Knicks Morning News (2019.07.02)

Like Everyone else, I am disappointed the Knicks will not be a contender next year, but I am optimistic the F.O. behaved in a progressive dynamic way to maintain future flexibility while significantly upgrading the roster from scrap heap level players to NBA level players. Will anyone miss:

Henry Ellenson
Emmanuel Mudiay
Noah Vonleh
Luke Kornet
Mario Hezonja
Billy Garrett
Isaiah Hicks
Kadeem Allen
John Jenkins
DeAndre Jordan
Lance Thomas

The FO did NOT repeat the mistake of 2010 Stoudamire consolation prize, and every player they signed has no long term effect. Build through the draft, develop the young core, and complement it with NBA level players.

Consider how bad last year’s roster – the Knicks are only bringing six players back in Knox, Frank, Mitch, DSJ, Trier and Dot (all homegrown). The marginal free agents they signed are clear upgrades over the dreck that was the rest of the roster. What do KD and Kyrie do for that core? Still not ready to compete at the highest levels. Knicks dodged a bullet IMHO.

I have to exercise excruciating patience, but am optimistic the team is on path forward. I have to pray they don’t get seduced by the quick fix, and hope some of the draft choices emerge as superstars.

@2,

While you are not entirely incorrect, you totally ignore a pretty major part of the complaint here. No, most of us will not miss those players (some may miss Kornet and Vonleh, especially compared to who got picked up). And yes, the basic idea of getting some grizzled vets on short term contracts to play alongside the youth is at least a strategy. But the choices they made are lunatic, given the kids we have and the holes we have. Randle and Gibson could make some slight modicum of sense. Even (much less so) Portis and Gibson. Even less than that Randle and Portis. But Randle, Portis, AND Gibson? Nonsensical. Ellington, maybe. Bullock, maybe. Ellington AND Bullock? Ludicrous. And meanwhile, as people have pointed out, who runs the offense and gets the ball to these guys? DSJ? I don’t hate him, but giving him the keys to the car at this point is a recipe for chaos, and another year’s worth of eat-what-you-kill molar grinding. My kid could have done a better job with building this roster. His cat could have.

I have no major problem with Randle, Portis, and Peyton. While none of them are the type of player I would have brought in because they don’t defend, at least they are young, have some upside, and the contracts are short enough to not cause any problems. I’ still worried about Randle’s fit with Robinson. That’s the one that can bite in the butt a little. If he’s not a good fit, are they going to bench their most expensive player and ruin his trade value like they’ve done with other players?

I don’t see the point behind Gibson, Bullock, and Ellington. I’m open to adding veterans to help set an example and teach young players, but we probably could have found a cheaper way to do it. It also makes less sense to pay a lot when you are clearly building a young team than when you are trying to build a more veteran team while adding young players via draft for the long term. For all the whining about Lee and Noah, they’d be expiring contracts this year.

We should have tried to rent some space and add some picks for awhile after we added the young players and come back to veterans later on the cheap.

Also, I definitely would have brought back Vonleh instead of one of these guys. The only thing I can think of is that he didn’t want a 2 year deal with a team option. We’ll see where he winds up and for how much.

Looking at our summer league roster and aside from the obvious suspects (RJ, Knox, and I guess Trier) there’s not all that much interesting going on. Maybe this kid Wooten from Oregon? He seems to have been a terrific defensive forward in college but he sucks on offense I guess. I’m also interested in seeing the D-II kid against higher level competition.

The FO job is to put a winning product in the floor and get people interested in the team. They have done a fine job if that so far this offseason.

I’m excited to see this team. The fact that they only signed short deals should have us elated instead of this condemnation of all things knicks. Stop!

We are building for the first time in as long as I can remember and that’s a good thing. I see a lot of moveable contracts going forward. What’s the problem!?!

They’ve signed short term deals and kept flexibility for moves in season and pre deadline. Literally I see no bad signings, not one of these guys in our roster couldn’t be moved in a trade, they’ve created Building blocks. Smart.

Wondering what the future is for Kadeem Allen. We still have him on a two-way, but if Frank isn’t traded, and/or if there isn’t a rash of injuries, hard to see him getting any kind of run with the roster as presently constructed.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but is it possible that the three smartest front offices so far this off-season are David Griffin, Dennis Lindsey/Justin Zanik and Steve Mills/Scott Perry?

What did the great Danny Ainge accomplish? He replaced Horford, Irving, Baynes and Rozier with Kemba, Kanter, and two draft picks.

What did the great Daryl Morey accomplish? Nothing. The Rockets are totally fucked.

What did the Sean Marks accomplish? He capped out his team with an injury-prone malcontent, a seriously injured 32yo immortal on the decline, and the corpse of a former DPOY. He got a pick back from GSW but lost his best young piece in the process. In three years, they will be the Rockets East, in cap hell with untradeable contracts and not enough to make it to the Finals.

Go through team after team and nearly every one is either capped out or close to it with bad contracts on the books or has players heading into RFA that need to be signed to expensive contracts.

The worst thing you can say about what the Knicks did is that it is BORING. They decided not to use their cap space to acquire draft assets, which is somewhat dumb, but they also did not sign a single long-term FA to an objectively terrible deal.

The strategy is to win a few more games this year than last year, to try to establish the team as a place that is a couple of pieces away, and to continue to build through the draft. They are banking on being well-positioned for trades as they become available until they can again try to land the big fish in free agency in summer 2021. They paid more than players were worth to make all of of the deals short term. It’s not perfect, but it’s perfectly fine compared with the dumb decisions that nearly every team made so far this off-season.

