From Ian Begley, who has been on fire this season since moving to SNY:
The lingering question after the Knicks’ 44-point loss in Milwaukee is this: how much longer will David Fizdale be on the sidelines?
We don’t have a definitive answer, but one member of the organization said late last month that he expected management to fire Fizdale soon, per SNY sources. The person who expressed the thought isn’t someone who would make the decision to fire Fizdale. But the idea that a member of the Knicks believes a coaching change is coming says a lot about the level of uncertainty in New York right now.
As you know, there has been speculation about Fizdale’s job status for several weeks amid New York’s 4-17 start.
Begley goes further, though, to suggest that MIlls and Perry would be in danger if the replacement coach doesn’t improve things. Begley also notes:
One more note on the owner: Dolan certainly deserves criticism for the Knicks’ pre-Phil Jackson struggles and how he’s handled some things off the court (the Anucha Browne Sanders case and the Charles Oakley incident, for example). But blaming Dolan for how things have gone awry with the Knicks recently is misguided. For the most part, he’s let Mills and Perry make every basketball decision without influence, just as he did with Jackson.
Dolan certainly expected the Knicks to land stars in free agency this summer, as he said in an interview on ESPN radio late in the season. It’s safe to assume that he thought they would do well in free agency based on information he’d heard from Knicks management. The statements from Dolan look foolish in the wake of New York’s disappointing free agency, but he didn’t pluck the idea that they’d land stars out of thin air.
Presumably, Dolan was then told that New York would be better this season thanks to the free agents that were acquired. That hasn’t happened. Any owner would be angry over the results.
I agree with the general “If Dolan were to cede control to a smart basketball mind, then this could actually work” position, but that’s not really a defense of Dolan, as the fact remains that he A. hasn’t done that yet and B. he has stuck with Mills and Perry despite it being pretty plainly obvious that they’re not the best bet for him.
The sad thing, though, is that there might not be a worthy replacement for Mills out there. Most NBA executives are mediocre at best. The good ones tend to be held on to like pirate treasure (unless your asshole son thinks he’s smarter than one of the best executives in the business. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Groenke). I suppose Daryl Morey might get fired over that whole Hong Kong deal. Or maybe Masai Ujiri might actually be available? Those are two of the only great minds in the NBA who I think have a big enough profile that you could convince Dolan to give over control of the organization to them.
150 replies on “SNY.com: Is end near for David Fizdale? One Knicks source expects head coach to be fired soon”
Story reads like one of Dolan’s non-Pills inner circle members is the source. Good sign.
I know the source.
It’s Mr Sense.
Mr Common Sense.
Brian, I disagree with your assessment: Dolan HAS tried to cede control to a smart basketball mind – that was Phil Jackson. Phil turned out not to be smart, but that wasn’t on Dolan; it was reasonable to believe that a guy with all those rings who had been part of successful Knicks teams and was widely respected around the league would be capable of bringing order to chaos. Instead, it didn’t goink well.
As for sticking with Perry, not sure what you’d have had him do: last year was a deliberate tank (and thank goodness they actually TRIED to tank for once!), and this year is the first year that really reveals how inadequate Perry is to the task. If he signed all those vets because he wanted to buy wins and protect his job, then 1) he sold out the team’s future (which is its youth), and 2) he poorly evaluated who would bring wins. Both are reasons to fire him, but when was Dolan supposed to do it? This is really the first moment where it would make sense…at least as an executive who gave his employees the latitude to build a team without interference. The results are poor, and they weren’t supposed to be (according to Pills), and now for the first time he has cause to fire Perry.
I guess I’m defending James Dolan. What has the world come to? But both points you make are wrong.
Edit: or let me rephrase: I strongly disagree. 😉
He ceded control to a big name, but one who had never been an executive before. That’s not smart.
The league forced Donnie Walsh on him and he said, “Eh, I don’t have to listen to this guy,” but then “never before been an executive” Phil Jackson is the guy he says, “Okay, this guy I will let do whatever he wants”? Not even that Walsh was all that great, but he at least was a reasonable basketball executive before coming to the Knicks.
And Perry isn’t the issue. Mills is (Perry doesn’t seem to be any good, either, but Mills is the root cause). Firing Phil and then saying, “Okay, Mills, you’re now totally in charge” made no sense.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that he is literally our only hope.
It’s hard to gauge what the cost of an executive in the middle of a contract is. I would hope a boatload of money would be enough. But if it came down to it, I’d give up the unprotected Dallas pick, too. I would try to avoid giving up both, but I would if I had to.
It would be ironic AF if Masai Ujiri ended up being the final piece of the Porzingis trade Mills and Perry engineered.
Ujiri only works if Mills and his hacks go at the same time.
Every time they cut to Fizdale he’s just wandering the sidelines with the same look on his face. The look of when someone sneaks into the parking space you’ve been patiently waiting for. Mild bewilderment mixed with staunch incredulity. We need to go through film before we hire the next coach to make sure they don’t make that face or make that face minimally.
Phil was a great coaching mind, not a great basketball mind. They’re not the same. LeBron has a very high basketball IQ, but his record as a de-facto GM is lousy. Phil had no experience as an exec, had been out of the game for years, was getting pretty old, and was known for sticking dogmatically to an offensive scheme that had become a complete anachronism. He was also known for stirring the drama pot even in his best years, so bringing order to chaos was NOT his strength.
Plenty of people on this blog said at the time that he was a bad hire — just another starfucking move by Dolan that looked okay on the surface but reflected a lack of deep thought. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Phil made dumb moves, valued the wrong skills, didn’t work hard, created a bunch of drama, and gave $72 million to a guy because they bonded over a doobie at his Montana ranch. Dolan gets a huge share of the blame for that situation going sour.
Please God stop stop with the Masai fantasy!!! Like he’d ever consider coming to this shit hole of a team with its shit hole of an owner in this shit hole of a city. (I live on 10th street BTW.)
Only rubes that are from NY think it is something special and everyone wants to come here. Toronto is a far better city by any metric. The ML group have plenty of money to pay Masai whatever he needs. Masai has a free hand, a franchise player who is 24 and a shit ton of cap space even after they re-sign Van Vleet for whatever.
As to Dizfail, he’s be done after they get hammered by the Nuggets and Pacers Saturday. They have 2 consecutive off days and go on the road with 3 of 4 games against not great teams where they might be able to steal a win on the road.
Its the perfect CYA move for Mills. Then if things don’t improve, they can have a fire sale of the vets and say, ” Look Boss…. we took a chance for respectability, it didn’t work and we still flipped these guys for picks.” And the building is still full……….
And he buys more time…..
Masai just built a championship team and still watched the Finals MVP leave because he wanted to play in Los Angeles. I don’t think that fails to escape Masai’s notice. He’s already proven he can win it all, but this would be like Theo Epstein going to Chicago to prove that he could turn them around even. Like Epstein, this would mean going to a joke of a franchise in a big market for a ton of money to become an icon if he ever succeeded. I think that there is appeal there (provided he got Sather-like control, of course, and Mills and all his cronies were fired).
You think New York is a shit hole of a city? Have you been to other cities?
That’s hilarious.
