(Saturday, July 13, 2019 12:20:34 AM)
Former New York Knick Tyson Chandler will be playing with Mike D’Antoni again. The free-agent center, who will be entering his 19th NBA season, agreed to a one-year deal with the Houston Rockets on Friday, according to an ESPN. The 36-year-old Chandler spent most of last season with the Los Angeles Lakers, with whom he…
(Friday, July 12, 2019 10:33:29 AM)
A look at the projected starting rosters of the Knicks, Nets and rest of the Atlantic Division and how they stack up after the many changes in NBA free agency.
155 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2019.07.13)”
That article above about the Atlantic division lineups made me think about what a tough division we are in.
The media has been killing Sam Presti for having had so much talent come through the Thunder organization and not win a title. While that’s half fair, it’s not his fault Clay Bennett and ownership didn’t want to give Harden an extra $4M over the life of his contract. If Sam Presti was running the Knicks we’d have the completely unfair advantage of a top 3 market and top 3 executive in basketball. The big criticism of Presti over recent years was he couldn’t find enough shooting, but shooters are wanted all over the NBA so they don’t have to settle in OKC. Pau Gasol chose Chicago over the Thunder for lifestyle purposes all those years back.
If I’m Dolan, I’d trade both Dallas picks to OKC for Sam Presti and fire Mills/Perry. That’s hard for me to say as a black man because I really want to see the Mills/Perry/Fizdale group work out, but they’ve shown to be a below average front office/coaching tandem so far, and star power in your front office is worth more than star power on the floor. I’d give Presti $10M a year to be the POBO and let him hire whoever he wanted.
I don’t think Presti is going to be in a rush to trade Paul. He runs a small market team where wins and star power probably help put people in their seats, and Paul helps with both. And he already has so many picks that he doesn’t need to trade Paul to rebuild.
I don’t know, the Magic and the Wolves could be tempted to take Paul. I mean, what if Minny knocks at Presti’s door offering Wiggins, Okogie and a couple first rounders?
In education, we love platitudes. One of the most popular ones is the phrase “lifelong learner.” Honestly, what Presti did is not rocket science. In fact, you don’t really have to be a genius to be a solid, if not excellent NBA GM. You should just be capable of learning from others and adapting to the changing market forces in the league.
Mills is not a learner. He has two great flaws…he’s a terrible talent evaluator and a terrible negotiator. Perry seems more like a learner, but he is hamstrung by Mills. Perry’s a somewhat better (but still spotty) talent evaluator, or perhaps a good delegator/listener to his scouts, but he either doesn’t understand the obvious value of having immediately available cap space or of cutting bait on his own mistakes in a timely manner.
There are lots of GMs (and billions of POBOs) I’d prefer over the Perry/Mills team. Alas, we have no control over that. So all we can hope for is that Perry keeps learning at a glacial rate and continues to be a guardrail for the reckless and untrustworthy Mills.
I still believe that the strategy is viable and the execution thus far is not so inept as to derail the train to a successful team. It’s just frustrating that management is so obtuse in regard to the truly simple and obvious concept of preserving at least some current cap space.
I agree if someone wants Paul, he could be traded. I’m sure Presti would be interested in salary relief if someone offered that. He traded For Paul because he wanted to rebuild, after all, and Paul is not your prototypical rebuild player.
One thing I’m interested in is how much of a fighter this year’s team will be. Last year they were horrible but they didn’t give up in games. Some of that maybe be Fizdale, but some may also relate to the sort of players they had. Management does claim they want hard working high character guys. I want to see how this translates in practice.
A few things about Presti and OKC
1. It’s going to take them a LONG time to rebuild unless they eventually start using their excess picks as a currency to bring in young productive players
2. I don’t understand why they traded Jerami Grant. Maybe I missed something. He’s still a young and improving player. When you start tossing out solid improving 24-25 year olds, you are basically saying this is a 6-10 year rebuild from scratch (good pickup for the Nuggets).
3. If you are going to move Grant, you should probably also try to move Steve Adams, though that could be a lot tougher in an environment where everyone hates traditional Cs and he’s making a lot of money.
4. Something is very likely to happen with Paul. No way Paul wants to lose his remaining time with OKC.
I would have stayed with Adams and Grant, started using excess picks as currency to supplement my own draft selections, and worry about the exact timing a little later when I see what kind of young players I could add in the next year or two. Adams and Grant will be productive for two contracts. No reason to rush. Unless he comes up with some good moves, OKC will be back in Seattle by the time this team is worth watching again on this path.
The Thunder have two 1RPs every year for the next four years. Then in 2024 they have three 1RPs, then just one in 2025 but three in 2026. That’s fifteen 1RPs in the next seven years. They also have four pick swaps built into all of that.
It may take them a little while to get to contention but that’s a really good foundation for the future.
Back to yesterday’s discussion, I have some very simple principles when it comes to government spending and regulation, largely based on capitalistic principals of cost/benefit analysis:
1) People should pay the true price of what they produce and consume
I bought a liter of bottled water recently for $2.99 and I thought to myself, isn’t it perverse that a liter of water (an abundant, renewable, and cleanly-produced consumable) cost more than a gallon of gasoline (a scarce, non-renewable, and environmentally, politically, and militarily-costly consumable)? What is the actual cost of a gallon of gasoline? Shouldn’t that cost be passed on to the producers and consumers? Shouldn’t the revenues from producers and consumers paying those costs be leveraged to fund less costly and damaging alternatives?
