From Mike Vorkunov (behind a paywall, but come on, it really isn’t that expensive to get a subscription):
If Thibodeau were to get the job, it would continue an emerging theme during Rose’s first spring as the team president. Though the Knicks have been generally lauded for their front-office hires, the people Rose has brought in have also had longstanding relationships with him. He and Wesley have been friends for decades from their South Jersey beginnings. He has strong existing relationships with Aller and new assistant general manager Frank Zanin. Thibodeau, along with his successful résumé as a coach, could benefit from that closeness with Rose and other members of his front office. Wesley reportedly represented Thibodeau when he worked for CAA. It is not unusual for executives to hire people they have known awhile, and Rose is doing so in his first offseason on the team side after 20-plus years as a player agent.
The Knicks still have another critical hire to make in the front office. Craig Robinson left the organization, a league source confirmed, to take over as the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Robinson had been the Knicks’ VP of player development since 2017, when he was hired by former president Steve Mills.
Robinson’s exit had been expected for months. He was a holdover from the Mills regime, and his contract was set to expire next month. The Knicks had already been putting out feelers for someone to replace him before he left.
Whoever the Knicks hire to take over player development will have an important job. The roster is filled with young and talented players but who have shown limited or stilted growth in their careers. Strong player development has been the backbone of contending teams, and the ability to find and develop late picks and undrafted players into contributing rotation members or starters has powered teams such as the Raptors, Spurs, Bucks and others. The Knicks also have had uneven results from their top-10 picks, leaving them at risk of attaining little value from years atop the draft.
It would be nice to have player development be an asset here instead of a detriment.
361 replies on “The Athletic: Knicks’ coaching search becoming clearer, but team has 1 other big hire to make”
If i were responsible for that hiring I’d grab a Jugoslavian oldskool Professor-coach.
When it comes to development “Jugos” are TOP on my list.
Greece’s basketball mania/success from the 80s till this day owes A LOT to Jugoslavian basketball minds.
(Serbia/Croatia/Slovenia/Montenegro)
Reposted to new thread.
I don’t think this is really the case. We will need at least three point guards, Barrett, Robinson, Iggy, Randle, Knox, three new draft choices, a back up two, a back up center. That’s already 13, and we need another back up two, and probably one or two more big men. This means we only keep maybe two of our expiring contracts even before adding Melo. And this doesn’t count Pinson and Harper
If i were Leon and
I could get rid of Randle and DSJ,
+ Some of Bullock, Ellington,Taj,Portis
while i could grab CP3, Melo
without losing draft picks and without fucking my team’s salary cap future
I ve done it ASAP!
I wouldn’t mind changing our current situation (without cap/draft”casualties) to this one below:
Pg-Cp3
Sg-Frank
Sf-RJ
Pf-Melo
C-Mitch
Your math is not making sense to me. We have no idea who the 3 draft picks will be or whether they will make the top 15 on the roster. They could comprise one of the PGs, or a back-up 2, or an additional big. None of Pinson, Harper, DSj, Iggy, Wooten, or Dotson is guaranteed to be an NBA rotation player. There would have been a billion ways to make room for Melo without cutting Trier, who btw was immediately replaced so a roster spot wasn’t freed up in the first place.
There is really no logical way to connect waiving Trier to freeing up a spot for Melo.
I don’t think anyone here WANTS the Knicks to bring back Melo under any circumstances. It’s really about how much of a negative will it be if that happens. Put me in the “largely inconsequential” camp.
I was counting a roster of 17 because I’m including the names of two way players. I agree the new draft picks will fill in some of the slots. But if one fills in a point guard slot, then he doesn’t fill in the backup big slot. I think it’s impossible all three will be NBA ready, so you still will need players at all the positions. I don’t want to argue about Trier for Melo. Trier was immediately replaced, as you say. I think the only reason that comes up is that they are both score first iso players. If you don’t value Trier, why would you want Melo? The roster spot is a different question. I don’t think it’s trivial to waive someone to make room for Melo. I will try to do a better accounting. I am sure I will find there is someone I’d rather keep than him.
Put me in the camp of “Melo+CP3 instead of mercenaries 1+1year lot”.
I have the feeling that it’s a PR upgrade which could lead to get a Big Dog much easier.
As I said, it would at worst be an inconsequential PR.marketing move. No one here wants to see it, but no one should get too worked up about it either.
Ok here’s a potential roster without putting in the draft picks yet
PG: Ntilikina, Payton, Harper
SG: Bullock, Dotson, Allen
SF: RJ, Knox, Pinson (losing Morris gives a hole here that I filled with RJ)
PF: Randle, Wooten,
C: Robinson, Gibson
G-league: Iggy, our second round pick.
That’s thirteen players, leaving two spots for our two first round draft choices, and having two players in Gleague to give seventeen under contract. Of course you could say let’s hire Melo and drop Wooten, or Iggy or Pinson, but I’d much rather have those guys. Any one of the others I’d rather have than Melo, including Knox, who at least had the potential for playing at least some defense while scoring inefficiently. Iggy could make the main roster, but then someone else needs to be waived or go to G league. Who would you cut to hire Melo?
Kadeem got cut when we signed Harper. Which isn’t to say we couldn’t resign him, but he’s not part of the organization right now.
