The Knicks go to follow up their best win of the season with a game against the Utah Jazz.
Sadly, no Mitch.
Let’s go? Knicks!
The Knicks go to follow up their best win of the season with a game against the Utah Jazz.
Sadly, no Mitch.
Let’s go? Knicks!
141 replies on “2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Jazz”
So who’s the best shooter in the starting lineup:
Elf
RJ
Moe
Julius
Taj
Wow, it’s gotta be Randle, right?
Wow.
it’s moe. he hit 5 straight 3’s in Philly the other night, where the fans are brutal. they boo’ed the guy who missed the 3 that would have given them free chik filet
Using “less worse” instead of “best” would have been more accurate.
RJ is at 32%.
Moe is at 37% on the season (including LA) but on half the attempts RJ has
Everyone else is below 30%
With Morris off the team, Randle leads the team in 3PA and is shooting 26.5%
Waiting for our super bench to kick ass.
Mike ‘Time Out Trigger-Happy’ Miller
Bobby P. Is showing why he gets the big money!
Portis looking like he’s gonna thrive at C.
I do think Portis or Randle at C is better than Taj clogging the paint.
If we had 2-3 steady decent shooters we may had something good.
Based on each respective teams talent and season to date, 12 points seems about right for a Jazz lead over the Knicks.
Julius ‘Dribbler without a cause’ Randle
I always find it crazy that players like Portis exist, the guy is average to bad 80% of the time, and then he has the Bobby Portis’ games where he suddenly can’t miss. There really is some stuff to be said about streaky shooting and getting hot, I just can’t possibly see how something seemingly so random could be quantifiable enough to be relevant.
We’re back !
If you want to explore this, Jordan Ellenberg goes into it in some detail in his book “How Not To Be Wrong”. There is a whole chapter on “the Hot Hand”. Worth a read for the stat heads.
Payton has played really strong D on Mitchell
Taj isn’t long enough to contest the drive effectively and get back to his man. He’s awful right now
Undermanned, but I’m kinda impressed with the kids.
Quin Snyder looks like an extra from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
The 2nd unit could really use Trier. No one on that unit can attack the basket. Still doesn’t make sense
Haha, so good!
Does Randle resent RJ’s attention/popularity? Seems like he came out chucking tonight.
“The 2nd unit could really use Trier. ”
I agree 100%
Unfortunately the Knicks treat him like he”s radioactive for some unknown reason.
What? I don’t understand why people keep forcing this narrative.
Randle had a huge mismatch and exploited the hell out of it
I didn’t noticed the huge mismatch tbh.
I felt that Randle played boldly while Gobert lost his chance to throw one more party on the D as he did on our paint.
Thanks dtrickey, I’ll check it out!
Stats vs Eye
Randle had 32p & 11rebs going heavily 1on1 against the 2 consecutive times DPOY with 57,1fg% and 66,7% on 3s and still….i feel he should be traded away ASAP!
How do you call that ?
This Pelicans – Mavs game is kinda fun, both Doncic and Porzingis are shooting like shit, Zion hasn’t been good either but Ingram and Lonzo are having a hell of a game. It might be too early to tell, but Lonzo might be figuring his game out, he’s been playing very well lately.
ditto on that mavs and pels game…lot’s of good performances…also a lot of very interesting young guys too…
boy but the lakers do draft well…
so cool to see ingram develop the way he has…glad for him he got out of LA…lonzo can kind of shoot now…
can’t wait to see when zion gets in better shape…should help him avoid injury…
Oh god right as I say it he chucks a terrible air ball that probably lost them the game lol, but yeah, he played well for the most part.
ha, jinx bruno…I thought the same thing when he shot that air ball…
Melli! What a shot!
TS% of 0.650 in last 10 games for KP. THJ north of 0.600 in 2020.
Knicks suk at…well everything. Even at employee/VIP enterance.
No wonder that Clayde just likes to sit alone in silence lately.
KP certainly pulled some shit while here but overall I’m happy he got out of this hellhole. Same with THJ. Yes, they certainly could’ve played better while here, KP could’ve offered to play center more, but this is what happens when you ask players to do more than they’re ready for / capable of.
KP is a great #2, and paired with a great coach who knows how to use him correctly and minimize his bad habits, he might really be good (injuries aside).
THJ was always meant to be a #3 or #4, but we paid him like a #2 and expected him at times to play like a #1. The day of the trade I literally texted my buddy who is a huge Mavs fan that THJ would be really good there playing off both Doncic and KP.
Portis is an interesting player — very bad at D but has varied offensive skills that he just doesn’t use correctly. A lot of that is on the coaching. wtf are we throwing him the ball in the post when he’s just not good at it in general? Dude is 16th in the league in the % of his possessions used in the post, and out of those 16, he is the 2nd worst at it (only Ayton is worse), and is only 30th percentile overall in terms of efficiency on that play type. But he is actually a good 3 point shooter especially for a big, and is actually quite tall, and should actually just stand behind the 3 point line and shoot spot ups, at which he is a 70th percentile efficiency guy, and if there is an opportunity for a mismatch in the post, then go do your stupid post up thing.
(all that said, he’s like a $7MM player max, so he is overpaid by >100%)
Actually, maybe this is just a big part of what we do as the New York Knicks. Randle is 13th in the league iso possessions per game, and on the entire 1st page list of this on the NBA stats site (sorted by # iso possessions/game), which I believe is 50 players long, Randle is the 3rd worst in terms of efficiency in front of only Paul George (Weird) and Caris Levert. But sure, keep giving it to him.
Setting aside the injuries KP had in NY, he had several other issues.
1, He was a very young, raw, and physically undeveloped coming into the league
2. He was way too weak to play C on a nightly basis in NY even though it made some sense strategically. I’m not sure that even with the added strength and bulk he has now he should be playing C against every matchup. But it’s certainly understandable that now that’s he stronger and can take contact better, he should be doing a lot more of it.