2) government’s job is to make people better net taxpayers (i.e. more money coming in as taxes than going out as government assistance)
Before the libertarians jump down my throat, what I mean is that when people depend less on government assistance, it’s good for society. For example, if you invest in public education and the net result is that the beneficiaries will be net taxpayers rather than net government assistance recipients, it is a sound investment. When you invest in drug treatment and the net result is more money coming in than going out for a given individual vs. alternatives such as incarceration (which usually leads to unemployability and recidivism) it’s a win for society, not just morally, but financially. When you invest in health care and the net result is greater worker productivity, again, that means workers will be paying out more than they’re bringing in.
@10 all of that common sense you just said sound like slurs to libertarians.
Agreed about the Angels. That was crazy.
Knicks Wizards play their consolation game at 6PM et tonight
sports are mostly just mindless entertainment, sometimes though – it can be a whole lot more…
Z-man, I agree with your assessment of Mills and Perry. I think they are good men and good middle managers. They have some leadership qualities too. What they are not are master tacticians, visionaries or powerful negotiators. At this level, those are qualifications to be an NBA executive.
Those types of people are very rare. It’s on Dolan to find those and that’s a quality he does not have. Jackson and Thomas are great examples. So Mills and Perry have to handle things methodically, which is a vast improvement over chaos and turmoil (Thomas) or lazy apathy (Jackson). The organization is operating as sanely as one would hope under the low-ceiling that a Dolan ownership means.
One political party has a disproportionate share of actively, and intentionally, undermining the credibility and efficacy of the legislature while simultaneously proposing and enacting budget cuts that would make dysfunctional any organization, much less some of the largest governmental organizations on the planet. These are active policy goals of that party.
I might have turned full-throated libertarian had I not educated myself on the history of that party’s heel-turn, and the inevitable march toward kleptocracy via a court purposely stacked with judges whose jurisprudence holds legal precedent in contempt.
When I go to the racetrack, it’s $6 for bottled water. They have a free fountain, but some people want bottled water enough to shell out the $6. $6 keeps me in water for weeks at Costco. I bring my own.
To your other point, I think everyone agrees that investing in things that reduce costs down the line is a great strategy. The problems are political.
We all have the same goals. We just have different priorities & different views on how best to achieve them given the limitations of both government and the private sector. They both suck in different ways, but the worst of all is corrupt people is the private sector/government using the government to enrich themselves.
Libertarianism is great if you’re a solipsistic 14-year old. Most people grow out of it.
“The problem with American society is that it is not selfish enough.”
-Libertarians
As a cartel, the NBA virtually denies the ability of a member organization to fail out of existence. This means a much greater tolerance for failure, especially on the part of management. And the subjective assessments prized by certain members of those management teams (and repeated as mantra by fanboys and pundits) allow for a lot of wiggle-room when it comes to choosing who to blame. See: Phil Jackson.
By take a little time, I assume you mean 2026- 2030.
If any city in the NBA should consider all out tanking it’s Oklahoma City, but even there it’s not such a great idea when you have a few young guys that can play. He was smart enough to unload his quality older players for picks. Now he should start using those excess picks to accelerate the rebuild or buy a home in Seattle. The Seattle Thunder.
Strat, we all tend to assume that OKC has lots of pucks now, so they are set up to rebuild well and will do that. But they actually have more picks than they can fit on a roster. What’s to stop them from deciding to trade some picks for win now players and try and win now?
@22
No, you can only do one thing with draft picks, please do not harm Strat’s narrative
I just want to note that libertarianism is, historically, a pretty enormous and diverse body of liberal political philosophy. What we have in American politics, i.e. the Tea Party, is a crypto-conservative movement that actually rejects larges swaths of what lowercase-L libertarianism might argue, especially in civil rights and social reform. And it’s largely a grift to install lobbyists as department heads and allow for easier, and cheaper, regulatory capture.
There are still people like Noam Chomsky who hold a lot of libertarian positions while rejecting the rational-market worship of the Night Watchman state or the paleolibertarianism of assclowns like Thomas Massie.
I really like thinking about them as pucks. We’ve been shooting with the wrong-handed stick for years now.
Back to the Knicks, I didn’t like a lot of the decisions that got us where we are now. I think we could easily be a LOT further along. That’s why I vent a lot. But we aren’t in bad shape. We are kind of like a very healthy and fit turtle. We’ll probably get to finish line, but it’s going to be slow.
From here I think we should simply hope that one or more of Randle, Portis, and Peyton starts breaking out into a more complete player and the rest of our young players keep developing on both sides of the ball. If we come out of this year with a 2-3 players that look like they can stick and be a significant part of a future contender (and have a lot of cap space again), things could be worse.
(I’m starting to get the impression that Portis is a really smart guy even though he’s had a few altercations. I like that.)
That’s exactly what I am suggesting they should start doing ASAP. But if you have that plan, why trade Grant and shop Adams when they are young productive players that will remain so for quite some time. That’s the inconsistency I am talking about. It’s looks more like a compete 6-10 year tank job that I think rarely makes sense unless you have no good young players.
In a sport like basketball where there are about 5 to 10 players who tilt the scales so dramatically each year, the parity that would theoretically exist if all teams had perfect management is never going to happen no matter what. When you throw in situational advantages like location, it makes parity even more difficult to achieve. So sure, the grossly incompetent will always be skewed towards the bottom, but then again, look at the Lakers, who couldn’t have been more pitifully mismanaged, still stumbled into a contending situation by virtue of their history and location. For the Knicks sake, I hope that there isn’t any expansion for the foreseeable future. I believe that the influx of talent is greater than the outflow, and that more and more teams will have a rotation without glaring holes, even the relatively incompetently managed ones.
