SNY.com: 2 trade packages Knicks could use to land Thunder PG Chris Paul

If we got a pick, sure. Otherwise what’s the point, chasing an 8th seed?

why not – well except for the part about losing frank…now cp3 with frank, mitch and RJ – now you’re talking…

If the Thunder don’t want to have Chris Paul’s contract on their books they need to pay us something to take it from them.

I don’t think we need to include either Frank or Knox at this point in the rebuild. Afterall, for there to be any value in brining on CP3 at this point in his career at that salary, he has got to have our young players to mentor.

I like Bullock/Smith jr or smith/Payton a hole lot better. Why give up players that we like who may still have a bright future if we are bidding against ourselves. Sounds Millsy to me!

I like Bullock/Smith jr or smith/Payton a hole lot better. Why give up players that we like who may still have a bright future if we are bidding against ourselves. Sounds Millsy to me!

I think the issue is that OKC doesn’t feel like they have to rush the trade. They’d prefer to deal him to clear his salary, but it’s not an imperative. I agree that no other team out there is probably offering anything of note for him, either, but if they’re willing to hold on to him, the Knicks might have to give them at least someone who might be of value to the Thunder, like Knox or Ntilikina.

Owen:
Agree that we need to get at least one of the Thunder’s nineteen first rounders back. Maybe two.

Off the top of my head, I honestly don’t know if 19 is hyperbole or not

You can say LOL 8 seed all you want, but I would like this team:

PG: Paul, Hayes or Halliburton
SG: Bullock, Ntilikina
SF: Barrett, Iggy
PF: TBD, Knox
C: Robinson

(I put TBD for PF bc I’d like to dump Randle and get someone at his salary that could actually shoot, like Gallinari, or even Morris is the cost to bring him back is low. But who knows.)

I love Chris Paul, but he’s making stupid money, you have to get something from OKC. It’s a negative value contract.

The question isn’t “is Chris Paul worth $40mm”. He isn’t. The question is are we likely going to have better ways to spend $40mm this summer and next. I doubt it.

We have incredible cap flexibility this summer. Especially if we can find a taker for Randle.

The only guys we should be holding onto are:

RJ – 8.2
Frank – 6.1
Knox – 4.5
Bullock – 4.2
Mitchell – 1.6
Iggy – 1.5
Our pick – 6.1 (using cap hold for #4 pick)
LA pick – 2.1

That’s under $35mm total for 8 players, leaving $80mm in cap space minus the 4 empty roster penalties. If for some reason we can’t get rid of Julius Randle, we only have $61mm in cap space. That’s a lot of money. We’re not going to find $61mm worth of Hinkie trades out there.

I’ll take Paul and Wood for $61mm, draft a backup for Paul, and roll the dice that he can replicate the season he just had at least once. If he does, we’re looking at a decent Knicks team for only the 2nd time this century.

I’m not going to say no to that because OKC won’t give us a pick.

What do we think the potential to dump Randle without giving up a pick is?

The contract isn’t terrible (it’s one year plus a mostly nonguaranteed second year). But he’s just such an out of style player. It’s really hard for me to imagine a team wanting him to absorb him into $19mm of cap space.

Fred Van Vleet is a free agent. If we clear enough cap space wouldn’t he be a better option than CP3 with some long term value?

Also, we could include Randle in the CP3 trade. That still saves OKC a little over $20 million this year and $40 million next year if he’s cut.

I think Ingram is the next best free agent, but yes, Van Vleet is up there. I also have no idea what the market will look like this summer. Is the cap going to go down a shocking amount, perhaps? Will teams no longer be willing to spend a lot of money? It’s very confusing times we’re in right now.

Ingram is restricted.

I think the Pellies would match, too. Just noting that he’s the next best free agent after the Brow. And hey, who knows with the cheap ass Pellies?

Holy shit, CBS Sports, how the fuck do you not even have Christian Wood on your list at all?!?

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/2020-nba-free-agency-top-30-players-headlined-by-anthony-davis-gordon-hayward-and-brandon-ingram/

I mean, Paul was an All-Star just this season, so last legs seems a bit much.

I don’t think just having a veteran on the team matters much, but I think a Hall of Fame point guard has more of an impact than most.

I am on board with bringing Paul on, for that salary, without getting a pick back, but they at least have to take players we don’t mind losing. If it involves losing a player we think can be a piece for the team going forward, I would not do it. And yes, I am including both Frank and Knox in that category. Perhaps even Bullock.

They can take their combo pick from a group including Ellington, Portis, Gibson, Payton, Randle, Smith Jr. If they want more, I would just pass, and continue the rebuild.

Trading for Chris Paul should not be plan A. It’s not the best thing we can do with the opportunity in front of us (7 1RPs in the next 4 drafts, RJ Barrett, and Mitchell Robinson), and we should absolutely be looking to add younger players to build around Mitch and RJ. I’d only pursue adding Chris Paul in a world where we foolishly trade Mitchell Robinson and some draft capital for Joel Embiid because that drastically changes the win curve for us. We should be looking to go draft a point guard, sign shooters at the 1, 2, and 4, and let Mitch and RJ do the damn thing.

With all of that being said, if we’re hellbent on trading for CP3, I need Julius Randle to be in that deal. I’d also want for the Knicks to take LaMelo Ball in the draft if we had CP3. Draft Ball and play him at the 2 next to CP3 for two years. When CP3 is done, you hopefully have a calculated LaMelo Ball to add to a reliable RJ Barrett and a defensive centerpiece in Mitchell Robinson.

Also if you want Van Fleet or Wood, having Paul here is probably a requisite. Neither of those guys are likely to come here unless you drastically overpay.

If we can dump Randle in the Paul trade, we can afford both of them and roll out a starting 5 of Paul, Van Fleet, Bullock, Wood, Robinson, and then all our 21 and under draft picks are properly slotted into bench roles until they stop playing like garbage.

Then project where you are in two years when $44mm is rolling off the cap.

Then project where you are in two years when $44mm is rolling off the cap.

Frank and Knox will have either made it or been kicked to the curb.

Van Fleet and Wood will probably be on two year deals. Robinson will be on the first year of his extension. And we’ll have six first round picks on the team on their rookie deals (Barrett, two this year, two next year, one in 2022).

Now that is a Knicks team that can attract a superstar free agent in his prime.

If OKC really wants to dump CP3’s salary, I’m sure we can talk them into Portis, Ellington, and Payton. I don’t wanna give up Taj or Bullock. Hell, they can even have Knox. They’d have to give us at least one draft pick and I wouldn’t care if it’s late 1st

Totes McGoats as Totes McGoats: If OKC really wants to dump CP3’s salary, I’m sure we can talk them into Portis, Ellington, and Payton. I don’t wanna give up Taj or Bullock

Not sure how those would work with team options/non-guarantees…Brian?

I think giving up one of the very worst of our first rounders (this year’s Clips pick) for Paul is palatable if the personnel exchanged includes Randle and DSjr but no other young players.

Paul doesn’t have to mentor the young players. He just has to reveal their true potential, which I think he can do.

Z-man:
Put another way, I think we need to focus on acquiring and keeping high-IQ players, and Randle and DSjr don’t qualify.

I agree that DSJ isn’t high IQ enough basketball wise, but wouldn’t it be a good thing for him to battle CP3 & Frank for his career? With a guy like CP3 to learn from, I’d be inclined to give DSJ one last shot to learn and apply. I mean- he is athletically gifted, he just doesn’t know how to use it as a PG. However, if another team is still enthralled with DSJ’s “potential”, TRADE THAT MOFO lol

The Glass Half Rebuilt: With all of that being said, if we’re hellbent on trading for CP3, I need Julius Randle to be in that deal. I’d also want for the Knicks to take LaMelo Ball in the draft if we had CP3. Draft Ball and play him at the 2 next to CP3 for two years. When CP3 is done, you hopefully have a calculated LaMelo Ball to add to a reliable RJ Barrett and a defensive centerpiece in Mitchell Robinson.

  

I like that plan (it’s what the Thunder did with SGA) but I’d prefer to do it with a prospect who can shoot, like Halliburton or (dare I say it…) Hayes.

The more I think about it, a Paul-Van Fleet backcourt would be pretty sweet. Van Fleet plays very well off the ball and can play enough minutes at the 1 to keep Paul fresh. Then we don’t have to focus on PG with our pick and can just take the BPA (which would should do anyway, but whatever).

I can see that being appealing to Van Fleet, whereas I don’t see him being interested in coming here to be our savior.

>Paul just being here does very little for our younger players. But our younger players (other than Mitchell) simply aren’t very good in the roles we’re putting them in.<

I disagree. I think Paul has a coaching job in his future if he wants it. Having a winning player like that around teaching players the finer details of the game, sharing the ball, making the right play and the work ethic required to win are all a plus. It may not be a large enough benefit to warrant a trade for that salary (the point I was making), but absent the salary, i'd love him to have take some of our young players under his wing.

Don’t other players kind of hate Chris Paul?

I’d love to watch him play but I am not sure what the point would be. Unless we are getting picks.

***But look at the age 34 season he just turned in. How many guys who are good enough to turn in a season like that at 34 suddenly become useless at 35?***

I like the idea of bringing in Paul. But NBA players rarely have a slow decline in their 30s. Even the greats fall off the cliff fast. Nash was amazing in his late 30s and the Lakers traded a boatload or picks for him and he woke up in LA and was suddenly terrible. That’s the way it goes. Paul could be as great at 35 as he was at 34. But that’s when Barkley fell off the cliff, and Drexler, and Ewing…

B-b-b-but John Stockton! Karl Malone! LeBron James! (All outliers to an extreme degree.)

I remember this one fondly:

Paul Pierce at 36: .595 TS% on 22.4% USG

Paul Pierce at 38: .489 TS% on 17.8% USG (playing next to Chris Paul during the last gasp of the Clippers’ contending era)

Not $40 million AAV fine, but somewhere around fringe all-star level.

He’d be fine on LAL for the MLE during their very-short championship window. But there’s also a good chance that his decline happens rapidly and irreversibly. You do not want to be holding this contract when that time comes. Or you do, and you tank your way to a couple top-5 picks. But Chris Paul is not going to be happy about that (and he, like most players, will likely be getting worse faster than he believes he is, so good luck trying to convince him to play 30 MPG for a 20-62 team.)

The fact that we’re debating the merits of trading for a soon-to-be 35-year-old 6’1″ player who will make $85.5M over the next two years– it’s a bad sign, guys.

I have the intuition that Paul is a noodge.

This is the thing.

He doesn’t seem like the kind of cat who is gonna be super into joining a team that is the dregs of the league and trying to teach the 1.5 prospects on the team how to play correctly. I don’t think this would go the way people think it is gonna go. He’d probably be a malcontent.

Lebron isn’t liked by everyone either.

There are players who are leaders and also really well liked, like Magic, but sometimes you need that player who will kick other player’s in the ass for not giving their all. This is where Jowles makes fun of me for talking about culture and make jokes about rough rydas, etc…but CP3 running the show with Thibs as the coach, getting on the young players and pushing them to get better. If they don’t want that then we probably don’t want them as players. For what its worth, I think RJ would respond to being pushed like this. Frank too. Mitch seems more chill but also seems to go with the flow. Knox might not like it but then again, we talk constantly about his low motor.

It’s not about him being liked. It’s about him getting disinterested and phoning it in, and making the culture even worse. Somehow I doubt that he’s going to have a real good attitude about finishing his distinguished career in basketball Siberia. He’d probably see it as a punishment, and I wouldn’t blame him.

I did a quick search of guards in the 3pt era who put up WS48 of .120 or higher in .1500mp

At age 35, the list had 10 names; same for age 36; at age 37 it shrunk to 6; at 38, 3.

Seems like the big drop-off is between 36 and 37…

So if Paul gives you one fringe all-star season, he then turns into a giant expiring….and will probably have at least something left. From a marketing perspective, it’s not a terrible “reasonably likely” scenario.

More pointedly, this is not a Joakim Noah scenario with 4 guaranteed years of a player who just put up 3 shitty seasons. It’s 2 years where he can possibly shake up a moribund franchise with no long-term commitment (again, assuming that we trade nothing of real value for him.

I agree with tnfh that it’s an unlikely scenario, especially in that Paul would not want to come here, but I have to say that it would be kind of excited if it happened. A Paul-RJ-Bullock-Bertans-Mitch starting lineup with Frank, Knox, Iggy, Wooten and Harkless off the bench, plus this year’s lottery pick, would be a fun group to root for, and the future would not be compromised by it, or not by much with the flatttened lottery odds.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: I remember this one fondly:

Paul Pierce at 36: .595 TS% on 22.4% USG

Paul Pierce at 38: .489 TS% on 17.8% USG

Not sure this a good argument against taking Chris Paul for 2 years at age 35.

Neither is Nash. The Lakers acquired him at 38.

All these outliers who were turning in peak seasons at age 34 still had them at 35 and 36.

The argument you guys are trying to make is “Chris Paul isn’t an outlier.”

I do think that a lot of the math depends on whether you think Paul will be an outlier. After the season he just had at 34, I don’t think it’s unseasonable to believe that he is an outlier.

I mean, is it not telling to you guys that OKC would be hypothetically willing to do this trade, despite fitting the “young team on the rise being mentored by Chris Paul” mold to a much, much greater extent than us?

Z-man:
I know that the prevailing thinking is that Dolan would never bring Lin back, but something about this week makes me wonder. It’s not like he doesn’t forgive, I mean, Latrell cursed him out to his face mercilessly and relentlessly from the court in his return to MSG and now he’s Dolan’s favorite son. Something seems to be up with the Linsanity rebroadcast.

I would be totally on board for that (at the right salary, of course!) He’d be a damn good backup to FVV or Paul or LaMelo at this stage.

They just have nothing else to play and you can market Linsanity as a thing to watch for a week rather than hey here’s a random game for you guys.

I thought they should have given Lin a look last year. He would have made a decent backup with DSJr and Frank as giant questionmarks. He would hurt draft position, but the plan clearly wasn’t to tank. Surprised no one signed him and he went to China fairly early in the offseason.

We discussed it a bit during the offseason, the NBA hasn’t expanded in almost twenty years, while the rest of the world has massively stepped up their game, so the amount of NBA talent out there is amazing. The NBA could easily expand again. Meanwhile, NBA GMs have gotten a lot more stringent in terms of roster spots. Nowadays, if you aren’t a young guy who might be something someday or a veteran who truly makes a difference, NBA teams really aren’t interested in you. That’s what made the Knicks’ offseason so peculiar. Guys like Wayne Ellington are barely getting NBA contracts and the Knicks gave him $9 million guaranteed on day one of free agency!

That said, sure, Lin does standout a bit among the other NBA guys playing in China. I figure it’s gotta be ego. He didn’t want to try to win a job in training camp (like Shump and a couple of others did) and instead preferring the guaranteed money and the glory from being an Asian-American in the China league. I think that was a mistake, but eh, I guess different people have different priorities.

***OKC is a competitive team with real NBA players on it. NYK is the dregs of the league.***

But the allure of the Garden!

But the biggest market in the world!

LOL I looked at a comparison of Knox/Frank to see who is worse and here’s what I got:
Player A: Player B:
3P% . 337 .311
eFG .439 .423
Ast/36 1.5 5.1
Reb/36 5.6 3.7
Pts/36 15 10
TS .474 .450
WS/48 -.017 -.011
VORP -2.7 -2.5
ORtg 94 93
DRtg 115 113

“Mecca of basketball doe” is not a thing anymore.

