Knicks Morning News (2018.06.17)

nbadraft now has the Knicks getting Porter at #9. Porter and Timmy to Memphis for Doncic at #4, or Dallas at #5 doesn’t seem like fantasy anymore.

Or Porter and a second rounder for Bamba, who’s slotted #6 to Orlando. It could happen.

If it was up to me, I would take Mikal Bridges or Carter without hesitation. I don’t know much about Knox. But people are acting like Knox is already a bust. He’s only 18, Calipari has been warning that he’s very raw but with a big upside, and he’s already outplaying other prospects at #9 in workouts. It’s kind of hard to simply write him off as a likely bust. Maybe he’s a very young kid that’s starting to mature and put it all together. So what people saw is not what we would be getting now.

If we pass on Mikal Bridges and take Knox, I’m not going to be happy. But if the Knicks scouting department (that has been terrific with KP, Frank, Dotson, and Hernangomez) likes him, I’m going to give him a couple of years before I start calling him a bust.

Here is the incredibly frustrating thing. We are 9th. We spent the last year and a half refusing to unload Courtney Lee for the best available offer and inexplicably giving TH2 a bad contract. We don’t know the precise benefit of having those two guys last year, but let’s use VORP as a proxy. It says they contributed about 6 wins over replacement level (RPM says about 7). Now, we don’t know who would have gotten those minutes but one obvious candidate is Dotson who actually played well below replacement in limited rookie minutes. But let’s assume replacement level. That puts the Knicks without those two guys as a 23 or so win team.

23 wins last year would be good for around the third pick in the draft, assuming we, like Atlanta, got jumped by a better team. At the moment, the 3rd pick seems to have a very legit shot at Luka effing Doncic. Instead we are sitting here taking about Kevin Knox and Lonnie Walker. Are there worlds in which Doncic actually ends up worse than one of those dudes? Sure. But there are a LOT more worlds where it goes the other way and Luka Doncic is a cornerstone player.

And what was the cost of missing those six wins? Zero? Was 2017-18 any different for Knicks fans than Hawks or Grizz fans? Are players looking at us like a great destination bc we won 29 not 23? Even better, we’d probably have some kind of asset, maybe a 2nd or two, for Lee. Plus we’d have the TH2 cap space to take on a contract like Parsons or Deng or Faried for even better assets. You like to say how much of a crapshoot the draft is and yeah it’s riddled with uncertainty, but we are literally sitting here taking about Lonnie Walker and Kevin Knox instead of maybe Doncic.

I suppose one possible positive out of the Knicks taking Knox at #9 would be that they might really be committing to a patient rebuild, since Frank and Knox are so young. Maybe they are looking at Knox paying off in 3-4 years. Still…

I will say this about Knox: there’s a school of thought that Kentucky didn’t use him properly. Combine his youth and quiet nature with the idea that they basically used him like a two-guard (b/c he was their only decent outside shooter), that there’s lots of untapped potential there. Calipari has suggested that in his remarks. That might explain some of his weak non-shooting stats.

However, even so he’s still quite a gamble and long-term project. He does not appear to have a strong motor unless plays are called for him, and was a rather slow, passive defender. So much will depend on, when he starts collecting those big paychecks, whether he has the ambition and edge to really work hard and be a great player. If so, the guy could be a very good stretch four, in time.

FWIW, supposedly Chicago is considering Knox at 7.

These fringe Kentucky players are hard for me to judge every time, the teams are generally stacked and have so much potential NBA talent that it’s hard to isolate the contributions of a freshman unless it’s a guy like Towns or Davis. I just don’t see the reason for going with this gamble instead of other players who were actually more productive and also have high ceilings.

Some others have mentioned that Callipari used Knox like he did with Monk, which probably won’t be his role in the league.

Givony:

Unfortunately Luka Doncic was playing 5 on 5 and not one on zero in the ACB finals tonight, so NBA teams picking in the top five came away unimpressed with his performance, and his draft stock continues to falter.

He won’t fall to 9, but maybe he falls to where we can trade for him?

Guys, considering Kevin Knox at #7 or #9 is literally like having a top 5 basketball players all time discussion and saying “well you know David Robinson was a hell of a player, too.” It doesn’t mean you value him at the draft position, but that it’s a point of discussion that never really materializes.

