I don’t want to break up PoliticBlogger, but here is some basketball news from ESPN.com, “A blockbuster offseason that saw multiple superstars on the move has left the NBA without a consensus title favorite and put some oddsmakers in a conundrum of trying to figure out how the season will unfold.
Caesars Sportsbook posted season-win totals for each team Thursday afternoon. Seven teams opened with win totals greater than 50, led by the Milwaukee Bucks at 57. The Bucks won an NBA-best 60 games last season and are the clear-cut favorites in the Eastern Conference. The Philadelphia 76ers are next in the East at 54.5.”
The Knicks? 27 wins, seventh tied for fourth from the bottom, which is itself a tie between the Charlotte Hornets and Cleveland Cavaliers at 24 wins.
What do you folks think? Bet the under or the over?
346 replies on “ESPN: Bucks, Clippers top Caesars’ season-win totals”
27 is a good number. I think I might take the over since it’s summer and adjust down as we get closer.
Love the era of parity. Going to be the most interesting season in years….
I have the Knicks at 36-46 this year. Smith Jr, Barrett, Morris, Randle, and Robinson will be better on both ends than people expect to start the year, and then things will get uneven before a strong last two months of the season. I’d take the over on a 27 win projection. It’s especially hard to see how this team loses 55 games if Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson play a combined 5,000 minutes.
My house…on the beach made of bamboo on Over !
27 pointless wins, 24th best team in the NBA, roughly ninth overall pick, sounds a lot like the same bullshit we’ve been doing for 20 years.
I’ll take the under.
Are we going to do our official predictions too or closer to the season? I’m tempted to go with the under, but there’s so much variance with this roster I’m really not sure.
D’you want to know what’s wrong with the world ?
Everywhere there’s people with no flowers in their hair…
(Going Up – Echo & the Bunnymen)
A hair over 27. Right now I’m leaning 29.
I’m pretty sure mine was 26 (I made it a week or so ago, I think). I’m expecting something between 23 and 29 wins, so 26 feels like a safe prediction.
The only teams I see below 27 wins are:
Hornets 24
Cavs 24
Griz 25.5
Then the Knicks and Suns are at 27
Doesn’t that make us predicted to be tied for the 4th worst record?
Other thoughts:
If OKC keeps Paul, they will have a pretty good team, should win over 30 games.
I think ORL takes a step back.
BOS will not win 49 games
Nets will not win 47 games
@9
Yes I think you’re right.
That seems like a very reasonable projection, I think the Knicks are still a bottom five team but not the complete dregs of the NBA. That projection seems a little low for the Grizzlies but the Cavs and Hornets are indeed going to be terrible.
I agree that 27 is reasonable with the information we have right now. However I think there is a lot of possible variance, especially on the upside. Mitch, Randle and Morris make a pretty formidable front line. Payton seems ready to make a jump. Ellington, Gibson and Portis are decent role players. A couple of the younger guys might develop some (I am especially optimistic about Trier).
Not that it’s necessarily a good thing if we win more than expected,…
if the number is 27, I wonder what kind of influence fiz’s performance can have on that plus/minus…5 games over the course of the season maybe…
Yeah, I misread a couple of the win totals. Thanks, fixed that! Why, by the way, is Washington predicted to win more than the Knicks?
OKC at 28 is ridiculously low.
27 Feels about right. At the end when the Knicks need a basket, I can picture Knox going one on five, all knees and elbows, predictable outcome, and me cursing at the tv as the other team races down the court for an easy 2 to seal it. Unless someone emerges who can get and make quality pressure shots, the mid 30s will be difficult. I have hope and optimism, but 27 is a prudent betting number.
the list from ESPN:
57.0 Bucks
55.5 Clippers
54.5 76ers
52.5 Jazz
52.0 Nuggets
52.0 Rockets
51.5 Lakers
49.5 Celtics
48.5 Pacers
47.5 Trail Blazers
47.0 Nets
47.0 Warriors
45.0 Raptors
43.5 Heat
43.5 Spurs
41.0 Mavericks
40.5 Magic
39.0 Pelicans
37.5 Pistons
37.0 Kings
36.0 Hawks
35.0 Timberwolves
30.5 Bulls
28.5 Wizards
28.0 Thunder
27.0 Knicks
27.0 Suns
25.5 Grizzlies
24.0 Hornets
24.0 Cavaliers
I seem to be the optimist here with my prediction of 30 wins, but I want to see a preseason game or two before finalizing any forecast of mine.
Interesting interview in the post with Portis – very clear he’s been sold on a bench role behind Mitch and he also refers to Morris as a bench piece. Portis expects 20-26 mins.
Seems possible when our FO were overpaying to get vets to take 1+1s they were also including a premium to get guys to accept bench roles… I still expect Morris to start but this feels like a reasonably positive sign?
Z-Man. From yesterday.
Yep. Really. Put yourself in the shoes of an 18 year white kid that was raised in a trailer park? Did he cause the suffering? There’s no denying the suffering. But that 18-year old kid had nothing to do with it and may have had his own rough life. When you work hard to get good grades and are told that a black kid is getting his spot with a lower GPA you get angry and that white kid now develops a hatred of blacks. You’ve just recruited a soldier into Trump’s army. Affirmative Action was deserved but it was a mistake.
That has been a lot of backlash along with lawsuits against it and it came from another minority group, Asians: Article about backlash against Affirmative Action.
So smart Asians and White kids are now being screwed. But what about the impact on the black student? It hasn’t been great for them either. They get into colleges unprepared and unqualified. Then they end up as inferior within that class and either fail or end up at the bottom of their class. How Affirmative Action backfires
Nobody would ever call me conservative. I’m a left-leaning centrist. But the “center” is where the Democrats are losing America and this is one of those “batshit crazy” ideas that nudges it along. If everyone is treated equally, this does not become an issue.
GNYGNYG you can feel that way but you’re simply wrong. The poignant story you wove is the same kind of bullshit that was spewed by racists to fight for “separate but equal.” It’s the same kind of bullshit that led to the evolution of a public school system in NYC that is the most segregated in the country. And yeah, those Asian kids are really getting screwed…they may have to go to a different college than Harvard. Their lives are ruined!!!
Anyone can find an article from a conservative magazine to support a conservative cause, or from a liberal magazine to support a liberal; cause.
My strong belief (and it’s supported by research, but I’m sure you can find an article refuting the research in a conservative venue) is that diversity is a good thing for all, that “smartness” is equitably distributed in all races (are you now gonna ask me to read The Bell Curve?) and that some groups, specifically African Americans, are owed s huge historical debt because they were first enslaved and then systematically denied civil rights and other avenues for social mobility by government policy at the local, state and federal level, not to mention in the private sector. And if you believe that these obstacles don’t continue to exist today, just take a look at gerrymandered school zones in NYC, which would make ardent segregationists in the deep south blush.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to suggest that this is even partially responsible for white nationalism/racism? Seems like total speculation and backwards reasoning to me. It’s not like you get some kind of notification every time a beneficiary of affirmative action gets into a school you wanted to attend.
In fact, the empirical evidence that does exist on the matter suggests that white people greatly overestimate the extent to which affirmative action effects their admissions chances. So these folks were already racist and simply use this specific phenomenon as an outlet for their perceived, and nonsensical, victimization.
I’m not going to pretend I can tell you exactly why and how people become racist, but it sure doesn’t help that prominent politicians and other conservative thought leaders spread malicious falsehoods about every single program that disproportionately benefits people of color. From the welfare queens to the nonexistent applicant getting into your school with an SAT score 500 points lower, it would be great if one of the two major political parties wasn’t committed to convincing white people that people of color are responsible for any and all of their personal shortcomings.
You also ignore the “affirmative action” that continues to exist for white people, or the whole concept of White Privilege. How many white kids get into colleges that they aren’t really qualified for because they are legacies? How many get jobs because their families are well-connected or are relatives or friends with the owners? How many got jobs because they didn’t have a criminal record or weren’t incarcerated, even though they committed the same offense as their white counterparts? This shit is real, and is still going on today pretty much everywhere in this country.
Remember that betting lines aren’t set so much on expected results, but rather on getting 50% of the betting money both above and below that line. That way they make money on their fees while minimizing house losses.
In the case on the Knicks, public perception is that they will be a bad team. Regardless of whether that’s actually true or not.
True, and I would guess that the widely-held belief that the Knicks struck out in free agency is a factor.
27 wins sounds about right. I think I predicted 25 a few days ago but the difference between the two is mostly a matter of luck.
I do think there’s enough mediocre talent lying around to get to 30+ wins, but we also project to give a lot of minutes to sub-replacement level players in Knox, Ntilikina, and Barrett.
There’s also plenty of variance, as a big jump from one or more of DSJ/Trier/Knox/Randle could change the calculus (I’d include Mitch in that group but all he really needs to do is play more). That’s not something anyone should be banking on though, instagram videos aside.
IMHO, I would take that 27 win prediction with the tiniest grain of salt as it serves to take advantage of the people’s preconceived notions about how good or bad the Knicks will be. They’re essentially profiting from the whole lolknicks BS.
I would take the over.
The same white people who rail against the unfairness of Affirmative Action are the same people who rail against the discriminatory, systematic denial of cheap-as-hell FHA loans and other generational-wealth-creating housing programs during the post-war housing boom, right?
25-30 wins sounds about right. Randle and and Robinson both should be very productive but both of them are best at the same position.
Nah, Randle is best suited for PF, assuming the 3-ball last year wasn’t a mirage.
If Portis thinks we have a great bench (as quoted in the Post article), I believe him. To quote
I think since the Knicks didn’t follow either of the accepted strategies for getting better (eating bad contracts in return for assets or hiring stars) and they have been a league laughingstock, analysts and bettors are assuming they will still be awful. I’m taking a clear over on 27 wins.
1. 27 wins is the bottom of the range in Vegas. I’ve seen as high as 28.5.
2. Why do people think Morris is a good player?
3. Interesting that Portis is going to be the backup C. I see him as a fit with Robinson or Randle. I wonder who he’ll be on the court with when he plays C. He’ll probably get plenty of minutes with Robinson in foul trouble from time to time and probably not a 36 minute guy yet anyway.
Answer to question 2, maybe because both the Spurs and the Clippers obviously thought so and they are both well run teams?
28. I predicted it last year, so I’ll try it again. 28.
Democrats are too busy living in their idealistic la la land to see what’s right in front of them in the real world.
The same country that was progressive enough to elect Obama TWICE, just elected a mediocre narcissistic businessman with a volatile personality, zero political experience, that’s a misogynist, and that is generally considered an ass clown even by many of the people that voted for him.
But instead of examining the policies and ideas that caused blue collar states to switch red and for red states that think Trump is an ass wipe to vote for him anyway (after voting for Obama twice), they want to believe it’s all racism, Russia, and some deep fault within Trump voters.
Put up a competent “center” left candidate that’s not an economic illiterate, not an old man, not wildly corrupt, and not off in some delusional la la land on other issues and the democrats would probably win 45 or more states. All you have to do is stop being idiots and you’d win every election for the next generation.
That is interesting. I just don’t see it.
It’s more than ‘striking out in free agency.’ It’s also the shit-show roster compilation. None of the individual players look that bad (sic), but as a roster?
The front court isn’t TOO bad — if Mitch and Randle get the starts at say 30-32 minutes a game, Portis isn’t a tire fire and gets maybe 20-25 backing up both, and Taj getting mop-up minutes (5-10).
The point is pretty shitty but comprehensible with Elfrid and DJS splitting time, Frank watching until he wanders off to get a baguette (I miss him already…).
But then the wings really make no sense. The likely bigger-minute players will all be playing out of position — Barrett is probably a small forward playing SG, Knox and Morris are both back-up 4s likely to be forced into small forward roles. Ellington/Trier/Dotson make an interesting bench, I suppose, and someday there’ll be Bullock to screw everything up further.
It’s a roster equivalent of starting the season with one’s right hand tied behind one’s back. If we had someone like Pop I’d have some confidence in it all shaking out, but I worry that Fiz is not ambidextrous.
I mean maybe we can ride this to 32 wins. I still feel better at 26.
This is one of the weirdest NBA landscapes in quite some time. Reminds me of the year where there were 8 West teams with 50 wins or whatever. I think it was 2010.
There will be some “surprises” this year in the form of young players making the leap and older superstars falling off a cliff. What if LeBron’s regular season struggles were the new normal, and not just LeCoast? What if Russ’s shooting woes don’t just continue, but get worse? What if Derrick White and Dejounte Murray are like, “Haha, hey guys, we’re stars now?” What if Doncic sheds the baby fat and becomes a 21-year-old James Harden, while Porzingis finally figures out how to stop taking long twos? What if Zhaire Smith drains 3s like J.J. Redick and dunks like Gerald Green? What if the Grizzlies aren’t good enough to make the playoffs, but good enough to slap the shit out of older teams that can’t run with Morant, Jackson and Clarke for 48 minutes on a Sunday afternoon? What if Jamal Murray and Gary Harris put the shit together and finally earn the praise that has until now been unjustly redistributed from the best offensive center in the game? What if the Nets win 40 games and Brooklyn collapses into the East River? What if Chris Paul stays in OKC and his diminished production was, in fact, due to Harden’s black holeishness? What if they win 45 with that underrated, solid core around him?
There are so many storylines already, and we haven’t even gotten into the winners and losers of the offseason player-development and age-curve lottery! This shit is going to be weird!
Jowles, totally agree. With the Knicks themselves being their own miniature version of the weirdest NBA landscape in some time.
I keep glomming onto your “What if the Grizzlies aren’t good enough to make the playoffs, but good enough to slap the shit out of older teams that can’t run with Morant, Jackson and Clarke for 48 minutes on a Sunday afternoon?” I don’t think they’ll be good, but I think they’re going to be a fun team to watch and no fun to play.
