(Sunday, March 03, 2019 4:57:09 PM)
The Knicks are set to play the Clippers on Sunday, but the real battle between the two teams will be for Kevin Durant in free agency this summer, writes Marc Berman of the New York Post. Durant, who’s expected to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, will register interest from several teams across […]
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 3:00:00 PM)
LOS ANGELES — The Knicks were out of it.
David Fizdale’s team gave up 82 points in the first half en route to a humiliating 128-107 loss to the Clippers on Sunday.
“We were in mud,” Fizdale said. “No matter who I put out there they were just heavy-legged and just really out of it mentally. It was…
[FOXsports] Clippers send Knicks to 50th loss with 128-107 victory (Sunday, March 03, 2019 10:17:02 PM)
Clippers hit 19 3-pointers.
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Playoff Mode? LeBron James and the Lakers Are Failing to Activate (Sunday, March 03, 2019 11:21:21 PM)
A move West came with dire warnings, but the reality is setting in that a James-led team might miss the playoffs.
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Giannis Antetokounmpo Is N.B.A. Must-See TV, and Maybe the M.V.P. (Sunday, March 03, 2019 8:00:04 AM)
Nearly two years after he was challenged to win the league’s Most Valuable Player Award, the Bucks star may be on the verge of upending the Eastern Conference to do so.
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 2:55:52 PM)
DeAndre Jordan will miss the Knicks’ game Sunday against the Clippers with a sprained left ankle. It’s the fourth straight game the New York center will miss due to the injury.
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 5:12:54 PM)
LOS ANGELES — The surge by rookie center Mitchell Robinson continued amid the wreckage of the Knicks’ 128-107 loss to the Clippers on Sunday. Keying their second-half rally, Robinson mounted 16 points on 7-of-8 shooting with 13 rebounds and four blocks. He had one emphatic block on Clippers young stud Montrezl Harrell at the rim…
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 1:07:36 PM)
LOS ANGELES — Let’s hope Kevin Durant wasn’t watching. If Durant leaves Golden State, there’s belief he would choose between the Knicks and Clippers. And there’s no comparison who has the better pieces. In their first meeting this season, the Clippers blew the Knicks out onto Figueroa Avenue in the first half, administering a mighty…
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 11:01:11 AM)
LOS ANGELES — Doc Rivers had made no secret about his love of Kristaps Porzingis, who once tweeted “LA Clippers” with three smiling emojis. But the Clippers coach said Knicks brass did the right thing in its blockbuster trade on Jan. 31. In addition to cap space, the Knicks inherited one of Rivers’ favorite players…
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 7:58:08 PM)
While some Knicks players have shown their potential in the month since the Kristaps Porzingis trade, others have seen their stocks fall.
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 5:52:57 PM)
The Knicks trailed by as many as 38 points as they were blown out by the Los Angeles Clippers 128-107 on Sunday at Staples Center.
(Sunday, March 03, 2019 12:13:33 PM)
The Knicks have won just 13 times this season, but three have come in the club’s last five games.
101 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.03.04)”
I’m looking at the boxscore and seeing that Mitch missed a shot last night. What happened?! Should he go to the dungeon?
Doc Rivers saying he loved the Porzingis trade raises the probability that NY is going to strike out in free agency and KP is going to come back better than ever. He had CP3 Jordan, and Griffin for years and couldn’t find the supporting pieces and bench.
If it’s played right we could still witness something special for our Knicks this year.
Last place in the Nba standings and less than 17 wins for the first time since 1946.
With flattened lottery ods one would think that this is the only logical outcome. Knicksy is still strong.
Low on the harmful knicksy things list tho as it has no long-term implications other than on winning culture gene.
My brother texted that he ran into Kenny Sky Walker in the supermarket, and Sky said, ‘say hi to your brother, the Knicks fan’.
at first i thought that was so cool. but now, i wonder if sky was picking on me!
I asked one of the beat writers to ask Fizdale why Knox hasn’t done time in the dungeon yet. He said he’d try to get to it on this road trip. Not that the official comment will necessarily be the real explanation, but man does this kid need to sit for a few games and get his head right.
He’s too good for the tank right now.
Good to see Noah Vonleh play well. He put up more numbers last night than he has cumulatively over the past few weeks.
Yeah, it’s hard to get too hyperbolic these days about a 20 year old rookie who has a .218 WS/48, a 6.7 BPM, and a 22.4 PER in 877 minutes played. I mean, I keep looking at the advanced metrics to see when the bottom is going to fall out from underneath him but they just keep on improving into more historically rarefied territory after every game I check.
Even Knox’s 3PT% is falling to Ntilikinian levels. I think he’ll get it up to at least league average eventually but that ain’t going to be enough if he continues to suck at everything else.
He’s 19 so some level of improvement is almost guaranteed, but man, I don’t know if any player has ever improved the amount Knox would need to improve to be a rotation level player.
We’re going to regret not trading Frank before other teams realized he couldn’t start for CSKA Moscow so I hope we trade Knox this offseason if things work out with free agents.
I think these kind of “improvements” are dubious examples of coach-assisted player development.
Dotson and Kornet’s year over year stats are nearly identical.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/k/kornelu01.html
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/dotsoda01.html
And the Smith thing is not only a small sample size but could be attributed to a dozen other factors.
The staff has been good and giving young players minutes and letting them show what they can do. I appreciate that. But that’s not “development”. What I’m looking for is examples where the coaching staff has picked up on a visible weakness in a young player and done something to fix it. Like if Kornet were getting open more often (he isn’t) or if he had a higher percentage of assisted attempts (he doesn’t). Maybe Kornet has been shooting 200 extra 3 pointers a day and that’s why his 3P% is better.
