Knicks Morning News (2018.09.24)

I’m really surprised at the articles with trade possibliities for Butler – even Zach Lowe has Minnesota getting young players + a pick. If we’ve learned anything about these situations, it’s that the team under duress (MIN) has always gets less than you think. Boston traded a premium pick for Kyrie, true, but Kyrie had 2 years left on his contract, and Isaiah was a broken asset. Derozan was traded for Kawhi but Derozan’s contract is not a positive asset. Now that Glen Taylor has mandated a trade, why in the world would Minnesota get anything but crap offers?

Butler is truly an elite player. There will always be a bidding war for him despite his contract status, list of preferred teams, etc. It’s just not very often that a team gets a chance to add 10+ wins without having to sway one of very few free agents. I think Minnesota will get a similar package to the Spurs, but hopefully without foolishly viewing someone like DeRozan (and his contract) as an asset.

IMHO, that roster spot is worth paying the extra $6.5E6 for 3 yrs, especially given the player development and incremental improvement program are preaching and have practiced since Perry got hired.

Crying about paying a few million in this instance (and probably in THJr’s too as I think he’s gonna blow up this season) is the definition of penny wise and dollar foolish.

I’m not even up in arms about the decision to stretch Noah because, even though I disagree with it, that contract was going to end in disaster the second it was signed.

But my god, this is an incredibly foolish way of viewing that decision. A single roster spot is worth $6.5m in dead cap room?! Dude. This team employs Emmanuel Mudiay, Ron Baker, and Noah Vonleh. If you want to create a roster spot it ain’t hard to do.

As for THJ, the guy makes $18m a year. That is not “a few million.” The contracts you’re writing off as no big deal (the stretched Noah AAV + THJ’s deal) add up to around $24.5m a year, or almost a quarter of the total NBA cap, or one full max contract for some players. It’s a huge amount of money that we’re getting next to no value from. We done fucked up!

Frank @ 2 – Surprised?

We’re talking about a certified stud; two time All-NBA. a top ten two-way player in the league and the best shooting guard in the NBA; just last week he turned 29 years old; serious about winning with an of the charts work ethic; culture setter and proper role model for youth. No bad habits plus I have to admit, he’s really easy on my eyes. Its like having Dwayne Johnson asking you out but you’re like “I don’t know if I’m ready… plus I really like Denzel”.

Knowing that he passed on Doncic and now Butler…can’t wait to see on whom Perry bets his career on. This is a man who has worked his entire adult life to become a GM, – so naturally, he’s going to hold to his chair as long as possible. All I hear rhetoric of slow and building the right way…blah blah blah and I’m not buying it; but it seems like I’m the only one so, TBD, I guess.

“Scared money don’t make none”. – Morrey and Ainge are elite cause they’re not afraid to take chances. When wrong, they cut dogs asap. Its the only way…and the right way.

Giana, rather than debate some of the finer points of your post, I’ll just ask: how did Perry pass on Doncic?

I think she means we didn’t make a play for doncic and give up an asset to move down. She doesn’t like the patient approach from Perry and Mills…

The relationship between the player and his shoe company is probably more stable and long-lasting than the player’s relationship with their franchise.

Also thought that was a good quote from the article on HoopsHype. It explains why it’s easy for someone like Kyrie to give up $5 mil a year to come to the Knicks – his sneaker deal is FAR more lucrative.

Noble, saying that the 24.5 is “next to no value” is not honest.y The 6 million for Noah is no value. Hardaway is an overpay but he is in his prime and is playing games for us. He’s not worth 18 million, but he’s not worth nothing either.

And last season he posted a career high BPM of -0.1 (WS48 has been kinder to him in the past FWIW but not appreciably so). I think you could find similar production at the minimum or with exceptions. I stand by “next to no value.”

Its like having Dwayne Johnson asking you out but you’re like “I don’t know if I’m ready… plus I really like Denzel”.

lmao

good one.

I’m still holding out for Scarlett Johansson

Doncic a Knick? Who was against that? I feel like the support for making him a 6’9 Manu in New York was pretty universal. I don’t remember what we had to trade for him.

We even stretch waived ruruland and er to make cap space for the move but it didn’t work out, unfortunately.

Ah that’s right, I remember now. They wanted Cronin but that was too much to give up.

If we traded for the #3 with Atlanta, maybe we could have gotten Caleb back too?

I’m back to my everyday life, but I’m not happy about it.

Book it–ruruland and er will be vastly more productive posters now they’re in a system more suited to their talents. Mean comments on Carmelo Anthony’s instagram aren’t going to respond “FOH” to themselves.

