Wily lost his job….To Luke Kornet.

I agree that the Carmelo max / ntc was why Phil failed and the major cause of our pain to this point.

Hopefully one day we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny. Sad to see NO NYK PRESENCE IN THE ALLSTAR GAME AGAIN. That’s why you watch, “Hey, Michael Ray had 14 points!”

What’s funny here is that many voices were thrilled with O’Q’s increased role and were hoping that we re-signed “on the cheap” for like double of what he could have opted in for or got from IND. I don’t remember anyone saying that he would not get an offer significantly higher than what he opted out of.

Kind of tangential, but KOQ’s agent/team thought that he was going to get a lot more than he did as well. After he opted out we offered him more or less what he ended up with. If nothing else, Perry seems to have a pretty damn tight handle on the valuations of the rest of the league.

And in 600 some minutes this year Willy has been replacement level, just like previously. Maybe an added 3 point shot that’s unreliable. That’s worth more than 2 second rounders since those usually bust, but not so much more that you’d hesitate if you thought he wasn’t a good fit or prospect for whatever reason. Like, literally any reason. Shit, we snagged Mitch and Mudiay for the price we got for Willy. We came out way the fuck ahead.

This is different than no-brainer good/bad moves that don’t/do work out. If you draft Zion and he either underperforms or is catastrophically injured, it was still a great move to draft him. If you pass on Capela and Jokic with the top 2 picks in the 2014 draft, you did the right thing and just got unlucky.

We’re mostly talking about it because generally you can imply from a number of minor moves that a front office isn’t all that great at talent evaluation and asset management.

Well, if Willy went on to set the world on fire in Charlotte, we’d be having a different conversation. But in terms of talent evaluation (he sucks) and asset management (2 Charlotte 2nd rounders is probably the best offer we will ever get for him for the life of his contract and we can easily replace him with even cheaper, better assets) Mills and Perry were spot on.

The Mudiay trade was a clear reach, and we all knew it at the time. Also a minor move, but clearly on the side of bad player evaluation and asset management.

Overall, the Perry regime has made more good moves than bad, and even on what looks to be their most serious blunder (picking Knox) the jury is still out and the draft as a whole was a win. The most critical moves are still ahead, and luck will play a major part in how things turn out. But a year and a half in, I have less reason to be pessimistic than at the same point in any regime going back to when I had hair, which I can assure you was a LOOONG time ago.

All about our evaluations of Perry and Mills will hinge on the next offseason and what they do (or don’t). So there’s also not much more to talk about until the season it over, which means it will be a long 4 or so months for this blog.

Sometimes in sports, the results matter more than the process. That said: I’ve always believed a team should put itself in position to benefit from a lucky break, not rely on one. Like everyone here, I desperately want Zion. But the team isn’t SOL if they don’t draw the top pick because the Knicks are competently carrying out a feasible rebuilding plan (with a lot of upcoming cap space).