It really doesn’t make sense. They are paying him so much more than he is worth. Kevon Looney got 15 million for 3 years. Enes Kanter is making 10 million over 2. Ed Davis is a much better player and got the same. I think R. Lopez did also.

I don’t get it. It’s just bizarre. Bobby Portis isn’t good and I don’t see us getting anything for him at any point at that number. Looking forward to being wrong.

For those people who are happy Perry got 1 + 1 with team options but also mad that he overpaid these dudes some, how do you think he got those short contracts with the team options? Free agency is a negotiation and other teams are vying for the same players. It’s not take it or leave it.

Once it was clear we were missing out on the top FAs, we needed to pivot to a clear plan B. Personally, I would prefer that it was to maximise draft capital and developing our existing you guys while taking a punt on one or two young FAs with upside. To that end, I can live with Randle and Peyton. I can also live with passing on draft night trades to bring in picks (though it’s frustrating in hindsight) if we still thought those big fish were in play. If we’d just signed those guys we’d still have had $40m to rent out, or wait out bargains later in free agency (or just gone after some of the other young upside plays like Noel).

What’s hard to stomach is the maddening inconsistency and poor execution of that plan B. There’s just no coherent reason to keep pursuing Portis once you’ve signed Randle – it’s like they had discussions with both then were embarrassed to pull one offer when the other committed. There’s no reason to sign TWO 3-point shooting SGs when your roster is full of young SGs. There’s no reason WHATSOEVER to commit salaries to replacement level older guys on day 1 of free agency. You will always be able to spend that money later and who knows what other opportunities might arise in the meantime?

I don’t hate our summer because I think not maxing Boogie or Harris ‘just because’ showed good restraint and a couple of our signings look like reasonable low risk punts where we maybe overpaid a bit bit got contract-length and option flex in return. That’s pretty decent work. But all of that would still be true if we didn’t pay Bullock, Ellington, Gibson and Portis $41m and we’d have so much more optionality for the rest of the summer. Those deals don’t have massive risk or long-term cost so they won’t kill us but they certainly have high potential opportunity cost and that really takes the shine off the better bits.

I like all these moves, I think if you look at a fair baseline (ie not 17 wins based on actively tanking for Zion) you can forecast enough improvement to earn a decent chance at the postseason if things break the right way and Fiz coaches up to his rep. Last year we played below replacement players for enough minutes to accumulate a staggering -6.9 VORP. This means that just replacing those minutes with a marginal D league player would result in an 18.6 win improvement on last years squad. A lot of those guys are gone, Frank and Knox are still here but a non tanking team has no business giving them minutes if they are not producing. Let them develop in the D league or practice. Playing on a functional team might actually be good for them, forcing them to focus on improving the aspects of their games that will make them productive instead of a hands off “give the kids the keys” approach that lets them drive the team off a cliff. Even our relatively low (still positive) VORP player acquisitions Ellington and Portis have high percentage shots and would be even more efficient scorers if you built a system that put them in a role that played to their strengths. The common theme to a lot of this potential upside is it relies heavily on Coach Fizdale putting players in position to succeed and developing the youth without costing the team wins. He might not be up to the job, but at least he has the tools to put a functional team on the court and it’s on him now. There are plenty of minutes for Mitch, if he doesn’t get run that’s on Fiz too.

We are building for the first time in as long as I can remember and that’s a good thing. I see a lot of moveable contracts going forward. What’s the problem!?!

Would I rather have Iguodala and a pick? IDK.

Yes, I wish we had a 2024 first-round pick, with Iguodala’s contract coming off the books this summer, rather than signing all of these free agents.

Also, the contracts with the team options make them potentially very attractive trade pieces later this year (or next if we pick them up they become expiring).

Playoff teams always need shooting wings.

We’ll never know if the Iggy deal was available to us. It’s possible that the first call GSW made was to Memphis and they said yes.

@27 I must have missed something, did Lee have a team option?

@27 I must have missed something, did Lee have a team option?

I just don’t think these guys are going to get moved, even as expirings, nor will they be moved to teams looking for an 8th man for their playoff run. I think it’s typical KB optimism. Maybe I’ll be wrong.

I just do not understand the need to rush out and use all your cap space up in the first two days of free agency. Couldn’t they have waited to at least scour for some bargains and those with interesting upsides, since prices will undoubtedly decline over time. Instead there was some unexplained rush to lock up the Taj Gibson’s and Bobby Portis’ of the world. I simply do not see a lot of creative or out of the box thinking from this FO.

Typical KB optimism? Did you read yesterday’s thread?

The point is that on these contracts it doesn’t matter. If they suck or are unhappy, let them go. That is a HUGE difference!

it is a huge difference but there is still significant opportunity costs to these contracts. i would trade literally any one of the contracts we signed for harkless at 1/11 and a miami protected first that can never become a 2nd. even if you believe the iggy deal was not available to us (i don’t), it is hard to argue the harkless deal would not have been. we weren’t smart, we were just less dumb than we could have been.

Once the KD dream died, the team should have aggressively and proactively searched out cap rental for asset trades. They should have let the whole league know they were looking to make those deals. Instead they did the opposite, they made it clear they were NOT looking to make those trades.

We’d all feel a lot better about this offseason if they had signed Randle and maybe Bullock and then added a couple of future picks for salary cap rentals.