Well, Mets fans, what did you think of Brody’s talks with the media? Lots of rehearsed phony humility, but he’s still clueless.
His opinion of the moves he made last offseason is that they “made sense at the time” but just “didn’t work out.” So, yeah, just bad luck! Uh oh.
Are you saying that talent distribution is flattening out via new high-production players? I don’t know if that’s true. I think there will be a rush of talented, skilled players (i.e. 7-footers who can shoot threes, guards who attack the rim) in the years to come, but that just adjusts the mean upward. There’s currently no real sign of greater parity.
By greater parity, I mean two things:
1) the squeezing of the W-L range between the best and worst teams, mainly by terrible teams still having enough talent to win, say, 25-30 games rather than fewer than 20 games, and the best teams winning around 60 games, with a lot of teams in playoff contention and a lot of jockeying for playoff position, and less abject tanking.
2) a greater ability for teams to make a key transaction that will move them up the food chain because even the bad teams will have a decent core.
You can still have dynasties and doormats if this happens, but the overall product should be better.
And the other political party is creating a neo-feudal state in California, advocating open borders and free health care for illegal immigrants, tolerating violent fascists who assault people in broad daylight, propagating a bizarre value system where someone who refuses to stand for the national anthem becomes a hero while someone else can have their life ruined because they don’t use the right pronoun, and lost the Presidency of the United States to Donald Freaking Trump in part because they spent the last quarter-century in thrall to a sexual predator/possible rapist and his #1 enabler.
Oh, and the other political party just spent the last 2+ years deliberately and directly undermining the legitimacy of the democratic process based on a kooky conspiracy theory.
Mike
Ah, I come to post this ( “Next year I’m shooting threes. I can shoot them. I shot them in high school. They ain’t that much farther,” said Robinson. “I’m going to continue to work on it. We work on [the eight-to-10 foot shots] a lot. Me and [assistant Summer League] coach Mike Miller, we work on that a lot. We’ve been working on that for almost a whole summer, also ballhandling, just getting better.”), and see there’s a circle jerk making fun of the people who believe in self ownership, personal responsibility and the non aggression principle.
Libertarianism is great if you’re a solipsistic 14-year old. Most people grow out of it.
Funny, that’s how I view leftists. I would think most people would out grow the childish notions of something for nothing (Free shit for everybody!!), envy (But mommmmm, Billy has a swimming pool. Why can’t I have a swimming pool??) and the idea that the world owes you shit just by existing.
Who’s worse, Nazis or the people who stand up to them? Just wondering.
Yeah the left wing has a real serious fascism problem. All those Proud Boys and alt-right 4chan trolls, all those white supremacists, gee that must be a real embarrassing problem for the left.
As a cartel, the NBA virtually denies the ability of a member organization to fail out of existence. This means a much greater tolerance for failure, especially on the part of management. And the subjective assessments prized by certain members of those management teams (and repeated as mantra by fanboys and pundits) allow for a lot of wiggle-room when it comes to choosing who to blame. See: Phil Jackson.
Haha! You just described nearly every Gov’t agency ever!
I just want to note that libertarianism is, historically, a pretty enormous and diverse body of liberal political philosophy. What we have in American politics, i.e. the Tea Party, is a crypto-conservative movement that actually rejects larges swaths of what lowercase-L libertarianism might argue, especially in civil rights and social reform. And it’s largely a grift to install lobbyists as department heads and allow for easier, and cheaper, regulatory capture.
Agree wholeheartedly.
-lower case Libertarian
Yeah the left wing has a real serious fascism problem. All those Proud Boys and alt-right 4chan trolls, all those white supremacists, gee that must be a real embarrassing problem for the left.
Antifa and white supremacists are all assholes. Why is that so hard to say? Why is it always about the other team?
Antifa wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Nazis. They are there to let Nazis know they can expect to get chin checked if they plan on starting some shit.
“Both sides are bad doe”
No, actually! One side is Nazis. The other side likes to punch Nazis. I’m gonna go ahead and root for the Nazi punchers, who only want to harm Nazis. It’s really not super complicated.
Wow. Just wow. A bunch of thugs go around attacking people they consider nazis. No judge. No jury. Just I don’t like that person, so me and my buddies are gonna go beat the shit out of him.
And you mock my beliefs. You’re nothing but a thug.
How about that guy? He’s a nazi?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/antifa-attacks-a-journalist-11562021361
Poor Nazis.
For the record, Andy Ngo is nonviolent and did not deserve what happened to him.
The Proud Boys though? They’re looking for a fight, and they’re specifically looking to bully the nonviolent, it has happened many times in my city. So if those guys get punched, too fucking bad for them.
If you’re really worried about “thugs” maybe you should be more angry at the people who are out there instigating the hate, white supremacy and violence, not the folks who are responding to it.
Music to my ears. When you consider everybody in the organization (Dolan/POBO/GM/Coaches/players etc), there are only 2 people we know to be above average at their jobs – and they are Mitch and Miller (Strat and Neptune might appreciate the Mitch Miller connection). Fortunately, the team is not following the advice of many here who feel Mitch being able to hit wide open shots at a high enough clip isn’t needed.