Mitchell Robinson is a prime example of what coaching can do and the smoking gun that shows what a failure Fiz has been in helping young players develop this year. The kid made incredible improvements the minute he got some coaching and mentorship. The problem is that should have come from the coaching staff… months ago! Instead it came from his personal trainer setting up a meeting with the assistant basketball coach at Princeton University and a midseason player acquisition. How the fuck did no one have that meeting with Robinson before? And what could we see from Knox or even Frank if they were getting that kind of active development attention?
So much this…. How is it possible that with a dozen “assistant coaches” it takes Kerry Kittles and DAJ to actually coach these young guys?????
I’m sure Mitchell’s trainer is an unbiased source for who to credit for Mitchell Robinson’s improvement.
You’ll Never Believe This One Simple, Coachable Trick to Becoming an All-Time Great NBA Rookie!
So the two options are:
1) His trainer is telling the truth when he says this:
“He was reaching too much,’’ Scott said. “Kerry showed him on the computer — you need to help on this, but if you help too far from the goal, it puts you in trouble. Sometimes (your teammate) is going to get beat in the NBA and you hold them accountable. A lot of credit to Kerry. Once he understood, it was ‘I see it now’ and he stopped taking chances like that.’’
2) He’s lying to give himself credit, and Mitchell suddenly improved on these specific things in the middle of the season because of Fiz Magic, which for some reason doesn’t work on players who didn’t get private coaching sessions from external sources.
And you’re going with 2. Noted.
@1o
Seems to me you want it both ways with your argument. On the one hand you argue that DSJ’s improvement since coming to NYK is due to many factors that can’t be attributed to the single cause of improved coaching from Fizdale’s staff. One the other hand you turn around make the argument that MitchRob’s improvement is because of the played out media trope of the veteran mentor/personal coach. You sure you aren’t committing a single cause fallacy here combined with a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy of attributing MitchRob’s improvement to Jordan being traded here and one meeting with Kerry Kittles?
Well, hold on. Mitch essentially jumped from high school to the pros and had been playing very well on a per-minute basis this entire season (granted his per minute play has improved as of late, too). Making a positive tweak to be able to stay on the floor after speaking to a different coach, and adding DeAndre, essentially the role model of your game, isn’t necessarily a damnation of the Knicks’ staff.
Fiz has consistently tried to put ppl in his network in touch with his players all season because he knows the value of this.
Noted chucker THJ has shot 50% or better in 8 games this season. He’s shot under 30% in 11 games this season. That’s bad.
It also would represent a big improvement for Knox. He’s shot 50% or better in 6 games this season and 30% or worse in 15 games. In his last 21 games, he’s hit half his shots once……in the Rising Stars game.
Isn’t a blind squirrel supposed to find a nut occasionally? If Knox was a squirrel he’d have starved to death months ago. He’d be chewing on rocks, going “Is this a nut?”
But hey, maybe I’m being unfair to Ol’ Knoxy Boy. He is just a rookie, after all. Rookies are almost never good. So let’s check how he’s doing compared to his fellow rooks.
WS: 2nd to last
WS/48: last
BPM: last
VORP: 2nd to last
Thank god for Collin Sexton, or it would be a sweep-a-roo for our young buck.
I cited an extremely specific documented example of a coach showing Mitchell a weakness in his game (one that we have all noticed, too) and Mitchell has improved on it since this meeting occurred:
^ That’s not a media trope.
In addition to that, there’s all the negative evidence. Name a specific facet of Knox or Frank or Dotson or Kornet’s game that you have seen improve during this season through coaching. There’s 1,000,001 things wrong with Knox that could be improved and none of them have been.
I know we’re not privvy to what goes on behind closed doors, but you can usually see evidence of a player being coached up if you keep watching. Like if Porzingis suddenly stops taking mid-range shots with alarming frequency next year, you can reasonably guess that Carlisle did something positive.
We have no idea what caused Mitchell’s improvement. Why bother trying to figure it out?
All I will say is that spending a year away from basketball is a significant amount of time amongst players who have been playing non-stop for their whole lives.
I went back and checked the last several rookie classes to find out what other rookies performed as consistently terribly across the four categories (WS, WS/48, BPM, VORP) as Knox has. In the five years from 2013-2017, I could only find the following names:
Rashad Vaughn
Johnny O’Bryant III
Anthony Bennett
Lorenzo Brown
Do you know what those four have in common? THEY ARE ALL OUT OF THE LEAGUE. Scott Perry, are you listening? Trade Knox NOW, while you still can.
We have evidence of a coaching session on a specific date about a specific thing that we have all noticed improvement in since that date. But let’s cast unreasonable doubt on the source and throw up our hands and say “how can you really be sure?” Ok.
Mitch’s talent level is through the roof and he is obviously a very quick learner. These other guys we’re talking about are guys who are fringe NBA prospects. You could bring Red Auerbach and John Wooden back from the grave and they’re not going to turn Damyean Dotson and Luke Kornet into amazing players.
Great line for Drummond last night. Fairly pedestrian 15 and 17 on 5-10 shooing and 5-8 from the line.
And he was a +27 in a five points Pistons victory.
This is where the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy comes into play, IMO. You’re giving a lot of weight to all of the improved play that followed that one meeting because the guy who set it up mentioned it as important to a reporter in retrospect. But aside from this point, consider the double-standard. You’re using the small sample of MitchRob improving his play since that meeting as proof for how comparatively ineffective the Knicks coaching staff has been in developing its young talent while disregarding DSJ’s equally small sample of improved play since being traded to the Knicks as proof that Fizdale’s coaching staff is developing him well. Seems like you’re just finding the narrative which fits your preconception and not applying the same standard across the board.
Mitch is not only a great athlete, he is a great position player. He cuts angles and moves to spots like the best position players i have seen. No one needs to coach him to do that. I hope he retires a Knick.
