(Saturday, October 13, 2018 7:53:56 PM)
Joakim Noah’s rocky tenure with the Knicks came to a close on Saturday, as the team announced that they waived the former Bulls All-Star center. Noah, 33, signed a four-year, $72 million contract with the Knicks in July 2016. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Knicks will use the waive and stretch provision with Noah, taking on a $6.4 million salary cap hit for three seasons starting in 2019-20.
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 10:09:18 PM)
Frank Ntilikina‘s versatility may help him earn more minutes during his second NBA season, writes Marc Berman of The New York Post. The Knicks showed a lot of faith in Ntilikina when they drafted him ahead of Dennis Smith last season, and it may be paying off. Berman calls him a bright spot in a […]
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 10:09:18 PM)
Frank Ntilikina‘s versatility may help him earn more minutes during his second NBA season, writes Marc Berman of The New York Post. The Knicks showed a lot of faith in Ntilikina when they drafted him ahead of Dennis Smith last season, and it may be paying off. Berman calls him a bright spot in a […]
[FOXsports] Knicks waive Joakim Noah after just 2 seasons (Saturday, October 13, 2018 1:55:56 PM)
New York Knicks waive Joakim Noah, ending his disappointing stint after just 2 seasons
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 10:30:00 AM)
The Knicks finally severed ties with Joakim Noah on Saturday afternoon, announcing they have waived the former All-Star after two astoundingly disappointing seasons.
A source told the Daily News that Noah was waived outright, meaning he gave up no money in a buyout.
The 33-year-old has been away…
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 8:00:00 AM)
For Allonzo Trier, the NBA draft was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
He watched the night painfully unfold 3,000 miles away on a TV in L.A., alongside his mother and agent. Names started being called he couldn’t recognize.
It was frustrating, says the 22-year-old, and embarrassing. After…
[Sports Illustrated] Knicks Waive Joakim Noah, Still Owe $38 Million to Former Bulls Center (Saturday, October 13, 2018 2:31:17 PM)
Noah has played in 53 games in two seasons with the Knicks.
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 1:59:46 PM)
The Knicks outright waived Joakim Noah on Saturday after he refused to accept a buyout.
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 12:05:27 PM)
David Fizdale still remains undecided on the Knicks starting point guard as regular season approaches on Wednesday.
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 2:21:27 PM)
A host of negative issues surfaced that took the buzz off the final week of the Knicks’ preseason: Rookie Kevin Knox’s mysterious funk. Fellow rookie Mitchell Robinson’s rawness, which will lead him to some G-League action. The flummoxing point-guard dilemma facing coach David Fizdale. Tim Hardaway Jr.’s wrist sprain, suffered in Friday’s preseason finale. All…
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 9:45:04 AM)
The Knicks officially released center Joakim Noah on Saturday, using the stretch provision to officially rid themselves of the worst signing in franchise history. Sources said the delay was trying to get Noah to give up more money in a buyout because he can sign with another team for the $2 million veteran’s minimum. It…
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 1:51:09 PM)
Here’s what waiving Joakim Noah means for the Knicks’ plans in 2019 free agency.
(Saturday, October 13, 2018 1:35:00 PM)
Joakim Noah, who had two years left on his deal, has been waived by the Knicks, who will spread out the $37.8M owed to the center over the next three years.
47 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.10.14)”
I swear I will never figure out who to believe when it comes to players’ listed measurements- the team or my lyin eyes. This is what some of the Knicks look like to me:
Hezonja- 6’9″ 230
Knox- 6’10” 220
Ntilikina- 6’7″205
THJ- 6’6.5″ 210
Mudiay- 6’5″ 210
Just with those 5, it looks like Fiz will have plenty of position flexibility. I’m impressed with how THJ and Hezonja came to camp looking. They look ready to ball. Of course, they’re not great, but I’m just pointing out the improvements in their physiques, especially THJ. To me, he looks taller and stronger. This team hopefully will do alot of running this season.
Best guess: Mitchell, Trier and Frank have starter skills. Mitchell’s perimeter presence and length is necessary for the beginning of games because we still cannot defend the 3 properly. Knox is playing tight – needs 2nd unit time with Vonleh to loosen him up.
Fizdale has Gen X smarts. He’s a guy who thinks in 3 dimensions. He will succeed.
KD is crazy enough to actually want to play in NY.
If the Knicks aren’t able to land one of Kyrie/Durant/Butler (not saying it would be smart to even try but clearly that’s the plan), they shouldn’t panic and use the cap space on Klay Thompson or someone similarly not worth it.