3. Once Melo left, he prematurely became the #1 option without a quality PG and with Hardaway Jr as the #2 option (who was injured for part of that limited season). Once he got off to that great start, he was getting double teamed, clearly not prepared to deal with it as a player, and took a lot of terrible shots. He was just starting to figure it out when he inured his ACL.
4. NY was playing him too many minutes at that time and wearing him down
It was OBVIOUSLY going to take some time for him to regain confidence in his knees, get back in game shape, fit in with a new team etc… after such a long layoff. But he’s playing great two way basketball right now.
He’s a key part of the spacing that allows other players to penetrate (like Doncic).
He’s a critical part of the interior rim protection and help defense when their weak perimeter defenders (like Doncic, Curry and others) get beat,
Now that’s he’s stronger and being asked to rebound, he’s filling that role well.
His shot selection has been much improved all season due to both better teammates and better coaching, but now that’s he’s making shots at closer to his former skill level, his efficiency is slowly rising to star levels.
Dallas has been limiting his minutes by not playing him on back to backs etc.. which is the right way to handle him for now given his injury history.
He’s basically a two way unicorn. All he has to do is not break down.
Frank,
I agree 100% on Portis.
Setting aside his ridiculous salary, the one reason I was a little less negative on him was that it was obvious to me before the season we were going to have some spacing issues. The one thing Portis can do well for a big is shoot 3s. It might nor be ideal to play him with Randle for defensive reasons, but there are lineups where he can be a useful player off the bench to generate space and rebound “at the right price”. He’s also young enough to get better. The current price is just a total joke.
I went last night and somehow they’re even more dreadful in person. Knox was useless, man. It might of been the worst game I’ve seen there second only to that OkC Christmas game where Melo was sleeping.
That Donovan Mitchell dunk was sick though.
Here’s an interesting basketball question.
Why are so many 3 point shooters taking shots from WAY WAY beyond the 3 point line?
It’s not just Lillard anymore.
A few years back D’Antoni was saying that if you stretch the floor just a couple of extra feet, it makes closing out to the 3 point line virtually impossible on some plays. The defense has to either give you the play or they have to give you the longer open 3. That’s why the Rockets started stretching 3s a little further out.
But now some guys are shooting from the logo, They are practically closer to half court than the 3 point line on some shots. It’s crazy. I can’t see anyone (except maybe be Curry) making a high enough percentage of those to be highly efficient.
I guess there are some added space benefits if they come out to cover you, but it seems like a bad idea to me.
The thing is, more and more players are doing it,
Dallas has even give KP (and sometimes Doncic) the green light on some ridiculously long attempts. They must have data that suggests it’s OK to sacrifice the efficiency of the player shooting them for an overall team benefit or they’d stop it. I just don’t get it at all.
I was happy that KP left…didn’t like his diva attitude at all.
But I agree that the Knicks make decisions on all levels that…i don’t know what to say. Make Julius a Point Forward being one of them.
They colletively look like completely unable to make sane decisions for two decades now. I know all fingerprints lead to Straigtshooter but it cant be just him.
All that enter here seem to be driven to their weakest self and forget everythig good they knew about basketball in the minute they enter the Mecca.
Hi Strat,
I know you’re not a big fan of having actual data infect your narratives, but even a simple google search provides information such as this:
In 2014-15, players attempted 1,308 threes from 28-40 feet and made 308 for a 23.6 percent rate. This season, players attempted 4,177 threes in that range and made 1,302 for a 31.2 percent clip.
This season, Lowry made 40.3 percent on 62 three-point attempts 28 feet or longer.
And so on. You like to go on about opening up the floor. Obviously this does exactly that, in a rather dramatic fashion. And people are making them now.
Maybe the trend towards longer threes reflects defensive changes as well as improved shooting. Open shots are always preferable to defended ones. If the other team’s defense is making threes right at the three point line unproductive, maybe you have a choice between a crummy two and a longer three. You might do better with the longer three if it’s a wide open shot.
Again, I think both Portis and Randle need to play C to be effective on offense and create mismatches. The problem is defense.
The Portis anchored defense actually looked much better than Gibson’s in the first half. Taj needs to go.
Knox had a sequence of about 4 Knicks possessions where he got blocked, stripped, and charged into somebody. That’s got to be some kinda record.
I know that minutes aren’t the only thing that determine development but I’m sorry, Trier and Dotson taking DNPs while Harkless, Ellington, Payton and Bullock gobble up 20+ minutes apiece is malpractice. There is literally no other organization in the league that handles their young players this way and the Knicks developmental track record frankly speaks for itself. It wasn’t even a close game! And yet we have a bunch of vets running around out there because the Knicks are more busy trying to figure out which of those guys can be a valuable contributor to getting 34 wins next season than which of the young guys might have a future that could actually provide some real value.
I mean playing young kids over mediocre vets during the dog days of a lost season is truly the lowest of low hanging fruit. Even the other mediocre orgs. figured this out years and years ago. Truly only the Knicks find a way to consistently and pointlessly undermine themselves to this degree.
It was unreal!
>The Portis anchored defense actually looked much better than Gibson’s in the first half. Taj needs to go.<
I love Taj but he belongs on some contender as a backup. I don't see much point on either side at this point.
Knox is truly beyond awful. He doesn’t do one thing well on a basketball court. Last night’s performance was vomit inducing.
We can keep saying “he’s only 19, he’s only 20, he’s only 21” till the cows come home, but I really think there’s no hope for this guy. What a complete waste of a draft pick.
it is truly mind-boggling.
>I know you’re not a big fan of having actual data infect your narratives, but even a simple google search provides information such as this:<
BULLSHIT!
I'm against the BADLY FLAWED "one number" models that are commonly used here and MISINTERPRETED data.
No doubt players are working on it and no doubt some are better than others (I mentioned Curry).
"This season, players attempted 4,177 threes in that range and made 1,302 for a 31.2 percent clip."
