(Wednesday, May 08, 2019 1:36:31 AM)
Oddly enough, the sportsbook at Caesars Palace doesn’t see any of those as the most likely options. Brooklyn Nets favored to land Kyrie Irving Yes, the Brooklyn Nets are apparently the favorites to land Kyrie Irving after an ascendant season built around young talent. Trailing behind the Nets are the Knicks, Celtics and Lakers, with the Los Angeles Clippers coming in fifth.
(Wednesday, May 08, 2019 1:36:31 AM)
Oddly enough, the sportsbook at Caesars Palace doesn’t see any of those as the most likely options. Brooklyn Nets favored to land Kyrie Irving Yes, the Brooklyn Nets are apparently the favorites to land Kyrie Irving after an ascendant season built around young talent. Trailing behind the Nets are the Knicks, Celtics and Lakers, with the Los Angeles Clippers coming in fifth.
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 10:23:48 PM)
The NBA Draft lottery is a week away, so it’s not yet known where the Knicks will pick in the upcoming draft. It would be an upset if New York or any team pass on Zion Williamson if given the opportunity to select No. 1 overall. However, the Knicks have just a 14% chance of […]
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 3:17:26 PM)
We don’t know where the Knicks are going to pick in the 2019 NBA Draft yet, so it’s way too early to say who New York may target on draft night. But it’s worth noting that some Knicks talent evaluators are fans of Duke forward Cam Reddish
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 2:30:02 PM)
Kyrie Irving can be a free agent after the season, and the idea that he could team up with fellow free agent Kevin Durant on the Knicks this summer has picked up steam. Here are the latest rumors…
[NYTimes] Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors Have 76ers on the Brink (Wednesday, May 08, 2019 2:50:51 AM)
A blowout win in Game 5 has Toronto just one win away from its second trip to the Eastern Conference finals in four seasons.
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Kyrie Irving Is Off Target Again, and the Celtics Are on Life Support (Tuesday, May 07, 2019 1:42:42 PM)
He was 7 of 22 from the field in Game 4. “For me, the 22 shots, I should’ve shot 30,” he said. “I’m that great of a shooter.”
[NYTimes] Sports of The Times: Don’t Give the Title to the Warriors Yet (Tuesday, May 07, 2019 4:42:26 PM)
After 48 sweaty, tumbling, raucous minutes, the Rockets scored a 112-108 victory and knotted the series.
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 4:30:15 PM)
The head coach at Murray State believes Broadway is the perfect stage to showcase Ja Morant’s point-guard “basketball genius,’’ and predicts he will be one of the NBA’s top shoe salesmen if he lands with the Knicks. Morant, the creative sophomore being heralded in several mock drafts as the second pick after Zion Williamson, had…
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 1:43:14 PM)
The Knicks and Nets can both afford to chase the biggest free-agent stars this summer, and both are expected to be in the race for Kyrie Irving, whose stay in Boston looks over more and more by the day. Though the Lakers’ impending coaching decision could certainly make Los Angeles a landing spot, Irving is…
(Tuesday, May 07, 2019 12:42:03 PM)
The Warriors are not hiding from reality. They are trying to extend their playoff run to chase a third straight championship, but also to delay the inevitable. Breakups are coming, and next year’s team may look much different than the edition that has become the NBA’s gold standard in recent years. “Internally in Golden State,…
202 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.05.08)”
The first two pieces of news in the list are eerily disturbing.
The first two? What about the Knicks being enamored with Cam Reddish!?!?
Yeah, of course I meant the first non redundant two 🙂
Ha! Gotcha.
Yeah, that was quite the one-two punch there. Holy shit.
I don’t read too much into the Kyrie thing, but that dude is a bit of a nutjob, so who the heck knows. If the Knicks have to “settle” for Kemba to go with Durant, that’s not that big of a deal, either.
For the love of God, please be some scouting misdirection.
We love Cam!! He can’t shoot, drive, play defense, pass, or rebound. Boy does he look like an NBA player though.
Honestly I’m fine not getting Kyrie. Just give me KD.
Do people not expect the Nets to bring DeAngelo Russell back though?
I think they plan on it, but if Kyrie tells them that he’s interested, then you gotta take Kyrie over DLo. What I don’t know, exactly, though, is where they stand via cap holds. In other words, could they afford to sign Kyrie and then also sign and trade DLo at the max? There would definitely be a market for DLo at the lower level max.
When I saw that bit of news I didn’t even want to check in here about it. I was too depressed.
After last season they still love Knox. Perhaps Reddish is just more of the same.
Looking on the bright side, I guess our current management doesn’t want trade the farm for low efficiency players, they prefer to draft and grow their own low efficiency players.
Good points.
Re: the top 5 pick, I don’t expect anyone other than Zion to be able to contribute to a championship team next season. It’s hard for rookies to be counted on like that.
Re: Durant, yeah, I think it’s reasonable to expect next year to be a peak season for him. The following one, too. The third year is anyone’s guess, and the last two are probably the price of the first 3. If I can’t get the pieces around him in year 1, it makes the purchase price more questionable, especially when you factor in the opportunity cost.
Re: trades, given the low salaries of our rookies, we have to give up a lot before even including the picks. If I want Covington, for instance, I have to give up something like Knox + Smith. Am I really adding a #1 pick to that? Even though we don’t like Knox, he has high trade value.
It’s just problematic, is all. We may be in the opening, but I’m thinking endgame.
We have another problem, too, when it comes to the endgame. Because David Fizdale is an isolated pawn.