Even if they sign Porzingis to his max of 5/$156m, if they don’t take on any multi-year money they should have around $25m in space in the 2020 offseason and $37m in the 2021 offseason. Using the space to take on money that comes off in 2021 and gaining assets would be a good Plan B. Obviously a lot could change (I assumed we’re renouncing everyone except Burke, I gave Burke 3/$18m in this scenario, assumed the draft pick cap holds of the 6th pick in 2019 and the 9th pick in 2020 + 2021) between now and then but generally speaking the Knicks can and should be patient.
I can’t say I’m holding my breath.
I don’t know why the league doesn’t just call BS and require every player to be measured in bare feet before the season every year and then list the actual heights. This isn’t WWE.
Tells you how dumb the whole Joakim Noah thing was from beginning to end. I think Knickerblogger was generally ok with the idea of signing Noah, but it was basically unanimous that giving him 4 years (or really anything over 1 or 2 guaranteed years) was terrible. Even Berman seemingly hopefully floated the idea that the last year might be nonguaranteed. And now we’re unanimous that stretch-waiving him 8+ months earlier than you have to is dumb also. I get the idea of not wanting to cut a young player to keep a dead contract, but seriously – cut Mudiay and just be done with it. Unanimity of opinion on knickerblogger is pretty rare — nice job Phil.
I’m not surprised about not getting a discount though – Noah is pretty much done. No one is going to sign him. He didn’t have any leads on a contract, not even with Thibs, so why would he give up any money?
My honest hope (which will almost certainly not come to fruition) is that the FO has their eyes on the 3 K’s Kawhi/Kyrie/Kevin (and hopefully not on the 4th K – Kemba), and if they don’t land one of the 3 Ks then they will rent out their cap space for a single year for draft picks or other assets. There are teams that will NOT have cap space this summer that would probably give up something nice to get into this free agent class. It just better not be a Derrick Williams / Robin Lopez / Arron Afflalo pupu platter for us this summer if we strike out on one of those 3.
Sums it up pretty well, Frank.
If we were going to foolishly try and compete, Noah wasn’t the worst player in the world to target. At his peak he was at least close to an elite player. I just have no clue whatsoever how Phil Jackson came to the 4/$72m figure for a guy who was coming off a 635 minute season, and two consecutive sub .500 TS% seasons. It was pretty much the definition of when to give a guy a 1-year “show me” deal even if the AAV had to be inflated to make that work. I don’t even think we would’ve been outbid had we done it that way, we truly bid against ourselves.
I forgot about the looming risk of maxing Kemba Walker if we strike out with that group…thanks for giving me something to be anxious about for the next 9 months.
There was competitive market for Noah and Lee when Phil signed them.
At the time the cap was projected to grow faster than it actually has. As a result, some deals around the league from that year look worse now than they would have had the cap grown as fast as expected. Those salaries would represent a smaller percentage of the total cap now if the cap grew faster.
If the Knicks don’t sign one of the major players they aren’t going to be able rent their cap space for a single year and get a decent draft pick for it. To get a draft pick they are going to have to take on a terrible contract for multiple years like the Nets have been doing. That’s why you have to consider the alternative of signing a guy like Afflalo/Derrick Williams for year or two on a cheap contract. Then when they leave you get the cap space back right away. It’s a value decision.
How good is the pick I am getting?
How bad is the contract I am taking on and for how long?
If I’m not getting good value on the “pick for bad contract swap”, am I better off sticking some filler in there for a single year?
There is no right answer. It depends on the details and the market at that time.
What other team was looking to sign Noah at that time? Cause I read pretty much all the headlines and articles about the NBA every day and I don’t remember ANY interest from another team besides The Knicks.
Instead of getting paid to give our cap space to another team for bad long term contracts it was good that we gave our cap space to useless players and sucked anyway
That’s what some idiot (me) on the internet had to say about Phil’s moves July 1 2016. They were bad moves and they were obviously bad moves at the time they were made.
There is not a single team that was willing to give Noah anything close to what we gave him, and the rate at which the cap was going to grow was pretty much irrelevant to Noah’s contract. It’s not like we’d be in some radically different situation if we had access to $5m more per year. It’s amazing how all of Phil Jackson’s moves were panned by a bunch of people on this here internet message board, they all turned out to be correct, and yet you continue to insist he wasn’t a complete and utter moron.
Just so you know, the contracts that Philly took on instead of “rolling over the cap space” were expiring in the case of Jason Thompson or had 2 years remaining at $6.5m AAV in the case of Carl Landry. That is what Phil passed up in favor of Afflalo and Williams. That is his legacy. So no, it’s not inevitable that renting out cap space for assets requires you to take on huge, long-term deals. They didn’t even last longer than the deals Phil gave out instead in this case, which both, of course, had player options!