If Melo is starting on this team then that’s a huge detriment. A .517 TS% on 21% USG is abysmal.
If we get Melo it should be to tank (and Knox would be better at it anyway). If we get CP3 we should, or at least will, push for a playoff spot. It makes even less sense to grab both of them.
Melo still thinks he can play, but can’t. Signing him will result in another media circus and Melo poisoning the ears of superstars who look up to him.
Randle and the mercs at least have some theoretical trade value and are young enough to improve. More importantly they’re unimportant. They can be benched to take a look at the rookies.
A couple of things.
1) I’m really ambivalent on Payton. He just seems like a generic placeholder that epitomizes getting in the way of younger players’ PT. I guess it would be alright to keep him, but maybe with an eye towards unloading him at the deadline for a 2nd round pick or something.
2) I think Iggy is either going to get a real shot to play, or he’s gonna be gone. He is either an NBA player or he isn’t, but certainly he’d be better off in Europe than spending another year in the G-League. I think he makes the roster and is sent down from time to time, or he gets waived.
3) Dotson is very iffy. He’s barely an NBA rotation player and ditching him to give one of the three draft picks (Nesmith???) his role is a real possibility.
4) I wouldn’t count on Harper making the big team. I hope he does, but if he’s in the rotation, we are gonna be really terrible.
5) Who’s Allen? Kadeem was cut to make room for Harper.
Call whoever does player development for Toronto and offer them a huge raise to take their talents to Manhattan
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if a trade of some sort happens around or just after draft time. Maybe they package the two lower picks to move up, or do some sort of CP3 deal. It seems like new POBOs have an itchy trigger finger early on, and Rose will want to do something to make a mark (not Jackson I pray!). Hopefully it will be a savvy low-key move to acquire more assets, or to unload Randle.
Our roster is so young and starless (and shitty) right now that Atkinson looks as the perfect fit.
Now if Rose makes some miraculous “moves”…
I forgot Allen was waived. Then I’d put Iggy in that slot. Alsep and Z-man, thanks pointing it out. Z-man I agree with you about Iggy, another year in G-league wouldn’t do him much good and I would like to see how he does on the main roster. I agree Dotson is iffy. But I’d rather have him than Melo. As for Peyton, I put him in my list because I don’t see us getting someone better, unless it’s maybe Lámelo, which is a long shot. Harper is hard to predict. He has rave reviews in some quarters and he is someone our new management actually picked. That makes me think they will keep him, although I guess he could go to Gleague.
Or San Antonio.
And yeah, it seems like such an easy call, no?
The real question is: Who would I hire to cut Melo?
I’d rather have a very mild case of coronavirus than Melo. At least I’d have the upside of antibodies and temporary immunity. There is no upside to Melo, but there is clear downside in that he’ll have a negative influence on how our young players play the game all while taking a roster spot and minutes away from someone that could contribute someday.
There are several question marks about Atkinson’s coaching acumen over and above his reputation as a good developmental coach, but rather that detailing them I’ll remind everyone that he wasn’t fired because Nets management, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving thought he was a great coach.
Berman says obvious result remains obvious, though he also leaves in the caveat that Thibs might not want the job:
Also, Atkinson took three years to get the Nets good. His first two years were as bad as the recent Knicks. I think many coaches, including Miller, could do as well with developing young players, given three years of continuity.
Sometimes you don’t need a great coach.
You just need the perfect fit.
You (should) never get a Ferrari to learn how to drive.
A mini cooper is fine!
Aside from my concern about management we aren’t in a terrible position. The Porzingis trade, all the wasted use of cap space, and at least questionable Knox pick set us back a few years from where we should be, but it won’t be that difficult to carve out an upward path from here with any competence. My real concern is that we still don’t have people in the organization that understand how to play winning basketball and then pursue the right kind of players.
Because if the past decade taught us anything, it’s that Melo is a huge draw for free agents.
You get a Big Dog by having a strongish cheap core and convincing two or three of them to team up on your shit as free agents, or you draft them, or you trade for one. Big contracts like CP3 that don’t have trade value and declining used-to-be-but-never-really-weres like Melo don’t fit any of those patterns. Players looking for a chip make much more rational choices than “I like that dude he’s pretty chill.”
Honestly, the Merry and Pills plan was a good one in general, until it fell apart. A couple dozen teams are trying this every year, almost all fail.
I really should have reloaded or quoted, mea culpa.
People have been talking about him wanting this job going as far back as Phil interviewing Kerr and settling for Fisher straight through the hiring of Fizdale. I don’t know why he would want this job, but if he wanted it before I can’t see why he wouldn’t want it with Rose in charge given they already supposedly have a good relationship and know they can work together.
Some people have their heart set on Atkinson, but this would be a very good hire also even if you like Atkinson better.
Dotson is a slightly worse version of Galloway, but that’s the difference between sticking in the league and not. We don’t need to draw it out any longer.
My preference has always been to keep Miller, but I could live with Thibs, especially if the old dog can learn some new tricks. Does it matter to him that he was fired twice, both times rather unceremoniously? Or is he just another version of D’Antoni?