It’s hard to make a prediction because I have no idea what lineups we’re going to see out there. DSJr, Knox, Robinson, Trier, Barrett and, to a lesser extent, Ntilikina and Dotson are all guys on rookie contracts who should be getting regular minutes to develop. Meanwhile, Randle, Taj, Portis, Payton, Morris, and Bullock all just signed relative big contracts and I’m sure are expecting to get regular minutes. There’s not enough minutes to develop our young players as well as keeping the vets happy so someone’s going to have to sit.
If we put out the best possible lineup in terms of trying to win games I see us maxing out at around 32 wins. If we instead go heavy on developing our youth I could see us winning around 22 games. Most likely, it’s more like last season and are lineups aren’t consistent game to game and sometimes look like they were made by picking names out of a hat. My prediction, 26 wins.
The Knicks are probably good for 33 wins if you add up their players individually and only played the best guys. But the whole is worth less than the sum of its parts because of the bad roster construction, and the fact that our worst players will (and should) get minutes.
Maybe it’s because I’m not interested in horse racing but it’s hard to believe people can be this stupid. Please, in your infinite wisdom, explain which Democratic candidates can win what combination of these red states to get to 45+: West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana,Nebraska, and Alaska.
The Hawks at 36 wins seems insane. Their pythagorean total last year was 24. They added rookies, salary dumps, and Jabari Parker while losing a good player in Dedmon.
Yeah, I have to say that the thing about the blue collar kid who wasn’t a racist but then got a notice in the mail saying “sorry your slot went to a black kid with lower grades” and then he started hanging out at Stormfront is not one of the more well thought-out arguments I’ve seen around here on a number of levels.
Soon the Boomers are going to die off and then the Republicans are screwed. Which is why they’re bending and breaking every electoral rule possible to try to cling onto power for as long as possible before the day of reckoning comes.
Look at Republican/Democrat splits among millennials and Gen Z’ers. The numbers are brutal for Republicans. The kids aren’t buying the bullshit.
Taking the over on the Thunder at 28 and the under on the Hawks at 36 seem like really obvious bets, but what do I know?
Yeah but they got Cam Reddish so what do you know
This got stuck in moderation hell, in response to the argument that one should hire the best applicant for a job — which I do largely agree with, but with major caveats:
The Knicks minutes distribution is definitely going to be an interesting referendum on Fiz and the FO. Guys like Knox, Frank, RJ, DSjr and Iggy should not be playing anywhere near 30 mpg unless they produce. There’s nothing wrong with that. All things being equal, Fiz should defer to the younger guys, but he shouldn’t coddle them. I could see them all being rotated in and out of the rotation (largely as part of the bench rotation) or perhaps starting one or two of them with a very short leash. The first theing they need to learn is that the best players play. Period. That’s the only way to get them to develop. If they want playing time when they’re playing poorly, rotate them in and out of the G-League. It’s not all that complicated.
The Hawks, Kings, Suns, Bulls, Griz, Pels are all teams with a wide range of possible outcomes. Even the Cavs could surprise if Sexton becomes a stud and Garland pulls a Trae Young. The Lakers, Celtics, Rockets, Nets and Raptors are all unpredictably modified from last year. In a way, it makes the NBA more interesting and exciting than it has been in years.
And if you believe that these obstacles don’t continue to exist today, just take a look at gerrymandered school zones in NYC, which would make ardent segregationists in the deep south blush.
And what political party is responsible for this? It starts with a D. All of those rich white progressives in NYC do not want their precious snowflakes mixing with the blacks and Puerto Ricans.
This is actually true, and shame on the parents in those districts for their hypocrisy. I agree with you there.
But instead of examining the policies and ideas that caused blue collar states to switch red and for red states that think Trump is an ass wipe to vote for him anyway (after voting for Obama twice), they want to believe it’s all racism, Russia, and some deep fault within Trump voters.
I think you’re making this too complicated. Trump won because his opponent was a vile, corrupt monster. Any somewhat competent/non monster looking Dem (ie Biden) without her baggage would have killed Trump and swept the swing states. She was so hated even amongst her own party that a commie almost beat her, and might have if the fix wasn’t in.
Thanks @50.
You’re not wrong, and I’m deeply embarrassed whenever I see all the white parents who probably donate to Kamala Harris or something deeply outraged about plans to make lily white public schools just a little less segregationist.
However, please show me the Republican who has any interest in fixing this, either. The relatively few politicians who have shown interest in combatting it are Democrats to a name.
(Or independent senators from Vermont)
The Libertarians have a solution for this problem: bootstraps.
This team is way too poorly constructed to win 30 games. The poster who said they’re less than the sum of their parts is right. It seems like no matter who is constructing this team, redundancy is plan B (after striking out on the big FA of the year).
Under
However, please show me the Republican who has any interest in fixing this, either. The relatively few politicians who have shown interest in combatting it are Democrats to a name.
No interest in defending Repubs. I’m a libertarian.
The Libertarians have a solution for this problem: bootstraps.
As in ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’?
That’s actually pretty funny.
Is she? Or is she the victim of a vile, corrupt and misogynistic PR campaign to portray her in that way? Please point me towards some objective facts that make her more of a vile, corrupt monster than Joe Biden. For now, I’ll point to these quotes from republicans and conservatives about her before she ran for president.
She was highly respected on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, both in NY and in Washington. She was highly respected on both sides of the aisle as Secretary of State, except for Benghazi, where she sat in front of a Republican Congress for 11 hours of some of the toughest questioning ever, and they could not find a single thing to charge her with. The Clinton Foundation has been scrutinized as much as any foundation ever, and receives an A+ rating. No one is saying that she’s squeaky clean, but to label her a vile, corrupt monster sounds like pure, unadulterated misogyny.
lmao @59.
I am at Ground Zero of the school segregation in NYC debate. Proud to be on the moral high ground of this argument, especially now as some change is finally taking place to reverse the tide. I have seen it all when it comes to quasi-liberal hypocrisy as stated above by 2 for 18. The new chancellor has some warts, but he’s pushing hard and making some progress on this issue. But yeah, let’s not compare this to what conservatives and libertarians think about school segregation.
@ 61 you struck a nerve with me. I saw first hand how well off white liberals talked the talk, but moved to the suburbs (and places like Portland). Meanwhile libertarian racist me usually resides in downtown areas. I just relocated to Philly and live in as diverse a neighborhood as you’ll find.
I am reading many of you saying the team is poorly constructed and therefore it will be worse than the sum of its parts, but I’m not sure I believe that. Sure, there are too many power forwards, but that just means some will get very few minutes. They still have players who could start and backups at every position. So in what sense are those claiming the team is poorly balanced thinking that it will make the team worse than the average quality of its players?
By the way, 2for18, how do you like Philly? I ask because I’ve been thinking of moving there if I can resolve some real estate issues.
The team is poorly balanced in that most of the QUALITY players are bigs. There’s not really a guard or wing on the roster who projects to be a very good player.
The best players on the team: Mitch, Randle
Solid average-ish veterans: Morris, Gibson
Mediocre veterans who are best suited to be bench players: Portis, Ellington, Payton, Bullock (?)
Young players who will probably be well below average: DSJ, Barrett, Knox, Ntilikina, Trier, other scrubs
Pretty much all of the guys who have hope of being plus players are bigs. There’s only so many of those guys you can play simultaneously. Wing play is important in the NBA, and we ain’t got it.
Philly is an emerging city that’s actually trying to counter gentrification.
2for18 Good for you for living where you do. Not that it means anything when it comes to your political positions. I don’t begrudge anyone for living where they live or living any kind of particular lifestyle. I only begrudge people when they have beliefs that are in deep conflict with my own personal core values. Even in my district with its segregation problem, I don’t begrudge parents for advocating for their child’s education in any way, so long as it’s not to create policy that significantly advantages their child over other children. I also see the need for measured approaches, as disadvantaged do not benefit when more affluent families leave their school district because they have negative perceptions of the schools. (as happened in the ’70’s, labeled “white flight”…no reference to a former Knick intended..
Brooklyn’s District 15 has implemented a very aggressive to addressing segregation in their lower schools, something akin to a controlled lottery. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
For the record, I think you are underestimating Trier. He was a very good rookie on offense, and needs some work on defense.
Yeah Trier is one guy who could break out and give the Knicks some good wing scoring at least. It’s going to be his age 24 season and he held his own as a rookie. But we’re talking overall value here, and he has a way to go to get to “better than league average.”
I previously cited the 2018 Charlotte Hornets as a poorly constructed team who nevertheless won 39 games. I have yet to hear anyone explain to me why our current team is 12 games worse than that team.
I have Knicks at 28 wins with a high variance depending on the lineup. If Knox wins starting SF position, it goes down significantly, but I have Dotson there right now. But it could end up being Morris or RJ. Although Bullock definitely grabs it when he comes back. Basically, I have no idea what’s going on.
On the other hand, I’ve had Portis penciled in at backup center since he got signed with Taj, and now Morris, covering his D. Portis primarily played C for Washington last year with a +3.8 on/off, whereas primarily playing PF with CHI he was at -2.6. Stats come from Bk-Ref.
When is Bullock’s projected return? Does he miss the whole season?
JK, it’s true that our bigs are better than our guards. We probably won’t have great guard play, but if we did have good guards, I think they would have to be considered contenders. That’s too much to hope for. I don’t see that imbalance as catastrophic. After all, most teams are unbalanced in one way or another. On Golden State their guards are much better than their bigs, for example. They still won a lot of games. We improved our front court this season. Hopefully we will improve our back court next season. At least we have hopes of being good at something.
I went to PS 199 and then later Stuyvesant, so I am Ground Zero of the debate 🙂
Which is why I found it odd that you brought the issue up in the first place. Segregation in public schools is predominantly due to housing segregation (redlining and the good old fashioned kind practiced by the current President). Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the libertarian position on housing segregation something along the lines of: well sorry, but that’s what the free market decided? So did you bring the issue up because you correctly identified it as a huge problem in need of solutions, or to own the libs?
Perhaps in true libertarian form you want to get rid of public schooling altogether, but boy, it’s hard to imagine a worse solution than that if you actually want to deal with racial inequities in education…
Also, I think Ellington/Bullock would be fine, not great, as starting wings. Bullock in particular is an average/slightly above average player most years. On the other hand, Ellington comes with the caveat that he’s close to the age-production precipice.
@64 Philly reminds me of NYC in the 80s in how raw it is – high crime, plastic bags and straws haven’t been banned, you can smoke in some bars, there’s a casino, lots of homeless on the streets and in the underground tunells and under overpasses….
My latest job has an office here, so I came down a few times and generally liked what I saw = northern city, all 4 sports…it’s very affordable compared to NYC… I have a nice place and walk to work, something I’d never be able to afford in Manhattan. Because of this, a lot of NYers are moving here like I did, and yes gentrification is occurring.
Easy.
That team got good guard play, and was the #12 offense in the league. They had a very good PG in Kemba Walker, and a low-key quality SG in Jeremy Lamb. They ranked #1 in offensive TOV%. The 2019-202 Knicks ain’t gonna be no #12 overall offense, I’ll guarantee you that.
They had three other wings who were not great, but also were not terrible: Nicolas Batum, Marvin Williams and Miles Bridges. Those guys all played reasonably well. The only actual bad players that got major minutes on that team were Malik Monk and probably the washed up Tony Parker, who only played 1000 minutes anyway.
Bad guard play just really kills you, and there’s a massive gulf between the production of Kemba Walker/Jeremy Lamb and Elfrid Payton/Wayne Ellington.
Barrett is also a wing and he’s likely to be helpful. I agree with Z-man, if being a poorly constructed team only means we’re strong at forward and center but not at point guard, that could just mean we are a mediocre team, not that we’re going to be among the league bottom dwellers.
@70 Charlotte had Kemba. It’s a guard/wing dominated league. We have meh at pg, nothing but ????s at wing, and a bunch of similar bigs who all can’t play at the same time.
Edit…sorry, JK already said it, but better
2for18, I appreciate your basketball acumen, but when you write about other stuff (highlighted by ‘I live in a diverse neighborhood in Philly!’) I can’t help picturing the Clint character in Gran Torino. Except while it seems you think you’re the guy in the second half of the movie, you read like the guy in the first half.
@79, With Gran Torino Clint, the neighborhood changed around him and he was bitter about it. With me, I chose to move here.
I also don’t get why people are sleeping on Payton. In the last 23 games of last season when he was finally healthy, he had a stretch five consecutive triple-doubles, 4 double-doubles with assists, and a double-double with rebounds. He had 14 games with 9 or more assists (4 with 14 or more) and 13 games with 6 or more rebounds. He only had 3 games when he shot more than 14 times in that stretch. That stuff is not easy to do. To me, that sounds like a very dynamic player on the rise. He may be the best all-around PG we’ve had in a long time.
2for18, thanks very much. I agree about the affordability. We want to be in a city, which we are not at the moment, but NY is just not affordable. I hope gentrification doesn’t price me out before I get there.
@73 congrats on getting into Stuyvesant. I scored high enough to get into Bronx Science but not Stuy…lived in East NY at the time so went to South Shore.
Yes, i saw a chance to “own” the libs and took it. It gets tiresome to hear libertarians called racists all the time by leftists, when racism isn’t specific to a political philosophy.
I’m looking forward to watching Payton. I have a thing for guards who rebound.
Is it possible that you are overrating Kemba a bit? He has a 31% USG% and shot at a .558 TS%. His AST% was a middling 29.4%, he doesn’t get many steals and he doesn’t rebound or defend particularly well. He’s essentially Melo at the PG position.
They had 2 guys with a BPM over 1.0, and Zeller only played 1200 minutes. They had 2 guys with an OBPM over 1.0 and the great Frank Kaminsky with his 700 minutes was one of them.
The stats tell an inconvenient truth for the take-the-under crowd: individually, Charlotte was every bit as bad on paper as we are right now, probably worse. And certainly in no way 12 or more wins better.