Oak, I don’t think a lot of people on this blog thought Phil was a bad hire. I remember some negativity, but a lot of relief that Dolan would step aside and actually let a basketball person run the show. It’s easy to say in hindsight how terrible Phil was (except for Strat), but though he had never been an exec, he wasn’t your average coach. His success has been tarnished, but the dude wrote a whole bunch of books and won a whole bunch of rings. Brian’s point was that Dolan has never ceded control to a smart basketball mind, and I just don’t think that’s true – if we’re assessing his actions with what we knew at the time. I am sure Dolan would gladly do the same for Masai – and Masai would actually BE a smart basketball mind, instead yet another con artist riding high on Dolan’s cash while Rome burned. (Some mixed metaphor like that.)
He just has to ask himself one question…. Do I really need to work for Jim Dolan with all his cloak and dagger bullshit? There’s no way any sane/smart person with options is doing that. The only people that come to work for Dolan are over the hill guys who are looking for a payday they can’t find anywhere else.
And, by the way, Masai is ALREADY AN ICON. He took Dolan/Walsh to the cleaners, found 2 great players as low first round pick and an undrafted free agent, made a balsy trade that won a championship and dumped a contract he didn’t want to deal with and has the franchise set up for the future with still having an ECF contender.
I don’t think he need “validation” by the NYC so-called cognoscenti…. who actually gives a fiddler’s bleep about that?
And If Kawhai wasn’t from Cali he wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
Masai is an icon to us and possibly a few other serious basketball people, but 99% of the people outside of Toronto would have no idea who he was. That would change if he saved the Knicks.
I also think the cloak-and-dagger stuff you cite is all Mills. Dolan is pretty upfront about who he is, often foolishly so. But either way, he has absolutely no need for skulduggery. I believe him when he said he was happy to let Phil call the shots and take the heat – at least until it became clear that that was a poor idea. But he knows Masai fleeced us; that’s why he wants to hire him. And that’s why I doubt he’d interfere at all – he knows he couldn’t do better.
It’s not like LeBron or Durant. We can pay him an ungodly amount of money. And I guess we’re neighbors. I’m on 11th and Broadway.
well i’ll tell ya bob, living on 10th street is a hell of a lot better than living in neptune city, nj…
it’s been forever since i’ve stayed or walked around the city…loving ‘ol google street view – man, that seems like a pretty cool spot to be at…a little claustrophobic with all the buildings around, but, i bet it’s a joy to chill on the weekends when a lot of the folks coming to work in to the city during the week have cleared out…
Yeah… is this some sort of trick question???
I was born in the Bronx and lived multiple places in and around the city for my first 55 years. I know the good and the bad of it.
I lived in Toronto for a year when I was racing horses at Woodbine and Mohawk. I now live half the year in Greenwich Village and half the year in south Florida.
Toronto beats NYC by every metric: it is cleaner, newer, has lots of diversity, all the cultural amenities, fine dinning, etc….. and 2/3’s of it isn’t a dump. In Toronto I never had to climb over 6 homeless people freezing half to death on subway vents to walk 6 blocks to the movies.
either of you guys got some space on the floor, or, a little closet room where i can come and crash out for a few years…
Neptune, you may have some money, but you’re not a rich, famous athlete. I imagine that the lifestyle of a rich and famous athlete is quite a bit different than we can imagine.
I’m not saying that it’s superior to places like SF or LA, which have their own allure — namely in the absurd beauty of SF’s wealthiest enclaves, and LA’s proximity to also-rich-and-famous entertainers that ostensibly want to be friends with other rich and famous people.
Portland, for one, is a fabulous city — for its views, its food, its charm — but it’s sleepy as hell, and the 5 months of 50-degree rainy gloom isn’t that much better than a 20-degree sunny day in NYC, especially if you. Downtown’s most exciting sights are the homeless guys yelling at me about how chafed their penises are and maybe the way the nearly six-feet, skinny-rich-white-woman-yoga-teacher Lady Jowles looks when she’s trying on the $5,000 ballroom dresses she’d never actually buy at Nordstrom. Bars all but close at 2 or something like that — incomprehensible to my NYC friends, some of whom don’t even leave their apartment for a night out until 11. Visiting my sister in Astoria earlier this year, I was shocked by life’s rich pageant on Ditmars on a normal Tuesday night — young people throwing money at the bartenders, dressed to the nines. As I recently ate at Coquine, one of Portland’s most decorated tiny restaurants, I noted that my Merrell low hikers, corduroys and fleece pullover made me among the best-dressed people sitting for lunch. In New York City, the pretense is always there, always lurking. The energy is just different. If I were handed a supermax contract from the Knicks, you bet your ass I’d want to live in an apartment overlooking Central Park.
Milwaukee, Phoenix, Memphis, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Cleveland, just to name a few? Fuck all that.
I cannot and I will not.
Toronto is a little flat and cold for my taste. I am more of a Montreal guy myself.
New York has it’s flaws but it’s a little more fun I bet when you are making 12 million a year. I also can’t believe Masai isn’t slightly intrigued by the notion of having “guy who turned the Knicks around” as his legacy. He’d be the king of this town and from what I can tell about him from his public persona, I definitely think he’d be into that.
We will see what happens. At the end of the day, I think there are a lot of smart people out there who could do this job capably but Dolan would never hire any of them. Masai though is too obvious to miss, the highest wattage guy out there and a genuine star to chase for a guy who has always loved stars.
Getting riled up here at the thought….
And Hubert, I am a block from you…
There are impediments to consistent high-level winning in TO that there aren’t in NYC. It’s not really a destination for NBA players, as great a city as it is. It’s cold AF and customs is a major hassle.
You don’t think the Maple Leaf Garden Entertainment group has plenty of money and value their best asset… who happens to be under contract to them?
This is required viewing, both by stratomatic, for his copypasta rebuttal, and ptmilo, for his sage thoughts on this matter.
addendum to #19: “…especially if you [never have to step foot outside for more than a few minutes at a time]”
Having lived in Colorado and Los Angeles after growing up in the NY area, the NY weather is awful. I cannot emphasize enough how terrible the humidity makes everything in the summer and winter. It rains or snows for weeks on end, you can’t step outside without immediately being soaked in sweat or frozen from the wind cutting through you.
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather live in a place where I’m comfortable in a t-shirt or light fleece 90+% of the year. I enjoy seeing the sun everyday. Being an hour drive from being lost in the mountains or skiing/snowboarding doesn’t hurt either.
There is a dollar amount at which it doesn’t make sense for them to do it. Dolan just has to be willing to go to it. You might not want to sell your home in South Florida but if someone offered you ten times what it’s worth, you do the deal.
The raptors are a great organization. If masai leaves, they can promote his #2 and carry on just fine. They’re not as desperate as dolan.
Of course I’d sell it and then but another place in the neighborhood and pocket the difference 🙂
The only problems with your analogy are Dolan isn’t offering Masai 10x what MLGE will and Masai still has to get past the Dolan and his media paranoia stuff. I’m sure Masai knows what a moron JD is just from the Carmelo negotiations.
Dolan can, and should, offer the guy something like 5 years, $100mm.
If he doesn’t, then I agree with everything you’re saying. If it’s just market value, Toronto matches, and he doesn’t leave.
I only live on measly W. 89th, but I have been known to patronize the Spotted Pig!
