The “How Many Wins Will The Knicks Win In 2019-20?” Prediction Thread

My official prediction will be 30 wins. I think the team is going to over perform during some stretches and it’s going to be a lot more watchable than last season, but in the end there’s just not enough talent on the roster to win much more than this. If they stay injury free I can see something like 34 or more being possible, but I’m sticking with 30.

Going with 29.

I think I predicted 26 last year so 28 this year.

25 and a whole lot of disappointment

26.

So much of this prediction depends on Knox’s playing time.

If Randle gives us what he did in the preseason it’s more like 20.

27 wins. I am taking the over baby!!!

This is one of the few teams I can remember that might actually be better when a few guys get hurt just because of team chemistry.

I will do a full prediction for all NBA teams, so I can check how wrong I was after the season.

EAST

Milwaukee Bucks 60 – 22
Philadelphia 76ers 56-26
Brooklyn Nets 50-32
Toronto Raptors 48-34
Miami Heat 47-35
Indiana Pacers 43-39
Orlando Magic 41-41
Detroit Pistons 40-42
Boston Celtics 37-45
Chicago Bulls 35-47
Charlotte Hornets 34-48
Atlanta Hawks 30-52
New York Knicks 23-59
Cleveland Cavaliers 19-63
Washington Wizards 14-68

Bucks will remain the same. 76ers will keep growing, Horford and Josh Richardson will be welcome additions. Nets will have a good year as long as the keep vaseline out of Kyrie’s hands. Toronto loses Kawhi, but I count on growth from Siakam and Anunoby while Gasol and Lowry have a good year. Paces are a bit of a mystery, since they changed so much the team and depend on when and how Oladipo returns. Boston will plummet after losing Irving, Horford, Baynes and Rozier. Chicago will improve, I count on WCJr having a good year and Satoransky being a good game director. Wizards will suck mightly and I see them trading or shutting Beal after the the All-Star game.

23 because at some point the tank will be real. Also I’m assuming some injuries.

i will be the brave soul and goto 35 wins…. This is sort of where I was after free agency…

we are a lot better than last year because we have a lot less roster chaff and will be replacing them with nba caliber minutes…. morris.. randle… taj… ellington and payton are not world beaters but they are also not mario hezonja… trey burke… and luke kornet….

randle is gonna be good although there’s some risk that his shooting efficiency tanks under a heavier workload like we’ve seen in the preseason… there’s also a chance for a true breakout….

i’m sticking with 35 wins largely on the backs of RJ and i’m hopeful that one of the dsj/payton duo will put in a solid season…. RJ in particular has been better than I expected and I’m expecting solid starter minutes at a heavy load… dsj/payton haven’t looked great but there’s still good reason to believe that one of these two will put in good starter minutes….

if frank and knox get 2000 minutes or more combined we will get less than 30 wins … but i’m hopeful they get less than 1000 and if they do we have a good chance at over 30….

You think Charlotte will win 34 games and 3 less them Boston only? Damn, that’s some prediction.

Is this Boston team better than last year Hornets?

On the other hand, the prediction for this year Hornets might be too high, given that they lost Kemba. But I think they are commited to “win-now”, they have lots of players in their prime, most of the players remain from last season and know each other, that I think they will win above 30.

I don’t think the Celtics are good and I agree with Jowles that they’re a low 40s team, but 37 seems far too low considering the east is still pretty bad. For example, are the Celtics that much worse than the Miami Heat, or the Detroit Pistons? They might be, but I don’t think it’s by that much. I have them at around 42 wins.

Now Charlotte has replaced Kemba with Rozier, who by all accounts is pretty terrible and will play heavy minutes, and 34 is pretty much 10 wins over most of the predicted over unders I’ve seen for them. Their starting lineup is probably going to be Rozier, Batum, Bridges, Marvin Williams and Cody Zeller, with the best bench players being Malik Monk, Dwayne Bacon, Hernangomez and PJ Washington. That’s a Knicks level team for me.

If Sabonis is available I would certainly be interested. He improves every year by a lot and is a winning player. Very efficient, rebounds well and passes very well, He is a ball mover and an efficient scorer. Other than MR and possibly (I hope) RJ he’s far better than anything they have and i’m not afraid to give him a big contract at the end of this year as a RFA

If you have Siakim, you give him the max and build around him unless you have reason to think last year’s development was a fluke. Even if he’s ultimately not a franchise #1 player, he’s a max player and can be a critical piece to a championship down the line. If Masai moves Siakim he either knows something the rest of the league does not or he has developed some kind of degenerative brain disorder since last season.

Yeah Horford is a significant loss for Boston. They have some of the nuts and bolts of a good team but none of the chrome and leather. Their fans think that Kemba is a massive upgrade over Kyrie but they’re wrong. It’s going to be confusing for a lot of their fans when they’re mediocre. They think Kemba is about to lead them to some ringzz because ruff rydah or something.

FWIW, 538’s new metric RAPTOR really hates Julius Randle. It lists him as a scrub despite having a decent last year.

@28

I would probably trade away the veteran Raptors, but there’s no way I’m letting Siakim go at 24. I’m giving him the max and going from there.