If Cronin isn’t worth the max no one is…

Maybe if we’re getting Olympic Cronin

Giana, I buy your argument that Butler is valuable and Minn will get a lot for him (especially because they don’t care where they trade him). But that doesn’t mean he’s right for us. by your own argument, we would have to outbid everyone for him. You are prob talking Kanter, Knox, Robinson, and our pick. Then the first year he’s here, we are going to win 7 games (and give Minn that pick) and he’s not going to want to return.

I guess what I’m saying is, I agree Denzel is hot, but he’s not for me.

But that doesn’t mean he’s right for us.

The win curve exists.

We are beholden to it. It makes no sense to add a 10-15 WAR player to this team as it currently exists.

1) Find the excellent players on rookie contracts.
2) Sign max-quality veterans once you have a >40 win core.
3) Cross your fingers, pray for no injuries, and hope that your team gets hot during the playoffs.

I think anyone would pay the supermax to have Cavan back, though.

Butler to the Knicks is about as dead as gravity effect posts on this board.

Many people thought it was bad for Minnesota that Butler waited so long to request a trade, but it’s been a huge blessing in disguise for them. It got a lot of NBA front offices looking at their rosters and either saying we’re not good enough, we need a guy like Butler, or we can be competitive if we add him. I’m a bit surprise at the sheer number of interested teams rumored (people have takes about Knicks, Nets, Clippers, Raptors, Pistons, Heat, Kings, Rockets, Blazers, Sixers, Cavs, Bucks and Wizards, which is almost half the league), but there’s no way now that the Knicks can find a deal that isn’t too expensive for us with all those teams lobbing prospective offers Minnesota’s way.

Just stay the course, keep building.

It was a blessed time to have those guys. Makes sense that they found greener pastures once the inevitable fall of the vaunted 2012-13 team came. Meaning, like, the very next year.

I think they were out by the time Bargnani was rehabbing his elbow after that monstrous poster dunk. Truly the moment that this Knicks dynasty jumped the shark.

During my honeymoon I got banned from r/nba for telling someone they were a moron for calling PPG a better stat than any “advanced” stats out there, in response to a claim that anyone who “believes in” advanced stats is, himself, a moron.

I used to be an Oakland Raider fan. Since they hired Jon Gruden and traded Khalil Mack, I jumped ship. Fuck the Raiders. I hope they lose every game from now on until the remainder of time. I’m rooting for the Rams now. Fuck it.

I have made a major heel turn on the Raider board where I hang out, and I’m seeing how much shit I can talk about what a fucking moron Jon Gruden is until they ban me. It’s kind of awesome.

Hubert, there are too many “ifs” in that list to answer, especially Knox. But if Knox and Zion both live up to expectations? Probably…? I mean, it could be 30 wins. But it could be 40. Just not enough information to say right now.

Adding Kyrie, though, I have come to the other side: I think we should do it. As a FA, with no assets lost in a trade it would be hard to do better, since KD isn’t actually coming. And with KP back, and even modest improvement from Frank and Timmy and decent play from Knox and Robinson, we won’t likely be in the lottery after next year anyway. So, we may as well sign good FA. Kyrie at 27, despite the knees, would be a good FA.

1. Is Porzingis, Zion Williamson, Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Tim Hardaway, and Mitchell Robinson a >40 win core?
2. Is Kyrie entering his age 27 season the right quality max free agent to add to that core?

Under normal the definition of “contender” in the NBA (53+ wins or so) I think there’s a decent chance that adding Kyrie to that mix would get us there. It would take some luck, maybe even an unusual amount, but it’s possible.

The problem is the current uneven talent distribution in the NBA kind of throws that definition into flux. I’m not sure 53-59 wins even gets you a non-zero chance at winning the title anymore barring certain circumstances (injuries that are healed by the playoffs, etc.). To be clear, it’s also far from certain we’d even meet that bar.

Now, I’m sympathetic to the argument that a multi-time 50+ win team, even without much room for improvement, would be the best thing to happen around these parts since the Clinton administration. I guess after all these years I lean more towards taking as long as we need to maximize our chances at genuine contention. I don’t think the Kyrie approach guarantees the win total some people do, and even if it does it’s unclear to me how much that’s worth.

I think it’s time for a moratorium on the Zion Williamson talk. He’s a great prospect, but you need lots of luck to get into the top of the lottery, even more now than ever, and if it’s one thing the New York Knicks ain’t got, it’s luck.

I just simmed the lottery five times on Tankathon, and the Knicks got:
Bol Bol
Quentin Grimes
Nasir Little (yay! Zion was still on the board too)
Quentin Grimes
Quentin Grimes

Yeah, Zion Williamson is already a Knick in my mind and I’ll be looking at Duke box scores the same way I treat the Yankees AAA affiliate in Scranton. I never bothered to read The Secret but I think that’s how it works.