But yeah, I know, I’m getting way ahead of myself.
I just went through this the Giants, I can’t.
Jowles, I’m pretty sure someone said this a few weeks ago, but if the Knicks take Reddish with Morant on the board, then you will have a sense of what the NFL draft was like for the Giants.
@1 FWIW – I’ve heard that Vegas odds makers set odds, not based on what they predict an outcome will be, but to get an even distribution of bets on all possible outcomes. This way, they pay the winners with the losers and just collect the fees.
i.e. it’s more of a reflection of popular opinion than some kind of analysis or insider info.
I honestly can’t imagine anyone taking Cam Reddish earlier than #5. If they end up taking Reddish at 5 it would still be horrible, but not nearly as horrible as taking him earlier than that, presuming the top 4 are Zion, Morant, Barrett, and Culver who all were actually productive playing against college kids.
I for one would not be terribly surprised if they took Reddish at 5. This FO’s MO has consistently been to take highest physical upside players and trust the development staff.
Has there ever been a player drafted in the top 5 who had a college TS of <0.5? Knick fans want to know!
I haven't been able to watch much of the playoffs so far, but what I hear is that Ben Simmons is being played off the ball. So ummm… what does he do if Embiid is on the floor and around the basket? Pretty crazy that he has still no perimeter game whatsoever and has been so much less impactful in the playoffs.
To distract myself from this unsettling (and, as others have said, very Gettleman-esque) Reddish news, I’ll instead point out that the four t-shirts on sale on the front page involve three guys who no longer play for the Knicks (and, other than KP, haven’t in a loooong time), plus Mark Sanchez.
Antoine Walker went #6 overall. Iverson did his freshman year but brought it up in his sophomore year.
That they’re already leaking stories about Reddish this early suggests to me that they are considering him for #4, as well. But yes, I agree that it’s not like they’re considering him at, like, #3 or whatever. But I think this makes it sound like they’d take Reddish over Culver and others. Which is, of course, bonkers.
His game translates well to the NBA. Missing shots, having more turnovers than assists, that sort of stuff plays well when you get the spacing you don’t have in college.
I don’t think you can worry too much about some anonymous comment this far from the draft.
I worry because this is the same type of leak we heard last year about another shooting prospect who didn’t do anything well, including shooting.
Yeah, I’m more concerned about leaks this early. It’s abnormal to leak names this early. It sure suggests that they actually like the guy. But whatever, so long as they get a top three pick, it won’t matter. I don’t think they’d dream of taking Reddish over Morant or Barrett (you couldn’t possibly take Reddish over his own college teammate who was clearly better than him, right?).
You’re right, but some of us are suffering from Gettelman-induced PTSD. That all started with innocuous stories just like this about how the Giants really like Daniel Jones, and it ended in unthinkable disaster. We all thought, “well, they must mean in the second round,” or “maybe with the 17th pick, but surely they wouldn’t take him at 6”. Sorry, it may be irrelevant, but it’s eerily similar.
It is now imperative to get a top-3 pick. I’d take Barrett 100 out of 100 times over Reddish. I’d be happy with Barrett at 3, even at the risk of having a DeRozan clone with the pointzzz to command early max chatter. I wouldn’t even waste a 2nd-rounder on Reddish. He’ll get eaten alive in the NBDL, to say nothing of the insane amount of talent currently in the League.
The bullshit never ends with this team.
I don’t think there’s any way for them to become championship favorites next year. The issue is that a top five pick in this year’s draft could help them be a legit championship contender the following season, especially with normal improvement from Mitch and a MLE addition (I believe they’ll have the BAE available, as well). And if they can become a legit title contender two years after being the worst team in the NBA (while being at least a theoretical title contender in year one, which they probably would be, on the level of say, this year’s Celtics, Sixers and Blazers), I’m all for that.
They took Knox over SGA.
I hear all of this. But it calls into question the wisdom of maxing a 31 year old Durant and moving the whole organization to his timeline if you only expect them to be a legit contender one or two seasons.
Then again, there’s probably enough value in him coming here and transforming us from laughing stock to contender that it’s worth it even if we don’t win. He would, at minimum, provide the kind of legitimization that Chris Paul gave the Clippers.
Yeah, I’d be more than happy if they “only” got the return that the Clippers got with Paul (six straight .600 plus season, including three .680 plus seasons in a row).
Actually, can we even offer him 5 years? Our max is 4, right?
Questions before I sign off on this:
1) Who’s taller?
2) Who’s got longer arms?
3) Who’s better at 3-on-3?
4) Who shoots better during one 2-hour workout?
5) Who’s got better intangibles?
6) Who do the box scores lie about more?
7) Who has larger hands?
8) Who gets more boilerplate coach-speak about their talent, hustle and heart?
Yep, four year limit.
Love me some Reddish. That was the guy I was dreaming about all last year.
I used to know that, because that fifth year made it so sensible to re-sign in Golden State. I must have made myself forget it recently as the hype train picked up.
Kevin Knox was a much better offensive player in college than Cam Reddish if that helps. Cam Reddish had a .499 TS%. He’s really big and maybe is a good defender but you can’t spend a 1st round pick on a kid that bad at scoring.
Especially not for the 2nd time in 3 years.
I will fucking fight you, Owen
Just another reason to hope for the #1 or #2 pick. From #3 on out, who knows what they’ll do?
I’d be mildly disappointed if we sign him as an undrafted free agent.
I mean, I can see taking Zion over Reddish, but really no one else.
