain, humiliation and heartache to the Knicks than any player the last two years.
[NYDN] Bucks selling shirts with Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Knicks dunk (Friday, March 09, 2018 9:28:25 AM)
The Bucks are dunking on the Knicks in more ways than one.
[NYDN] Ex-Knick Steve Francis went from dealing crack to making the NBA (Friday, March 09, 2018 6:18:19 AM)
Before Steve Francis became a superstar in the NBA, the former Rockets guard said he sold crack years before being drafted.
44 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.03.10)”
One of the last pieces of really low hanging fruit in NBA team management is not playing terrible players on good teams. For years Doc was the poster boy on this. Minnesota is this year. They’re suddenly not even guaranteed a playoff spot and that would probably not be the case if they found someone just passable to play the 1500 minutes they’ll have given to 37 year old Jamal Crawford. This isn’t about some surprise shitty season, it’s just Thibs making what seems like an obvious mistake that might turn out to really matter. There are a ton of guys more productive than Crawford (congrats on finding one of the only ones who isn’t) available for basically nothing, especially on a bad defensive team like the Wolves. Or he could have just given a bunch of his minutes to Tyus Jones.
Thibs also made the low-key most franchise crippling move in the last year by keeping Wiggins. If you’re in the camp who thinks you have to max him bc he could be dealt, then okay he should have dealt him. But otherwise you took a team with two HOFers in their prime and just neutered its potential to improve. Getting Butler was awesome, but a good GM could have taken Wiggins and the Teague/Rubio asset/money and turned them into something serious right away. It’s also crazy that Wiggins is leading the NBA in minutes and not just because of burn out, but because he sucks. SVG hasn’t been great and it’s hard to like the Blake deal but I think Thibs has done even more damage than SVG relative to the counterfactual.
@1 agreed. It’s frankly incredible that Wiggins got that max.
Like Noble said the other day someone we should definitely look at in the late 2nd (and not just bc he’s a UNC alum) is Theo Pinson. He’s a do-it-all SF who’s averaging 15/9/7 on a 58 TS% (53.7 2 pt%) with 1.5 steals and 1block a game while playing terrific defense. Hes a senior and he absolutely cannot shoot 3s (25%) despite his solid free throw shooting and 2 point shooting, but he checks pretty much every other box as a SF in terms of ball handling, athleticism, slashing, passing, scoring efficiently, individual and help defense, etc. He’s absolutely worth a 2nd round pick, but he might even go undrafted.
What’s so strange about the minutes allocation thing is that even D’Antoni seems to have got the memo. Thibs is a great battle-winner, war-loser.
@2
Nah, he might steal Lance minutes
I’m afraid Kp is too tall, knee issues will be a recurring theme in his career.
If we could get a top three pick for him and another piece we could have a real core moving forward this offseason. I’m just saying it’s an option we might have to consider because we suck and waiting for another season to be watchable again doesn’t seem like it’s in Dolan’s character.
I really think if the Knicks play their cards right, they have a real shot at being caught by Brooklyn in the tank race. Right now, we’re 3 games up, but they have home games left vs. Dallas and Memphis, a road game vs. Orlando and 2 games with the Bulls. Plus they have no reason to tank.
So of course on the last day of the season, Mudiay will hit a half court shot to beat the Cavs B team and we’ll end up one game behind the Nets.
I really like Pinson’s game also.
The Knicks are going to tank their way into the #6 pick in this draft, and I couldn’t be more pleased about that. Brooklyn, Chicago, and one of Orlando, Dallas, or Sacramento is going to pass us.
The schedule becomes very tough for the tank though. We’ll have 5 home games, an easy loss to the Raptors, a harder loss against Philly and then Charlotte, Chicago and Dallas all at home.
If we somehow manage to clutch the 0-5 I believe in a top 6 position, but the Knicks are the Knicks and I’m not confident at all.
Dallas and Chicago at home are going to be very tough games to lose
It’s a zero-sum game, too. The Wolves could have torpedoed another franchise via their own stupidity — give the Bird rights to the traded team and let them deal with that $148M max that instantly becomes the worst contract in the NBA. It’s a lose-lose for the Wolves, and it appears that no one in the front office can see that.
The sad part is that the Knicks would’ve signed Wiggins to the same contract.
The Knicks would trade Frank Ntilikina, Enes Kanter, and this year’s 1st round pick for Andrew Wiggins. I have no doubt in my mind about that much.
Here’s the saddest part – I bet the Knicks would have traded their 2018 first rounder for Wiggins, I bet the New York media would have supported the move and, saddest of all, I bet the Wolves would have said no.
Well, we could play Mudiay 48 minutes and dramatically increase our chances.
maybe the key to being a sane knicks fan then is to constantly imagine all the (other) terrible shit we would plainly do if given the chance but just never got around to.
Seem like Courtney Lee would’ve been a nice fit in Minny. I wonder if they were interested at all? In fact, it would be interesting (and maybe depressing) to know what teams were interested in Lee and OQ, and what they were offering.
RE Wiggins. I guess Pointz and “Upside” are powerful lures.
The Knicks reportedly only wanted a 1st for Lee.
It’s just insane how consistently bad Wiggins has been. Through more than 11200 minutes in his career his advanced stats have pretty much stayed the same, until this year when he actually got worse and is managing, despite his so often praised athleticism, to get to the line even less. He’s shooting 3.9 far per game while averaging 36 minutes and converting them at a 63% rate, this is mind blowing.
I would be so depressed as a Wolves fan for the future if Butler doesn’t manage to recover well from his injury or leaves when his contract is up, there’s no way Towns is going to want to stay 5 more years in this situation.