What’s the problem with bad moves? Why is everyone so worked up? You gain life experience, wisdom, the benefit of learning from your mistakes, which obviously you won’t repeat ever again. Plus if something is bad for you it must be good for everyone else, so you become popular. Which is great! Bad moves are the best!
Injury risk was the big market inefficiency back then as I recall….
JK47 was pretty impassioned as well.
Just to illustrate how bad the decision to rent Afflalo and Williams for one useless year was, the draft pick that the Kings attached to dump the Stauskas contract is projected in various mock drafts right now to be used to draft Zion Williamson.
if I remember correctly Noah had some interest from the Wizards too — although who knows if that was drummed up by his agent and wasn’t real. They ended up signing their own huge albatross contract in Mahinmi.
Yeah there was a brief rumor that they were going to offer him the max. It was quickly refuted and one of their beat guys said they actually didn’t have any interest at all and were looking to get younger: https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/washington-wizards/wizards-have-no-plans-offer-joakim-noah-max-deal
I don’t think anyone was topping a 1/$25m or 2/$45m type of offer. Not that either would’ve been a particularly shrewd move.
I somehow ended up on the “What we talk about when we talk about Bargs” thread from 2013 while trying to find the Noah thread. That got the blood flowing.
Stratomatic really digs his heels in on some bullshit huh
FiveThirtyEight predicts us for 23 wins. Good news for the tank.
this is not gonna be a deep draft… it’s a good year to be playing for a top 2-3 pick…. and we are without a doubt one of the worst teams in the league…
man, a lot of shitty contracts that summer…..Biyambo, Chandler Parsons, Deng, Ryan Anderson. Lance Thomas.
I hate to spoil the party but I’m in the “it’s a calculated risk and I will reserve judgment until I see what other moves we make” camp.
It’s quite lonely here.
The rising cap mitigates combined with the free agents expected to be available this summer vs 2020 makes it a reasonable risk.
In 2019, when there are many free agents we would love to sign available, we reduce Noah from 17% of a $109mm cap to 5.9%. We also do it in the only year Porzingis’ cap figure projects to be ~60% of his actual salary. And we do it in a year where we have multiple contributors on rookie salaries.
The cost of this is losing 5.4% of our cap in 2020, and an undetermined percent of the cap in 2021. Does the cost benefit make sense? I think it questionable but not dumb.
If you’re of the opinion (like me) that we should only be targeting free agents who are true max players and can move the needle on our team to contender all by themselves, then I think it’s a reasonable risk. Because now (with more work) you can acquire such a free agent in 2019 (when they are many), 2020 (when there is really only one, and 2021 (who knows). Whereas before, had to sit out 2019.
I wouldn’t sit out 2019 when there are great max targets available just to preserve cap space in 2020 when there is currently only one and we’d still be able to sign him even after this stretch. In 2021, we could have as much as $70mm available even with this, too.
Now, if he doesn’t move Lee or Hardaway, it’s a mistake. The reason I’m willing to reserve judgment is I don’t know what work he’s done to determine how easy it is to move them. Maybe he has done his work on this and know what he can do later, and we don’t.
Hubert, unless I’m misunderstanding something you’re saying isn’t it all invalidated by the fact that we could just wait to stretch Noah until we have an agreement in place with a free agent?
I am in same boat as TNFH.
But yes, if we unload Hardway and Lee for future assets, I will take it all back.
The only reason to waive Noah now is because you need/want his roster spot for a promising young player and/or you just want to close the book and remove distractions.
The former is not a great reason unless you really think that Mudiay is redeemable. I for one don’t think he is, so really, we should have just cut Mudiay instead. You could say the same about Kornet or Baker but I like both of them better than Mudiay. You could also say that we will eventually need that roster spot because I imagine we’ll be bringing Trier onboard once his 45 days are up, but that’s still 45+ days away.
Re: distractions – i’m not sure how distracting he has been for the last year — he’s not with the team.
I dunno. I get wanting to move on, but $6+MM in cap room feels like one of those things that seems reasonable now but will be something we are cursing in year 2-3 of the stretch.
None of us really know how feasible that option really was. Was Noah going to be content with it? We saw what he did last year. He fought the head coach, ffs. He already started trouble in training camp publicly with that snapchat thing.
If I knew I was going to do this later, I would do it now.
And I have to think a year of bullshit-free basketball plus not having the future of another NBA basketball player hanging in the balance is a big plus going into a free agent pitch.
you mean keeping him? you’d just tell him to stay home. there are worse things than collecting $18MM sitting on your couch!
You’re right. But we’re getting a significant benefit for the cost.