Two other things that favor Kyrie: 1. It hurts Boston, 2. The 2020 class really isn’t very impressive.

Re: Hardaway, i think we’re all a little too cynical about his expected production. He’ll never match 50% of his salary and isn’t more than a 5th or 6th option but if he’s at SG he’s good enough to be a slight positive on both ends of the court.

Also, tankathon is too optimistic about the Knicks, having us 6th. Chicago, Brooklyn, and Phoenix are a tier above us. I’m very confident we’re in the bottom 3, interchangeable with Sacramento and Atlanta.

1. Funniest thread in months. Jowles, you are a hero for getting banned from reddit. Their loss.

2. Re win curves, Kyrie and tanking. The problem is you can’t have a ‘single cycle’ tank that goes indefinitely. At some point your lotto picks become due for extensions and you lose all your cap flex. This is about to happen to Philly. So IF your model is draft the first phase of a team then push it over the top with FAs, you need to time it. Our FA window is going to be 2019 and 2020. If we don’t have the makings of a winning team by then we’re basically re-entering a new cycle and have to start trading some of our current ‘building blocks’

It’s part of the frustration of the failures of the last few years. We haven’t accumulated enough assets because we were too busy trying to eke out the 8th seed to a)pick high and b) trade vets for picks. So now we have a few young players who, if we squint hard, may amount to the basis of a good team. But we either go pretty much all in over the next two summers and risk them amounting to no more than a middle tier playoff team or fold and buy back in.

If we don’t have the makings of a winning team by then we’re basically re-entering a new cycle and have to start trading some of our current ‘building blocks’

Correct, which is why I think it’s a good idea to trade KP while his perceived value is high. It’s a pretty serious question mark that he’s going to be a true franchise player, but it’s NOT a question mark that he’d fetch lots of assets in a trade.

Only ruruland surpassed Ted Nelson as a high volume/low efficiency poster.

(can’t even count reub et. al, too freakin’ pathetic)

“Ted Nelson”

Ted Nelson was insightful at times, but he would rip apart every sentence of every post and expect a response to all of it or he’d attack you and suggest he won the debate. He never understood that not everyone wanted to dedicate their life to arguing with him. He was draining. I have a tough time letting go sometimes, but he was max player at never letting go.

I’m rooting for the Rams now. Fuck it.

This is like saying, “I’m rooting for the Nets now. Fuck it,” which is a real sign that the Raiders are in irredeemable-shit territory

@66 The Raiders probably feel it’s better to leave Oakland for Vegas on a bad note. I suppose there’s less emotional pull if you piss off the fan base to point they’re like “good riddance muthaf@^&$as!!” instead of “noooo pls God don’t go/save our Black Hole”.

That’s a question I’ve always asked myself, like, does anyone really care about the Rams or the Chargers now except from their old cities probably hating them? I’ve always lived in environments where team relocation was literally impossible and given zero consideration ever, so it’s hard for me to conceive two franchises moving to a new market where people have no attachment to them or to the sport even. I guess being in LA already brings tourists and high end rich people by default, but it seems not much to fill a big football stadium.

Ted was a classic example of this board valuing “chemistry” over analytics. Personally, I think we gave up on him too quickly. He’s probably posting productively somewhere else right now, and we could have gotten at least a future consideration for him.

Jon Abbey too. He was a curmudgeony locker room cancer that that had started to negatively influence some of the younger posters here, but man, it his prime, he was the Patrick Ewing of this blog and all we got in return for him was the posting equivalent of Luc Langley and Travis Knight.

I liked both Ted and jon. Shame that both chose to flout multiple cease and desist orders, especially abbey, who took it way too far with his unnecessarily over-the-top harping on Silverman’s schlocky prose. It’s not like the ban-hammer is on a hair trigger around here.

Ted was like Bernard King. He came back from his injury for a brief encore, but sadly simply wasn’t quite the same.

One thing I can predict confidently is that within 3 months Thibs will no longer have GM responsibilities. I just can’t imaging that the Timberwolves’ owner is happy with Thibs. Not only did he have to overrule Thibs to get the franchise to make the correct decision that trading him right away was best, but he can’t be happy that Thibs didn’t figure out that Butler wasn’t going to stay until now. I predict a new GM. But he needs time to do the search and it’s better to leave the current management structure in place until Butler is actually traded. Who he picks could be a surprise, but I would actually expect Billups to be a serious contender. He played for Minnesota and wanted to return as a player when he was a free agent but couldn’t. Maybe he will go back now.