This is making my point. Other than a handful of players like Curry, Lillard, and maybe a couple of others (like Trae), the numbers don't justify the attempts unless there is spacing data that suggest it does.
Maybe the data suggests it's OK to let some other players bomb away even though their own long term percentages will be lower and don't seemingly justify it because at the team level the extra spacing helps other players more than the cost of taking the very long 3 on occasion. I don't know that answer.
However, 31.2% is not a satisfactory clip in my mind, especially if you generally have a good offensive team that can run effective plays, draw fouls etc.. .
KP took one from the logo last night. I've seen him take a few other similar ones on other nights. Doncic takes some bombs also. I question the efficiency and wisdom of those shots for those players long term, but Dallas is a very smart team.
I think one of the things the Knicks like to do with their draft picks is to prove they’re smarter than everyone in the room by picking some shitty player 10 picks ahead of where he should be drafted because they know something everyone else doesn’t know about the player.
That’s really the only thing I can think of to justify 90% of their picks. That’s why we get Kevin Knox.
By the way, ESPN NBA Real Plus Minus is back up and running after the formula was updated.
They changed the model to weigh boxscore metrics more for defense (DRPM) than they did prior and lowered the adjusted on/off data component. I’m sure there was a reason for doing that, but imo, that’s the opposite of what you should be doing to try to improve the model for defense.
IMO, the whole point behind trying to use adjusted on/off data is to try to capture the things players do that have negative or positive value that are NOT in the boxscore. Then you try deal with the extra noise by looking at larger multi year samples.
They are basically heading in the opposite direction for defense, even though that’s a primary weaknesses of the boxscore to begin with. It doesn’t capture significant portions of individual defense,
In the grand scheme of things, this may have improved the overall accuracy for all players, but I scanned through a number of players and saw some very significant changes for a few that are obviously wrong now that seemed reasonable before.
Morey has clearly been ahead of most on analytics. He figured out that length matters much less than we thought it does when most of what you do is spot up on the corner to stretch the floor.
Perry and Steve overvalued a young guy 3 inches longer than a typical wing who can stretch the floor and paid him $15M. Who cares if a player is 3 inches taller when they cant guard, block or rebound at a league average level.
That Porzingis trade set the Franchise back 3-5 years. We lost a generation talent and an excellent 6th man type bench player for the right to swap Lee with Portis. Two completely useless guys. Signed a local BK vet that cant play over 8 minutes a game without hurting the team and three late future 1st round picks.
For those of you that still love the trade, please be realistic and realize acknowledge that THjr is probably much better at basketball than any of those three future picks will ever be and when you add the Knicks inability to develop or even play the young kids, this is basically a certainty.
So, after its all said and done, we basically traded away an injured 23 year old All-Star player with MVP type talent for nothing.
I think the Knicks have drafted ok on average. We tend to denigrate Knick’s drafting because we don’t get a lot of stars, but it’s the expected result for where we typically draft. Other than Barrett, our highest recent pick was KP. We clearly got value at number four by picking him. Knox is bad, but many picks at his spot are bad. Just look at DSJ (not drafted by us). At the moment, Frank is a useful role player with upside. That is a reasonable outcome for pick 9. Robinson, Dotson and Trier were good value for where they were picked. Brazdeikis, who knows? Barrett, it’s too soon to tell.
Tim Hardaway is likely better than any of the 3 picks we have from the KP trade?
Tim Hardway was the 24th pick in his draft , ie a late first round pick.
So there is no chance any of the 3 picks will turn out better than Tim, who was also a late first round pick?
Never forget that Stratomatic only evaluates all-in-one metrics by how well they match up to his 140-point diner-napkin rating system
I’ll just continue to say what I’ve been saying all along, even when he wasn’t playing that great — the Knicks “shopped” Porzingis ineptly, got pennies back on his actual asset value, and the trade set them back years.
There is going to be some significant crow eaten on KP here. I am ready for my helping.
People need to shut up about the KP trade. He was getting traded no matter what because he wanted to leave. There was no winning anything on that. This seems to be the thing everyone against the trade never mentions.
The next comment will be about well if we didn’t have a bad culture he wouldn’t have wanted to leave…
No shit captain obvious. Clearly, the posters at Knickerblogger control the culture of the Knicks.
Exactly. Porzingis, RJ, Frank, Knox in aggregate exceed expected value at 3, 4, 8, and 9. Not getting expected value or better for the picks isn’t the issue. The issue is that they hit nicely when they had 4 and recklessly squandered the value of the asset.
A young nucleus of Porzingis, Barrett, Frank, Mitch would be looking mighty nice now, particularly on defense where they could be suffocating. That group could form the core of the NBA’s best defense.
At the moment, it’s not a given that Frank Ntilikina will be playing in the NBA in 2021-2022.
The Knicks have made some sketchy picks:
– Knox was mocked around where we picked him but there were pretty obvious reasons to doubt him and it sure sounds like our process sucked on this pick if the rumors about picking him primarily b/c he crushed some 3-on-3 workout are accurate
-Frank was also mocked around where picked him but again it sure looks from the outside like the process here sucked. He seems to have been picked at least in part because of his theoretical compatibility with the triangle…only we fired the GM and ditched the triangle less than a week after the draft.
Still I think by far the bigger issue is the Knicks total inability to develop talent. Trying to come up with any developmental success stories, young players who blossomed or even consistently got better, from the last twenty years is not easy. It’s a very, very short list. It’s always hard to disentangle development and talent acquisition since we never observe the counterfactual (i.e. how would Knox and SGA’s careers have proceeded if they’d switched draft slots) but it looks to me like generally the failures have been more that our young guys rarely improve as opposed to a lack of talent to begin with. The draft is crapshoot-y enough that you’re going to hit some busts and some sleepers regardless of how good or bad your process is. Only by consistently minimizing the young assets you do acquire can you end up with a record as poor as the Knicks when it comes to young talent.