Typical KB optimism? Did you read yesterday’s thread?

today is a new day

We blatantly tampered with Golden State’s player for the last few months. They were not going to call on us unless no one else wanted to deal.

The Harkless one is a missed opportunity if offered.

It was a C offseason, that’s for sure. Nothing terrible or crippling, nothing exciting outside of maybe Randle (and I do like Elfrid Payton more than most). The only team who came close to an A I would say is the Utah Jazz, who are a legit threat if Bogdanovic continues his stellar shooting from last season, and maybe the Nets but we’ll only know about that next season when Durant is back (and it has potential to be a complete mess if he’s not good anymore) and the Lakers if they get Kawhi. Most teams made lateral moves, like Philly, or got worse like the Celtics, Bucks and Warriors.

The Pacers also made interesting moves but without a real superstar it’s hard to see them going too far, but they got a pretty good team.

If the Knicks miraculously win 40 games this year, it will be a mirage. They’ll still be doing it on the backs of a bunch of contracts with players who are unlikely to have a place on the roster long-term. And we will have Bird rights for Randle alone, correct?

Unless we do it on the backs of Mitch, Trier, RJ and one or more of the other young players, supported by the vets we acquired. And if the Nets underachieve this year while waiting for Durant to recover, it could make for some interesting takes in the court of public opinion.

We’ll be an interesting team this year, much more so than last year. We will probably still lose 50+ games but we should be very competitive in more than half of them. And the games vs. the Nets should be high drama.

re: rebuilding through the draft, it’s not like we have foregone that opportunity. We have 6 first round picks in the next 4 years, and three potentially excellent second round picks in the next 2 years. It’s not out of the question that Dallas will implode (if either KP or Doncic go down, look out below!) and so as always, it comes down to who you draft, not necessarily how high (especially with the flattening.)

The Knicks didn’t have an awful off-season, but they had easy opportunities to make the Knicks better in the future that they passed up for no short or long term gain, so it certainly wasn’t a good offseason

I don’t know about ‘easy’ per se, but yeah. We punted in a pointless sort of way that might add some meaningless wins. Could have been a lot worse, could have been better. I’m curious about the list of guys who turned down these 1+1s but I suspect we’ll never know. It wasn’t a good off-season, but it wasn’t super bad. No major fuckups, that’s the Perry m.o.

Honestly, I think avoiding fuckups can win championships. You avoid fuckups and eventually get lucky in the draft or FA is sufficient. Just avoid being completely incompetent and you can win eventually.

Bobby Portis could be a Houston Rocket by the trade deadline if he gets enough minutes. His contract is Mills but his game is Morey.

I don’t have a problem with these 1+1 deals.
I think the strategy was smart. I am relieved we didn’t fall into the Stat trap again.
Patience is welcome.
I too want to rebuild through the draft, although the 14% deal makes tanking a stupid strategy. Who bets on a 14% chance, all things being equal?
But while history has not been good to the Knicks in terms of using expiring contracts, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get some picks for Randle or Portis, Payton or Ellington. It’s an option. Nothing is guaranteed. But unlike Lee, we can dump them after a year.

The team also could not afford another 17-win season; even Knicks fans won’t turn out.
So they added some talent on the margins. Most of the players are tough competitors.
But in terms of executing, the youngsters need to get the minutes.
Strangely, I’m in the minority on the Gibson move. I think the team needs an old, does the dirty stuff veteran on board. He sets an example. I think Rasheed Wallace. Obviously not as solid as Rasheed was, but tough.

There were a whole lot of Dennis Smith fans on this board during his draft. I’m okay letting him get lots of minutes. Robinson, Knox (although Ignas needs a shot at beating out Knox), and Barrett need to get minutes and lots of patience. Dotson is what he is and I fear Frank is broken.
So all in all, not bad. And it could have been way worse.
I’m glad they didn’t take KD with the Achilles.
Frankly, this all could turn badly for the Nets. Irving has hardly been a solid guy. He forced his way out of Cleveland and Boston, where they had a pretty decent set up. He appears to be a bit of a malcontent. And KD has similar characteristics. He dumped OKC and GSW. Neither guy seems disposed to being happy. Great players, but…

Picking 5-7 is better than picking 9-11 but whatevs. Like I’m looking at the 2020 draft class and there are 5 or 6 players that look like top prospects, and then it kind of drops off.

In the 2018 draft, the top 7 picks all look good, then there’s a big dropoff.
In the 2017 draft, the top 5 or 6 are solid, then a dropoff.

You don’t have to win the 14% magic lotto to benefit from better draft position. Drafting 9th or thereabouts sucks, I present to you Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox as evidence.

it is a huge difference but there is still significant opportunity costs to these contracts. i would trade literally any one of the contracts we signed for harkless at 1/11 and a miami protected first that can never become a 2nd.

Hmmmm…. there was someone here who said a week ago Pat and Mr Carnival Cruise at 75 weren’t going to sit around for 3-5 years of boring basketball and were going to dump some contracts to make a run at a top FA suggesting to be available to eat Whiteside/Dragic’s last 44M…..

I’m going on record, to say we are a playoff team

I think there’s zero chance the Knicks reach 40 wins, as I think the team is too defensively challenged to go against the better teams. We’ll play 16 games against the Celtics, Sixers, Raptors and Nets in the probable strongest division in basketball, and outside of the Cavs, Hornets and Wizards who will all be terrible, the east is not that bad at all. The Pistons, Heat and Hawks will all be going hard for playoff spots too with better teams than ours.

