Knicks Morning News (2019.04.25)

I follow the Giants semi-closely (though much less so the NFL as a whole) and had really gotten into these past two drafts. The Jones pick is so terrible it’s very difficult to come up with an NBA analogue for those who want to understand it better.

Knox might be in the ballpark, but he was at least projected to go just a little lower than where he was picked for god knows what reason.

You’d need to find someone picked in the early lottery with bad numbers, bad tape, and who was projected to go much, much lower (like, probably in a different round). Bonus points if there were still multiple legitimately intriguing options on the board. I’m really at a loss.

Honestly, I might just have to tune out this team until Gettleman is gone. I’m not capable of doing that with the Knicks or Yankees but I should probably take advantage of my lesser attachment to the Giants.

First of all…. my comment didn’t relate to the actual value of the picks which none of us have much idea. It was about your “he ‘s obviously too soft” inane commentary. If you have ever played football imagine playing that sport 20 days after breaking your collar bone and I don’t give a crap how good the surgeons are. He can’t possibly be “obviously soft”.

Your silly biases spew forward when you also said “he looks like the Covington Kid” (like that kid did anything wrong). I guess that is proof positive he is a pussy no matter what the facts are. Just for the record Eli Manning is the spitting image of Opie Taylor and he hasn’t missed a down in a million NFL seasons so judging a book by its cover generally isn’t a good idea while ignoring the facts.

These are actually fair criticisms of the portions of my criticism which could be classified as knee jerk and bitter.

But I’m not ignoring the facts. The facts are what led me to make emotional judgments that I can’t support. Gettelman had a terrible night that will impact the Giants for as long as Phil’s stupidity impacted the Knicks.

Focusing on the wisecracks made in the midst of bitter disappointment is… I don’t know what it is… picking on low hanging fruit? Missing the big picture by a mile?

The fact that I don’t like the way he looks *clearly* isn’t the basis for my argument that this was a terrible pick. It’s an obvious expression of disgust over the disappointment of watching a franchise blow itself up. Beating up on a throwaway comment while ignoring the main argument does not let you draw the conclusions that you did.

It’s wrong that “none of us know the value of these picks”. Prospects get graded have projections. We reached. Far. Twice.

I defended Gettelman hard on the decision to pass on QBs last year. His performance last night is indefensible.

And you know what, you’re right, I have a bias: despite the success of Eli and Peyton, I think a QB needs to have a certain appearance in order for an entire team to follow him. If you have the talent, like the Mannings did, people won’t care how you look. But if you’re mediocre or subpar, like Jones was in college and projects to be in the pros (by everyone except Gettelman), and you look like you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I don’t think that an NFL team is likely to respond well to you.

You can call me biased for that opinion. I have no problem accepting your criticism.

I’d bet a damn lot that I’m right, though.

I’m not going to get too pissy about the Giants yet. Reese was a fucking drafting disaster his whole tenure besides a couple star picks. It’s why the Giants are where they are currently. If they have good lines and the kid sucks then there’s a problem.

Dinosaurs who mistakenly believe they’re 10 steps ahead of the game rather than 20 behind, too arrogant to be swayed by logic, and someone holding the franchise hostage until ownership recognizes what a terrible blunder they made.

I didn’t agree with you last year, Al, because I love the Barkley pick. But you were right. Even if you love that pick, it seems more like an instance of the broken clock being right twice.

Gettelman is a disaster and the sooner he’s gone the better. We’ll probably have the #1 pick next year, and he can’t be the man making it. Based on everything we’ve seen from him, he’d probably take the 10th best prospect at #1 and let the franchise QB fall to #2 without even considering trading down.

By the way the Melo and Reddish analogies are ok, but underscore the enormity of this mistake.

Jones is a borderline top 100 pick who Gettelman fell in love with for reasons that were not logical and spent the #6 pick on.