You left out one key thing, his low TOV%, around 10.0. He was handling the rock most of the time, and the Hornets were the lowest-turnover team in the league, goosing their PPP quite a bit. Meanwhile our man Elfrid Payton has a career 18.1 TOV% and was at an unsightly 20.0 last year, double Kemba’s number.
I don’t think Kemba is a superstar player, but he’s a very competent, solid point guard, and that super low TOV% helped the Hornets a lot.
Yeah, PS199 was close to another elementary school, PS191, but the zone was gerrymandered to ensure that the Lincoln Towers kids would be kept safe from those “other” kids in the Amsterdam Houses. That’s been significantly tweaked in the last couple of years…and a brand new school building opened up in the area and now houses the 191 upper grades, while a new school moved into the 191 building (PS 452.) It was a vicious fight to redraw zoning lines.
You realize that large swaths of conservativism, including the modern American libertarian movement (i.e. Tea Party’s paleo/right-libertarianism), advocate for the maintenance of a particular status quo, which, in this country, happens to be one of the systemic oppression of people based on the color of their skin, right?
Melo also had a very low TOV%. They are strikingly similar given their different positions.
Kemba vs. Payton: everything else being even, if you’r averaging 0.5 turnover more per 36 but also 3.1 assists and 1.8 rebounds more per 36, doesn’t that kind of balance things out? Kemba is a better scorer by far, but Payton is some improvement on D away from being a formidable all-around player.
I just don’t really see it. Kemba starts off with a 50-point edge in TS% on way higher usage with a way lower TOV%. That doesn’t seem like a few assists and rebounds offsets that very much, especially when you account for the fact that New Orleans played at a very fast pace, one of the fastest in the league, while the Hornets played at a below-average pace.
I feel pretty comfortable taking the over on the Knicks. Low 30s seems right – a lot of duplicate players, a lack of brilliant coaching from Fiz. But Mitch and Randle, and I do think people don’t appreciate what Payton is going to bring. After we lost the big FAs, I was OK with Payton and Randle as our big signings, as they can be potential long-term productive players at decent cost.
I am so confident on the over on OKC I am thinking about making my first ever bet. I would have won a fortune this off-season, instead of $20 from a friend because of my Raptors in 6 prediction. Unless there are further moves that insiders know (trading Paul for a bag of beans?), I can’t see them at less than 35.
Atlanta I dunno. Interesting up-and-coming team, and Trae seemed to be quick figuring things out, with some pretty good young players around him. I’m not sure I’m betting the under.
It seems to me that those who are saying we are unbalanced and therefore will be very bad are using the logic that you have to an excellent point guard or you are going to be horrible. But look at Detroit last year. They were 41 and 41 and made the playoffs with Ish Smith, Jose Calderon, Reggie Jackson and Kali Lucas as their point guards. Jackson is pretty good, but you can’t claim they had an imposing guard rotation. The stats I just looked at suggest Jackson is better, but not by that much, and Payton is younger and at an age where he should improve.
I guess I’d also be comfortable taking the under on the Wiz. They should be terrible this year. At least we’re not Wiz fans….
I might take the over on the Mavs. As Jowles pointed out, a lot of potential variance with a lot of teams. Lakers on the under as well – hard to know what LeBron will show up.
You realize that large swaths of conservativism, including the modern American libertarian movement (i.e. Tea Party’s paleo/right-libertarianism), advocate for the maintenance of a particular status quo, which, in this country, happens to be one of the systemic oppression of people based on the color of their skin, right?
Libertarians don’t care about race, gender, ethnicity, who you like to sleep with or any of that crap. We only care whether you follow the NAP or not. I understand that in your mind, and in the minds of your fellow travelers, treating people as individuals rather than what silo you put them in, makes libertarians racists, or at least collaborators.
For the Knicks to win in the low 30s, they’d have to play .500 ball at home, and that’s not happening with this roster when you compare it to the rosters of the teams they’ll be playing.
We go through this on here every year.
@92 Detroit had Blake and Drummond. Not saying I’d want Blake on that awful contract, but those are 2 excellent offensive players.
Mitch>Drummond
Randle<Blake
It's a wash.
Detroit had the #11 defense.
Does anybody think this is going to be anything close to the #11 defense?
I wasn’t suggesting we will win 42 games, just that it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom because we don’t have a star point guard. We can win more than thirty games even with a lousy defense. And last year our road record was almost the same as our home record. I don’t see why it will be a different split this year.
Let’s not forget that winning 32 games is, like, really bad. Not horrific, but really bad.
Blake, IIRC, really put it together last year offensively. He boosted his TS% to true blue superstar range.
I like the Randle-Mitch pairing. Randall’s passing will hopefully include lots of lobs to the Blockness Monster. Hopefully both continue to improve.
I could see 30+ wins. People underestimate the effect of removing Knox, Frank, and the defense of Kanter. I don’t think they will, but it could happen. Largely depends on Mitch’s impact on defense. Can he elevate the whole team himself? I’m skeptical.
“Kemba starts off with a 50-point edge in TS% on way higher usage with a way lower TOV%. That doesn’t seem like a few assists and rebounds offsets that very much, especially when you account for the fact that New Orleans played at a very fast pace, one of the fastest in the league, while the Hornets played at a below-average pace.”
I wasn’t arguing that Elfrid was better than Kemba, only that the difference between them is all about TS%/volume and not about low turnover rate.
32 wins would have made us the 6th worst team last year and according to the Vegas odds would be the 9th worst team this coming year. You have to suck pretty badly to win only 32 games.
It’s what we won in 2015-16 when our top minutes-getters were a mediocre Melo, Robin Lopez, Afflalo, KP, Galloway, Calderon, DWill, Jerian and Lance. We were 24th on ORtg and 18th in DRtg.
It’s what we won in 2016-17 after the amazing Rose and Noah maneuvers.
It’s what we won in 2008-09 with Duhon, Lee, Wilson, Al, Nate, Quentin, Jared, Tim Thomas and Larry Hughes, plus a few minutes of Gallo, Jamal, Zach and Wilcox sprinkled in.
This team seems at about the level of those teams, except with extra draft picks and no long-term albatross contracts.
I could see this team anywhere between 23 wins with disgruntled veterans and young player sucking all over, and 34 wins with a few career years and some good lineup management and development. It’s really a toss up for me, as there are so many new parts everywhere and potential lineups.
I’m still going with around 26 wins because the team doesn’t have a lot of actual talent and production, but I’m truly unsure about it this season.
SAC won 39 games last year in the very tough WC. They were 16th in ORtg and 20th in DRtg.
DAL won 33 games last year in the WC. They were 20th in ORtg and 18th in DRtg.
WAS won 32 games last year. They were 14th in ORtg and 28th in DRtg.
To win less than 30 games, you pretty much had to be bottom 7 in both ORtg and Drtg. I think this team is better than that.
On offense or defense?
It’s going to be a low-eFG%, high turnover offense. That’s a bad combination. It will be a great offensive rebounding team, and possibly a decent/average FT/FGA team but there are too many low eFG% players on this offense who are going to take too many shots. The PGs, RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox fall into this category. There are just not enough high eFG% guys to make up for that. So I think people will be disappointed in the offense.
That leaves the defense, which doesn’t seem great either. Who are the good switchable defensive wings? Who are the rim protectors other than Mitch? Those are the premium skills you’re looking for when it comes to modern NBA defense and we have one guy that fits the bill.
I’m a skeptic of this team. I could see bottom five offense and defense, easily.
The Mets are so weird man
We were barely a bottom five offense last year. I don’t see us being that bad on offense again. Mudiay is replaced by Peyton, Knox will be less bad and no one matched Randle at all. So I’m predicting maybe 20th in offense. As I’ve said before, that, along with a horrible defense, will get to thirty wins.
We were the worst offense in the NBA last year, 30th out of 30.
So much room to improve! 8th seed is a lock.
I stand corrected. It was actually our defense that was 26th, not our offense. But even so, we would only have to improve by about 5points per game to be number 20.
I made a rough estimate of a .568 TS% for our starters next year. It’ll sink a bit since someone will have to increase their usage, but our TS% should be fine (*maybe, not as I left it short of 100% of possessions). I assumed Dotson as the starter.
Mitch + Randle = 40% of our shots at high efficiency. Ellington at .565 TS% ain’t no slouch either. Bullock’s return will help too.
Assuming starters take roughly 75% of shots, we should end up close to middle of the pack. Based on an estimate of the bench shooting. 525 TS%, roughly what our cellar dwellers did last year, we’d have a team .558 TS%. If we adjust our bench estimate to a godawful .500 TS%, we end up 8th worst in the league.
Take the above with a major mountain of salt, but I enjoyed the exercise and wanted to share. I’m also sure someone can come up with a better estimate than my hastily thrown together spreadsheet. I just took the TS% and USG% of our starters, increased the usage to ~100 (my method ended up .005 usage short) keeping the USG% proportionate, multiplied the new usage by the TS% and added them up. Not a great method, I readily admit flaws abound with the method and my math skills, but hopefully a rough estimate.
Elfrid Payton kinda sucks though
Point guards usually have worse than league average true shooting. So I don’t worry so much about that.
And I think this tells you all you need to know about the state of America today. You are OK unless you don’t agree with me on MY fundamental values……
Which is why a partition of the country is likely inevitable. Igor Panarin put out a paper a few decades ago and I laughed then…. but not so much now….
Someone here compared him to Ray Felton and I think it’s a pretty good comp. Payton is really good at some things-he’s a good playmaker, a terrific rebounder for a PG, but what he can’t do is score efficiently. He doesn’t draw enough fouls and he can’t really shoot. His FT shooting has improved since he’s come into the league, maybe his 3 point shot will come around and we’ll have a pretty good PG, but maybe he won’t and we’ll have Ray Felton 2.0
Can a Mets fan explain that trade for Stroman? I don’t follow them super closely, but I don’t at all understand what the point of it is.
The fuck is Brodie Van Wagenen doing
It makes NO sense. Stroman only has one year of team control left after this one, so he doesn’t make sense as a long-term piece. And flipping him for prospects doesn’t make sense, because they traded two of their better pitching prospects, one who is close to MLB, to acquire him.
It’s just a batshit insane trade. The only sense I can make of it is that they’re about to trade Syndergaard and Wheeler for pennies, and they want Stroman for the 2020 rotation to keep up appearances that they’re competing. Then when they suck in July 2020 they’ll trade Stroman for a lesser prospect haul than the guys they gave up. Oh, and in addition, Stroman is an extreme groundball pitcher and the Mets have the worst infield defense in MLB. So that should go well.
Brodie is the emperor’s new clothes. He has no fucking clue how to do that job.
I heard a 3D chess take on the trade on ESPNradio. It was that this takes a pitcher off the market, thereby upping the price for the pitchers they have on the market. (dont shoot me I’m only the messenger)
I would’ve liked Stroman on the Yankees. At this point I’ll take any SP on the Yankees that can give us a quality start every once in awhile.
CSKA Moscow wants to hire Jeremy Lin. If they miss on him they want Ron Baker. Hmm.
6′ 7″
I watched one of those Frank training videos and he still looks like he’s dribbling underwater
Not surprising that you interpret what I said in this way. And didn’t someone try that partition thing around 170 years ago? Didn’t work out so well as I recall.
Begrudging someone isn’t the same as wanting to be in a separate country from them. I begrudge the Celtics, but don’t want them in another league. But this is who you are, isn’t it? Essentially an extremist who feels continually under siege by moralizing liberals and conservatives alike (more the former than the latter) and who doesn’t have much use for anybody, correct?
The Russians are trying to steal Ron Baker and people think they don’t interfere in the US.
Payton does not kinda suck. He’s excellent value at his current salary. His game is nothing like Raymond Felton’s.
Hey my friend,,, I quoted your words directly. You said and I quote: I only begrudge people when they have beliefs that are in deep conflict with my own personal core values.
Interestingly enough about 80% of the landmass of this country and half the population doesn’t believe in your “core values”. But you feel the necessity to run roughshod over them to “enlighten them.”
I would prefer to partition the country peacefully rather than be subjugated to the core four of the D party’s tyranny. I actually think it would work out rather nicely….
@121
BVW is an abject disaster. The Cano trade sucked enough on its own but at least you could squint and maybe talk yourself into it. This Stroman trade though doubles down on the badness of the Cano trade. We’ve totally gutted our minor leagues for a team that’s 5 games under .500, has a -20 run differential, and is 6 games out of the wildcard with 6 teams ahead of us. And now, with Stroman’s $10M on the books we’re going to spend even less money in the offseason.
I said that in the context of a conversation about education, but yeah, I begrudge bigots, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc. If you’re any of those, I have no interest in trying to convince you to be more open-minded, since it would be akin to trying to convince most 1860-era Southerners that slavery was wrong and that black Americans were entitled to equal rights under the law. You can be sure that a lot of Northerners felt the same way about civil rights as Southerners, especially in the currently redder areas in the North and Midwest. On the way to my daughter’s college in the North Country of NY, I saw more than one confederate flag, which is funny since many folks from that area were probably killed, wounded or even tortured by Confederates in the defense of a State’s right to determine whether it had slavery or not. Glad to hear that you feel a special affinity with those folks and would rather be on their side of the partition.
These guys look pretty similar to me
Elfrid Payton and Ray Felton have in common the letters E,L,F,R,A,Y,T,O,N.
You can find all the letters of Ray Felton’s name inside EPayton’s name.
And That’s where their similarities end.
Not sure this is correct but it was funny….
Are we really treating stuff like being anti racism as a “value” that some people have and some don’t, and it’s fine either way?
Damn, I mean, I can take the Pollyanna libertarians and the Austrians, but treating racism or homophobia as an opinion is a bit too far for me, sorry.
bob, would you support legalized slavery if a House and Senate majority voted for it?