This is true. If anything Frank has regressed. And while I do believe he’d be better served playing for a coach who runs a far more structured offensive system, I am also open to the fact that he’s not that good and has been exposed by a league he’s having problems adjusting to. Meanwhile, Noah Vonleh has made some significant strides this season, the first where he’s producing a positive BPM and VORP during his career. So I think the results are mixed to the point that its impossible to make the argument either way about our coaching staff’s development skills.
Trying to disentangle the factors involved in a single player’s development is basically impossible. By definition you’re going to be working only with anecdotes, not with data. Even over the course of multiple years you’re only going to be talking about a pretty small group of young players that any given organization has the chance to work with.
If the Knicks lose tonight, they’re officially eliminated from the playoffs.
“So you’re saying there’s a chance….?”
@29
As Knicks fans we are immune to losing seasons to the point that we cultivate the painful disappointments and resignations they evoke from us like little badges of courage. But I am having a wonderful experience of schadenfreude watching the mess over in Los Angeles with the LA LeBroners. If they don’t make it to the playoffs I am certain that the franchise will enter into a tailspin from which its frontrunning fans will never be able to recover from. Does joyfully wishing for this end this make me a bad, spiteful person or just someone who is fed up with their fanbase’s self-entitled bullshit?
That would be the case if there was a meeting in which we didn’t know what took place. In this case we have evidence of precisely what was shown and taught. You have to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to think a coach showing a guy video of what he’s doing wrong and said player subsequently doing those things less after that date is merely correlated, not causal. Post hoc ergo propter hoc would be if his trainer said “he met with Kittles, we told him just be yourself, be aggressive, keep up the hard work” and I attributed improvement to that.
Incidentally, those are all the quotes you hear about the wisdom that Fiz and his network are imparting on the young players. It could all be coachspeak that belies real work being done. But when do we hear instances of any player talking about anything as specific as what Kittles did with Mitchell? And more importantly, when do we see examples of it on the court?
This is an interesting discussion, and one there is probably not a clearcut answer to. I will say that Knox’s failure to make progress is not something you can clearly ascribe to the coaching staff. Lots of people here thought he was a terrible draft pick, and there is a clear possibility that they were correct rather than that it’s just poor coaching. The discussion is also muddled by the Knicks tanking strategy, which is to give lots of chances to players to do new things. I suspect certain stats could improve next year just by changing plauer’s roles, but time will tell about that. Personally, I want to see what these players are like when the team is clearly not tanking to answer some of these questions But that is going to have to wait until next year at the earliest.
I like vonleh at the three…good size, okay handle, developing three, good speed…he should never play another minute at the five…he gets abused there…
kornet versus ellenson, still favor kornet…
although everyone in a clippers uni was lighting it up – it was fun to watch dotson guarding guys in the post…get low, get low…
it’s weird, trier looks like the only guard on the team who can dribble and consistently keep his head up at the same time looking for teammates cutting…
I hope dsj learns to shoot if he’s still here next year…
Kerry Kittles should tell Frank he should shoot shots that go in more often.
Look at the head of the snake. People at the top hire people like themselves that they expect to be loyal to them and so on down the line.
Fiz himself said all of Mitch’s improvement is due to DAJ. But maybe he’s just buttering him up so Jordan speaks positively of him to his buddy KD? The major news nobody is talking about is that Jordan told FO he didn’t wish to be waived to enable him to join another team.
I will now make my prediction for this summer:
(1) Odds are KD and Kyrie will join the Knicks. Kyrie never wanted to be traded to Boston in the first place and he’s gotten a bitter taste of what it’s like to be “the man”. GSW is and always will be Curry’s team. There’s a chance KD wants to go for 4 straight titles or Celtics right the ship in the playoffs changing dynamic but 2 of them to NYK more likely.
(2) Jordan will take 1and1 room exception with the expectation of receiving a new deal the following summer of something like 3 yr/30m (the Knicks would use their early bird rights). Jordan would be a Knick for the same 4-year period as KD and Kyrie. He probably would get MLE (10m) type money this summer so wouldn’t be giving up that much by taking the room excep for a year (no injury would be his gamble).
(3) Mitch will be traded to Pels. He’s starting to receive recognition and buzz throughout the league. He’s way better than any player Lakers could offer and, if Kyrie’s gonna be a Knick, Boston’s out of picture. Need #’s to match but something like Mitch/DSJ/Frank/Knox/Lance might do it. Throw in Jenkins and/or Ellenson if required to match. I doubt any draft picks will be part of AD trade if Mitch is part of deal; Pels are getting a young Gobert on an incredible contract.
Our roster (before any vet min signings or potential trades involving our draft picks):
1: Kyrie/Kadeem
2: Dotson/Trier
3: KD/2019 Draft Pick
4: AD/Kornet
5: Jordan/Kornet
Maybe we’re able to re-sign Vonleh for vet min and we’d probably attract some quality vet min guys. We’d also have the option of trading our 2019 pick w/future pick for a quality…
This is a fair point. But even if Knox is incapable of shooting better under any circumstance, there should be some aspects of his game that are improving. John Wooden might not make Knox a better shooter but he’d sure AF make him pass the ball more than he does.
We showed a breakdown here recently that illustrated how easy Knox is to defend on drives because he never passes the ball. Everyone in the league knows he’s going to shoot. If I just saw him passing the ball more often on drives I’d think maybe these coaches are doing some coaching. The absence of any kind of improvement like that is what I think damns the current coaching staff.
I kind of wish there were a way to lay out comments about Mitch in a timeline.
I think we were all intrigued in summer league but pretty stoked about him by mid-November. Certainly, once he had that 9 block game and then that six block BOS game it was a full on lovefest. We all noted the issues with fouls, free throws, and defensive rebounding but didn’t care because it was already clear he was the best draft pick we had made in 20 years.