For Jowles (or anyone who wants to relate this to the Knicks), what Gettleman did was the equivalent of if Phil was considering giving Melo the mega-max with a no trade, but then decided to offer the same mega max deal to Lance Stephenson instead, because Phil saw something in Lance that no else in the NBA could see, and because his triangle offense would unlock Lance’s full potential.

That’s how enormous this mistake was.

I didn’t agree with you last year, Al, because I love the Barkley pick. But you were right. Even if you love that pick, it seems more like an instance of the broken clock being right twice.

Saquon is awesome. But you can’t take him and then take a developmental quarterback with the sixth pick in the draft the following year. Even if Gettleman is right about Jones, which I very seriously doubt, by the time Jones is a viable above-average NFL starter, Saquon will have a lot of mileage on him and will cost a ton of money.

The one thing I will say about the Giants, though, if you’re an unequivocal disaster you only get two years (e.g. Ray Handley, Bob McAdoo). Reese was awful but he won a Super Bowl in year 1 and that bought him time. If we have the season everyone knows we’re likely to have, I trust them to fire him before the next draft.

The Maras are at times quick on the trigger with godawful coaches. Never with executives. George Young (who admittedly saved the franchise and thus got a lot of leeway) was allowed to stick around for multiple years after it was clear the game had passed him by. Reese survived long after he should have because that fluky 2011 SB win (on the heels of the less-fluky 2007 title) tricked the organization into thinking their formula was working. This is an inherently conservative ownership group who hates going outside the family. To replace Reese, they interviewed only one person with no prior ties to the team, and instead gave the job to Gettleman. I figure we’re stuck with at least three more years of the guy:

2019 season: Gettleman gets a pass because it’s Eli’s final year
2020 season: Gettleman gets a pass because it’s Jones’ first full year as starter (even if he plays part of this season)
2021 season: If Jones still stinks, maybe Mara and Tisch start to develop qualms. But that’s the earliest it would happen.

And you know what, you’re right, I have a bias: despite the success of Eli and Peyton, I think a QB needs to have a certain appearance in order for an entire team to follow him.

This is such nonsense….Phil Simms still has a “golly, shucks baby-face” at the age of 60. Eli looks like Opie Taylor. Joe Montana and Fran Tarkenton would never be mistaken as macho men.

If you can play in sports, people will follow you…. if you can’t a specimen like Ryan Leaf loses credibility immediately.

Then he drafted a big-hitting safety with no coverage skills to put alongside his other big-hitting safety with no coverage skills.

Did he draft Landon Collins …. or just pay him 95 million to not cover people and be a midget linebacker? 🙂

I feel for you Giants fans, but we Jets fans must continue to live with Mike Maccagnan and the Jets’ DL fetish. That’s not even close to a position of need, and the Jets have many areas of need. Year after year, the guy ignores the OL in the draft or as premium free agents to sign, instead using a rare mid to late round pick, but mostly picking up vet garbage discarded by other teams.

Hey, Quinnen Williams seems like a good kid and may very well be a good player, but we’ve heard all this before. Oh yeah, the proverbial “Best Player in the Draft”(tm) again. Like Leo Williams. Or Sheldon Richardson. Rinse and repeat. Yet the team continues to stink.

And it is not just about this one pick last night. They just continue to pour draft capital into that position. Last year, after trading away both of their second round picks (and this year’s too) to get Darnold, they took DL in the third and sixth round. So, two of their six picks last year, and now their first one this year.

Meanwhile, the OL is awful. They need a C right now. They need an OT right now. They have not a single young promising OL who could emerge, and current starters at C, RG, and RT who are garbage. They have a young QB and an expensive new RB who need much better up front.

Maybe in the third round this year? Two picks: a C (there are 2-3 more good ones left, but will either be around…and if so, will Mac even care), and an OT? Please. They could use a good CB, too, but Mac’s draft record is not encouraging.

Being a jets fan made it easier to quit watching football. I think what the giants are doing is producing a bad enough football product that y’all can quit with ease too. In a perfect world the jets win a superbowl and i can run off into the sunset, never to witness another devastating brain injury.

