Knicks Morning News (2019.04.09)

The whole “tanking” argument is, sorry to say, really fucking dumb.

If you suck, you should be looking to ACQUIRE ASSETS. You should not be looking to add pointless MARGINAL WINS. Trying to go from a 17-win team to a 29-win team by signing the Kentavious Caldwell-Popes and Courtney Lees of the world is LITERALLY THE DUMBEST STRATEGY you can pursue.

This is absolutely correct, and also what is broken.
Players, coaches, and FOs should be incentivized to win. Winning should not be broken down into “marginal wins” vs. “meaningful wins”. Going from a literally unwatchable 17 win team to a most-days-competitive 29 win team should be a feature, not a bug. Teams should not be rewarded for being more successful at being terrible than the next team. Fans should not be expected to root for their teams to lose. It’s freaking ridiculous.

You want to kill the most egregious tanking? Install my lottery system to disincentivize tanking at the end of the season, then disallow teams from picking in the top 3 in consecutive years to disincentivize the years-long tanking strategies and to punish persistently awful teams.

I watched the NCAA championship game. I came away very unimpressed by Culver. I know that a single game can’t be the be all end all in terms of prospects evaluation, but maybe RJ really is better than him. If so, I’m amenable to trade down even from #3.

1. They blew the 2om on horrible contracts
2. Blew 6 million on Hezonja
3. Let a productive player like O’Quinn walk for nothing
4. Made a suspect trade for Willy
5. Drafted Knox
6. Are stifling Frank’s development
7. Made no other productive trades or FA signings
8. Produced such a terrible team KP wanted out and we had to use him in part to move the terrible contract in part 1.

I mean, if you’re actually curious as to why people get frustrated with Strat just look at the disingenuousness of almost all of this.

1. Yep, that was bad and everyone agreed it was bad. Sadly, because of Phil Jackson, THJ might not have been one of the worst three contracts on the books.
2. This one is really rich coming from someone who adamantly defends giving out a total of $13M, with player options galore, to Arron Afflalo and Derrick Williams. There were likely better ways to spend the money (though Hezonja wasn’t a bad target), but this is such a non-event.
3. Every time he says this, I post the link of KOQ himself saying the Knicks matched the offer but he wanted to play for a playoff team. Then he stops responding, but waits a few days to just post the same debunked nonsense. You really don’t see why this is annoying?
4. I didn’t like this at the time, but honestly it seems like I was wrong. I highly doubt Charlotte could recoup two seconds for Willy right now, and he was replaced with a clearly superior player.
5. Definitely bad, but…
6. So Knox’s horrible numbers indicate he’s an irredeemable bust, but precious Frankie has simply been failed. Hmm, what ever could be the source of this inconsistency?
7. Lol. The literal best player on this team was brought in because Phil Jackson’s most disastrous contract was miraculously moved.
8. Zach Lowe and Ian Begley have said this was primarily the fault of Phil Jackson, but no one should even care because the trade was good.

Let’s call it a draw. Alfalo and Williams were fliers on a couple of guys who we thought we were getting on an upswing. If our stars had played like stars those guys might have blended in. The mid tier FA has value in the right mix. SAS plays really well and Rudy Gay gets tons of run. Our big failure was building our team around Amar’e, Melo, KP. KP may still become a player worthy of that, not that I necessarily think so, but his injury never gave us a chance to truly find out. Sometimes marginally bad players become marginally good ones. GM’s buy low and sell high. Even a gamble like THJ made sense at the time. If KP keeps up his November last year and Timmy had continued a positive growth curve we may have had success. Not saying it turned out to be a great strategy, just that at the time you could see the logic.

Now we have some underwhelming 1st rounders, some overachieving 2nd rounders and some young inexpensive pieces (DSJ). If Zion comes over and is the second coming of Shaq, we can afford to make some marginally bad decisions and not sit here ruing our sad fate.

Well-run franchises will do whatever the incentives lead them to do. If you incentivize losing then people will try to lose. You have to change the incentives, and you will get a change in behavior.