I’d say a realistic range is between 25 and 32 wins.

@63
Wow, references to both Lord of the Rings and Deadwood in the same post!

Post of the day!

Bobby Portis could be a Houston Rocket by the trade deadline if he gets enough minutes. His contract is Mills but his game is Morey.

It is funny after the shock wore off what the Knick’s were doing signing 3 bigs, the only thing that made any sense was they were grabbing them to ship them off to someone else December 15th.

Players with no three ball are out of vogue today sans Gobert level defense. Maybe Morey likes Randle/Portis better than Capela /Tucker.

Of course…. this is probably Knick fans with Stockholm Syndrome trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit but who knows???

I get picking up a couple of vets to keep the young players “honest” (to at least have viable options should the young players dog it on defense), but they certainly seemingly engaged in overkill here.

i would trade literally any one of the contracts we signed for harkless at 1/11 and a miami protected first that can never become a 2nd. even if you believe the iggy deal was not available to us (i don’t), it is hard to argue the harkless deal would not have been. we weren’t smart, we were just less dumb than we could have been.

100%

You can’t just judge a front office just by what they did. You have to include what they didn’t do. The latter is sometimes difficult to do because you never really know what was available. Some guys may just tell their agent they don’t want to go to NY. But if you are competent, you should come up with a positive suprise once in awhile. The best GMs do.

We did nothing bad, but anyone could have paid a premium to keep contracts short with an team option so we could make another run at free agency later. We rolled the cap space over. At least we got a few young players to take a look at. Maybe one of these days one will stick. Mudiay, Hezonja, and unfortunately Vonleh did not.

I’m going on record, to say we are a playoff team

Which of these projected starters are average or above average?

PG Elfrid Payton
SG Reggie Bullock
SF RJ Barrett
PF Julius Randle
C Mitch Robinson

I’d say two of those five will likely be average or better, Randle and Robinson. The bench in this scenario is DSJ, Ellington, Knox, Gibson, Portis, Ntilikina and whatever other dreck. That is a group of mediocre vets and bad young players.

25 wins.

someone in the FO appears to have been made aware of something called a “team option” and, excited by its discovery, appears to have made it the centerpiece of this year’s free agent strategy.

This is pure gold!

Robinson
KP
Mikal Bridges
RJ Barrett
Elfrid Payton

Frank/Dotson/Trier etc.. off the bench

This PLUS MORE could easily be ours right now if we made some better moves over the last few years.

I think I got a boner reading “oleaginous”

I think this is a 38 win team.
But if Robinson suddenly emerges as an elite player this year, which I do not think is crazy, they could do better.
I like Randle, above average TS% and eFG% on moderate usg%.
He’s a 25/10 guy/36. Add in nearly 4 assists/36.
Next to Robinson’s defense and finishing ability at the net, this could be a pretty tough duo in the paint.
We’re a bit heavy at the SF, but some of those guys could play the 2 or the 4.

Huge question at point. Smith/Payton/Frank

God, when was the last time we felt good about our guards…?

Continued tanking also risks having guys like RJ Barrett (*) get disgruntled a la KP at the continued losing. With the shrunken lottery odds, it just isn’t worth it.

(*) And if they pan out, Kevin Knox and Dennis Smith, Jr. Yeah, Janis, but the Knicks haven’t yet even proven they can build a culture their home-grown drafted guys want to be a part of. That’s way more of an imperative than an extra couple ping-pong balls.

so let’s take a slightly deeper look at win projecting this roster… this is not a great way to look at it but this is a lot better than guessing….

i made the following assumptions:
1) knox will not get major minutes – he might at the start of the year but i think he’ll be coming off the bench sporadically until he actually shows some nba skills… ditto for frank…
2) bullock/ellington/barrett will get lionshare of the SF minutes – the team lacks shooting so they will see a lot more floor time…
3) small regression from mitch.. bigger minutes boost – which is to be expected.. he was playing at an unsustainable pace last year even for how good he was…
4) no major improvement from mostly anyone – this is to provide a fair baseline even though the team is young…
5) modest improvement from dsj – this might.. or probably.. not happen.. but you can use this as a proxy for any modest improvement from anyone on this list and given the age.. .someone is likely to overperform their projection..

payton 2400 mins .075 ws48 3.75
smith 1900 mins .060 ws48 2.38
barrett 1800 mins .050 ws48 1.875
bullock 1500 mins .0975 ws48 3.05
ellington 1200 mins .080 ws48 2.0
randle 2400 mins .135 ws48 6.75
robinson 2000 mins .190 ws48 7.92
portis 1200 mins .060 ws48 1.5
gibson 1200 mins .125 ws48 3.125
+
knox/frank/dotson/iggy/trier – 3000 mins .025 ws48 1.5

that puts us at 33.85 wins

again this very imprecise… and probably not the best methodology… but i think folks who are assuming 20 some odd wins is a fair bit offbase… that probably won’t happen unless rj is a total bust AND gets major minutes… and if he’s a bust then everything else is irrelevant… we have much larger problems…. it could also occur if mitch gets absolutely buried on the bench or gets hurt.. which again would signal that we have much larger problems than 2020 win totals…

with that in mind… i think we’re going to be in for an ok yr…

I’m a bit Knicksy in my optimism about our man Mitch.