The world is a better place without football. (hopefully this is as political a stance as I will take on this site).

I wouldn’t have a problem with someone trying to bring back 90s basketball if he had a statistical reason to believe he could exploit today’s style with an inside/outside game instead of the outside/inside game we see today and he also had Shaq or Hakeem as the starting C. 🙂 When everyone is built to play and more importantly defend a certain style, another style might have an advantage for awhile until those other teams catch on and retool.

It’s trying to force it without the correct personnel or without any statistical backing that’s a problem.

Such a bad analogy… Lance Stevenson has an 8 season professional record of sub mediocrity….

So does Jones! Now you need to do your research. Daniel Jones couldn’t play QB well enough in high school to earn a college scholarship to any Division 1 school. When he did play at Duke, he didn’t perform well. That absolutely matches up with Lance Stephenson’s record of sub mediocrity. At least Lance was big in high school.

a better analogy might be Jokic…

Even if this wild-eyed optimism is correct, Denver took Jokic in the 2nd round, not with the 6th pick in a loaded draft. I wouldn’t have a problem with Jones if we took him where he should have gone.

@22
I wish I could have your optimism. Jets boards are aflame. As I said, it is not just about this one kid and this one pick, but Mac’s entire philosophy of drafting and signing free agents, and a team philosophy that goes back even further. They spend huge amounts of draft capital on the defense (supposedly 15 of their last 18 first round picks!), and particularly along the DL, yet the defense stinks.

They just keep recycling first round picks on DL. Wilkerson. Richardson. Williams. Another Williams this year. Also, 2/6 picks last year. Oh yeah, and they just resigned Henry Anderson to a fairly big deal. Another DL.

The #1 priority should be to build around your young QB. Darnold had to run around for his life most of last year and try to catch wayward shotgun snaps from the awful C who was Mac’s prize FA signing the previous offseason (and was cut after one season). WR play is spotty at best.

Last year’s 3rd rounder should have been on the best OL available. Yet, they wasted it on a reach for an oldish (he was 24 when drafted, I think) small school DL who showed nothing last year. IIRC, Mac has drafted only 2 OL in four years (none in the first three rounds), and signed nothing but junk as FA, even as their last two stalwarts (D’Brick and Mangold) retired.

All this is irrelevant if your target sucks the way people are suggesting.

I don’t know much about football or the QB being discussed, but sometimes it’s a bit of a dilemma when you like someone in the draft and you are selecting well above where that person is likely to get picked.

The fantasy is “just trade down, add another asset, and get your player plus another good prospect”.

I suspect that’s a lot tougher than it seems when you are operating with imperfect knowledge about where your #1 target is going to be selected and have to find someone willing to make that trade in the area that ensures you get him. If you gamble too much you could easily miss him. If you really love the guy and can’t find the right deal to ensure you’ll get him plus another asset, sometimes you just have to make the move and take the heat for selecting him above wherever he would have fallen.

But again, if the guys sucks, that’s a different matter.

Here’s one of the upsides of being 60 years old.

I was a young sports fan when the Jets and Knicks were both champions of the world!!

Here’s another upside.

I’m retired now and am going to spend the afternoon at Belmont Park. Wish me luck.

Ratherr than multi quoting people:

How on earth did the Raiders go from the next team to challenge NE just two to three years ago to this

If you think college football is a scam what about tuition

I like the Dl and think the one way to stymie Brady is/was pressure up the middle. That being said I was hoping for a trade to get multiple picks since they really need players at more than just the fantasy Football positions.