Rookie scale contracts mean that teams hitting the reset button are incentivized to sell off players for contracts anyway. Developing a bevy of rookies is indistinguishable from tanking. Being a bad team is indistinguishable from tanking. Your plan makes it harder for bad teams to get better without solving the issue.

Strat is pushing a fiction that we’ve been in “rebuild” mode for many years, that we’ve been “tanking”’ for many years. I don’t know how else to say it, but that is a flat-out lie.

We were in “win now” mode for pretty much Phil’s entire tenure, save for the second half of his first season when he realized that the 5-35 “win now” team he built around Jose Calderon and Sam Dalembert probably wasn’t going to be “winning now.” He had numerous opportunities to tear the team down and start from scratch.

For instance, after that 17-win season, did he try to sign-and-trade Carmelo Anthony? Nope! Gave him a mega-max contract. That’s not what you do if you’re rebuilding, it’s not what you do if you’re “tanking.” It’s what you do if you’re trying to “win now.” After the second year, he spent the off-season signing Joakim Noah and trading for Derrick Rose. Those were (very bad) “win now” moves.

So either Strat can stop pretending that we’re in year five of a rebuild, or he can continue to be called out as full of shit. This is year ONE of the rebuild. The guys in charge of it might and probably will fuck that up. But let’s stop pretending we have been rebuilding all this time. We wasted several years on Phil Jackson’s ill-advised “win now” strategy. It failed. It blew up in his face. We should be thankful we’re at least trying to do something different.

Not to mention the fact that Strat regularly says that everyone here wants a “10 year rebuild,” but somehow that’s not the very kind of willful misinterpretation you’re talking about? I’m sorry someone made a small error when looking over the details of your fantasy trade, but Strat is the most egregious offender in the bad-faith interpretation department.

Is there anybody out there who doesn’t think this team would be better off if it tore down the Melo/Amar’e/Chandler team and sold off all those pieces for draft picks/assets instead of investing in the tomorrow of Jose Calderon, Arron Afflalo, Mega Max Melo, Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose? Just imagine if we really HAD been tanking/rebuilding all that time. We’d probably be in a pretty good spot by now.

Instead all we have are our memories of some 29-win seasons, Noah having a punch-up with the coach and that time Derrick Rose disappeared and everybody thought maybe he was dead. Misty water colored memories.

Is there anybody out there who doesn’t think this team would be better off if it tore down the Melo/Amar’e/Chandler team and sold off all those pieces for draft picks/assets instead of investing in the tomorrow of Jose Calderon, Arron Afflalo, Mega Max Melo, Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose? Just imagine if we really HAD been tanking/rebuilding all that time. We’d probably be in a pretty good spot by now.

You’re right, JK47, but this isn’t the point.

The point is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. There’s an in between route, one that was employed by Morey in Houston, West in LA, and Marks in Brooklyn, where you acquire assets *without tanking*. That’s the route Strat espouses.

Here is strat saying Phil sucked:

I agree that Phil made mistakes.

Lol

We’re not agreeing on what the word “tank” means. To me it’s the same as “rebuild.” It’s not just losing games, it’s— repeat it with me now— ACQUIRING ASSETS AND GETTING YOUNGER. Signing Joakim Noah to a 4/72 deal is NOT THAT.

Ok, I get it.

But there is another way to rebuild. In this second way, age doesn’t matter. You just look for as many undervalued assets as possible. Some of them will be draft picks, some of them will be veterans.

Danilo Gallinari is 30, Marcin Gortat is 34, Lou Williams is 32. But they were all acquired for less than what they were worth.

You guys are saying, and I’m going to quote you here so nothing is lost in translation:

You should not be looking to add pointless MARGINAL WINS. Trying to go from a 17-win team to a 29-win team by signing the Kentavious Caldwell-Popes and Courtney Lees of the world is LITERALLY THE DUMBEST STRATEGY you can pursue.