Quite a Randle chart there, HCJ. Thanks.

You know, I have watched Portis a bit live in Washington. He seemed like a guy who could very well become a top third guy. Forty percent from three is nothing to laugh at, but how can you shoot like that from three and not so good from 2pt? 8 boards/36, 1.1 steals/36. 80% from the stripe…if only he got there more. He could be nice for spreading the floor.

Knox and Barrett are also viable superstar prospects. Nineteen-year-old 6’9 guys that can get off a shot pretty much every time they want, have a high variety in their shot repertoire, including high athleticism in transition, and who have very good shooting form, are potential superstars. They’re rare.

I’m happy to be able to watch very young guys like Mitch, Knox, Barrett, and to a degree DSJ play. They all have very high ceilings and it’s fun to see if they can reach them. They may never get there, but it’s still fun. I’m also happy that they put together a team that can at least let them play competitive NBA games, instead of the somewhat farcical ones they played in last year.

E,

I am worried about Knox. He was literally terrible. He would have to make a massive turn around to become a superstar.
No, the guy with that much potential on this roster is Mitch. RJ hasn’t played a minute of pro ball but wasn’t an efficient college player. Classic high volume guy

Knox and Barrett are also viable superstar prospects.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/carmelo/kevin-knox/

He’s not. According to 538, he was worth -7.6 wins against replacement. To VORP, -5.94. Win Shares, -1.3. Wins Produced, -6.38.

He was the worst player in the league last year. He is not a superstar prospect. The fact that he was able to put the ball in the vicinity of the rim is not a winning basketball skill.

Nineteen-year-old 6’9 guys that can get off a shot pretty much every time they want, have a high variety in their shot repertoire, including high athleticism in transition, and who have very good shooting form, are potential superstars. They’re rare.

Who are we referring to, here? Barrett struggled badly in the NCAA and likely would have seen a significant drop in draft stock had Zion not single-handedly carried them to moderate tourney success. Knox was the worst player in the NBA last year.

Terrible players, like Knox, are not rare. And Barrett has played zero minutes again NBA-quality competition. Calling them superstars in waiting is an affront to the actually-good players in their cohort, like Doncic and Ayton.

It seems like we have 4 M left, plus the exception…
But it really depends on how they structured the new contracts, I read somewhere that Randle could be frontloaded.

What did the great Danny Ainge accomplish? He replaced Horford, Irving, Baynes and Rozier with Kemba, Kanter, and two draft picks.

What did the great Daryl Morey accomplish? Nothing. The Rockets are totally fucked.

What did the Sean Marks accomplish? He capped out his team with an injury-prone malcontent, a seriously injured 32yo immortal on the decline, and the corpse of a former DPOY. He got a pick back from GSW but lost his best young piece in the process. In three years, they will be the Rockets East, in cap hell with untradeable contracts and not enough to make it to the Finals.

i know it’s petty, but, this take here made me feel better…and, yeah – i’m seriously wishing for a mavs collapse too…

Knox and Ntilikina will make us a bottom five team again, but if Barrett and Robinson turn into Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, we have a shot at 32-50.

The Only way to get 30wins or more is by staying healthy while All or Most other teams lose their star player/s with a season ending injury.

Getting Harkless and a draft pick would have been a far better move than Gibson, Portis, or Bullock. One year at 11.5 mill and a first round pick, yeah that might have been good.

i sort of/kind of get what the FO did the last few days – what i don’t understand is their rationale for not wanting to take on other team’s “bad” contracts…

Once the KD dream died, the team should have aggressively and proactively searched out cap rental for asset trades. They should have let the whole league know they were looking to make those deals. Instead they did the opposite, they made it clear they were NOT looking to make those trades.

they made an issue of wanting to bring in their “type” of player…

I’m not sure how those two are mutually exclusive, but, supposedly that’s our front office’s philosophy towards any wheeling and dealing to bung on another teams signed player (and, acquire draft compensation)…

I found interesting that they promoted Westchester coach to Fiz’s assistant.
I’m not advocating for Fiz’s firing, I hope we’ll have a “decent” season.
But for him it’s time to replace words with facts,
there’s no place for his dungeon this year.

The list of 19-year old wing types over 6-5 who were able to get off 15+ shots/36 in over 1000 minutes consists of:

Kobe Bryant
Carmelo Anthony
LeBron James
Luka Doncic
Marvin Bagley (if you consider him a wing, I kind of don’t)
Cliff Robinson (the NJ/Philly one, not the UConn/Blazer one)
Kevin Durant
Kevin Knox

Getting shots off as a wing in the NBA is a skill. One of the primary reasons wings come into the league and go bust is because they can’t get shots off.

The list of 19-year old wing types over 6-5 who were able to get off 15+ shots/36 in over 1000 minutes consists of:

Kobe Bryant
Carmelo Anthony
LeBron James
Luka Doncic
Marvin Bagley (if you consider him a wing, I kind of don’t)
Cliff Robinson (the NJ/Philly one, not the UConn/Blazer one)
Kevin Durant
Kevin Knox

This is ridiculous. Getting off shots???
You don’t think this is more a reflection of the kind of season the Knicks were having that a guy as inefficient as Knox took that many shots? I think Knox shooting that much was part of the tank plan.

It’s really not ridiculous at all. Getting off shots at the NBA level is a skill, especially as a wing. It’s difficult to get a shot up to the vicinity of the basket in the NBA. Very difficult.