But in any event, Dolan will pay what it takes; the only worry is that he pays enough to be able to successfully insist on Mills being able to stay around.
Man o man, this board is colorful af with its horse runners, food critics and jazz-funk practitioners… Glad I wandered in here many moons ago.
If he can’t get Masai, Dolan should just go for his head of scouting, Patrick Engelbrecht. He seems like a cool dude and probably knows his stuff.
And just as an addendum…. is anyone really convinced Dolan can subjugate his ego long enough to grossly overpay the single guy who absolutely fleeced him 10 years ago in the Me7o trade???
Load it with both achievement incentives and punitive clauses for early termination. Make Dolan give himself an incentive to not meddle and give Masai an incentive to win big.
It really shouldn’t be this hard when you print money they way Dolan does. Right now, he reminds me of David Koch’s entrepreneur son.
yeah, being born in to money sounds like a horrible hardship…
you know what, i’ve change my mind – i wanna give it a try…could one of you wealthy folks adopt me please…
i’m not as cute as i once was, but, not god awful ugly to look at either, and, i rarely have accidents anymore – so, pretty easy to care for…love me…take me home…
I think his ego is why he would do it.
George Steinbrenner had his entire legacy rewritten by Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, Bob Watson, and Joe Torre. Dolan needs to find the guys who will do it for him.
The elephant in the room is JD would have to fire 3 African-Americans. And Fiz/Perry are liked throughout the league. How he is viewed in that regard is important to Dolan given his history. So Ujiri makes sense from that perspective.
If and when we don’t land Masai Ujiri, we should go after Darryl Morey.
Darryl Morey is going to be fired with Mike D’Antoni this off season. They will yet again fail to reach an NBA Finals, and Fertita will get rid of those nerds for real basketball guys like Chauncey Billups and Kenny Smith. When that happens, we need to go get Morey. It would be a massive “F*** you” to Joseph Tsai across town, and Morey is the one POBO outside of Los Angeles that can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he consistently lands star players. Can Darryl Morey build an organization that develops players? Ehh, I don’t know but Capela and Beverley grew up in Houston’s farm system.
Morey is the guy for the job. He’ll hit on his draft picks, he’ll get real star players, and he’ll restore respectability to MSG. He also won’t let Danny Ainge bully him.
I’m not a big morey fan but he’d be a huge upgrade
Dolan is the kind of guy who would call morey a nerd. I can’t see him ever getting behind him.
I think Morey is overrated and I’ve always hated him for the McGrady trade 10 years ago, but the guy is a winner.
Also, Dolan can say “but you’re a nerd” and Morey can reply “I’m the guy who added James Harden, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, and Russell Westbrook to his roster.”
If I had a horse in this race and we all came to grips with the reality that Ujiri to NY would just be too good, Tim Connelly is my guy. He’s the POBO in Denver and he interviewed with Washington last summer. It would take Adam Silver’s intervention to get Connelly in New York, but he’s a program builder and Denver is probably too cheap to match what Dolan would pay. In fact, Denver lost Ujiri for that very reason.
KP with another monster game tonight.
But he’ll be fine once he gets in shape.
33 & 18 for luka thru 3 quarters
KP must be feeling like he won the lottery getting carried every night on Doncic’s shoulders.
luka with 18 boards…what the hell???
i don’t get it, he’s not really fast or big/strong – how’s he doing that…
Nick Nurse looks like Luka in the year 2049 !
The reason why Morey and Ujiri work, besides them being really smart executives, is because they’re “names.” Tim Connelly is fine and he would be a huge upgrade, of course, but he’s not a name and Dolan isn’t going to step aside and let a non-name have total control. He’s only given it to two guys – the big name Jackson and Mills, who Dolan has known for years (and is obviously the Dolan-whisperer, seeing as how Mills was at the center of the Browne-Saunders debacle, got fired for it and yet still got re-hired and given a huge promotion).
By the way, Connelly is probably the reason why Toronto wouldn’t fight too hard to keep Ujiri. One of the great things about guys like Ujiri is that they develop great talent underneath them, so when they leave, their underlings do fine, as well. Tim Connelly was under Ujiiri in Denver and has done a fine job and I’m sure Zimmer would do a fine job in Toronto if Ujiri left.
Great people bring in great people.
Shitty people bring in Scott Perry and David Fizdale.
Have to say, I had no idea what the Heat were thinking when they signed Jimmy Butler, but it’s working out pretty well so far.
Tonight they took the Raptors to OT in Toronto, very impressive
Correction: beat the Raptors in OT, going away
42, Bruno –
KP got TARPed without a state tax, has a solid coaching staff and he’s playing with a top 5 player, – now that’s a great situation for him.
However, and I really doubt this, if he truly can’t play and team has shit picks, with his contract, – just don’t see how they get under cap enough to get a #2 stud to join, – would Luka extend there?
Folks, – the longer Fiz stays the higher the odds that all three stooges are replaced. This is a positive thing.
KP Woof
Luka is so good it is going to hurt for a long time
Speaking of hurting for a long time, Poeltl having a really nice game vs the Rockets, 15 rebounds, 6 blocks
Didn’t we basically trade him for Bargnani?
If and when we don’t land Ujiri we should go after Darryl Morey
I approve this message. Would be a massive upgrade over the clown car now running the show at MSG. Clearly Morey knows how to acquire assets and use them to get better assets. The current Knicks front office apparently doesn’t know much about that.
Those Dallas picks are looking worse every game….. Doncic, he’s pretty good
PorzingAss
Poeltl was the worse of ours and the Nuggets picks that year. The Nuggets took Jamal Murray with our pick
So as a NY transplant living in one of the not-famous areas in LA, I can tell you that I’m in a weird place in more ways than one.
I’ll always love NYC – but I’ve come to the point in life where I don’t need to live there. I don’t miss winters – though I should say my time in Syracuse has really soured me on snow and winter period. There’s some scenery here that answers why people pay what they do to live in certain places like the Beach Cities, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, the UCLA area; I like visiting and walking around those places, and it’s all within 20-something minutes of me. Best of all: the reason I’m out here – my fiancee.
Now my personal cons: there’s a HELLUVA lot of homeless on the streets (biggest reasons I hear are drugs, and being priced out of apartments/homes) and you see them more frequently than you do in NY. The city is expensive, public transit sucks (in that it doesn’t meet the needs of such a huge city), and you’re SOL if you ever get tired of burgers, tacos and fast-food Asian. People are too insulated in space and feelings, and it’s hard to call out BS because people will get more unsettled about you getting angry rather than what you’re angry about (related: spazzing on people don’t work the way it does in NY bc people here don’t comprehend anger – unless you’re in the hood). Being nice is far too valued over being honest. Peoples attitudes are a little too transient for my taste. And sports fandom here is only ride-or-die if the team is good – otherwise folks will just go to the beach. And there’s a LOT of crazy people around…
Cdiggy – My wife and I moved to LA from NYV 6 years ago after I had lived in NYC for close to 15 years. We live in Los Feliz and I work in Hollywood. I’ve enjoyed my time here but she hates it. But there are a lot of downsides and the isolation of LA is probably the worst part of it. People just love to be in their bubbles here.