When Phil does it, it looks dumb. But does it look dumb when Jerry West does it? Jerry West does it and gets a better player at 13 than teams that drafted 8 and 9. And he’s got a team that isn’t a laughing stock and can make a more compelling argument to a max free agent than we can.

The idea was not stupid, the execution of it was horrible.

Tanking, rebuilding, whatever you want to call it, the basic principles of it are extremely simple:

1. Don’t take on long-term money that hasn’t been made well-worth it to you with draft pick sweetener, or isn’t coming in the form of a franchise altering elite player (even in this case, analyze the fit with your win curve before proceeding)

2. Prioritize whatever intriguing young players you might have when it comes to minute distribution (it’s fine to alter this one a bit in the odd game here and there if the tank race is close)

3. Use your cap space to get as many future assets as possible

4. Give any extra roster spots to young players who have some intrigue (2RPs, UDFAs, G-League standouts, etc.)

There’s no world in which Phil Jackson followed basically any of these principles. In fact, he pretty much did the polar opposite of all of them. He took on devastating long-term money, didn’t emphasize youth whatsoever, traded more important draft picks than he brought back, and gave out extra roster spots to retreads. So no, no “rebuild” was occurring during his tenure.

The longest you could argue we’ve been “rebuilding” is two seasons, though it was pretty tough to do much of anything during the first season with all of Phil’s garbage still on the books, having Kanter as a product of the Melo deal, having KP and Frank to show for years of terribleness, etc. This is the first season in which it’s been entirely possible to follow the above principles, and much to my surprise the guys in charge have mostly done so.

When Phil does it, it looks dumb. But does it look dumb when Jerry West does it? Jerry West does it and gets a better player at 13 than teams that drafted 8 and 9. And he’s got a team that isn’t a laughing stock and can make a more compelling argument to a max free agent than we can.

Third time now: the Clippers have traded away multiple prime-age, productive players because they analyzed their win curve and determined the wins those players would add would be of the marginal variety. They’ve since won more games than most people (themselves included) expected, but the strategy has been pretty much exactly what I outlined above.

There’s no world in which Phil Jackson followed basically any of these principles.

Absolute, 100%, Straw man argument. No one is saying Phil followed those principles.

You’re broadening the conversation to talk about rebuilding the Hinkie way. Strat is talking specifically and only about the idea that you should never add a veteran player if it will negatively impact your draft position.

Your response is to point how horrible it worked out for us, but that’s because Phil constantly chose the wrong players and paid them too much money. The same strategy could have worked with better execution.

The Clippers plan has NOTHING to do with what Phil did, can we please stop this narrative?

IT’S NOT A NARRATIVE!!!!

YOU ARE THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP BRINGING IT BACK TO PHIL!!!

PLEASE.

STOP.

BRINGING.

UP.

PHIL!

When a certain poster says “We’re in year five of a rebuild and it’s going nowhere hurr durr what do you guys want, a ten year rebuild or what” it’s kind of hard to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that Wavy Gravy tried repeatedly to build “win now” teams, to the great detriment of the team’s long-term future.

In fact, that has been the hallmark of Knick basketball for many moons now, the “win now” team that doesn’t actually win anything and then cripples the possibility of winning in the future.

Just do a fucking rebuild for once, the right way! Good for Jerry West that he built an interesting team in another way, I don’t foresee Jerry West or any other GOAT-level GM walking through the door to work for Guitar Jimmy any time real soon, so it’s kind of moot what Jerry West was able to do.

You can go back a week or two to find lots of words on this. I happen to be the kind of guy who doesn’t care if an elite PF prospect is 22 and 6’8” but I might be wrong. I think you have to be 6’10 and 19 to be good at basketball these days.

Thanks, I found some more posts. I’m with you: I don’t care about the downsides (actually, the 27% from 3 really isn’t good) and I am aware that I could be very wrong… anyway, I’m just trying to convince myself that falling to number five in the lotto wouldn’t be so miserable.

Third time now

Yes, it is the third time you have brought it back to a different argument!