All you guys who are citing Frank as an example of bad drafting should remember that the alternative was DSJ. Frank is also better than Mudiay, who was picked at number seven. He’s managed to survive three chaotic Knick years and get regular minutes as our backup point guard. Backup point guard is, almost by definition, a useful role player. You can say, well, there isn’t much trade value for him, but that is true of most backup guards.
To put it another way, if he was less than a useful role player, then the Knicks should have able to find a better replacement for him pretty easily. But they failed to do that, despite bringing in a bunch of players to compete for his position.
This is…not how the draft works.
I mean, the Knicks have been god awful in all of these years. By this standard, all of the rotation players on the Sixers during the Process years were fine picks because they got minutes on an NBA team. It’s completely meaningless, the question is whether or not the player is, in a vacuum, good.
Does anybody here look at a particular “all in one” model and decide “that is the absolute value of player x” and not factor in anything else? Because I know I don’t.
I’ll use some of them as a very rough estimate of player value, but even then make my own internal adjustments. Like “this center has good efficiency numbers but WS48 overrates guys like this so I’ll adjust accordingly.” Or “shooting guards don’t do well in WS48” or “this metric doesn’t seem to capture defense well” or whatever. I come from a background as a baseball stat nerd, so I know very well that these models are evolving and imperfect.
This just seems like the ultimate straw man, the idea that some of us just go with whatever all-in-one metric we like and shut out all other arguments.
No, it has never happened in the history of this board.
TNFH, if you can’t find a replacement for a player and you use him, then he is by definition, useful. Of course there are teams where that player wouldn’t get minutes, but there are also teams where he would. Remember I’m not saying Frank is good, I’m saying he’s ok for where he was picked.
I don’t understand your comment about that is not how the draft works. There are studies that assess draft position and quality of players and I could have found one of those and cited it. Instead I chose to use an example familiar to the Knickerblogger community.
Tim Hardaway, even when he’s playing well, was useless on the Knicks for the money he’s getting paid. And he would not be playing this well if he was on the Knicks (see the times he was on the Knicks). He’s better probably because he’s getting a bit lucky but also because he’s shooting more open shots because he plays with better players in a better offense. When you have a Luka it’s fine somewhat overpaying for a guy like Timmy. This is the best year of his career and he’s performing like an averagish wing. Maybe the knicks have 2 more wins if we have Timmy. Who gives a shit.
This is ridiculous. Of course the Knicks could easily find a better player than Frank Ntilikina and give him Frank’s minutes instead. They could do the same for Kevin Knox and RJ Barrett, just as easily. They don’t think these guys give them the best chance to win games.
Even organizations as stupid as the Knicks know it’s worth sacrificing maximum current production in order to develop players you hope are productive later. This is especially true when you’re a terrible team like the Knicks, but even good teams dole out these kinds of developmental minutes.
You suggested DSJ was somehow the only alternative to Ntilikina. That’s not how the draft works. There were plenty of options available who were, in fact, neither of those two players. I’ve already said my mea culpa about being way too high on DSJ, and even I had a player available with our pick ranked higher than both of them.
KP came off an injury that kept him out for over a year. Generally he’s been injury prone. He’s still kept out of some games because of his knees. He had no interest in staying with the Knicks.
There is no point at which I will ever have an issue with the KP trade.
I was only giving an example of someone who is manifestly worse than Frank being picked around where he was. Of course, there are players who turned out better than him selected later in the draft. But it’s hard to identify those players and teams often don’t do it so the average value of someone picked number nine is someone with similar value to Frank. I wasn’t saying there was no possibility of doing better, only that we did as well as team picking there often do.
…you keep saying this, and then when I post one of the countless studies showing it isn’t true, you say “well I think Frank might be that good one day.”
Which, fine. I disagree but whatever. What’s clear is that’s a full concession that, as of now, we haven’t gotten anywhere near the average return on the eighth overall pick.
This argument doesn’t hold water because literally everyone on this board picked out at least one if not multiple better players available with the Knox pick.
Part of the reason the avg value is so low is teams keep choosing the Knox’s over Mikal Bridges
Early Bird,
I wouldn’t have picked Knox either. But, as you just said teams often do pick the Knoxes of the world over the Mikal Bridges of the world. That is basically my point. We are normal as drafters.
Isola:
Correction. He had no interest in resigning with our head coach, GM and President. He loved NYC from day one.Three three stooges were a joke and they convinced everyone on this board and around the league for two plus years that they were the chosen ones. KP saw through that fake BS like real NY-ers did.
That’s interesting. I guess getting Chris Paul would be a way to “ to jumpstart our short-term growth”, as Leon Rose’s letter said.
I really don’t expect to get any free agents of note this summer so getting Paul wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we didn’t give up assets to do it. If we actually got some assets to take him on, that might make us next year like OKC is this year. A team with a lot of assets that isn’t awful.
I’m sure they’ll give up assets to get Chris Paul. That’s what we do. Don’t expect otherwise.
I hope not. His salary is so high it’s hard to see any way of bringing him here if you look at the trade machine. I’m not holding my breath.
I started off totally against CP3 but I’ve sort of come around on it. He’s obviously spectacularly overpaid but as we’ve conclusively demonstrated this year there are worse ways to spend $40m in space if you’re looking to give your young guys a veteran presence to coalesce around. Having a star (even a fading one) to organize the offense would do a lot to put the various young guys in more appropriate roles for their current capabilities which would be a positive for their development I think. Further, having only one (oft injured) veteran in that salary slot instead of like four would also open up some more playing time for the young guys. Lastly, he’d satisfy what I’m sure is ownership’s desire to make gestures towards “winning now” and putting a more immediately appealing product on the floor at a relatively low long-term cost.
As long as that was the idea – a star that could be acquired on the cheap asset-wise who would give the team a bit of cachet and a central presence while we continue to work out what we have in the young core I think it would be a reasonable move. The optimal use of that cap space? Maybe not, but this is the Knicks we’re talking about and wouldn’t be the most ill-considered of our ideas.