You may be familiar with the NFL draft value chart, assigning points to each pick. Here’s Mac’s apparent record in the last 4 Jets drafts:

Defensive Tackles: 4050 points (5 picks)
Quarterbacks: 2678 points (3 picks)
Safeties: 2110 points (2 picks)
Inside Linebackers: 850 points (1 pick)
Wide receivers: 761 points (4 picks)
Outside Linebackers: 355 points (2 picks)
Tight Ends: 111 points (2 picks)
Cornerbacks: 99 points (4 picks)
Offensive Line: 58 points (2 picks)
Running backs: 25.2 points (2 picks)
Defensive End: 18.6 points (1 pick)
Punter: 1 point (1 pick)

Gettleman claimed that Jones’s MVP performance in the Senior Bowl ultimately sold him on the passer, telling reporters that after three series he “was in full-bloom love.”

i’m not sure on this but is this a step up from 3on3s?

@36

And now the board is playing right in their hands because there is a bunch of a very competent WR talent that has fallen into the 2nd round.

Yeah, except the Jets don’t have a second round pick at this time. They traded that, and both of the their second rounders last year, to move up for Darnold. Plus, C and OT are much more serious needs than WR.

The Jets needed to trade back. If QW is so awesome, why couldn’t they find a team to trade back? I’d love to know what Buffalo (picking at 9, and supposedly coveted QW) would have been willing to do.

Oh, BTW, the reports now that new Jets coach Gase is already not happy. He’s nowhere to be seen at this time, and supposedly the Jets are the only NFL team not having a press conference with their shiny new first round pick today. More fun in Jetland.

If QW is so awesome, why couldn’t they find a team to trade back?

Probably because the draft was so deep in DL talent other GMs weren’t willing to part with their draft capital to make the deal. But the flip side to that is the fact that there will be good talent moving down when you guys pick again.

Yeah, except the Jets don’t have a second round pick at this time. They traded that, and both of the their second rounders last year, to move up for Darnold. Plus, C and OT are much more serious needs than WR.

Either a legit 2nd round WR or interior OL will fall to you guys when you pick in the early 3rd.

Oh, BTW, the reports now that new Jets coach Gase is already not happy.

Well, I can’t find a silver lining there. Hiring that guy was a mistake. His hire has all sorts of disaster written all over it. Bad word of mouth follows him everywhere he’s coached and his great success as a coordinator was when Payton Manning was running his system as a second coordinator on the field.

How on earth did the Raiders go from the next team to challenge NE just two to three years ago to this

That 12-4 team was a bit of a mirage, but they did have an elite offensive line, a DPOY, a competent QB and some decent weapons on offense. The next year Some of the OL guys started to decline, Amari Cooper started playing like a bust and Reggie McKenzie started whiffing on every draft pick. Then they brought in Gruden who absolutely set everything on fire, just pissed value away at every turn.

He traded down in last year’s draft and got an extra third round pick, then used the third round pick to trade for Martavis Bryant, who then got cut, and then re-signed because nobody wanted him. He’s not very good to begin with. They used the traded-down first round pick to take Kolton Miller, a right tackle in college and a major reach where they picked him. You don’t draft right tackles in the first round. But anyway, Chucky played him at LEFT tackle, where he was one of the worst players in the NFL. This year Chucky egregiously overspent on an overrated left tackle in free agency, and they’re moving Miller back to right tackle.

It’s just stuff like that over and over. They traded Khalil Mack for essentially one first round pick. The second first rounder they “acquired” was actually a pick swap in which they send the Bears a 2RP. They used the Khalil Mack pick this year on a running back who looks like an okay player but the kind of guy you can probably find in the third or fourth round.

Chucky is magically stupid, and his contract runs forever and he’s like the owner’s little buddy. They’re going to be so bad for so long. Watching the train wreck unfold in slow motion is pretty fascinating.

@42

This is a dumber version of when the Yankees used to draft for “makeup”, and picked Dante Bichette Jr. and Cito Culver in the first round.

Gase is probably a good OC ill-suited to be a head coach.

I’m trying to be optimistic tonight. Mac tends to go for safe BPA in his first round picks, but he tends to reach and whiff after that. Hackenberg is the most spectacular example of that. That 2nd round pick was just lit on fire.

It’s pretty funny there’s a game 6 tonight where the road team is a ten point favorite.