We’re actually moving in a few weeks to Omaha. We’re having a baby (our first) and it’s closer to family. I got a good job there and it’s way less expensive obviously. I’m not too sad to leave LA even though I’ve liked it overall.
I’ve been spending a lot more time in LA recently. The amount of homeless tents is shocking. And whats the point of an ocean if the water is too cold in July?
Having said that, the homeless problem here in nyc is returning fast. Bob was not exaggerating when he said he has to step over 6 people to get to the movies. I know the exact strech he means. There is scaffolding on Broadway between 11th & 12th, and there’s a 24 hour 7-11 under it. It’s basically gotham city before Batman cleaned it up under there. Every morning I have to play hopscotch on the sidewalk where dope fiends are just passed out. And on the subway they are sleeping on the trains during morning rush hour.
We’re going in the wrong direction here. And that tax bill made it a lot smarter to move somewhere else if you can. Places like Vermont are recruiting folks who can work remotely. I personally would love to move to Tennessee, but I’d need to find a new lady bc she ain’t coming with me.
Wow, Lonnie Walker went nuts in that Spurs/Rockets game. Another guy we didn’t pick.
Why Tennessee of all places?
Thanks for the NYC life tidbits. Brings back memories. And for LA’s too.
Dolan has been obsessed with Ujiri ever since then. He would 100% hire him if Ujiri wanted to come. A useful question to ask is — how much would people here be willing to give Toronto for the right to hire Ujiri (who is still under contract)? I would easily give up the Mavericks unprotected pick next year.
That said, I don’t think Masai is leaving Toronto. He gave an interview in the offseason about how much his kids and wife love living in Toronto and in Canada. He’s got a great situation there.
I would be quite happy hiring one of his underlings, but maybe that wouldn’t be a good enough name for Dolan — which I actually think is ok. At this point I would be happy hitting a single or double and not necessarily looking for a home run.
Re: Morey – he did a Reddit AMA a couple years ago and basically pegged Dolan as the “common denominator” for all their problems (I guess he could’ve meant Mills?) — I’m guessing he’s not going to do that. I would in a second take Morey though. At the very least he would bring a vision to the franchise in terms of analytics, how they’re going to play, etc. that would be so welcome after the last 7+ years of directionless “basketball”. Maybe Phil Jackson $ plus a promise not to meddle plus a guaranteed 10 year contract might be enough.
meanwhile – Luka is currently averaging 30/11/10 per 36 on a TS of 62.7. Needless to say he is the only one in NBA history to be averaging that. Dude is already a top 5 player if not top 2 (1?), and he’s 20. Just unreal how much of a role luck plays in rebooting a franchise.
@61
You beat me to it. I’d love to sign Morey as POBO but Dolan would never sign him because of that AMA (and I doubt Morey would come anyway). Here’s his AMA if anyone is curious. The Knicks question is the top comment.
The Rockets losing in OT in a game in which the officials didn’t count a clear dunk by Harden is pretty funny.
All things being equal, I would probably do North Carolina for its combination of mountains, ocean, bbq, and college basketball. But Tennessee has offered heavy tax incentives to employers to move there and my industry has moved some good jobs to Nashville, which is basically becoming the new Atlanta in the sense that many NYers are moving there in droves like they did to ATL in the 90s. I know a few who have taken the leap and they’re all very happy. I mean, they just opened up an Ainsworth in Nashville. That says a lot*. My former employer UBS is down there, as is Alliance Bernstein now. They pay NYC salaries with Tennessee cost of living, which is… I don’t know… kinda what I imagine being King Henry VIII was like.
* Ainsworth, if you’re not familiar, is a ubiquitous chain of generic sports bars in NYC that caters to the young professional crowd. If you try to organize a group of 12 people to watch a game and merely say “meet at Ainsworth”, you’ll end up with 4 people in Chelsea, 4 in the East Village, 3 in FiDi, and one poor soul in Hoboken. They opened one in Nashville for the large pop of NY expats.
That’s the issue, and why Masai is our unicorn.
Dolan only listens to / has patience for stars and company men. That’s why Walsh and Grunwald got meddled with while Isiah, Phil, and Mills never did. The problem is stars are usually not great execs, and the men in his company suck.
Morey may be a star in some circles, but that isn’t Dolan’s circle. I don’t think he’d be patient with Morey and stay out of his way.
That’s not the area I’m referring to but it is rampant all over the city and it is unconscionable for city that tosses around billions like they are jellybeans not to intervene in a compassionate way.
I understand the civil liberties issues of not wanting to give the state dominion over individuals to “put them away on ‘supposedly’ mental health grounds”, but there needs to be some sort of middle ground process to intervene on humanitarian grounds with layers of civil liberties oversight.
These people aren’t human refuse and need actual help from society at some point.
You can put me in the “nyc isn’t what it used to be” camp. I think percentage wise, crime and homelessness is actually lower now (although probably a tick up under Deblasio, I’m not sure), but the obscene inequality is what makes it more unconscionable.
I mean, the West side rail yard has basically become Dubai, something only a few people wanted aside from some clueless tourists.
I currently live in Brooklyn (where it’s not AS bad, but it’s still bad) but I’m moving upstate in a month after 20 years here, and I honestly can’t wait.
Try visiting flyover country with an open mind if humanly possible. I lived inLexington , KY for 5 years and it is a wonderful city with a vibrant middle class where $210,000 buys you a 3500sq ft 5 bedroom house in a terrific public school district with a Jacuzzi tub in the master bath and a community olympic sized pool in the development for your kids to hang out at . It has good night life downtown around UK and there are lots of fancy eateries that cater to the wealthy than come to Keenland.
I lived in Salt Lake City for 2 years and I never would have come back east if there was horse racing there…..
Hubert. That’s interesting about Nashville. I am sort of looking for a site to start a chemical company. (Which will probably never come off, but still). Is Tennessee looking for that sort of business, and, if so, by any chance do you know of locations?
instead of putting them in institutions we could put them in some sort of housing and then they wouldn’t be homeless.
I grew up in Nashville. It’s awesome though it’s booming right now. My family is from Lexington and it’s also a fun town. Not to bring politics into this but I think a lot of easy and west coast liberals look at that map and see that sea of red and get freaked out. But if you’re in a decent sized city even if a red state the people in that city are going to be liberal leaning. And these middle sized cities where the cost of living is much lower now have most of the things people liked about the larger cities on the coast. Like sure it’s awesome that NYC has a million Thai restaurants or pizza places but a city with half a million people will have one or two good spots like that and that’s really all you need. Bars everywhere now have all the craft beer you can drink. Smaller cities aren’t as podunk as they used to be. I’m actually really excited about Omaha as it supposedly has a fantastic music scene. And we’re about to rent a house for 500 less than our one bedroom here in LA.
It’s true, every city in America now features its own Williamsburg or Silverlake-style neighborhood with all the same art/food/music/scene stuff that you used to have to go to the coasts for. It happened pretty quickly too.
I have no idea. I know the incentives are tied to how many jobs you can create.
DRed…. putting a broken person in a housing unit is like putting whipped cream on dog shit….. it doesn’t do very much for the taste. If you are truly compassionate you have to make an effort to “fix” the broken person.