The real problem would come if that led to any kind of temptation to “build a contender” around him or any of that type of nonsense. I do worry that it’s a slippery slope once you trade for a 35 year old star towards other bad moves, but in a vacuum I think I’m okay with it.
Brodie Van Wagenen : Robinson Cano :: Leon Rose : Chris Paul
Let’s hope Mitch Robinson isn’t the Jarred Kelenic of this deal.
In a vacuum, I am not ok with it.
There might be some ingenious way of structuring this deal where I would be ok with it, picks galore etc. But the overall concept of trading to acquire a 35 year old point guard, Joakim Noah 2.0, is just bizarre to me. Chris Paul is balling this year, no doubt about it. I love him as a player and I’d enjoy watching quality point guard play for the first time in my adult life.
But this can’t be the best option.
Maybe I’m missing something, but why would OKC be looking to shed salary? I would think their future is in developing their current core and their gazillion upcoming draft picks, so why not keep Chris Paul around during that process?
I don’t understand it either. But it’s what is reported.
The thing is that I think some of you are going backwards with this CP3 talk. Like yeah I totally 100% agree that it’s better to pay CP3 38 million than it is to pay the same amount for Bobby Portis, Wayne Ellington and Taj Gibson… but a smart rebuilding team shouldn’t be doing either.
If you assume the next front office is just as stupid as every other front office we’ve had in years, and it’s just gonna waste the cap space anyway signing useless players, then ok, I guess I’d rather watch CP3 do CP3 things for 2 years until he gracefully retires.
But this can’t be the best possible option, there has to be other stuff you can do with freaking 40 million in cap space in the NBA that is more interesting than trading for an overpaid injury prone star who might not be productive at all very soon and is certainly not going to be a part of the hypothetical next good Knicks team if that ever happens. It’s just a bad move in principle, in terms of basketball tesm building strategy, it just seems like a good move because we’re so jaded by constant stupidity.
CP3….Melo….
Hmmm …..
>>Correction. He had no interest in resigning with our head coach, GM and President. He loved NYC from day one.The three stooges were a joke and they convinced everyone on this board and around the league for two plus years that they were the chosen ones. KP saw through that fake BS like real NY-ers did.<<
It goes beyond that.
He was obviously not pleased that Mills/Perry put together the worst team in the NBA, but he did not ask for a trade. As reported, the Knicks spun that story (most likely to sell the trade to fans who were sure to be upset). That's why KP posted on his Instagram that the "truth would eventually come out" right after the trade.
Mills and Perry had already begun doing due diligence on trading him prior to the meeting they scheduled where they were supposed to discuss KP's future and the direction of the team. After the meeting, KP went home with his brother and learned through the basketball grapevine that Mills and Perry were trying to trade him. So assuming he was out, he put together a list of teams he wanted to go to. I believe the list was Brooklyn (to stay in NY), the Clippers, and the Raptors. He then found out he was already traded to Dallas.
He was not happy with management (understandably because he realized they were incompetent idiots that knew nothing about basketball and the team sucked), but he did not ask for a trade.
>CP3….Melo….
Hmmm …..<
We can only hope this is all fake news.
Given the media these days, that's probably likely.
Even if there was a way to make a trade happen that was beneficial to OKC and NY got back enough pick compensation to make it worthwhile, unless Chris Paul has severe brain damage, why would he agree to come to NY? He could just pull an Iggy and say if you trade me to NY I'm not showing up. Players seem to have all the power now. Plus, just out of respect for one of the greatest PGs to ever play the game you don't send him to NY for his final 2 years. You either find a serious contender or ride out the last 2 years in OKC while you rebuild.
>…you keep saying this, and then when I post one of the countless studies showing it isn’t true, you say “well I think Frank might be that good one day.”<
IMO, you don't value Frank properly to begin with.
That's obviously a problem in any discussion of whether it was a good idea to gamble on a project player with that pick and how his development is going.
I'm still on board, but he clearly still has a way to go to become a solid enough two way player that would be a great pick at that spot. He's only half way there.
Add Donovan Mitchell to the list of competitors who have gone out of their way to complement Frank’s D.
Chris Paul isn’t the best outcome we could hope for next year, but we have to grade on the Dolan curve so I guess it’s better than selling the farm for Andrew Wiggins or giving Bobby “Crazy Eyes” Portis a huge contract cause he’s tough and occaisionally lays out his teammates. I think Hubert made a fairly articulate case for signing CP3 not being the End Times, so I’m pretty meh on it.
>This just seems like the ultimate straw man, the idea that some of us just go with whatever all-in-one metric we like and shut out all other arguments.<
JK47,
(not directed at your analysis)
It's clearly not a straw man.
This goes all the way back to when I was screaming that Kanter sucks despite his lofty stats or that KP and Frank are underrated by boxscore models now etc.. People are starting to come around to the fact that certain plus defenders are underrated by those metrics (or vice versa), but there's way more that those models are missing than just that.
Some of these things are very hard to value even if you are an NBA team with an analytics department, but clearly the models we have access to are bad and you have to move way beyond that into more subjective and intuitive thinking unless you do have a staff spitting out tons of new and improved data.
That's why I harp on the subject and reject it.
(BPM and NBA Real Plus Minus were both just changed and there were significant changes to the value of a lot of players. That's telling you either the old models were badly flawed, the new models are badly flawed, or IMO they are both still badly flawed.)
>Add Donovan Mitchell to the list of competitors who have gone out of their way to complement Frank’s D.<
Great scorers know who gives them a tough time. Quite a few great scorers haven't enjoyed being defended by Frank. He's only going to get better.
If they wait until the offseason, they’ll have the cap space to just absorb his contract without sending back equal salary. So if OKC just wants to get rid of him, then the Knicks could do it. If the Thunder wants assets in return, then, well…gross.