I noticed Chandler got picked up for 2.5m by Rockets. I would have been fine if we had offered Tyson 4M for this year with the understanding we would cut him at the waivers deadline so he could join any team he wanted. He could have been the reserve center and mentored Mitch on defensive positioning.
You’re doing the same thing actual Nazis did. You’re dehumanizing people you don’t like so you can justify committing violence on them.
Thugs:
https://www.businessinsider.com/extremist-killings-links-right-wing-extremism-report-2019-1
I don’t know how else to say it. Fine you win. Initiating violence is justified if I don’t like the victims. Most people on both teams agree with you. Enjoy your civil war. I’m moving to Costa Rica.
MAKE LOB NOT VORP
you’re born with nothing but the skin on your ass, and, each every day you should thank god for that…no one owes you a god damn thing in this world…
one of my favorite mom “sayings” of all time…no doubt she got it from my granddad, who was a crazy ol’ cajun and a very unique individual…
Yeah, that Q Anon shit is pretty wild, right?
You never address the subject at hand…. always answer with some to cool for school BS…..That is usually assumed to be a concession on the point at hand.
Yes, I definitely think that trying to convince you Fox News junkies that Bob Mueller is not a deep-state conspirator is a good way to spend my time. You didn’t read the report or you are funtionally illiterate. There’s really no alternative. And you’re probably going to be all sorts of mad — because you are fucking brainwashed by a vile, 24/7 belch of false reporting and hyperpartisan analysis.
Don’t be upset with me for calling you what you are: easily duped, a mark for the most transparent con-men this country has to offer. If you have visited Breitbart for accurate information of any kind, if you think that Hannity and Carlson are giving you Truth in its most patriotic form, this fact is self-evident. Honestly, I didn’t make you this way. Don’t be mad at me for it.
Wow. Lots of interesting stuff discussed yesterday and today.
2FOR18 (I still remember that game like yesterday damn near) and JK47, allow me to make a point that hopefully relates to your debate:
If the KKK started marching down my block today, I would have a very hard time with it. My ancestral anger would rise within me, and I would seriously question whether I have the moral and spiritual duty to impede their march. Like, I would consider getting a Louisville slugger and at least chasing the bastards out of the neighborhood.
Now, you can say they have the right to march, and the Constitution says you’re right. But some things go beyond simple law when you’re facing a group of people who’s historical m.o. has been (and continues to be) the reduction of Black livelihood.
Appeasement didn’t work at Munich. It will not work now.
I was catching up on yesterday’s thread and saw something that I wasn’t going to call out for fear of derailing, but since we’re still doing this shit gonna get up on my soapbox for a couple of posts. I work in TV, for reference.
2for18, you posted this yesterday:
This is fucking stupid. Look, all of these things are businesses. They exist primarily to make money. A couple of these organizations have agendas: Fox News, Sinclair (owns like 80% of the the radio stations and ‘local’ TV broadcasters), MSNBC (though that is as much about trying to position themselves in a relatively crowded cable news market, see below for a breakdown on this*). But even then what they really care about is making money. Hollywood’s agenda? MONEY. They want as much of it as they can get there hands on. Kung Fu Monkey used to write about this pretty often, here’s one. The studios avoid any viewpoint because that might get in the way of making of money. The various cable networks? Same exact thing. They want your money, they want your time and attention, they do not give a shit about your politics. Conservative ‘values’ or whatever don’t really sell all that fucking well because it alienates a bunch of your audience. And don’t conflate indie productions with Hollywood, lots of liberal and conservative films get made at the indie level the conservative ones just tend to not sell super well for a whole slew of reasons. Lots more of everything don’t get made at all – it is very difficult to get a show or movie made, if you go 2 for 18 that would be a phenomenal success rate. Continued below.
That low success rate of turning ideas into film isn’t because of a litmus test, it’s because movies and TV are extremely expensive to make, only so many are going to get made by any particular studio or network, so they really really need to make sure a project has a good chance of paying for itself. Otherwise you lose money. Moving on.
Academia is liberal, a little bit but not as much as you would think. The headlines tend to be about excited teenagers stretching themselves out at small liberal schools and not anything broadly representative of the national state of our universities but they definitely skew perception. Anyway this state exists mostly because conservatives tend to not actually want those jobs. It’s not because anyone is applying a litmus test to teach at UCF, or Texas A&M, or Michigan State, ect. Most of the folks teaching there aren’t really political anyway, mostly because most people just aren’t that political. Occasionally you’ll see somebody get fired for saying something that is classified as ‘conservative.’ It is pretty rare, happens the other direction occasionally as well. The big reason that happens is because if some asshat runs their mouth off about what the fuck ever, that generally results in a drop in applications to attend that school and a drop in donations. And the administrators who run these schools care first and foremost about making fucking money. Hell, look at Michigan State not wanting to hold the President accountable for the Nassar fiasco – because she brought in fuck tons of donations. What universities generally care about is making money, because the people running them mostly care about making money. Continued below.
Newspapers. I get that it is a thing that if you are not espousing a conservative slant in your news your are automatically liberal. This is, of course, bullshit. Conservatives complain about the NYT all the time. Liberals also complain about the NYT all the time. The same is true for the Post, LA Times, and.. That’s it. Those are the major newspapers left, because, and I apologize if I am hitting this point repeatedly, newspapers don’t make any damn money anymore. Anyway. All of these share some reporting commonalities but this one is important: they push equivalency, false or not but usually false, extremely hard because they are terrified of being called liberal because that means they lose readers. So the NYT publishes Krugman, but also publishes Douhat. The Post runs stories about Trump because it is news and it attracts attention and they are trying to sell newspapers. Well, they are trying to sell advertising but it’s almost the same thing.