The actual argument, please explain why West should have avoided all those players, or benched them, or dumped them for draft picks and younger players, because “looking to add pointless marginal wins” is “literally the dumbest strategy you can pursue.”

The problem you’re having is you’re trying to defend Strat without knowing his position.

I’m only going on what he’s said in this conversation. I think that’s part of the problem. People react to things that were said a while ago instead of reading what they’re saying.

What he’s been saying for a while is the fact that the Knicks have been “rebuilding” since 2015 and still aren’t good proves that rebuilding/tanking is a deeply flawed strategy.

I understand your method of rebuilding. I advocate for it, as well. But you have to admit it isn’t fool proof or easy to execute. When I read strat’s position, I see him advocating Morey’s way before Harden, although he fails to do it eloquently. That way worked out, too, and didn’t involve any of your principles.

Where’s Ted Nelson when you need him?

The main issue with Clarke isn’t his talent, it’s that he’s not optimal next to Robinson, who is a phenom in his own right. He would be ideal next to a Brook Lopez-type center. But then again, maybe he can learn to shoot threes? I can’t really comment on his shooting form, and I suppose he played center more often than not because Hachimura had to play power forward.

I think he’ll have physical limitations if he tries to play center against Gobert types, but he would still be a terror at pf, especially on a team with Kyrie and KD taking/making the bulk of the team’s 3-pointers. If Clarke has Rodman-level energy/decision-making abilities, you have to consider him.

You should not be looking to add pointless MARGINAL WINS.

So…unless they can get the equivalent of LeBron or Zion Williamson, teams shouldn’t bother making any moves? I mean, according to this logic, there’s only about six or eight teams in the entire league who should be making any moves to add veteran talent while the other 22 or 24 teams are all trying to unload veteran talent for picks/unproven young players. How exactly is that market supposed to work?

Mike

I really hope that the Pistons win their last two games. I hate when the #8 seed is under .500.

It’s also hilarious that the Hornets have a legit chance of making the playoffs still.

That’s. Exactly. What. He. Did.

Yeah? Jerry West traded Danilo Gallinari and Lou Williams? Again you are re-imagining another person’s position.

He traded Tobias Harris. Maybe you’re imagining I was talking about him. I wasn’t. I specifically said Gallinari and Williams. It’s up there in post 16. Two “pointless veterans” that “added marginal value”, which is “literally the dumbest strategy possible.”

Harris is 26 years old, not exactly a pointless veteran. West got a monster return for a pending free agent who he doesn’t intend to resign. That’s smart asset management. THAT is what Strat means when he talks about a non-tanking rebuild. It’s not me who doesn’t understand his position.

He thinks if you win trades you can rebuild without tanking, and you guys take him to task for not having examples of his “winning trades” argument. That’s why West is relevant to this discussion. Trading Blake Griffin for Tobias Harris and 1st round pick, and then trading Tobias Harris for Landry Shamet and two first round picks, is what he’s talking about. West turned one asset (Griffen) into FOUR cost controlled assets, and he did it without tanking. That’s strat’s position.

Now they have a shit ton of assets, cap space, and (thanks to all those pointless veterans) a team that people in their right mind would want to join. What they don’t have, and haven’t had in ages, is a top 10 draft pick. Strat’s point, over and over, is that you can rebuild without top picks.

That’s his position. It’s always been his position. You guys just always get sidetracked in Phil Jackson arguments and a misunderstanding of each other’s posts.

ESPN did an award forecast panel and it is annoying that Isiah fucking Briscoe got a DPOTY vote but not Mitch.

m only going on what he’s said in this conversation. I think that’s part of the problem. People react to things that were said a while ago instead of reading what they’re saying.

Here is Strat’s comment from yesterday that ignited the discussion:

If you were in that bottoming out position 3 years ago, made a #4 pick, #8 pick, a #9 pick, and had 20 million of cap space on top of it, but you are still in that position now, you screwed up badly.

The draft picks, free agents, and other moves you made over that 3 years should have you well into the turnaround by now.