@27

The Boston fans think Kyrie did not fit well there and is generally overrated. I haven’t heard anyone say they think Kemba is a huge upgrade. Most people think it’s a downgrade. I’m kind of with the Boston fans. It’s not so much that I love Kemba, but I think he’s a little better than people think and Kyrie is not quite as good as people think. So imo that particular swap is not going to be a big deal. It’s the C position that’s a nightmare unless Ainge has some secret weapon I don’t know about or makes a deal.

I’m going with 24 wins. That’s a 7-win bump. Maybe too generous.

I think Masai never shied away from giving big contracts to players, because he’s confident in his ability to survey the market and make good decisions. I’ll trust him again on this one. He knows the best chance Toronto has of contending again is by trading for star players, and he understands that having a piece like Siakam locked for a long time is going to be a plus in that sense.

The NBA can be extremely different in the next 2 years, depending on the decisions guys like Davis, George, Leonard, Towns, Giannis make. If you have a player like Siakam locked up, plus cap flexibility and the reputation for winning that they built last season, you can afford to wait and see how the chips fall while being competitive, and then throw yourself into the stakes for one of those guys if they come up.

Put me down for 27 wins.

Fizdale has been set up to take the fall when this roster disappoints.

Golden State lacks depth and Russell is not really a good fit. Something like Morris, Ellington, and a Dallas pick for Russell would help both teams.

538 really needs to stop naming their metrics after other basketball things. It’s real fuckin’ dumb. Why not go the tech-startup route and just slightly alter a common word so it’s searchable?

You hit the nail on the head alsep. Fiz will have to go to protect Mills and Perry for another year or two.

As much as I’d like to see Fiz fired I must agree with Alsep, M&P will give Fiz at least another full year.

I see Morris, Ellington and even Gibson as depth pieces that contenders could like.

How much value do you think they can bring?

One expiring and two overpaid (but with only 1M guaranteed next year),
maybe a handful of second rounders and a young lottery ticket or two? More than that?

I feel lucky today!
I’ll go with 3 bold predictions:
33 Wins.
RJ wins ROTY award.
Bobby Portis punches Fizdale in the face and kicks Jud Buechlers butt.

I’m going to go with 31 wins.

Reason is that the tank is not going to happen. With all these vets (ie. no one really terrible to put on the floor) and the FO stung by last year’s tank being the proposed reason for why no marquee FA’s came, plus Fizdale needing to show progress in year 2, they are just not going to tank.

Other reasons:
1 – Knox is not going to be the worst player in the league. Not only will he be passable, but he’ll also play fewer minutes. So many of these models assume he’ll be super awful and also play a lot of minutes.

2- one of the PGs will be passable.

3 – RJ will be at least an average NBA player. After having watched most of his preseason, I’m really pleasantly surprised. Yes, his athleticism isn’t great, but the thing I’ve been most impressed with is his off-ball play. He’s really been great at cutting and finishing around the rim. Those will equal easy buckets for him making it more likely that he’ll have somewhere near an average TS (like 53) while probably having a usage around 22, whereas I assumed before seeing him playing so well off-ball that he’d have a TS around 48 and pounding the ball into the ground. He’s also been much better defensively than I thought he would be.

So between RJ being average, Knox being just below average as opposed to super awful, Mitch making some improvements, no tanking, and a roster full of competent NBA players, I just find it hard to believe they’ll be terrible. The PG play is going to be bad, but I wonder going forward whether it’ll really be RJ taking most of the ballhandling duties. That could be bad, but it’ll also give Fiz cover to play better defenders (ie. Frank) at the 1 which will be a positive thing overall.

That said – I am not a Fizdale believer. I still want the Knicks to bring back JVG. I’ll believe that’s the right hire for the rest of my days.

29 wins.

preseason has affected my guess; i.e. me stupid. i think the floor is a bit higher bc RJ’s chances of having knoxian year for 2500 minutes are lower (tho i’ll still take the under on farfa’s 20/5/5 ts 53). i think the ceiling is a bit lower bc my very private and personal hope that mitch came back this fall with tim duncan’s brain is…dimmer.

Too many new players to easily guess improvement over last year. Talent level seems to be safely in the bottom quarter of the league. So I expect only a few wins (4-5?) against teams they “shouldn’t” beat in the upper three quarters. In a fair fight they might be very slight favorites in most games against other teams in the bottom quarter (11 wins out of 20?). Many of those won’t be exactly fair because they’ll probably commit more fully to tanking as the season wears on. But other bad teams will as well. That will probably give the Knicks a few more unwatchable wins (3-4?) at the hands of more adept and determined tankers. Joy. So I’ll guess that they end up winning a couple less than a quarter of their games. 18 or 19. Something like that.

This Yankee game has the potential to be the longest ever with all these slow ass bullpen pitchers.

They’ve played an hour and 15 minutes and it’s still the top of the 3rd inning.

Gotta love baseball !

26 wins.

I believe that’s what I picked before the season began and I’ve seen nothing in the preseason to change my opinion. We’ve moderately improved the talent level over last year’s team but not by that much and I have no idea how Fizdale could possibly balance the minutes to keep everyone happy.

Hubert, you weren’t wrong about Encarnacion….

JK47 – This sounds like a high grade problem…

It’s not awesome

I feel like I should be walking around asking people if they want some chicken satay

Pit me down for 30 wins.