I think maybe you can see the outlines of where I am going with this. These media companies do not have political agendas (for the most part, see below). All they really care about is making money.*
*They also care about crushing their enemies, but the best way to do that is usually by making money. ABC hates CBS, who hates NBC, who hates FOX, ect. From that Kung Fu Monkey post I linked to above: “Paramount exists only to crush Sony, see them driven before them, and hear the lamentations of their assistants. They care not how they do it.”)
The promised Cable news addendum! Cable news is pretty cheap to produce so it’s worth the investment but the margins remain fairly thin because there really isn’t much of an audience. Last month Fox News topped the cable charts with 2.5mil primetime viewers. That’s pretty good, they made some money! But it’s not really all that many people in a country of 330 mil or so. MSNBC drew 1.5, CNN 800K. That’s not that much indoctrination for anybody. Bourdain’s death hit CNN pretty hard, he was their biggest draw by far. They are example number one of why you should pick a side – CNN stayed neutral, got called liberal anyway, and lost viewers because neutral doesn’t sell. The point is they are differentiating themselves to make money, because the audience of cable news watchers is pretty small and if you don’t differentiate yourself you end up like CNN, slowly going down the drain.
Also talk radio is pretty far right but that’s mostly because, for the same type of reasons that liberals go to more indie films, conservatives listen to way more talk radio. So Sinclair has an agenda, but it’s at least partially (and a significant part it is) because what their audience wants.
That’s it, I’m done. You’re all welcome.
Knicks-related: I think some here would look at Perry in an even better light if he wasn’t tied to Mills. I know the feeling among some is that he’s not executing the most optimal plan, but it is a viable and flexible plan that allows the team to pivot if things don’t go according to plan. It’s decent, and decent is a hell of a lot better than what we’ve had in this current century.
I also don’t feel it’s fair to be totally skeptic of Fizdale based on a tank year. I’d like to see how he coaches, develops and strategize when there’s more of a directive to win some games (not “win-now”), with better players.
That’s a fair point about Fiz— the team had a pickup game quality to it last year but there were very few competent players on the roster. Maybe he can get a more veteran-based group of players to play with a better game plan than “eat what you kill” or whatever the philosophy was last year. I’m not sold on him as an X’s and O’s guy but he probably deserves a grade of “incomplete” so far.
1. Source on California becoming a “neo-feudal” state?
2. I would love for a mainstream politician to seriously advocate for mostly open borders because the geographic coordinates of your birth constitute one of the most arbitrary privileges/disadvantages that could ever possibly exist, but to my knowledge literally no one has done that, so, source?
3. Who had their life ruined by accidentally misgendering someone?
4. Do you think George W. Bush’s hand picked FBI director is a secret deep state lib or something?
And I thought people would be talking about Houston’s trade.
I grew up with the Big Black Book of Communism on my shelf – which, let’s be honest, was too long to get through. I think Stalin has been vindicated of late and his death count brought to a relatively feeble 10-132 million. Too many people survived the Gulag and Siberian deportation it turns out. So I think the Nazis are still #1. Of course, my cousin married a Rwandan woman who lost a whole chunk of her family to genocide, but not thankfully her mother. She played dead under a pile of corpses for several days. I think that 70% of Rwandan Tutsis were killed.
I think it makes sense to keep a close eye on everyone. Human beings of every political ideology are capable of terrible stuff.
Honestly I’m not about to blame Fiz for Ntilikina having a total lack of dribbling skills, but I will blame him if he’s unable to recognize that fact
I think we’ll learn a lot about Fizdale when we see the opening night’s line-up. If Morris and Portis are starting, he’s a rube.
“Anti-fascists are fascists” is a particularly brilliant take
Fox News and co. have very successfully duped millions of people into believing “antifa” is some highly centralized, deeply ideological membership group who are coming for them when it’s really just a bunch of people who sporadically get together to counter Nazis and their ilk.
It’s sad, really. I’ve got elderly, retired family members spending their golden years in constant horror that antifa or undocumented immigrants or Syrian refugees or Ilhan Omar or whatever that day’s fear mongering grift is are going to come to their house and brutally murder them. They’ve never been the most agreeable people, but it’s gotten much worse since Fox News (Tucker Carlson specifically in this case), Breitbart, etc. really started to take off.
There’s no ethical way to grift, but you’d hope that “convincing people they are in grave danger at all times” represents a red line of sorts. As one can easily see just by reading this thread, that’s way too much to ask for apparently.
@60 why do people forget about Mao? That commie starved 60 – 100 million of his own people to death. He deserves a spot at the Hitler/Stalin table.
It’s really amazing that I know about antifa without reading breitbart or watching fox news.
I just want decent health care and an economic system that doesn’t utterly rape everybody for the benefit of the mega-rich. I favor a tightly controlled free market economy with a robust social safety net, much like the systems in place across Europe, specifically Scandinavia.
Mao and planned economies and communism and authoritarianism can go fuck right off as far as I’m concerned.
It was as much the Gang of Four as it was Mao, but I think the intention should come into play. Mao wasn’t trying to kill off all those people but Hitler and Stalin very much were. Definitely a table in the same room though.