And yes, we ARE the Kings.

Chris Paul makes them a low playoff team in the east.

This is literally the most commonly cited example of the worst possible place for an NBA franchise.

What is the point of riding the treadmill of mediocrity for two seasons? If you’re right, we’d have the privilege of getting swept in the first round for two years while the clock ticks on extensions for Mitch/RJ/our 2020 pick.

We’d also be picking 15th or below after both years (again, if you’re correct about the dubious proposition that Chris Paul makes us a playoff team), so you can’t assume we’d be adding much via the draft.

Chris Paul would unceremoniously come off the books in 2022, and I see no reason we wouldn’t be right back where we are now except with Mitch being signed to an expensive extension instead of his current tiny contract.

The other outcome (and I find this one more likely) is that you’re wrong, as in the current Knicks + aging Chris Paul aren’t a playoff team. In this scenario our draft picks are worse than they otherwise would’ve been, and we have far less flexibility to take on salary dumps and/or sign free agents that actually fit our timeline. What do we gain?

No one has made a coherent argument that any of this leads to positive outcomes that outweigh the obvious negatives. No one seems to be able to answer the question “what exactly is the point of trading for Chris Paul?”

Actually, fk my last point. Trading for Chris Paul while being so far behind on the win curve, that it’s October in Wuhan, makes so little sense that I don’ tknow why we’re entertaining it. Sure, if we had KP, maybe if Randle was any good, or RJ/Mitch/Frank/Knox were farther along, but NO. They’re not. What would be the point?? Culture? Wingspan? To attract another Afflalo?

passing on Doncic was all sorts of Knicksy

And you guys are judging the team based on our win total/percentage for the whole year. Not looking at the win pace for the team under Miller. Fizdale was horrible. A competent coach with CP3 and Mitch. Rj and the youngsters. Some vet minimum dudes to fill out the bench and a back up PG lottery pick like Hayes or LaMelo. That team would be fun to watch.

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU ALL HAVE AGAINST FUN? (can you tell I’m still not getting sleep?)

Its 2 years. Its next season and then he’s an expiring contract. We’re talking about getting him with minimal/no draft picks and young players.

We do better drafting later in the draft anyways. And who says next year we couldn’t use our pick and the dallas pick to move up if we really wanted to?

OR BUY A PICK? Teams are gonna be hurting for money next year.

Donnie Walsh: Typically, players that are great enough to play great in their mid 30s experience an injury, and it is MUCH harder to come back from an injury when you’re 35 vs 25 at this level. A relatively minor injury to a rookie can end the career of a 14 year vet. There is no way to know whether Chris Paul will be a $40,000,000 cheerleader next year or not. So you should only take the risk if that $40,000,000 isn’t very important to you.

Guys like Paul are more likely to sustain nagging injuries that take longer to heal, for sure. Still, it’s a 2 year commitment, compared with, say, Amare, who was at much higher risk even in his first 2 years based on his history than Paul probably is now.

Paul is a brilliant guy who likely knows how to take care of his aging body at this stage, The layoff probably helps him, too. He also has the kind of non-vertical, non-quick-twitch game that would likely age better than, say, Russell Westbrook. You never know, but if I had to bet, I would come down on the side of him having 2 pretty good years.

I’m not advocating for signing him at all, just saying that I’d be kind of excited if we did. It’s two years, we can survive that.

It would be fun to root for CP3 for a year or 2, if he’s still any good. On the other hand, we could sign some decent young talent in an offseason without many teams with cap space. Much rather throw excess money at a young FVV and Wood.

FVV
BulLOCK
RJ??
Wood
Mitch

is a solid young-ish core that will add a number of 1st round picks over the next few years. That’s a team that could attract a superstar next time one is available. Even without a superstar, progress from our young players and we make the playoffs several years in a row.

Early Bird:
It would be fun to root for CP3 for a year or 2, if he’s still any good. On the other hand, we could sign some decentyoung talent in an offseason without many teams with cap space. Much rather throw excess money at a young FVV and Wood.

FVV
BulLOCK
RJ??
Wood
Mitch

is a solid young-ish core that will add a number of 1st round picks over the next few years. That’s a team that could attract a superstar next time one is available. Even without a superstar, progress from our young players and we make the playoffs several years in a row.

1000% this. Chris Paul, are you serious? This offseason the FA options aren’t great but you have a young PG who would be perfect for this team in VanVleet and a couple of young, stretch 4’s in Wood and Bertins who would also be perfect for this team. Signing VanVleet and one of Wood/Bertins would be a perfect offseason plus adding the 3 draft picks (the 2 in the 1st rd and the 2nd rd pick from Charlotte). Add those 2 FA’s plus 3 picks in the Top 38 of the draft and this would be the best Knicks offseason in God knows when.

BigBlueAL: 1000% this. Chris Paul, are you serious? This offseason the FA options aren’t great but you have a young PG who would be perfect for this team in VanVleet and a couple of young, stretch 4’s in Wood and Bertins who would also be perfect for this team. Signing VanVleet and one of Wood/Bertins would be a perfect offseason

VanVleet and Wood may be perfect for us, but we are not perfect for VanVleet and Wood.

They might consider us if Paul is here. They’re not taking our calls if he isn’t. No one will be.

This is why no superstar dumb enough to want to come here should be turned away.

Hubert: VanVleet and Wood may be perfect for us, but we are not perfect for VanVleet and Wood.

They might consider us if Paul is here.They’re not taking our calls if he isn’t.

Wood is a young kid who finally got some playing time after bouncing around a few teams, VanVleet went undrafted. You think these 2 guys are not gonna want to come to the Knicks???? Neither one has made big money, if the Knicks outbid the other teams for them they’d both sign with the Knicks in a heartbeat.

They must think it’s 2009

Age 35 in a basketball career is like age 103 for a human life. If you want to argue that a 103 year old will be similarly healthy 106 as they are at 103… well you’ve got a mountain of trends that aggressively suggest the opposite, so you need a mountain of evidence to tip the scales and convincingly argue that any single 103 year old will be not suffer significant decline in the next three years. Same thing goes for Paul and arguing that his next season will resemble his last one.

And as far as the “it’s not so bad” stuff I’m hearing here, that’s exactly the reaction most of us had to Phil Jackson’s moves with the exception of the Noah contract. Even Melo’s mega max was not so bad according to many here. Not so bad to me means “not so much worse than doing nothing”, which is fine if other teams are doing nothing, but the teams move up out of the garbage heap are doing so much more than nothing. The distance between “not so bad” and “on a path to relevancy” is enormous.

Would OKC do any of those or just let CP3 expire?

That’s the issue. They’re the #5 seed with him. They’d prefer to get out from under his money, especially with them having two younger guys who could play the point, but it’s not imperative, so I think they’d just as soon hold on to him if they have to give up anything for him.

It’s fair to debate whether the Knicks should give up anything for him, but I don’t think the Thunder are in any rush to move him to the point where giving up picks would come into play.

max fisher-cohen: Even Melo’s mega max was not so bad according to many here.

A 2-year commitment is clearly less bad than a 5-year commitment. That said, if you’re suggesting that the dumbness of taking on CP3 would be a sign that many more dumb moves would follow, that’s a very fair point. So yeah, I’d be more afraid of what it suggested about future moves than the deal itself.

If they get Paul for Randle and DSjr but no assets, I wouldn’t see it as the end of the world.

As MFC points out, these pointless moves that don’t move the needle much in either direction are best understood as affirmatively bad moves.

The Knicks are in direct competition with 29 other teams in a league with a finite number of assets and a salary cap. Those other teams are not going to stop trying to get better in sustainable fashion just because the Knicks refuse to do that. Any asset accessible to us that we don’t gain is an asset another team keeps or gains.

So while it’s easy to say, for example, signing Bobby Portis to a huge 1-year deal was silly but not actively harmful, another way of looking at it is we did that instead of taking on Moe Harkless’ expiring contract for a pick, or using that roster spot on Christian Wood or Duncan Robinson. It was in fact actively harmful because we passed on the opportunity to do something good.

thenoblefacehumper: As MFC points out, these pointless moves that don’t move the needle much in either direction are best understood as affirmatively bad moves.

I get the whole opportunity cost thing. The thing for me is, in the real world where we have no choices but to either root for the team or not, if the Knicks brought on CP3 without giving up much, I wouldn’t be crushed.

geo: nba officially postponed the draft today…you wanna talk some more about frank 🙂

actually big blue…was going through the garage today and had to figure out which issues of my yankee magazine i wanted to keep…had all the mags from about ’92 to ’02 or so…

made sure to keep the no-hitters, paul o’neil, rookie jeter, and all the mo covers…

right after mick the quick (back in the ’70’s) mariano has been my favorite all time yankee…

had the magazines in the same box as a bunch of old Muscle and Fitness magazines…on one of the covers was this back in the day dude named tom platz – if you want to see some crazy huge and ripped thighs (who doesn’t, right?) – tom had em…

betcha bob knows who tom platz is…don’t disappoint me bob 🙂

I have some old Yankee magazines, yearbooks and programs too! I have some game programs from the 1978 ALCS and World Series which I got from my parents since I was born in 1980. I have yearbooks from 1985, 1988 and 1993. I specifically remember purchasing the 1988 one at Yankee Stadium, as a little kid I was obsessed with reading it. Jack Clark was the big acquisition that season lol.

In more recent times I have Yankees Magazines from the 1996 season and was able to purchase World Series programs from 1999 and 2009 along with the All Star Game program from 2008. Derek Jeter’s final season I have a bunch of commemorative programs and magazines including the 2014 yearbook which I purchased at Yankee Stadium when I went up there that summer to watch Jeter play one final time. Also got an All-Star Game program from that year since it was dedicated to Jeter.

Jowles, I’m not disputing that acquiring CP3 is not an optimal way to rebuild, far from it. But since we know that the odds of the Knicks ever rebuilding the way you would prefer, it becomes a matter of where it stacks up compared to other moves that are actually possible, given the management cards we are dealt. This is not like trading a boatload of picks for a faux star like Westbrook. Paul is still playing very, very well. He plays the right way and would be fun to watch.

So I apologize but I’m too burned out by this week to do the research and math. There seem to be smart people here who can, so I’ll ask. We’ve bounced these three around: Van Vleet, Woods, and Bertans. Could we afford all three? Or (and I hate this, but since it’s a topic of conversation) that 106-yr-old, Woods, and Bertans?
I plan to go to bed with this running through my head:

PG Van Vleet, Haliburton, Frank
SG BulLOCK, Frank, Haliburton (Trier, Dotson, whatever)
SF RJ, Harkless, Iggy
PF Bertans, Wood, Taj
C Mitch, Wood, Taj

Van Vleet, Haliburton and Bertans would shoot the lights out. Tyrese is 6’5″ so he can play with VV as a SG or back him up at the point. Frank locks things down when needed. People argue that Wood’s best position is center, so get him, Bertans, and Mitch 33-35 mpg as a 2.5-headed frontcourt, Taj gets garbage or foul-out minutes.

Do whatever is necessary to get rid of Portis, Randle and Knox. Trade them all for beans and sand. I’d set Elf on fire, too. DJR goes in the trash. Roster is done. At least for my dreams tonight.

Raven:
So I apologize but I’m too burned out by this week to do the research and math. There seem to be smart people here who can, so I’ll ask. We’ve bounced these three around: Van Vleet, Woods, and Bertans. Could we afford all three? Or (and I hate this, but since it’s a topic of conversation) that 106-yr-old, Woods, and Bertans?
I plan to go to bed with this running through my head:

PG Van Vleet, Haliburton, Frank
SG BulLOCK, Frank, Haliburton (Trier, Dotson, whatever)
SF RJ, Harkless, Iggy
PF Bertans, Wood, Taj
C Mitch, Wood, Taj

Van Vleet, Haliburton and Bertans would shoot the lights out. Tyrese is 6’5? so he can play with VV as a SG or back him up at the point. Frank locks things down when needed. People argue that Wood’s best position is center, so get him, Bertans, and Mitch 33-35 mpg as a 2.5-headed frontcourt, Taj gets garbage or foul-out minutes.

Do whatever is necessary to get rid of Portis, Randle and Knox. Trade them all for beans and sand. I’d set Elf on fire, too. DJR goes in the trash. Roster is done. At least for my dreams tonight.

(1) It depends on the final cap number and what Wood & FVV command in the market this year

(2) Current projections are $115M, but that could drop

(3) I have us at $69M guaranteed, so $45M to spend (someone should check me on this)

(4) Based on those numbers we can likely afford Wood, FVV, keep Bullock

(5) If we trade Randle for Paul, we could then spend $25M on Wood or FVV (Keeping Randle we have $5M, can probably get neither, more room if we include Frank or whoever)

(6) I doubt FVV comes here to play behind CP3 for 2 years, our offer would need to blow other out of the water

(7) DET is one of the few teams with cap space and will likely spend it on Wood, Bertans is more achievable since WAS is already at $100M

(8) In none of the above do we keep: Taj, Dotson, Trier, Ellington, Payton, or Portis

So,

PG: FVV, Haliburton(?), DSJr
SG: Bullock, Frank
SF: RJ, Knox, Brazdeikis
PF: Randle, Bertans
C: Mitch, (Wooten?)

Clips 1st
CHA 2nd
Joakim Noah (dead salary)

hey big blue…that’s cool the yanks went on that run when you were still pretty young…

feels good to either pick or inherit the right team when you’re young…

I started watching them on wpix, channel 11 in ’75…I hated the reds…every single one of them…i can’t remember why, but – especially dave concepcion…he drove me nuts…

who are your favorite players?

I’mma ask this again to the people slotting FVV onto the Knicks:

What makes you think “no one wants to come here” only applies to max free agents?

I’ve been saying that for years I’m still not sure people get it. What you have to do is make incremental moves that make you a little better each year so you can eventually trade for or land the whale.

People are going to continue to “not get” your plan, because it’s not an actual plan, it’s a series of words strung together that don’t amount to anything in the context of NBA team-building.

In years, you’ve never once been able to answer questions that amount to the most basic scrutiny, such as:

“What do you do about the fact that adding free agents in one year makes it difficult or impossible to do so in another year, given the NBA salary cap?”

“We see players from all over the draft board being productive extremely early in their careers, so what evidence are you citing when you say it’s inevitable no one we draft will be good until 2026? Is it literally just the fact that Frank Ntilikina has sucked in years 1-3, so you feel a need to pretend that’s completely normal for all drafted players?”

“Which players specifically would you add via free agency at this point in our win curve, and to what contracts would you sign them?”

Sometimes we actually do debate the merits of adding free agents despite being a very bad team (e.g. Wood and FVV). Good arguments are made on both sides, but you don’t even weigh in on those debates. You just continue to scold everyone else for not understanding the simple path to becoming a contender: rip other teams off in trades, and rip players off in free agency.

Never mind the fact that other teams are trying to “win the trades” as well, and players invest a lot of time and money in making sure their contracts properly reflect their value. If Strat were GM, he would simply be smarter than the other GMs.

“We see players from all over the draft board being productive extremely early in their careers, so what evidence are you citing when you say it’s inevitable no one we draft will be good until 2026? Is it literally just the fact that Frank Ntilikina has sucked in years 1-3, so you feel a need to pretend that’s completely normal for all drafted players?”