CamReddish is kind of a col name so theres that too
Take Cam Reddish this year, Cassius Winston next year and we will be the coolest team in the league.
if we win the lottery and have a chance to trade the pick to atlanta for, say, barrett and reddish, do we offer the mavs unprotected 1 as a sweetener?
1. The same was true last year also and in the playoffs.
2. Are you saying it was all a coincidence that Rozier and the Celtics just happened to play well when he was in the starting unit being given a lot of minutes with the best players?
3. I’ll grant you that Thomas had a great OFFENSIVE season his last year in Boston, but the team was also very successful the prior year when he was not considered a particularly special offensive player but was considered one of the worst defenders in the league.
And again, are you saying it’s all coincidence both that Thomas and the Celtics just happened to play so well in combination?
As I said, A lot of on/off is noisy. But when everything from multiple years, with multiple teams, and multiple players is screaming that player “x” is not contributing as much to the team as the boxscore says, there’s usually a very good reason for it.
Even NBA +/- doesn’t have them very far apart this year. And that’s only because it rates Irving as a plus defender (???). That’s something I have suggested is a flaw in that metric. I see a lot of players getting a “plus” on the defensive side that few if any observers think are a plus. They usually just happen to play for good defensive teams. I also see the flip side.
You might need to give up both of the Mavs picks in that trade.
@40
i see what you did there
No one is arguing that Kemba is better than Kyrie.
No one is arguing that Kemba would be a good signing at the max.
I am arguing that the actual gap between them is less than boxscore metrics suggests and that difference is being captured better by on/off evidence, adjusted plus/minus evidence, player substitutions to the team, teammate comments about Kyrie etc..
Strat, if you can’t tell me off the top of your head who Kyrie and Kemba have had as their most-played backup PGs over the course of their entire careers, then you definitely can’t tell me how they affect on-off numbers.
I mean, shit, if you can name all of the Knicks PGs in 2014-15, and tell me the % distribution of available minutes to them, I’ll be impressed. If you can do it for two players on teams you don’t follow, I will be fucking floored.
Terry Rozier is a very good backup. And there are plenty of teammate comments following the 2016 NBA Finals that sufficiently negate the whispers of some nameless current Celtics.
It’s a bad argument, strat. Kyrie’s attitude is worrisome, but it doesn’t negate his superiority to Kemba.
here are the rapms of kyrie and kemba over the last 4 seasons starting with 2018-19. rapms are not close to perfect for many reasons as nothing computable is perfect, but they do adjust for opponents and backups better then any eye-tester could just by knowing, say, who the backup is. lineups are much more complex than backups. backups change, backups get hurt, starters play with their backups, your backup may be bad but you might have collinearity with another starter who has a great backup, etc.
kyrie 2.69, 1.02, 2.35, 0.18
kemba 2.19, 3.50, 2.97, 1.24
It’s “being captured better” because that’s what you want to believe. So better means = tells me what I want to hear, which is the issue I have with so many of your arguments.
Also, if Kyrie is a bad defender, how is Kemba any better?
As long as you’re not saying the Knicks should target Kemba instead of Kyrie, then sure, whatever. I’m not sure I agree with your point but if it doesn’t relate to the Knicks’ plans it’s just not really an interesting enough topic to belabor.
The best case scenario for this offseason (assuming Kawhi is off the table) remains Kyrie + KD.
I am aware that backups are significant to on/off and that it’s extremely difficult to tease out a player’s value from +/- and on off data. That’s why I am not pointing to a single season.
I am pointing to multiple teams, with multiple backups, games where the backup became the starter because Irving was out (and a 3rd stringer became the backup), regular season, playoffs, and now even NBA plus minus.
There isn’t any conflicting evidence about Kyrie’s value in any of that. It all says he’s a very good player, but probably not hugely better than Kemba. I am not putting an exact number on that because I can’t. I can only shade the boxscore in one direction or another.
I’ll tell you what I think is really going on.
Some people believe that all you have to do is look BPM, WS48, etc.. and that makes them more informed than most players, GMs, analysts, and other fans.
Some people think the boxscore is a great place to start, but it doesn’t capture some of the things players do that “add” or “subtract” value, can’t capture that a player’s own numbers are partially dependent on his teammates, and can’t capture that the value of each thing a player does varies depending on the makeup of the team. The values are not fixed like the formulas.
I’m in the second category looking for data that supports or conflicts with the boxscore.
I don’t automatically reject the other data because it conflicts with what I want to believe about the boxscore. If you can find me any data that suggests the gap between Kyrie and Kemba is as large as the boxscore says, I’ll gladly alter my opinion. I just know that what I am doing adds value to my understanding even if I can’t place an exact…
Another Strat-ism you hear a lot is “player X is a bad defender” or “player A is a better defender than player B” as if Strat has watched every minute of every NBA game and is just qualified to throw out his opinion of who is and isn’t a good defender as a plain objective fact.
It’s not just “conventional wisdom says player A is a better defender than player B,” it’s that Strat KNOWS who the good and bad defenders are because of his general omniscience.
Read my last post and then look in the mirror.
I don’t mean that as an insult, but I am not the one rejecting conflicting data. I am looking at all of it, including the boxscore It’s others that are trying to explain away on/off, NBA plus minus, Rozier’s success last year, Boston’s success when Kyrie wasn’t on the team or when he’s injured this year etc..
I’m simply saying, hey guys, there’s a lot of conflicting info here.
Drafting Reddish would make me feel blueish…
One PG has a .600 TS% on 30% USG% and a 35.0 AST%.
Another PG has a .550 TS% on 30% USG% and a 28% AST%.