@19

Oh, I agree there should be no hurry to just dump him for whatever, he doesn’t move the needle much either way for it to be an urgent matter. I think people that want to see him gone are mostly seeing our front office as making decisions based on having him as a building block, which should not be the case at all. Let’s say picking Knox instead of Mikal because Knox fits better with Hardaway, for example.

In my opinion he’s not a building block at all and not a huge hindrance too, just leave him there and hope he can somehow either develop into a good player or gather enough trade interest to be moveable in 2020 when we’ll probably have some cap space, or preferably before that.

My best case scenario is that he comes out without Porzingis chucking like crazy, scores like 24 ppg on terrible efficiency and attracts some dumb front office to attempt to trade for him. Then again, most likely we are that dumb front office and will keep him no matter what if that happens.

THJ’s 3pt% last year was by far the lowest of his career. It was probably a combination of a bad year combined with the Knicks inability to get good looks from 3. As long as we run a modern offense THJ will probably get better looks and hopefully will shoot closer to his career average (35.5% before last year). If he can do that he becomes much more efficient and while I don’t think he’ll ever be a good 2nd option scoring the ball he could be a decent third option. His TS% was over 56% the two seasons prior to last year.

If we can set up a team in which THJ is the 3rd best scorer and 4th best defensive player in the starting lineup I think we’re doing okay. Last year with him as the 2nd best scorer and 2nd/3rd best defensive player in the starting lineup was unacceptable.

@16
Tonight Luka has 20 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists in 24 min, as Madrid won on the road and took a 2-1 lead in the ACB Finals.

Could we ask Givony if maybe his stock will raise again?

🙂

I’m willing to give Hardaway a pass for last year. He played part of the year after a significant injury, part of the year as a main scoring option when he’s not even a solid #2 option, and spent some time out of position at SF. He was good enough for 2 years in Atlanta to think his 3p% and TS% could rebound a bit this year. I still think he’s going to wind up as more of an overpaid 6th man than a solid starter, but he’s a hard worker. Maybe Fisdale can do something with him.

@25

It was a big douchey, but I think he’s just pissed that people keep overhyping individual workouts that are black boxes and nitpicking Doncic’s problems endlessly. Like, there’s been talk of this guy dropping past the 5th pick, how is that not the stupidest thing ever?

Yeah, that tweet looks to me like he’s mocking the NBA’s evaluation process of prioritizing workouts over real game performance.

Oh, I also thought he was mocking Doncic at first but before I posted here I eventually figured it out lol.
I thought you guys were saying he was a douche to other talent evaluators.

Doncic has been playing basketball non-stop for almost 2 years now, there’s just so much tape and evidence and it’s much easier to just harp on his issues. I can’t believe there’s talk of Porter Jr going second ahead of him when he played like 40 minutes in college.

Fuck me, if we just did what the Mavs did we would have a real shot at this guy. All we had to do was lose 5 more meaningless games. I’m getting so pissed about this discussion of Knox versus Lonnie Walker when it was so damn close for us to have a shot at Doncic, Jackson, Bamba or Porter with Young and Carter Jr being our worst case scenarios.

I’m getting so pissed about this discussion of Knox versus Lonnie Walker when it was so damn close for us to have a shot at Doncic, Jackson, Bamba or Porter with Young and Carter Jr being our worst case scenarios.

#DolansRazor cuts again

I apologize for misreading the tweet, Givony! 🙂 Although, to be fair, if you issue an explanatory second tweet, you probably didn’t get the point across very well on the first tweet. 😉

my guess is that they’re not too enamored with either bridges…. and it seems like they are set on a SF… good news is that they seem to like carter….

i try not to get too caught up in rumors… but this whole knox deal is very worrisome and i’m echoing givony’s cry…. taking knox would be ignoring a whole college season’s worth of production in favor of empty gym workouts…

it would be on the level of the frederick weis draft…. only less obvious to casual draft followers….

According to Woj we hired another assistant coach, Canales is young and worked years with Carlisle.

I like the mix of the new coaching staff, they’ll have a lot of work to do, let’s see how it shapes out…

Sorry Givony, your sarcasm wasn’t clear 😀

Why do the people that like Frank hate Knox so much?? The Knicks to me seem like they really like their development staff so want to take players they can mold(maybe wrongly…..). Knox is clearly one of the youngest rawest players in this draft, a lot of people are comparing him to tobais harris which isn’t bad value at 9. We all know we are not going to be good next year so let’s take the biggest gamble and get a top three pick next year.