Just to expand on this a bit, using the 2017 draft as an example–8/14 players in the lottery have already posted a season with a .100+ WS48 and/or positive BPM.

One of the players who hasn’t is Lauri Markkanen, who has come very close, might be undervalued by those models, and has a ton trade value. Another is Markelle Fultz, who is getting his shit together to some extent but is obviously an exceptional case in all kinds of (unknown) ways.

The remaining 4 are Josh Jackson, Malik Monk, and of course, the two current members of the New York Knicks.

The draft works, folks. You just have to not be stupid!

thenoblefacehumper: The remaining 4 are Josh Jackson, Malik Monk, and of course, the two current members of the New York Knicks.

The draft works, folks. You just have to not be stupid!

  

You were all over DSjr if I recall correctly…

You can’t Harkless/Vonleh your way to respectability. Those guys might be worth more than their contracts, but not by large amounts. Guys like that can be decent role players in the right situation but they are not going to add a lot of marginal wins to a bad team. They’re nuts and bolts, and you can’t really do much with nuts and bolts if your chrome and leather suck.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to find those players. You should! Surplus value is good! Those guys just don’t bring very much surplus value, they bring a negligible amount.

We have a bunch of 1RPs due in the coming years, and if we whiff on all of those we’ll still be bad no matter how good the scrap heap veteran finds turn out to be. The draft is still the best place to add talent. We keep whiffing. That’s the real problem.

People want to build via draft but they are are ready to give up before a kid is finished going through puberty. It’s just too funny to believe,

>You can’t Harkless/Vonleh your way to respectability. Those guys might be worth more than their contracts, but not by large amounts. Guys like that can be decent role players in the right situation but they are not going to add a lot of marginal wins to a bad team. They’re nuts and bolts, and you can’t really do much with nuts and bolts if your chrome and leather suck.<

I agree with you.

But imo the idea for us is to accumulate players like that now because no one that's going to move the chain significantly will come here. If we have a few players like that, Robinson adds to his game, RJ develops his shot bit, etc.. we suddenly have a 40 win team or at least have a few pieces and picks that can be used to roll up into a better player and so on.

We've been using the tank/cap space model looking for star. That won't work on the free agency side of the equation and is a very long term crap shoot on the draft side.

Also, I'm not opposed to renting cap space for picks, but imo that's a very early stage tank move.

We should have done that last year when we knew KP was going to be out and we'd suck anyway. I would not do it now. Even though we totally screwed up the rebuild by losing KP for garbage and set ourselves back a few years, we got RJ as a result of the KP injury and Robinson is still a very good prospect to go along with Frank who I still like. We should be looking for pieces that make us better and stop worrying about the draft or whether the kid is 25 years old or younger. As long as it's a good player on a attractive contract that fits a need and he's not on his last legs, bring him in.

The downside of what I am saying is that I think our management is incompetent on the basketball side and has no idea how to value players or fit them together. That trumps any approach.

Strat will take any position so long as it supports the 140-point assessment he invented. No point in arguing. He’s convinced Frank will be a DPOY with a sick corner three game and anything less will be blamed on coaching, role or culture.

It will never be Frank’s fault, because Strat knows so. Because he’s the only smart one in the room. You’re just too dumb to realize it. He’s the only one smart enough to see it

>Strat will take any position so long as it supports the 140-point assessment he invented. No point in arguing. He’s convinced Frank will be a DPOY with a sick corner three game and anything less will be blamed on coaching, role or culture. It will never be Frank’s fault, because Strat knows so. Because he’s the only smart one in the room. You’re just too dumb to realize it. He’s the only one smart enough to see it<

None of that is true.

Frank is already plus defender that can impact games on that side once in awhile. He has a strong work ethic and plays basketball the right way (meaning he puts the team first, is a willing and good enough passer, typically makes the right play, and has a good basketball IQ etc..)

His current value is underrated by popular models that imo suck, but I acknowledge he has a very long way to go on offense to become a starting caliber player on an NBA team. I'm simply willing to give him the time because he has so much of what I value and I see progress in his handle, emotion maturity, confidence, and even shot. I believe he is more likely to get there on offense than the average player because of the intangibles.

But of course I think people that use broken models to evaluate players like him will undervalue him and I'll keep saying they are wrong.

You’re definitely going to. And we’re going to have a second wave of it, too. We didn’t stay home to make it disappear, we stayed home to flatten the curve.

Oh I know Hubert, it’s just that most people actually think we’re staying home to eliminate it. They’re going to lose their minds when it starts showing up more often here.

You were all over DSjr if I recall correctly…

Sure, he was 5th on my big board that year (behind Ball, Isaac, Fultz, and Z. Collins) and I don’t regret it at all. I used the exact same process I used to determine FVV, Delon Wright, Brandon Clarke, and Mitchell Robinson were good prospects. Give the data the most weight, supplement it with scouting/tape while keeping in mind the limitations, and factor in other things to the extent possible (age, injury history, etc.).

The draft is never, ever going to be a sure thing. I’m lucky I was 13 at the time of the 2008 draft and thus a year or so away from posting here, because I would’ve been absolutely drooling over Michael Beasley. These things are going to happen for all sorts of reasons (unpredictable off-court stuff, etc.). Look at Masai Ujiri’s draft history and you’ll see plenty of names that never amounted to anything.

If you consistently use the approach I outlined, though, you’ll get good value out of your picks in the aggregate (and needless to say, you should stockpile as many picks as possible).

thenoblefacehumper: Sure, he was 5th on my big board that year (behind Ball, Isaac, Fultz, and Z. Collins)

So which one of those guys would have represented a major change in our fortunes? If you were the GM and had tanked correctly. your model would definitely have passed over Jayson Tatum and De’Aaron Fox, who were widely ranked above Isaac, Collins and DSjr. And if you had our draft spot, you would have drafted Zach Collins. Do you really think he would have moved the needle for us? Would you be happy about passing on Mitchell, John Collins or Bam, who were certainly in the discussion as viable options at our spot?

Fultz and Ball were pretty much chalk #1 and #2 picks, so you get no credit (or blame) for having them at the top of your list. After that, your 3-5 picks were reaches in most models. You would have passed over Fox and Tatum against the conventional wisdom. That’s the kind of shit that sets franchises back. You would have passed on Porzingis for Winslow or WCS. That’s the kind of shit that sets franchises back.

Granted, you’ve identified some hidden gems, but finding a low-risk, high reward flyer in late first, or the second round, or as a UFA is a much different science than drafting the right player in the lottery, and has nothing at all to do with the discussion re: tanking properly. In the lottery, your rankings outside of “chalk” picks has been nothing to crow about.

TBH, neither Wood or FVV are likely to come to the Knicks. I think FVV has a better chance since he won’t have to share the PG position with Lowry. DET will pay Wood a crap ton this offseason, so I think he’ll be overpriced if we do get him.

Does anyone else see other players they want this offsesason? We’ve already said Bertans, who has a decent chance of coming here.

I really like Bertans at the right price, but Latvians probably don’t think all that highly of the Knicks right now. I wonder if Dallas will try to snag him somehow.

1) What in the world does this have to do with the general proposition that, 3 years removed from that draft, a ton of the players in it have already been productive despite Strat’s assertion that it takes 7 years or whatever to make this determination?

2) Lonzo Ball does not have a negative career BPM, and Fox’s has been comfortably positive for 2 of his 3 NBA seasons.

My point is lot of players have been productive soon after being drafted, but they usually aren’t point guards. I’m not sure why it’s not clear that “lots of players are productive soon after they are drafted” and “lots of point guards are productive soon after that are drafted”. The first is true, the second statement is not. You are right Ball does not have a negative career BPM, but he was drafted second. If we draft a point guard at that position I do expect good signs early in his career. Fox was drafted fifth and has done well, but his BPM in basketball reference, which I assume is a career number, is still negative. If you draft a young point guard after number five you are probably looking at a project, which Frank was.

I’d like someone to go through the last decade of All-NBA point guard selections and tell me how many of them hadn’t shown significant improvement by the end of their rookie deals. I’d be surprised if you could find a single one.

As to the Bargnani trade, that was indeed indefensible wishful thinking on my part. I never advocated for that trade nor did I ever say that I would have done it, nor did I celebrate it. I also came around very quickly on that deal and admitted that I was dead wrong once I saw him play, and have never defended it since.

You have lots of trouble backing down, e.g. it took you forever to lose the snark when discussing Willy. You are persistently arrogant and condescending when going back and forth with Strat, but he has been way more right than you on Porzingis, and could possibly still be right on Frank…who definitely showed improvement of late and just might be a decent rotation piece in the right circumstances next year..he’s still younger than Obi Toppin. You shouldn’t be so quick to crucify him, or me, when you would have picked like 20 guys over Jayson Tatum, or passed over DeAaron Fox for Dennis Smith Jr, and passed over Lauri Markkanen for Zach Collins, or Winslow over Porzingis. Your response to those frightening realities is “well, I would have drafted Zach Collins, so it’s all good.” You couldn’t even pick the right Collins in that draft!

You shouldn’t be so quick to crucify him, or me, when you would have picked like 20 guys over Jayson Tatum, or passed over DeAaron Fox for Dennis Smith Jr, and passed over Lauri Markkanen for Zach Collins, or Winslow over Porzingis. Your response to those frightening realities is “well, I would have drafted Zach Collins, so it’s all good.” You couldn’t even pick the right Collins in that draft!

Actually I only would’ve picked nine guys over Tatum, one of them being Donovan Mitchell, but anyway what I said was “If you consistently use the approach I outlined, though, you’ll get good value out of your picks in the aggregate (and needless to say, you should stockpile as many picks as possible).”

What you seem to have read was “I, TNFH, 25 year-old law student, can predict the future best player available at every single draft slot in every single draft.” So it’s kind of pointless to continue this argument.

Needless to say, getting good value out of a pick =/= making the single best pick available, hence, say, Klay Thompson being a good return for the 11th pick in 2011 even though Kawhi Leonard went 15th and Jimmy Butler went 30th.

What do people think about signing Aaron Baynes? He’s 33, but can play D and shoot from the C position. Baynes helps modernize our team and open the floor for Randle, Payton, RJ (holy crap do we suck at shooting)

Mitch still struggles to stay on the floor and we need a solid C.

Okay, final report, all-nba guards in general. Most (outside of the mentions above) started good, and got considerably better during their rookie contracts. A few showed clear jumps, like Our Savior Chris Paul who was pretty darn good his first two years, but found a whole nother gear in year 3. Ditto Westbrook. Goran Dragic (!) was a not-very-interesting back-up his first three years, started to show signs/got starts in year 4, and hit his stride in year 5.

“You’re definitely going to. And we’re going to have a second wave of it, too. We didn’t stay home to make it disappear, we stayed home to flatten the curve.”

You are going to have continual infections until either a vaccine is available or the majority of the herd becomes immune. Keep in mind anyone under 50 without and of cancer, kidney disease hypertension, obesity, COPD are at very (very) low risk of serious outcomes.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-04152020-1.pdf

Science is your friend……..

Back to the Paul discussion. What if he does enough to elevate some of the rookies’ game (Mitchell, RJ) so they get big second contracts out of us, and then they turn back into what they were before when they’re playing with a non-HOF pg. isn’t that kinda a likely scenario?

I think it would be fair to expect players who don’t initiate possessions to show an uptick with competent PG play, relative to the dogshit we’ve been so privileged to watch over the last few years. Mitch should get some better looks, for one, but if so, the takeaway is simply that you need to find another good PG if you want to maximize your investment in those players. But this is basically a tautology: good point guards make winning basketball.

I think Chris Paul is a top-3 modern era PG (Magic, Stockton, Paul) in his cumulative production, but for the millionth time, it’s not 2009 anymore. His minutes and touches will be significantly down compared to even his HOU days, which were not even his peak.

It’s a bandaid over a gaping, festering wound. Once that $45M bandaid is gone, the wound will still be there.

So if we offer FVV money so stupid that the Raptors (or 28 other teams in the league) wouldn’t make that offer it to him, we can get him.

You see the problem here, right?

Yeah I mean I think the consensus is FVV is getting a max or close to it and that’s what we’re debating.

It’s worth mentioning that we won’t be in competition with 29 other teams though. We’ll be in competition with the Raptors, who have his Bird Rights, and the Grizzlies and Hawks, who are the only other two teams with cap space as of now.

If FVV is getting the max that’s a hard pass from me. Good player, but no.

Having a 36-year-old Chris Paul at $45M during a shrunken cap year at the production of ~1 BPM would be as Knicksy as it gets. Can you imagine? The cap shrinks to $90M or so and he eats 50% of our cap space to play 28 mpg? Amazing.

What is with this unanimity that Chris Paul is an average basketball player beholden to the timelines of ordinary people?

The notion that he is not in the same category as LeBron, Stockton, Nash, and other greats is absolutely not settled.

***So if we offer FVV money so stupid that the Raptors (or 28 other teams in the league) wouldn’t make that offer it to him, we can get him. You see the problem here, right?***

The question then becomes: which would you rather have?

35 year old Chris Paul at $40,000,000 for 2 years

Or

25 year old Fred VanVleet at $30,000,000 for 4 years.

For a championship level team, it may be option A.

For a building team, it should be option B.

(VanVleet is really really good.)

Did a few back of the envelope calculations.:

OKC’s total revenue of 18-19 = $258M
OKC’s live gate revenue 18-19 = $63M

Assuming when BB re-opens there won’t be anywhere near the same live gate recipts probably with a contracting cap (by Maybe a lot) OKC is in a God awful position with CP taking down 41 & 44M the next 2 seasons Thry HAVE TO MOVE HIM! This is the franchise that let James Harden get away because they didn’t want to pay the tax.

The already have 103M gurenteed for next season in salary even with Gallo and Andre Robertson off the books.

Fate has cast them a nasty blow and they are completely over a barrell. There are few place that can absorb his salary next season

They have 13 #1 picks the next 7 drafts including Miami’s ’21 unprotected and LAC’s 22 and 24 unprotected….

It’s time for a NY GM actually put their balls in a vise and extrect 2 or 3 of those picks to take CP3 off their hands and then try to move him at the 22 trading deadline for more capital as an expiring……

Raptors still have Lowry on the books for 1yr@30M. If you offer enough, Raps may not want to match. More likely they try and move Lowry. If so we might be able to absorb that contract along with some picks.

There’s certainly a chance the Raps don’t use FVV bird rights to outbid or he just doesn’t want to return to TOR while Lowry remains. FVV is attainable.

I don’t really see the point of CP3

Van Vleet seems to be heading from underrated to overrated, or at least benefiting from the lack of good players on the market. He’s a good player, I’d be happy to have him on the Knicks, but yeah not at 30 million. Maybe 20 million.

I should add that I used the projected $125M cap for the 2021-2022 season, which could be a ways off due to COVID-19.

I don’t see what makes FVV worth that kind of money. He doesn’t rebound, or get to the line, or get you tons of assists, or put up strong scoring efficiency numbers. His WS48, BPM and VORP don’t jump off the page. I see a nice piece, but nowhere near a max or near-max player. If someone wants to offer $30 million per for 4 years, , they can have him.

I’ve found myself watching a lot of Raptors games over the years and I (completely subjectively) think FVV is legitimately the defender people pretend Frank Ntilikina is, so the all-in-ones likely don’t do him justice.

Still, I agree with you.