Those are tangible things. Those are baskets the first guy is making and the second guy is bricking. A lot of baskets.
How much unquantifiable “his teammates don’t like him” and “the ball doesn’t move” kind of stuff does it take to offset that? It would take a lot. A whole lot. Maybe if the first guy is a truly abysmal defender and the other guy is Gary Payton, that would make up for some of it. But that is not Kyrie and Kemba.
I think a strong argument can be made in favor of Kemba being the better teammate to pair with Durant if you are worried about his attitude or flat earthiness rubbing his teammates the wrong way. That would be the main reason why I would chose Kemba over Kyrie. If you have Kevin Durant, maybe the difference between Kemba and Kyrie doesn’t matter as much since either of them would be the number two star on the team and not the number one star. And also, maybe Kyrie would be less inclined to play the second fiddle long term BECAUSE he all ready played that role in Cleveland to Lebron whereas Kemba has been stuck on a mediocre team his whole career and might be more willing to sacrifice his individual stats/glory for the greater good of the team.
I think if we get either of them to pair with Durant we are fucking golden though.
And it feels like while Kyrie and Durant have been linked, Durant may just want to come here anyways and it isn’t contingent on Kyrie also signing here.
i!
This entire post is bullshit.
I do form opinions based on what I see, but when I say Kyrie doesn’t have a reputation as a plus defender, that means that when I read articles, hear comments from current players, ex players, analysts, and people that do look at a lot of film, I have yet to hear anyone say Kyrie is a plus defender.
So if NBA plus/minus says he’s a plus defender, I am at least skeptical of that stat.
I am twice as skeptical when I find similar discrepancies and that other player also plays on a good defensive team and other data that suggests otherwise. That leads me to believe that NBA plus minus isn’t teasing out individual defense from team defense well enough to assume it’s highly accurate.
I agree with all of this. My point is that if you can’t even identify the backups, you can’t assess any of these things:
And I’m not demanding that anyone actually be able to recall this kind of information, much less parse and analyze it with any accuracy whatsoever. It’s just that the very easiest thing — knowing the significant backups’ names — is still a remarkably hard thing to do.
Strat, im still curious what you thought of the Kentucky Derby this year
@54
Have you read a single word I have written?
You are arguing that Kyrie is better based on boxscore stats.
I am arguing that Kyrie is better, but not by as much as those boxscore stats.
At no point did I say Kemba is the better player.
I simply don’t think it’s a no brainer decision given the gap may not be as huge as we think and Kyrie is a bit of nutjob with an injury history that probably makes him a bigger risk than Kembas’s age. To be honest, I’ll be fine if neither ones come to NY. I’d rather draft Morant and add something else.
Interest in Cam Reddish highlights the problem with the current Knicks administration. While they seem to understand the value of draft picks and avoiding pitfalls of bad contracts far better than their predecessors, they have not proven any understanding of roster construction nor commitment to using statistical analysis.
Kyrie Irving played 2,000 minutes for the 2017-2018 Celtics. They were the #1 defense in the league.
You can hide a weak defender at PG, it’s just not a key defensive position like it used to be. So you have to weigh that in. It’s like having a .950 OPS first baseman who’s not that great with the glove. It’s not ideal, but who cares? It’s not a key defensive position.
1. According to the exact rules, the horse should have been disqualified.
2. There is an unwritten rule in horse racing that’s a lot like the playoffs in basketball. In the very big Grade 1 races (and especially the Derby), they tend to not call fouls as tightly. That’s why there’s some controversy among people in the industry than know the game and rules well.
3. Maximum Security was the best horse in the race that day.
4. If I was a steward, I would have voted for a DQ, but I would hated doing it. I think the rules have to be followed as written all the time. If they lead to an occasional unwanted or unjust outcome, change the rules.
5. I lost my wagers. 🙂
I looked up some Cam Reddish draft reports. His weaknesses are exactly what I don’t want. Unfortunately, he looks exactly like a player the Knicks’ brain trust would love, so I believe the reports.
Strat, Thanks for the Kentucky Derby insight. Two parties complained about the foul, do it might have been hard for them to avoid adjudicating it
I’m sorry to hear about your wagers
I don’t have Strat’s knowledge of racing but I do enjoy the races and I agree. You hate to call it, but you kinda had to. That move to the inside really could have caused a pile up and resulted in the deaths of several horses.
Sadly, I was at a party without access to a gambling portal. An hour before the race my girlfriend told me to bet on Maximum Security and Country Home, “because those are the two things I want in life.” It would have been annoying when my exacta box win got wiped out but I would have made a killing on that 65-1 to win.
i’m not a big metrics/numbers person, but, predictive tools are very interesting – shout out to hari seldon 🙂
when i took a look at the definition – yikes…
With “Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus” (RAPM), the goal is to provide more accurate results by employing a special technique called “ridge regression” (a.k.a. regularization). It significantly reduces standard errors in adjusted plus-minus (APM).
The enhancement with the RAPM is a Bayesian technique in which the data is combined with theoretical beliefs regarding reasonable, large data ranges for the parameters in order to produce more accurate models. That is what ridge regression does.