Now … let me state there may be some perfectly mentally healthy people living on subway grates, but the vast majority either have an addiction problem or serious mental health issues. I have some appreciation for these issues from dealing with my immediate family.
In a compassionate world we would get theses people into a REAL de-tox situation with in patient counseling and other forms of mental health counseling for those without addiction problems. Putting a roof over their head is fine, but getting them the actual help they INDIVIDUALLY need is several orders of magnitude better.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day…. teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
IMO this is the greatest problem facing this country today
Not going to link to him because I don’t want to give his Knicks material extra clicks, but Isola suggests that whenever Fizdale is fired, Miller and Pat Sullivan are the two most likely interim candidates. Which is the first bit of promising news I’ve heard in a while. I had assumed Mills and Perry would promote Keith Smart or maybe Jud Buechler to replace Fiz, and to continue this ridiculous pretense of contention. Sullivan or, especially, Miller means they’ve accepted this is a lost season where the only goal should be developing the kids.
This also makes me more optimistic about them trading Morris at the first opportunity.
I think we might be talking about two different things, then. There is the general plight of homelessness. And there is what is going on under that scaffolding, which is hard to describe unless you’ve seen it. It’s a community that moved here from somewhere with suitcases full of clothes, aggressively panhandles people to buy alcohol from the 7-11, and passes out face first on the sidewalk in a manner that indicates heavy use of opiates.
Maybe I’m a heartless bastard but I’m not inclined to think society should be buying them homes.
There is the possibility they are holding Morris out because they already have a trade for him – although that is a long time to hold someone out.
Why do i even bother with these delusions
I don’t know the first thing about Pat Sullivan. Would be interesting to see Mike Miller, even though we really don’t have any idea what he would run if given the chance.
I’m lucky because I truly love Los Angeles but if you’re trying to have a career making music it’s either here, NYC or Nashville. Those are your three options. And LA is really the best of the three because TV and film are here, and that’s where a lot of the music jobs are, including mine.
You really can’t make much of a go of it in Lexington or Asheville.
Pat Sullivan is too tall to be an NBA coach
Every new thing is “Dubai”. The Time Warner Center. Brookfield Place and all the redeveloped areas around the WTC. Hudson Yards. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice no one actually buys anything there.
Brian Windhorst made a mention that a guy like Marcus Morris could be headed for the buyout market and that made me very upset. It also felt like reality because he’s on a $15M contract and the Knicks are not looking to take back salary, even if for another season.
Hearing that Mike Miller is in line to be the interim coach is bittersweet because it’s the right move and could potentially buy these idiots another off-season. I just want to hit reset on the front office and let Mike Miller interview with the next POBO. Our priority should have always been Mitch, RJ, Smith Jr, Frank, and the rest of the young guys. This bullshit with Bobby Portis, Marcus Morris, and Julius Randle needs to be canceled.
Why do people like Mike Miller?
I suspect the logic is something like:
A. We have young players who need development
B. He coached in a league whose goal is to develop players
ergo C. Mike Miller would be good for the kids’ development.
But that’s not really sound.
I’m inclined to trust Dolan’s razor and assume that he’d be a disaster.
Folks here whom love to judge me will probably eat this up.
There are physical health and addiction issues at play but its mostly just nature. Poor mental health is now the new code word for extremely low IQ. These are poor folks who are having a tough time fitting in our society and performing a job consistently. They can not be fixed. We have a moral obligation to support them. Both left and right have it wrong on purpose because they don’t fit the narratives. Right says that its laziness, drugs and culture while left says everyone can be taught to part take in society, if they can just get real help and equal opportunity.
Our society is becoming more and more complex, competitive and things are moving and changing consistently, to be part of it, one has to have a faster and faster engine.
US Army has does not accept anyone with an IQ level below 84. This is one employer who is always hiring. According to them, there is no job in the army they can perform. Look it up.
Over ten percent of US population has IQ level under 85. Can’t fix that engine. That’s why no one is going near it or telling the truth. Look it up.
That’s such a depressing thought. The Knicks better make it exceptionally clear they won’t waive him after the deadline. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? He’s their damn PPG leader and likely best overall player non-Mitch division. Just spin some stuff about wanting to stay competitive and liking his leadership and all that.
You’re easily the dumbest poster in the history of this board, and that includes a guy who attributed the Knicks’ issues to Clyde Frazier’s negativity, a guy who writes similarly stupid shit and then signs his name after for some reason, and reub.
Stopped reading after this.
Really enjoyed tnfh’s recap, though.
I live in Chicago now, and lived in Minneapolis for a year (amazing place for ~6 months of the year), so I’m missing the New York winter–it’s child’s play, especially compared to Minneapolis, which has for my money the most brutal winters of any city in the lower 48 (Buffalo and Syracuse give it a run by sheer snow accumulation alone, but man is it frigid in Minneapolis). That being said, I love winter, so it’s not bad for me.
When I was a few years younger I had an obsession with moving back to the city to be around friends and family and the culture there, but after growing a bit older I could take it or leave it (would still love to–at the right salary level and on a tenure track). New York is growing increasingly unlivable for anyone not in the mid to upper 100 thousands or above, and yes, the housing crisis and the city’s lack of spine in addressing it is just unconscionable, along with the total lack of resources for the mentally ill (deinstitutionalization basically created the homeless crisis).
Chicago, on the other hand, is lovely: affordable (my partner and I pay 1600 for a 1200 sqft 3 br in a nice, happening part of town), lots of public transit, a really healthy job market, and plenty of culture, so it still feels like you’re close to the center of things. Temperamentally, it’s also the city most similar to NY, which I appreciate–the west coast is aggressively relaxed to me. The violence, crime, and corrpution are a problem but certainly overstated (it’s actually less violent per cap than Atlanta, which is where I lived before moving to Chicago). If you can handle the winter and don’t mind being away from mountains/ocean (biggest minus, to me), it’s a great place to live.
Tennessee and NC are also great. I have a soft spot for Chapel Hill/Durham, because that’s where I went to undergrad (UNC), and Asheville and Nashville are terrific places as well (Charlotte, however, is awful). They’re great places to live. But the politics in NC are fractally fucked.
Do you mean apartments and such or the shopping. I go through Brookfield every day and most of the shops are empty other than Eataly. I would say 5 or more out of no more than a dozen places have already closed or been replaced from the ones I walk past regularly. I can’t have been much more than 3 years since it opened.
Wicker Park/Noble Square/Logan Square?
@89
Humboldt Park–probably next in line for mass gentrification that hit Logan/Wicker/Noble. It’s great though, but not built to last as is for more than 10 years I think. The cube houses (and young creatives, the demographic I guess I’m adjacent to as an academic) are creeping in. The extremely tight Puerto Rican food isn’t going anywhere any time soon though.
I used to ride my bike from Ukrainian Village to the McCormick Y to lift weights, lived on W. Chicago right across the street from Beauty Bar. I mostly enjoyed it, but a fatal shooting happened right in front of me on my way home one night and it soured me on the whole thing. Was pretty happy to be back in the Hudson Valley a couple months later. Hoosier Mama on W. Chicago makes incredible pies, if you’re willing to pay for them.