There’s no ethical way to grift, but you’d hope that “convincing people they are in grave danger at all times” represents a red line of sorts. As one can easily see just by reading this thread, that’s way too much to ask for apparently.
LMAO!!!! Don’t you know that the world is gonna end in 12 years! That if we don’t get rid of Trumphitler it’s the end of democracy!!
Mao’s got game too, no question. Franchise player.
Some say Pol Pot was only a second tier star but he’s a championship cornerstone to me.
Honestly, history is depressing. So much genocide at every turn.
You think you know about anitfa, but you have demonstrated that you in fact do not. Nor do you appear to understand the neo-fascists, how they tend to operate, and the nature of the relationship between the two ‘groups’. You do seem to understand the talking points put out by the neo-fascists for media reasons, and it is more than a little odd that you stick so closely to them. Why do you trust what they tell you?
Just a remarkable grifting effort on the part of Big Scientific Consensus
Pol Pot is a starter. I’ve got Hernán Cortés and Andrew Jackson on the bench.
It’s not really a grift, as they are legit giving people exactly the kind of entertainment they want.
If we’re including Americans, I want Woodrow Wilson as my 6th man.
@ 71 what talking point did I, specifically, use? I’m not talking about what you think I mean. What words did I use that are a talking point?
I think for myself, so this offends me. If I was some sheep I’d join one of the 2 big parties.
We could use a democratic offense based on team play and a fascistic Defense with blocks, steals and trash talking this season !
Sports can unite people and political systems !
I have a Libertarian friend who has very similar stances. “I’m above the two party thing” and “both sides are terrible” and “I’m a free thinker” and then every single thought and meme and opinion he expresses is straight up boilerplate right wing stuff, right down to “Colin Kaepernick sux” and “climate change is for hippies.”
Libertarianism! So you can be a Republican without the stink of Republicanism on you!
@76 You dropped the Proud Boys story of their latest little dust-up, and just assumed it to be an accurate and complete one. You parroted their version of what their interactions with antifa are like. You didn’t even bother with a ‘both sides do it’ argument, you went straight to blaming antifa for any violence and positioning the Proud Boys as victims. Precisely the story they fed the media, and one with very little truth to it. So, why?
Considering your regurgitation of right wing talking points like the asinine imbecility of ‘liberals control the media,’ which as I mention briefly above is ridiculously untrue on even a cursory examination, you mostly don’t, and you already have even if you don’t claim the name.
@79 I was told that antifa only beats up nazis. I put up a link to them beating up a non nazi.
Again I ask you to paste the words that I used that are a talking point. Not what you think I said or meant.
of ‘liberals control the media,’
You’re a mendacious asshole. Now you’re misquoting me.
Libertarianism is anarchy for white men.
Self-defense ain’t fascism.
@83 that’s so dumb I don’t know where to start.
@84 assaulting some one because you don’t like their views isn’t self defense.
@86
If it’s not self defense then it’s fascism undercovered.
Many times in this life we see Words losin their True Meaning by men with bad intentions.
Act peacefully and nobody will punch you.
Start some shit, catch some hands.
If you’re a Nazi/KKK dude/Proud Boy your very presence is designed to be intimidating and violent.
You should expect blowback.
It seems that totalitarianism is the key feature of those governments’ atrocities. Still waiting on report of the evils of the mixed-economy states in northern Europe that have low corruption, low rates of violence, and high HDI.
The truth is that Fear is pretty objective.
There are people who kill cockroaches, snakes, grasshoppers or whatever else possible even on the street because they fear them to death and others that don’t because they respect them as a living creature.
Can you blame the first for fearing ?
The Proud Boys throw these rally/fights every week or so. Sometimes they travel but often they hold them in Portland – they know they will get an antifa response there and the cops mostly let them fight. The fighting is the entire point. Everyone of them goes the same way and assigning blame for initiating is pointless, both sides are there for the same thing. Andy Ngo may or may not have been knowledgeable about this, I certainly don’t trust what he says but it doesn’t matter a whole lot. The Proud Boys invited him because they knew there would be violence, violence that they had a more than equal share in creating. The predictable ensues, and then their press release says antifa are thugs who attacked a non-violent person. Then you come here and repeat it. There are some people in antifa who are there just for the fight, some anarchists just want to break shit. But your line is straight out of the mouths of the neo-facists. Just like your other talking points are straight out of right-wing media.
From yesterday:
Are you denying that this argument is ‘liberals control the media’? I may be an asshole but I wrote no lies. You are spilling right wing talking points all over the place.
Georges Santayana sez hai. If you are a citizen or resident of this country it is incumbent on you to follow the precedents of the applicable courts on such matters.
While the Nazi Party “won” the Skokie Case in 1977 (?) they lost the war in the most Pyrrhic of victories. In a free country the light of the noonday sun is always the best disinfectant . Not Fugazy tough guys…..
The best news of the summer for the Knicks… Knox et al can read the writing on the wall:
If you initiate violence you deserve whatever you get. Being a “presence” isn’t initiating violence,
Re: the Republican thing, I can list out all of the things I disagree with them on, but I think it would be pointless. Though I do understand why people equate the 2 = there is some common ground. The 2nd Amendment and the fake talk by Repubs re: smaller gov’t. I see zero common ground with the Dems = they’re on a hard left course and openly embracing marxism.
.