1. Is Porzingis, Zion Williamson, Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Tim Hardaway, and Mitchell Robinson a >40 win core?

If this is even close to obvious next summer then we will have won way too many games to have a shot a Williamson. Unless he falls way down from sucking in college, natch. But probably not.

At some point we’ll have to push in our chips but if that time is next summer they’ll probably be doing it because they think the money / cap situation is forcing a move, not because it’s obvious that we’ve got a winner. I am enjoying these press conferences that are boiling down to “No, sorry, the Knicks are really bad. I mean, we are just absolute shit. We’re gonna take a wait and see approach for the forseeable future, because hoo boy, garbage fire.” It’s really uplifting, the way honesty can be.

Well, they didn’t hire Fizdale for nothing. They clearly expect him to have a big impact on player development. The way I saw Mills and Perry’s statements is that they think what we have plus the first rounder this year is enough young talent to build the team around a superstar.

I don’t think that’s necessarily the wrong approach, just that it will take some lucky breaks in terms of those youngsters becoming very good players for this team to be good. As long as they don’t 1) trade them on stupid deals 2) don’t overpay the wrong guys on free agency, it’s the most solid plan we’ve had in a while with the Knicks.

The reason I hope so much the Knicks get a top 5 pick this season is because it gives some insurance in case those options are badly handled by the FO. There is a conceivable scenario in which the Knicks have this core, plus a guy like Williamson / Barrett / Little / Reddish and then adding a star looks much better.

Theres so much that could go wrong still, but I’m more hopeful they don’t screw up then certain they will, so I guess it’s a big upgrade from the Phil years and before that.

they wanted ptmilo as a sweetener, and we said No

Oh, yeah, ptmilo is untouchable. As are a bunch of the others 🙂

Humor made Joe Peschi like cameo in this thread. More please.

Ted: one of my favorite characters, but the guy uses blog argumenting just for weight lifting for his daytime job of consulting otherwise known as “building the impregnable wall of arguments”. Argforarg’s sake.
Jon was just angry and raw. A truth telling savage.

I miss both of them.

I choose to believe that they’re getting rid of Noah to clean up the locker room, make sure there are a minimum of competing agendas there, and ALSO to have as much flexibility as possibility this summer. Yes they could’ve just sent him home a la Josh Smith but then they lose a roster spot too, as well as pissing off agents and probably players around the league in the process. This way they clear him out, let him get on with whatever is left of his career, and move on from yet another reminder of the Phil regime. There is zero chance he could be traded on this contract without us parting with assets, so I don’t think that’s any loss. The real issue is if we strike out completely in free agency this coming summer, but we aren’t privy to whatever backchannel stuff is going on. Every cap $ counts of course but $5-6MM/year isn’t the end of the world especially with the cap going up significantly in the coming years.

I wish I had more time to post.

Best line from media day from Enes Kanter when asked about how he felt about Knox talking about making the playoffs: “I love it. When I think about playoffs, my nipples get hard.”

It astounds me that there’s so little buzz about media day and the start of camp. Damn, there’s already a countdown to pitchers and catchers. I’m pretty psyched about this team. They won’t win a ton of games, especially with the unicorn on the mend, but for the first time, in a long time, I feel they’re pointed in the right direction. Adding KP, a top free agent and another high pick next off-season could catapult this team into a different tier. I’ll suffer through the growing pains with this team and honestly, I don’t care about a tank any more. I just want to see this core get good.

I watched the media day interviews and I can tell that guys like Burke, Mudiay and Hezonja are very hungry. They know that they’ve failed and they know this is a great opportunity for them. I’m rooting hard for all of them.

1. Is Porzingis, Zion Williamson, Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Tim Hardaway, and Mitchell Robinson a >40 win core?

If this is even close to obvious next summer then we will have won way too many games to have a shot a Williamson. Unless he falls way down from sucking in college, natch. But probably not.

Eh, not really. Because two of those guys won’t play next year and three of the other guys are going to be too young to contribute to a 40 win team now (but that doesn’t mean they can’t later). And the other guy is Tim Hardaway, who has proven capable of turning a 24 win team into a 26 win team, but I’m confident isn’t going to carry us to 40.

Anyway, y’all talk about Zion like it’s a long shot. By the current numbers, it’s actually the most probable outcome. He’s currently the 4th or 5th highest rated prospect in the land, the Knicks are projected to be the 4th worst team in the NBA, and they have a ~48% chance of landing a top 4 pick if they are.

Granted, those numbers are so volatile they’re practically useless, but until they change it’s not much of a long shot.