The Stroman trade only makes sense if you like extend Stroman and get some infielders who can field and and extend Syndergaard and try to reload to contend in 2020 and maybe beyond. DeGrom/Syndergaard/Stroman would be a front 3 that you could build around. But they’re not going to do that, they’re going to trade Syndergaard to restock the farm system they just raided to play for win now players. It’s just about the most incoherent strategy I can imagine.
What’s really going on is that they traded perfectly good prospects for Stroman with the idea that Stroman is going to “replace” Syndergaard in 2020, and then in 2021 they’ll have neither Syndergaard nor Stroman. Nor the prospects they traded for Stroman. BVW is burning things to the ground in record time, the incompetence is almost impressive.
Alderson actually left the team in good shape, they had Alonso, Conforto, Nimmo, Rosario, McNeil and Smith as cheap position players with some decent hitting prospects in the low minors, plus DeGrom, Syndergaard, Wheeler, Matz plus pitching prosepects like Kay, Dunn, and Peterson who were fairly close to MLB and intriguing arms lower in the system like Simeon-Woods Richardson, Szapucki, the blue chip outfielder Kelenic… Now half of that is gone already it seems like, most of it for pieces the Mets didn’t even need.
I really hate that guy.
Sad Jeremy Lin is a horrible thing to behold. I hope someone signs him soon.
That’s all well and good depending what one considers a racist and the other things you mentioned. If one considers a racist on the basis if they deal with people based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin that would be my general definition. If one decides “racism” with the acid test of whether one believes this is a sovereign nation whose populace gets to make the laws through their elected representatives or…. do you object to every citizen of the world being able to claim US citizenship by their own volition, then that would be a definition I would disagree with.
And I don’t give a sweet rat’s ass what you or the rest of the woke crowd think 🙂 I know I have actually put more skin in the game than most of you as far as making the world a better place one human at a time…..
In other breaking news… the moon is not made of green cheese!
Or…. I can answer a question with a question… Jowles… would you and Lady Jowles support the internment of a segment of the citizens of this nation just because they had epicanthic folds like your idol actually did?
Even a cretin like GW Bush didn’t do that after 3,000 Americans were snuffed.
I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for Lin.
Lin has made a lot of money in his career and could still make a lot more if he heads to China or something like that. He’s got a Harvard degree too, and is a recognizable name. As much as it is sad and he might be depressed about the situation, it’s more of an “aw shucks” to me. So many players who have made much less than him flame out of the NBA a lot earlier than he did, he simply had a decent career and unfortunately he can’t contribute much more.
Berman carrying water for someone throws shade at Fiz….
https://nypost.com/2019/07/28/so-much-for-knicks-talk-of-culture/
shit lin thinks things are tough now, just wait to his perfect hair starts thinning out…
yeah, that’ll be a whole new bottom…
That article was fascinating in that I don’t even know who he was necessarily even serving there, as he seemed to be knocking Mills and Perry, too, right? Or maybe Mills was okay with getting knocked a bit so long as Fiz gets the brunt of it, thus helping to set up Fiz at the fall guy. As I write that, I guess it all makes much more sense, really.
That’s what caught my eye and made it noteworthy…. maybe from the disgruntled boss putting them all on notice. Billionaires don’t particularly like going out in public and spouting shit and then having to eat it after “his” players sign with the Nyets. I can’t believe that went down well……
I think Lin can still play in the league. If he’s on the Knicks or Lakers he’d deserve playing time based on merit, maybe not age. Maybe the Heat.
For instance, Rondo is older and played abysmally, but he got signed by the Lakers.
Yeah, Lin’s reaction was weird. There are plenty of teams that are still looking for back-up point guards. It seems way too early to be crying about not being signed. Shaun Livingston is also a free agent. Does anyone really believe that Shaun Livingston isn’t going to get a gig this season if he wants one? Similarly, Iman Shumpert, JR Smith and Kenneth Faried will almost certainly all be playing in the NBA next season and yet none of them have teams at the moment. If you’re still jobless on November 1st, then sure, I wouldn’t mind him being sad, but this is way too soon to be so mopey.
I’m British and we more or less wrote the book on partitioning countries. It’s always worked out really well too. Ireland, India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine… our list of greatest hits is a real source of national pride for me.
Put me down for 30 wins.
And I’ll jump into the deep end: we’ll get the #4 draft pick, and people will still #lolKnicks us by saying we got the 4th pick in a three-player draft. But…
To me, the article burns the entire organization. DAJ’s words were the most damning. Fiz seemed to be right in the crosshairs, though, which I think is a good thing. I don’t think he’s accomplished anything besides successfully executing a tank. You could argue that KP wasn’t impressed by the snake oil, not that he’s a paragon of honor himself.
Maybe Berman is lobbying for the Nets?? More people fed up with the Knicks = more defectors. Or he’s just generating clicks in a slow Knicks news cycle.
Personally, I never understood why Lin didn’t do everything possible to re-sign with the Knicks. I get that there were millions of dollars at stake, but there was no way he could duplicate Linsanity anywhere else. I was one of the few here who didn’t criticize Dolan/Grunwald for not matching the poison pill (no sane FO would have) but ultimately it hurt Lin’s career. The greatest humiliation was when Morey et. al. hung that Melo banner with #7 while Lin was still on the team and wearing $7, and then used a #1 pick to dump the contract that Melo dubbed “ridiculous” when it was signed. He let the hype and the immediate payoff go to his head.
Ultimately, he topped out at a decent backup-level PG on a contender or low-to-middling level starter and has had a nice career as a journeyman. I don’t know if staying in NY would have changed his career trajectory all that much, but it just seemed like a short-sighted move for him, both at the time and in retrospect.
I wish Dolan would tell the entire FO that if the team doesn’t make the playoffs, they’re all out. Not that it would be a good thing to make the playoffs, but since they would probably fail, they’d all be gone. Although who knows? He might bring in the Mets braintrust to replace them.
Lin was living on a couch before the season. He got his money. He made the right choice.
I don’t think Berman is grinding any ax in the story. He remembers what Knicks management said and is calling them on it. Knicks’ management promised player development using some form of secret sauce, but then they didn’t return most of their players or any of their free agents. They traded for guys like Mudiay and Trier, but then didn’t keep them. They promised exciting free agents and then gave us what are basically no-name free agents. They said they wanted to build a culture but lost out to the Nets partially because of culture. Berman probably represents a lot of fans in feeling this way.
I don’t think it’s quite as bad for the Knicks as the above makes it sounds, but the team has to improve this year or it will be as bad as it sounds.
They have definitely made strides in the culture-building department. I think everyone on the team really wants to be here (with the possible exception of Frank, who may be on his way out anyway) and while guys like Portis and Dotson have skeletons and Trier sometimes presents as a diva, they all seem to be high character guys.
That’s fair. They also seem to have prioritized players who work hard at getting better. I hope this shows up in results this season
The sad part about it that even with zero offense, I’d rather have Baker on the team at the minimum than some of the guys we had last year and this year.
Berman has flashes of excellence that sometimes deteriorate into moments of being the clown jester. He’s way better on podcasts and sometimes it spills over into his articles.
Our three leaders in FTA last year were Knox (.475 TS%) Mudiay (.531) and THjr (.531) for a combined 2400 shots. Dotson took 700 shots at a .526 TS%. Lance, DSjr, Hezonja, Burke and Frank took over 1500 shots and each one had a TS% below .500.
That’s around 4700 out of 7200 (65%) shots at well below league average TS%.
It’s quite possible that we will have a bottom-dwelling offense again if the remaining lousy-shooting Knicks (Knox, Dotson, DSjr, Frank) and the lousy-shooting new ones (RJ, Portis, Payton) get the bulk of the shots.
Other than some of those guys improving, the best way to a better offense would be a) get lots of offensive rebounds (we should be very good in this area) and b) funnel as many shots to our better shooters, particularly Mitch, Randle, Ellington, Morris and Trier. Find out whether Iggy can be a player, as he shot very well in college. Let Portis, Gibson, and Payton be more opportunistic.
(none of this will happen, of course!)
Lin’s problem is that he’s honest with himself.
He wanted more from basketball than money and a ring. He wanted to be a very good player and to win a championship as a key piece on the team. Instead, he was a mediocre player, lost a few years of his prime to injuries, won a ring on the bench, and now realizes his career is winding down. He’s Harvard educated, worth millions, and famous around the world, but he feels like a failure and a phony in Asia because he didn’t achieve what he wanted out of basketball.
You can be rich in many ways, but if you are poor in the one thing you wanted most, you can feel like a failure.
He’s a #glasshalfempty guy right now. He has to realize what an incredible position he’s in, figure out what he wants next, and achieve that instead. There are way more important things than basketball.
Phil Jackson came out of hibernation?
The Berman article is weak. The headline is not supported in the body. Not re-signing 17 win contributors such Mudiay, Vonleh, Hezonja, Kornet, Thomas, Ellenson, Allen, Hicks, Jenkins, DAJ is not evidence of a culture problem. DAJ was diplomatic about going to the nets, and did not flame the Knicks culture like the sarcastic line “so much for culture” indicates.
Berman makes the statement: “The Knicks sold player development, rather than their record, as the key element on which to judge last season. Yet not one of their nine free agents was considered worthy of another contract with the team.” He calls that a “stain” on Fizdale. A collection of stiffs going to be stiffs elsewhere is Fiz Fault? Is that a culture problem or a sucky player problem?
In an article about developing culture, Berman fails to mention the the young core Dot, Mitchell, Trier, DSJ, Knox. Are those guys developing or building a culture? I don’t know, but Berman’s article did not explore that possibility. He was too busy lamenting the Knicks roster fodder were left to rot. He called the Hezonja one year 6.5 mil a “Marquee free agent signing” He added Mudiay was their leading scorer. Come on. The eye test for those guys had me puking in my mouth all season.
He then goes on to state “What sort of culture Fizdale has built is unclear” Does he not travel with the team, observe practice, see how players act behind the scenes? He can’t articulate those observations in terms of off-screen behavior and practice habits? Weak and lazy reporting, and I am annoyed lost IQ points reading and wasted time even responding to it on KB.
@162
The Knicks will be a LOT better if they just keep Knox off the floor (or if he gets a lot better). He has talent and a strong desire to get better, but he was horrible on both sides of the ball last year. He was so bad, it’s hard to estimate how many extra wins it would have been worth if we started a solid role player at SF instead. The rest of the team is also better. I think there’s enough talent on this team for it to be fun, but I don’t have any faith in Fizdale to put together coherent lineups or systems.
Unfortunately I had to tend to non-posting activities yesterday but I have to respond to Z-man and others who questioned my anti-Affirmative Action post. I’ll start off by repeating that I’m left of center. Center yes, but left of it. But being in the center, I hear (and actually listen) to both sides and both sides are not listening.
I will respond to only a few comments for now.
I am not wrong. It is not a matter of right or wrong. It’s a matter of how this lands on the individual and the way that it lands is badly.
What you are not understanding is that this is an example of how going too far stokes the flames of hatred. You can’t call it bullshit because it’s about how this makes people feel. And yes, some are racists but most just want a fair shake. The trial is not over, but if you want to understand how bigotry is created, follow the story about the Affirmative Action lawsuit against Harvard to just know this is an emotional issue.
And it’s far from the only one. The in-your-face, you must accept my lifestyle, you must help prop up the “less fortunate” platforms that are seemingly the only platforms for Democrats these days, are feeding the schism and further destroying the nation. Just as Trump’s bigotry is killing this country, the left wing push is just as guilty but is totally unaware.
@165
Yeah, I don’t read too much into it either. All these guys are terrible except maybe Vonleh and Kornet, who we could make a case deserved to be re-signed at their current numbers, but I’m more than happy about getting rid of everyone else.
It says a lot that they went for these guys in the first place, but other than that, it’s more just exposing what we already knew, the snake oil salesman and all the media talk was obviously just talk.
Berman was spot on.
You can’t talk about building a new culture and player development and then overhaul the entire team the next year when most of the guys were still in their early 20s. That’s the exact opposite.
There were a couple of players in that group that were OK role players that will still get better…at least with a competent management and coaching staff. There was no reason to not move forward with a couple of them on cheap 1 year deals instead of overpaying veterans. Most of the NBA is already expecting them to toss all the players they just signed next year. That’s not culture building or development. That’s hiring mercenary players.
@169 I am not arguing whether the Knicks have a developed culture or not, I just believe an article about Knicks development should focus on the returning players and what they bring to the equation, including culture.
The 1991-1992 Knicks won 51 games and returned just 5 players in 92-93. No one complained Pat Riley was not building a culture after “overhauling the entire team”. They won 60 games that year with an “overhauled” team. The five players brought back: Ewing, Oakley, Mason, Starks, Anthony. The “Core” Nobody missed the likes of roster fodder youngsters like Patrick Eddie, Carlton McKinney, Brian Quinnett, and Kenard Winchester.
Again, I am not arguing pro or con if current Knicks have developed anything worthwhile, only that ignoring the returning core in a development article is incomplete.
Berman is completely transparent, he always writes these types of articles to please his sources. I’m sure either Mudiay or Mario gave him some stories to write, so now he’s repaying them. Notice he doesn’t put any blame on Perry or Mills for not resigning these guys, he just throws Fiz under the bus. Gee, I wonder why that is.
Exactly. If you don’t have good players, why the hell would you even want to bring them back? This is a non-story. You can argue these guys shouldn’t have been signed in the first place, and I agree completely with that, as most of us saw that right as the signings were made, but to chastise a management for not wanting to bring back Mudiay, Lance or Hezonja is just finding ways to shit on the Knicks randomly. The DeAndre Jordan part is the only one remotely interesting in the article, because it does show that Kyrie and Durant were set on Brooklyn right away and that Jordan might have helped with that, but everything else is pointless.