As an educator, I believe in an individual’s capacity to be a lifelong learner (bob n aside) and the hope would be that Thibs realizes that he has to rest guys and value the 3 on O and fear it on D. He will have some very interesting defensive tools in his kit…Mitch, Frank, Wooten, RJ…and it might have an impact on drafting (no Knox’s, please)
I’m shocked Steve Mills hasn’t been scooped up by another organization yet…
I would find out who the Warriors player development guy is…double his salary and get him in here..
Lillard and McCollum were begging Melo to go to Portland.
Even after 2 unsuccessful melo journeys to Houston and OKC.
Melo is like a hot chick having along while going out.
Treating Melo and CP3 with respect makes other players wanna come here and live the MSG experience.
They’re Not pieces of a contending team . They’re just teasers to Big Dogs.
JFC this
I can’t believe some people have already forgotten that he signed with a depleted Rockets team and got cut after playing just 10 games. There was no “veteran leadership” or “valuable playoff experience” or “proven scorer” nonsense out of Houston. He had a net rating of -12 and got politely put on the shelf so they could make room for Danuel House, who was quickly waived. Later, the Rockets used Carmelo, the rights to Jon Diebler (who has never played a minute in the NBA and $1.5M for a guy named Tadija Dragicevic, who also has never played in the NBA.
There is absolutely no reason for Carmelo Anthony to be in a Knicks uniform. For any reason.
He still works for Dolan in another capacity. I’m not sure what he does, but I wish I could sell his department short. haha
When the pandemic is finally over I won’t mind seeing him in celebrity row as a fan rooting for the Knicks with a current NY Knicks Gallinari jersey on. 🙂
“another capacity”…I am sure we all know what he does for Jimmy…
those of you who think signing melo to sit on the bench and smile for a non victory lap is lame but benign didn’t watch enough timberwolves games when thibs routinely and inexplicably pressed the 25 minutes of washed jamal crawford button despite having one of the worst defenses in the league and plenty of “shot creation.”
Only Mills, though, has ever been sent to “another capacity” and actually came back from it!
The similarities are quite similar to Houston:
1) The team had made the WCF the previous year, and so had very high expectations.
2) The team was capped out, so little room to move except vet’s mins.
3) Injuries decimating SF/PF depth in a league increasingly moving toward positionless basketball.
4) Legit All-NBA superstar in his prime just beginning his supermax, so you really can’t waste a year.
I don’t get what you’re implying.
So there are two camps:
-those who hate the idea of melo being brought back and who think it would be a disaster and a harbinger of another decade of mismanagement.
-those who hate the idea of melo being brought back but who think it would be largely inconsequential if it happened in and of itself.
That sound about right?
If you give Melo the Vince Carter farewell treatment i don’t see any negative.
Only positives.
Now if you can pair him with CP3 without fucking your future and gather a geriatric playoff squad then you’re a magician!
I’m in!
I hate the idea, it’d be a sign of bad management, it’d be relatively inconsequential for this shitty team but there’s an opportunity cost especially if new coach gives him plenty of minutes.
Why anyone wants a season where we’re guaranteed to be pissing about minutes allocation again I have no idea.
Seriously, teams as bad as the Knicks have no business wasting time on a farewell tour for a guy that helped us to the second round once in his entire tenure.
In happy news, today’s weather is fucking glorious.
Vince Carter has basically been a bench warmer since leaving Dallas 5 years ago; Melo will never agree to that, he thinks he should still be starting. And I don’t understand what bringing in CP3 has to do with Melo? It wouldn’t even make sense. Trading for CP3 would mean, I would think, we’re going all out to make the playoffs. Bringing in Melo doesn’t help us make the playoffs because he’s dogshit awful.
Why the hell do we need to do a farewell tour for Melo? We had one year with him where we won a playoff series and the best thing about that year was Pablo Prigioni.
Melo with youngsters would mean a pessimistic Farewell tour.
Melo with CP3 and other vets minimums like JKidd’s,Kenyon Martin’s and Sheed’s could be a nice season to remember.
No Melo No problemo.
Simple as that
“I think Tom and Leon can get the Knicks back to 50 wins,’’ one league source said. “And the Knicks need wins. Tom having Leon there is the key.’’ – from Berman’s article….he left off the last part of that sentence…”by 2025″…
Let’s have a “farewell” tour to remember that one kind of good season when the Knicks got bounced out of the Conference Semifinals because Mike Woodson couldn’t figure out how to neutralize Roy Hibbert. That’s not Knicksy AT ALL.
As distasteful as it would be for all of us woke KBers, Melo still has lots of diehard fans in NYC. If there were a vote, I think more fans would vote yes than no.
I’m tired of “development” man…
Give me an enjoyable “Farewell season” and continue “development” after that!
7 straight seasons of Pure Shit is not an easy burden to carry.
You need a time out!
Melo only makes sense as a catch and shoot option on a contender. I think even the biggest romantic would struggle to find a role for him when we have younger guys we want to give minutes at his position. If he wants a farewell with the Knicks, he can do what STAT did and sign a “contract” and then retire.
Also, haven’t been on the board in a while, so it’s nice to see everyone is going along okay. Hope you are staying safe. Looking forward to a bit more Knicks news coming through the wire shortly.