I agree but taking it from OKC’s perspective it’s hard to see why they’d want to do it if they weren’t getting some assets back. I think they’d be pretty content to run back this season next year; they don’t have a lot of pressure to bottom out because they have such an excess of draft capital and have SGA already on the team. It’s hard to come up with any scenario where they’d be in a rush to clear the salary – OKC isn’t exactly a free agent destination, and most FAs wouldn’t really fit their timeline right now. Maybe they would dump CP3 into our space and then use their space to take bad contracts and treat that as the return. That’s probably the Hinkie-style long-term maximization move, but in a small market, with the risk of pissing off SGA, and again without the same pressure to go full tank it seems sort of unlikely to me.
Bobby Karalla
@bobbykaralla
Kristaps Porzingis is on some kind of tear. In his last 12 games he’s averaging 27.8 points, 11.0 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, and 2.3 assists on 50.0/39.1/83.5 splits, attempting more than nine 3s per game, and Dallas scores 121.2 pts/100 and allows just 108.1 when he’s on the floor.
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This is an excellent stat below because you can see how often he’s used to set picks in the Dallas offense and that he looks competent doing it, but I hadn’t seen stats like these.
Bobby Karalla
@bobbykaralla
Top-75 guys in picks set, ranked by team points per possession following a pick they set.
1. Porzingis (1.202)
2. Powell (1.187)
3. Giannis (1.181)
4. Harrell (1.176)
8. Kleber (1.160)
(h/t Second Spectrum)
That picks stat is meaningless without volume
Nice tear-down of Dolan in the Wash Post today:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/05/knicks-fans-sell-team-jim-dolan/
Oh, I totally agree. Just noting that the Knicks could take him back without giving back anything more than a fake second rounder, if OKC just wanted out from under his salary.
https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/05/knicks-gathering-intel-chris-paul-trade
Why???? You cannot make this stuff up. Love Chris paul, but he has a player option at 45 mil at the end of this contract
So Dallas has 3 of the top 8 pick setters in the NBA? No. Doncic is just insanely good at basketball. KP has nothing to do with it.
Yesterday i saw Frank giving 2 very good passes for easy buckets and both players failed to finish.
Stats said 0
Eye said 2
I saw him also playing good D in 2-3 consecutive plays which resulted in travelling, offensive foul and bad pass by utah or something like that ….
Stats gave him 0
Eye saw Frank making 3 winning D plays
That’s why i agree with Strat that stats ain’t yet able to give the best possible info about a player’s impact in a game.
I feel they’re still valueing the classic aspects of the game but not the so called hustle or all the winning plays.
I believe that’s one of the main reasons that some players are highly selfish. They still believe that filling the dated box score w/o playing team basketball will bring them contract, fame, legacy…
And they’re right!
But it ain’t gonna bring them a championship.
Translation: Frank Ntilikina ranks 82/87 qualifying point guards in RPM this year.
Somehow, we have to argue about whether or not this dude represents the standard return on the eight overall pick.
Someone above asked for stats and references suggesting that Ntilikina’s performance is typical of a number 9 pick. Here goes. Consider this:
https://www.82games.com/nbadraftpicks.htm
The ninth pick is a star 30% of the time, solid 10% of the time, role player 35% of the time, deep bench 20% of the time and complete bust 5% of the time. So the median outcome and also the most common outcome is role player. How do they define role player? The sum of a role players’ points, assists and rebounds per game for his career is between 10 and 14.9. What are Frank’s numbers? This year his number is 11 and his career value so far is 11.1. So if he keeps performing just like he has so far he’s right in the middle of 9th pick results distribution, I.e. we got the typical result for a ninth pick at least as far as points, rebounds and assists go. (And the expected result is not any different for an eighth pick)
stats are funny…there’s just so many different data points which exist…like I don’t know: a lot lot…
making it so
: depending in how they’re used – they can tell so many different stories…
I like your numbers knick fan in NJ, but, I also really enjoy watching frank play basketball…I still enjoy defense and team play…
I think the real frank question we should consider – what kind of salary and length of contract should he get going forward…
how cool would it be for frank to break that long streak of not getting an offer after their rookie deal…
you want frank up on that wall, you need frank up on that wall…
the knicks suck, frank does not…hell looks like timmy wasn’t all that bad…
we neither develop or utilize basketball talent well…
we really suck at finding and establishing effective roles for our players…we consistently play losing basketball…
I like watching Frank play too. My numbers are conservative with respect to Franks’ value since he’s young enough that he could improve a lot by the time his career is over. I’m just showing that already he’s made it as a role player.
Apparently Bulls are making moves to get Presti. Didn’t really want him when Ujiri was in the picture but now my feelings have changed.
if you just focused on frank’s foot and hand movement for a game, it’s not to hard to see it’s not normal…his eye tracking and movement are not typical at all, even amongst other professional athletes…
I know it’s weird, but, really enjoy watching him maul guys all over the court…
I haven’t looked at the stats, but, it seems this year he’s anticipating opposing player movement a lot better and taking more charges…
what most amazes me though about frank and his defense is his temperament…despite being a total nuisance on defense, he doesn’t get in to it a lot with other players…
it’s not like he’s beating guys up, like a lot of good defenders do…frank just sort of taps you to death…
it’s a joy to watch him and mitch defend…the times when elf and DSJ rack up steals…hell, even julius has had a few nice blocks this season…
Going after Chris Paul, to me at least, says the Knicks may not be sold on the crop of point guards coming out this year, and I agree with them. Trade Bobby Portis and Wayne Ellington for Chris Paul then draft Obi Toppin and Aaron Nesmith.
I want the Knicks to trade for Chris Paul simply because I believe he will unlock Mitchell Robinson. The most I would give up in any CP3 trade though would be Dennis Smith Jr, Kevin Knox, Wayne Ellington, and Bobby Portis.
Frank was a terrible pick at #9 in that draft, case closed. Who gives a shit what the average outcome is?