What he has done with regards to those three areas is pretty great. I mean, he is shooting 75% since February from the line, dominating on the boards, and fouling at an average rate. No way anyone saw him improving like that so quickly. It’s a tiny sample but just watching him, you feel a real incremental leap has been made.
It’s pretty unusual to say the least and I would be very hesitant to give the Knicks coaching staff any credit for it. I am sure years from now they will be taking credit for it but I think a player like Mitch is born not made.
One thing I will say in Knox’s defense is that if there is such a thing as a “rookie wall”, it’s not surprising Knox ran into it. He was playing a TON of minutes earlier in the season. He has a lot of games where his minutes got into the upper 30s and lower 40s. That’s too much for a rookie. Robinson’s minutes have been handled a lot better. Of course some of that was by accident due to his foul trouble.
THAT is post hoc ergo proper hoc. As is pointing out Smith’s improvement since coming to NY.
Pointing out that Mitchell improved on a specific thing after getting coached on a specific thing is literally the opposite.
Actually, you can dispute it since we don’t really know what took place since we’re getting the rundown from the guy who set it up thinking it would pay off. He could be overstating its importance as a case of confirmation bias.
It’s still a problem because you’re making a single cause assumption that the improvement which followed after that meeting is attributable to that meeting. I think it’s a problem to separate Mitch’s personal training, team coaching, better conditioning and increased playing experience apart from one another to identify one single cause behind his improvement. If you actually look at MitchRob’s overall arc this season you’ll see he’s been improving in various aspects of his defensive game before that late January/early February meeting with Kerry Kittles. He was improving his inordinate defensive fouling since November and his DRT getting better for the month January by the time meeting happened. If you actually listen to what his trainer said, you’ll see he attributes Robinson’s improvement to better conditioning and work ethic than Kittles. (“Scott believes his relatively modest early-season exploits were due to him not working as diligently as when he trained with Scott for the draft.“)
In fairness, we didn’t even hear Robinson talking about anything as specific either. It was Marcell Scott who relayed that anecdote about what Kittles said.
I hope to Hell this isn’t happening. We’d be so stupid to waste money on 3 max contracts when we can have MitchRob for pennies on the dollar, sign KD and Kyrie, keep our depth of cheap young talent, and still have cap space to fill out the rest of the roster.
Let’s see how many of the other awful rookies over the last few years have improved over time. We’ll see the MP threshold at 1,000 total minutes played. BPM below.
2017
Tyler Dorsey -4.7 >>> -6.4
Malik Monk -4.4 >>> -4.1
Frank Mason -3.4 >>> -4.2
Semi Ojeleye -3.5 >>> -3.5
Josh Jackson -4.3 >>> -5.0
Terrance Ferguson -2.5 >>> -2.1
Dillon Brooks -3.1 >>> -5.8
2016
Isaiah Whiteside -4.9 >>> -5.6 >>> traded, waived, signed 2-way with Pistons, has not played
Tyler Ulis -4.0 >>> -5.2 >>> waived
Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot -4.0 >>> -4.7 >>> -7.5
Dragan Bender -4.3 >>> -2.7 >>> -5.7
DeAndre Bembry -4.3 >>> -4.4 >>> -2.7
Skal Labissiere -2.6 >>> -5.1 >>> traded to POR, has barely played
Brandon Ingram -3.8 >>> -1.3 >>> -2.9 (but teh upside???)
Pat McCaw -1.8 >>> -3.4 >>> -1.9 (should fire his agent)
Cheick Diallo -5.6 >>> -3.1 >>> -0.9 (this is maybe the only encouraging one on the list)
But don’t worry, guys — this will NEVER happen to our Knicks. WE are the ones who draft the scrubs who turn into two-way players. WE are the ones who make marked improvements with players in just ONE coaching session. WE are the ones who know how to spot the diamond in the rough, trade him to another team, and sign him back for a multiyear $18M AAV. WE are the ones who know BPM is bullshit and the eyetest is better.
#FreeKnox
I was at the game yesterday. I have yet to go to The Staples Center since moving to LA and not watch The Knicks get absolutely destroyed. I could’ve gone to the Lakers game over the holidays but missed out and they actually won that game.
We did have really good seats about 15 rows behind the Knicks bench. Even though they got destroyed it was still pretty fun.
Some observations….
Mitch is easily our best player. I mean we know this all ready but dude is ACTIVE on defense. I got to see multiple Mitch blocks and a few put back dunks, which was fun.
outside of mitch, everyone pretty much stunk except Dotson was decent and Vonleh at least was trying hard. Everyone else sucked big time.
I feel bad for Knox. I think Fiz needs to sit him a game or two. He looked TIRED. Like even before the game in warm ups he was coming up short on all of his shots. His body language is not good right now. In the first half when the Clippers were running up the score, every time they got an open 3, it felt like it was Knox who left his man open or fucked up the rotation.
DSJ was the biggest disappointment. He had a weird game. It felt like he didn’t play as much as he should.
Mudiay NEVER passed the ball. Its one thing to see it on TV but jesus, up close, there were multiple times when he could have thrown up a lob to Mitch but instead just kept driving to the lane to take a really bad shot. Mitch probably could’ve had 6 to 8 more points off of lobs if people were looking for him.
My wife is a big college basketball fan (KU and I root for UK, so we have a nice rivalry going). The first observation she said when the score was getting out of hand was “The Knicks do not play any team basketball. Its all ISO.” I told her yeah that is a big criticism of the coach a lot of fans have. But seeing how the Clippers share the ball vs how we were just isoing, it was embarrassing.