You ever go through a period in your life that seems kind of shitty but later on you feel nostalgic for it in a weird way?
Yeah, that.
Speaking for myself, I am feeling quite comfortable back in my old rut of trying to get Melo cancelled.
That’s the one!
Gimme that !
All i need right now is a shitty east semis exclusion!!! Nothing more!
And then continue development.
Jason Kidd apparently killed it in his interview. But it still looks like Thibs is in pole position.
Things are relative. Even if his last 3 years with the team were shitty, the last time the Knicks had a winning team, Anthony was the main player, even got a ridiculous #1 MVP vote. This was 7 years ago. There was some hope during Kristaps 3rd year, but then he got injured and is now in Texas. How much pain can you take in a 7-year span? With all the caveats, he’s still the face of Knicks’ last success. The team didn’t got better after he left. It’s no wonder he’s still loved by some. As “Watchmen” teached us, Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Haha, sounds like reub, but reub would say Melo and CP3 would get the Knicks the championship.
Come on, Melo and CP3 (as good as CP3 is) wouldn’t make the Knicks even sniff the East Semifinals. You would need DEVELOPMENT from RJ, Knox and Ntilikina to get to that point…
Now I’ve got to hope Thibs wants this job, because it sounds like Kidd is the alternative. This freakin’ team.
I’m not betting that Melo and CP3 guarantee a successful season and trip to the eastern semis but I’d prefer watching a “Wild Bunch/Last Waltz” by these old motherfuckers rather than Julius Spinning Waltz and Mercenary shitty plays.
And you never know…
With a little help from the youngsters, the right coach and the right minimum vets could be a fun season…
The only problem is that Melo is legit one of the worst players in the NBA
Ok.
Not Melo then.
Let’s get an analytics beast instead.
An analytics future HOF!
Let’s get Cole Aldrich!
Lakers: Give Kobe farewell tour for bringing them 5 championships and playing whole career there
Heat: Give Wade farewell tour for bringing them 3 championships and playing all but 1 season for them
Knicks: Give Melo farewell tour after **checks notes** losing in second round and **checks notes again** playing less than half his career there
Cole will bring back memories too!
Nostalgia is a bitch indeed!
Obviously. There no way he got hired in his previous job if he wasn’t great at interviews.
Treating Melo as a dominant superstar is not accurate.
But treating him also like he’s Thanassis Antetokounmpo is ridiculous.
The guy has 23,6ppg career average after 18seasons.
He’s a Beast.
It worries me that Kidd might be an excellent schmoozer.
I really think Kidd could pull this off.
Jeez, you know it’s gonna be CP3, RJ, Melo, Toppin, and Mitch next year, and maybe we trade up to get Cole Anthony to come off the bench. Shit is gunna be real lit, hells yes, y’all.
Dolan’s Law dictates we get Kidd (and here we all were debating the merits of Thibs)
*Dolan’s Razor
Haha. But seriously, one of these guys will test positive during the playoffs and derail everything. If the Lakers lose a player like Danny Green, or Denver lose a Jamal Murray, their teams are shot. At this rate, teams whose best players actually GOT the COVID are better suited to deal with the rest of the season than those whose stars took care :/
Let’s sign Dominique Wilkins
He scored hella points a long time ago too
Not a good idea
Dominique’s efg% is under league’s average
Only Tyson Chandler can put us in the map again
Scour the rosters of the Big 3 league…cutino mobley or rashard lewis are available
Why not go after advanced stats Messiah Donte DiVincenzo ?
This seems reasonable, but it was also the logic behind most of the world’s worst decisions.
I feel like a classic SNL skit can explain it best:
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/bad-idea-jeans/n9937
I’m surprised that Danny Green is the scenario you’ve chosen. I was telling Lady Jowles with anxiety that aside from a death in the bubble, the worst-case scenario is that LeBron or AD or Giannis or Harden or any pivotal star tests positive before Game 7 and there’s finally a cause for a real asterisk to be put next to the champ’s name.
I’m not sure if I’ve written this here, but I think that a double-elimination or group-stage tournament (with the Elam Ending, of course) and a best-of-5 semis and finals finish would be a possible solution to the overly-long schedule that’s currently out there. There may never be another time when you could have a tournament where all 16 teams are available to play each other with a day’s notice. And it’s not like doing this “normal” playoffs structure is going to keep pundits from decrying the “legitimacy” of this year’s chip. I mean, fuck the pundits to hell and back, but if you do something completely different, you remove this playoffs from the conversation around the past and future playoffs, and let it be its own different, but meaningful and unique, thing.
The adherence to institutional and cultural precedent is often frustrating in American sports (how the fuck are people still punting the football?), but especially so right now. I think the six (or whatever) weeks of playoff basketball will be far too risky, will lead to all sorts of shitty outcomes (like asymptomatic positive tests) and is a waste of a golden opportunity to try something fun and novel.
I’m good with the current plan. If you are going to do it at all, do it as close to as possible to the real thing. Otherwise just skip it.
There is no rational reason to sign Carmelo Anthony and Knew Your Knicks is low-key one of the worst posters on this site.
I understand what Z-Man and some others are saying regarding a one-year, minimum deal (hopefully…I guess it’s not out of the question that they spend real money on the guy, which is too horrific of a thought for me to entertain at the moment) being annoying but largely inconsequential.