He referenced “bottoming out” 3 years ago, which is nonsense. You don’t sign hoards of mediocre-to-bad veterans to multiyear, expensive deals when you’re bottoming out/rebuilding/tanking. The actual bottoming out process occurred during this past offseason, making this year 1 of a rebuild.

So…unless they can get the equivalent of LeBron or Zion Williamson, teams shouldn’t bother making any moves? I mean, according to this logic, there’s only about six or eight teams in the entire league who should be making any moves to add veteran talent while the other 22 or 24 teams are all trying to unload veteran talent for picks/unproven young players. How exactly is that market supposed to work?

Yeah, if NBA GMs were operating under the assumption that the goal was legitimate contention as soon as possible, this is what the league landscape would look like. It’s the reason I’m in favor of drastically altering the existing incentive structure.

Yeah? Jerry West traded Danilo Gallinari and Lou Williams? Again you are re-imagining another person’s position.

He traded Tobias Harris. Maybe you’re imagining I was talking about him. I wasn’t. I specifically said Gallinari and Williams. It’s up there in post 16. Two “pointless veterans” that “added marginal value”, which is “literally the dumbest strategy possible.”

Are you forgetting how West acquired Lou Williams? It was in a trade in which he sent out Chris freakin’ Paul, before sending out Blake Griffin a few months later. The same trade also brought back Patrick Beverley, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell, Darrun Hilliard, DeAndre Liggins, Kyle Wiltjer, and a 2018 1st round draft pick. Harrell and the pick were the most important assets in the trade. Everything else, Lou Will and his .557 TS%/.126 WS48/0.6 BPM included, was essentially filler.

The Gallinari example is odd, because the Clippers will almost certainly be trading him this offseason in order to accomplish their actual goal of bringing in elite players. It’s been awesome to see him play so well, but I’m not sure what you think his deal has actually accomplished for the Clippers other than help them squeak out an 8th seed playoff appearance. If you think that’s a goal worth striving for, then sure, that kind of contract can help you get there (assuming you’re not in a place on the win curve where a player like Gallo could actually put you over the top).

Are you forgetting how West acquired Lou Williams? It was in a trade in which he sent out Chris freakin’ Paul, before sending out Blake Griffin a few months later.

No, I’m not.

Are you forgetting that, at the next trade deadline, Lou Williams was highly sought after and West extended him instead of trading him for picks?

He extended a 31 year old player while he was in rebuilding mode instead of trading him for draft picks. You would never advocate for that in your position, right?

But Strat’s position is to forget about age and not overvalue draft picks. If you can get good value, take it. So signing a 31 year old 2 guard when you’re in rebuilding mode makes sense in his philosophy. And it’s proven to be a fairly good move, wouldn’t you say?

Adding marginal wins to a 42 win team is different from adding marginal wins to a 17 win team. The Clippers had been a decent to good team for quite a while, they weren’t starting with a bare cupboard and a shitload of dead Joakim Noah/Carmelo Anthony/Courtney Lee money. They had some things to work with. It’s not a comparable situation.

I’m really not sure why we’re going gaga over the Clippers because they won 47 games and got the eighth seed largely by default. I’ve definitely been impressed by some of their recent moves, but their impressive moves have all been the ones they’ve made in pursuit of fetching extra assets in recognition of their win curve positioning (CP3 trade, Blake Griffin trade, Tobias Harris trade). Everything else gets a big TBA–just like us, they’ll look good if they’re able to land two worthy max players and much less so if they’re not.

Strat’s point is that, intentional or not, they got the same reward in the draft that they would have received if they had gone full Hinkie.

Really? The 4th, 8th, and 9th picks? No extra picks to speak of? Picks traded to dump Travis Outlaw? On what planet is this true?

He extended a 31 year old player while he was in rebuilding mode instead of trading him for draft picks. You would never advocate for that in your position, right?

But Strat’s position is to forget about age and not overvalue draft picks. If you can get good value, take it. So signing a 31 year old 2 guard when you’re in rebuilding mode makes sense in his philosophy. And it’s proven to be a fairly good move, wouldn’t you say?