The team did compete harder in the second half for sure. But that 1st half…
Man, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense that Mitchell gets traded back to Louisiana where his grandmother and little sister live. He even shares a trainer with Anthony Davis. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason that NO refused to pull the trigger on that deal with LA was because they were getting assurances that the Knicks would give them MitchRob plus a package of players and or picks.
IDK, you think New Orleans is going to pull the trigger on a deal centered around Mitch Robinson? I mean, we all know how good he is, but I don’t think Pels fans do and there would probably be some howling.
I think they look for a “name” like Tatum or even Kuzma over Mitch.
Nobody has been boosting Mitch more than me. I proclaimed him a sure star after summer league and took heat from the regulars here. And I’d very much like one of our stars to be a player the Knicks drafted like Ewing. And I do believe 3 guys (KD/AD/Kyrie) who need the ball in their hands could be problematic (diminishing returns).
All that said, I think the FO probably has to make that trade IF DAJ is willing to take the room exception. I was the first to say here that Mitch should not be traded for AD but DAJ on room exception changes the calculus. He’s still very productive and would give us similar production to Mitch. KD/AD/Kyrie/Jordan and a strong bench would be a top 3 team and a chip contender. Isn’t a chip the goal here? This a perfect storm in the making. And is anyone gonna lose any sleep about our future if we lose DSJ/Frank/Knox? If we think with our hearts, we keep Mitch but if we think with our minds, it pains me to say this but I think you have to trade him in the circumstances I mentioned.
Which regulars?
At worst, some of us were skeptical that he’d be able to contribute right away. I thought he might need a year to mentally mature before showing us how great he could be, which probably made me the most bearish Mitch poster on KB.
You don’t know what Mitch was coached on. This whole conversation is incredibly stupid.
Knox is trash which is notoriously difficult to coach up. Can’t squeeze blood from a stome.
Frank tried to be more aggressive. Being a timid little mouse, he failed, but he did try. Dotson hunts for catch and shoot opportunities on a regular basis, spending less time standing in the corner waiting to be noticed by the cool kids at the dance. Kornet is much more active on defense in getting out to the perimeter and looking more comfortable out there, probably a necessary development if he wants to stick in the league.
Mitch was starting to cut back on his fouls before his injury, which would have been before the fabled meeting, yes? Maybe I’ve got the timeline wrong. He did come back fouling like a champ before reining it in again. Maybe he forgot reaching is bad. I blame Fortnite.
I’m not saying Fizdale is the cats pajamas and he makes choices that confuse the fuck out of me but it is silly to suggest he’s had the impact of a wart on a toad.
This was not your imagination. He was a gaping wound on defense and a black hole on offense. I hope he doesn’t read this, he seems like a nice kid and I’d feel bad. Needs to get his shit together though. Needs to recognize that other players exist.
Except we do. Your entire argument seems to be “the source is lying”.
For everyone worried about Perry trading Mitch for AD, have you thought about this?
Perry drafted Mitch. He was drafted with the pick that Perry picked up in the Melo trade, which was Perry’s first big move as a GM. Perry also negotiated the contract for Mitch that is an absolute steal.
So sure, maybe he’ll trade Mitch in an AD trade but Mitch is a huge win for Perry right now. Is he willing to give him up for an AD trade?
You act like I’m mad because he doesn’t have a .540 TS%. I just want to see him pass more and shoot less, or set solid screens, or not lose his man every time down the court. Those are not impossible asks of a coaching staff who is demanding to be judged on player development.
I do agree with this part. lol
How can anyone defend a metric that doesn’t measure individual defense in a reasonable way and produces all kinds of idiotic results on that side?
BPM (which at least is one of the better ones) tries to estimate defense by saying some portion of the team’s efficiency belongs to this player and since we can measure some of his offensive contribution well we’ll assume the rest of his value is his defense.
As is, every player is getting credit or getting punished for team level defense. So a great individual defender on a bad defensive team will look worse than he is and vice versa. That’s why you wind up with silly conclusions like Jokic is a very plus defender, KP is a negative defender, David Lee was a good defender, and on and on. The model stinks. It just stinks less than some of the others because it at least tries.
This is dumb, as am I, so I’ll bite:
Minutes per foul, October through Jan 30 (alleged coaching session happened then) 5.55
Feb through present 5.89
I mean, this is pretty dumb — per-minute is worse than per-possession, doesn’t adjust for quality of opponent (or opponent’s drawn foul rate), doesn’t account for referee fouls-called rate — but c’mon, there’s no decent evidence that his foul rate has changed much at all. So yeah, thanks Kerry, I’m sure it didn’t hurt, but maybe he’s just, you know, learning on the job?
Signing Kyrie will be colossally dumb, but hey, knicks!
I don’t think you’re going to get a really good defensive metric until you start grading every player on every defensive possession like they do for the NFL at Pro Football Focus.
Some of the more analytically minded teams probably do that already.
Because it’s better than whatever faith you put in your specious, subjective, unverifiable, conjecture-laden mental analytics.
Strat surely watches every minute of every NBA game and makes detailed observations about every defender on every possession
Good points all around, but here is the thing – I don’t think Boston is an actual contender in the AD sweepstakes and NO probably knows this talking with AD’s people. The reason I believe this is because AD won’t sign an extension with them when Kyrie leaves and its all but certain in my mind that he’s on his way out to join KD in NYC.
So the real competition is LA, which only entices a GM if you think Kuzma is a better guy to build around than MitchRob – someone who a far younger player, family rooted in your home state, and producing far superior metrics, with one more season on his cheap rookie contract. The guy even looks like a young skinny AD. If we know how good he is I can imagine New Orleans’ own front office people know too. It’s a no brainer to me.
