Comments on: Knicks Morning News (2018.09.16)

By: JK47

JK47 — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 01:40:00 +0000

Isiah had a special ability to put together a team that was less than the sum of its parts. That last Isiah team had Stephon Marbury, Jamal Crawford, Quentin Richardson, Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry playing major minutes. Those guys were all decent players (well maybe not Curry) but they made no sense together whatsoever.

By: Hubert

Hubert — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 23:27:12 +0000

I think Isiah had a top-to-bottom ineptitude that was unparalleled. But Layden’s moves were even dumber.

27 year old Marcus Camby and the 7th pick in the draft where Amar’e and Nene were available for McDyess coming off an injury was incredible. The Ewing trade for bad contracts. The Allan Houston deal. Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley.

Him and Isiah can go punch for punch.

By: Bruno Almeida

Bruno Almeida — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 21:31:05 +0000

I think my brain automatically says Isiah because he was here longer and the off court stuff, but otherwise I think Layden was worse. The Allan Houston contract, how bad he botched the Ewing deal, the Weis / Nene / Sweetney picks, McDyess, the Sprewell contract and then trade, the Glen Rice trade that brought Eisley and Shandon Anderson to the team… everything he touched was garbage.

That’s also true of Isiah, but yeah, Isiah inherited a horrible team with no talent or cap space, Layden had something to work with at least and botched every single move.

By: thenamestsam

thenamestsam — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 21:28:28 +0000

I’ll always give Isiah the edge in any bad-GM contest. I don’t think anyone else has ever painted such a comprehensive picture of having no freaking idea what they’re doing. He did pretty much nothing right and managed to cover nearly every mistake in the entire GM playbook; He had significant failures based on: going for players based on small playoff samples, going for washed up players, going for injury prone guys, going for head cases, trading too many picks, over prioritizing scoring, getting players who were too similar, over valuing “name” players. Basically if you made a list of common NBA GM mistakes, Isiah covered every single one of his bases. And he didn’t just completely master the standard realms of failure, he went above and beyond and threw in a sexual harassment scandal as well. To me he stands alone.

By: Hubert

Hubert — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 20:52:58 +0000

Speaking of comparing the Titanic to the Hindenberg, who was worse: Isiah or Layden?

Layden has repaired his reputation but his time here was a disaster. Unlike Isiah, who took over a roster that was a steaming pile of garbage, Layden inherited a team in the NBA Finals.

By: Owen

Owen — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 20:09:56 +0000

When I think about how dumb Isiah was, at this great remove, I feel real admiration.

By: The Ghost of Ted Nelson

The Ghost of Ted Nelson — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 19:48:20 +0000

For Noah, Phil Jackson actually built up two years worth of cap space to sign him. For Jerome James, Isiah simply burned the mid-level exception. James was a better mistake to make. The biggest problem was that the two moves that the James signing should have precluded still ended up happening: the aforementioned Curry trade, and the use of the full MLE the next summer too (Jared Jeffries).

By: Nick C.

Nick C. — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 18:56:12 +0000

The “best” thing about the Jerome James signing was that they follow that by trading for Eddy Curry. Let no one forget just how mindnumbingly stupid Isiah was a GM. Of course to bring it all home one of the pick in the Curry trade was used to pick Joakim Noah. Does it get any Knicksier?

By: thenamestsam

thenamestsam — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 17:54:31 +0000

As one of the most anti-Noah people on the board at the time of the signing I’ll say that I still think James was worse. The trend lines for Noah were absolutely awful and there was a very real chance that his body was never going to let him be a productive NBA player again (exactly what happened), but he at least had a real track record of being a player worthy of the salary we paid him. It was never the most likely outcome, but Noah certainly was capable of earning that contract or at least playing well enough for it to not be a disaster. He basically peaked in 13-14 (finishing 4th in MVP), had a down but still largely productive season in 14-15 and then 15-16 was mostly lost to injury. If he had bounced back to something like his 14-15 level for the Knicks and had a gradual decline from there the contract would have been not great but not awful.

Again, I’m not saying any of this was likely or that signing the contract was a good idea. To make up some numbers lets say the deal had a 10% chance of working out, a 20% chance of being an overpay that’s not a disaster, and a 70% chance of being a disaster. That’s obviously a terrible deal, but the Jerome James one was like 99% disaster. JJ averaged 5 points and 4 rebounds in his 4 seasons for Seattle (normally I’d use per36 numbers, but for a guy who could play about 45 seconds before he needed a blow I’m not sure how indicative they are). His “regular” stats sucked, his advanced stats sucked, his eye test sucked, he just sucked. The entire premise of the contract was that at age 29, 11 playoff games indicated a new level of play that he was going to continue going forward, setting aside the other ~250 games of his NBA career. And that’s before getting into soft factors like how bad an idea it is to give a big payday to a guy who clearly struggled dramatically with motivational issues. There was no chance of it ever working out even halfway.

By: dtrickey

dtrickey — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:12:31 +0000

Yeah I seemed to recall he was younger too, but time makes fools of us all I guess. On a numbers basis the Noah deal is probably worse. The dumb thing about the James deal was that Isiah signed him off the back of “contract year numbers” produced in 11 playoff games. What Isiah really paid $30 million for was a center that averaged 4.3 points and 3.1 rebounds per game across 4 years.

Noah is probably worse given he was clearly on the downside of his career and at best should have been offered a vets minimum. Good times.