MSG is showing the Lin/Lakers game. I forgot Mike Bibby was on that team.

DRed: None of these guys would have resulted in a major change in our fortunes. Tatum is a really good young player, but we have no talent.. The Knicks with Tatum instead of Frank are what, a 27-39 team last year? We have one good NBA player. There’s like 4 players in the league who could get these bums near the playoffs. Tatum might be one of those guys in a couple years, and it would be nice if we had him instead of Frank but we’d still suck.

I couldn’t disagree more. Tatum is very underrated here at KB. Even if he didn’t produce significantly more wins, he would brighten the team outlook dramatically if he were here instead of Ntilikina. He just turned 22 and is well on his way to becoming a perennial 2-way all-star. If that wouldn’t represent a major change in our fortunes, I don’t know what would.

Part of our plan depends on getting value out of our draft picks. We can afford to overpay some players if we can acquire some strong role players or a superstar through the draft. This works with FVV because he’ll probably still play in 4-5 years, CP3’s time frame doesn’t allow for sufficient development for the 4 players drafted in the first round over the next two drafts

Ideally we won’t pay more than $25M for FVV (depending on salary cap). I’d probably value him around $23M right now, less is good value & more is an overpay.

fred’s a good 2 way guard, something the Knicks haven’t had in forever, so it would be nice to have him next year. At the same time, he’s like the 4th best player on the Raptors. Overpaying for a good player isn’t terrible, because hey you’ve got a good player, but 30 million a year is an awful lot for a guy who is probably never going to be an all-star.

Knew Your Nicks:
Giving 33M to Bobby and Julius or 30M to FVV?
I’ll take the second. Even if it hurts statistically…

That’s an entirely different situation. Bobby is a 1-year flyer, Julius is 2 years and a team option.

You’re not getting a RFA at.a fair price. By definition, you almost have to overpay to prevent a match. There is no reason to overpay on a 4-year commitment to a nice piece but non-star. And honestly, I’m not sure he’s even a “bargain” at $20 million for 4 guaranteed years.

FVV ain’t a sure thing for 30M per year but he looks to me like a bet I’d easily take(especially after watching last season’s finals).

Hubert: I don’t mind an aggressive bet I can walk away from in two years. 4 years is a much bigger concern.

Honestly when we were talking about FVV I was figuring $18-20mm. It seems I missed the mark by a lot. He’s not a max player. I don’t want him on a 4 year max under any circumstances.

More generally, the big money long-term bet on the non-established all-star is the kind of contract that bites teams all the time. If FVV drops off even a little bit, there would be no way to trade him for fair value. Julius Randle was a guy many people wanted here and the nice thing is that his contract was very reasonable. He hasn’t worked out, fine, so now we can either trade him or eat the $4 mill in year 3. Imagine if that were a 4-year $100 mill guaranteed deal….he’d be going nowhere.

I think Van Vleet has benefited considerably from playing alongside a very good PG in Lowry. It allows him to be a secondary playmaker and spot up shooter, which is a good fit for his skills.

It’s similar to Schroeder, who always has CP3 or Shae on the floor with him and is not coincidentally having a career year. Their offensive numbers are comparable. FVV is a better defender of course.

On the Knicks, both guys would be the only good backcourt playmaker and would be surrounded by a bunch of non shooters. They’d both be in over their heads. I think we’d regret anything over $18m for FVV.

FVV is a better version of Jason Kidd when he was on the Knicks. Good shooter, strong but kinda slow, doesn’t have primary ballhandling duties, hustle defender, good passing vision, good teammate. That’s a nice piece but it’s not someone you build around.

 I think Van Vleet has benefited considerably from playing alongside a very good PG in Lowry. It allows him to be a secondary playmaker and spot up shooter, which is a good fit for his skills.

It’s similar to Schroeder, who always has CP3 or Shae on the floor with him and is not coincidentally having a career year. Their offensive numbers are comparable. FVV is a better defender of course.

On the Knicks, both guys would be the only good backcourt playmaker and would be surrounded by a bunch of non shooters. They’d both be in over their heads. I think we’d regret anything over $18m for FVV.

that’s a sobering thought, but on the money, we are more than one player away…

both of those guys would need another ball handler/shooter next to them for us to see the kind of numbers they’ve had this year…

we need help – everywhere…like one through 10…at least this year we do have a few guys on the roster that have a chance at developing and can help in a role…and, we have some picks and cap space…

this is the best spot we’ve been in for a long while…

forgot who mentioned bringing in a 5 that can shoot the 3, yep, need one of those too…

I still love you bro

DRed
February 14, 2012 at 8:56 pm
Fields hasn’t shot well tonight, but he’s got 5 boards and 7 assists.

It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me
So you can’t see me, no, not at all
In another dimension, with voyeuristic intention

I’m enjoying the last dance, despite some of the painful knick moments and occasionally having to hear bob costas’ voice…

not enjoying all the time warping between ’93 and ’98 though…tell a simple linear timeline story
…oh well…

my favorite edit of the godfather 1 & 2 is when they splice the two and present it in chronological order…I think it was some made for tv thing…

my favorite parts almost always include vito, young and old…

https://nypost.com/2020/05/03/the-last-dance-charles-oakley-blames-knicks-failure-on-ewing/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

At this point Dolan is going to have more fans than Oakley. If I’m Ewing I would say the reason we lost to the Bulls back then was because he didn’t have Houston, Spree and LJ as his teammates yet instead he had Oak, Starks and Charles freaking Smith.

For the record, I would rather we sign FVV than trade for Chris Paul.

I think its a catch-22 way of thinking if you always think “well player X benefits from being on this team that’s good. He wouldn’t be that good here because we don’t have the type of teammates he has.”

If you think that way then there is literally no point to signing any free agent ever until we build up a good team completely through the draft. And that hardly ever happens.

FVV is a good player. A good guard! We don’t have good guards! He would make us better. He’s young enough to give the full four years to. He could still get better too. Team building requires getting good players through the draft and free agency. It’s all about what we give him contract wise.

What? Fred Van Vleet? Honestly, if Kawhi hadn’t sunk that shot and the Sixers found a way to advance in OT, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. Dude shot a combined 3-24 in the entire seven-game series against the Sixers and wasn’t good in the playoffs overall., at a 0.1 BPM. But he had a few big shooting games, so hey, let’s give him a massive contract? What? Do we honestly not remember Jerome James? Did we not dodge the Scary Terry bullet last year?

People really need to check his BBRef page out. While he’s a fine player, he is not as good as you think he is — exactly the kind of player you happily overpay when you’re 46-18, have just committed to a max contract, and don’t want to pinch pennies when every marginal point matters when playing 6-deep rotations in a top-heavy Eastern Conference.

He is not the player you sign when you’re 21-45 and don’t have a single player on your roster who’s shown superstar potential. He’s another player that will carry an otherwise-terrible team to the late lottery, and nothing more.

If you’re fiending for a guard to overpay, you might as well try to pry Bradley Beal away from Washington.

FVV could struggle without Lowry, or he could elevate his passing game like Brogdon. I would not have been happy paying for Brogdon last summer based on his weak assist numbers, but he stepped it up when given the lead guard role. FVV could do the same.

And for the record, I like FVV but a max contract is too much.

I still prefer FVV to CP3 because he can contribute when some of our other players and draft picks might actually become decent.

The Glass Half Rebuilt:
If you want Fred VanVleet, draft Cole Anthony and let him turn into FVV. I don’t think that’s a good way to spend in free agency; he’s a guy with middling efficiency who plays for one of the best coaches in the NBA. If you take him from Nick Nurse and pay him a ton of money, chances are you’re looking at an overpaid asset over the course of four years.

I’d rather take CP3 on for two seasons. Kidd, Nash, Stockton, and Billups were all good NBA players in their age 35 and 36 seasons, so I’ll roll the dice with CP3 who is probably better than everybody on that list not named Stockton.

Based on Cole Anthony’s numbers in college, he’ll be lucky to put up Knox/Frank levels of efficiency.

The difference between Brogdon and FVV is Brogdon was a 50/40/90 guy who logged close to 2,000 minutes for the best defense in the NBA before he got paid. He was a good bet to remain productive and was a guy I really wanted the Knicks to add, and even he saw his efficiency stats fall off a cliff.

Yeah, no thanks on the FVV max contract. I love his fit next to RJ Barrett in theory, but I look at Cole Anthony and see a similar player if that’s the route I want to go (and I’d have a very hard time taking Cole Anthony over LaMelo Ball, Killian Hayes, or even Kira Lewis).

At this point Dolan is going to have more fans than Oakley. If I’m Ewing I would say the reason we lost to the Bulls back then was because he didn’t have Houston, Spree and LJ as his teammates yet instead he had Oak, Starks and Charles freaking Smith.

Ooph, Oakley sounds d-u-m dumb in that article.

The Knicks aren’t guaranteed to throw their money away, even though that’s what they’ve done for 20 years. You have to believe they’re capable of making good free agent decisions eventually.

LOL!!

We should be fishing for young stars, either in the draft or free agency, and high value contracts. That’s it. Basic win curve stuff.

Which is why giving FVV a contract makes sense. He’s young and on the upswing. NOT AT 30M, I don’t think anyone should want that. At 20M, he’s a solid starter, and I doubt Masai is offering more.

Is anyone advocating maxing Van Vleet? I thought the issue is he’s likely to be overpaid at 20-25M, in which case, give me a team option.

$20M sounds like a lot but you don’t get a whole lot of player for $20M anymore. Van Vleet will probably command more than that.

At $20M it’s a no-brainer.

Brian Cronin: Ooph, Oakley sounds d-u-m dumb in that article.

For real, Patrick Ewing played exceptional in that series (maybe Game 2 he was off for a bit) But The Knicks didn’t lose because of Patrick, they lost because most of Pat’s help was sporadic at best.

There’s no point to debating the merits of FVV at $20M because the Raptors would happily match that (he’s a UFA but they have his full Bird Rights and he has said he wants to be back).

We could only make them hesitate with a max or close to it.

It wouldn’t be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done because FVV is good and we have given similar money to guys who are not good, but right now we are so early in the rebuilding process I still think it would be pretty dumb.

Our core is RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson. That’s it, and we don’t even know if the former is good. The team sucked this year, and that was with meaningful contributions from guys who have no future here (Morris, Randle, Taj, Payton, etc.). If you stripped this thing down to the nuts and bolts it would be one of the worst teams of all time. It really is not the time to be cutting off our flexibility for anyone but the most elite players.

You can yell at me all you want about how it sounds like I’m advocating taking for 10 years or whatever, but the reality is we did what I’m outlining for exactly one season, 2018-2019, and then promptly abandoned it. It also doesn’t help that we botched the mediocre picks we gave ourselves before that (Frank and Knox).

So we really have no idea how long it would take to build a good team if we 1) didn’t insist on failing the Marshmallow Test with regards to marginal wins all the time and 2) had a semi-competent draft process. There’s no reason to think it would take as long as some folks say though.

I honestly don’t know why we can’t just load up on draft picks and keep shooting our shot instead of trading for overpriced vets. Is it because we need “big names” in the garden? We have a ton of picks and a perfectly good G-league team.

We have 15 roster spots and really only need, like, 2 real vets on the team, let’s say Taj and Bullock, although we could exchange both of them if we wanted.

I would say keep Kadeem, Iggy, Wooten, Dotson, Barrett, Frank, Mitch, and Knox. Trade DSJ, Randle, and Trier because they are disgruntled or need fresh starts.

That gives you 5 slots for your three rookies this year (Okongwu, Terry, and Bane, let’s say) plus two other guys and just let them fight it out for court time.

Then, don’t resign the guys that haven’t made significant improvements over their rookie contracts. Keep taking 2 shots in every 1st round and get extra 2nd rounders and stash them in the Gleague.

Don’t do any big trades or signings until you’re VERY close to contention. Just let guys walk if they aren’t good. Dotson, for instance. Thus far, can’t we find a 2nd rounder in pretty much every draft that can do what he does? And I like him! But he’s not worth whatever his next contract will be (just like Randle wasn’t worth what his next contract was).

Do this for 4 years, and it will eventually be a decent team, even if you really only hit on 33% of your draft picks.

BigBlueAL: At this point Dolan is going to have more fans than Oakley. If I’m Ewing I would say the reason we lost to the Bulls back then was because he didn’t have Houston, Spree and LJ as his teammates yet instead he had Oak, Starks and Charles freaking Smith.

  

I love Ewing, but he was a disappointing guy to love.

I think Oakley hit the nail square on the head. Especially with the “a lot of the guys who say that now didn’t do it when they played”. Patrick was not one of the hard guys on that team. I wish he had been.

The goal should to move on from from Randle, not so much because he can’t play, but because he doesn’t fit at all.

IMO there are 2 viable strategies here.

The first is to transition Randle to a primary bench scorer like Harrell. In a couple of years if it’s working out, we’d be able to go over the cap (and let’s be honest FO is gonna hit the cap) to re-sign him in that role at a higher contract than he would get from any other team. Maybe he wouldn’t mope so much if that’s the reality facing him.

The second is related to FVV. How much competition would there be for him given the cap situation? Hawks, maybe off ball next to Trae? If Hawks are not interested, it might be Knicks forcing Raptors to pay FVV much more than they anticipated. Rose could tell Ujiri we’re prepared to place a 26m/yr offer on the table but prefer Raps take Randle/Ellington/Reggie in exchange for Lowry. Raps save some money and Randle might be attractive to them as a bench scorer for a year and maybe more if it works out. We get a transition 1 guard and hope Ball/Hayes/Halliburton shows something.

1: Lowry, Draft pick
2: Frank, Dot
3: RJ, Knox
4: Wood, Knox
5: Mitch, Wood
OR
1: Lowry, Draft pick
2: RJ, Frank
3: Bertans, Knox
4: Wood, Knox
5: Mitch, Wood

Mostly we’ve been doing this. We have taken all our picks. We haven’t traded for any overpriced vets, except maybe Kanter when we traded Melo, which was more getting rid of an overpriced vet than acquiring one. We didn’t commit much long term salary in last year’s free agent binge, except for Randall. He doesn’t fit well, but it’s hard to claim he’s overpaid at $18m for your leading scorer when a guy like Gordon Hayward makes $32m. And he’s not old. There have been no rumors at all that were interested in trading picks. I think the reality of going after picks and developing them is just messier than we hope it would be because management still wants a team on the floor but without long term veteran commitments.

No we haven’t. We did it for one season. It got us RJ Barrett. Then we ditched it completely in order to win 27 games instead of 17.

I will say I’m fairly happy with our current pick situation, having both Charlotte and Detroit’s seconds next year is really nice (conceivable for those to literally be 31 and 32). But even that is largely a result of the Marcus Morris signing, which was an accident.

Yeah I mean obviously cost is the biggest issue for ANY free agent. We shouldn’t overpay for any free agent unless its peak Anthony Davis or Giannis or a true franchise altering/superstar/top 10 in the league player. And even then you want to do it outright in free agency, not trade the farm like we did for Melo.

I think there is a lot of collective fan trauma with our overpays for Amare and Melo (and Eddie Curry, ZBo, etc before them). We don’t want a 5 year max on a guy who gives you one good season. We don’t want to trade the farm and then pay max for a top 20ish player.

We don’t want to trade away all of our picks for a disgruntled star.