@91 what I said in your actual quote of mine is true as I see it. Your fake quote was a lie. And I am still laughing at you calling CNN neutral. They aren’t as hysterical as Fox News and MSNBC. They’re more somber which is why nobody watches them. But to not acknowledge that they lean heavily towards the Democrat team makes everything else you wrote moot.
In a democratic Scandinavian country the Norwegian Serial killer killed 77 and got 21 years in prison.
[The maximum determinate penalty (civilian penal code) is 21 years’ imprisonment, but only a small percentage of prisoners serve more than 14 years]
That’s the democratic way !
The same action under other circumstances could result to sudden death or lynch mob.
What’s more fair or humane or affordable for a society ?
I love it. Team scrimmages would turn into
Culture clashes.
@95 If you think that was meant as a literal quote you need to invest in some reading comprehension. Do you think that is an unfair characterization of what you said? It clearly isn’t. Thinking that CNN is leftist is a common republican delusion, so whatever.
OK it’s almost game time. If anybody wants to get in some last shots I promise I won’t respond. I want to concentrate on the game.
well, that kinda sums up my whole world view pretty neatly…
I don’t check Knickerblogger for a day and… holy hell we need some basketball.
interesting stuff grocer…thanks for sharing…
but – damn, I was absolutely positive you were running some deli somewhere deep in the five boroughs…
I could even picture the sandwiches you’d be selling…
yeah, I need to stop thinking too deeply about these forum name things…
Barrett looking great so far
hey man, so it says “espn app”…does that just mean we have to watch it off the internet?
I’m watching it on the espn app on my PS4. You can watch it through the website as well, I think.
Its on NBA TV. Hope everybody saw the ridiculous Mitch Lob
thanks silky, thanks 2-4-18…
my cable bill started creeping up again…laying off the expanded sports pack until college football season starts up again…
downloading the espn app now on the ps4…
Knicks-Wizards summer league consolation game, shitty basketball, Isaiah Thomas doing the color commentary.
It doesn’t get any better than that!
Isiah comparing Knox to Allan Houston, I wish he became as good a shooter as Allan Houston. Talk about someone who would’ve benefited greatly from playing in today’s era where more 3pters are encouraged, Houston was a career 40% 3pt shooter and 86% from the FT line but his TS% was “only” 55% which was actually very good for a guard during that time especially considering he had a pretty high usage rate. Just didn’t shoot enough 3pters and didn’t contribute at all in other categories.
Allan Houston:
22/1/1
Every night
great, now i really feel stupid for watching…in my defense, i’m also doing some chores around the house 🙂
there is nothing about kevin knox that says “small” forward…hopefully he gets bigger and moves his feet faster sooner than later…who knows, maybe he could pull in 7 or 8 boards a night…
ugh, just heard isaiagh…rarely a pleasant moment…
Technically JK it was 22/3/2 lol
You know, I’m not watching the game, but despite being a terrible GM Thomas was pretty good at drafting. If he like Knox, I would take that seriously.
Rj with 11 points on 3-6 shooting, 4 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 turnover. Exactly the type of game you want to see out of him.
Mitch is still tremendous, ho hum….
And Knox still sux a bag of dix.
Our last two lottery picks are the only reason this feels like an accomplishment but RJ clearly has a lot of skills to work with
http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/13Ev9571xt8Bdm/giphy.gif
Haha, nope. The grocer of despair. My sandwiches are shit.
RJ triple double watch.
Listening to these two is like slowly bashing in your own skull with a cantaloupe. Avoidably and embarrassingly messy.
Oh no. They’re singing. Where’s an earthquake when you need one.
Listening to Isiah talk is the ultimate antidote to thinking former players necessarily know what they’re talking about
Gotta keep Wooten!
Max Kenny Wooten
I want Wooten in the rotation.
Isaiah is like Kenny Smith-he speaks as if he’s saying something important, but it’s total gibberish
RJ is playing like a bigger Rondo today
Braz needs to be in the rotation
He’s got a real nice stroke
RJ Barrett is close to a triple double with two turnovers and no fouls, and is leading the team with a +22 net rating.
He isn’t the savior we asked for. He’s the one we needed. We have a real shot of being Jazz East in a year or two.
I’m thinking that as a secondary thing, if Knox improves his FT shooting to 80% or better it’ll benefit his TS greatly since he’s shown more of an ability to get to the line.
5 assists, tho. Couldn’t watch the game – how’s he looked?
Encouraging to see RJ put up some real good numbers.
Btw bobneptune, I’m a law-abiding citizen but as an African-American I know all too well that the law, and those who are sworn to protect it, has historically not been on our side too many times. Law is not always just, and I do believe there are times that moral responsibility can conflict with law.
And btw2, I’m not advocating for vigilantism.
RJ clearly slowed down in the last two games and tried to just distribute and take what’s given to him. Makes me optimistic about his basketball iq, which was my biggest question concerning him other than his steal rate and his shot. Nice to see! Now just two things to work on instead of three.
Iggy also looks for real.
The political chatter turned me off earlier today. Just saying. It doesn’t matter what side I’m on, it just all sucks.
Nice game by RJ. Next up real NBA players.
Isaiah . Do I have to listen?
Do we have room for Wooten? I think he’s the rim protector we’ve been looking for to back up Robinson. Guys like him are why the Portis signing sucked. Anyhow, I would love him as the 15th man.
Antifa doesn’t even possess the ethical/moral/actual authority to define the term “Nazi,” much less adjudicate people Nazis and commit violence against people they say are Nazis. Only the state does, and even then the constitution limits the state’s authority to a significant degree.