I hear you and think this is a great problem for any franchise to have, but I am not certain putting all our eggs in the basket of 3 max players is the brainy move, especially since we’re going to need depth paying that money injury prone (Kyrie and AD) and past prime players (KD). I actually like DSJ as a backup option to Kyrie and think he would do well coming off the bench and starting in the ~20 games a season he’ll miss for us. I like the fact that MitchRob is just 20, on an insanely cheap contract, and is already capable of producing per minute metrics comparable to Michael Jordan’s and David Robinson’s historically efficient rookie seasons at a younger age. To me, it’s better to have this blend of young promising talent like MitchRob, DJS, Zion/Barrett,Morant) and two top 12 players (KD and Kyrie) than to subtract the young talent and focus on three top 12 guys who will have to carry all the load.
I wasn’t acting like you were mad, I was responding to your request for specifics. Can I assume you accept the other three as evidence? 3 of 4 isn’t the worst. Cause I think those might be impossible requests for Knox to fulfill. He certainly seems incapable of tracking his man, or navigating switches.
I wonder if he simply doesn’t listen to what guys are saying on the court. It’d explain why he always seems confused on defense.
It was a specific type of foul that we were talking about, i.e. running for blocks out of position, and we were all commenting that we were seeing less of it even before the article. But I get it. No one wants to talk about this.
But even if we accept the whole kittles thing is 100% bunk, does anyone legitimately support the notion that this staff deserves passing grades on player development? Every supporting argument seems to be: “he’s playing X, and X is playing well, ergo development has occurred.” Playing well isn’t evidence of being developed, it could just be evidence that you’re good.
This is from December: https://nypost.com/2018/12/11/fizdale-gets-creative-to-break-mitchell-robinsons-bad-habits/
The idea that no one on the staff has been working with him to reduce unnecessary fouling is crazy. Robinson has mentioned his dislike of doing pushups as motivation a couple of times and hasn’t mentioned Kittles once as far as I know.
I’ve got my issues with Fizdale. Too much Mudiay, too much Lance Thomas (AKA any time at all for Lance Thomas), weird doghouse patterns, I haven’t loved the offense from an aesthetic point of view (it would be empirically awful no matter what), etc.
But my god, some of the speculation going on here is ridiculous. The most likely reason we haven’t seen “development” from some of our younger players is because they’re terrible. The Spurs/Warriors/Celtics etc. wouldn’t take guys like Knox and Ntilikina and turn them into good players. They just wouldn’t take guys like Knox and Ntilikina, period, because they both projected terribly before playing a single NBA minute.
It is certainly possible the Fizdale and his staff are bad at developing players, but the sample size we have to work with should leave us with nothing but a giant shrug. The younger players who showed some degree of promise before coming to the NBA are continuing to do that. The younger players who were not good at anything at Kentucky and Strasbourg are continuing to not be good at anything.
How about looking at the defensive rating of the team with him on and off the court, looking at which player typically gets substituted for him and how that may be impacting his own rating, how certain lineups with other well known positive or negative defenders do with him on the court, how the players he defends tend to do statistically on the possessions he defends, what players and coaches that are pouring over film and face him say about how much trouble he gives them, whether he can switch or not etc.. and eventually coming to a ball park opinion that’s based on what’s happening on the court?
I can’t give you an exact number, but I’m 100% certain that KP is a plus defender and better than David Lee at defense despite what that broken model says.
I can’t tell you how good a defender DSJ is yet, but I can already tell you that the on/off data will probably be partially impacted by the fact that Mudiay is often the player that substitutes for him. So if his on/off looks OK, it’s probably overstated because Mudiay is the alternative. Eventually, I’ll have an opinion based on observation, data, and what’s actually happening on the court.
The funny thing is that the trainer whose own words are being as evidence for the great impact that Kerry Kittles had upon MitchRob’s growth as a defender even states that the #1 factor which accelerated the kid’s development wasn’t coaching but improved training and conditioning.
I’ve been trying to watch a lot more Nuggets games lately and I’m not surprised there is statistical support for the idea that Jokic isn’t a bad defender. He’s a bad rim protector. But they don’t use him as one that much. He’s usually out there trapping guys on Pick-and-rolls and he looks pretty good at it.
It’s an aggressive solution, though, and one that could easily be exploited as they get deeper in the playoffs.
Again, I’m not asking for a magician to make knox good. I’m just looking for improvements like “passes more than once in a game”. Call me crazy, but if Knox played for Greg Poppovich I don’t believe this glaring flaw in his game would remain unaddressed for an entire season.
Mitch fouled out twice in a row, January 21-23, and has not had a game since with over 4 fouls, with the exception of two games ago. And in that game he gave three quick fouls at the end of the game for strategic reasons. If you take those three fouls out he is running at about 4.15 fouls per 36 over that time period, i.e. since Jan 23.
Now, that is perhaps the most egregious data mining I have ever performed but I think the fact that he went the entire month of February without fouling out once of his own accord seems to be substantial progress..
This is a perfect example of what I have noted about the superiority of baseball statistics. I don’t know when foul rate “stabilizes” but he does seem to have improved a lot over the last 350 minutes.
Apparently Fiz has him doing pushups if he commits a bad foul…
https://nypost.com/2019/03/02/the-brash-goal-driving-mitchell-robinsons-knicks-emergence/
How do you know this? Is it a certain “truthiness” to KP’s game that makes you so sure or do you just have “alternative facts” to backup the contention?
FWIW I think you might focus too much on blocks and intimidation while underestimating the impact of how many extra possessions/easy points Porzingis gave up by not being able to rebound adequately for his position. That’s an example of the stats working to override our biases.
Knox is ninth in minutes among rookies. With the possible exception of Sexton, he is having a far far worse season than any of them.
It’s generally pretty dumb to conjecture about what is and isn’t being coached. It’s the usual conspiracy theory suspects making the same specious arguments.