But the convo isn’t about giving CP3 a 5 year max or trading away half our picks for him. Its about getting him for 2 seasons (1 season and then he’s expiring) and giving up no picks and a minimal amount of prospects in the process. Its about signing 26 year old FVV to a reasonable contract (20 million).

I think these are very different scenarios than what we saw under Isiah or Donnie or Phil. But I think a lot of fans especially on this blog are so traumatized by those past mistakes that they take an overly conservative stance on any free agent signing that isn’t a sure fire superstar or a vet minimum. There were some people who were upset about getting Morris after we got Randle but now we have a first round pick because of it. FVV would be 29/30 in the final year of a 4 year contract with us. That’s a very tradeable player assuming he doesn’t get hurt.

As far as the win curve. Look, if we don’t make the playoffs of course I want as high of a pick as possible. But top 5 lottery picks are not always a sure thing (this year being the best example). And you can look at every draft and find VERY good (sometimes all-star level good) players later in the draft. To me the key is having extra picks and not trading picks. Its about having as many scratch off tickets as possible.

Yes, they have not been trading away picks, but the problem is that they are bad at drafting.

Frank was a risky pick that should’ve been Mitchell, Dotson was whatever, and Knox was a completely absurd choice — a fireable offense, really.

RJ was simply the consensus at #3, but let’s be honest: he hasn’t been good yet. In fact, he put up startlingly bad rookie advanced metrics (with some eye test flashes). Iggy has proven nothing yet.

The only good pick was a pure luck stab in the dark with Robinson where there were no statistics to work with. That doesn’t make me feel good about the GM we just decided to keep on for this draft.

This isn’t about tanking. The Knicks don’t need to tank, they just need to draft well, although it helps to get lucky with lotto balls, too.

And like ess-dog said, the Knicks have whiffed hard in the lottery. If they would stop taking project players that pan out as some of the league’s worst, maybe it would now, on this day of our lord, finally be time to start talking about signing the FVVs of the world. But it’s not.

I’ve been silent for a few months. After COVID hit, I was swamped at work and then there was no basketball. But I decided to pay a visit and was not surprised, in the least, to hear the same arguments over and over and over again.

Trading Bullock (who cares) plus either Knox or Frank for CP3? Really, that’s CP3 for Knox or Ntilikina. Let that sink in. Will either player be a member of the Knicks in 2 years? Frank is an RFA next year. He’s lost. Knox the year after. What is the question? Are either going to ever be close to what CP3 is? Ever? Even a diminished CP3? Sheesh.

I’ll just reply to THCJ

(1) Accept that your team sucks,

Done.

(2) Take advantage of win-now teams to unload short-term/expiring veteran contracts for future picks.

In the NBA you need to match contracts. We dumped Morris and got a couple of picks. Those picks will suck because when you trade to a good team, they just do. We’re not ever getting a lottery pick for an expiring contract. We may end up with one, serviceable player out of the deal if we’re lucky. If we turn Harkness around for a pick next year, we’ll get another useless pick.

(3) Use remaining cap space to acquire more short-term trade pieces OR sign available FAs that will outperform their contracts.

I don’t even understand this. Sign a guy to trade him? That was what Mills did last year. It help keep us awful. And if you can find a FA that is sure to outperform their contracts, can you find me a stock that will never tank? Absurd!

4) Once the “core” is in place…

What core? 5 years from now? I might be dead. I can’t wait for 2030 to be good. Screw that. We better make the playoffs next year or it’s another failure. Make the trade – preferably get rid of Ntilikina. I like him but his ceiling is playoff team backup . Add 1 or 2 players that compliment him. Develop the kids we have now and are about to…

What core? 5 years from now? I might be dead. I can’t wait for 2030 to be good. Screw that.

Oh, I see. This is an Onion-y post.

I like him but his ceiling is playoff team backup

Damn, you got me good.

>The response you’re going to get to this great post is that this would actually take 10 years, for unspecified reasons that contradict basically everything we’ve seen from teams that have actually done this.<

The list of teams that have been rebuilding via draft for years that are still not a serious contender (and in some cases not even a playoff team yet) is not short. Hell, we've been drafting lottery picks since Porzingis and even got lucky in that he got hurt and got another top 3 pick out if it and we still suck (granted Phil was missing a couple of 1 round picks along the way).

I know.

I know,

The problem is we didn't tank the right way like the 76ers – who are 6-7 years into their rebuild and have a potentially all time great C that can't stay on the court and PG that can't shoot and doesn't fit well with him to show for it. But I know, if they didn't fire Hinkie it all would have worked out great, lmfao

The data on tanking is out there. It has been studied.

It can work, but it has been no bargain.

It's obviously going to be worse going forward because we are drafting younger players than we used to. That means it will take longer for them to reach maturity and the teams to blossom than the historical record indicates.

Those young players will sometimes get paid before you know what you have.

The lottery odds are also flatter.

So it's clearly a worse strategy now than it was at one time.

It's one of many possible paths, but it's a worse path now than it has been and it was never clearly the best one to begin with except in certain situations.

Seize the FA day

Easy Money
1 You suck badly for X years till you find your franchise player.
2 When you find him You break his leg till you pair him with another future all star from the draft.
3 After finding both you re going to the playoffs and start your dynasty.

Nobody would care if the Knicks tanked or not if the Knicks took OG Anunoby in 2017 and Shai Gilgeous Alexander in 2018.

I don’t think the strategy is the problem as much as the problem is the infrastructure.

Obviously, picking better players would be good, but the appeal of tanking is that the higher you are, the less likely you’ll fuck your pick up. Fuck ups still happen, but they’re much less likely the higher you are in the draft. Stats bear this out, as the difference between top five pick players and players picked from #6-10 is more significant than players picked #6-10 and players picked #11-15 (heck, I think even #16-20). In other words, good players are found outside the top five, of course, but so many good players are found in the top five that being in the top five is still very significant and the best chance you have for picking in the top five is tanking. Give yourself the most cracks at the prize and then start adding players to your team after three years of having top five picks.

The Thunder had Durant and Westbrook and still sucked enough to pick in the top five for a third year in a row and got James Harden. If you strip your team of win-now veterans and draft in the top five three years in a row, your team will almost assuredly look a lot better going into Year 4. While the Knicks’ approach since Phil got here doesn’t guarantee any real forward movement.

And the staggering thing here is that the Knicks tanked once and got RJ Barrett out of it! Why in the world would anyone look at that and say, “Welp, that’s proof that tanking doesn’t work” instead of, “Wow, if we do that two more times, we might have an actual good young core!”?

I just don’t know with the specter of grossly reduced revenues the next season or two Dolan doesn’t just call up Clay Bennett and let him know the Knicks are willing to take CP3 AND Adams and their 69M off their books next season (and Paul’s 44M the following season) for the appropriate draft compensation.

The Thunder have 13 #1’s the next 7 years including all of their own plus 6 excess picks including 3 unprotected ones….. they can afford to move a few.

Maybe the team that moved Harden to save money enjoys the prospect of losing a ton of money next year. but it is certainly worth a phone call.

Completely random, but..

Out of all my years of Knicks Fandom, you know what hurt me the most? The Xavier McDaniel sitchew. That team was TOUGH! A little crazy, but that squad was solid. It still bothers me how most of the time, X was underused, and then the way we lost him. He was Ewing’s true #2..on both ends. What could have built around those 2..with Mase waiting in the wings to take over for Oak..wow.
Man..
Shit..

The list of teams that have been rebuilding via draft for years that are still not a serious contender (and in some cases not even a playoff team yet) is not short. Hell, we’ve been drafting lottery picks since Porzingis and even got lucky in that he got hurt and got another top 3 pick out if it and we still suck (granted Phil was missing a couple of 1 round picks along the way).

The lottery picks you get from actually taking care to avoid marginal wins =/= the late lottery picks you get because, somehow, your Derrick Rose/Courtney Lee/Carmelo Anthony/Joakim Noah core failed become a dynasty.

Had we not signed any of those guys, there’s a good chance we’d have two of a player pool that includes Luka Doncic, Jaren Jackson, Trae Young Jayson Tatum, Jonathan Isaac, De’Aaron Fox, and Wendell Carter.

The problem is we didn’t tank the right way like the 76ers – who are 6-7 years into their rebuild and have a potentially all time great C that can’t stay on the court and PG that can’t shoot and doesn’t fit well with him to show for it. But I know, if they didn’t fire Hinkie it all would have worked out great, lmfao

On what planet are the Sixers 6-7 years into a “rebuild?” They were working on their 3rd consecutive 50+ win season when everything shut down. You framed it that way to avoid the truth that completely contradicts your point–they went from having absolutely nothing to being a consistent 50+ win team in four seasons specifically because they avoided all the marginal wins you love.

And yeah, they obviously would’ve been much better off by sticking with Hinkie but I don’t really care to argue about it. Believe it or not, as a New York Knicks fan born in 1995, despite all of their post-Hinkie screw ups I would sign the hell up for a young, consistent 50+ win team that could fetch a king’s ransom of assets if they decided to blow it up.

Check out the 5 first players of the 20 last drafts.
This is 100 players.
How many of them helped the team that drafted them to get a chip.
You’ll easily get the % of tanking success.

RJ Barrett put up bad numbers because the Knicks drafted him and said “hey let’s surround this kid with Elfrid Payton, Julius Randle, and Bobby Portis.”

I really hope we put more shooters on the court next season.

Check out the 5 first players of the 20 last drafts.
This is 100 players.
How many of them helped the team that drafted them to get a chip.
You’ll easily get the % of tanking success.

Lebron, Tim Duncan, Shaq and Kevin Durant were all top two picks and just those four guys have won, what, 13 of the last 20 NBA titles? Add in Kevin Garnett, who was a top five pick, as well, and that gets you 14 of the last 20 NBA titles won with a top five pick being their best player. Of the remaining six, you still have a #3 pick winning the NBA Finals MVP for the Pistons, and the Lakers’ second-best (I’d say best in those particular seasons, but I know people say second-best) player in the non-Shaq titles being a #3 pick. Then you have Curry just outside the top five (#7) and that leaves Dirk at the #9 pick (with two #2 picks being the other top guys on that team, though), Kawhi, at the #15 pick, and I guess the rest of that Pistons team outside of Billups as the outliers.

My point is that even if you suck for 100 years and you’re lucky enough to find the future HOFer in the 5 first picks of the draft he won’t help you to get a chip. Because You Suck as a Team.
He Will get titles with other Teams.
Unless you tanked accidentally (SA)
Or He suddenly felt homesick (CLE)

Brian Cronin:
But that’s the thing – you know what team likely wouldn’t lose a star player if they didn’t want to? The Knicks! As seen by the time that they actually drafted Patrick Ewing #1 and he made them one of the best teams in the NBA for, like, 15 years!

High draft Picks during the 80s are a whole different story.
Most were flag-bearers and stayed with the team that drafted them for almost their whole career (at least their prime).
Different eras, different league rules, different strategies.

Only one team can win the title every year. OKC lost a finals, to a team with a top 5 player who drafted him (Wade) and lost in game 7 in the WCF to a warriors team made up of homegrown stars. Does that prove you can’t win with stars you drafted in the high lotto? The Warriors and the Heat suggest the opposite.

Brian Cronin:
If you’re a small market team, maybe you have to worry about losing your #1 pick, but that’s not the problem here. That’s the killer thing – every single thing that could possibly say “you should tank” applies to the Knicks more so than other teams (as once they have a nice core, they’d totally be in play for every major star who wanted to force a trade) and yet they never try it! Except for one year, and that one year resulted in one of their only bright spots on the entire team! It’s re-donk-you-lus.

As far as i remember we lost our #1 pick recently cause he wasn’t happy in NY.

I can understand the common sense of ‘drafting higher is better’ but numbers say that tanking teams have won shit till now.

I can understand the common sense of ‘drafting higher is better’ but numbers say that tanking teams have won shit till now.

Do we still not understand that the teams that consistently pick in the top 5 are categorically the worst-run teams, who routinely fail to identify and acquire talent?

If you tank for three years and are still in the high lottery come the fourth year, your failure can be explained by one of two things.

(1) bad luck
(2) sheer incompetence

There is no third option.

The problem this year was that we whiffed on Randle and overpaid a bunch of mediocre players. The only transaction we “won” was Bullock, and that was by luck. If you can’t win trades or sign economical FA’s, then sign scrubs at near-minimum salaries. Our FO constantly lost trades over and over and drafted bums.

Oh sure, I’m totally at the point where I never expect them to actually tank, so I agree that I’d be thrilled if they just stopped making actively bad moves. And yes, that’s the hilarious thing, that they’d probably be better off than most teams by just not being actively bad and they can’t even get that right!

@Dred
I don’t think i get how Heat and GSW success can promote tanking.

Imagine how insufferable Durant would be here. Imagine how insufferable he’s going to be when the Nets aren’t very good next year. I am so glad he didn’t come.

100% correct. We might have a blessing in disguise for a change.

If We had gotten KD i bet that there would have been tanking lovers that would celebrate his absence/injury for the chance on a high lottery pick.
Or not ?

There are arguments to be made against tanking. But “high draft picks don’t win championships” isn’t one of them. Neither is “high draft picks always leave via free agency” isn’t one of them either.

The goal of a rebuild isn’t to win championships, anyway. The goal is to compete for championships. There is a difference, and the difference is key.

To build a competitive team that can win a championship:

#1 get one of the best players in basketball
#2 surround him with other excellent players

This can be done in 3 ways: draft, trade, free agency. One of these ways is free. One you have to give something to get something. One you have to give a lot to get something.

It’s a strange debate to have, honestly.

Donnie Walsh: One of these ways is free.

This is not really accurate. There are significant costs associated with tanking, it is a high-risk, low reward strategy. It has been exceptionally rare to land the kind of generational player you are referring to via abject tanking for multiple years. It is equally rare for that tanking team to legitimately contend during that player’s rookie contract, and then the team has a huge issue with trying to retain the star on anything but a max deal.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Do we still not understand that the teams that consistently pick in the top 5 are categorically the worst-run teams, who routinely fail to identify and acquire talent?

If you tank for three years and are still in the high lottery come the fourth year, your failure can be explained by one of two things.

(1) bad luck
(2) sheer incompetence

There is no third option.

This makes sense, but is kind of a tautology. If only poorly run (i.e. sheerly incompetent) teams tank for 3 years, and we want our team to be a well-run team, why would we consider that strategy? Why is that a better path to building a contender than a “soft” rebuild via smart drafting at lower spots and smart player acquisition via trades and free agency and good cap management?

The Ujiri model worked as well if not better better than the Hinkie model, and that was before the flattening of lottery odds. Mills/Perry were implementing a poor man’s hybrid version of both models, and it might have worked if they drafted more prudently, avoided the KP fiasco and made more Marcus Morris moves and fewer Bobby Portis moves. They dodged two bullets with the Kyrie/KD miss, but at least they considered the Knicks if for no other reason than the big market. That suggests that if we get up to a 35-40 win team with cap flexibility, we can bring in a disgruntled star or two, which seems to be what Rose is putting out there. That at least sounds like he’s leaning towards the Ujiri model, but the concern is that he’s a starblanking agent desperately searching for the white whale.

We’ll know a lot more soon enough.

bobneptune:
I just don’t know with the specter of grossly reduced revenues the next season or two Dolan doesn’t just call up Clay Bennett and let him know the Knicks are willing to take CP3 AND Adams and their 69M off their books next season (and Paul’s 44M the following season) for the appropriate draft compensation.