I’m not even defending Perry and Mills, because their record as management of the Knicks isn’t something I’m particularly happy about, but come on. Who cares if Mudiay wanted to go to Utah? It will matter only if some of the recent signees are actually good for us and then they don’t want to re-sign, then we have a story.
lol marquee signing Mario Hezonja
I think it’s fair to ask what young players the Knicks are developing, but most of those guys were very long shots to become productive NBA players, and we moved on when they didn’t work out. Would I rather have Vonleh for the minimum than Taj Gibson for 10 million? Yes. Would I rather have Kornet for 2 million than Bobby Portis for 15 million? Yes. But those are FO mistakes, not coaching/player development mistakes.
Bruno, I essentially agree, but all that said, there was a definite narrative projected by the 3-headed monster that Fiz’s persona/coaching and culture-building would make top-shelf guys want to come to the Mecca THIS YEAR. Since none of the FAs we signed this year could have been signed if we went, say, the KD/KI route, the cheap 2018 signings were probably part of that plan. That plan completely backfired. If anything, It confirms that Fiz’s appeal to players is largely unjustified hype, and that there is little trust in this FO/ownership/coach combo from players and agents.
I think that given those circumstances, the FO did a workmanlike job of retooling on the fly, and that passing on the 2019 marquee FA crop (other than the impossible KD/AD/KL pipe dream) was always the best plan. But trading KP to free up cap space and stretching Noah confirms that it was about THIS year, and Dolan’s comments suggest that he is fucking livid that the plan didn’t work. The fact that Fiz said that the FO is “holding me hostage” (i.e. ordering him to stfu with the empty platitudes and start winning some games) is pretty telling. Fiz is definitely on the hot seat. Sadly, it seems like he may be getting thrown under the bus, maybe because Mills feels that Fiz assured them he would land the big fish.
But that would project to everyone that the Knicks were purposely tanking again. It seems more and more like Dolan issued an ultimatum because he and everyone else knows that Plan A failed: close the gap between us and the Nets, like, now! There is no doubting the perception that Gibson and Portis will generate more wins than Vonleh and Kornet.
I remember seeing Joe Johnson being taken out of the Rockets-Warrior series back in 2017-18. It wasn’t a moment that will ever be examined or replayed, but he got to the bench and looked furious that he wasn’t still out on the floor. He was en route to his 54 total minutes in 8 games played that postseason, where he put up some of the worst numbers (-10.4 BPM) you’ll see in a small playoff sample. But he seemed pretty sure that he wasn’t supposed to be on that bench at that moment.
I think we’re seeing this with Lin — he has a blind spot, and it’s himself. He should be happy that he turned a fluke playing time experiment into a $65M career and what looks like the perfect opportunity to go to China and become a megastar on par with our favorite vaseline-tasting mathematician. And he could do it while he’s still young, and probably light the league up! But he’s still chasing the American media, who would rather tell us what color of Beats headphones Bron Jr. wore yesterday.
@21
I need to answer this question directly. It’s a “feeling” thing, for sure. But the evidence is there in the Lawsuit against Harvard, and in the right-wing rhetoric. If it’s a talking point, it’s real to someone and that’s the entire point.
@22
That is a similar problem and makes it “unequal” and wrong.
@27
What difference should race make in FHA loans? If it’s based on economic need, regardless of race, it’s fair.
@34
I agree. This geographic location is a liberal hotbed and does not represent the country. Travel to upstate NY and you’ll soon find out that NY could easily turn Red. But a centrist candidate will be left of what we have now and will attract that portion of middle America that knows Trump is vile.
Would it? I don’t see anyone in the media praising the Knicks for signing Bobby Portis.
@174
I think it’s a message to Fizdale more than anything, I agree. They want better results, which is comprehensible since we got literally nothing out of last season outside of Mitch, and they want the guy who tells everyone how much of a development player’s coach he is to do that. Everyone was talking about how LeBron loved Fiz and all, and that meant he could attract people, but in the end it didn’t matter at all.
I also dislike how the Knicks missing out on the free agents they might have had a shot became this huge indictment about the front office. Yes, it shows that they failed at a plan they had, which clearly was to bring 2 top level guys, and that’s not encouraging. But given that they wouldn’t come, they did well considering everything, even if I would rather have more promising players or more assets from cap managements. They didn’t panick into giving non deserving guys a max, and they kept the flexibility to a maximum.
We will have better ways to truly evaluate what they’re doing in this deadline, to see what they do with all the team friendly contracts they signed, and in the next offseason with 2 first rounders and potentially cap space again.
My point is that Berman and others are acting like the sky is falling, when it’s really not. Fizdale hasn’t shown anything for us to be really confident in him, and the players they let go weren’t good to begin with, and most of the signings are just mediocre but not terrible. It’s a lot simpler than he’s making it up to be, you build a winning culture around winning players, not before you have those guys. Curry is just as responsible for the Warriors being the Warriors as their management is. Damn, Cleveland won tons of games with LeBron even though they front office was largely terrible for most of his time there.
Build the peripherals after you have the main guys, not before. These guys want to build a roof before they even have a foundation in place.
Bruno, I think you meant 2021-22. Next offseason they only have 1 first rounder.
True, but it was clearly more of a “win now” signing than Vonleh or Kornet, perception-wise anyway. That doesn’t mean that it was a good win now signing.
Yeah, Berman’s article really slams Fiz. Why care about Mudiay leaving? Well, we don’t, but remember Fiz saying “We going to fix you” or some such thing?
Then, there’s the LT as Draymond thing.
He’s calling out the Knicks for being dishonest hypocrites (talk about building culture and then just flush everything down the drain for mercenaries), and Fiz for being incompetent.
If there’s an agenda there, I wouldn’t put it past Mills firing a volley over the head of Fiz. I.e. win a lot more games this year or off with your head!
I.e. the FO and Fiz are full of sheet.
The truth is, now that the dust has settled, I’m more excited about the upcoming season than I have been in a while. I was pretty excited about seeing how much KP would develop in 2016 and even more so in 2017 after ditching Melo. But between Mitch, the other young guys and Randle/Payton, I see some exciting possibilities, and I like lunchpail types like Morris and Gibson.
Honestly, I’d feel a lot less comfortable if we had maxed Kyrie and KD.
Brodie and the Mets.
I don’t think the Stroman trade, in a vacuum, is bad at all. Not nearly as bad as the Kazmir for Zambrano trade (Stroman is actually a good pitcher; Zambrano was not), which some articles are using as a comp.
Some pundits think he’s trying to “corner the market” on pitchers so he can get a boatload of prospects for Syndergaard. I seriously doubt that. The guy clearly only values prospects as tools to acquire win-now established veterans, and that is a serious long-term concern. He’s basically an impatient child running a MLB team. Even if he does get a bunch of prospects in a move this week, they’ll just be fodder in the offseason to go get more vets.
I’m going to guess that he is really trying to retool on the fly rather than just sell. Yeah, he’s still in “going for it” mode, with the “it” probably being to contend next year, and maybe even take a flyer at this year’s wild card.
The problem is the context. He does not yet seem to recognize that the Atlanta Braves will be dominating the NL East for the next few years. While only 6 games back of the wild card, the Mets would need to pass like 5-6 other teams. I’ll bet he thinks that Cano is just having a down year and will bounce back next year. Even after his three HR night recently, Cano still sucks.
I really hope whatever combo of trades of Syndergaard/Wheeler/Vargas/Frazier/Diaz happens, he DOES get a bunch of prospects to restock the farm system he’s burning, but we’ll see.
The Berman article angers me. I point at HIM when FA decide not to come here. He’s one of the negative mouthpieces that makes MSG a leper colony. But someone here also hinted at the likelyhood that he’s a Dolan puppet and gets fed the stories from him. So it all falls on Dolan ultimately.
As for win totals, it’s too early. Catch me in October for my predictions.
from the yanks side of things – i really like frazier, and, absolutely love andujar (there’s something about that young man standing at the plate and attacking the baseball that’s a lot of fun to watch), but, urshela has got a crazy good glove over there at third, and, not sure frazier can stay healthy in an already crowded yanks outfield…
interesting to see the yanks starters melting down since the all-star break…they need some help even with severino (and betances) coming back soon…
i’m not sold on bumgarner’s fit in new york (plus the giants are only 2.5 out of the wold card)…thor would be pretty cool though…
Which is a terrible fit for the penny-pinching, small-market Mets, who are basically the Kansas City Royals but in Queens.
Stroman is also a guy who does not miss bats but relies on infielders to convert groundballs into outs. The Mets’ infield defense is horrendous, led by Amed Rosario, who needs to be moved off shortstop ASAP. The team has no ML-quality shortstops or centerfielders, so they don’t convert batted balls into outs, which makes their pitchers look a lot worse than they really are. Stroman is going to get lit the fuck up for the Mets. Cano is washed up, can’t even play second base anymore and has negative WAR on the season. Cano is a $25M bench player who doesn’t even have positional versatility.
McNeil and Alonso are probably going to give the Mets something like 9-10 WAR combined for the princely sum of $1.2M, you would think Brodie might learn a lesson from that.
Berman article is very bizarre. Fizdale is the person in the braintrust least responsible for the fact that the front office brought in a bunch of bad players that were mostly not worth re-signing. Kornet was mildly intriguing I guess, but again, the decision to not bring him back rests with the front office.
You don’t run it back when you go 17-65, you try to replace the bad players with good ones. I don’t think the front office did a good job of that either, but who the hell is weeping for Mudiay, Hezonja, Vonleh, etc.? They were the core of the worst team in the league.
The people calling Fiz a hypocrite, what is he supposed to say? Lance sucks ass, but I’ll tell you he’s good on defense because you can’t tell? Mudiay is the worst player on the league, why the hell did we get hum? No he has a duty to sell the players and the fans on the team.
Mudiay and Vonleh did improve. The problem is that after the improvement they still sucked.
@187
Cano should be benched. Yup, he’d become the most expensive pinch hitter in MLB. What a terrible trade that was. I hated them trading Kelenic away. The recent trade bugs me b/c of Simeon Woods Richardson being dealt away. He’s the kind of A ball pitcher with upside the Mets should be trying to trade FOR, not trade away. The only good thing is maybe they could flip Stroman for prospects in the offseason or next year.
McNeil back to 2b, where he should have been all along. JD Davis (Brodie’s one good move last offseason) should go back to 3b. Anyone but Rosario at ss.
If I were running the Mets, I’d try to trade almost everyone except the cost-controlled guys and totally rebuild. The Braves are very good and young…they will rule the division for awhile. Try to build for 3-4 years from now, but that’s a total non-starter for Brodie and the Wilpons.
I’d see what might be available for DeGrom for sure, and maybe even Conforto. Maybe in the offseason. But I really think Brody is going for next year.
It was Fizdale that pushed for Knox.
No one is crying over lost role players, but if you say you are into development and culture and let your CHEAP YOUNG role players walk to sign a few EXPENSIVE OLD role players, you are doing the opposite of what you are preaching and probably not even making the team much better!
that berman article was the epitome of empty calories… reading that is like eating a pop tart for breakfast…
JD is a butcher in the field… the Mets have a lot of guys like this who can hit but have no defensive position. He really is a flat-out horrendous defensive 3B. I’d try Rosario in CF, but that means they’d have to find a real shortstop as Andres Gimenez has fallen off the prospect radar after a disastrous year in AA. Rosario is at least managing a 100 wRC+, which is enough for a CF, but I dunno, maybe his defense would be just as bad out there. Dominic Smith can hit, but has no position as he’s blocked by Alonso.
The sad thing is that none of this matters, because Robinson Cano will still be dragging his mummy ass out to 2B in 2023 when he’s 40 and all of the good young pieces will be traded away for guys who were good players in 2013. There’s really not a lot of reason to watch the team other than Alonso and McNeil until BVW gets fired. Which will take probably two more years of putting fake “win now” teams on the field with $75M in dead salary on the books.
Was the intent of the Cano trade to get a quality player? Like, was there any other reason for the Mets to do it?
Edwin Diaz came off a fantastic season as a closer. He was young and cost controlled. Unfortunately he has been underwhelming since April. He was supposed to be the prize of the Cano trade.
The Stroman trade seems like they are all in on the WC. I was going to gripe to a co worker but he said he liked the trade ‘they’re playing better” “prospects are just that” I went back to pick up copies or whatever took me that way.
There was a vague Jay Bruce salary dump angle to it, like they would be getting Cano for not much more than they’d be paying Bruce, but that’s dumb because Cano’s contract runs like forever while Bruce’s contract only had I think two years left on it. Even with the Bruce contract going out and cash coming back, it was still a horrible idea because of the length of the Cano contract.
It was basically Bruce for Cano plus cash, then the other part of the trade was prospects (including a blue chip FV60 prospect) for the unexpectedly terrible Edwin Diaz. The Mets frittered away their #1 prospect for the proverbial bag of magic beans. If they’re smart they’ll trade Diaz, and I’ll guarantee they’re not getting a FV60 prospect back in return.
Jay Bruce is hitting .230 and he is a statue in the field, and he’s a bad player, but he’s still going to manage probably like 2.0 WAR, while Cano will likely produce negative WAR. They’d be better off with a replacement player than Cano.
BVW legitimately thought he was acquiring two star players, one cost controlled (Diaz). Of course, he was terribly wrong.
McNeil was perfectly fine at 2b, so it was NOT a position of need. Yet, they bring in Cano, and even with the Mariners kicking in some of his salary, the Mets are on the hook for 4 more years of him and near $20m in yearly salary. So, that seriously eats into the “cost controlled” part of Diaz.
BVW was Cano’s agent and loved him. He totally misread the NL East, esp. the Braves, and decided to “go for it,” dealing away two very good prospects to a Mariners team really just looking to dump Cano’s horrible contract. One, Kelenic, would have been the crown jewel of the system this year.
The Mariners are probably still laughing.
I think there are Knicks fans like that too, and Berman’s recent article probably represents how some of them feel.
