Knicks Morning News (2018.09.17)

this is pretty awesome use of ARKit. I wonder how many teams already have proprietary stuff like this.

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1039939181013807104/video/1

The Knicks held their town hall on Facebook (video actually starts at about 6:45 mark today and lots of great stuff in it. Mills, Fiz and Perry answered questions from Mike Breen and a bunch of long-time season ticket holders. I heard a lot of things that make me feel good about the direction of the team. There’s some news out of it too. Here are just some of the bullets:
– KP is in NY and is seeing the medical staff. They will be patient with him.
– Fiz is keen on position-less team ball.
– Fitz is going to have Knox defend the best players and predicted there’ll be nights where “he’ll have his ass handed to him”.
– Perry and Mills are focused on 2018-19 and not on free agency. They want to make NY a place that FA want to come to.
– No expectations of wins this year. It’s all about player and team development. Players must show improvement from beginning to the end of the year.
– They will try and win games.
– They are super pumped about Knox and Mitchell. Fiz thinks they got something special in both.
– Mills said that Hezonja and Vonleh are guys that failed that they’re hoping just need a change of scenery.
– Mills said “We are not going to take short cuts and we will not trade our draft picks”. He added, “We gonna build this team the right way. What we’re not going to do is trade away assets to get a guy that we can go and get on our own later”.
– Frank Ntilikina grew 1.5″ over the summer. He’s now 6’5 1/2 and can cover the 1-2-3-4. He’s also gained 15 lbs of muscle and has worked all off-season.

Shouldn’t Frank be 6’6 if he grew 1.5 inches? Anyway, terrific development that he’s grown and put on 10-15 lbs. of muscle. I always believed the kid would sprout and fill out.

There’s an interesting tidbit from Shams Charania about the Towns/Butler dynamic. He’s saying Towns will not sign his extension until the Butler situation plays itself out, so you have to think Butler is the one who will be meeting Thibs with a short list of teams to trade him to. I’d love to see Toronto somehow pull off a trade and pair Butler and Leonard on the wings, but I’m worried the Knicks will do something stupid like trade Frank Ntilikina and an unprotected 1RP for Jimmy Butler. It’s been reported that we have the hots for Kyrie and it’s also been reported Kyrie wants to play with Jimmy Butler.

My mind says Jimmy Butler will end up a Dallas Maverick or a Washington Wizard, but I can really see a trade that lands us Butler but sends out Ntilikina, Courtney Lee, and a lightly protected 2019 1st round pick. I would not be willing to offer anything more than Tim Hardaway Jr, Courtney Lee, and swap rights on the 2019 or 2020 1st round pick (and even the swap rights give me cold feet). I want very little to do with giving any 30 year old player a 4 year max, and that goes double for a player who spent the past 4 years averaging over 36 minutes a night for Tom Thibodeaux. What makes it worse is Cam Reddish, RJ Barrett, Zion Williamson, Nasir Little, and Sekou Doumbouya make wing options at the top of the draft look like the position to be picking, and wasting a shot at those guys at 19/20 years old to add a 30 year old Butler to a 23 win team? It’s just not a good idea. I hope we stay the course and finally draft in the top 3, but this Jimmy Butler situation is the exact thing the Knicks of old would jump at. Let’s see how Scott Perry handles this situation.

Mills was pretty clearly adamant they weren’t trading first rounders. Generally I wouldn’t believe it, but the part where he says we’re not trading assets for someone we can get later really makes me feel that the Butler + Kyrie interest is real, either both or only one, but they have decided to pursue them as free agents only. There’s no reason for him to say that if they don’t already have this planned out on some capacity.

Makes sense to wait until he hits free agency. Unless you are in a position where a guy like Jimmy Butler tips you over in to contention, you make an offer. However, that’s not where we are at. Watching the interview, it seems to be pretty well acknowledged by Mills, Perry and Fiz that is not where we sit at the moment. If you get Jimmy Butler for an offer that is too good to be true, you pull the trigger. Knicks can’t make an offer that is too good to be true ha ha

I really liked the emphasis on development they spoke about. Obviously they have said they are going to try to win, however W-L isn’t going to be the only indicia of a successful season.

Hate to throw more cold water on the Frank hype train, but we just saw him in July. I truly doubt that he’s either grown much or put on much muscle in the two months since then. This isn’t like last year when he went mia after the draft.

What I’m saying is, don’t expect some magical transformation. He’s probably gonna look pretty much the same as he did in summer league.

I can also see the Celts doing something.

Well, FO is at least paying lip service to the right approach. Most you can ask for.

They also seem like stand-up guys. No phony agendas, no ego trips. At least for now, the circus seems to have left town.

It really is impossible, even if they packaged every single available player on the roster it wouldn’t match Butler’s contract.

I’m kinda resigned to the fact that he’ll get a max, pretty much.

It’s rough because the hype and the reputation around him and the injury creates such a weird situation… if he comes back healthy and plays well he’s immediately gonna ask for a max and the Knicks will very likely do that. If he plays badly or isn’t healthy it sucks for us because the guy we’ve been waiting for to become a star is definitely not one. So it’s a true lose – lose situation for the Knicks either way, unless he progresses a lot and truly becomes a star worthy of the max, which is still unlikely.

I see the logic behind Kyrie because he’s still young enough to be a highly productive player as our younger players start peaking. The issue with him is injuries. However, we have all of this year to see how he holds up. We don’t have to decide now.

Butler is a different case. He still has some productive years left, but he’s probably going to be on the downside by the time the rest of the team is peaking. So you can’t give much up for him.

The only way I would consider him is if we stole him or if the only way to get Kyrie is to also sign Butler. That could involve making other moves we might not want to make. I really don’t think Butler fits all that well unless we can steal him (which is probably not going to happen).

I think management has it right.

They should focus on developing these young players, explore options for Lee and Thomas (and of course Noah), but don’t do anything foolish by giving away something trying to force a deal. We are positioned well. We drafted some talented players previously, picked up some talented young players, imo drafted well this year, still have our future draft picks, and we haven’t made any bad moves in the last 12 months other than overpay for Baker/Hardaway. We could have done better without the overpays, but Baker is pretty much a non event and Hardaway is not a disaster.

I feel like we’ve discussed this as much as anything here, so there’s no point in repeating. I just don’t understand why we all assume he’ll get something he clearly doesn’t deserve and has no leverage to get. Just because Wiggins got it? Minnesota is dumb and desperate. Because Embiid got it? Embiid is clearly superior, and Colangelo was dumb and desperate.

I’d like to at least have a little hope that Mills and Perry aren’t dumb and desperate and can competently manage a negotiation with an overrated player who has no leverage.

Honestly, the only reason is narrative and it matters a lot. He’s the “one relevant guy” with real potential we’ve had, he’s supremely skilled, he’s young and is seen by both the league and fans as a guy with superstar ceiling, he won over fans that booed his choice, New York can’t attract real stars, we’re tired of rebuilding, he’ll leave if he feels threatened or slighted, etc etc etc.

It doesn’t matter to us because we as a collective tend to look past narratives to try to identify production, etc beyond media and fans common sense. But there’s no way we can safely say it doesn’t matter for Mills, Perry, Dolan et al. I would 100% offer him something like 4 years 80-90 million and if he feels insulted he can get the hell out of the Knicks for all I care, but I’m not making the decisions.