The Clippers’ plan is to lure two max players this offseason, which they can do with Lou Will’s meager salary on the books if they trade Gallo. So like I said, if they’re successful in doing so the move will look perfectly good. If not, it’ll seem pretty neutral. Heoznja-esque, if you will.

To restate without a shred of ambiguity:

we won 17 games in 2015, that’s as hinkie a win total as you can reasonably expect. And it still didn’t get us the franchise player we needed.

But we didn’t do any of the other things Hinkie would have done, so it’s not reasonable for strat to use it as evidence that tanking doesn’t work.

That’s what I said. I guess maybe it was confusing because I was seeing both sides of the argument 😉

Yeah the tanking as a strategy vs. Phil as a GM debates need to stop. Way too boring.

@50 Kadeem

What we should be debating now is our draft ranking of 2 thru 5 (with emphasis on 4 & 5, where the Knicks feel like a lock to end up).

As of this moment with last night’s game fresh in my brain I’m thinking:

2. Morant
3. Hunter
4/5. Barrett/Clarke

Culver is out of my top 5. If KD then Clarke @4, if no KD, Barrett.

Come on, dude. You’re misstating my position AGAIN. I said that in 2015 they got the same reward “in the draft” that they would have gotten if they had taken a full Hinkie approach.

If you’re only talking about 2015, you’re not doing anything to defend Strat’s point at all. The point he made that started the discussion is the one I just posted, in which he says that after three seasons of a “rebuild” in which the Knicks had the 4th, 8th, and 9th picks, the fact that they’re still bad shows that rebuilding is flawed. So he’s talking about all three seasons (i.e. not just 2015).

The reason he’s hilariously wrong is because Phil Jackson did the opposite of trying to maximize the expected return on those picks. He tried to make those picks as bad as possible. The only reason they were somewhat high was because he was god awful at trying to determine which players help teams win basketball games in the present.

So…unless they can get the equivalent of LeBron or Zion Williamson, teams shouldn’t bother making any moves? I mean, according to this logic…

As already mentioned in this thread, the incentive structure in this market is totally fucked. The agreement on bilateral price controls (i.e. the NBA and NBPA’s co-endorsement of max contracts, vet’s minimums, MLE, rookie-scale contracts) create inequity in virtually every area that affects wins and losses. It is damn near a requirement that a Finals team gets surplus value from multiple max/rookie-scale players (Curry and Durant; LeBron and Kyrie; LeBron and Wade; Shaq and Wade; Kawhi and Duncan; Duncan and Manu/Parker; et al.) to be successful. To be successful in the playoffs, your team needs to be capable of winning 55+ games with a high SRS. This isn’t the MLB, where playoff win expectancy depends on whoever’s pitching that night, nor the NFL, where the 60-minute sample size leads to high win variability. In the NBA, the better regular-season team most often wins the series.

It’s not that you shouldn’t “make moves.” It’s just that you shouldn’t make moves that take on “project” players who are being paid handsomely but have yet to show that they can reach the leaderboards for our dreaded all-in-one stats that are pretty good at approximating value.

Instead, you should be looking for the diamond in the rough via keeping roster slots open for tryouts and the draft picks plentiful, and then pouncing with a team-friendly contract before the player’s reputation catches up with his actual production.

It seems that there’s a strawman at play here: that simply because you shouldn’t make big-money moves (until you have your high-yield stars) means that you should make no moves at all. This is silly and disingenuous. It’s overwhelmingly obvious that flexibility and prospecting should be the priorities of any team stuck in the lottery.

@66 An additional reason getting the 4 is the most brutal outcome: it’s the least likely outcome! If we dodge the 5 spot coin flip, our most likely outcome is 1 then 2 then 3. 4 feels inevitable.

Tonight might be the most exciting pre-game I’ve had all year. The Knicks are playing a fellow scrub team but have no reason to lose. I expect big things from the squad tonight.