No, I don’t think it was a reflection of the kind of season the Knicks were having. I watched most/all of the games and Knox was getting off good, normal wing shots. He didn’t make enough of them. Hopefully his good shooting form together with maturity and a bit more strength will change that calculus. If it does, the Knicks have a player. It might not. Dude was 19 years old.

It’s really not ridiculous at all. Getting off shots at the NBA level is a skill, especially as a wing. It’s difficult to get a shot up to the vicinity of the basket in the NBA. Very difficult.

melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…melo…

“It’s not how many shots you make, Marv. It’s how many you take!” -Bill Walton, troll

The list of 19-year old wing types over 6-5 who were able to get off 15+ shots/36 in over 1000 minutes consists of:

Kobe Bryant
Carmelo Anthony
LeBron James
Luka Doncic
Marvin Bagley (if you consider him a wing, I kind of don’t)
Cliff Robinson (the NJ/Philly one, not the UConn/Blazer one)
Kevin Durant
Kevin Knox

Lmao you gotta respect this. It’s like ruru but for Kevin Knox.

That’s cool. I’ll go back to admiring and following from afar.

Don’t take it personally, E. Everyone comes under some critique here.

The reason Knox is in that list is because there haven’t been many 19 year old wings at all, and guys who are as terrible as he was in his rookie year simply don’t average 30 minutes per game ever. All the good guys on the list got as many minutes as they had simply because they were extremely hyped teenagers who landed on terrible teams that had no other plan outside of developing them (Durant, Melo, Lebron, Doncic), and Kobe shouldn’t count because he was in his second year in his 19 year old year. Bagley doesn’t even play a similar position.

I appreciate the effort and I think it’s in good faith, but it’s pretty clear the list is no indication of future success as Knox’s situation is incredibly unique in this list and there’s no other factors that connect him to any of the stars in the list outside of the amount of shots they have taken.

To go a bit further, shots taken is not a measure of skill whatsoever, it’s a measure of reputation and it’s related to team situation. Andrew Wiggins took 16.6 shots per game last season while being one of the absolute worst players in the league to get as many minutes, simply because he has the reputation of being a 1st overall pick and Minnesota had no other plan. Hell, Jerry Stackhouse once has a notorious season where he nearly averaged 30 ppg on 24 shots a game on pretty bad efficiency (around .520 ts%) and he wasn’t a star at all, he was just the most famous player on a terrible team.

That’s cool. I’ll go back to admiring and following from afar

well done this is a beautiful trick. feign retreat whilst the enemy dances unknowingly upon your deftly laid metaphorical land mine: haha we have shown that tenderfoot the near impossible folly of aspiring to maintain fire in a hostile environment.

And I understand that unlike ruruland, you’re not saying that a tall wing helped the team by missing shots (or taking them), but there’s still no argument that taking shots means that you will get substantially better at making them. It’s not a matter of having good form or being stronger or whatever. Solving distance shooting woes is complicated as hell. You can’t just do some plyo shit and suddenly improve your shooting efficiency. If his form were good, he wouldn’t be a .475 TS% shooter.

I’ll put it this way: GSW led the league with a .565 eFG% against the Cavs’ 29th-ranked .503 eFG%. (I didn’t want to use the Knicks’ league-worst eFG%, since Knox contributed to it.)

Take that gap and double it. That’s Knox’s eFG% — .438.

With more weight training, more experience, and more understanding of what he can and can’t get away with when he bulls to the basket, he could greatly improve in that area

Rookie season dunk attempt % from some skinny tall rookies:

Durant 7.0%
Giannis 16.0%
Corey Brewer 2.9%
Tayshaun Prince 3.4%
Shaun Livingston 2.3%
Knox 2.8%
Ingram 4.7%
Anthony Davis 20.9% (dude was skiiiiinny as a rookie)
Garnett 5.0%
Anthony Randolph 12.8%

Doesn’t bode well.

A lot of people seem to be taking the perspective of damage reduction (hey, these deals won’t be terrible, there’s flexibility) instead of being actual values/assets. The Knicks are nowhere close to contention or the playoffs and should be collecting assets—likely none of the players they signed are assets.

Even worse, the roster construction makes no sense. Randle/Portis/Gibson effectively push Knox and Iggy out of their preferred positions. That in turn creates a jam at the 1/2 with DSJ, Frank, Allen, Trier, RJ, and Dotson. These are all players we should be trying to develop, and now we have Payton, Ellington, and Bullock on top of that. A couple depth pieces would make sense, but with the amount of money they’re getting, you’d expect them to take playing time away from the young players.

The Knicks didn’t take their cap space seriously. Miss out on the top FAs? Might as well waste it and punt next season.

If they wanted to go for being respectable next year, Dragic/Bullock/Randle makes sense. They needed another wing and another big, and an actually good facilator would do wonders for this terrible passing team. Bring back Kornet and Vonleh. Then you’re left with:
Guard: Dragic/DSJ/Trier/Frank/Allen
Wing: RJ/Knox/Dotson/Bullock/Iggy
Big: Mitch/Randle/Vonleh/Kornet

And also some cap space left over for picking up assets. Payton in the Dragic role isn’t bad, but Ellington/Portis/Gibson makes no sense and is a complete waste.

rama got that Fizdale Magic
June 26, 2019 at 12:42 pm
The best thing I can say is that with all our draft picks and cap space, we are in a good position to get lucky.