He’s shown some glimpses of competence, sure, but he been replacement level overall. For what he’s getting paid, you can find better players easily pretty much all the time. Buy hey, here’s to him turning the corner someday soon!
If Rose gives up assets to take on Paul, or even gets him without getting at least one decent asset in return, would be Dolan’s Razor at its sharpest.
For the billionth time, don’t use raw per game numbers, ever. According to 82games’s metric Elfrid Payton, Julius Randle, Marcus Morris, and RJ Barrett are star players. We have 4 star players in our starting lineup, so why are we one of the worst teams in the NBA?
The crazy thing about Paul to the Knicks is that even in decline phase he would still be the best PG the Knicks have had in the last 20+ years. Not keen at $45 million though……
I think getting him for just nothing might be fun. But yes, trading actual assets for him would be ungood. He’s Chris Paul. We all love the guy. He’s a god among men. He’s also going to be 35 years old next year (heck, he’ll be 35 this May!), signed for two more years at $85 million for the two years and the Knicks are terrible. What in the world is the point?
The best explanation for why the team would trade for Chris Paul is incompetence. Like Phil, Leon has his guys and is pursuing some amorphous concept of positive culture rather than methodically building a team.
The second best explanation is Rose doesn’t GAF about the Knicks and is gonna do favors for his “former” clients for 2-3 years before media pressure forces Dolan to fire him, at which point he’ll return to CAA.
Then there’s a 3rd best explanation, which is simply that Rose understands that creating press for guys ups their value, and so while he isn’t interested in acquiring players like Melo or Paul, he is happy to try to help them out with comments to the media. I hope it’s this explanation, but I have a hard time believing it given the Knicks’ history with CAA… like if anyone understands how stupid and easily manipulated and untrustworthy Dolan is, it’s Leon Rose. He had like a decade long con going on the guy. Would you really want to collaborate with a guy like that?
We clearly want Paul and we clearly intend to run another mediocre “competitive” team next year
I think Paul and a lower-level FA plus RJ and Mitch, in addition to Randle, Payton, and maybe Bullock, plus if any 2-3 of Iggy, Hinton, Frank, Knox or the draft picks can contribute next year, you have an interesting team for the next 2 years until Paul comes off the books and draft picks are made. And who knows, maybe Rose has enough gravitas to engineer some kind of big-3 situation that results in a serious contender. He is very well liked by players, so I’m willing to wait until his first deal to judge whether he’s capable of the agent-to-management transition.
It’s pretty clear that Rose was not brought on board to tank for the next 2-3 years, so everything has to be judged through that lens. Non-tanking is not the preferred method of team-building around here, but it’s been successfully done over and over again by other teams. You just have to draft well and make smart trades and signings relative to the cap.
I used the per game numbers because the study I linked to and quoted used those numbers. Of the links I found relevant to the question “how valuable is the ninth pick” it was the only one I could actually compare Frank to. Other metrics would be interesting to look at, but I don’t know of a similar study using different metrics. In this case, I don’t think using per game numbers is so bad. Of course they are heavily influenced by playing time, but playing time itself is an indicator that is related to how highly coaches think of a player. For example, role players get playing time and end of benchers do not.
Of course we are going to give up assets to pay Chris Paul $90M for his age 35 and 36 seasons. And of course we are going to win 32 and 31 games in those two seasons.
The Razor has spoken.
Razor is busy in other places at the moment.
Wily Hernangomez is still in the NBA. 14 and 6 against the Nuggets last night. He’s no Julius Randle though.
Just wanted to go into the wayback machine….
Also, NBA Desktop is all about the Knicks…
https://www.theringer.com/2020/3/6/21167707/nba-desktop-new-york-knicks-are-absolutely-pathetic
I’ve been thinking about why OKC might trade Paul. They have a lot of assets, but if they want to use them to trade for someone good they might have to move Paul to make cap space to bring someone in. Then NY could help out by taking on Paul’s contract. Basically we would be selling our cap space by acquiring him.
Chris and Mitch would be wild. Dump Knox, Bobby, and Dot.
Oh dear. I don’t know quite where to start with this.
1) The question of whether or not “points + rebounds + assists” tells you anything, like anything at all, about a player’s conduciveness to winning was litigated in…the ’80s? The site itself says upfront that it’s a silly way to do this.
2) Frank Ntilikina was the 8th overall pick, not the 9th
3) Their sample is very old (1989-2008) and probably completely outdated.
4) The average 8th overall pick averages 15.2 PTS + TRB + AST (can’t believe I’m even playing this game) according to them, and as you said Frank’s career figure is 11.1, so what are we even arguing about?
5) There are many studies on this topic using metrics way better than whatever PTS +TRB +ASTs is supposed to be (I mean Jesus, say what you will about all-in-ones, they trounce this garbage), but I don’t want to bother to dig them up and link them if you’re just going to ignore them when they inevitably show that Frank Ntilikina is a god awful use of the 8th pick. I’ve done it before, and had that happen. If I find a few, will you actually read them?
>>>If you assume the next front office is just as stupid as every other front office we’ve had in years, and it’s just gonna waste the cap space anyway signing useless players, then ok, I guess I’d rather watch CP3 do CP3 things for 2 years until he gracefully retires.<<<
For the record, this is 100% what I believe and it was the foundation for my pro-CP3 stand last month.
No one is discussing whether playing Frank is conducive to winning. We are discussing whether Frank is typical value for where he was picked. So your first comment is completely irrelevant
If you look at the data in the link, Frank is typical of an eighth or ninth pick because the numbers aren’t much different between the two picks
Frank is a defensive specialist at the moment. If he scores somewhat less than many eighth picks, that’s to be expected. He is still in the middle of the range for eighth picks.