“Prospects are just that,” meanwhile Alonso and McNeil are costing about $100K per 1.0 of WAR.
Berman article seems like Mills trying to center blame on Fiz so that when wins don’t impress Dolan this year Fiz is primed for the block not him. Mills is the instigator, Dolan is the target.
This seems correct.
Mills is not a smart man but he’s an expert when it comes to James Dolan palace intrigue.
@199
I just don’t get that fans can’t see how developing home-grown, cost-controlled talent is so important in MLB and the NFL. Those are big rosters; you can’t just buy a title contender like you can (sort of) in the NBA.
And also, knowing when to “hold ’em” and when to “fold ’em.” BVW needs the insight of Kenny Rogers! BVW had a pair of deuces and decided to go all in!
🙂
JK47, are you familiar with Yves Tumor’s music? Saw him on Friday down in San Diego. Enjoyed his show and we really liked his guitarist. Looked him up online, his name is Chris Greatti.
Not only am I familiar with his music, I played on his upcoming album! It’s gonna be an amazing record, I haven’t heard the finished mixes yet but it was all sounding incredible while we were tracking it.
Oh wow! Ya, we thought he was great. Seemed like a lot of the material he played was from that Serpent Music album which isn’t available on streaming platforms anymore. Too bad you’re not his touring guitarist – I could’ve been standing 5 feet away watching you play!
Yeah, I wasn’t on any of the same sessions as Chris Greatti but the producers were raving about how amazing he is.
I saw Yves Tumor back in March here in Brooklyn. Shit was a trip. Even though its like Fischer Price My First Noise Show for the yuppies in attendance. Ah, they never knew the halcyon days of Red Light District.
I think the show I caught was the second of two nights, he was without a band when I saw it.
To be honest I wasn’t that familiar with his music – my fiancee listens to him. So I didn’t really have any expectations going in. His opener was an odd fellow who made up for his vocal chops with energy and stage presence, but it left me doubtful as far as what kind of vibe YT would have. But when they took the stage it was clear as to why he was the headliner.
People have short memories. New York baseball fans over 40 lived through a decade of George Steinbrenner trading away guys who had all star careers for guys who never were or did (Fred McGriff, Willie McGee, Doug Drabek, Jay Buhner off the top of my head). Basketball fans had the Knicks counting “we didn’t trade our picks” as a bragging point.
One of the references we listened to a lot for inspiration on the YT sessions was “There’s A Riot Goin’ On.” That was the intent, to make a sort of dark, evil funk. “Bitches Brew” also. I have really no idea what the end product sounds like, but it was one of the best experiences I’ve had making a record. I played on probably 5-6 songs.
Just looked at next season’s free agents and realized that with all the cap space we’ll have, there is zero chance we don’t max DeRozen.
Have a nice day.
That’s really cool man. I guess there was a reason I mentioned the show to you. It felt like it was in your wheelhouse – and I was right! I generally like the music my fiancee finds, which is one thing I love about to her. As far as where my tastes trend, the new Benny the Butcher and YBN Cordae albums both slap!
@213, no way we max DeRozan unless he beats all odds and turns into a top 15 player. He’s essentially a one way Jimmy Butler, and we had zero interest in him this summer.
puts on tin foil hate….. I think the Stroman trade was about sticking it to the Yankees. He was the best available SP that wouldn’t require a top prospect, and he’s a perfect fit for the AL East bandboxes.
JD is a butcher in the field… the Mets have a lot of guys like this who can hit but have no defensive position. He really is a flat-out horrendous defensive 3B. I’d try Rosario in CF, but that means they’d have to find a real shortstop as Andres Gimenez has fallen off the prospect radar after a disastrous year in AA. Rosario is at least managing a 100 wRC+, which is enough for a CF, but I dunno, maybe his defense would be just as bad out there. Dominic Smith can hit, but has no position as he’s blocked by Alonso.
Sounds like the Knicks
I’ve seen this speculation elsewhere, and I have to admit, it’s so dumb it makes Metsian sense.
Maybe the Mets flip Stroman AND one of Wheeler/Syndergaard for a huge Yankee prospect haul? The smart play is to just extend Syndergaard, I mean the name of the game is to find players like Syndergaard in the first place. But he’s too “colorful” or something, so the Mets brass doesn’t like him. Thor is clearly pitching below his talent level, so better trade him now while his value is low!
No matter how many scandals Mills is involved in and no matter how many bad basketball moves he makes, he always survives. That’s Dolan’s fault. It was the same thing with Thomas. It took forever for him to finally get rid of Thomas. Everyone knows Mills is incompetent except Dolan.
Well now I need to listen to Yves Tumor — There’s a Riot Goin’ On is one of my favorite 70s albums
Haha, I don’t really follow baseball much anymore so this tells me everything I need to know
Hey Strat, any chance you could reduce your handle so that it only takes up one line? The 21-word version causes all sorts of viewing problems on both desktop and mobile.
This tune is a jam, it’s from his last album “Safe In The Hands Of Love” which is excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9teCJVTr_s
Sorry. I had no idea. If this one is not better, let me know. 🙂
OK. That should do it.
If Mills was under even the slightest hint of pressure I think this offseason would have looked pretty different (i.e. they would have chased the second tier of “stars” hard rather than mostly keeping their powder dry). I can’t see the front office taking such a passive, wait-and-see approach and then immediately transitioning to throw the coach under the bus mode.
I’m curious: do people think Fiz is under some pressure this year? Even if things go really poorly I don’t expect his seat to get particularly hot until year 3. I don’t think he’s a particularly good coach and I don’t think he did a good job last year at all but also they weren’t trying to win even a little so what can you say at this point. I think we’ll know more once training camp starts and we start hearing what kind of signals the front office is putting out there. Right now it’s not all that clear how competitive the FO expects the team to be or how they’re expecting Fiz to balance that with development for the young guys.
Jason Vargas to Philly for a Double A catcher.
How should I feel about this?
Much better. Thanks, Strat!
As for Berman, there are times when he is clearly carrying water for Mills or one of his other sources. But those pieces are written in a way to imply he’s getting the information/opinion from somewhere in the building But he also has a history of writing analysis pieces that are clearly unsourced and just his opinion. I asked one of the other beat writers once how Berman gets away with it when he’s often so clearly dependent on access to Mills et al. I was told, basically, “They need him at least as much as he needs them, so they let it slide.” This one strikes me more as a pure Berman opinion than him passing along a coded message from Mills or anybody else. And while it’s a loaded opinion — other than maybe one of Vonleh or Kornet, there’s nobody who left whom we should have tried to keep, and several of those players did improve on Fizdale’s watch (Mudiay included) — it also doesn’t seem like a hugely unfair one. The FO talked a big game. Then they ended up with role players.
Thanks, Satan!
That’s a good one, JK. I remember that one live. This song is good too off that aforementioned Serpent Music album that was pulled off streaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hXQhle7M5c
Maybe Berman doesn’t like Fiz and the whole search for a source is like looking for Bigfoot!!
On the other hand, if you wrote the Knicks coach and mgmt were about to start drama, you’d be right in like 80% of recent Knicks seasons.
We’re buyers! We’re sellers! We’re Schrodinger’s Mets!
Interesting piece of info from a Houston newspaper into the specifics of the Westbrook trade and I didn’t know that Morey put some pretty innovative restrictions on the draft picks in question. Essentially, of the four picks/pick swaps that they are sending them, they are all top four protected and the final season is top ten protected. Not only that, but if they were to go into the top four in any of the four seasons, then the picks are extinguished period for that given season (they don’t carry over to a future season). What this does is to take away any uncertainty and allow the Rockets to still trade future first round picks. Interesting stuff that makes the Westbrook deal a bit more palatable in my mind (I still think it’s an odd fit, though).
been thinking about westbrook and harden together…westbrook does do a lot of good stuff (passing and rebounds) other than shoot the ball…can’t remember if he’s a good or poor defender…
still it’s gonna be strange watching him stand around the arc just watching the ball…
Yeah, the protections make the deal a lot better for Houston if everything ever falls apart completely and they can’t compete anymore. It still sucks if they tread water for a while as Westbrook and Harden age, as they won’t have those picks to retool on the cheap or to make further deals, but I guess it’s a decent insurance.
You are assuming Harden brings the hall up the court. What if Westbrook is the lead point guard. Harden would be a deadly spot up shooter.
So if, say, the Rockets land in the top 4 picks in 2024 (when James and Brodie are 34 and 35, respectively), they keep the top-4 pick and the Thunder give back the 2025 swap and 2026 pick?
It seems pessimistic to assume that the Rockets will be in the dregs of the league even with a 34-year-old Harden, but flattened lottery odds make this real tenuous. Even worse is that those future picks, if contingent, just plummeted in trade value. I sure as hell would not trade for 3 assets that might totally vanish in 2024.
Harden in the Eric Gordon/CP3 role could be interesting. Either shooting wide-open spot up 3’s or attacking closeouts after a Westbrook/Capela PnR as the initial action.
It’s funny, I had just edited my piece to clarify before your comment! No, the pick would just be extinguished for that season. So they would still owe the 2025 pick swap and the 2026 pick. The 2025 pick swap, though, is top ten protected. The Thunder would lose the first rounder in 2024, though, which is still significant.
Most likely, Presti figures that the Rockets will be good enough that he’ll get the picks and pick swaps in each given season.
If the odds stay the same, he’d have at worst a 47% chance at losing the top-4 protected picks, and that’s if the Rockets somehow become as bad as the 2018-19 Knicks. Them’s some good odds.
Mets get a 26 year old catcher hitting .195 in AA. And, the Mets are kicking in $2.9m towards Vargas’s salary. They save $2m, which will make the Wilpons happy, but pretty much no one else.
If you’re rebuilding why are you trading 12 controlled years of Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson for one year of Marcus Stroman
Somebody please help me I’m dying over here
I’d say they sold high on Kay as a prospect. He is 24 and has been a mediocre pro outside of 66 innings at Bingo this year. Simeon Woods-Richardson is mowing them down in the very low minors in very limited innings but you can’t really hang your hat on that, see Thomas Szapucki for a recent Mets example of how that can go wrong.
If they keep Noah and QO Wheeler, that’s a nasty rotation for 2020.
Kay just came back from TJ surgery, he has hardly pitched until this year. He did very well at AA when he did pitch, and some scouts have upgraded him after seeing him at AA. He’s not a blue chip prospect but it wouldn’t be crazy for him to have a Jon Niese kind of career and giving you decent back-of-rotation innings. Woods-Richardson is described by most scouts as having a floor of “high leverage reliever.” Those are also useful, as evidenced by the 2019 New York Mets.
If the Mets can keep their top of the rotation pitchers and sneak back into the wild card race, maybe the moves don’t look so bad. I’m also not totally convinced that Cano is totally washed. They really shouldn’t be as bad as they are given their roster.
Niese debuted at 21 and had his second full season at 24. It’s just way too early to say with SWR, he’s so young and so far away. Guys like him lose effectiveness in the high minors or get injured way way way more often than they make it.
There’s definitely risk here and Brodie cashes in minor leaguers more than I’d like, but regarding this isolated move – if Stroman accumulates 6 total WAR over this year and next in a Mets uniform then turns down a QO and signs elsewhere (reasonable to me but certainly debatable as an outcome) I think the Mets get more than they paid.
There’s still the rather significant problem of Stroman being an extreme groundball pitcher and the Mets having a putrid infield defense. Stroman doesn’t miss bats and a lot of those groundball outs are going to become singles with the likes of Rosario and Cano chasing them down. He’s really not a good fit for this team.
One would think that in today’s game, ground ball pitchers are keeping the ball in the park, which is hard to do. Most teams don’t get ground ball singled to death.
There’s apparently an article in the athletic on what the young knicks are working on going into the season. Can anyone sum it up?
@248
Allonzo Trier rented a house in LA with Stanley Johnson and is working on shooting more 3s and becoming a more versatile scorer working on shooting off the catch, running off screens, and coming off pin downs.
Kevin Knox worked out with assistant coach Jud Buecher for a significant portion of June working on his shooting and play in the P&R. Buecher wants Knox to get better at driving to the rim and finishing but it doesn’t say that he’s actually working on that.
Mitchell Robinson is working with assistant coach Mike Miller on 8 to 10 foot jumpers (fucking perfect!) ball handling, and FTs. Wants to start shooting 3s next season.
Kadeem Allen wants to improve his shooting.
No mentions of Ntilikina, DSJr, Dotson, or RJ Barrett.
Trier needs to shoot more 3s. Knox needs to improve on his pick and roll play and, surprisingly, finishing strong at the rim. You are going to think this is crazy but “Knox finished with the third-lowest shooting percentage on dunks of any player in the league who tried at least 20, missing eight of his 26 dunk attempts. He shot just 48 percent at the rim, according to Cleaning The Glass, which put him in the ninth percentile among all forwards.”
Mitch wants to shoot more jumpers.
It’s good to know that it’s not just me. Does anyone have clue what the Mets are doing? Anyone? I don’t think BVW knows. The Vargas trade looks more like a firing of Vargas than anything. How does that move help in the long OR short term? The money must be the only motivation.
I hope Mitch doesn’t shoot more jumpers
I hope Trier isn’t learning his form from Stanley Johnson
Right? I was just about to comment on the oddity of that bit. I mean, I get it, they’re both Arizona players (did they play together in college?), but wow, that’s like hearing Mitch was getting jumper tips from Eddy Curry.
That just reminded me – Arizona is a fine program, but holy shit, their NBA history is fairly bleak, right? I mean, they have plenty of decent alumni, but few superstars. It seems like most big programs have had at least one superstar, no? Who is the best Arizona Wildcat of all time? Iggy, I guess? Sean Elliot? Ooph.
By the way, wasn’t Buechler a Wildcat? Why wasn’t he helping Trier on his shooting?
As long as he’s not giving diet tips to Mitch that’s a Knicks win. Knick wins are graded on a very generous curve.