@91
Awesome (besides the shooting, obviously)! I technically live in Ukranian Village, but I’m right next to the east end of Humboldt Park, which everyone calls Humboldt Park despite the city of Chicago’s designation. It’s only just begun gentrifying west of the park, but the east side is in full swing.
I’ve been to Beauty Bar a few times (my partner goes with her girlfriends for comedy night). Haven’t been to Hoosier Mama yet but I live right next to Spinning J (I’m at California and Division), which also makes a mean pie and has perhaps the best milkshake I’ve had in my life (gotten confirmation from multiple people on this). Let me know if you’re ever in this neck of the woods again and I can introduce you to it if you’re not already familiar.
Hah, jinx. I was definitely part of a wave of people moving into the neighborhood and taking over places like Chip Inn. I may have told this story before, but I brought an uptight opera singer in a fancy cocktail dress to Club Foot in East Village and she asked for a blended strawberry daquiri, to which the bartender laughed and informed her that they did not own a blender. I was too tickled to be embarrassed.
Unfortunately, I lived there years ago with a bunch of UChicago PhDs who’ve all moved on to bigger and better things. I hope that rooftop is still getting lots of play from young men and women looking for a romantic place to watch Chicago turn into a veritable warzone on 4th of July.
Ah, the ol’ “people are just too dumb” argument. That sums it up – mental health problems are the new boogeyman. Yeah, all homeless people are just not “smart enough” to hold down a job and a place to live. But there are homeless people in NYC that hustle harder than you or I. But they’re all dumb tho, right?
I won’t entertain this any further – I’ll just say that as a community college employee and as a landlord, I can’t begin to tell you how wrong you are.
I grew up on the Upper West Side, went to Miami for college and worked there for a few years after, and just recently returned to NYC for law school.
The cost of living has gotten so insane it has a bubble-ish feeling to me. I currently split $2,800 with a roommate for a shitty little apartment in the East Village. That was universally regarded as an anomalous steal for a true two-bedroom in the area. In Miami, a city not exactly known for its low cost of living, I was splitting around $2,100 a month for a place with a gym, pool, game room, etc. in a really nice area (in Midtown, just outside of Wynwood for anyone familiar).
Unlike some other posters, I do still love it here. Don’t get me wrong–the inequality has become Dickensian and needed to be addressed yesterday (for the record I’m with DRed—get people in homes first and then deal with everything else. Homelessness comes with serious risks and harms every single day, we don’t tell doctors the first thing they need to do is teach shooting victims how not to get shot). I guess I view it as a kind of last, best hope a place that can demonstrate all the benefits of cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism. It’s hard to put a finger on it but I just feel like there’s something here that’s missing everywhere else.
But it’s hard for me to see people continuing to put up with the cost of living too much longer. You really have to have a romantic view of the city to justify it, especially when a lot of what made it somewhat unique is increasingly spreading to just about every other city (as others have pointed out).
I’m making pretty fat money now composing this TV show and it’s still not really enough to buy a place here in LA. If the show sticks around a couple more seasons and/or I get other good gigs then maybe. We just moved to Passdena and our rent is almost double what it was when we lived in Silver Lake 10 years ago.
Pasadena is great though. Great historic part of the city with lots of diversity. We’re living in a historic Craftsman, built in 1906.
The closest I ever lived in smaller city, and I know it’s not the area you talk about, was Richmond, VA. I loved it.
Thanks for all the stories about NY and other places, “cities I lived in” is my favorite off topic here.
I’m also still waiting for a free moment to dive into the optimal stopping paper. Maybe it will help me apply a strategy to the search of cities to live in.
I meant the shops. No one buys anything at those places.
Empty apartments is another problem but that’s more for the likes of 432 Park Ave, aka the blight on our city skyline that exists solely for the elite international money from saudi, moscow, china, etc.
JK47 – I’ve pursued acting and comedy for over 20 years in NYC and then LA. I had times where I thought I was so close to having a career breakthrough. One year I made close to 20K just off of acting and comedy stuff. What I found frustrating, though, was that even the times when I was performing, shooting commercials, doing films, etc..no amount of marketing myself about all of these amazing projects would get me to the next level.
I know some very successful comedians. A few of them who are at that level where they are the star or co-star on a major show. They own nice houses here in LA, travel the country and the world doing projects and have truly made it. I know about 5 or 6 people like that.
Then I know a ton of people who many would say “wow. they made it.” They do commercials and tv shows on the regular. But even these people are still struggling in LA. They live in a tiny apartment. They get a few big paychecks a year and then spend the rest of their time working odd jobs to make ends meet. They’ll have a good year followed by a bad year. A good friend of mine just left LA to move to Dallas and she books all of the time!
I guess my point is that I feel the financial burden of living in LA and NYC has priced out middle class artists to the point where unless you really hit it big, you are going to struggle mightily even if you are “successful.” I’ve spent my life pursuing comedy and acting but also working in the theatre. When I got the chance to get a full-time job in Omaha while still working in the arts…it was a no brainer to me. I can be a comedian anywhere and actually getting to produce my own work in a smaller place without the burden of wondering if this is going to be the thing that gets me discovered…its a huge relief to just be a creative person for the sake of being creative.
Luka is 6’7, 220
AND he has a 42-inch vertical.
He’s a point guard.
Magic was 6’8, 220
His vertical was 30 inches.
Luka is a big, athletic point guard by any standard.
Evicted by Matthew Desmond, read it, get back to me
If you’re near 2nd St and Ave B, I have a stake in the place over there called Eastpoint. Feel free to pop in for some drinks on the house during a knicks game. Same goes for anyone on this board.
For anyone into NYC club history, it is literally the same spot Save The Robots inhabited.
Born and raised in Mount Vernon and I’ve live in Little Italy. I’m not going anywhere. They’re gonna have to drag me outta there in cuffs, a bodybag, or wedding band.
I bet he could easily convince Dolan that he meant Mills. Dolan is clearly the type of dude who would accept whatever story he needed to accept to believe that he’s not the problem.
Thank you Silky, that’s just the term I’ve been looking for to describe living in LA. You have to soften up to live here, or else people will think you’re “too aggressive” or “too judgemental” and won’t bother with you.
Nashville, Omaha, NC, Chicago… I’m making a mental rolodex of all these places you guys have mentioned. My fiancee wonders occassionally about cheaper places to live and she knows I’m up in the air about living the rest of my days out here. I’d also add Maryland depending on where (ex: Baltimore COUNTY, not the city).
Back to Knicks: if Masai even has just a cursory interest in being our POBO, you gotta clean house if you’re Dolan.
How you think I ended up in LA? 😉
(wedding band pending)
One time I merged close to a minivan’s front bumper downtown, and the woman floored it around me to scream at me at the light, like murderous screaming, like I had just killed her family. I was so surprised that I burst out laughing, which only made her more angry. Then I laughed harder and pointed at her while holding my chest. I could hear her screams as she sped away. The guy behind her pulled up next to me and said, “Hey man, this isn’t Naples, what’s with you?” In NYC it wouldn’t have registered as an event at all.
@103: Mt. Vernon has made some significant contributions to hoops
Williams Brothers ( Ray and Gus)
McCrae Brothers
Andre Drummond
Al Skinner ( I played against him when he played for state champs Malverne)and
Earl Tatum.
It also gave us Denzel Washington.