Kevin Knox sucks but hopefully we can flip him for Taurean Prince this summer.
If we sign Durant and Irving, it would make more sense to trade Knox and Smith Jr in separate deals instead of trading them along with Mitch, our 2019 1st, and the Dallas assets because Anthony Davis can’t play two positions at once. If I’m the Knicks I’m offering PHX Smith Jr for Mikal Bridges, and I’m offering Atlanta Knox for Taurean Prince. A depth chart with Irving, Bridges, Durant, the 2019 1st, Mitch, Trier, Prince, maybe DeAndre Jordan and Satoransky is better than doing something like Irving, Durant, Davis, Ntilikina, and Brian Cronin. It just makes more sense to skip the 3rd max (even when it’s an all time great like Davis) than to squeeze your payroll and bank that you can find steals off the scrap heap in order to win multiple championships.
My favorite thing to do would be to offer Knox, Ntilikina, and Smith Jr to LAL for Ball in a three team deal that lands AD in Los Angeles. I’d be so pleased to watch Irving and Durant lead the offense with Mitch and Ball leading the defense.
I love Mitch, and I’m sure the hometown kid thing will make a more palatable narrative for the four total people who write about New Orleans basketball, but I don’t see the Pelicans passing on literally every asset the Lakers have (even if they’re all overrated) to take our all-time bad rookie-contract players, a top-5 pick and a reserve center who’s never played over 34 minutes in a single game.
I think Mitch is the truth and a possible All-NBA player by the end of this contract (and I won’t be surprised when he puts up a 30-20 next year as the starting C) but I just don’t see them being able to sell it to fans. And if Davis wants to gut any team just so he can get out of a contract he agreed to sign a year early, he can fuck right off.
I think NOLA would rather have Smith Jr, Knox, Ntilikina and all of the Lakers’ assets instead of Lonzo Ball and the rest of the Lakers’ assets.
@77
Boy, I hope you’re right. But I don’t see how the Pelicans can hold the small amounts of minutes per game against MitchRob when everyone knows he’s just 20 coming off a one and done season where he didn’t even accumulate a full season of college ball currently playing on a team that’s trying to limit his minutes while tanking. This entire season seems the NBA’s in a state flux. Too much is going on the background with players like KD, Kyrie, AD, Kawhi, and Jimmy Buckets all looking like they’re planning something behind the scenes to get to new destinations around the league. If the Pelicans were so keen on the Lakers package then why did Pelinka turn them down? I get that he was most probably fired for not pulling that trigger but there must be some reason he didn’t do it and I am afraid it involves us and a combination of waiting to see how MitchRob and draft chances of picking Zion develop.
I was proposing a similar type deal since we all know Lebron loves him some DSJ and would most definitely sign off on getting Lavar Ball’s mouth away from his team. In fact, the Lakers were involved in trade talks to get him from Dallas back in late January. But do we really want to deal with Lavar Ball’s mouth here? I have a feeling he would really be a problem, especially come contract extension time.
thanks for the link owen, real good q & a with mitchell…
I don’t know if he’s a franchise changer – but, he definitely hasn’t been the type of player we’ve seen too much on our roster…
too bad bagley 3 is sidelined at the moment…would have been fun to see those two bouncing all over the court…
LaVar Ball or not, I would absolutely love to put Lonzo Ball on the same team with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, Mitchell Robinson, and our 2019 1st round pick tear through the league. If that pick turns into Zion Williamson we would be the Showtime Knicks.
@82
I’m with you, man. I’ve had such a crush on Lonzo Ball’s game since college and never bought the dismissive negativity that’s plagued his NBA growing pains. Even though his abysmally low FTr and FT% are a real worry, I feel the league would’ve given him more a pass for those woes had he a less audacious father and played for a more forgiving GM/coach in Lebron James on a smaller market team. But Lavar Ball is a headache, and it’s a major one which would make Jannis’ antics with KP pale in comparison in a more neurotic high profile market than the one which is skewering Lonzo right now.
I think Lonzo would be a good catch. Rumor had it he was on the market earlier in the year. If we were somehow able to draft Matisse Thybulle, that would be pretty exciting to watch Ball and Thybulle playing defense together.
You need guys who are able to shoot 3’s next to Kyrie and KD. That’s not Lonzo. That’s Dotson and Trier.
Danny Ferry in all probability will be making the decision. He’ll tell management to take Mitch. And any fan bewilderment will evaporate the first time they watch Mitch go up for a lob/dunk and learn that a 2 rejection game is a poor performance for Mitch. Novak and Mitch are the 2 Knick players in the last decade who generated a certain anticipation in the crowd. Remember the feeling right as Novak received the ball and began to shoot? There ‘s a general feeling of anticipation of the extraordinary about to happen on both offense and defense when high motor Mitch is out there. Pels fans will be mesmerized by Mitch.
The strongest argument to be made against trading Mitch for AD in the scenario I outlined are:
(1) DAJ could decline sharply or he could be fine for a year or two but much worse than Mitch in years 3 and 4.
(2) Kyrie, KD, and AD all need the ball in their hands to be effective. I think Kyrie and KD together would be fine since Kyrie often played off the ball with Bron and KD is effective in that role. But AD is different in that regard because he’s not great at shooting 3’s. Covington might be a better fit than AD.
I think I would be most happy if we get Kyrie and KD and keep our young players. I’d be down with Jordan coming back on the 1+1 deal mentioned earlier in the thread, because that basically guarantees 48 minutes of good-to-great center play every night while still having Kornet in case someone gets injured or something. Throw in our pick and possibly find a way to get Vonleh back and you might have yourself a team:
Kyrie/DSJ/Kadeem
Dotson/Trier/Jenkins (I guess?)