JK – but A-list actors doe? No opps for politickin?

Sidebar: I got kicked in the nuts 2x tonight. My junior college just got blown out, and Chapman coughs up a season-ending bomb after the Yankees pull even in the top of the 9th.

FML

I am going with 26 wins. That would be a 9 win improvement over last which honestly seems too generous.

let me be of assistance mister jk sir…

step 1: silently repeat this mantra twice to yourself – “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

the third time say it strongly and clearly aloud…you want to make sure to really drive home the point to others…

step 2: I would never promote drug use to others, particularly in a professional circumstance, and, it’s a challenge for many…but, the answer though is drugs…

27 wins for this team, and that is generous. Most of their wins will be ugly, and probably because the other team is cold and misses a good percentage of their many open looks from three. On the optimistic side, after trading some 1+1’s the net result is assets and a reasonably defined rotation where the group gels and starts winning semi-regularly. Or in the same scenario, trade 1+1’s and enter tank mode again.

I think the team we see today is not the group that finishes in 2020.

Spring Training can’t get here soon enough.

22 weeks til opening day……

Isn’t it odd how the team has performed better with Ntilikina at the point this preseason?

Why is it odd when you compare him to the competition? For all his warts Frank is an actually ++ player at 50% of the game…. its just the half that is more difficult to quantify and isn’t as flashy or AAU-tastic….. It just wins in every sport.

Put another way, winning 28 or less would suggest that there was very little development from the young core. Not a good thing.

33 wins. The abbreviated preseason hinted at a few patterns, but mostly was an exercise in floor exposure for the new Knicks. RJ has the athleticism, but controls it to a point where it stays buttoned up. DSJ loosened RJ up a little bit. The Knicks are better with Frank in the rotation as a defensive unit – the perimeter disaster against the Pelicans being the obvious example. Randle’s isolationist tendencies are familiar and worrisome. Portis will join Mike Singletary in the eyeball hall of fame. Feels like old Knicks times, but RJ is an actual player and will turn a few losses into wins.

Portis will join Mike Singletary in the eyeball hall of fame.

They both have crazy eyes, but neither of them have Manson Lamps……Upon further review the Knicks should probably run T3, T$ and TSH tests on Portis.

@71 Frank is definitely an “old school” PG. If he becomes like Derek Harper when he was a Knick, I’ll take that. I hope for more with his measurables and the fact he’s still probably got an inch in height left in him and he hasn’t grown into his body yet. But I’ll take Harper if he can get there.

@73, I’m thinking 28 if we have to rely on Mook and Randle doing all the heavy lifting while the kids grow. Randle is fine as a top option right now, but can Mook consistently produce as a #2? DSJ’s back scares me, and I’m not quite ready to trust Portis as a consistent threat yet or Fiz’ plan for Trier. If Trier plays the minutes we think he should play, then I think we win more. But it really doesn’t bother me to think between 28-33 wins because I’m so excited to see the kids’ progression. I just wish I knew what Fiz is planning

The challenge as described in recent posts is to find the proper balance between developing our long term assets ( Mitch, RJ), finding out if any of our young assets are keepers ( Randle, Knox, Iggy, Frank, DSJ), while creating the appearance that the franchise is trending in the right direction by winning in order to attract free agents. Nothing that has happened in the last few years with our current management team inspires confidence in that happening.

The 2020 draft class looks kinda thin to me, anybody have their eyes on anybody in that class? Anthony Edwards seems like a chucker guard type, James Wiseman is a pure center and we already seem to have one of those, LaMelo Ball gives me PTSD, Cole Anthony is a pure PG but has little flipper arms and can’t shoot, Theo Maledon is a French point guard so uh maybe no…

Isaiah Stewart maybe? Stretch four? I dunno.

Unless there’s a consensus pick, this might be yet another year for the Knicks to trade a high lottery pick down and grab multiple players like Edwards or Clarke instead of chasing blue-chip Kentucky and Duke underachievers. But I say this every year and every year, they keep shooting their own foot despite it already being a bloody stump.

Well, also their career numbers are bad enough that unless one of them massively improves, there’s a chance preseason is merely a confirmation for what we already know in this case.

I don’t trust any of Payton, DSJ or Frank to be good, but I do think Payton was a good gamble and he can provide good minutes for the team. I would love to see the other two show real progress, but I’m not holding my breath.

Totally undersand that feeling but the stat is meaningless. None of them played even 70 minutes.

Yeah I just meant that it forced me to take a harder look at the quality of our guards in general. Also figured I should post the stat because even though it’s meaningless, it’s hilarious.

Last year NBA teams played supposedly below-replacement level players enough to produce -59.9 in total VORP. We led the league here both absolutely at -6.6 total sub-replacement VORP and in negative VORP as a percentage of expected losses at 10.7% (this is a rough measure of how much your win total is being relatively depressed by playing really bad players as opposed to just not having any good players). The teams with the lowest negative VORP contributions were the Heat, Celtics and Spurs. Really the Spurs had no sub-replacement minutes if you excludes garbage time. Other teams on our end of the spectrum, again using -VORP as % of Pythagorean wins, were not all tankers like you might expect (though it is tanker-heavy). The 2nd and 3rd teams were the Thunder at 9.7% of expected losses and the Rockets at 9.3%.