We’re trading 11.8% off the cap in 2019, which is the only year we have Porzingis counting $17mm against the cap and not $30+ and the only year there are so many max free agents available (some of whom may have already expressed interest in playing here) for 5.4% of the cap in 2020 (when it goes up $9mm) and probably less in 2021.
When you do all the math, it’s not as straightforward as just spreading the cost of one year over three years. For this to be a fundamentally stupid risk, you probably assume three things:
a) no one good will ever come here in 2019
b) it’s impossible to move Lee and Hardaway this year
c) we could have paid Noah to go away for 12 months and there’s no way that could have blown up in our face.
We all just have PTSD from the last 2 decades —
We HAVE avoided trading away young players and draft picks
We ARE apparently emphasizing player development
but…. this upcoming summer still feels pretty Knicksy to me. Mills/Perry did pass one test by not even considering trading for Jimmy Butler. Hopefully Durant say sure I’ll come, but if one of the superstars doesn’t come, will all that cap space burn a hole in their pocket? The last time Mills had money to spend he blew it on THJ and Ron Baker.
We tried that ahead of a big summer of free agency once.
http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3775717
well this is looking very tanklicious :
Per FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO system (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2019-nba-predictions/) , which factors each player’s future performance based on trajectory of similar NBA players, the Knicks are expected to finish dead last in the league, with a 23-59 record and one percent chance of reaching the playoffs.
i think they’re being a little dismissive though in regards to our roster and coaching staff…i’m sticking with 26 wins for the year (i think i guessed 28 wins last year)…the year before that i was around 41 (i was suffering from the reub effect at the time)…
next year – i may be guessing around negative 5 or so (they’ll already subtract 5 wins from our ’19 to ’20 season based on how poorly we perform this year)…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5eUtSV519vU
“The last time Mills had money to spend he blew it on THJ and Ron Baker.”
Yeah, about that…
Hopefully Perry can add a voice of reason, sanity, and basketball IQ and doesn’t get overruled by the other idiots in the management team (i.e Mills & Dolan) – It’s our only chance for a good outcome.
Joakim Noah, WS48 in the three seasons before signing with NYK:
2013-2014, age 28: .190
2014-2015, age 29: .130
2015-2016, age 30: .079
Hey, I know! Let’s give this guy a 4/72 contract! Trendline looks good! Surely he will improve as he enters his thirties and not decline further! Pinch post bitches!
I mean, you could see this disaster coming from a mile away.
I wonder why Fizdale hasn’t chosen a starting PG — for competitive reasons or something? Like Eric Mangini identifying injuries by their region of body?
Put me down for Frank as starting PG.
He needs to play in lineups that have other scoring — ie. with THJ + Kanter would be a pretty good place for him.
you could see Noah not living up to his contract, sure. but what happened here…..no way you could have predicted that. best thing that came out of it for the Knicks was not having to pay him during his suspension.
Does Hezonja start at pf over Knox? I think Frank’s focus will be on defense, so he’ll probably start next to Burke and maybe TH2 will play sf again? That’s a tankalicious line up.
Fizdale has been vague on some things, but not on his reluctance to start either Hardaway or Lee at small forward. And he also explicitly made Knox an exception to his “starters will have to earn their spots” mantra after the last preseason game, saying they want/need him to take his lumps, at least at first. So four of the five starting spots are already decided:
C: Kanter
PF: Lance
SF: Knox
SG: Hardaway
PG: Either Burke or Frank
Hoping for Frank, but we’ll see.
@39 – He’s also been open about his desire to play Frank at the 3. He’ll probably get most of his minutes at those two positions while Lee and Hardaway play the majority of their minutes at the 2 until one of them, hopefully, is traded.
Frank playing PG next to Trier or Hardaway feels like a relatively complementary backcourt. Frank next to Lee at either PG or SF doesn’t seem a great use of his skillset. Then again, it’s unclear how much Lee is gonna play, whenever he gets healthy.
Myles Turner just got $80M over 4 years according to Shams.
A quick post about the math of the Noah stretch provision.
http://knickerblogger.net/the-math-of-joakim-noahs-stretch-provision/
Frank’s not a point guard. I guess you can try to jam the square peg into the round hole for a thousand minutes or so, but I really don’t think it’s going to change the outcome.
With where they are as a team, I’d just as soon try to jam the square peg into the round hole for another thousand minutes or so. The theoretical return on that would tremendous and the risk is, what a wasted 1000 minutes in a season that they’re not trying to win?
Dear God, Lance Thomas,…Why?? Watching him makes me glad I got rid of Fios/MSG.
But seriously, that’s a brutal starting 5. Sacto might be a worse now, but they might be better by midseason, making us the worst team in the league.
Great value.