I am very close by so I will be taking you up on that at some point (as in, after law school finals season)! Thanks.
I agree 100% with you and would appreciate if you keep insults out.
We need to take care of them all, forever. Also, some are homeless only temporary due to various reasons and will thrive after a short term boost. That’s not whom I’m talking about.
I was referring to most of the folks with cognitive ability scores (IQ) below 85. All 30 million of them. I’ve met many and have family members in this category way below the mean. I’m sure everyone here knows whom I’m talking about. I tried to employ a few of them and give them a simple repetitive task to do. Something that I can teach you to do in 10-15 minutes and you can do it consistently without errors in perpetuity. Tens of hours of training later, they were still struggling and kept making errors. To them these simple tasks are super difficult and almost impossible to do. Their experience was frustrating. They often quit and blamed the task, their partners, immediate supervisor or even myself. Its difficult to go through life where world doesn’t make sense and even the simplest tasks are difficult and require so much energy. Its emotionally painful and its real. Then you add that technology (ex. driver-less tech) and the world over next 30 years will require employees to be more analytical thinkers the unemployable bottom will continue to grow by millions.
Its science; its creative destruction, but its super taboo to talk about. Parents, teachers, politicians don’t go near this. Its not about race, gender identity, ethnicity, privilege, opportunity etc. All lives are equal. But people don’t have equal physical or mental talents/capabilities.
Homelessness is a very complicated problem and there are lots of things that cause it. It’s one of those things that defies a simple silver bullet solution.
Here in LA you have a cocktail of escalating rents/real estate prices, the leftover effects of the opioid crisis, not enough investment in mental health services, many years of ill-conceived Giuliani-style “broken windows” policing, and the baked-in problem of the city being too densely populated with too many single-family homes and NIMBYs who successfully prevent more high-density housing options in their neighborhoods.
Can we please, please, just bury forever the idea that IQ scores are somehow meaningful in any possible way? Thank you.
Ironically enough, you have to be pretty stupid to take the concept of IQ seriously.
Anybody watch High Flying Bird yet?
Thanks Hubert. I will do some research on what Tennessee has to offer. Lots of places have incubators for startups, but they are mostly oriented toward dot com types of businesses; it’s hard to find chemical facilities for start ups.
Yeah, no such thing as addiction, depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. They all just have remarkably low IQs. I can assert without questioning it for a moment that I know more than a handful of homeless people who are smarter than GianaDani, which is only an insult if you believe them to be stupid.
To quote Ginsburg:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
But also putting them in housing is also problematic. My city runs a program, but requires a high standard to get placed in the housing. Without the standard you end up with people destroying the living situation for those that actually try, bringing in drugs, acting violently, and so on. They know because they’ve actually done it. Some of these problems would be fixed by more money for the program, but a lot of people are just looking for a free meal before leaving to elsewhere. Just because the physical housing exists, doesn’t mean people want to live there. Another problem is that one homeless shelter is so far from downtown that it creates issues as everyone attempts to flood there when it’s time to get a bed. If a person doesn’t have the bus fare, they won’t even try.
So GianiDani is Charles Murray of The Bell Curve infamy? Funny, I always thought he was a soccer mom.
Ben Gordon is also from Mt Vernon
Oh, wow, I loooooved Save The Robots. One of my all time favorites. Damn, another reason to hop on a plane and come visit.
OMG Save the Robots. That place was the shit.
It later turned into a club lounge called Guernica, which was also pretty dope. My friend use to DJ there and on his birthday he was DJing and my other friend was being a drunken idiot, bumping into people while dancing on the dance floor. And this dude shoved him and this massive brawl broke out in the club. It was crazy.
But in the meantime, let’s cut thousands off from food stamps because you know the country is doing so well with unemployment.
It is breathtaking that an administration presiding during a period of massive opioid addiction, among other addictions, and rising mental illness (much overlap), both which are major drivers of homelessness, thinks somehow that because the job market is better these people are just lazy.
Please tell me more Save The Robots stories.
I’ve heard about it but it was before my time.
Why couldn’t Steve Cohen have bought the Knicks. Although he is a terrible person. But I wouldn’t care….
Bruno, no more discussing IQ, ha? – what about “basketball IQ”? Is that a taboo thing?
I suppose the low basketball IQ guys can’t find a home in the offense or defense and end up sleeping on the court where high IQ players trip over them. They make team a bad neighborhood and all fully employed players who do have homes in typical offensive and defensive schemes want to move to a new neighborhood. It makes one debate whether those low IQ players should get job training or instead be shipped off to some low rent neighborhood like G league.
My personal one is that I was fairly young and very shy. I already had a couple of girlfriends but never the courage to dance in public. Then after a painful breakup a friend told me about Save the Robots, and I went there and was sitting and watching people when someone I didn’t know offered me a line of white powder on a credit card.
I looked at him, at the card, thought what the hell and did like in the movies. I didn’t feel much but a few minutes later I got up and danced for like 7 hours non stop. It was so much fun, and I was so proud of myself when I stepped out of the club at like 8AM and went for breakfast. Finally I was one of the cool crowd.
I understand Charles Murray is taboo among the woke (I’m guessing most have never read his works) but did you ever listen to noted right winger Sam Harris’s interview with him???? Probably not because you already know everything there is to know…. am I right???
Or maybe because just the notion of hearing the man’s voice might infect one with Ebola….
I’m going to make an analogy with another prevalent health problem… Type II Diabetes. T2D is treated in this country and generally in the west with insulin, metformin and ever increasing doses of insulin over time. Year by year predictably the patient becomes fatter and gets vascular eye disease, kidney disease, heart disease and ends up with infections losing toes first and progressing to entire limbs.
Those are the sequelae of treating the symptoms of diabetes rather than the cause namely insulin resistance.
One can cure T2D (yes cure) in a few weeks by restricting the persons diet to zero sugary and starchy carbohydrates and moderate protein intake.
Putting people in a homeless shelter is like giving a person with a 300 serum glucose insulin…. it fixes the immediate crisis for a day but the problem will get worse if the underlying causes are untreated.
I’m a committed atheist and I think Sam Harris is a faux-intellectual fraud and an embarrassment. He’s only slightly less embarrassing than Richard Dawkins. I don’t really know about his interaction with Bell Curve dude but fuck Sam Harris.
It’s always funny to me to see who right-wingers perceive to be left-wing icons. All the time bobneptune is like “oh so Alan Dershowitz/Sam Harris/some-other schlub-who-identifies-as left-wing-because they-think-it’s-better-for-their-brand is wrong now?!?!” and I’m like…yeah, that person sucks man.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve
For a little context…
Man what a wild time that was luring the board. I had completely forgotten that saga ha ha.
On the Fizdale topic, it looks like Berman has a contrary report (https://clutchpoints.com/knicks-rumors-new-york-not-ready-to-fire-david-fizdale-yet/). Hedging bets, I wouldn’t be surprised if the move (if it happens) doesn’t occur until the All-Star break. Not sure if playoffs were ever really a serious goal this year, but I think if we can’t at least play .500 ball for a period then a move gets made sooner rather than later.
Loving hearing the different stories of where everyone lives. Having not visited any of the places anyone has referred to, the way everyone has articulated their stories has been worth the read.