The Thunder have 13 #1’s the next 7 years including all of their own plus 6 excess picks including 3 unprotected ones….. they can afford to move a few.

Maybe the team that moved Harden to save moneyenjoys the prospect of losing a ton of money next year. but it is certainly worth a phone call.

If we put Bob in charge of negotiating the CP3 trade, I’ll be pretty happy. Paul for Randle straight up saves OKC $63mm…in the middle of a sharp decrease in league revenues. I really think that Clay Bennett would be willing to tell Presti to throw in a pick or two to get the deal done.

But with Dolan and Rose involved, this could be a monkey’s paw situation. I’ll get the player I want, but it will cost me far more than I imagined. Presti will tell Clay, “don’t worry, boss, I got this”, and find a way to walk away from the deal with Frank, Knox, and picks from us.

This is where I hope Perry can add value as GM. For all he lacks in player evaluation, he seems to understand the trade market fairly well. It’s possible he can be the voice in the brain trust that tells Rose and Dolan to chill and let him extract value. There isn’t one other team in the NBA who can and will absorb Paul’s contract. If he can’t extract value from that situation, I don’t know what the point of him will be.

If you tank for three years and are still in the high lottery come the fourth year, your failure can be explained by one of two things.

(1) bad luck
(2) sheer incompetence

There is no third option.

Let me add to Z-man’s comments. The statement above basically implies that to get better we need smart management that fields a terrible team for three or more years running. But if we actually had smart management, there are other ways to build a team that other teams have demonstrated. On the other hand, if we have dumb management, being in the lottery three or four years in a row won’t get you a good team without a lot of luck. A lot of the debate here boils down to the wish for luck crowd versus the wish for smart management crowd. That’s a rock and a hard place choice if there ever was one.

I don’t believe in good luck, at least where the Knick’s are concerned. So that leaves smart management as the only route out. I realize that many believe that smartly managed Knicks is an oxymoron, but I’m hoping that just having not terrible management will eventually give us a watchable team.

After reading the latest Berman article on Thibs, I’m on board for hiring him even if he’s dumb enough to come here. (what’s that old joke)

He may have been over his head with the amount of power the T-Wolves gave him (as they all are when given that much responsibility), but if the issue with Towns and Wiggins was work ethic and the reason Butler left was the attitude displayed by those two, then Thibs was obviously right. And given the immense talent Towns has on offense, the fact that he often sucks on defense, doesn’t even try, and keeps losing without Thibs, speaks loudly that work ethic may actually be a problem.

I also think he’s 100% correct that winning basketball requires a diverse offense. The dominant PG running mostly P&R or all 3 point shooting doesn’t get the job done in the playoffs. It’s too easy for great defenses to take one or even two things away. You have to be able score in a lot of ways with player movement, ball movement, multiple playmakers, inside, outside, in the post etc…

I am not sure what “the Ujiri model” being referred to here is other than “be one of the best GMs in any sport,” but it’s worth noting it’s not like Ujiri doesn’t see value in picking high in the draft. 2/3 trade assets he sent out for Kawhi were former lottery picks.

No. I’m saying I want to get off of the pray-for-a-miracle merry-go-round and add known commodities and surround them with complimentary parts.

If you’re aware of “known commodities” that are young, productive, and not cost-prohibitive when it comes to doing the second part of this (surrounding them with complimentary parts) please enlighten the rest of us.

This makes sense, but is kind of a tautology. If only poorly run (i.e. sheerly incompetent) teams tank for 3 years, and we want our team to be a well-run team, why would we consider that strategy? Why is that a better path to building a contender than a “soft” rebuild via smart drafting at lower spots and smart player acquisition via trades and free agency and good cap management?

Because the poorly run teams who find themselves repeatedly in the lottery aren’t “tanking.” On the contrary, many of them are actually trying to win as many games as possible but are hopelessly inept at evaluating which players help you do that (the Phil Jackson model, basically).

It’s a different story when you have a team that is intentionally avoiding pointless marginal wins.

Obviously, no one is going to come out against smart drafting, smart trades, and smart free agency signings. It’s weird to suggest you can’t do all of these things and still avoid marginal wins, though. I mean what, are we a more attractive free agency destination because of the game Bobby Portis won for us against the Bulls? Are we now going to be able to make better trades because of the times Marcus Morris chucked us to victory?

Correct, the 76ers have made a bunch of enormous errors post-Hinkie. And they’re still winning 50+ games a year. It would be difficult to bungle the post-Hinkie years worse than Philly did, AND THEY STILL ENDED UP WITH ONE OF THE BEST TEAMS IN THE CONFERENCE.

This is what’s so wild to me about them being used as some cautionary tale.

They did what we’re advocating for three seasons, then completely ditched it and basically went the opposite way…but those three seasons alone were enough to stock their war chest so heavily they’ve still been exponentially better than we’ve been in any 3 season period in over 20 years.

Where do I sign up for the Knicks to replicate this allegedly horrible, failed project?

Dink: The problem with the Knicks implementing a ‘Ujiri model’ is that it is extremely hard to do if your team doesn’t have a Ujiri. It would be great if the Knicks hired one of the sharpest minds in the NBA and allowed him to rebuild the scouting + player development systems from scratch. It just ain’t realistic, especially when James Dolan is the owner.

The Hinkie plan is comparatively idiot-proof.

Except that the team that allowed Hinkie to implement it fired him and replaced him with an idiot.

The statement above just doesn’t match the reality of the NBA. Teams that tank multiple times tend to suck even when they get lucky in the lottery (NYK, MIN, PHX, SAC, ATL, CLE) while team with smart management who tank only occasionally or accidentally, if at all (GSW, HOU, MIA, TOR, MIL, IND, DEN, SAS, LAC, BKN, BOS, UTA to name a few) tend to become contenders. None of those teams drafted a top-10 NBA player with their own top-5 draft pick. They either acquired picks and good players by fucking teams in trades, or drafted well with the picks they had.

The pitfall is being both poorly managed and not tanking….then you get DET, WAS, ORL, NOP. But it’s pretty obvious that the best road to building a contender–especially with flattened lottery odds that are specifically intended to make tanking a dumb strategy–does not include abject tanking for multiple years.

thenoblefacehumper: I am not sure what “the Ujiri model” being referred to here is other than “be one of the best GMs in any sport,” but it’s worth noting it’s not like Ujiri doesn’t see value in picking high in the draft. 2/3 trade assets he sent out for Kawhi were former lottery picks.

It’s really not worth noting. Derozan and Poetl were drafted in the same positions we drafted Ntilikina and Knox. They were not the result of tanking, nor were they drafted by Ujiri. What it actually proves is that you can acquire the assets for an opportunistic Kawhi trade if you have decent assets and cap space. If anything, this is an argument against tanking.

thenoblefacehumper: Because the poorly run teams who find themselves repeatedly in the lottery aren’t “tanking.” On the contrary, many of them are actually trying to win as many games as possible but are hopelessly inept at evaluating which players help you do that (the Phil Jackson model, basically).

It’s a different story when you have a team that is intentionally avoiding pointless marginal wins.

Philly executed that plan and it worked well, but cost the GM his job and let to a change in lottery rules that discourage anyone from doing it again. So which smart GM is employing that strategy now? If the answer is “none”, then why are we even debating it? And why are we selectively ignoring all the teams that went from shitty to really good without tanking? Why are you so dug in on a strategy that a) no one is using because any GM who dares to use it under the current rules will be fired, and b) there is zero chance that the Knicks will ever use? It’s like arguing that the best way to stop global warming is to stop all fossil fuel consumption for the next three years. It might work, but it’s not going to happen.

>It’s the common thread in building good teams. If you have smart management they will take the opportunities to improve the team that comes along and that may result in incremental improvements and not the Philly model.<

Exactly.

There are success stories in the NBA with hard tanking, soft tanking, no tanking, and various combinations of the above depending on the circumstances and opportunities at the time. The one thing they have in common is management that understands how to play winning basketball, knows to to identify players with the qualities required to play winning basketball, fits those players together properly, and a GM that understands the cap and salary values so that bad deals are very limited.

You start with competent management that understands where the opportunities are and then figure out the approach. You don't start with an approach and then try to ram it through.

If any move should be criticized for creating marginal wins, it would be firing Fizdale and promoting Mike Miller. Fiz was on his way to an all-time losing season.

I would be fine with hiring Thibs and drafting Cole. There is so much uncertainty in the draft that it gets to a point where people really rip apart some of the top prospects more so than they need to. I get all of the question marks about Cole Anthony but we’d be adding one of the top guard prospects in this year’s draft. That’s really all you can hope for. I guess I’d rather have LaMelo or Hayes but they aren’t without their issues too. Haliburton too. None of them are perfect prospects. Makes me glad we got another first later this year and those Dallas picks the next few years as well. We’ll hit on one of them.

A couple notes on the above:

– LUCK: If you have bad luck AND are tanking/suck, as in, you never move up – and are constantly moving down- in the lottery, or you keep picking one pick after the last good player, you suck. And I think no other team even thinks about this, because it’s literally just the Knicks. I mean, tanking and then dropping a slot every… single… year severely lowers your chances of success… obviously. Yes, I mean, the Knicks drafted guys like Knox, so their talent evaluation needs work. But come on, if we picked not by lottery but by rank, we’d have drafted Ja Morant, Lauri Markannen… all the way back to Kevin Love. Picking third and ending up several tiers below Zion and Ja sucks something nasty.

– TANKING: If you don’t see the value in getting your exceptional players in the draft by tanking, I don’t know what to tell you. So many top teams got a high lottery pick that they hit on. Cleveland drafted Kyrie and LeBron. GSW picked Curry. Chicago got Rose. OKC hit on three after getting picks number 2/3/3- we never went that high! The Celtics drafted Garnett, and now they have Tatum. The Blazers drafted Lillard. The Lakers drafted a few that they ended up using via trade for a championship caliber team (Ball, Ingram, Randle!).

Put it this way- almost every top team in the past 10 years had a major player that was picked top 5. The only outliers that built via trade/free agency are the Bucks and the Rockets, and we don’t have the draft success of the former, or the genius of the latter. The Raptors and Clippers also haven’t tanked to where they are today, and that also speaks to the genius of their front offices.

So… unless you think you have the front office acumen of a Masai or Morey…. you’re probably better off tanking.

The Celtics DRAFTED Garnett? Might want to check the history on that one. Maybe you meant Pierce?

I think the question isn’t tanking one year per say but tanking multiple years. The teams you mentioned bottomed out naturally, got a good pick/player and then started to build up from there. And not all of their good players were top lottery picks. Some were later in the first round or even second round picks.

I have no issue with getting a higher lottery pick. But its not the sure thing people act like it is. For all of those players you listed there are 2 or 3 that were also top picks that did not turn into superstars or were even full on NBA busts. And there is talent everywhere in the draft.

I do agree we should be acquiring extra picks everywhere we can and we have done that to some degree. Extra Dallas picks, clipper picks, extra second round picks for Willy.

But tanking shouldn’t be a long term philosophy. You shouldn’t be afraid to sign a good young player in free agency to a decent contract, one that fills a huge need, because you are worried about the win curve. You shouldn’t pass on a great coach because they might fuck up your win curve.

Now I do agree….playing one year vet rentals excess minutes is dumb. But I also don’t think throwing all rookies out there with no vet leadership and a shitty coach (like we did last season) is productive at all.

We have had really bad luck with our drafting spots too.

We messed up with ZInger (strat alert!) Regardless of what you think of him when we got him , the rebuild should have been all system’s go at that point, Melo be damned. Rose and Noah and that season set us back.. That’s when we should have been taking on bad contracts for extra picks (since we didn’t have a pick that season after we drafted Zinger).

It still kind of amazes me how much Phil fucked up. Sorry strat. Phil had the weight and persona to demand a full rebuild from the get go. The fans would have been patient…

Tanking literally cannot be a long-term philosophy if you draft guys like Doncic. That’s the whole point. When you draft Wiggins and Bennett with two #1 overall picks, you’re not tanking. You’re being a terrible team indefinitely.

The Celtics DRAFTED Garnett?

I meant Pierce, my apologies.

I think the question isn’t tanking one year per say but tanking multiple years. The teams you mentioned bottomed out naturally, got a good pick/player and then started to build up from there.

… Because they HIT on the pick. They picked well, and their ‘probably the best available pick’ became ‘good pick’

And there is talent everywhere in the draft.

There’s oil everywhere, really, so just drill anywhere you want.

For all of those players you listed there are 2 or 3 that were also top picks that did not turn into superstars or were even full on NBA busts.

Which is exactly why you need to tank for more than 2-3 years sometimes to hit on a pick. (Longer if you are unlucky and pick badly – the Knicks)

But tanking shouldn’t be a long term philosophy.

Right, but you have to define endpoints- when you hit on the picks, and you are able to dig and claw your way out of the hole with good moves all around, with good young players (not vets, the shortsighted move). We are not there yet.

We messed up with ZInger (strat alert!) Regardless of what you think of him when we got him , the rebuild should have been all system’s go at that point, Melo be damned. Rose and Noah and that season set us back.. That’s when we should have been taking on bad contracts for extra picks

… So you agree, that once you hit on a pick, and you dig and claw your way out of the tankathon hole, that you rebuild by taking on picks through the draft? So… then right now…. when we don’t have a KP type player (I don’t think KP himself is that player, but whatever)… we should definitely keep drafting?

What’s also amazing is that “Suck for a while to build up draft capital” is literally how the Knicks built both the team that won the championships in the 1970s and how they built their good early 1980s team and then again their late 1980s team (after the King injury forced them into tanking mode again).

While the Knicks since Dolan took over have taken the controversial “suck for decades and build up no draft capital” approach. It has surprisingly not worked. And then the one brief period where they “sort of tanked” from 2008-2010 also led to their best team of the past 20 years. They bungled that approach, too, but even their bungled approach eventually led to a pretty good team.

It’s a simple, easily achievable approach where, even if you bungle it, you still improve. Just don’t sign veterans to long-term contracts for a few years, suck for a couple of years, get good draft picks, develop the young players and then, when the young players have reached a decent level, then you can start adding veterans to the mix (if need be).

Also, boy, people sure do love to gloss over the kinds of tanking tons of the currently contending teams did in fact do.

-LAL: are where they are today because they were able to attract LeBron with a combination of their market and assets they got from tanking hard, and then trading those assets for AD.

-BKN: we’ve been through this a bunch of times. For all intents and purposes, they tanked (hoarded picks and took on every damn salary dump they could. Yes, they missed out on the benefit of improved draft picks and made good picks anyway. Is there any reason to believe they’d be in worse shape if they did everything else the exact same way, but had that benefit?

-LAC: it really all goes back to picking Blake Griffin #1 overall in 2008. Sorry!

Hell, even the Raptors’ success can be at least partially explained by drafting Andrea Bargnani #1 overall. They flipped him for 33% of the assets in the Kawhi trade (with another 33% coming from another one of their lottery picks in DeRozan).

Sure, there are other ways to skin this cat. If we draft an all-timer at the tail end of the lottery (Milwaukee), we probably don’t need to tank. If we trade a couple of old husks for a treasure chest of high-lottery picks (Boston), we probably don’t need to tank. If we draft an all-NBA player in the second round (Denver), we probably don’t need to tank.

