Knicks Morning News (2019.04.21)

  • [NYPost] Duke great: Zion Williamson would be a star in NBA playoffs
    (Saturday, April 20, 2019 7:07:55 PM)

    Sixers sharpshooter JJ Redick played a full four seasons at Duke, but has no issues that the Blue Devils’ hyped freshmen trio have chosen to be one-and-doners. And as far as Zion Williamson, Redick believes the dynamic power forward could have starred this season in the NBA at age 18. “I think Zion is the…

  • 14 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.04.21)”

    What a disappointing season for the Jazz. I mean no one expected them to beat the Rockets, but they could have least made it a series.

    Donovan Mitchell is the classic example of media overhype, he throws down the occasional nasty slam, scores many inefficient pointz (he’s shooting .328 in this series) and the sports talking heads can’t get enough of him.

    Utah should really think about trading him, I’m sure there’s plenty of GM’s who would give a lot back to have a young “star” on their team.

    Harden not even knowing he went 0-15 is pretty funny. Some of the smarter NBA writers I pay attention to thought Utah had a real chance in this series but it’s looking like they were all wrong.

    Harden also had six steals last night. He set a career high for steals this year-I wonder if Houston has figured out some way to make Harden less useless on defense.

    Isn’t he rated the best post defender (of his respective man) in the game right now?

    Harden has been a lot better as a defender, specially now that he has a full team and doesn’t have to carry the offense every single game.

    I’ve been saying Mitchell got way overrated and it’s been a bit sad to watch. He just can’t finish inside, and he’s not a good enough shooter to compensate for that. He can still get to the line but he’s not a shot creator for others. His ts% for the series is at .434 with a 32% usage rate.

    He’s looking very much like the next Monta Ellis, a guy who always got hyped as a big time scorer but who could never really score efficiently enough to be the guy on a good team. Utah lacks scorers, but when you’re shooting this badly on this many attempts you’re actively hurting your team.

    is kevin booker better than donovan mitchell?

    is either of those players the best hope for trier?

    just without looking at their numbers (both sides of the ball) and contract – I’d probably pick booker…trier, I don’t know yet who to really compare him to…

    Really surprised by the Celtics series. I had that one going 6. I’d say they are finding another gear, but it looks like they still had a pretty bad game.

    Not as bad as Gallo, though. Ouch.

    And hey, that SGA kid seems pretty good. Wish he was available when we were picking…. But I guess even if he were, no one here would have suggested him as a better pick than our 3-on-3 star…

    Indiana was reeeeally bad, people forgot that they’ve been stumbling hard these past weeks because no one really paid attention to them, me included.

    I think Booker is a better offensive player than Mitchell for sure, he’s a better shooter and better passer. Mitchell might be better at defense but he plays on the 2nd best defense in the league and Booker in one of the absolute worst, so the gap might not be as large as it seems. I’d take Booker over him, to be honest, but I wouldn’t be happy with either at the max.

    Stratomatic "I'm tired of the Knicks paying lip service to DEFENSE. Get defenders & two-way players. Then play them!says:

    Indiana didn’t have enough offense before Oladipo went down. It was a small miracle they didn’t go into a death spiral when he got hurt. Boston’s defense seemed to be playing better, but it’s hard to be sure given they were playing such a bad offensive team.

    Utah has only 1 guy that can create his own shot and not enough spacing. That’s not enough to carry a team, especially when Mitchell is not a superstar scorer to begin with. If you can slow Mitchell down by keying on him or if he just has a randomly bad game, it’s pretty much an automatic loss for them against a team like the Rockets.

    I like several players on that Utah team, but they are going nowhere unless they replace a couple of players with some more offensive firepower and spacing. They should start over and build around Mitchell and Gobert. They can keep a couple of other role players, but they need a star caliber scorer that can shoot badly.

    Bizarrely enough…I get the impression OKC misses Kanter a bit.

    For all of his flaws, his touches are a much better option offensively than “have Westbrook come off a screen and shoot a midrange jumper” which, for god knows what reason, seems to be one of Billy Donovan’s favorite play calls.

    It’s quite possible the offense/defense trade off comes out positively for them, but man, on nights when PG doesn’t have it their offense is uuuuuugly.

    They can keep a couple of other role players, but they need a star caliber scorer that can shoot badly.

    I hear Melo is available…

    Holy shit this Trailblazers Thunder series is by far the most hotly contested of some very testy first round matchups.

    Typical…

    Report: #Knicks, who had traded the pick that is now 31st in the 2019 #NBADraft to dump Travis Outlaw's contract to Philadelphia in 2014 (#Nets now have the pick), would like to trade back into the early part of the 2nd round pick. They have the 55th pick.— @kc1nyk (@kylecohenNBA) April 22, 2019

    @10

    And Steven Adams has been the guy who has been sorta unplayable down the stretch in close games for them, because they simply don’t have scoring threats are having to resort to playing Grant at the 5 with Schroeder on the team, who was surprisingly not terrible today.

    Meanwhile Kanter played 30 minutes in a road win in the playoffs and OKC’s offense did not magically turn into the Warriors for some unknown reason.

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