The problem is it’s quite possible, even probable IMO, Carmelo Anthony is unwilling and unable to play NBA basketball in a manner that can be described as “inconsequential.” If he’s freezing out Mitch, RJ, etc. on his way to a .479 TS% that’s not inconsequential, and if you don’t think it’s possible, see ptmilo’s point about how Thibs handled the late-career Jamal Crawford experience with Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns on his roster.
My view remains that Leon Rose thinks the benefits to our tattered reputation would outweigh the downsides of signing him. I have no idea if Leon Rose is any good, but based on his hires I think he’s at least smart enough to know Carmelo Anthony is not a basketball upgrade.
Personally, I think we’ve been lead astray by so many “shortcuts” to improving our reputation and this is no different. Our reputation will improve if/when we deserve as much i.e. we build a good, sustainable basketball team.
rotflmao
I would be for making the first round a 5-game series like it used to be. But beyond that, having the same two teams play on the same court for a week or two seems to maximize COVID control.
Top 10 signs your organization is doomed.
10. Debating Melo
9. Debating Melo
8. Debating Melo
7. Debating Melo
6. Debating Melo
5. Debating Melo
4. Debating Melo
3. Debating Melo
2. Debating Melo
.
.
.
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1. Signing Melo
The whole thing is at least 50-50 to fall part. These guys are going get tired of masturbating a week into the season. When the groupies start sneaking in or players start sneaking out it’s all over.
The whole thing is at least 50-50 to fall part. These guys are going get tired of playing with themselves a week into the season. When the groupies start sneaking in or players start sneaking out it’s all over.
It’s about minimizing time in the bubble.
@thenoblefacehumper
I promise to work hard during the summer and be the MIP (most improved poster) on the upcoming season.
You are my favourite poster.
Whenever i want to sleep i just read one of your posts.
oh it is on now
I agree with most of what tnfh said above re: Melo. My differences are as follows:
1) I don’t think he would put up a .479 TS%. He’s putting up .517 in Portland this year, which is around what he’s been posting in the last 3-4 years. Weirdly, his 3PTr is down to .286 even though he shooting 37% from 3. His FTr is also down significantly, meaning he’s taking more twos and drawing less fouls. FWIW, in the 10 games after the all-star break he was putting up a .590 TS% on a 20% usage (he’s been steadily around that usage number for the last 3 years.) So considering that he would mainly be taking shots away from Randle, Knox, Frank and RJ, I doubt it would affect team shooting all that much, nor would it hinder the development of our younger players.
2) I doubt that he would be much of either an attitude problem or a bad influence on our current crop of young players. He’d probably appreciate the opportunity. If he really thinks he’s still good, why would he come to an almost guaranteed lottery team rather than stay put in Portland or go to another contender?
3) If he’s as bad as you fear, he could actually help with the tank in what might be a much deeper draft.
Again, I hate the idea, but am not worried about it. If it happens, most likely no big deal.
Even though we have some heated arguments, we agree on most things. Case in point. But be kind to KYN, logic is his second language.
I’d rather see Wooten or Knox at PF and Iggy or RJ at SF.
That’s it. We can fill 48 min of basketball with those 4. Why would we ever want Melo taking a minute from them or another young player?
Agreed. Again, the question is not whether you approve of bringing back Melo (no one does) but whether you think it would be damaging in the long term.
If you’re suggesting that a FO that prioritizes an interview over a coach’s history of being a coach is poised to make the same fucking mistakes previous FOs have made well I just do not know what to say other than “yes, obviously, Dolan keeps hiring people who tell him what he wants to hear and we keep getting similar stupid results.”
I just threw out a number that would be really bad but it’s not like the scenario I described would be much better if he carries it out en route to a .517 TS%.
I mean honestly, the only role he wouldn’t be somewhat detrimental to development in is a Udonis Haslem type of situation where the crowd chants for him in garbage time, etc. That is simply not going to happen even though on the merits it should, so the goal would have to be to minimize his role to the extent possible.
If you don’t take that seriously enough the problems are obvious (Melo taking shots/minutes/roster spots from more deserving players), and if you take it too seriously it’s possible we get Melodrama IV.
There are just too many potential pitfalls for me to see this being worth whatever intangible benefits it confers on our reputation across the league.
You know why we got Rose and not Masai? Because Rose told Dolan what he wanted to hear and Masai didn’t and Dolan isn’t capable of understanding what that means, to wit, that what Dolan thinks are the important things about running a professional basketball team are in fact detrimental to building a good professional basketball team. The Knicks’ FOs have been varying degree of competent (mostly the ‘in-‘ variant) but they’ve all had two things in common. They’ve all sucked and they were all hired by Dolan. Unless we get very lucky the Rose Regime will be exactly the same as all the rest.
What are you talking about? Masai never interviewed for the job.
I mean look at this shit. Apparently, bringing back Melo is on the table for these clowns. That’s batshit insane! That’s completely counter to building a good team! And does anyone really think that bringing back Melo is going to resurrect the Knicks rep while Dolan is still the owner? It’s cargo cult bullshit.
10 to 1 Dolan had some kind of convo with Masai. How would he not? Either way the larger point stands.