The sample looks at career values so it has to use older data. Frank coming out in the middle of the range for eighth picks but he has potential to improve because of his age. So he could end up better than a typical eighth pick by this metric. He won’t end up…
If you point me to a similar study that uses a different metric, I’d be happy to take a look. I tried looking at Carmelo, but their top similarity score was Jamal Crawford. That was hard to take seriously
Nice piece from Lowe today, which mentions us in two separate items:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28842662/ten-things-like-including-la-clippers-nba-title-favorites
>>>It remains astonishing that in the year of our basketball gods 2019, the Knicks drafted a ballhandling bulldozer with a shaky jumper — RJ Barrett — and introduced him to the NBA by surrounding him with: Julius Randle at power forward; paint-bound centers; and point guards who can’t shoot.
Every defender is in the paint. There are no driving gaps. Mitchell Robinson rolls into brick walls.<<<
Is that bad?
(this is another reason I think Paul is worth overpaying in salary, btw; I trust him to fix the on-court dysfunction, and I trust that to help RJ, Mitch, and the rest of the kids. Granted, a functional GM could do that, too, but beggars can't be choosers).
I hate those studies that take pick position because it ignores a fundamental aspect of the draft in favor of cheap hindsight: players are not locked in their draft positions. Ntilikina was drafted 8th, but if the draft order was different, he could have been drafted 15th, 30th, 6th, I don’t know, there’s never a consensus between the big boards of all teams. I don’t think it’s relevant at all if Ntilikina was picked 8th or 15th, the only thing that matters is what he has produced in the NBA so far. Expected value for a pick is never very meaningful because the results are so wildly different, Giannis was drafted 15th and on the very next draft the 15th pick was Adreian Payne who’s out of the league, and the 16th pick was Jusuf Nurkic. Taking the median value between Giannis and Payne and saying that the expected value of the 15th pick is a role player seems like an exercise in futility for me, because no team drafting at any position is ever expecting or intending to draft a guy that is equal to the median expected value of the draft slot.
If they’re expecting much more than expected value, they’re stupid and if they’re internally valuing draft picks at much higher than expected value, they’re even more stupid. You do not value a draft pick by looking three years later and saying, “Oh, look, there were three really good players picked in the next 25 picks.” And if we’re actually on a “stats-based blog,” we won’t do that either — because it’s not stats-based. Stats-based is using expected value.
Stats-based blogs also should not look at the historical expected value of the draft slots, which includes grown-ass men playing their entire career, and then look at a 20 or 21 year old who has not yet met that career expected value and continue insisting that the 20 or 21 year old was a “bust” draft pick.
https://twitter.com/jga41agher/status/1234902183214084096
Sing it….
it’s working…heck of a sacrifice to those folks buying a ticket then getting tossed (and, potentially banned), but – it’s working…
Tickets are cheap AF right now (h/t Coronavirus).
What could be a better community experience than this whole board going to a game and chanting sell the team full throated for 48 minutes?
Then we go to DRed’s house for pizza.
This threat by the security guard could be entirely empty, but it’s really troubling that the NYPD is apparently possibly enforcing Jim Dolan’s whims as if they are actually the law. This should be clear: there’s no law against yelling “sell the team” in Madison Square Garden. Jim Dolan (unfortunately) does have the authority as a private facility operator to revoke your ticket license peacefully for yelling “sell the team,” but that’s an entirely different matter from arrest. If the police are getting involved with these evictions, it should only be as a means of keeping the peace between the potentially arguing parties and they should be entirely even-handed — i.e., MSG security has no right to start putting its hands on people or grabbing people or threatening violence or anything of the sort and if they do, the police should be arresting them, not the fans. MSG can ask the fan to leave and the fan has to leave or they’re trespassing and that is a violation of the law — a teeny, tiny one, but yes. But if security comes over and says you have to leave and you leave, the police have no place to do anything and you’ve obviously done nothing illegal.
Like most Knick fans, I find it utterly outrageous that Jim Dolan is operating the Garden in this way where peaceful paying patrons are getting aggressively confronted by security and police for innocuous, unthreatening statements and it’s kind of troubling that Adam Silver and the NBA are just letting the outrages continue over and over and over again.
“Like most Knick fans, I find it utterly outrageous that Jim Dolan is operating the Garden in this way where peaceful paying patrons are getting aggressively confronted by security and police for innocuous, unthreatening statements and it’s kind of troubling that Adam Silver and the NBA are just letting the outrages continue over and over and over again.”
I think we have found common ground…..
hopefully more fans are willing to chant “sell the team”, and, it does reach a point where adam silver needs to intercede…
More:
Security doesn’t have any right to detain you either, make you wait for anything, meet up with their supervisor, meet with Dolan — any of that. They have no right over you at all other than peacefully asking you to leave the facility. They don’t have any right to use force against you to get you out, either, absent you doing something that reasonably makes them believe they have to in order to get you out. You’ve broken no law by yelling “sell the team,” you’ve broken no law by telling the security guards to stick it where the sun don’t shine if they demand that you do anything but leave the premises. They’re private nobodies, the equivalent of bouncers at a bar. MSG is a public place, so you can’t go about disturbing the peace in any way (and yelling “sell the team” isn’t even close to that), but otherwise, you’re basically in a private bar when you’re there. The bar owner can ask you to leave his bar, but nothing beyond that.
The owner of this team sics platoons of security guards on peaceful 15 year olds. Outrageous.
is mitch playing tonight?
if i get coronavirus it will not be because i attended a knicks game-that’s the dred guarantee
send jimmy D a letter E – let him know!!!
maybe you’ll be graced with him writing you back and calling you an alcoholic…
man is that dude out of control, and, sadly to date no one has been able to slow his roll…hell, if anything he’s just getting worse…
hopefully though there’s enough people with the will to show up and help keep it messy and uncomfortable for dolan…until eventually silver needs to do – something…
The problem is who would want Jimmy D as a landlord.
The other problem with Paul is we can get Fred Van Vleet w/o giving up picks. He’s a better fit and costs less. CP3 is only a better fit if he somehow lands us Anthony Davis in the offseason.