RAPM is about twice as accurate as an APM using standard regression and using 3 years of data, where the weighting of past years of data and the reference player minutes cutoff has also been carefully optimized.
wow, there’s a lot going on in that word “regularization”: P(HE) = P(EH)/P(E) . P(H)
H = hypothesis whose probability may be affected by data
P(H) = Prior probability
E = new data
P(HE) = posterior probability
P(EH) = likelihood
P(E) = marginal likelihood
that’s pretty cool for someone to be able to actually put all those pieces together…extrapolation was always my favorite thing about math…heck, seems like with the right predictive tools – you could rule the world…
are these kind of stats used more for team building, player scouting/development, or gambling?
i forgot who it was that shared a really interesting article reference someone whom was incredibly successful doing horse race betting in hong kong (i believe that was the location)…it definitely seems with the right analytical tools you could take a lot of the guess work out of placing wagers…
I’m going to drop the Kyrie debate. Everyone knows by now I think he doesn’t add as much value to his teams as people think.
Let’s go back to my favorite controversial subject…FRANK.
Before we drafted Frank, I originally hated the idea. I said something along the lines of “If he can’t score in France, there’s no way he can score in the NBA”.
Later, I read an article about how much his 3 point shooting was improving and started warming to him.
I talked about that article a few times but never posted it because I couldn’t find it. I finally found it bookmarked in the wrong folder. This is the section than gave me hope he wasn’t a permanent brick thrower .
http://www.slamonline.com/nba/frank-ntilikina-interview/#wpRlXRFBM1btvtXx.97
“Even his jumper, once viewed as a weakness, has begun rounding out. Ntilikina drilled 39.1 percent of the 1.6 treys per game he hoisted this season and Chris Brickley, a former Knicks assistant coach who now trains NBA players and has worked with Ntilikina, says the Frenchman’s stroke is NBA ready. He has proof, too: there’s an arduous drill Brickley likes to put his players through; it consists of launching 100 3s from different spots on the floor. Brickley says that when Kevin Durant runs through it, he’ll nail around 80 percent. Most guards, he adds, drain about 70.
“And the first time I ran Frank through,” says Brickley, “he hit 78.”
Frank shouldn’t be controversial anymore. He’s a fuckin’ bust.
Well supposedly Iman Shumpert had good shooting performances in drills also. Frank DOES look like he has decent form on his shot, that it’s a repeatable motion, but he is just not comfortable shooting it in games. He has the yips, just overall. He’s a very tentative, passive player on offense.
Playing off the ball doesn’t seem to alleviate this, either. You’d think taking away the pressure of running the point would help but it hasn’t really.
Haha. You are totally Ntillakilling it today.
So… Bedford Hills?
I can’t believe any Knicks fan who suffered through the Carmello era could possibly be jazzed at adding Kyrie. Taking him if it meant getting Durant? Sure. But Kyrie himself?
Kyrie doesn’t do anything at an elite level except score and he can’t even do that consistently. He’s also now burned his way out of two franchises, both of which were already Finals contenders with him.
Basically every criticism you can make of Kyrie on the court is even more true of James Harden. Ball hog. Over dribbling. Too many shots. Too many bad shots. Dubious defensive effort. But I’ve never heard of Harden having the kind of problems Kyrie has now had with two sets of teammates and I don’t think it’s just because Harden is significantly better than Kyrie on offense.
Mike
Well, I wouldn’t want Kyrie without Durant and I suspect few of us would.
Wow. I should have thought of that.
I might have to pull a Costanza when he brought a bucket of shrimp to another meeting so he could make the jerk store joke. I need those two horses to race in the Belmont so I can goad her into saying it again.
Later, I read an article about how much his 3 point shooting was improving and started warming to him.
wait, so the guy who’s such a rampant spotter of human bias i sometimes wonder if he’s cialdini’s literary agent suddenly changed his mind based on the selective self reporting of one of the most promotional motherfuckers riding the nba sidecar? you think brickley would self report an update in the interests of p hacking truthism if frank ran the 100 shot gauntlet 30 more times and came up mediocre?
OMG, are we really going back and re-litigating Frank Ntilikina?
This is like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy gets on a train and it keeps coming back to the same stop over and over.
I think it’s sort of like dog whistles. We can’t see the posts that advocate for getting Kyrie without KD, but Mike somehow can.
@67 there’s no one answer, people do this work for all kinds of reasons including completely non pecuniary dallying. many of the early stats nerds have been hired (and fired) by nba teams. dean oliver who was maybe the closest thing to the bill james of basketball bc he wrote basketball on paper when nobody cared and without some smarmy self promotional agenda worked for the nuggets for a while.
none of the high level stats are going to get you a useful edge in betting markets nowadays, and really they were never a good mine by themselves, but they were nonetheless
part of big bettors modeling in one way or another long before they became part of the popular conversation. you probably know that haralobis voulgaris, who was one of the bigger nba gamblers for several years in the aughts works for cuban now.
I’m sort of morbidly fascinated with this Reddish stuff.
Regardless of where he ends up, it will be interesting to see how his NBA stats differ from his abysmal college ones. If you look at his EYBL work before college, he appears to be an effective straight-line driver, a decent three-point shooter, a good finisher on the break, and a fairly aggressive defender (though not much of a rebounder).
Between Barrett and Zion, I could see how he would be mostly reduced to a 3 and D guy, but his numbers shouldn’t have been affected by teammates THAT much.
That being said, the rumor is curious and was probably placed there to beef up his stock so someone else will take him before 5 (so we can take our real target at 5). He just doesn’t make a ton of sense with either KD or Knox around, but then again, “Knicks gonna Knick.”
Scam Reddish
So in the 2010 playoffs, if you wanted LeBron to come to your team, you’d root for the Cavs to lose so he’d become frustrated with the Cavs and leave (we know how that one worked out).
I’m rooting for the Rockets tonight but does the Warriors winning the championship or getting eliminated make Durant more likely to leave?