One of the teams in “The Basketball Tournament” on ESPN is called Sideline Cancer.
For some reason, I expected to see Melo as their coach (-:
One thing that rankles me is total BS conspiracy-theory based assertions. You have zero evidence that Dolan would engage in a level of tampering that would result in HUGE fines and lost draft picks if he got caught. If you are going to make a larger point, try to make it in a way that doesn’t destroy your own credibility.
There is also no evidence to suggest that Rose is considering bringing back Melo, zero. We’re just conjecturing on the idea. Again, keep it real.
Shrug. Rose was hired by Dolan, ergo Rose will be some level of shitty. There’s zero evidence he won’t be and years of evidence that people hired by Dolan suck at their jobs.
Taking minutes away from young players does seem like it damages the team in the long run because they don’t develop during their minutes on the bench.
Using a roster slot on a known crappy quantity harms the team in the long run because we could use that slot to acquire a good young player.
Melo potentially causes a shitstorm and poisons the well for actual superstars when he doesn’t get to shoot the ball after we start losing every game or we try to bench him. Again, deferring to RJ, Knox, and Frank is different than deferring to Lillard, Westbrook, & Harden from the last 3 years.
Signing Melo is a high-risk no-reward proposal.
I mentioned the deterioration of his game after the 2014-2015 surgery yesterday. He lost some quickness and lift and it has just been getting worse with age. Before, he could go inside, bully weaker players, and either get a good shot off or draw the foul. Now he seems to have trouble getting off a good inside shot and gets blocked when he tries. He’s also probably so beat up he doesn’t want to go inside and initiate contact as much anymore.
That was the efficient part of his game. Even though he finally started shooting more 3s later in his career, he was never quite good enough at it except for a couple of years in NY. If you aren’t a good 3 point shooter and you can’t get to the rim, finish and draw fouls, your efficiency is doomed,
He was a very good player, but he never learned to play the right way. Now it’s way too late.
People in the press have have been speculating about it too.
That either means Melo’s people are pushing for a reunion by talking about what great shape he’s in (like they do every year when he’s out of a job) or people are talking about it at MSG and it’s leaking to the papers.
Personally, I think if there was nothing to it, someone would have politely shot it down. They haven’t.
Giving Carmelo Anthony a farewell tour in New York would be like Kenny Loggins getting a farewell tour with the Doobie Brothers.
He also worked at CAA. Knicks fans spent years discussing how we could get rid of the influence of CAA. We finally did. Now they are back stronger than ever. These aren’t real basketball people. They are former agents. Does anyone really expect anything good to come of this? If it does, it will be accident.
The only guys that I have seen critical of the Rose hire are Steph and Sheed. Every new guy that Rose has brought on board has a great reputation…even Wes. He has made two decent personnel moves (please stop with the hypocritical Trier handwringing, strat) and has thoroughly interviewed a bunch of coaching candidates. Whatever Melo might be lobbying for behind the scenes (and there is no evidence AT ALL that he or his peeps is behind what’s in the press) there is nothing to suggest that Rose is interested in bringing him back.
This may be a short-lived era of good feelings, but there is nothing yet beyond Knick fan PTSD and unflinching belief in Dolan’s Razor to conclude that this is just more of the same. If you are speculating that it will be, that’s fine. Just don’t base it on total bullshit and call it real.
https://knickerblogger.net/2019-20-game-thread-knicks-the-fox-less-kings/#comment-682850
lol
Rose and Wes don’t work for CAA any more. It’s actually stupid to think that they are going to be more loyal to their former clients than to creating a winning brand of basketball in NY, upon which their reputations going forward will be entirely based. These two guys are extremely reputation-conscious (not like the absentee delusional burnout former POBO that snookered the franchise out of like $60 million while setting it back years and destroying any credibility he has as a basketball mind.) They were making tens of millions in their former jobs without the stress of getting raked over the coals in the NY tabloids and NBA blogs every day.
But yeah, keep stoking those conspiracy theories.
That’s unfair to both Kenny Loggins and the Doobie Brothers.
Who said anything about loyalty to former clients?
Their expertise at CAA was getting lucrative contracts for their clients. They have no expertise at evaluating players, understanding how to play winning basketball, fitting players together coherently, or anything else you’d want from a management team trying to build a contending team.
When I want redecorate my living room I don’t hire an expert landscaper.
We should be bringing in real basketball people with a history of successful team building. That covers a lot of skills. So far, at best, we may have hired a good “cap” guy from the Cavs which is something we’ve desperately needed for awhile. We’ll see. But I can’t think of a single person in the organization whose opinion on the game of basketball I hold in high regard. The closest thing to it is Miller but at best he’s going to be an assistant coach.
But all Rose himself has done is hire experts in every aspect of successful team-building. You don’t have to be a successful landscaper to be a successful CEO of a landscaping company. You have to be good at hiring, putting people in positions to be successful, and duly considering their advice before making decisions. So far, he hasn’t made a single rash decision or crony hire beyond Wes. It is extremely cynical to conclude without evidence that Rose hired a top-notch capologist but won’t listen to him, or hired a top-notch talent evaluator and won’t listen to him, or a top-notch analytics guy, etc.
