Just thinkin… Can KP just say he isn’t physically and mentally ready to play…sign his QO and just work out at the team facility until he becomes an UFA…..

Could he threaten NO or the Knicks with this a la Kwahi?

He totally could. There’s way too much risk for everyone involved for a team to ever take KP in a trade right now save him telling them, “I will re-sign with you.”

There’s enough risk for it to be annoying for the Knicks to be in this situation, no one is going to trade into this situation, particularly a team that is literally going through a star player refusing to sign with them long term right now!

Could he threaten NO or the Knicks with this a la Kwahi?

Pelicans GM Dell Demps is reportedly “not picking up his phone” for trade calls on Anthony Davis

It’s probably under the sofa cushion. Or, possibly, he dropped it in the toilet and it’s now in a bag of rice.

But don’t worry, he’ll get the messages and respond to them soon.

But what’s up with demps not taking calls. That’s all you need to know about how a bad gm operates. Like a pouting teenager.

If I’m NO, I’m possibly getting better offers. But it could be a pretty good offer, especially not knowing whether the first round pick turned into #1. A chance at Zion, with a couple decent options after that, plus serviceable or promising players in Timmy and Knox, is better than what the Lakers can offer, and the Celtics unless they include Tatum.

I don’t prefer giving up KP instead of the #1 pick, because there is only a 14% chance the pick ends up #1 overall, and that is just too unlikely to bank on. If we did, however, it’s easy enough to ensure KP stays in NO – just tell the Pels that if they take THJ or Lee, “we’ll have the room to make a 4/$25m offer to KP at the stroke of midnight, which of course you might want to match.” KP has to sign that offer – too much risk not to – and the Pels match, and then they have him locked down.

http://knickerblogger.net/roundtable-the-mid-season-tankies/#comment-487930

It’s a comment about how MCW was good value at #11 in 2013 because it was a “weak draft.” That was the consensus then, but now we have some hindsight: Gobert at 27. Giannis at 15. Plumlee at 22. Otto Porter at 3. Steven Adams at 12. So it wasn’t an objectively weak draft — it was that The Powers That B thought Anthony Bennett, Alex Len, Cody Zeller, Ben McLemome, KCP, Trey Burke, MCW and Shabazz Muhammad were worthy of lottery picks. The NBA braintrust totally fucked it up. There are some TERRIBLE picks on that list, and fantastic players above (who wouldn’t want to start their franchise in 2020 with a Gobert or Giannis?).

Same with 2014. Of the top 15 picks, here are the scrubs: Wiggins, Parker, Gordon (all upside, still), Exum, Stauskas, Vonleh, Payton, McDermott, LaVine, Warren and Adreian Payne. Garbage! Yet guys like Capela, Jokic, Anderson, Powell and Dinwiddie were lurking in the later picks.

So yeah, the hard part is identifying talent, but talent is in each and every draft; it’s rarely Zion-level, consensus #1 overall talent, but the talent is always there. The stupidity of franchise decision-makers is there, too.

Perhaps even harder is trying to convince a franchise as stupid as the Knicks that a player like Barrett is really not worth the #3 overall when you could trade down and pick the next Siakam (Brandon Clarke plz) at #17 while picking up, say, a couple future firsts or pick swaps or good underrated rookie players. I would weep if Mills & co. showed that kind of patience, foresight and strategery. But I think we’ll all be dead in a nuclear winter before Dolan comes around to running his franchise like the multi-billion business it is.