But we would actually need luck to come our way. There are no moves we can make to get there without it. Which is why it’s imperative NOT to leap at band-aids like DAR and Randle. The openness to opportunity is actually our best asset right now. (And Mitch!)

So, I tuned out completely for a few days, because I was sure we’d do really stupid stuff like sign Boogie and max Tobias, and I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. Today, instead of reading the news to catch up, I just read the KB threads. I highly recommend this path in the future: don’t live the Knicks in real time, bouncing along the bumpy, unmediated road of reality – follow the KB commentary post facto, so you can breathe and laugh and not think about how much damage all those bumps are doing to your testicles.

Did we do well? No. Did we fail completely? No. As I’ve said, Perry is good at contracts; he aced this off-season. As I’ve also said, Perry isn’t great at identifying talent; signing a bunch of deeply flawed players to play the same position is, for example, sub-optimal.

I get that they felt fans couldn’t endure another season like the last, and that they needed to save face after crowing about the wonderful things about to happen that didn’t happen. But this offseason could have been a B+ if they had simply STOPPED. SIGNING. PLAYERS.

I didn’t think we could get Randle on the contract we did; as is, it’s a good deal for a player with potential. Good.

I don’t think the value of a vet is worth $10 mil a year. Bad.

I do believe a stretch 4 who can rebound makes sense next to Mitch. Good. But as the fourth big, at $15 mil a year? Bad.

And so on…

Does this offseason rank as an F if they decide to start Portis over Mitch?

Percentage of overall shots that were dunk attempts? What does that show?

In any event, Knox’s moves around the rim typically aren’t dunk attempts. They’re typically that two foot leap thingie that looks ok but then you kind of realize he didn’t get quite enough lift and he didn’t thrust himself quite the right way but he still got it up there with decent form but the not quite right lift and the the not quite right thrust meant it didn’t go in enough.

He shot 45.3% from 0-5 feet. Terrible. He got to that area 3.3 times a game. Not bad. (Kevin Durant, 3.8) The 45.3% is effectively what tanked his bb-ref numbers. There’s reason to believe he’s got a ton of room to grow there.

Vonleh to Minnesota, for what I’m sure is a much better salary than we are paying Bobby Portis. (Man, do I want all of us to be spectacularly wrong about Bobby Portis, even though I know we won’t be.)

Percentage of overall shots that were dunk attempts? What does that show?

He gets close to the rim, but not to the rim. That’s pretty damn disconcerting to see from a guy who’s a legit 6’9″ with an 8’10” standing reach. Not good.

There’s reason to believe he’s got a ton of room to grow there.

It’s a weakness, which is an opportunity to get better. But I think this is couched in an attitude like, “It can’t get any worse than it is.” Like you said, he’s 19, but getting older doesn’t necessarily mean getting better. See: Andrew Wiggins.

I think he’ll improve, but he has so far to go before he’s even close to average, to say nothing of superstar-level play.

The Kinks and Lakers both have TGIAGOTOSS, the grass is always greener on the other side syndrome. If they lose a lot of games, none of their own players except for their own recent draft picks can be any good. Vonleh is a good example of this.

For all the flack the Knicks exec’s are getting, the idea of signing literally your whole team to 1+1s is novel. It gives us more roster flexibility than any team in history.

I’m holding out hope that the team options are actually partially or unguaranteed contracts–apparently those are the same thing now. If that’s the case we can trade with any team looking for an asset. Need a playoff rental for 1 year? We have guys. Need a salary dump? We got you. If the players outperform their contract (unlikely) we have their early bird rights. To those who say, no one will want to trade for overpaid players, most teams that are looking to add them are contenders likely capped out anyway.

Given their statement about not taking on contracts, I’m likely just dreaming. On the other hand, the format they’ve come up with has the potential to generate lots of assets. If the office can think outside the box even a little bit, I could see other mediocre teams copying this format.

That’s cool. I’ll go back to admiring and following from afar.

whoa – easy E…

you have three choices:
1). post non-issue basketball type stuff like: the knicks have sucked for a very long time and will most likely suck for a while longer…can’t go wrong there, and, no one at all will ever argue that fact…

2). talk about food or music…everyone loves food and music…at the end of the day – you can’t tell someone else what to like, so, a very safe area to deal in…

3). post a basketball opinion (best if you can include some numbers – we love us some numbers here, they don’t really need to mean much…more impressive still if you put a few random acronyms before them and maybe a % afterwards), and be ready to have your thought and opinion tore to shreds…probably get your level of intelligence questioned – repeatedly…

or – you could take option number 9 and simply ramble on and on with some semi coherency with whatever stray thoughts might be rolling around in your coconut…my personal favorite form of discourse…

You think Payton might go back to his giant hair visor look?

I always wondered how that could not affect his shot.

Kevin Knox doesn’t have much of a chance at being a successful NBA player because he’s not a great NBA athlete, he’s not very skilled for an NBA player, nor is he very smart for an NBA player. He appeared to be below average on all fronts, but we’d all probably look like dumb overmatched novices if we were 19 year old NBA players. He was terrible at everything except shooting 3s, so he has a legit NBA skill to build off of. If he can learn to move the ball on offense or slide his feet defensively we might have a player. I’m not hopeful with Knox, but I do want to see some sort of improvement from him.

Dennis Smith Jr, however, is actually a respectable jumper (and clear bill of health) away from being an impact player. I liked what I saw from him last season and think he’s a solid bet to see a noticeable jump in his statistics. Mudiay went from worst in the world to NBA rotation player in an off season with Fizdale. I’m hoping DSJr can do something similar.