Also, let’s not overly complicate what it takes to be a successful basketball executive. Everyone on this fucking site thinks he/she would be a great GM, and most of us know far less than Rose does about it. It’s not rocket science.
And I can’t think of a single respected poster here who holds your opinion on the game of basketball in high regard.
Its fine to be skeptical of Rose. Until The Knicks are actually good (in a sustainable way), we should be skeptical.
But so far he has hired good people. Not just a capologist but a very well respected scout, etc. And he’s doing due diligence with the coaching search. He doesn’t work for CAA anymore, so he shouldn’t be beholden to them, but his connection with them can be a positive.
I’m positive about Rose (surprise) not so much because I think he’s going to be incredible but because he is coming in to a much better situation than Phil or Pills. Those guys made lots of mistakes too but lacked first round picks, had dead money on the cap, bad contracts, etc. Rose is coming in with a relatively clean cap sheet, all of our first round picks plus 3 extra ones over the next few years AND a few young promising players plus some other young prospects that aren’t totally lost causes. He doesn’t need 4 or 5 years to really rebuild like Phil or Pills would have needed and even a few “win now” moves could be done without mortgaging our future. So I think Rose could appease Dolan with some more immediate wins without screwing us over.
I feel like The Knicks, as an organization, are learning from their past mistakes, however slow that learning is.
I’m honestly surprised that Melo has garnered so much discussion/emotions. When I brought him up, I was really just shocked at how much weight he had lost and if that might affect his game at all.
I kind of doubt Melo wants to leave Portland, and the Blazers seem kinda cool with him. Why would he come back to NYC just because Leon Rose made him lots of money in the pas—oh wait…
“Playing the right way” is a well understood term.
Specifically it means finding a group of high IQ players that play defense, that are less interested in their own stat lines than the win, that try to create efficient shots with a lot of unselfish player and ball movement, and that can create good spacing because of their diversified and complimentary skill sets.
Sometimes the focus is inside/out and sometimes its outside/in. It doesn’t matter. It depends on who the dominant players are, but it also requires a few players that can create for themselves later in the clock when set plays and movement don’t generate a good shot.
That’s a lot different skills that have to be packaged together, but unless you recognize the required skills, IQ, and goals, you are unlikely to build a good team. If you are attracted to athleticism, scoring, and shot creation, you are heading down the wrong path.
https://knickerblogger.net/ny-post-knicks-great-returns-to-drop-some-knowledge-on-rj-barrett/#comment-672187
I love it
Let’s say, completely hypothetically, Mr. Brand New Poster, that a GM put together a team in which the two highest paid players were Carmelo Anthony and the 2016-2017 version of Derrick Rose.
Would this be a good example of such a group?
Will Melo retire as a Knick? And if so, does that mean he gets his jersey hung?
I cringe at the thought.
I’d love to know Clyde’s thought on Melo’s jersey hanging up there next to his and all his teammates.
I would like to subscribe to an alternate history newsletter where the only change is that Melo was never a Knick.
Re: Rose and Wesley, Leon Rose would never have become the super agent he was without his friendship with William Wesley. I listen to the Knicks Film School podcast, and Macri interviewed the guy who wrote about William Wesley in GQ. I came away with the impression that William Wesley is essentially the POBO but values keeping a low profile so much he will let Leon Rose be the front man.
It looks like Wes’ relationship building went beyond NBA players. Think about Alex Kline, a kid from jersey who is an apparent wunderkind and now works for the Knicks. We got that kid and we got Walt Perrin from the Jazz, where he has been for like two decades. I’m hopeful to see what else transpires with Rose and Wesley at the helm. CAA wasn’t always the biggest agency in the NBA.
Current NBA title odds:
https://www.sportsline.com/nba/odds/futures/?clickid=1VXwBGQDSxyOTPhwUx0Mo38MUkiRluyUETqASU0&ttag=10078&irpid=10078&vndid=sbnation.com&sharedid=sbnation.com&ftag=ACQd6bfc96
I’ve never bet on one of these websites and I don’t know if any real bookie will take those odds. The level of uncertainty is extreme, how can anyone really justify +2000 on teams like Philly and Toronto?
I looked these up because I want to take a flier on the Mavericks. Logic dictates that they should reap the benefits of November Porzingis, right? At +3500, I’d be happy to place a significant bet on them.
Also, as it relates to RJ Barrett the prospect, let’s not let Boston’s superior player development program jade us into thinking he’s not on the same level as Tatum and Brown we’re when they came out. Tatum was seen as a reach there and everybody had Jackson and I think Isaac ahead of him at the forward spots. Jaylen Brown was also seen as a reach at 3, but Boston turned those guys into a future MVP hopeful and a guy who might make 4-5 all star games before it’s all said and done. If you think I’m lying, go back and look at Brown and Tatum’s sport references pages and then look at RJ Barrett’s. The Knicks are just a shit organization when it comes to player development (like playing KP at the 4, Frank at the 1, and RJ at the two? Come on), and hopefully we get guys in here who know what they’re doing so RJ Barrett can reach his ceiling.
There’s usually one or two epically shitty transactions that reveals a given GM of the Knicks to be completely incompetent. You know, those kinds of transactions that make you groan out loud and scream WHYYYYYY into the void. I don’t doubt we’ll get there with Leon Rose. I fully expect it.