It’s hard to be a really shitty team unless you give a ton of minutes to these so called sub-replacement guys. Last year only 4 teams had expected wins under 27 and they all generated at least -4.1 VORP from this group. It’s going to be a huge wildcard for us this year. On the one hand we may have made the biggest upgrade in the entire league when it comes to potentially replacing sub-basement guys. On the other hand we still have plenty of possibilities on the roster if some young guys disappoint and we either tank or accidentally play the wrong guys. Makes for a lot of volatility on the O/U. The Bulls are the other team set up to dramatically reduce their -VORPers.

The very fact that the Knicks are even considering starting Portis at C over Robinson is screaming that my concerns about Randle and Robinson not being an ideal fit were justified. Randle does his best work inside. The idea is to give him as much room as possible to work inside. That’s why he has even played some C. I always liked Randle, but I pictured him as an ideal fit with KP. He does not really fit with Robinson. It’s not ideal for either of them, but at least Randle seems to be stretching his game out. So it shouldn’t be as bad for Robinson even if it’s not as ideal as having a true stretch PF out there. To me, Portis is more of a stretch PF. He’s certainly not a starting C.

The fact that Portis is on the roster is problematic, period. I get that you want stretch bigs, but he’s not a good overall player. You could have just brought back Kornet for that role for a lot cheaper. Portis was the worst move of the offseason.

@95 100000% agreed. That guy is Kevin Seraphin with a jumper and I hate that he’s going to be a consistent presence in the rotation. I’d much rather the 4/5 rotation consist of Randle, Robinson, Gibson, Morris, and Knox.

randle is a big that can fit with a lot of different kind of bigs.. but fits best with someone that can make up for his defensive deficiencies… and the reason for that is that he can pass… over 5 assists per 36 in the preseason… that also came with 4 turnovers but he can create offense….

the reason the spacing was not so great is because a)randle draws a LOT of attention when he drives because he tends to overpower whoever he is guarding… ppl will automatically help off of that… and b)we don’t have shooters anywhere and c)randle hasn’t been quick enough on his looks

it’s a mix of all those things but the difference between portis and mitch is very very small as far as spacing goes… nobody is afraid of leaving portis open.. and there’s no evidence to suggest that randle can’t share the court with mitch either… in fact i think they work very well together….

the problems with mitch/randle mitch/portis and portis/randle are primarily on D. taj is actually a good defensive pairing with mitch because he actually knows how to play positional interior defense without nodding off and mitch needs an adult yin to his tasmanian devil yang. on offense obviously it’s not ideal.

randle’s best complement on defense is just a really good interior defender because he ain’t. he has good hands but he also falls asleep a lot and alternates between very hard work and getting lazy (hi dsj), which is worse than the middle ground. myles tuner maybe (though they seem to hate sabonis/turner).

mitch’s ideal complement on both sides (draymond doesn’t count he’s too much of a unicorn) is someone like horford or even millsap. portis isn’t even worth taking about. he’s just a bad defender and it’s not really about fit, he plays d like a gigantic hubert davis.

Portis playing stretch PF next to Robinson is probably the best theoretical combination depending on what type of player Portis will have to cover (some matchups may not make sense), but it makes no sense when you are paying big money to Randle to be the centerpiece of your offense and he’s the better offensive player.

This is the problem with the management and coach.

Basketball is not just about looking at a basic stat sheet and/or watching players play (something our coach and management is not very good at to begin with). It’s about knowing each player’s individual skillsets in detail (strengths and weaknesses), valuing those attributes correctly, and then fitting them together properly to maximize the output at the team level. There’s no magic formula I’m aware of, but there are some basic principles.

You can tell by the players they get, the combinations they get, and the lineups they put on the court they have no idea what they are doing. Even when they stumbled onto some defense heavy lineups last year that were working well, they broke them up trying to get more offense. They got more offense, but they also got worse results and had no idea. smh

There’s zero zip nada zilch rim protection with a Randle/Portis frontcourt, and that’s a good way to get your ass kicked in the NBA.

If they seriously start Portis over Robinson then…well…that would be, you know, really shitty.

I’m talking myself in to a second team of Mitchell-Taj-Dotson(?)-Trier-Frank. 4 average+ defenders and one chucker, it’ll be like the Mutombo/Iverson sixers.

I guess they’d probably put Knox in there somewhere and ruin things.

This team is probably going to have rotations like the Larry Brown Knicks, which is to say a bunch of random shit thrown together at random times for no reason.

I think they should go back to 8 preseason games or at least 6… Fiz has an incomplete picture of the lineups he has to work with at this point.

RJ and Mitch should be the priorities. I think Randle works fine with Mitch, and I guess Morris/Knox is a fine stand-in/work-in-progress, take your pick.

Who works best next to RJ? It’s hard to tell, but clearly not Elfrid. I’d go with Frank because defense, but I’m sure they’ll go with DSJ. On offense, it’s all about who can run the break, take wide open threes, and stay out of RJ and Randle’s way.