To my knowledge, we have not done any of these things yet. So what’s the plan? Nobody is a stronger advocate for 1) taking every draft pick incredibly seriously and 2) getting as many draft picks as possible than me. This will increase the likelihood of being able to do these non-tanking things.

Of course, doing 1 means not hiring people like Scott Perry, and doing 2 means not chasing after every last marginal win all the god damn time, which for some reason a lot of people seem to be arguing is actually a fine thing to do.

tnfh, all of the examples you gave bear no resemblance whatsoever to what Philly did. That you trace LAC’s success back to drafting Blake fucking Griffin is emblematic of that. The Knicks have actually tanked more often than any of those teams. So has MIN, PHX, and SAC. And we actually lucked out in 2015 where we dropped to #4 but wound up with the 2nd most valuable asset in that draft (maybe the first if KP keeps improving.) And during that time frame, other teams bungled their tanks worse than we did, but got lucky! You bring up the Lakers…who got luckier in the lottery than them? Twice?! Yet it still took being in the most opulent city in the country to attract LeBron and then AD. They went through the Lins and Howards and Nashs trying to get one last glory year out of Kobe, then they drafted Randle and Russell and Ingram and Ball, and traded all of them. We drafted KP and RJ and Mitch and could have drafted SGA and Mitchell/J Collins/Bam. The Lakers gained absolutely no advantage over us by tanking. And while they look good for the next year or two, the cupboard looks pretty bare after that.

In the meantime, again, why aren’t we discussing the teams that rebuild without embracing tanking for multiple years?

thenoblefacehumper: Of course, doing 1 means not hiring people like Scott Perry, and doing 2 means not chasing after every last marginal win all the god damn time, which for some reason a lot of people seem to be arguing is actually a fine thing to do.

No one is arguing that. They are arguing that tanking is not better than winning trades, making smart FA signings, and drafting prudently. They are arguing that no one really has done it any more than the Knicks have, and that those who have done it have also “chased marginal wins” by your own definition (bringing on useless free agents rather than taking on bad contracts into cap space for assets.

If we trade a couple of old husks for a treasure chest of high-lottery picks (Boston),

And that, in turn, came from them identifying their win curve and dumping their vets while they could still get good draft capital for them, while the Knicks, instead, traded Chandler for other veterans, traded Shump to get rid of JR Smith and extended Melo and gave him a raise and a no-trade clause (and still came out of it with a second round pick eventually that became their best player). So yes, another aspect of tanking is trading your veterans while they are still good.

That’s the straw man here…no one is saying that multi-year tanking “can’t” work, only that it isn’t necessarily the only effective strategy, or the most effective strategy, or even a possible strategy given constraints (e.g., Knicksiness, leveled lottery odds, coaches and players always coaching/playing to win, GMs not having latitude to do it without risking getting fired, and GMs that are incompetent beyond being able to tank.)

There are ample success and failure stories on both sides of the narrow “abject tanking vs. chasing marginal wins” argument. What the successes have in common are 1) luck and 2) other strategic team-building strategies, notably, winning trades, making prudent FA acquisitions, building through the draft regardless of draft position.

Brian Cronin: It sure does seem that way. Teams have been doing this for decades without anyone freaking out about it, but I guess they didn’t say “tanking,” so it was all right.

I think everyone knows what “tanking” means. The disagreement is re: tanking like Philly did it vs. how most other teams have done it in selective seasons, which is actually what we have been doing lately.

Brian Cronin: And that, in turn, came from them identifying their win curve and dumping their vets while they could still get good draft capital for them, while the Knicks, instead, traded Chandler for other veterans, traded Shump to get rid of JR Smith and extended Melo and gave him a raise and a no-trade clause (and still came out of it with a second round pick eventually that became their best player). So yes, another aspect of tanking is trading your veterans while they are still good.

But that can happen independently of a “tanking” strategy. The Celtics never won less than 25 games since like forever. They never tanked in the way it is being discussed here. They didn’t tank their way into Paul Pierce or Rajon Rondo. They didn’t tank their way into Al Jefferson being the key piece in the Kevin Garnett deal. They never really tanked at all.

If we are only applying the very broadest definition of tanking, the Knicks have done it as well as most teams. They have not gotten better because of a combination of bad lottery luck, poor drafting and bad cap management. When you never, ever move up a single spot and move down every time you tank well, it’s hard to fault that aspect of the strategy.

They never tanked in the way it is being discussed here.

People want the Knicks to:

1) Give the overwhelming majority of minutes and roster spots to players who have a non-zero chance of being part of their future

2) Get as many draft picks as they can

I’m not asking for anything else than doing these two things and letting the dominoes fall where they may.

I think everyone knows what “tanking” means. The disagreement is re: tanking like Philly did it vs. how most other teams have done it in selective seasons, which is actually what we have been doing lately.

The Knicks did it in 2018-19 and that was good, but then went right back to signing mediocre veterans for no real reason the following year. With the one guy who was actually worth something came to them via a fluke of them signing a guy on Day 1 who turned out to not be ready to play basketball! And Mills wanted to keep that one guy who actually had trade value long term instead of trading him for a pick and then also trade a first rounder for Terry Rozier, who they could have just signed in the previous offseason if they wanted him so bad! Man, Mills was terrible.

People want the Knicks to:

1) Give the overwhelming majority of minutes and roster spots to players who have a non-zero chance of being part of their future

2) Get as many draft picks as they can

I’m not asking for anything else than doing these two things and letting the dominoes fall where they may.

While I agree, I think it’s fair enough that when we are all pretty much agreed on the proper strategy, then it’s only natural that we end up debating the areas where we might not all be exactly aligned.

Re: top-level picks,

Just look at last year. What if the Knicks didn’t buy the hype and traded down with Atlanta for say, Herro and Clarke, who many people on this board liked?

I don’t want to totally discount RJ just yet because he was put in a bad role last year, but don’t you think we’d at least have a bigger and better cast of players by simply recognizing that after the first 2 picks, there were no more real star players in the 2019 draft? Regardless of RJ’s high school reputation?

For chrissake, Cam Reddish had better overall advanced stats than RJ last year.

We do not have Giannis. We do not have Boston’s haul from the Nets trade (that, as BC points out, essentially amounted to Boston “tanking”). We do not have Nikola Jokic.

But we have Mitch. We have RJ.

I give up 🙁

A team can optimize it’s draft position while doing all 3 things you listed. It’s not an either/or proposition. The “pro-tankers” here are not against winning trades, smart FA signings, and solid drafting. It shouldn’t have to be said, but I guess we’re at that point.

This is what I was saying earlier. It seems like some people think that marginal wins somehow fuel being a smart front office. Not true! You can be smart and not sign Courtney Lee, I promise.

You’re smart and the point you’re trying to make is important but your analogies to chess and poker are pretty off base. You keep ignoring several gargantuan differences between either game and GMing a basketball team.

All analogies will reach limits before they become tautologies.

I used the chess one to explain that some games require concurrent tactics that depend on one another to achieve one’s aims. In basketball, you could tank your ass off to draft Zion Williamson and Luka Doncic in successive drafts and then sign Kwame Brown (like right now, in 2020) and Darius Miles (also right now) to max contracts, and then it doesn’t really matter how well you drafted: you’re not going to win shit if you fail to manage your cap. Just like you’re not going to checkmate Magnus Carlsen before he checkmates you if you develop your pieces well, while keep your king precariously in the center of the board. K?

I used the poker one to explain (haha) that entering a randomized event with a 14% chance of winning is better than entering the same event with a 6% chance of winning. Sort of like how the cards you are dealt before the flop are random, and determine the likelihood of you winning the hand based on the strength of your cards alone. Obviously this is where the analogy ends — I thought that much would be painfully obvious — as, wouldn’t you know, poker and NBA team building are not in fact the exact same game, otherwise they might have the same name, and be one thing instead of two.

It gives the impression you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.

It’d be cool if you would respond to them with an actual rebuttal rather than say, “This bad because bad.”

If you have to live in a cave eating nothing but bread and water for 3 years vs. living in a condo in the suburbs of Portland, I’ll go with the 6% odds. Either way, you’re probably not winning the lottery.

I honestly don’t find 33-win teams all that much more appealing than 17-win teams, which was the difference between the 14% Knicks and 6% Pelicans last year. My wife used to live in a condo in the Portland suburbs, and I can tell you it was much better accommodations than the small cave in which I and several other adjuncts held office hours at the CIA in Hyde Park. At the very least, more hospitable to simulating procreation. Running water, too.

You can’t possibly explain the success of even half of the current playoff teams via the tanking you are advocating for without making impossibly convoluted connections

I mean, I don’t really care to emulate the Orlando Magic.

(the LAL and LAC attempts are LOL)

The Lakers traded two #2 overall picks and one #4 overall pick (and Hart and future picks) for AD, but LOL at the idea that their long-term badness gave them a war chest of assets that they used to become successful! LOLOLOLOL!

The Clippers got Griffin, who made them an attractive enough destination for Chris Paul (who they got using assets they got from tanking). Then they traded both of those guys for basically the entire team they presented to Kawhi and Paul George.

It’s true, you caught me, you don’t have to tank if you already tanked to get two guys with very high trade value, and then you trade them.

and of the teams that actually embraced your strategies more completely

I have no idea what you think I’m advocating for, but I outlined it above. I want the Knicks to collect as many draft picks as possible, and not sign players who 1) have zero chance of being part of our future, or bringing us assets via trade and/or 2) give us some marginal wins that we likely wouldn’t get if we filled out the roster with (carefully selected) 2nd rounders, UDFAs, etc. I want them to do this until the team is decent, at which point they can start to supplement it with guys who help them win.

What is so objectionable about this? This process can take literally one season if you draft a Luka/Giannis etc., or it can take a lot longer if you don’t. Either way, what’s clear is right now WE DO NOT HAVE THAT GUY OR GUYS. What’s the alternative route to getting them?

thenoblefacehumper: The Clippers got Griffin, who made them an attractive enough destination for Chris Paul (who they got using assets they got from tanking). Then they traded both of those guys for basically the entire team they presented to Kawhi and Paul George.

Wait, you’re citing the 2005-2010 Clippers as a model of shrewd management? Please. They were more of a laughing stock at that time than us. They got lucky in that lottery when two teams who tanked better than them moved down (btw how have fellow tankers WAS and SAC been doing since then?). They also got extremely lucky when the CP3 to Lakers deal got nixed. And they’re in LA! That doesn’t hurt! BTW in the 2008 draft they picked up Eric Gordon at #7 and DeAndre Jordan at #35. Without tanking.

Just to clarify, by adding value, I mean they outperform their contract and we have the option to keep them as part of our future on a fair deal or trade them for assets. Payton is an interesting case, he’s probably worth slightly more than what we’re paying him and might or might not be an asset on an expiring, Same for Bullock, Randle was a reasonable gamble on a young, improving player who looked like he had star potential, so it’s hard to get too bent out of shape by that deal, but he’s clearly not working out.

I totally agree that Portis wasn’t ever going to be worth $15 mill or more. Taj and Ellington were totally superfluous, so we’re in agreement there. That’s like $30 mill in cap space for eating salary to acquire assets. If they just signed Randle, Payton, Bullock and Morris, I’d be fine with what they did. Any of those guys represented potential value, even if they created a few marginal wins. I don’t see why you can’t agree with that.

Sorry, I am juggling laptops with my brood and spouse. Could have put the first 3 in one post and one was a correction.

Dink: It’s an actual strategy though. “Win trades, make smart FA signings, and draft sensibly” is not. It’s a bunch of vague nonsense without a foundation.

whut?

NahNah: Dink, you are absolutely right. TNFH has to study for his final exams, so please relieve his stress by taking up the mantle. Please spend the next three hours of your life explaining basic logic principles to Z and Strat. If you want a shortcut, simply copy and paste what has been posted here the last five years.

I so hoped that you would actually go the other way and never post here again….

Z-man:
Nothing like being trolled by two guys named Dink and NahNah.

In other news, wtf, is Mark Vermin trying to make us feel better about drafting Cole Anthony?

Here’s the thing though. We aren’t trolling. You just engaged in an internet debate with TNFH. You each spent over 2000 words trying to justify your opinions. Dink and I are simply recognizing that TNFH is making sound, salient points that are convincing. Your arguments are not convincing. If not us, who are you trying to convince? Who is the poster on this board who you think agrees with your takes?

Piss of cake
I am convinced too after the salient points.
Constant Tanking is a far better strategy.
All it requires is shaolin centenarian patience and a hammer to break your franchise player’s leg till you find his partner from the drafts.
You don’t even need a FO.
Just a statistician.
A blind one to avoid the eye test temptation.

“Rashad Phillips, a rising star in mock-draft circles who played at the University of Detroit Mercy, told The Post he sees a lot of All-Star Victor Oladipo in Hampton. Knicks GM Scott Perry drafted Oladipo for the Magic in 2013.”

lol

who would have ever guessed ‘piss cake’ is an actual thing…I am forever being enlightened by this site…

nice nah nah, you the man, man…

hey jowles, tried some of that tincture you mentioned…they got all different thc/cbd ratios…of course I asked the friendly young man behind the counter to give me whatever would bring me the closest to death…

holy fuck, I was still high the next day when I woke up…that shit is like a some kind of opiate…

man, some of this stuff in 2020…not in kansas anymore that’s for sure…hell, not even of this world…

Just a thought RE: The Draft

I’m starting to really warm up to RJ Hampton if we don’t land as high as we hope for. He’s a little streaky as a shooter, but he’s pretty good at breaking down defenses. An all RJ backcourt kinda intrigues me. But we absolutely have to get a 3 & D SF with a consistent J. Maybe it will be Bullock if he doesn’t have to try to score as much as he did this past season. And if we can’t find a trade partner for Randle and we end up keeping Portis, we might as well flip the 1st and 2nd team big spots. That way we may be able to get the most out of Randle as the 2nd team anchor

geo, I’m right there with you. Also take less of it next time.

Z-man:
Again, tnfh’s points may be salient, but are only one of many strategies that can work, and among the most unlikely to actually be implemented no matter who the GM is. My biggest point is, let’s live in the real world. I made the analogy of global warming…the absolute best strategy would be to ban all fossil fuel use, but since there is zero chance of that happening, what is a reasonable strategy to hope for from our current leadership? If you think it’s tnfh’s, dream on!

More pointedly, I’m not sure why you have so much beef with me. You came out of the blue and called me a troll when I feel pretty confident that most of the regulars here would disagree with that characterization, whether they agree with me or not. Do you have some kind of special relationship with tnfh that compels you to attack me?

As someone who worked in energy (and specifically renewables), the optimal strategy is not to ban fossil fuels. The optimal strategy is to invest heavily in renewables and battery capacity, appropriately tax the externalities presented by fossil fuels, and improve existing infrastructure. We are years away from a national system that can run on renewables alone, both on a baseload and a variable load perspective.

As to why I attack you, it’s because you should know better. You are not strat, reub or bobneptune. They are basically hopeless and completely disingenuous in their analysis.

You seem to understand the basic statistical arguments. You, however, refuse to abandon your eyes. You cling to them like Jack to a wood door in a cold sea. You make bold claims (fine). But once they get refuted by statistics, you then always fall back to your eyes or reinterpret the statistics inappropriately. For once, it would be nice to see you concede a point when backed into a corner, not lash out with a 2000 word diatribe.

I don’t know, Jowles. Honestly, there is no one right answer to this. But I sometimes think you approach players as if anyone over the age of 27 is a veteran that should not be signed on a young/rebuilding team and I just don’t see it that way.