Maybe they’re trying to pull an Ainge and get some team to trade up for him…
….naaaah
I mean, of course they like Cam Reddish. They like Emmanuel Mudiay, and they like Kevin Knox, so is it really a surprise that they like Cam Reddish?
I was hoping that when we get that #5 pick somebody is smart enough to use it on a reasonably safe bet, because our last two lottery picks look like unmitigated busts. But whatever! Cam it is! You get a chance to draft a scoring-oriented player who puts up a .459 eFG% in college, you don’t let that chance pass you by.
I think we’re doing the ‘my opinion was completely defensible at the time’ bit. Not sure if that counts as bargaining or depression, but at least we seem to be past the anger stage. We’re getting there!
Full disclosure, I had to look it up.
This UCL game is unreal…
I have seen it all….
Frank Ntilikina has hit 5 more threes in 2,610 NBA minutes than he apocryphally hit in a drill one time lol
i’m gonna guess the bucks close out the celts tonight…i don’t think it’ll be a blowout (plus 15 or so) though…it just looks like the celtics have lost their heart – what a joy to write those words…
i’m guessing the warriors will win a close one…with, an over/under of (75) 3 pt. attempts…man, is that some ugly “basketball”…
i think the first time i became acutely aware of the run down the court and shoot a pull up 3 pointer was when chauncy billups started doing that shit when he played for us…i strongly dislike/hate that shot…
This is my year, Owen. Spurs are in the final, and the Knicks are going to win the lottery.
Anyone who watched this Champions League semi-finals and didn’t come away thinking it’s one of the greatest sports events in the world is out of their fucking mind.
This forum is getting comically silly.
You make it sound like I personally drafted him based on this report. I was ENCOURAGED by it.
At the time, Frank was kind of a bit of an unknown quantity that looked like he was going to have trouble scoring at the NBA level. The Knicks had already drafted him and someone that works with a lot of NBA players said his shot looked NBA ready.
How is a rational person supposed to respond to that?
Are you supposed to say, “It’s all bullshit I don’t believe it.” No, you accept it as encouraging because not many players are going to hit 78 3s out of 100 in practice any time in their life, let alone first time through the drill. And you hope there’s more there than meet the eyes.
I read a report YESTERDAY that Giannis (who is an even worse 3 point shooter than Frank so far) has been hitting 3s in practice at a much higher clip lately, but it has yet to translate to games. Giannis supposedly said it will take time for his confidence to grow and for it to transfer to game activity.
Should Bucks fans dismiss that report as selective bullshit and luck or should they be encouraged by it because it may mean in the next year or two he’s going to able to add a 3 to his game and get even better?
I’d be encouraged by it.
I think Perry and Mills are on record as saying they evaluate players using a kind of spreadsheet checklist where they rate each of a player’s tangible skills and intangible qualities on some kind of scale. They are looking at skills more than stats.
Personally, I think that’s the right way to evaluate players. It’s just way too tough a job for a casual fan to do and it’s highly dependent on the “rater” doing it accurately. So I’m not so sure I trust the Knicks on this. lol
In my ideal world, I’d have a spreadsheet with dozens of sub categories on each player’s shot making ability, defensive ability, play making ability etc.. Each sub category would also have a weighting for the importance of that skill.
That would give me a total value and player profile I could use to numerically rank players and also help fit them together to maximize the team output using different profiles.
You’d need a staff of very good scouts and basketball minds with a lot of time to do it well. Cam Reddish is probably coming up better on the Knicks checklist than he looks on stats.
Personally, I don’t see it.
Woj:
If you have a spreadsheet like that it could make players who have lots of skills but aren’t good at any of them come out better than players who are very good at one thing. That said, they did pick Robinson, and he’s very good at some things and not good at all at others.
@96 …oh i find this very funny indeed:
oh yeah, anyone ever record a game, and, before watching the game check the score to determine if you’ll even bother watching it…
it kind of feels like “cheating”, but, time is short…
The Knicks had already drafted him and someone that works with a lot of NBA players said his shot looked NBA ready.
How is a rational person supposed to respond to that?
Are you supposed to say, “It’s all bullshit I don’t believe it.”
i mean, yeah, probably but i’m not banging on your window to knock it off with all the “encouragement.”. you weren’t just encouraged. before the kid played a minute you read as close to meaningless of an article as could be written and suddenly became convinced frank would at the very least be a good 3&D player. this backflip eventually led to a series of even more impressive contortions when he showed zero signs of the three part, which came precariously close to noting that he shot great on full moons so the data is auspicious if only anyone else knew how to look at it carefully.
I cannot believe that we live in a world where Tyronn Lue is playing hard ball because he feels that he should be compensated like a “championship coach.” For serious? Everyone remember his amazing adjustments in 2016 where he told Lebron James to be the best player in the universe for seven games?
i think the issue might be he’ll “lose” money because of the $10 million still owed to him by the cavs…i’m not sure exactly how that salary stuff would work for coaches though…
i’m sorry to have to say it but kurt rambis is tyrion lannister
Just draft guys who are already good at basketball. How can you tell if they’re good at basketball? Take a look at the statistics they accumulated. Adjust for age and level of competition.
Stay away from “this guy is good at some other game besides 5-on-5 basketball” and “this guy has an NBA body” and “this guy can jump high” and “this guy is a good fit for an offensive scheme that is about to become extinct.” Just get the guys who are good players already.
Follow this formula and you’ll do okay. Get cute and start looking for other stuff and you’ll end up with a roster full of Kevin Knoxes.