Oh and starting Portis opening day is way overthinking things and will just piss me right off. I’ll be rooting for Fiz to get canned if that happens.

and if there’s anybody still left on the kevin knox bandwagon…

knox per36

2p fg – 35.3% <-more of the same
pts – 17.2
rebs – 5.9
ast – 1.6
stl – 0.54
blk – 0
to – 0.54
ftr – 21%

doesn't look like preseason signaled any change for him…

This team is probably going to have rotations like the Larry Brown Knicks, which is to say a bunch of random shit thrown together at random times for no reason.

This is a bit harsh. I’m not sure a single good coach wouldn’t have major issues figuring out a starting lineup and rotation with this motley collection. I expect some juggling, but doubt that it will be “random.” Dumb maybe, but not Brown-level bizarre.

There is zero chance that Payton is out of the rotation. Nor should he be. Both Ntilikina and Smith Jr. have been abysmal. Payton has a track record as a playable PG and they didn’t bring him in to sit him. If there is one, my guess is that the odd man out will be Frank, at least at first. Then it all depends on DSjr’s back and his play. But they absolutely will not bench Payton.

payton should be starting… everybody has been bad… but he’s the vet and he’s at least established nba level minutes…. he should be the starter by default unless someone proves otherwise… and no.. frank absolutely did not do that…

he should however not be getting the lion’s share of the minutes but he has the best chance to keep up with opposing first team pg’s… him and dsj should be splitting time with frank sprinkled in to come in vs trae young…

My guess is that Fiz starts with a 11-man rotation:
Starters: Payton, RJ, Morris, Randle, Mitch.
Bench: DSjr, Trier, Portis, Knox, Ellington, Gibson
Out of rotation: Frank, Dotson, Iggy, Bullock

Frank and Dot get spotted in situationally. If the rotation guys start losing/playing poorly, Frank and Dot get minutes at the expense of RJ/Trier/Ellington/DSjr/Knox

I’m going with:

Starting 5: Smith Jr, Barrett, Morris, Randle, Robinson
Bench: Payton, Trier, Ellington, Knox, Portis, Gibson
DNP CD: Dotson, Brazdekis, Bullock, Ntilikina

I think they’ll start the season at 11-deep maybe even 12 as Frank should get some spot minutes. I also think Trier will fall out, Dotson will move up, and Frank will be traded. Payton will probably take over as the starter at some point because DSJ won’t improve. I also think Knox could start over Morris eventually.

Trier does one thing really well: score in isolation. But he doesn’t dish so play stagnates around him. He struggles on defense. In other words, he’s the perfect Knick.

I feel 33 wins is in the real of possibility with us in the hunt for LaMelo with a mid-late lottery pick. Kid looks pretty good so far in his 4 games for Illawarra. His 3pt numbers are a bit of a concern, but he looks like he has a lot of tools and his IQ looks to be pretty high.

Yea so…remember how I said Barrett and Knox should lead the 2nd unit with Barrett as the defacto PG so they can have the room to grow?

SIKE! I lied lmao

It appears that RJ is a lock to start, and with DSJ not all the way back yet, this is the perfect time for Ntilikina to assert himself as the starting PG. So..I’m lookin at a MitchRob/ Randle/Mook/RJ/Ntilikina starting 5 followed by Portis/Taj/Knox/Ellington/DSJ. You can even swap Taj and Mitch if you want, but I’d prefer Mitch so we can have strong defense at the 1 and 5. Not that Taj isn’t a strong defender, it’s just that Mitch is the better rim protector of the 2. You know what? Screw it. Start Taj. He’s not gonna play 30 minutes a night anyway

I would be ok with starting Portis at the 5, but if our starting guards don’t stay in front of their man, it would be a layup line at the rim

I keep reading and hearing that Mook is the most likely vet to get traded. Why not Portis instead? I think we need guys like Mook and Taj on the team. I like Portis, but he’s not exactly a great fit playing the 5 for us. And with Mook on the roster, that’s a bit of overlap if Portis plays the 4. So it makes sense that he’s the odd man out, right?

I keep reading and hearing that Mook is the most likely vet to get traded. Why not Portis instead?

My guess, no one wants to give up assets to pay Portis $15 million to lose games.

We’re heading into the season with no discernible offensive system or any semblance of a rotation. This is a disaster waiting to happen. I think every time we play a game against a well-drilled NBA team it’s going to be readily apparent how unprofessional Fizdale’s approach to the game is.

@136,

Trier turns 24 in January. He’s effectively entered his prime and passed the improvement phase of basketball.

He played 3 years of college ball. Generally players who stayed in college longer are assumed to be closer to a finished product upon entering the league. He’s already picked up many of the skills that Frank, Knox, and RJ will over the next 3-4 years.

Trier is a FA after this season. Even if Trier does improve this year (he probably will) he will get paid equally or over his market value. So, despite being a steal as an undrafted FA, his surplus value is minimal.

Look at his advanced stats, they’re terrible. He has a -4.2 BPM, -0.8 VORP, and .030 WS/48. He’s not a stellar player and can’t be expected to improve much (see above).

He’s a ball-dominant player, but it’s not clear to me he’ll be good enough in that role to make a difference on a competitive team.

You can look at Melo before his mega-max too. He was an average NBA player despite scoring at mediocre efficiency and rebounding fairly well. Trier doesn’t rebound very well AND turns the ball over frequently. He’s a negative value.