2019 pick/Knox/Lance
KD/Vonleh/Kornet
Mitch/DJ (or vice versa)
I’m not enthused about the small forward slot (depending on who we pick), but we would basically just need a warm body that can shoot 3’s there and maybe not blow every defensive position. Guys like that are not hard to find, especially if Perry is willing to cut bait on Knox and trade his ‘upside’ for some quantifiable production. In any event, KD is perfectly capable of playing the small forward slot; I’m kind of just assuming we get either Barrett or Zion in the draft.
I think that’s a team that could potentially win 50 games. I don’t know if it makes us contenders persay, but it would strike a nice middle ground between winning now and not wholly sacrificing the future and tbh I’m pretty fine with winning 50 games a season with a team that’s not built around a bunch of 30+ guys and Amare’s chalk knees (oh 2012-2013, how I miss you).
This is purely academic as I don’t see the Knicks as an organization that would add Ball to Irving, but here’s my reasoning:
– 6’7” Lonzo Ball can comfortably play shooting guard with his height.
– Ball as a defender will lock down the other team’s best guard and he’ll create turnovers. Ball and Mitch would tie together a top ten defense.
– Ball would be in a position to shoot wide open catch and shoots off Kyrie Irving and Durant, so I think his 3PT shooting goes up to a respectable level. He’s already shooting it at 32%, so there’s actual hope for him (considering he was a knockdown shooter at UCLA).
– All of Ball, Irving, and Durant can take the ball up the court kinda like how Durant, Curry, and Green do in Golden State. They’d all be able to coexist because Ball wouldn’t really be sacrificing any shots as he’s a low usage guy with a high IQ. Ball is already who we hoped Ntilikina would develop into.
– Dolan would be able to give LaVar Ball a show on MSG under the agreement that he’d play nice. I’m not worried about LaVar because he hasn’t been a distraction in this shit show of a Lakers season.
I think it would be unbelievably fun to watch Kyrie and Durant do their thing as “eat what you kill” scorers while Ball, Mitch, and the 2019 1RP play off of them in a more structured offense. You’d have two guys in their prime and as they fade out, you build your team around Ball, the 2019 1RP that hopefully turns into Zion Williamson, and Mitchell Robinson.
We can’t keep both if we trade DSJ for Lonzo and keep MitchRob?
I agree.
LOLOLOLOL
According to WoJo Melo says he won’t play with the Lakers until they’re in the playoff picture. Methinks someone is trying to save face by pretending he rejected the Lakers when the opposite is the case.
I was a big Lonzo believer in college but at this point the FT% makes me really question whether he’s ever going to really improve as a shooter. Being literally the worst free throw shooting guard of all time doesn’t seem like a good leading indicator for a guy whose 3P% is about to take a leap and he already takes pretty much exclusively wide open ones (and has to because his release is so wonky). He still has a role in the league even if he can’t shoot – I think his defense already makes him a fairly effective player overall – but there’s a real hard cap on his ceiling. I’m not sure he’ll ever be much more than he is now if he can’t improve that one element of his game because it limits so dramatically how you can use him – he just can’t have the ball in his hands enough to use the rest of his skillset. I do think a Kyrie-KD team would be pretty much an ideal scenario for him though.
One of the big problems with Lonzo right now is that he’s not really an effective player without the ball in his hands. Lonzo needs to go somewhere where he can make some things happen with the rock. He is woefully miscast as a spot-up shooter/guy who attacks closeouts.
He’s shooting .214 on corner threes, on a team where LeBron James is creating most of the opportunities. I just don’t know about Lonzo as an off-guard. It seems like a bad idea.
@87
I’ve fantasized about everything you wrote here since Mitch’s rise into a rookie monster and DSJ came along in the KP trade. It would be the kind of a development that would set us up for a generation of basketball that Knicks fans have earned after a 21st century of futility. But I don’t agree that Lavar will stay shut. He had an understanding with Magic Lonzo’s rookie season and opened his mouth that Lebron was coming over even before his son played his first game with the team. He’s done a better job of biting his tongue since Lebron came over to LA, but I doubt he’ll stay shut for long if Lonzo comes over here.
What are the odds that the Lakers strike out in free agency and LeBron requests a trade? Or better yet, demands a buyout?
When Carmelo Anthony says that your team isn’t good enough for him to sign with, that’s rock bottom, right?
We are one pitiful team… Just was on ESPN and saw our team leaders in points, assists, etc… Our current leading scorer is Knox at 12.4 ppg, assists Trier at 1.9 per game and Vonleh at 7.9 rebounds per game.
Unverified rumor was that Lebron wanted the Lakers to sign Carmelo but the Lakers said no. And knowing how no other playoff contending team has seemed to show interest in his services, I am willing to bet that this rumor of Melo refusing to sign with the Lakers is just an attempt to spin the fact that no team he wants to play on wants him to play with them.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/2019.html
ESPN is wrong about all three, not to mention the fact that several starters got traded midseason.
Watching the Nets/Mavs game reminds me why am so happy THJ isn’t with us anymore.
Wow Shawn Jefferson is really passively aggressively shitting on Rick Carlisle and the Mavs organization. Seems to harbor some resentment that Carlisle microscrutinized him during his time there.
im not so sure about lonzo.. hes probably best suited as a low usage pg type… in that way hes a bit like rubio.. only he never gets to the line … guys like that arent all that valuable since their upside is effectively capped…
not getting to the line at all it means youre not really capable of expanding your game outside of the opportunities ppl give you… thats always a bad sign..
the other skills are there and hes a talented passer but the scoring ability will probably improve but not by that much… he probably will be a fringe to ok starter type…
@96
Allen has a WS/48 of .136. Now I know why Fizdale won’t play him.
Doncic is already able to draw those Hardenesque bullshit foul calls. He’s so advanced.