If RJ or Knox end up contributing on offense at the level Jokic does, I couldn’t care less if they don’t play defense, as I agree with JK47 that Denver has shown you can compete and win a lot of games with other guys carrying the brunt of the defense. Portland also faced a similar situation as Lillard is not a good defender at all.

Obviously I’d rather have Giannis or Kawhi or prime Lebron, dominant two way players, but those are so damn rare, there’s like only Zion in the last 3 or so drafts that might even project to be at that level eventually, maybe Ben Simmons?

DRPM is a noisy stat.

I thought it was an improvement as far as defensive metrics go. Believe it or not, Jokic has been very consistent as far as this stat goes. It has ranked him as the 17th best defensive center in the league the past three straight NBA seasons.

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

You mean kinda like Portland schemed for Kanter? Or Houston schemes for Harden?

Well, yes, actually. Defense is a team concept. If you can play successfully as a member of a solid defensive team, that kinda means by nature you’re not a terrible, team-killing defender. Jokic led Denver in minutes and they were the #10 defense in the league, despite the fact that they didn’t have a shotblocking “caddy” to play next to him.

He’s not gonna be on any all-defensive teams, but he’s not completely blowing up their defense either.

Great, so that team should win about 32 games, and then pick 10th in the 2020 draft. Sounds like a solid plan.

I have a better idea: don’t do that.

Actually, yes. But I think we can get over 500. We’re not going from last to first overnight. It ain’t happening. Doubling our win total is better than another 17 win season. You can’t buy a championship until you develop a core of good young, cheap, players. We have to hope RJ is a star and has the type of impact Doncic had last year. Add one max next to him and assume that Mitchell Robinson plays no better or worse than the second half of last season. Now you have something.

And Brian, we have a lot of money. I should have done the math. Based on Tommy Beer’s article in Forbes, with a core of
Mitchell Robinson, Kevin Knox, Dennis Smith Jr., Frank Ntilikina, Damyean Dotson, RJ Barrett, Joakim Noah’s $6.44 million cap hit, and the Knicks excercise Allonzo Trier’s option and, five minimum roster charges, the Knicks have apx. $70 million to spend.

I’m thinking that we max out one (either $33M or $27M). We know the top names but there needs to be an all-star: Kyrie, Kemba, Kawhi, Butler are the top of that tier but there are others. Get one.

Assuming we sign a 7-9 year max, the remaining $37 needs to be spread out to fill 3 major positional needs: starting power forward, veteran backup center and veteran point guard. We would need one of them that could shoot 3’s. None of them to suck defensively and a couple need to be thumpers. I would just try to find the best way to fill those holes with that money. The rest of the team is filler.

Done right, with at least one of our younger players developing, we could even have a good team.