Two NY Times writers picked RJ for Rookie of the Year, and one picked the Knicks to make the playoffs.

So we’ve got that going for us…..

Fiz was definitely the most discouraging part of the preseason to me and a big part I’m on the low end of the range here (I’ll say 23 wins official prediction). I think he has crushed any suggestion that last year’s team was, shall we say, undercoached (putting it politely) for tanking purposes, or because they knew most of those guys would be gone or whatever other excuse you want to dream up. I think we have a real Occam’s razor situation here: We were badly coached last year because we have a bad coach, and we’re going to be badly coached this year for exactly the same reason.

And this team is truly in need of a deft touch from the coach – it’s not an easy job for all the reasons we’ve discussed ad nauseum. There are some teams where the 9 man rotation basically picks itself, and you can largely run an offense that gives the ball to the best player and tells him to do something good every posession. This team could not be further from that on either of those axes. There’s a real potential for this to break down into a complete every man for himself situation with everyone from the front office down to the court looking to protect their own ass from the firing line.

The one biggest thing we have going for us is that the conference is really soft. As ugly as I expect this team to be, even our sorry outfit should be able to steal some games, all the way down to the lower echelon playoff teams.

Biggest swing factor in my opinion is RJ. My expectations were that he was going to be very, very bad this season, but he looked really good in preseason, but it is preseason. The one thing that seems certain based on what we’ve seen is that he’s going to play a ton, so the difference between him being decent vs. totally lighting those minutes on fire could be like 5+ wins and I could easily see it going either direction at this point.

Trier turns 24 in January. He’s effectively entered his prime and passed the improvement phase of basketball. He played 3 years of college ball. Generally players who stayed in college longer are assumed to be closer to a finished product upon entering the league….Look at his advanced stats, they’re terrible. He has a -4.2 BPM, -0.8 VORP, and .030 WS/48. He’s not a stellar player and can’t be expected to improve much (see above). He’s a ball-dominant player, but it’s not clear to me he’ll be good enough in that role to make a difference on a competitive team.

Maybe it’s not fair cause Trier does seem to shoot with some higher efficiency, but I remember when the Knicks had Lee Nailon on the team and he was an iso-hungry elderly youngster type who scored a lot while doing nothing to actually win basketball games. I remember being kind of tantalized by him during a few games, but then reality set in that this was pretty much the ceiling for him, and that ceiling wasn’t high enough to invest in. I haven’t watched much Trier, but from the descriptions here, I get images of Lee Nailon at the guard position.

I beg the board’s optimists: do not get your damn hopes up

I’m closer to Z-Man than EB on Trier. It’s no secret that he wasn’t a winning player as a rookie, but I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that we’re in a position to hemorrhage young players who have shown…anything. He’s a shot distribution alteration away from being a .580-.590 TS% guy on pretty high usage, and that’s without much of any improvement in other areas. His box score aggregators will likely never be too pretty, partially because he’s not likely to ever be that good, but also because I think they tend to give off-ball guards the short shrift a bit. The traditional conception of the position largely determines that the other 4 guys on the team rack up the non-scoring numbers, even if the SG could if put in the right position (e.g. Beal racking up assists with Wall out).

Will he make the necessary changes to be an efficient player? Even if he’s willing, is Fizdale the guy to get him to do it? I have no idea, but you can probably tell I ain’t betting on it. But we quite literally have nothing better to do than give him 2000+ minutes and see what he can do. If he parlays those minutes into a contract that would be stupid for us to sign, we don’t have to sign it! If he doesn’t, that’s valuable information too. I mean these are minutes that would come at the expense of Wayne Ellington. Is anyone really against that?

i actually think folks are being a bit too pessimistic…. and i think the folks in the 20 win range on this board and out in the media are anchoring hard on last year’s roster…. none of those guys save for mitch and dsj is going to be seeing heavy minutes so this is a completely different team…

the atlanta hawks last year won 29 games… and the only guy who played well for them from start to finish was john collins.. and he missed 21 games…. huerter and bembry played their 2nd and 3rd heavy minutes and they are absolutely worse than whatever morris is gonna give…

we’re not all that different than last year’s wizards team… and those guys won 32 games…. and yea this is the pupu platter of shitty teams but there’s a difference between being wizard shitty and the knicks starting luke kornet and mario hezonja shitty…. and we’re not that team anymore thankfully….

what we do have is some solid vets who have established a baseline of competence across many many teams…. it’s very reasonable to expect morris… ellington and taj to give us what they gave last year.. and it’s pretty good! that’s a huge swing in production on that basis alone…

there’s some volatility surround randle… but a young guy who has shown improvement in each of the last 3 years who obviously has worked very hard on their game…. who has still not hit their prime… there isn’t a better type of guy to bet on succeeding…

then you have guys like rj and dsj… and yea if they’re bad we’re probably high 20s but they’re not knox or frank level of bad…. and there’s plenty of indication that they’ll actually be good… and if they both are we’ll be contending for a playoff spot….

plenty of reason to be optimistic…. of course there’s also plenty of reasons to be bearish which i recognize… but i think given the age and promise of the guys that matter i would be more bullish …. young teams tend to surprise and we’re exactly that kind of team..