This is not a right/left thing. They both wrong. Trump is president cause he excited sub 85 IQ folks and showed them who to blame for their miserable lives. Left does the same, – it’s the fault of racist people and billionaires who don’t pay their fair share.
I suppose we can all become or master any subject we want to, right? We can become champions if it wasn’t for the privilege or if we just work harder.
Fwiw I’ve talked to actual contemporary cognitive scientists and psychometricians working on IQ related issues, and even the ones sympathetic to the concept repudiate Murray’s work, because it’s horribly methodologically flawed. It was roundly criticized in its day by competent scientists and still continues to be. The only people who give it the time of day are pop-pseudointellectuals (like Harris) and Evo psych cranks (there’s plenty of good Evo psych, just naming a current within that discipline) who use “the need to be objective and see all sides of an issue” to front for discredited neo-race science.
IQ tests (properly administered, with rigorous data collection practices etc.) might be measuring something related to intelligence. But most psychometricians today are gonna say that g and g-based metrics aren’t capturing everything. It’s enormously irresponsible to use *good* IQ data to make any policy prescription–it’s just not robust enough. To use bad data to make policy prescriptions is unconscionable.
Sam Harris’s claim to intellectualism is proffering atheist arguments that were rejected centuries ago. It comes as no surprise to me that he would interview another person that has had his theories roundly rejected by competent scholars.
Literally, Sam Harris ignores hundreds of years of work. He’s a public anti-intellectual along with Dawkins.
Not feeding the trolls.
IQ tests are very similar to me to those useless surveys that intend to determine how “happy” a certain population is. It’s literally pointless in principle to try to measure something that is by definition immeasurable and even worse, that wildly varies between different spheres of life (or knowledge for that matter) and is very unique to each individual. It’s just pointless and its existence only leads to more ammo for bigots and other assorted types of idiots looking to create stupid, eugenics like arguments.
Ding ding ding ding!
We atheists have a rough go of it here in the old USA, I think we’re hated more than just about any other group. Maybe if we weren’t represented by professional asshats like Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins things might improve a bit.
@128,
Or part of the problem is the overwhelming prevalence of foods and snacks containing corn syrup and other cheap sugars unfairly burdening people to go out of their way to seek healthier alternatives. Often the sugary products are cheaper and easier to store than healthy foods–go google food deserts.
Then of course there’s the biological issues including genetics and addictive properties of sugar. Yes, sugar deprivation creates symptoms of withdrawal. People often look to carbs and sugars for energy only to crash later on, then they load up on carbs and sugar again. The withdrawal symptoms of sugar include irritability and low energy making people trying to change their diets believe that they need sugar to re-energize.
Obesity is absent in many parts of the world because avoiding sugary food is easy. There’s a reason that obesity and diabetes is prevalent in America and rises in other countries that adopt similar cheap eating habits.
The best method of correcting obesity is by forcing companies to internalize the negative externalities of their products, or at the very least making healthy alternatives available.
Today I was walking down Hollywood Blvd on my lunch break and I saw a homeless man covered in dirt who was screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs at invisible reptile people that that were following him and trying to use mind control over him. I tried to stop him and get him to take an IQ test so I could determine if he had mental health issues or just had a low IQ but he wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to adminster it.
Hopefully the main point that everyone can agree upon is that “the homeless“ isn’t a group of identical people or a “type.” They are all radically different humans with an unimaginable range of problems and talents. There’s certainly no one cure for it.
That would be like saying an intensive passing clinic would solve every basketball player’s problems and turn them into demonstrably “good” players. It’s just not the case.
My sister got ravaged by an opioid addiction, got kicked out of the house because she would steal everything that wasn’t nailed down, tried and failed to rehabilitate herself many times because kicking an opioid addiction is extremely difficult, would eventually be allowed back into the house and then would steal everything within 24 hours, then would get kicked out again, and ended up homeless and living on the street until she died of an overdose at age 28. She was a smart and gifted person but like many, many people in the state of Florida she got hooked on opioids and didn’t survive it.
So fuck you and your “low IQ” bullshit, reub. As always, you’re a moron and a piece of shit.
Sounds like he gets a score of zero IQ since he didn’t answer any of the questions correctly. Guess Giani is right. **I cannot emphasize how strongly sarcastic this is and how unnecessary this disclaimer ought to be.**
Anyway I’m done. Thank you Cronin for the new thread.
Owen…. if you are actually interested in the subject listen to the actual podcast the author gives his opinion about and then decide for yourself.
I’m just going to tale a wild stab that Mr. Harris believes his claim to intellectualism stems more from his work as a Dr of Neuroscience rather than if he does or doesn’t believe in an invisible sky man…..
I’m well aware that Harris has a PhD in neuroscience. Harris is not famous for his neuroscience and I’ve never seen a news article comment on his use of fMRIs. He’s famous for writing on religion and philosophy, two areas he’s not qualified to speak on. Literally any philosopher remedially well-versed in the areas Harris is famous for will quickly dismiss any of his arguments. Even atheist philosophers will dismiss Harris for his intellectual laziness on the subject.
If you go look on his Wikipedia page, or really any page on Sam Harris, you’ll be hard pressed to find more than a passing reference to his actual academic work.
Bob- I am pretty well versed on the topic. In particular, I have very deep knowledge of the kind of people who buy into this nonsense. While I am all about following the data in basketball no debate has ever made me more aware of the limitations of statistics than the one about race and iq.
JK47 – That is absolutely terrible. Having a family member who is an addict is, I know from personal experience, extremely difficult and I am very sorry for your loss.
JK 47, I’m really really sorry for your loss.
My condolences to you JK. Of the couple dozen friend who moved to Florida from NY, five of them are now dead of OD, mostly H and fentanyl. I almost lost two of my best friends to it too, guys who are now excelling in their chosen fields after undergoing MAT with Suboxone. My cousin is in a very famous alt-prog band and got kicked out over his addiction, which allegedly consumed >$300k of his money. Luckily he cleaned up and rejoined the band. Their bassist, who stuck up a drugstore for pills, was not so lucky.
Condolences, JK. Like many others here from the sound of it, I’ve been touched by addiction as well. My cousin committed suicide (with a gun illegally acquired at a gun show, I might add) while in the throes of a heroin addiction, and my best friend’s sister died of a fent OD a few years ago. It’s an epidemic on Long Island (I know at least 10 people who have died from it in/around my hometown alone), and it’s extremely difficult to quit once hooked. Belittling addicts marks you as one of the shittiest possible kinds of people. Being an addict has nothing to do with IQ, intelligence, whatever. It has to do with your social circumstances and your genetic predisposition to addiction.
Also, as a professional philosopher, I can reliably cite expert opinion here and say that he has not been at all influential in our field. Because his arguments are puerile and because he’s not a philosopher. I’ve read The Moral Landscape, and it’s one of the worst attempts at “philosophy” I’ve ever read. And I’m sympathetic to moral naturalism and scientific approaches to morality (an unpopular approach in my discipline, to say the least). Like Jordan Peterson, he pivoted from a career as a mediocre scientist towards writing pop-“philosophy” for a general audience, and got rich off it. But it has nothing to do with his competence or his intelligence. It has to do with who he’s writing for.