Let’s face it – the future of this franchise pretty much depends on whether RJ Barrett turns into a legit star.

It’s pretty much unconscionable that they put Knox in that position last year. It’s like when a baseball game is lost, the manager is running low on pitchers and the guy who’s getting shelled has to stay out there.

Giving Knox the ball was good tank for sure.

Now maybe they’ll have an actual team and run some coherent offense. That might help Kevin.

Did anyone suck at 19 but get it together to at least be a decent pro?

Geo, you’re a truly good person. Even Jowles likes you. I’m in your camp as a poster…

It’s pretty much unconscionable that they put Knox in that position last year. It’s like when a baseball game is lost, the manager is running low on pitchers and the guy who’s getting shelled has to stay out there.

Giving Knox the ball was good tank for sure.

that’s a really good point dan…the coaching staff/FO is most definitely responsible for some of his abysmal numbers…

Coming in late after work on the eval of the front office moves.

Knowing what I know now, they did a good job (B-). I really like Payton and Randle. They are nice, young players that have already taken steps forward. They need Gibson’s toughness to rub off on Knox. Portis is an awful backup for Mitch and Ellington is a swing man to play when there are injuries. Bullock will be the 6th man. I see roles for everyone. I see strengths and weaknesses. Most important, I see lots of youth with potential. If we can find 3 real players in the group that includes Payton, Barrett, Knox, Randle, Robinson, Smith, Dotson, Trier & Ntilikina (9 players), we’ll be on our way. But we have cap space (11M) and reasonably priced, tradeable assets. If the FO is sharp, they’ll find a way to flip those assets for high draft picks.

Adios Mudiay!

I was hoping we’d keep one of Kornet or Vonleh. I liked both of their games and their price tags, so it sucks to have let them go in favor of paying Bobby Portis and Taj Gibson 25 million dollars.

How did we miss jared Dudley while still having 10M in cap ?
FO lost its edge on the2nd day !

The only thing that is clear about Knox is that he was not ready for big minutes and a big offensive role in the NBA. He should have stayed in college. He probably should have played for a better coach in college.

Was he worse than Miles or Mikal would have been had they come out as freshman and been given the ball like Knox?

How did Fox play his rookie year? Last I checked, he had 2,000 minutes of suck, and he was older than Knox as a rookie. And his TS% was a whopping .003 higher than Knox.

Players either develop or they don’t. If they do, their 18-19yo rookie season doesn’t mean shit. Their college years don’t mean shit. The difference between Giannis and Noah Vonleh is that Giannis developed and Vonleh did not. Fox developed, Mudiay did not.

just for you, geo–

https://soundcloud.com/ricky-ha-1

the most polished ones were not mastered to be played through iPhone speakers (i.e. brickwall limited to within an inch of its life, thanks Chris Lord Alge!), so headphones are your best bet

(according to my wife and just about everyone else I know, my singing voice sounds nothing like my speaking voice, so don’t try to read my posts in my castrato register)

That’s Mudiay, Vonleh and Kornet already picked up by other teams. TGIAGOTOS.

howdy jowles…for a minute there – i was kind of thinking just how lucky you were to find missus jowles…seems like she ain’t done too bad for herself either 🙂

are these your words?

there’s always so much more than what we know…

@cock jowles
Couldn’t listen to the whole due to low battery on my phone but i heard some pretty Good alternative americana underground vibes with Great feeling ! Keep it goin man !

okay, let’s get weird mister jowles…

soooooo, my perception is you’re a pretty high energy level person…quick and sharp mind, competitive nature…a somewhat forceful personality…

holy fuck – i was not expecting to hear that…still picking up the lyrics, ‘want’ is pretty memorizing though…

i could not have imagined that kind of slow paced relaxing/mellow control in your voice…it was like listening to one of those: “your in a sunny room, sitting on a comfortable oak floor, staring out of a window on a warm and pleasant day, off in the distance you can hear the waves hitting softly against the sand…and you’re feeling very very relaxed…”

i don’t really understand the whole pitch and phonation thing…but, sounds do effect folks in different ways…i imagine though being able to bust out some vocals like that would be a pretty darn useful thing to have in your dating toolkit….

it’s good to be surprising…very well done sir 🙂

You can bench Knox and Frank without worrying. Both Frank and Knox will improve just by aging and playing here and there. Send them to the G-League till they’re 23 or so.

Once upon a time we are sad to Justin Holiday, Copeland, Fields etc gone. But those seems to be good move.

To ‘distract’ and ‘calm?’the angry knicks fanbase for losing/letting go KD’s trio …

the angry knicks owner for

FTFY. Always good to remember the Knicks worst enemy is Dolan.

By the way, Jeremy Lin is still available… I know he’s done and all, but they could bring him as a mentor and it could be an actual feel good moment.

I listened to the (very likable) Jowles’ music and I don’t think I know anything about life anymore

This blog is David Lynch’s idea of heaven

@177 I don’t think “athleticism” in the raw sense separates Simmons from Knox. It’s more of a skill/coordination thing. Simmons has what Scalabrini called “elite decision-making” skills. Unfortunately, he was talking about Julius Randle and describing what he was missing that keeps him from being a true star.

Maybe a good analogous comparison is Kanter vs. Jokic. Kanter has just as much raw athleticism but he is playing checkers while Jokic is playing 3-D chess.