they say that now but they’ll come around

stealing this

I don’t get why people think he can’t be a top player in the league in a few years. He fixes the free throws and improves shooting and you’ve got a very well rounded player who plays smart and isn’t selfish and is also pretty good on defense all ready.

I noticed you elided the “if” in your second sentence, you imp.

Doncic is sweet but he is not good on defense and call me crazy, but I think that still counts for something.

Of course it does. It’s just that no one is as good at defense as Doncic is on offense. And you don’t have to put Doncic on the opposing PG or ball-handling wing. You can hide him on the worst backcourt/wing player on the floor and try to minimize his mistakes.

There is no coaching on the planet that can teach Doncic’s ball skills. He is a demigod and he is 20 fucking years old. If Barrett is remotely the offensive player at 25 that Doncic is today, we will be lucky.

And re: turnovers — sure, it would be better if he didn’t cough it up so much. But some of the best individual seasons of the last few years, that of the mantra “give your MVP the ball and let him work” (Curry, Westbrook, Harden), came with exorbitant turnover totals. Aside from the ridiculous behind-the-back pass, wherein Curry threw the Larry O’Brien trophy out of Klay’s reach, those turnovers are simply the cost of doing business.

Porzingis has a .504 ts% and never passes, every time he touches the ball it goes up, THJ just went 0/5 last night and is shooting at Ntilikina levels (.468 ts% so far). Kleber, Curry, Powell, Wright and Finney-Smith are efficient shooters on low volume who can’t create anything for themselves or others, and Brunson also can’t shoot.

If he doesn’t do “too much” every night they lose every game. I’d rather have the dude with a 12 BPM, .266 ws48 and 47.3 ast% in his sophomore season have the ball in his hands every single possession. Yes, he does take some bad shots and turns it over in silly ways here and there, but I’ll take him wasting 8 or 9 possessions per game when the overall production is at this level of excellency.

Here’s where I stand.

We got RJ and he’s going to be really good. I don’t get why people think he can’t be a top player in the league in a few years. He fixes the free throws and improves shooting and you’ve got a very well rounded player who plays smart and isn’t selfish and is also pretty good on defense all ready. Doncic is sweet but he is not good on defense and call me crazy, but I think that still counts for something.

We got Mitch. He’s gonna be a beast.

Knox and Frank can be good role players. If we had drafted higher could we have ended up with Fox or somebody special? Sure. But they are uber young and Frank’s defense is game changing. Having that bench role player who can change the game on the defensive side is very important. And there is still a lot of time with him. Knox I think can eventually settle into a good 6th man.

So that’s 2 starters and two bench pieces that we’ve got to build with.

We got 6 picks coming our way in the next 4 years and I bet at least one of them is a lottery pick. Maybe more.

And the vets are all short term contracts.

We just gotta show growth with RJ and the other youngsters and we can turn this into an attractive place in a few years.

Now we just gotta get a good coach.

Also, Randle is not beyond hope. He’s just had a rough start.

We need a PG. A legit one. Frank is doing fine as the starter but long term I think he is best suited as the back up PG.

The media and internet really revs shit up on the day to day but if you take a breath and take a step back and look at the long term, things are actually pretty good for us. There’s plenty of opportunity to screw it all up but there’s also good chance to build something real here for the first time in a long time.

Keep your head up.

Imagine where we’d be today if we had passed on the MMM/Afflalo/Noah/Rose era and instead just started the rebuild in 2014. Sign and trade Melo for assets, trade Chandler for assets, get a high pick in the Ntilikina draft…

Your 2019 New York Knicks!

Collin Sexton
Frank Ntilikina
Josh Jackson
Marquese Chriss
Max Porzingis

they say that now but they’ll come around

I laughed out loud, and hard, at this

I think I called Doncic’s first MVP at age 22. Looks like I was far too conservative. He is a freak.

Man that would have been sweet. We’d probably be pretty good by now. You can’t take those Courtney Lee memories away from me though.

Pretty frustrating how much luck is involved in team-building. We get the #3 pick in 2019 and land RJ, who looks like a nice player but whose absolute ceiling is probably 2nd or 3rd best player on a contender (probably 3rd). Dallas gets (through an aggressive move – kudos to them) the #3 pick in 2018 and get Doncic, who at age 20 is probably a top 10 player in the league already.

There’s definitely a frustrating amount of luck involved. Having said that, last year was the very first year the Knicks tried to make their own luck so to speak. Under Phil Jackson, we just putzed around with 28-32 win teams with no regard for the implications that had on the lottery and no plan for how we were going to improve if it wasn’t going to be through the draft. We wound up with the young players we deserved–Knox is looking like a fringe rotation guy and I don’t think even the most dedicated Frankophiles think he’ll be a top-75 or so player in the league at any point in his career.

Last year for the first time we mostly just played the young players we had and let the results shake out. Lo and behold, we discovered that Mitchell Robinson is really fucking good at basketball and wound up drafting one of the better prospects we’ve had in a while.

So naturally, the front office went right back to the putzing around approach. It’s much better to putz around with 1-2 year deals than 4 year deals a la Phil Jackson, but it’s still just putzing around.

It’s way too early to worry about now, but the depth says that there may not be a big difference between picking early or later in the lottery

it is early but if there’s anything i have high conviction on this early is that the top 2 should be wiseman or edwards… and that it’s a pretty weak draft… all the guys you mentioned aren’t exactly performing at the moment so they are names… they exist… but they’re not good right now… particularly jaden mcdaniels who i had high hopes for but looks like he’s far away from the nba at the moment… i do have a soft spot for williamson and he’s much closer… he’s #11 on my board but he also needs to show more…

cole anthony is a tough one to judge…. but again he hasn’t been all that dominant… even against weak comp… if he keeps this up ppl will start questioning what he really is… and right now he isn’t a pg and he hasn’t been all that good…

alot of mocks haven’t been updated yet and i generally don’t make too many judgements this early either but that’s how i have it as of right now…. i’m not the only who think this draft is weak either… you can just compare a guy like lamelo ball .. who’s getting serious buzz at #3 for some unknown reason… and a guy like rj barrett…. these guys are not on the same planet…. and that alone should tell you something….

I imagine we’re about to get our asses kicked in this upcoming slate of games, and that I’ll be right back to yelling at our coach about his theoretical offense. But last night, at least, we did exactly what we were supposed to do in soundly thrashing a clearly inferior (without Love and Nance) team.