@150

I don’t understand this view at all. It comes down to basic asset management to me. I mean the chance that 31 year-old, regularly waived Wayne Ellington is a contributor to the next good Knicks team is 0%. It’s a non-possibility. We have one shot at getting anything at all out of that contract—trading him for something small at the deadline. Seeing as how he was waived last year while making less money, color me skeptical about that happening.

And no, I don’t view the chance that Trier is a contributor to the next good Knicks team as very high. But if he starts shooting 6+ threes a game, cuts out some mid-range junk, and takes defense more seriously, it isn’t 0%. Is it likely he does all of those things? Not at all. Is it (much) more likely than us getting anything out of the Wayne Ellington contract? Yeah, that seems easy to determine to me.

As for the “rub-off” effect or whatever, I’m gonna need to see some evidence that this phenomenon even exists before I take it seriously.

I’m just not optimistic about this season at all. I’m not bullish on Fiz at all (I’m not buying the snake oil), and I think he’s been dealt a pretty crappy roster by management.

The team should be tanking. Young players should still get priority, but you don’t sign Morris, Payton and Portis and not give them big minutes, I guess. And now there’s rumors that Payton was promised the starting gig when he signed.

Really, this season should be about finding a good complementary set of players for RJB to play with. I’d think that includes Mitch as much as possible. Developing those two guys should be job one for Fiz.

If Randle and Portis is the starting frontcourt and those guys are both getting 30+ minutes the D is going to suffer even if there are some other bright spots.

I think Fiz has too much self-preservation game to run that pairing out there at Mitch’s expensive.

I’m not sure what our win total will be but I think people are overreacting a bit to the preseason. Its a bunch of new players and it will take some time to figure out the roles/minutes. I think we could win 25 to 40 games depending. I think if we win less than 25 Fiz is out for sure.

But it does feel like the fan base on this blog and on P and T is really pessimistic a lot earlier this year than normal. So here is team optimist with some reminders.

RJ and Mitch are definitely core pieces and both are super young.

Randle is going to be fine for us.

Knox looks better.

We have 6 first round picks over the next 4 years. When you think of where we will probably be this year and where Dallas could be next year, at least 2 of those could be lottery picks.

All of the vets we signed except for Randle don’t have to be optioned for next year. We are not tied to these guys long term. I understand the criticisms of this strategy but let me just throw this out there. We can basically bring back who we want to and not bring back or trade those we don’t want. So, for example, if TAJ turns out to have stuff left in the tank and is a good mentor/veteran influence on the young players, he can come back. If Elfrid Payton complains when he is pulled from the starting line up for some games to give DSJ or Frank a chance, we can let him go. This means space can open up next summer for new players or in 2 summers for a major get.

And again, RJ BARRET! He’s freaking awesome. RJ and MITCH ARE THE FUTURE.

Things are not so bleak. Keep your head up!

Buddy Hield just signed an extension in Sacramento. For now, takes another potential player off the trade market.

A lineup of Hield/RJ/Randle/Mitch is something I’d start getting excited about. If Bullock ever comes back, he may imitate a poor man’s Hield.

For all the changes this team made, I’m not sure the needle moves much.

(1) Fizzle will play Knox for a stretch of games to the tune of 38 minutes a night of .450 TS%
(2) Our lineup has a low change of ever being optimized
(3) There’s still lots of questions about Randle’s value (see 538’s Raptor, even his WS/48 is only mediocre)
(4) Mitch is fantastic and can do no wrong but his positional defense still needs a lot of work before he’s a truly elite anchor

I’m disappointed in Trier. Those who pay attention to scoring as the #1 metric to evaluate a player love him, but he’s not a good player. Thing is, he could be a very good player if he took to coaching, but seemingly (I’m not in the locker room) refuses to pass and can’t keep up with players he’s defending.

Allonzo Trier not well-liked by Knicks’ veteran players, per report – April 2019

I will underscore my statement. He COULD be good. He refuses to do what it takes – play team ball.

picking up both frank and dsj

Yup, and Knox’s third-year option, not that that was ever in doubt.

Good. Both are deeply flawed players, but we’re not winning anything this year, and we’re not signing an impact free agent this summer. Might as well take as much time as you can to see if either or both can ever live up to their potential.

@164

The problem with Trier is obviously not what he does fairly well (which is score). It’s that he doesn’t defend well, stops the ball, takes shots even when a teammate has a better look, and often turns the ball over trying to do too much in order to score.

Ultimately he’ll probably be better than someone like Hardaway because he’s more efficient as a scorer. But like him, his flaws are not conducive to playing winning basketball if you give him a big role. You need scorers to become a serious team, but you need scorers that play well within a team concept and that also defend. Otherwise, you should come in off the bench once in awhile to try to ignite an offense that’s struggling on a particular night.

If that’s the role we give him and he’s willing to accept it, no problemo. If he thinks he’s a key piece or he somehow becomes a key piece without correcting his deficiencies we are not going to be very good.

picking up both frank and dsj

IMO, the correct move in both cases.