All the Timberwolves have to do is trade Wiggins to a place like New York, New Orleans, or Sacramento.
The Raptors excel at this. They don’t have great top-line talent, but they can run out ten guys who are at .100 WS48 or higher, and they just bury you with their depth. They’re #3 in the NBA in offensive rating, #4 in defensive rating. Must be nice.
You know who’s a pretty good player for them? Jakob Poeltl. He’s 22 years old, has a .646 TS% and is a good shot blocker. He’s the guy they drafted with the pick we sent them for Andrea Bargnani. But hey, we got some funny GIFs out of the deal. The East is big, man.
Yeah, Boston and Toronto are lessons in how nice it must be to be able to totally fleece some other team in a trade. Why can’t we do that?
Probably the closest the Knicks will get is the Melo deal, but to do that they need to nail someone with the 2nd round pick or somehow flip Kanter for something nice.
I caught up with the game on metaphoric tape. The trivia question was good and brought back memories. For those who missed it, the question was “Frank Ntilikina is the second youngest player ever to start for the Knicks, who was the youngest?”
It’s the sort of question you think you should know but don’t. The answer is Trevor Ariza. I heard the answer and thought, a valuable role player who defends well and shoots threes. Ntilikina could end up that way. But Ariza was drafted 40th, so his career is very good for where he is was picked. I’m hoping for better with Ntilikina, but I’m not sure we will get it.
In case you are wondering, Ariza was traded as part of the Steve Francis deal, a bad Knicks memory if there ever was one.
And of course we have to watch two Knick draftees, Ariza and Nene, play on the #1 seed team in the west.
they should’ve taken anything for getting rid of lee’s contract…. there’s no good reason for him to be playing with us other than to remind us that he’s performed about as good as you can expect and the deal still sucks…
There is a real chance that there were no offers for Lee period.
The 54 win Knicks were very deep, 8 of their top 11 players in minutes played had a WS/48 over .100 and 2 of the guys that didnt were Shump and Felton who were just barely below that level and Brewer who was gone by the end of the season when K-Mart was on the roster and he too had a WS/48 over .100. Not to mention Kurt and Amar’e who didn’t play much but they too provided above league average production when they did play.
Having a bunch of league average players is very good, unfortunately for us only one time since 2001 has management been able to accomplish this feat.
No way Mikal Bridges falls to us, probably will be drafted one or two spots above us and go on to a great career in the NBA.
Derrick Rose has to be one of the least self aware athletes out there. He did a long interview today talking about how amazingly healthy his body is and how anyone who thinks he’s injury prone is an idiot. Meanwhile the guy took 2 weeks off earlier this season to contemplate his future because he was getting hurt so much.
Dallas (20 wins) has a big home game today vs Memphis. Go Mavs!
I think he possibly goes #7, but for him to go top 6, he’d have to pass Ayton, Doncic, Jackson, Young, Porter and Bagley. I don’t see that happening. It’s hard enough for him to pass Bamba and Carter, but I agree that he’ll probably end up going there. Which makes getting to #8 a big deal, since I think as much as I like Bamba, I’d prefer Carter and I’m starting to think that Bamba will be the one who drops to #9 (he’s great value at #9, so I’d take it, but I’d prefer Bridges or Carter).
The draft should be changed to:
1) lottery ping pong balls even to all teams not making playoffs
2) rest of first round based on playoff rounds won then games won (nba champ gets last pick of 1st round)
3) second round in reverse order of regular season record (worst reg season record gets first pick of second round).
I’m pretty sure this is the optimal solution. Zero inscentive for tanking. Making and advancing in the playoffs is much more important — no sane team would intentionally try to not make the playoffs even for a quick first round exit. Some of the bigger morons on this sight might advocate that a equal shot at the lottery is more valuable than making the playoffs, but they would be wrong. And still provides a good path for poor teams to get better. THIS MUST HAPPEN. Imagine how amazing it would be to always be able to root for your team. And for teams to always try to win since the value of building a winning team and teaching players a winning culture would far outweigh the very modest tanking insentives this system has.
We need those fucking ping pong balls to fall our way one more time (since 1985 and Patrick Ewing)
The tortured souls known as New York Knicks fans are due
What do you guys use to research lottery picks now that DX is down?
When the Raptors took Poeltl I remember them being criticized for playing it safe with a kid who was likely to be a good pro but didn’t have the upside to be a great player. They were picking 9th-what else do you want?
The Mavs are spanking the Grizz.
the only thing wrong with a balanced lottery is that it bases the outcome of success on competent team management..
something the knicks haven’t exactly excelled at…
@34
Tankathon, The Stepien, NBADraft.net (though I don’t think they’re particularly reliable), and a lot of trawling of sports reference, ESPN’s paywalled draft articles through a proxy, and Twitter analytics stuff. Along with watching games, ofc.
I don’t think Mikal is gonna go top 7.
I think he’s going somewhere #7-9. I think a lot will depend on how Bamba and Carter do in the tournament.
mikal’s only shot at going higher than 7 or 8 would be if michael porter looks as bad in the tourney as he did against georgia…..
NBAdraft.net has Trae Young falling to us at 9. Don’t know how I feel about that.
There’s no way Young lasts that long. Especially since Orlando will likely be one of the teams picking #4-7 and they obviously desperately need a point guard.
They are also Orlando and not very bright in terms of drafting, so…
But yeah, the Suns, Magic and maybe even the Cavs could all conceivably draft Young, so I think he’ll be a goner by the time we’re up. I would be very happy if he dropped all the way to 9th but I think there’s just no way, unless something truly bizarre happens in the tournament.