Bibby was from AZ. He’s pretty good, but definitely not a star.
Iggy is a superstar in my book. Defense, passing, rebounding.
Ayton could make it.
Did Knick draft pick Jordan Hill, drafted right after Steph Curry, not become a superstar? Huh, weird.
Also, Iso Zo. Superstar.
Yeah, Ayton obviously still has a shot at becoming a superstar.
“Is Iggy a superstar?” is a great question. I’m a big fan of Iggy, but I dunno if I’d go “superstar” for him or not.
Yeah, Trier shacking up with Johnson stood out to me as being pretty weird. They didn’t play together college; Johnson was one and done after the 2014-15 season and Trier’s freshman year was 2015-16. Trier did play college ball with Kadeem Allen which I didn’t realize.
The stupidity of Mitch Robinson developing an 8-10 foot jumper is astounding. I cannot wrap my head around what anyone is thinking there.
Mitch needs more ways to score. Do any of you complaining about Mitch and eight to ten foot jumpers think he could learn to shoot three pointers without learning to shoot a shorter shot first?
The idea behind Mitch having a mid range game is NOT to actually encourage him to shoot them. It’s to be ABLE to shoot them when he has a tough matchup or the opponent game planned to take away the lob and orebs. If you can burn them with wide open 8-10 footers, they can’t leave you open anymore. That changes the defense and potentially opens up the paint for lobs again, not to mention potentially helping Randle operate inside also. You always want the best shot available, but the more things you can do at a high level the better. It makes it tougher on the defense and easier for the rest of the offense.
This too
Even though you are right that a short jumper is a good thing for Mitch, I am sure you are convincing some your new moniker is correct.
Yeah that worked great for Tyson Chandler when he first came into the league…
This is like the “layups are better than dunks because fundamentals” argument, but 10 ft stupider.
Early Bird, I have no clue what you mean
There is nothing wrong with Mitch developing a mid-range jumper. He also needs to learn a true post-up game and should become a better ball handler and passer. He also needs to become stronger and more physical. None of that diminishes his current value.
The athletic story does not imply that Stanley Johnson is teaching Trier how to shoot, just that they are rooming together for the summer while each works on their games individually.
Tyson Chandler is the most overrated player in the history of KB discussion. That has become crystal clear with the advent of BPM and VORP. He was never anywhere near a superstar-level player, and nearly all of his value was based on defense and rebounding.
To put it into perspective, Robinson’s rookie year BPM stats (after a year off from the game and never playing against anything but HS-level comp) were higher than in any year of Chandler’s career. In fact, Chandler never had an OBPM higher than 2.0. His best year with the Knicks was 1.7. Mitch’s VORP was slightly below Chandler’s career highs and higher than many of his prime years, including the year he won a ring.
The more skills you have, the better you are. Chandler tried to expand his game but couldn’t, so he remained a hyper-efficient but extreme low-usage offensive player who was limited to dunks and putbacks. Why should a 21yo put himself in that box?
The one good thing is that learning how to shoot jumpers can’t possibly take away Mitch’s biggest strength, like he won’t forget how to run hard and jump really high and dunk on people if he starts training jumpers.
He’s 21, obviously he sees himself as a future superstar and wants to improve everything in his game to become a complete player. That’s what he should be doing by himself. The next part is figuring out whether the shots he’s training are efficient enough to be relevant at games and that’s as much on him as it is on the coaching staff using him properly. So I particularly don’t mind it, we’ve seen this “expand your game” go sour before with Dwight and Drummond, but they were also perceived as the superstars in their teams and were utilized as such (and given space to do stuff they shouldn’t be doing in the first place).
Tyson was 29 when he came to the Knicks. And he was very good. It’s true that a guy like him can’t provide the kind of value that a high usage superstar can. However, having his production as opposed to say, a Zaza, is quite valuable to any team with championship aspirations, as he proved the year after he left us.
Tyson is the best Knick we have had in 20 years in my book. Mitch might be the best Knick in the next 20.
The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn’t Exist! 🙂
I “get” the efficiency story. What some people are missing is that the defense also understands the efficiency story. They are trying to take away whatever you are good at. Sometimes they win the possession. Then the team has to do something other than what it would like. The more strengths you have as a individual and the more versatile players you have on the floor, the harder it is to take anything away and the better the team’s results will be when it is forced to take a tougher shot.
IMO, Chandler added a lot of value on defense. Even though he was limited on offense, he was so exceptionally efficient, he probably added some value on offense also despite the low usage. He was a very good player. He just wasn’t a superstar or the kind of player you could build around. He was the kind of player you were trying to add to a team that already had 2 high level scorers. At that point all you need from a C is exceptional defense, rebounding, and low usage efficiency. If you don’t have the scorers, then maybe you need more. But he was a perfect fit with Dirk and even Melo (even though Melo was not a legit #1 scorer on a championship caliber team).
Here’s the list of centers with a higher OBPM than Tyson’s 1.7 in the 2012-2013 season:
The year before there were only 4 centers with a higher OBPM than Tyson. He was a very good offensive center compared to his contemporaries. Aside from very rare players like Jokic and Towns most centers aren’t that good offensively. Joel Embiid, a much more skilled offensive player than Tyson has never had an OBPM higher than 2.0.
Nonsense, as shown above — nevermind the fact that he led the damn league in ORtg in four consecutive seasons.
I don’t know how the hell anyone can defend this kind of take. It’s still steeped in a “singles are better than walks” kind of backward thinking. He didn’t waste possessions. That provides enormous value.
I can’t believe we’re still arguing about Tyson Chandler in 2019 but it’s better than politics.
If a defender leaves Mitch open from 8 feet he should just run to the rim and dunk the ball or get fouled. He’s going to be either bigger or more athletic than the guy at the rim in almost every matchup.
Tulsi Gabbard > Tyson Chandler
Signed,
Satan
🙂
DRed, have you looked carefully at his list of contempories? It may have been the absolute worst collection of C’s the league has ever seen. And of the C’s who played 2000+ minutes, Chandler’s usage was by far the lowest of anyone with a positive OBPM. Most of his statistical value on offense came from rebounding, not scoring. He scored the 3rd fewest points of any C with over 2000 minutes, below only 20yo Biyombo and 32yo Zeller. A huge % of those points came from the FT line.
The stats suggest pretty conclusively that Chandler was a HOF-level defender and rebounder and a very limited offensive player beyond offensive rebounding. In the last 30 years there have been 150 player-seasons of higher than 1.6 OBPM with 2000+ minutes played. Chandler had the lowest usage by far in any of those seasons, and is only on the list twice.
Let’s stop making ludicrous statements about what Mitch should do and not do in the offseason based on an irrational infatuation with an overrated past Knick.
Lucky Spermboy strikes again:
https://sports.yahoo.com/james-dolan-got-a-reporter-kicked-out-his-own-bands-concert-151625835.html
*overrated as an offensive player
Tyson Chandler was integral piece of: the Mavericks’ championship, Linsanity, the best Knicks team in twenty years, the best Charlotte team under MJ’s ownership, “The Redeem Team,” a Hornets team that pushed the prime Spurs to seven games… he’s the Jason Kidd of centers and should be celebrated.
@277 old news, but yeah, he hasn’t changed.
@KnickFaninNJ, it means I want Mitch to Dunk the ball.
So was Bill Russell….
fuck James Dolan
I mean, Tyson Chandler was a DPOY, an all-star, and arguably the 2nd best player on a championship team. We’d be lucky if Mitch has a similar career. Personally I think Mitch has a higher ceiling based on his production as a rookie, but it’s not crazy to want him to follow a similar path to Tyson freakin’ Chandler.
The argument about the impact of players like Chandler on an offense is so tired on this board, so I’ll just say that in his prime the teams he went to tended to get a lot better on both ends, and the teams he left tended to get a lot worse on both ends.
Having said that, I don’t care about Mitch working on jumpers unless he takes stupid jumpers during games. Chandler would say this every offseason too but it never really amounted to anything, which was fine. Anthony Davis has managed a .600 TS% on enormous usage over the last two seasons despite only taking 37% of his shots around the basket–there’s more than one way to skin the efficiency cat if Mitch can actually become a good shooter.
Mitch will be DPOY if he can learn how to stop fouling. Jumpers are irrelevant when you collect 3 fouls before the first TV time out
Here’s a fun video of Mitch playing a regular person one-on-one and dunking all over him.
Mitch has so much natural sports talent it completely would not surprise me if he adds a reliable jumper without much of a problem.
@284 I largely agree with what you are saying, but frankly (and hopefully not coming off like a starry-eyed fanboy) I disagree that we would be “lucky” at this point if Mitch became Chandler 2.0. He is pretty much already there except for the fouling, so you would be saying that we’d be “lucky” if he only became better in that area. I think “satisfied” is a better word.
I don’t think the Chandler argument is “tired” because it is at the root of today’s argument about whether Mitch should be practicing jumpers. We seem to selectively forget that back in the day, prominent posters here were calling Chandler one of the best offensive centers of all time…you remember than, don’t you? And definitively calling him the best player on that Dallas team, not 2nd best. Maybe Tyson’s biggest fans are uncomfortable when the newer stats they themselves turn to in evaluating other players paint his offensive game in a less favorable light than in the past.
You brought up Anthony Davis, and I think that’s a valid counter to the Chandler argument. Only a complete fool would rather have prime Chandler over prime Davis, assuming the same health and salary. If you say that prime Chandler was an all-time great player given his salary, I would totally agree. (And if someone is arguing that Mitch shouldn’t round out his offensive game because he’d be that much more likely to command a max salary, there’s a perversely shrewd counter-intuitive argument to be made there!)
But why not find out whether Mitch can be more versatile on offense, especially now when there is no downside to it? If he doesn’t develop, great, then go back to being Chandler or Gobert or Capela. If he does, then go to being Ewing or Hakeem or David. He has shown some very interesting offensive tools in small doses going back to high school. Why not explore those tools? As you said, it’s about how it translates. Chandler was smart enough to know that it wasn’t working.
This is exactly why the Chandler argument is not tired. People here think he’s worthy of being put in the same sentence with immortal players.
Yo! I know that’s an ordinary Joe scrub-a-dub but Mitch’s handles are not half bad there! Better than our fucking PG prospect from France!
someone commented “It wouldn’t be a Mitch video without him biting on every pump fake”
lol ouch
Funny that the guy who compared our rookie to Wilt is complaining when a former DPOY and allstar is compared to Russel.
Anyway like JK said, Mitch could be good at jump shots. It’s natural for him to try.
I did not think Mitch’s handle was good in that video. The scrub also made a shot fake that Mitch not on resulting in a clean three point attempt for the scrub.
The latest is that Frank measures 6′ 7″, 225 pounds, with a wing span of 7’2″ as of now.
(and supposedly the Knicks dd not want him playing in France, but he went anyway and just got cleared to do so)
Z-Man – Anthony Davis is as good on defense as Tyson was. And quite solid on offense. As for Russell, obviously I am not saying Tyson was Russell, just that Russell wasn’t much of an offensive player.
Mitch Rob looks like one of the best rim runners the NBA has seen in a long long time. He’ll have to be awfully productive in other areas to balance out watering down that aspect of his game. And if he is going to develop his offense, I’d prefer he work on his low post game. Having him take potshots from midrange seems like a total waste of his unique gifts like being super tall, super athletic and super coordinated.
The bottom line though is that we should do anything and everything we can to make sure he is a Knick for a long time at an acceptable price after his current contract concludes.
So fire away Mitch….
The funniest thing about that video is the kid gets Mitch to bite on a pump fake
Wow, another dumb provocative statement by you directed at me. Not surprising.
So, after watching the league MVP get neutralized in the playoffs once by the Celtics and four times by the Raptors because HE CAN’T SHOOT, people are actually arguing against Mitch practicing a 10 foot jumper?
NOT arguing against him relying on it or shooting it too many times in games. LITERALLY arguing a basketball player should avoid developing a basketball skill.
Bring back the politics.
Mike
Agreed.
I don’t see it as watering it down. It’s not an either-or thing.
Why not work on both? Last I checked, post play included 10-foot shots.
Why aren’t we saying this about AD or Horford or JJJ or Ayton? Why didn’t we say it about Hakeem or Ewing or Robinson or even peak Amar’e?
Again, my problem with the argument is that it assumes a false choice. No one is saying that Mitch should abandon rim-running and become a spot-up midrange shooter.
There was a play in summer league where Mitch got the ball at the three point line and took one dribble and got to the rim finishing with a finger roll. If he can shoot just well enough to make guys come out and guard him 10-15 feet from the hoop he should be able to beat just about any big off of the dribble. Given that (at least for the moment) he’s got more of an advantage in quickness than strength I think working on a little jumper to set up drives makes more sense than working on post moves though a little hook to use down low when he gets the ball off of the offensive glass in traffic would be nice too. The kid’s 21- why not see if diversifying his game without sacrificing too much in the way of efficiency is possible? If the Knicks can’t attract a superstar in free agency maybe they can develop one with Mitch.
This is simply not true, especially when compared to a) his peers and b) Chandler. Russell could be a featured offensive player when he needed to be. He had a slew of games where he scored over 20 points and many where he scored over 30, and I can assure you that they weren’t all dunks and putbacks. In his prime he averaged between 12 and 16 shots a game and had over 20 on many occasions. He quite often led his team in scoring in games and was often in the top 3 on his team’s total points scored and average. He also passed very well (Chandler never averaged more than 1.2 APG in a season, Russell averaged 4.3 assists for his career.)
His defense, rebounding and passing were superior to his shot-making (and better than Chandler in all 3 regards) but he was a much better offensive player than Chandler.
@300
I remember that play. The guy has “it.” Reminded me of Hakeem.