More like Jorah Mormont. Banished from one realm for unspeakable crimes, he sells out his new employer. One day he might develop a conscience – will Jeanie Buss forgive him when that time comes?
hopefully he’s better at basketball operations than coaching…actually, since it’s the lakers we’re talking about – i hope he sucks at that too 🙂
The article said that The Lakers want Kidd to be an assistant coach and that is something Lue would have to accept. Given Kidd’s history as a coach and having Kidd under you, and having the expectation of bringing the Laker’s back to glory, that could make for a tough job. Derek Fisher got $5 million a year as a new coach and Lue was asked to take a pay cut and get $6 million a year, not much more than Fisher. I can see why he might say no.
i don’t know, this lakers gig might be the only thing on a very long horizon for lue…
Giannis is a human mismatch machine.
Man, I hope Kyrie is more checked in when he plays for us next postseason, He’s playing like he can’t wait to clean out his shit from the Celtics locker room.
Going to listen to the Boygenius EP in Brad Stevens’ honor tonight.
thinking of GoT…one of the few things i thought the show actually did well at in its divergence from the books was putting arya and tywin together at harrenhal…
@112
Everything they tried with Tywin worked. He was such a great character brilliantly played by Charles Dance.
(posted on yesterday’s thread by mistake)
Was just hanging out at a bar with Bill Clinton. The man is still as sharp as a tack! Hard to get a word in edgewise but you can listen to him expound on an array of subjects all day.
Wow!
Kinda wish they would just join forces permanently and be a full-time band.
Bye bye Celtics
This is what happens when a mediocre offense faces a world-crushing defense
@114
I am sure he loved the attention.
Kyrie really is a true Knick.
He already hates Celtics.
There’s no way that this performance doesn’t reflect poorly on Kyrie in a significant way. If you can’t raise or equal your level in the postseason then you have a while to fix. He’s way behind Durant and Kawhi.
I hear you, but their individual output is just so otherworldly that I am happy we get to hear their solo careers too.
Who would have thought that game 7 last year would be the culmination of the Celtics’ “treasure trove” of assets.
What a joy it is to see the Celts bite the dust in humiliating fashion.
Lolol
This is why you don’t quickly ban long-time posters. Boom!
Chris Paul has regressed so much he can’t take Looney off the dribble 30 feet from the basket with space? Jesus!
If the Celtics really want to go hard after AD, Tatum, Brown and their draft picks ain’t gonna get it done.
If I’m the Pelicans, I look elsewhere.
I’m not as down on Brown and Tatum as some here, they had a tough season but I would expect both of them to bounce back and be better next year. They’re both still very young. Hayward and Kyrie are the bigger problems, and also Horford’s age. But they still have lots of assets and flexibility.
The Celtics had a lot of lotto picks but they used them all on role player-type guys. Tatum, Smart, Brown and Rozier are their young core, and that’s a mediocre young core. Those guys are all okay, but none of them are really franchise type talents. They also blew a few first rounders on Euro draft-and-stash guys that didn’t pan out in Zizic and Yabusele, and another one on James Young, who didn’t amount to anything. They burned another lotto pick (which eventually became Collin Sexton) for two years of Kyrie Irving, who didn’t get them over the top. They do have one first rounder coming as a result of the Tatum/Fultz trade, that’s probably going to be the #14 overall pick.
Some of their high picks came in weak drafts, so there was a bit of bad luck there. Whatever, I’ll take it! They were poised to do a lot of damage and they whiffed on a lot of those draft picks.
Oh man, I just cannot walt to see Durant doing this sort of awesome stuff for the Knicks next season! What a first half!
This is turning out just as I hoped
The Lakers and Celtics seemingly imploding today is a Knicks fan’s wet dream.
Curry’s misses are baffling this series. Layups, open threes, passes…
Word.
Well, maybe we’ll see him do it for the Knicks in 2020-21.
Oh shit. KD popping his Achilles before he becomes a Knickerbocker would be the most Knicksian thing imaginable.
Durant to the locker room with an Achilles injury.
He can walk, so there’s that. A full rupture would be a no on that.
Shit….. anyone have Kawhi on speed dial????
Right? What even happens in this scenario? Does he have a player option for next year?
Didn’t look like a terrible injury, I bet he returns this game
Steve Kerr’s face says it all.
Wow, Harden double-teamed and he still makes the shot!
Harden’s moves to the basket are insane.
Shit…
yeah, that didn’t look good at all…
ruptured my achilles just shooting around, i literally thought someone shot me, it was loud…wasn’t really that painful, just weird when it happened…
hopefully it’s just a strain or something, he may not return though, for the rest of the year…
Finally watched Twin Peaks s3ep8 (the atomic bomb episode), you know what’s scarier than the Woodsman’s radio monologue? Maxing a 31 year old coming off an Achilles tear. I’m in the black lodge, or the sunken place, or the bad place right now
This is 100% Cronin’s fault
It’s now looking like destiny. This plus the Cam Reddish news and Kyrie playing like ass in the playoffs pretty much seals our fate.
I doubt he actually tore it. But I’m really not kind of fascinated what does happen if he tore it there. Does he even opt out if he tore it?
The Knicksier thing would have been signing him to the max, THEN he pops the Achilles
KD has a $31.5M player option for next year
the cronin curse lives…and, seemingly thriving…
He’s in the locker room exercising that option right now
Wouldn’t the Knicks max him out anyways if he opted out?
Draymond is about ready for a nut-shot soon.
This is some really impressive play from the Durant-less Warriors.