RJ was the best player on the floor today, hands down. The cool thing about him is he figured shit out and adapted on the fly. Very optimistic.
@132 – what he said about the political chatter earlier and on keeping Wooten. It would be nice to have someone to bring in who has a similar defensive presence when Mitch gets into the inevitable foul trouble.
Need to surround RJ with shooters. He’s gonna be the type of guy that plays at his own speed and the game will come to him. Big two guard /small forward who can post down low and if doubled, will make the right pass. He was nervous those first two games. I think he’ll make up for lack of quickness/speed/shooting (which can get better) with craftiness/toughness/court awareness. Won’t be a superstar but a 17,7 and 7 dude.
Knox was almost in control tonight. Not bad. His last pass to outerspace was epic tho…
Iggy looks pretty solid.
And Rj starts to remind me of StJohn’s legend in Greece during the 90’s: “The Truth” Walter Berry.
With less paint spins and more all around game. RJ LOOKS GOOOOD !
Wooten and Cavanaugh deserve a chance.
I like that comparison. No big free agents (unless you count Conley) build through the draft and make smart signings. And of course Gobert and Mitch.
My Knicks fantasy is that we’ll look back in a few years and be really, really happy we lost out on KD and Kyrie.
So which of our island of misfit PGs fits best next to RJ? If Frank could shoot, like, at all, it might be him. But unless he’s a different shooter at FIBA, then it’s down to Payton, whose own shooting difficulties aren’t ideal here, and DSJ, who has allegedly fixed his shot but is also fairly ball dominant. So… I got nothing.
Still not sure why the best player on the team was playing summer league games.
I missed the game, but it’s good to read that RJ finished on a good note. I think he’s going to suck this season but he seems to have a pretty broad skill set which is encouraging for the future.
Gafford and White look good…
What up my bitches
RJB got nice to nice
Farfa, Haikoo, son!!!!!
Mitch needs to play. He missed an entire year of organized ball. Next stop: USA select team. I pity the fools on the actual team.
Allie Laforce is not ugly…
Iggy has to play with the big team. He just has to. The kid is so much fun to watch.
Iggy is better than Knox based on my eye test and their college stats. I’d like to see a line-up of RJ, Smith, Iggy, Randle and Mitch in the preseason games, with RJ being the primary ball handler. That’s 4 3 point shooters who can pass, plenty of rebounding, inside scoring – and Mitch might average 5 blocks a game covering up for the other 4.
Knox seems improved, but I can tell that he’s a slow learner and incredibly awkward. His physical profile is just so impressive that I hate to not give him every opportunity to stick. He literally dwarfs Iggy and RJ. When he drives it must look to the defender that there are a whole bunch of arms and legs coming at you and it’s hard not to foul him. He had a couple of nice passes out of the post that we would not have seen last year. He’s blocking some shots.
I truly wonder whether Knox, had he decided to wait until after his junior year to enter the draft, would be a top-5 pick.
I don’t see how Knox gets minutes on this team. I don’t like it, but he’s a PF on a team with 5 PFs making $60mil.
And Cock is right. Mitch is a superstar right now.
He averaged 19.7pts, 15.1rbs, and 4.8 blocks per 36 with a tidy .82 TS% for the summer. Of course he also averaged 7 fouls per 36 but yeah, he should be playing until he fouls out every night.
Knox looks like he’s gotten a bit stronger and seems to be getting more leverage when he drives which helped him get to the line a ton. He was still one of the younger players in summer league- he’s 7 months younger than Iggy for instance. I think he winds up a solid scorer (med/high volume, above average TS) by year three but he’s yet to show the ability to contribute in any way besides scoring.
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: “theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron”
– dril
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liniiRApSFg
bruhhhhhhhhh
he jumps like he’s on a pogo stick, ridiculous vertical leap
Broadcasters: “Memphis liked Clarke enough to draft him early”
Lol, at them thinking 21 was early for Clarke
yeah but wait till knox is his age…
Knox has looked pretty good — like maybe next year is his year to really be a useful player. His stroke looks pure, has made a bunch of really nice passes, and has been a beast getting to the line — the first and second of these are things that are probably real improvements, but the last — we’ll see if that holds up to real NBA defenders.
Still not sure about Barrett. His passing has been really good, and he can rebound the ball. I can easily imagine him averaging 8 rebounds and 6 assists per game in a few years. But I worry that he’ll never be able to take guys off the dribble on his own. There are plenty of players who need a pick or a dribble handoff etc to get space, but it sure would be nice to have a guy who can just compromise a defense on his own. Everyone’s swing skill is shooting, but maybe even more so for RJ.
I think a mostly-bench lineup that would really work would be Frank, RJ, Dotson, Morris, and Randle. You have a fair amount of shot creation there, can switch everything on defense, and good shooting around RJ.
Speaking of swing skill – I doubt he’s even going to get much of a chance this year, but if Frank could just shoot 35% from 3, he would fit so well with RJ.
btw – a few games into summer league and it’s clear that RJ knows that if you throw the ball to Mitch anywhere near the basket, it’s 2 points and an easy assist. Funny how the 12 PGs the Knicks used last year never figured that out.
Let’s define terms here.
Superstar = means making All-NBA teams (top-15)
Star = makes the allstar team (top-25)
After that you have starters, rotation players and scrubs.
Is Mitch even a Star yet?