We have a bunch of 1 year mercenary veterans on the team. Most (if not all) will be gone next year. We’ll have a ton of cap space again, but there are few lucrative free agents. We are probably going to use much of that space with the same kind of “roll over” strategy we just used it for. So why not keep a couple of very young guys that show some talent on one side or the other and try to improve and round out their games instead. Of course, we could let Frank go and then when Wayne Ellington moves on, we could always bring Courtney Lee back for a year instead. 🙂

I don’t understand this view at all. It comes down to basic asset management to me. I mean the chance that 31 year-old, regularly waived Wayne Ellington is a contributor to the next good Knicks team is 0%. It’s a non-possibility.

I agree with this. What I’m saying is don’t just throw Trier out there for 30 minutes a night if he plays roughly like he does last year in the hopes he gets better as the season goes along, because there are other young players on the team. Play DSJ and Ntilikina and RJ at the guard spots.

@165 So based on the amazing veteran leadership of last year’s 17-win Knicks team, we are labeling Trier uncoachable and a locker room cancer? Specifically Trey Burke (who had a terrible attitude as a rookie, if I recall) and THjr., who was so team-oriented as a rookie that he averaged per 36 a whopping 1.3 assists? (Not to mention a massive 2.3 TRB per 36!) and had to be banished to the G-League before he took defense seriously?

I was literally laughing out loud at the examples in that article. I mean if THJ had Trier’s AST% from last year, his career AST% would improve. Trey Burke, I mean, that just kind of speaks for itself.

Allonzo Trier had the second highest TS% among all of our full-time players last year. I would get furious when he would look off Mitch (though my vague, eye-testy recollection is he got better at finding him towards the end of the year). Everyone else…we might’ve been objectively better off with the Trier-ISO, honestly.

I will repeat, I don’t have a ton of faith in the guy. But a smart organization would recognize there are legitimate skills there and find out just how much they can be honed. So yeah, we’ll probably develop Wayne Ellington instead.

To clarify my position, I’m not anti-Trier, but I think the staff is starting to go there, and it seems like a rift is slowly growing. I think he’s a perfectly fine player to have in the rotation, but I predict a falling out of sorts.

And while I agree that his good qualities (3pt%, drawing fouls) are ideal qualities, a lot of his bad qualities don’t look particularly solvable (tunnel vision, bad defense). At the right price and in the right milieu of players, he could become a great 6th man, but it feels like he’s not fitting with the timeline. We shall see, I suppose.

Trier is good at everything Fizdale and the front office love, and he’s terrible at all the things the same people are willing to overlook. I think he’ll be fine unless the current veterans truly come to despise him (not impossible).

He’s also the only decent floor spacer on the team.

The Clippers are the best team but they are still the fucking Clippers. I wouldn’t be shocked if their season got derailed by injury.

The Bucks were cruising to a title last year until Kawhi decided he was going to own Giannis. If I had to place a bet today, I’d take them.

I loved the Bucks last year until Kawhi decided he was going to own Giannis. If I had to place a bet today, I’d take them.

They definitely seem like the likeliest team to be there at the end. They’re arguably the only contender that hasn’t undergone a major facelift relative to last year (depending I guess on whether you consider the Paul/Westbrook flip to be a major change for the Rockets, and whether you consider the Nuggets a true title contender). Multiply that by the Eastern Conference factor and they’ve probably got like at least 75%+ odds to be in the conference finals. That’s an awfully nice baseline.

My hesitancy with them is two-fold. One, as someone who almost never puts much weight on “Player X can’t get it done when it counts” narratives, I legitimately worry about Bledsoe. He has really melted down both of the last two years, and I don’t think they have quite enough talent without him playing at his normal levels, even moreso without Brogdon. Second, I think the Sixers are potentially a uniquely awful matchup for them, and against the Eastern Conference factor means they’re extremely likely to have to beat them in the playoffs. They just have so much size to wall off Giannis.

Ainge just gave Jaylen Brown a 4 year, $115 million extension. Seems like a considerable overpay, but he’s still young I guess? Looked like he regressed last season.

Also, the Siakam max extension is now official.

Well, I think I would rather have Buddy Hield at his contract than Jaylen Brown making 115 million.

wow… jaylen brown is okish.. but wow… that’s not gonna work out for them…

in terms of who’s going to win.. i’m not even gonna try…. this is one of the most fascinating title races since i can’t even remember…

i do really like denver… and they are a legit title contender in my eyes… although they probably don’t have the best playoff team… i think they’re likely to end up with the best regular season…. they are young.. deep and they are very good at every position…. the rest of the west is about who is the most healthy and i’m pretty sure there’s gonna be more trades to impact the hierarchy…

i like the sixers if they didn’t sign horford and just got anyone else.. it’s a very interesting team regardless and i’m rooting for them to pummel everyone inside… i also like the bucks although it’s very giannis centric but he’s surrounded by capable role players… that generally hasn’t been enough… but might be this year…

this is a good year to watch the nba….

I did statistics for the thread. I counted 39 predictions. The predictions were symmetrically distributed with an mean prediction of 27.9 wins and a median prediction of 28 wins. The predictions ranged for 18 or 19 (by Unreason, which I counted as 18.5) and 36 (by the glass half rebuilt)

This is not a small range, but it is still smaller than the predictions of the New York Times, where two sportswriters thought we would make the playoffs and one thought we would have the worst record in the league.