@50

Nah, unless the Clippers actually win the series.

It’s easier to find street parking in Manhattan than it is to find an NBA executive, player or coach who doesn’t think Durant is going to sign with the Knicks in July.

Some of Durant’s former teammates think it’s going to happen, per ESPN sources. Several of his current teammates have told friends that they think it’s going to happen, sources said. Opposing agents believe it’s a fait accompli: “Just a matter of putting pen to paper,” is how one agent of another top free agent in the 2019 free-agent class put it.

[…]

Multiple executives doing their homework on the free-agent class, though, fully expect Durant to sign with the Knicks and Irving to join him.

https://deadspin.com/report-pretty-much-everyone-is-sure-kevin-durant-is-he-1834336028

@52 despite the weather, sounds like a very good day…

although it seems at times i’d be interested in watching two kids pitching pennies – i never really followed horse racing that closely…

this santa anita stuff is interesting though – i had no idea what some of these horses were going through in terms of drugs and dealing with tough racing conditions and training…

sounds like the rules around horse racing may be getting dragged in to the 21st century soon…

it’s funny, for the most part, the regrets i might have in life involve things i didn’t do, and wish i had done…

one of those being going inside the monmouth racetrack…i remember when i lived in that area for a bit i walked by that racetrack a few times and it looked absolutely magnificent from the outside…like something from a whole different time…

@55

If you want to experience the racetrack, I would strongly suggest a trip to Saratoga Springs NY on any racing weekend (though Travers weekend might a little too much given the huge crowd) during the meet in July/August. It’s a nice town with plenty of entertainment and good food at night and the track has a throwback country fair feel to it with the best racing in the US.

Santa Anita was a debacle. I don’t think anyone knows exactly what happened, but my guess would be the heavy rains changed the track. The maintenance crew in California is so unused to getting that much rain and having to seal and unseal the track, something was probably going on in the base that made it less safe. The good news is that even though the drug Lasix is getting all the headlines and almost certainly had nothing to do with it, the bad publicity is helping make changes I am all for.

visiting a racetrack is on my bucket of things to do list…it seems like a pretty cool environment to chill at…with some very interesting participants (i don’t know, maybe that’s just some perception from watching tv and movies)…

considering the level of intelligence, and, what seems like a competitive spirit the horses have – i have no doubt they’re loved by many if not most…

i’m not really sure what kind of conditions exist for the care of racing horses and dogs…pretty sure they’re better off than cows, chickens and pigs…heck, that and probably most zoo animals also…

probably one of the saddest sights i’ve ever seen was visiting the oakland zoo years ago…it seemed a lot of the enclosures at the time where sitting on regular ol’ asphalt…it was a pretty grim place…

Awesome comment on that Deadspin article, “Listen, I get all the reports and stuff, but just wait until the Knicks get a look at Daniel Jones and decide to go all in on him.”

if you go by betting lines nuggets/sonics ’94 was a bigger upset than warriors/mavs. and by that measure clips this year would be the biggest upset by a country mile, not even close.

Someone tell me who won the Josh Rosen trade

Whichever team traded away Josh Rosen

@64

Miami won and it’s not even close. Josh Rosen was considered one of the best QB prospects last season (I desperately wanted the Giants to take him). Getting him for a late 2nd, at best a coin flip to become a good player, and a 5th, basically worthless, is a steal. It would kind of be like if the Lakers traded Lonzo Ball for a future 2nd rounder.

I don’t expect many people to agree with me on Klay Thompson being one of the most overrated players in the league

but also I’m not wrong

At least if Durant comes to the Knicks we don’t have to worry too much that he’s washed up. What a performance.

so if kd is on the clips instead of the dubs – the clips win…

not in love with the rockets, but, ready to see the warriors go home…

I wonder if the g-men will be able to trade jones for a 4th rnd pick in a couple of years…

I guess maybe the words “decline phase” and Kevin Durant can be disassociated for a few minutes now?