It really does seem like that, doesn’t it?
How you getting out-hustled by 76-year-old Chris Paul?
they just showed that replay, maybe it’s a calf thing?
When I tore my calf playing ball last year, I thought the sound was from skin on skin contact from the guy who slammed into me. Nope. The belly flop sound was my Achilles nearly detaching from my I haven’t played since.
Yeah, Woj just says it is lower leg, not the achilles.
Right calf strain
Won’t return tonight
You take “right calf strain” every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
I feel like I’m watching a heavyweight fight…
This is the most excited I’ve ever been about a right calf strain
Right calf strain, they say. Y’all buying it?
Calf strain. Phew!
Soleus.*
These Warriors are going to get owned by the Bucks if they make it that far. They are not even close to the team they were four years ago.
You think it’s a foregone conclusion the Bucks beat the Raptors??
I think sadly their gambling deals mean that they are not allowed to lie about these sorts of things. So I believe them.
If the Rockets can’t outscore a Durant-less Warriors in the fourth quarter, then they sure don’t deserve to win this series.
Kyle Lowry isn’t done Kyle Lowrying in these playoffs
They keep showing that teams tied at 2-2 who lose Game 5 only win series 18% of the time, well the Knicks are part of that 18%. Twice!! 1994 vs Pacers and 2000 vs Heat.
I hope you were able to do a smart rehab, I did a shitty job at it and it definitely never was the same…
I occasionally get some calf knots but it’s mostly okay. Not a ruptured Achilles, though. That shit is about as bad as a leg injury gets.
Tough shot by Gordon.
That was about the 4th time Iggy had Paul guarding him in or near the paint. Can’t he back him down?
This is another reason that on the rare occasions I play pickup basketball, I play just like Frank Ntilikina. Stay out of the way. Don’t dribble. Shoot if there’s nobody near you, and usually miss. Try to pass the ball like a hot potato the moment somebody makes the ill-advised decision to pass it to me. Do not jam a finger under any circumstances.
Draymond is such a fucking idiot
I am effin Nostradamus…. just a knee to the head, not the nuts 🙂
you are one funny motherfucker jk…
not to call ya names, but, it just kinda fits here…
I’m not a very hateful person in general, but I will say that watching Draymond Green celebrating after a big shot really brings the absolute worst in me. It’s so incredibly annoying.
My fiancee, the Laker fan that’s all pro-California, just called Steph Curry a punk-ass bitch. (lmao)
She’s rooting for the Rockets. I don’t get her logic… lol.
It’s insane how half-hearted the Rockets have seemed this whole quarter.
She’s also probably on her 3rd cup of Ciroc, so…
You’d think that it was the Rockets who just lost their Hall of Fame player, ya know? Just lolly-gagging the ball up and down the court. It’s like, dudes, you get that you’re trailing, right?
This is some of the shittiest basketball that the Rockets have played all season (with a healthy roster) and they decided to play it in a tie game in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals with Kevin Durant out of the game. Just shitty play and shitty coaching.
Fuck the Rockets, they really deserve to lose the series after this garbage. No urgency at all, how can you play this passive when KD is out of the game????
Rockets will blow out Warriors in Game 6, find a way to blow Game 7.
They should be so ashamed of themselves for how they played in the last five minutes of this game. Holy shit, it was almost inconceivable to see a veteran team play with such a lack of energy.
Draymond averages like half a point in lost tech FTs per game this playoffs. For such a smart basketball player, he’s really fucking dumb at basketball
Not just dumb, but douchey dumb. Like, how in the world did you think it was going to be okay to knee Paul in the head, dude?
How funny would it be for the Nuggets or Blazers to make it to the NBA Finals after beating a Durant-less Warriors team? A bad calf strain could theoretically keep Durant out for the rest of the playoffs.
This Rockets team is the most pathologically almost-good-enough-but-not-quite-good-enough team ever. They’ve had their chances to knock the Warriors out over the past few years and they never get it done.
Ah, reminds me of the 1990s era Knicks. I sympathize with Rockets fans.
our boys are fucking giants
didn’t know the liverpool coach let that one out yesterday…good for kerr for getting that out there on tnt tonight…
I like Steve Kerr. Seems like a cool dude.
Maybe that’s why they piss me off so much, they give me flashbacks to all the painful 1990s Knick losses! 🙂
Every game, it’s like, “Just dunk the fucking ball, Charles Smith!”
“You’re down five with 40 seconds to go, James Harden, why are you walking the ball up the court?!”
How did Elliot Perry come to partially own the Grizzlies? Is it, like, a $10 stake?
The Rockets just could not corral a loose ball or get a stop down the stretch there.
If KD has a serious injury:
Kyrie to the Nyets
Kwahi to the Paper Clips
Durant opts in for 31.5M
Knicks park 2 one year stiff contracts for picks and tank again with the 1-5 pick their only improvement…. best out come under the circumstances.
Or to couch this evil turn of events in 1960 broadway terms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9cCP0iwtCc
Or…. to quote William Bendix playing Chester A Riley in the 50’s sitcom “The Life of Riley”….”What a revolting development this is!”
It seemed like they punched themselves out coming back from being down 20. Turns out the warriors aren’t just a one man team
First my eyes told me that Clint sucks . Then box tells me he had the highest +/-(8) on the Rockets.
GSW was attacking him with high isos all the time. Nothing on offense.
O, and Rivers EYE-test was positive and he is -20+/-???
Basketball – the game I clearly don’t understand.
Obviously d’Antoni should insert bigs(Nene) more the box says. Eyes not so much.