I’m going to bring up the example of Michael Jordan, which is absurd obviously. But he was 30 when he won his first championship.

Yes, players don’t usually improve after 27 or 28 and start to decline in their early 30s. But veterans can be role players, bench players or even starters and still produce at a high level way into their 30’s.

I wouldn’t sign a 32 year old to a 4 year deal at a huge overpay or anything like that but a 30 year old player who fills a specific role could be useful to a rebuilding team. That player could conceivably play that role for 3 or 4 years. I’m talking dudes like Kyle Korver (not now just a recent example).

I actually think our vet strategy this season wasn’t the worst. People act like Randle is awful but he isn’t. And none of the contracts were bad because they are all short. We needed a PG badly so we got Peyton. We needed outside shooting so we got Ellington. We got a first back for Morris. Bullock was a nice signing. We have team options. The only real quibble I have is that some of those dudes got minutes over guys like Dotson or Iggy, who should have gotten some burn.

And I think ultimately my first sentence two comments ago sums it up for me. There is no one right answer to these questions. Every situation/player/contract is different. I understand and appreciate your philosophy and approach and think it holds a lot of merit. I would love to see you be GM of The Knicks! But I think all philosophies shouldn’t be dogmatic and rigid and I think that is where I sometimes have beef with you because you hold it as an absolute truth.

Morris seemed like an unnecessary signing at the time but turned out to kind of be a stroke of genius for us. I don’t know if you would have signed him even for one year because it would have been an overpay and he was too old and he would hurt our win curve. But he’s a good player and we had the chance to sign him for a short deal and that allowed us to trade him for a pick. Every situation is different and being flexible is really important otherwise you miss opportunities and chances.

Jordan was a few months into 28 when he won his first ring. And any failure to win before 1991 lies with his teammates alone. He was ridiculously good on a mediocre team, like LeBron’s first stint on the Cavs.

Bo Nateman: Z-Man, I say this with total respect because without speaking to the merits of what you argue( which I am oftentimes unqualified to pass on), stylistically speaking you are one of the best writers on this board. Your tone is reminiscent of the big firm litigators I used to do battle with. Were you a lawyer before going into education?

Thank Bo! I never seriously considered law but I did work for a law firm for a while, mainly to finance my ed degree, and actually met my wife there, who did consider law but became a clinical social worker instead. I worked in several fields before education, including a few years on Wall st. All the prior experience really helped me maintain perspective when I transitioned into education in my 30s. People who go directly from college into education sometimes have jaded views of the corporate world. I especially appreciate the compliment about writing capability, it truly means a lot considering where it was even in my 30s.

When you’re at the bottom of the win curve like we are, the “don’ts” are more important than the “dos.”

Don’t invest in veterans who are not going to be a part of the eventual contending team.

Don’t give minutes to some marginally decent veteran when you can give those minutes to a young player who might be part of the future.

Don’t worry about squeezing out 32 wins if it means playing veterans more minutes than necessary. Play the kids and live with the win total.

Don’t pay market value for mediocrities like Wayne Ellington and Bobby Portis when you can use that cap space to take on a bad contract and acquire a draft pick.

Just stick to these principles and you’ll be all right.

JK47,

What about “Trade for former Leon Rose clients and draft prospective Leon Rose clients”. Would that be considered a “Do” or a “Don’t” as a good team-building strategy?

JK, Your don’ts make perfect sense in a perfect Knicks world. What complicates matters is that the folks in the position to execute these strategies are working for Dolan and have very little wiggle room. If Ujiri were hired, I would doubt very much that he would follow the don’ts you list to the letter. The key is, it’s okay not to minimize opportunity cost, so long as you don’t kill flexibility and/or you can turn over your mistakes for assets. The Morris signing is a good example…he clearly violates your Dont’s list and definitely took minutes away from Knox and Iggy resulting in more wins, but he also yielded a nice return at the deadline.

On the bright side, there are serious “don’ts” that even our incompetent front office has been following. for example:

Don’t trade away draft picks, especially to acquire an overpaid marquee player.
Don’t sign veteran FAs to long-term guaranteed deals, especially when there is little chance that you can move the contract in the final two years of the contract.
Don’t give player options

Sadly, there are others that they haven’t followed:

Don’t draft players based purely on upside, especially based on a 3-on-3 workout.
Don’t stretch waived contracts

Donnie Walsh: But instead they signed Bobby Portis for $16,000,000 and didn’t get a pick. Why? Because they didn’t think Iguodala would help them win this year, which is a poor long-range team building plan.

Totally agree, but to be fair, I think they saw Portis as a good young player on the upswing who could possibly be a piece of the future. Predictably, he didn’t develop at all.

Again, for the 1000th time, Strat isn’t suggesting any viable plan, because he never names a player he would acquire on a reasonable salary. You can’t actually name one move that Strat would implement right now because his whole argument boils down to: be smarter than other people. You can’t actually implement it.

However, JKs list of don’t is a very easy path to follow. Even a GM of mediocre negotiation and analytical skills could implement JKs plan very well. That’s what makes it an actual plan.

And you resort to the eye test ALL THE TIME. And when you do, on a stats-based blog, you have to carry the burden. Presumption goes to stats over eye test (sort of like a tie to the runner in baseball). So if you are going to bring the eye test, it’s got to be very persuasive. Your entire rejection of Hayes came down to his “left-hand” capability based on your eye test, and your refusal to understand the correlation coefficient (“r”) between college free throws and NBA three pointers.

You can’t just turn off fossil fuels without disruption to the economy like you are seeing during COVID. The instability would be disastrous. I would LOVE to see a renewable earth friendly power system; it’s the thing I want most for this planet. I’m just not willing to sacrifice the vulnerable in pursuit of my dream.

***You can’t just take on what teams are willing to pay you to take and not hire other free agents. One or two of those deals could help. But you still need a team that has enough players at every position to hold scrimmages***

If scrimmages are valued higher than asset management, then that is fucked up. Especially if for scrimmages you hire only power forwards.

NahNah: Your entire rejection of Hayes came down to his “left-hand” capability based on your eye test, and your refusal to understand the correlation coefficient (“r”) between college free throws and NBA three pointers.

Again, an unacceptably simplistic characterization. EVERY ANALYST confirms that his lack of a right hand is a significant issue. It’s not an eye-test thing just because it’s not from a box score, it’s based on statistical data easily acquired by extensive film analysis.

And the correlation you site is strong but hardly enough to dismiss his terrible 3-pt shooting entirely. There is a standard deviation and a bell curve, and predicting where someone falls on the curve is hardly an exact science. In my argument, we went through a bunch of players who would up being decent but not great 3-pt shooters based on FT%.

The larger point, which you choose to selectively ignore, is that my concerns about 3-pt shooting is not the only reason, or even close to the most important reason, why I am so down on Hayes. Not having a right hand is far more concerning, as is his overall lack of elite athleticism. I don’t think his game will translate to being a decent NBA PG, and I don’t think he has the skill or athleticism to play any other position. We can have a reasonable disagreement about these and other things without you mischaracterizing my positions.

JK47: We did get a low first rounder for Morris so hooray for that.

  

And a future 2nd rounder and a decent expiring player with bird rights. That’s a really nice haul.

I mean, there is a minimum salary floor that’s I think 90 percent of the cap, correct?

In other words, Dolan dollars gotta go to someone d’oh…

Z-man: Again, an unacceptably simplistic characterization. EVERY ANALYST confirms that his lack of a right hand is a significant issue. It’s not an eye-test thing just because it’s not from a box score, it’s based on statistical data easily acquired by extensive film analysis.

If I had a gong, I would hit it. For anyone bored enough to read my writing, imagine a gong being struck in your mind’s eye, and listen to the deep hum of the reverberating metal. If you get a slight tingle, that’s a bonus.

You read it here first: statistical data easily acquired by extensive film analysis

How often does Hayes dribble with his left hand compared to his point guard counterparts? Are you telling me that you have player data for how often EVERY PLAYER INTERNATIONALLY dribbles with their off-hand? Because that is exactly the data you would need to show to make this statistical claim. If you have it, great, please direct me and I will stand corrected.

when Uncle Geo comes to visit me in Montauk this summer.

oh my goodness…montauk is soooooooo beautiful…i don’t know, sort of made a mental commitment to myself that sometime next year me, sis and ma are taking a trip back to new york…back to our people 🙂

you’re going to be very disappointed when you see I’m not a male model.

try to stop me from hugging on you hubie…i dare ya…

shoot, that goes for the rest of you all too if i’m lucky enough to see you in person…

you all have become a big part of my life…shit my daily routine…we’re blessed with a lot of remarkable folks here…you know what – fuck that – fuck remarkable…you all are a lot of good people…i really don’t give a shit what you do or don’t do for a living or have or have not accomplished in life…

it really doesn’t mean a god damn thing to me…cuz, that ain’t life…life is simply the passage of time…

and, most of the time i have zero clue what the argument/debate is, but, it is comforting for me to read and enjoy your words…

Finishing that Coll book is a truly heroic effort. I didn’t make it.

The hard thing with books like that is they have a short shelf life. Exxon is currently sucking wind and isn’t the monster it once was.

I work in energy and am sympathetic to the goals of the renewable energy movement. Reducing carbon dioxide output is critical and urgent.

However, it does appear the renewable energy industry is on its way down the road to being just as corporate as fossil fuels and in its own way prone to quite a high level of misinformation. Not at XOM/CVX levels yet of course but not difficult to imagine things changing 10 years down the road.

Owen, I think that’s a sound assessment. The serious players that I know that are doing well in solar/wind energy aren’t doing it because they want to save the earth (some are, no doubt). The margins on renewable energy are very attractive (and getting more so every day). They are just as likely to screw over their neighbor for a buck as anybody else (or any other oil exec).

Crash!

One of the more under-appreciated films of the David Cronenberg catalogue.

I imagine it runs pretty close to the book. Let us know 🙂

NahNah: How often does Hayes dribble with his left hand compared to his point guard counterparts? Are you telling me that you have player data for how often EVERY PLAYER INTERNATIONALLY dribbles with their off-hand? Because that is exactly the data you would need to show to make this statistical claim. If you have it, great, please direct me and I will stand corrected.

Now you just sound incredibly stupid and petty.

Z-man: Now you just sound incredibly stupid and petty.

This isn’t petty at all. This is a stats blog! We argue about the statistical value of players. If you are saying that Hayes uses his left hand too much (which might be a reasonable assessment, I really don’t know), the burden is on you to back that up with math if we are supposed to take it as a key metric for evaluating his performance. BTW, it would also be helpful to know the correlation of one-handedness to productivity. Harden loves his left hand, but it’s so damn effective, it doesn’t matter all that much.

KnickfaninNJ: I think we basically agree.The 50% that I think was well spent was mostly not spent on power forwards.

That is a gross mischaracterization of the analysis you are quoting. There is no basic agreement. The money spent on non-power forwards was stupidly spent. BuLOCK, Ellington, and Payton were a waste of money.

“Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information train is jammed, man!”

nan nah does jeffrey goines…you’re like a brain bully at times…

not really serious…maybe a little…i don’t know…who cares…

Thanks NahNah, although I actually think Peyton was worth the shot, given the deep, ugly hole filled with excrement that was our point guard position. Surprisingly for a Knick, he didn’t actually improve his play while here, much less realize his potential. I suppose that’s bound to happen now and then, even with our crack (sic) development staff.

Anyone know that this is Ellington’s second go-round with the Knicks? In 2014 he came over in the summer with Shane Larkin (aw) and other flotsam for Ray and Tyson. But he was tossed to Sacramento before the season even started, for among others Mr. Outlaw. And was waived shortly thereafter.

By the Kings. So of course we kept our eye on him.

That is a gross mischaracterization of the analysis you are quoting. There is no basic agreement. The money spent on non-power forwards was stupidly spent. BuLOCK, Ellington, and Payton were a waste of money.

Then we disagree. I think Bullock and Peyton were good signings and we particularly needed Payton to just actually field a team sometimes when Smith and Ntilikina were injured.

NahNah: This isn’t petty at all. This is a stats blog! We argue about the statistical value of players. If you are saying that Hayes uses his left hand too much (which might be a reasonable assessment, I really don’t know), the burden is on you to back that up with math if we are supposed to take it as a key metric for evaluating his performance.

This is total bullshit. When every single draft analyst points to his lack of a right hand as a significant problem, saying “show me the numbers” makes you sound like a petty, condescending moron.

Now if you want to concede the point (and please, don’t play dumb here, just concede the fucking point) and then say that you believe that it shouldn’t matter, sure, we can have a debate about that. I think it is a critical skillset that if point guards don’t have at this age, they are unlikely to develop to the point where it isn’t a liability, especially if they can’t overcome it somewhat with elite athleticism. Finishing with one’s off hand is more likely to be improved with practice.

You brought up James Harden…did you know that he was a standout athlete at the combine his draft year?

“No projected lottery player was more surprising at the combine than James Harden. Many scouting reports on Harden say that he’s not athletic, but his results say otherwise. First, he recorded a 37” vertical and reached the same maximum height (11’8.5”) as Blake Griffin. Second, he ran a 3.13 sprint, which was only one hundredth behind speedster Ty Lawson, and repped 17 on the bench press.”

He also had a far better right hand coming out of college than Hayes (I can find evidence for that too, but why bother) but it didn’t even matter as much because he wasn’t being drafted as a PG.

And quote: “When every single draft analyst points to his lack of a right hand as a significant problem, saying “show me the numbers” makes you sound like a petty, condescending moron.”

Z-Man, the rhetorical heuristic you now seek to rely on is called “appeal to authority”. I don’t put too much weight in such appeals. In fact, that is the very reason we are stuck with RJ “Can’t Shoot” Barrett. No bueno.

Call me crazy for not giving a damn what the wingspan band has to say about evaluating players. Just show me the numbers. If he has only one hand, why didn’t this manifest in his productivity in the leagues in which he played? You know who else has no handle? Frank. You know who sucked in his limited international minutes? Frank. Simple.

You know who else has no handle? Frank. You know who sucked in his limited international minutes? Frank. Simple.

i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will not take frank bait. i will take the frank bait, and like it.

you know what sha na na – go ahead and get schooled then sucka…

no handle…fool, please…

TNFH, at the risk of being accused of trying to bromance you to get a look at your knickerbockers, i actually think that lineup you posted at the top of the thread would be super entertaining to watch. i wouldn’t hate that. nice team assembly.

Hubert:
Normally I’d suggest a new thread but this is kinda like when the ash gets really long on a cigar and you just want to see how long you can go before it collapses.

The Knickerblogger-Monkey Theorem:

If you give ten Knickerbloggers access to the internet and 1,483 posts they will type at least one set of identical Frank Ntilikina arguments.

Knicks could trade Julius Randle for Blake Griffin
I just figured I would put this out there.
The CP3 trade doesn’t make sense. BTW, he turns 35 today. Happy Birthday.

I’m not advocating. I was sharing as a PSA.

I’m trying to remember other circumstances where the league stepped in to nix a trade…

I remember thinking it was a bullshit move by the league…

I think new orleans was without a owner at the time…

CP3 wasn’t asking to team up with Blake.

Paul was in the last year of his contract. The only teams who would trade for him were teams that knew he would resign with them. The only reason the Clippers knew he would resign with them was because they had Blake Griffin.