I think we’re all just PTSD from years of Melo and KP’s terrible 2-pt shot selection. We’ve seen the worst of what focusing on that aspect of the game can do to one’s efficiency (and team play, and fan enjoyment, and on and on). Lots of excellent reasons for Mitch to develop a jump shot, but I’m not surprised a lot of us flinch at the idea.
Which is kind of hilarious to me because Kawahi has basically the same shot profile, he is just a much better shooter….
League average ts% when Russell came into the league was 44.9. When he left the league it was 49.1. His career TS% was 47.1. It never went over 50%. The game was played at a faster pace too, so everyone scored a little more in absolute terms.
He was a good passer but overall, he was nothing special as an offensive player. I don’t have any trouble saying Tyson Chandler was a better offensive player in his career than Russell.
As for Mitch, I think messing with a good thing may have some unpleasant consequences. But you can’t stand in the way of progress if that’s what it take to get him to re-sign.
One of my favorite 2-way guys to watch in today’s game is Al Horford. He’s not great at any one thing but has virtually no glaring holes in his game, especially on offense. When the situation calls for a post move, e.g when matched up on a smaller player after a switch, he can do that. When left open on the perimeter anywhere from 10 ft to beyond the 3-pt line, he converts at a reasonably high rate. He’s a good passer, screener, and rim-runner. Mitch seems to have some great offensive instincts and reactions, and while raw right now, might develop into a very intelligent and skilled offensive player…not KD or AD or anything like that, but maybe like Horford.
Over at True Hoop Henry Abbott wrote an interesting series of articles about Epstein and some of the shday billionaires who own NBA teams. Sadly it has no new information about Dolan but it’s worth a read.
I think we all agree it would be great if it turns out Mitchell is also a good shooter but I just don’t know how necessary it is. If he’s a DPOY type candidate who just dunks the ball a lot he’ll still be really valuable.
R.J. Barrett has entered the game
@260
A) love the new nick
B) an 8-10 shot won’t be bad for mostly the reasons you mention but it’ll be damn disappointing if he starts jacking those up with regularity. I’m much more excited to see him working on his handle so he can get from 8-10 to the rim without losing the ball.
C) Tulsi Gabbard isn’t really anti-war. She’s strongly pro-Assad for instance, complaining that the US was focusing on ISIS there and not doing enough to attack Islamist Syrian rebels.
Here is the Ringer on the topic of this thread….
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/7/30/20747286/nba-win-total-odds
That reporter must have been causing trouble because, you know, alcoholic.
Saying Gabbard is pro Assad is a bit misleading. She thinks he’s a brutal dictator, but is against regime change because she thinks he poses no threat to the US and our involvement is making matters worse for the Syrian people.
That’s basically my position on many of these conflicts.
I don’t think we should be in the business of regime change. I think we should help defend our allies and interests at times, work with the world community, communicate with adversaries, and set a good example. However, I also don’t think we should be naive enough to think scumbags are going to behave the same we would and play nice with us. They won’t.
I think she’s pretty close to the balance I am looking for between strength and less involvement.
She also said some things about free speech as part of suing Google that are pretty close to my position. I have to hear way more, but I so far I like her more than Biden, Sanders, or Harris. I could see myself jumping on the Tulsi train eventually. There’s zero chance I’d vote for those other 3.
I think this whole argument on Mitch is much to do about nothing:
Mitch is a full-time basketball player. The video posted showed Mitch trying an outside shot. His form was butt ugly.
a full-time player in the NBA needs to work on his release and from all over the court. He has an innate talent around the rim and a freakishly quick and powerful leaping ability combined with that body. That talent, which comes from limited actual play, likely won’t atrophy while he works to develop other parts of his game.
Frankly, it wouldn’t kill Mitch, once he figures out his release, to expand his shooting to the 3 line.
Great players work on all aspects of their game. He’s got almost nothing else to do. He’s in the gym all the time.
Work on the low post and his release, and work then on a mid-range. Later he can try 3s.
Maybe he can. Maybe he can’t.
But the man can jump out of the arena quicker than most any NBA player. And with his athleticism and body, he’ll always have the dunk.
If he cleans up his jumper, he’s not a piece, he is THE piece.
And he already started to reduce his fouls late last season. The kids has a good head on his shoulders.
People argue here for fun. I get that. But this isn’t an either or. He needs to develop. He will try. If he succeeds he could change the Knicks’ fortunes almost by himself.
OKC has already been bet up to 32.5 which is still too low
Yeah, if Mitch become a higher volume scorer while not compromising too much what makes him good, he’s going to be a superstar. The guy went an entire year with no college experience training mostly by himself, I think we can assume that he won’t lose himself in the process of one offseason.
Reading TChandler’s stats may fool you and think that he’s a pretty good and efficient Center.
Watching him play reveals his inability to play offense, dribble and pass. His post moves are a joke.
His widely famous D is not also convincing to me when his rim protection is childish, his rebounds avgs are nowhere near top rebounders of his era or any other era and his presence is not causing any kind of fear to opponent slashers and paintballers.
I call him and Shump in D as ‘PretenDefenders’.
They look like they play Hard D but actually they’re mediocre.They act playing great D.
Comparing him to Great Centers is an insult for the game.
Okay now we have a full-on “Tyson Chandler sucked” hot take.
Id call him not 2way or 1way Center but 1/2way Center.
Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!
Some arguments are evergreens….
what’s really crazy is that as dolan ages – i can’t imagine this type of behavior will do anything but escalate…
Sometimes i wonder which is more rare ?
A snow leopard (ghost cat) or a Tyson spin move ?
Hard to believe there’s no publicly available spin moves/36 data. You know the smart teams are tracking it internally!
dang, 225 for frank…that would be pretty amazing if he’s gained 25 lbs since the beginning of last season…not sure it’ll help him play basketball any better, but, an in shape 6’7″ 225 should help him raise his rebound average to at least a “solid” 3 a game…
@318 TC didn’t suck but you can’t call him a great or even a pretty good center while having seen great Centers play.
His game was nowhere near complete.
You can call him ‘one of the lesser craps of his crappy Cs era’.
Great Centers look like Jojo and great Defending Centers look like Gobert.
You see them and shit your pants while attacking or defending.
Thats what great C is.
Center who can’t spin is like a car without reverse gear.
Trouble !
howdy al, wherever (have a safe trip to LA) and whenever you might be…glad you’re enjoying Legion this season for what it is…thankfully, i’ve never felt compelled (or needed to for work) to pick it apart and examine it in detail…
caught up to season 3 episode 5 (got episode 6 on the dvr, but, think i’ll wait for the season to complete before watching anymore)…
i’ve given it some more thought – and, still sticking with Legion as my all time fave tv comic adaptation (i would need to spend a bunch more time to think about the best movie adaptation)…i did like the walking dead, and, absolutely love preacher – but, i was never really that in to the artwork on those comics/graphic novels…similar to how i don’t really bother with manga stuff, just not my preferred style…
Legion is like my discovery of glossy print comics times a thousand…
it’s definitely a show where is pays to be a little superficial, and entertained to a large extent by the visual (and audio) representation…they do say some pretty cool stuff every once in a while…
here’s something that will significantly enhance everyone ‘s existence – was trying to remember where and when i first became aware of david haller…lo and behold it was during Legion Quest, the prequel to my all time fave comic storyline of all time: the age of apocalypse…
Legion Quest also contained one of the cooler comic images ever:
https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/scale_small/6/67663/6364910-01.jpg
As for Mitch expanding his game i don’t see where the problem is…
Great Centers are Great Players.
And Great Players are Complete.
Chandler was a really good player but not a great one. The term “great” should be reserved for MJ, Hakeem, Lebron, etc.
But he was an all-star. He was DPOY. He was a starter on a championship team. He is a gold medalist in the Olympics and in the FIBA world championship. And he was part of multiple 50 plus win teams that had decent playoff runs.
There’s no need to shit on the guy. But he isn’t Jordan or Wilt or Kareem. I do think his low usage on offense and limited skill set should be taken into the equation.
But also there are Knicks fans who don’t like him because he was sick/hurt in both playoff appearances and his final season he broke his leg and also did more vocal complaining. But at the same time, he had to cover up for Melo’s lack of defense for 3 years. Probably got tired of that shit.
Chandler made one all-star appearance as a reserve in 18 seasons. That puts him in the same company as immortals like Chris Kaman, Devin Harris, Gerald Wallace, Mo Williams, Josh Howard, Mehmet Okur, Jamaal Magloire, Theo Ratliff, Tyrone Hill, and Christian Laettner.
Yeah and Carmelo Anthony made like fifty all-star teams so who the fuck cares.
Z-Man, some of those people listed were good players too. How many of them also have a DPOY and a ring to their name? Plus a gold medal.
He was a good player. Give him his props and move on.
I’ll just add that we saw the very best of Tyson here. He clearly peaked in the 2010-11 through 2012-13 seasons (last Dallas year when they won the title; first two Knicks seasons), earning his only 3 all-defense nods, and putting up some monster efficiency numbers, albeit on low volume. The rest of his career was definitely a notch (or few) below that – in most seasons he was a very good defensive C with middling to poor offensive numbers and the box score stats don’t suggest a big offensive impact outside of the stats. Great Knick for a couple seasons, more good than great for most of his career, that’s my $0.02.
wasn’t a big fan of tyson growing the beard out though…same thing with harden – my face just starts itching looking at those guys running around sweating with that thick beard…
kind of like watching charlie blackmon step up to the plate…phenomenal hitter, but, come on man, clean it up a bit, for the rest of us…
I love(hate) playing this alternative universe in my mind.
Melo comes to the Knicks in free agency outright, allowing the Knicks to keep their cupboard full with Gallo, Wilson, Moz, Felton, picks, etc. Knicks in turn do not have to use amnesty on Billups.
Front office wisely realizes that STAT’s back injury is the beginning of the end. Convince Dolan to amnesty him and pay him the rest of his contract as a thank you for making the Knicks relevant again.
Knicks sign Tyson in free agency, do a sign a trade for CP3.
Knicks go into 2011-2012 season with peak Tyson, Melo and CP3.
Interesting take on the whole Lin thing. Obviously he shouldn’t have said it but it would be strange if he never played in the NBA again. He sucked in Toronto but I suspect he might be the best guard on the Knicks. If Taj Gibson can get a deal Lin should too.
https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/ny-jeremy-lin-linsanity-20190730-t2bm2yx3mzepvnjm57dh7le2ue-story.html
#321
Tyson would need ~7 spin moves a game over his career.
Z-man is trying to retcon his terrible, unabashed wrongness from 2011-2015 and I won’t have it at all.
You’re smarter than this. Deferring to All-Star selections is so fucking dumb that I’m starting to believe that someone else duplicated your screen name to smear you. Clean that shit up.
I don’t give a fuck how long your wingspan is when you shoot .417 TS%
Get the fuck outta here
Jowles, you must be pretty stoned if you think that that’s what I was trying to say. I was merely pointing out that swiftandabundant stating that Chandler was an all-star had no relevance in this argument. And again, I said in an earlier post that Chandler was a great rebounder and defender. He was a mediocre offensive player who was smart enough to know that he was mediocre and therefore had among the lowest usage rates in history. But you and others who were on a now-defunct WP48 sugar high driven by stats that grossly inflated low-volume/high-efficiency scoring and rebounding don’t want to budge on declaring Chandler an all-time great offensive player, as you did often back in that time period. Even in the face of new stats that bring his offensive value back down to earth, the same stats you and others now use to praise or diss current players, you can’t look back and admit that you vastly overrated Chandler.
I am stoned as fuck and two happy hour ciders in but I still know u wrong
His Ortg still led the NBA four times and his VORP was top 20 twice. That’s not an insignificant feat. That would make him the best and most valuable player on most teams, categorically
Ortg?!?!?! Must be some good shit! Alas, I’m all out…
This doesn’t really track with her strongly voiced support for Russian attacks on Syrian rebels and her complaints that the US was being insufficient in their attacks on same. Maybe Assad is the best of bad options – he’s Saddam level at this point but it’s def true that many Iraqis aren’t better off now – but she has not been advocating for strict non-interference. It’s basically cold war style interference she wants, with communists replaced with islamicists. That’s not how she spins it, but it’s what her actual stances demonstrate.
I was never a big WP48 fan, it always seemed to me like that metric overvalued players like Chandler. But that doesn’t mean Chandler wasn’t a highly effective player on both ends of the floor.
Efficient dive men like Chandler have value beyond the boxscore, you have to account for them at all times because you don’t want them to get a dive and lob– that is an automatic bucket, as attested to by Chandler’s insanely high TS%. He could also make free throws, so he’d punish you in that regard as well, and he was a very good offensive rebounder, so he’d get you lots of extra possessions. The idea that in total those things aren’t very beneficial to an offense seems, uh, wrong?
Low usage, low-efficiency bums like Frank Ntilikina are what kills an offense, they force you to play four-on-five. It wasn’t like that with Tyson Chandler. He was a threat, and had to be treated as such.
I’m certainly in agreement that Chandler was a very valuable player on both ends of the floor, for all the reasons you put forth, JK. But the vast, vast majority of his value comes from his rebounding and both perimeter defense and rim protection. A guy that plays defense and rebounds like Tyson Chandler but only shoots at a .570 TS% on a 12% USG% is still incredibly valuable. A guy who shoots .750 TS% at a 12% usage rate but is a below average rebounder, perimeter defender and rim protector is not an NBA rotation player.
I don’t think there’s much of a difference on offense between Chandler and, say, Mutombo or Ben Wallace, despite the difference in TS%.
Are the Mets really 11 of their last 15?
I was only bringing up Chandler’s all-star appearance in the context of all his other career achievements. You’re right to not be impressed by an all star appearance. Although you guys act like it’s an easy thing to do when it is in fact, not. Even if the process is flawed in picking all stars, it’s still an achievement. But an all star appearance along with winning DPOY one year and starting for a championship team one year and winning a gold medal and bring on multiple competitive teams as a starter for his career? That’s a good player.