But until that happens, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for the small things like hiring a competent capologist, a competent analytics guy, and whatever else. I know the boulder is probably going to be rolling back down the hill very soon but until then I’m gonna keep an open mind.
i ain’t exactly the king of romance, but, this may be the most beautiful love song ev-er
Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you, honey
And everything will bring
A chain of love, oh, oh, yeah
In the mornin’, when I rise
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be alright
i’d put it right up there with god only knows and nothing compares to u (chris cornell’s version)…i was watching some performance on tv with kenny loggins talking about how he played that song for jim messina with just his guitar…man, i got to imagine messina was absolutely blown away hearing that for the first time in that setting…
i remember hearing somewhere that one of the reasons the markets did so well this spring is because there was nothing else for folks to bet on…
have you ever done any of that day trading stuff hubie…that seems like a pretty exciting (read: absolutely nerve-wracking) experience…
Butterfly Effect: Stoudemire finishes fourth for MVP; Gallo makes the All-Star Team in 2011; Felton goes to New Orleans in a trade for CP3; Dwight Howard joins the team in 2012; Linsanity never happens; JR Smith never comes to NYC.
Can’t hear that song without immediately thinking about this clip
(whole movie is great if you haven’t seen it)
I can think of a few other changes I’d like to see made.
that’s funny dink…so crazy how different pieces of media get stored inside and tied to different “triggers” 🙂
Nobelprizehumper and Zzzman say I’m the worst poster in here and I say I’m the best.
What can i say ?
Tastes differ!
i’d say you are simply you, knew your knicks…how long have you been posting here…i think i saw your name on the 2016 thread that was linked…
I REALLY Don’t remember geo.
I used to post on the greek nba official till it became via Facebook and i said Fuk Off.
Used to post on the official Knicks site till it changed…
And finally I’m here and only here.
Remember a poster named “Donnie Walsh” on the blog of the official site of the Knicks who if i remember well linked me to knickerblogger.
I don’t know if he’s the same with the one on here but that’s how i learned about this one and the rest is history ! lol
Well I love your posts, KYN. I don’t often (rarely? ever?) agree with them, but even then I find they’re like little puffs of absurdism. Don’t stop being you.
Zzzman. Wow. I actually like it.
Thank You Raven!
That means a lot to me!
I don’t know exactly what, but A LOT!
I’m an absurdist oriented human being.
Can’t pretend seriousness.
Seriousness and pretentiousness kill me with a bazooka.
I was about to say, Zzzman is a pretty good burn but he missed the mark on Nobelprizehumper. There’s just no detectable roast embedded in there.
Actually if you’ve ever known someone humping to get recognition for that prize (and it’s a thing, I’ve seen it), I could see the roast.
NobelPrizeHamster ?
🙂
***Remember a poster named “Donnie Walsh” on the blog of the official site of the Knicks who if i remember well linked me to knickerblogger. I don’t know if he’s the same with the one on here but that’s how i learned about this one and the rest is history ! lol***
That wasn’t me. Maybe I should change my handle to The Real Donnie Walsh. (Do you think the real Donnie Walsh would mind?)
You always have the plan B – option of “The Surreal Donnie Walsh” !
A friend of mine was the keyboardist of a band called Facehumper. They had a pretty decent following back in the day. (He didn’t actually know how to play his instrument, but it didn’t seem to matter). I think of them whenever I see TNF post 🙂
whenever i read TNFH’s posts i think of what is was to be once young and idealistic…before the world sand-blasted my ivory tower down to damn near nothing but a welcome mat…
beware this world of compromised values…
there is that.
Does anyone have any good tamale recipes for a lazy cook?
I think this is similar to the the question, “How do I make Beef Wellington in 20 minutes without making my kitchen look like the aftermath of an air raid?” Prep the corn husks, prepare your fillings, fill the husks, tie them, and then steam. My suggestion? Costco sells them in enormous bags.
If you’re willing to compromise but want something Mexican or Tex-Mex, try simple carnitas:
4-6# pork shoulder, boneless or bone-in (this makes a ton of food)
2 to 1 parts orange and lime juice, at least 1 cup liquid total (I do more because I like my shit t a n g y
as much smashed garlic as you can handle
salt, to taste
cumin, 1/2 tsp
quartered yellow onion (optional)
splash of cola (optional)
Put everything into a large dutch oven (or large stockpot) and pour in chicken stock or water until the pork is barely covered. bring to a boil, turn down and simmer (200F-ish) for a few hours uncovered. Turn the heat up and boil off the rest. Don’t touch the pork during all of this. Let the pork fry in its own rendered fat and use tongs to shred and brown the tips, a crucial step to reach Flavortown. Serve with pickled red onion, cotijo cheese and sliced avocado on corn or flour taco tortillas.
You can also use these carnitas to make tamales.
Enjoyed this one…
https://mobile.twitter.com/Mikey_Cooks/status/1283539917444874240
My cellphone’s browser during the last days bombs me with knicks headcoach latest and Johnny Depp vs Amber news.
I must doublethink before clicking into articles..
Oof, I think tamale and lazy cook are a contradiction. Have never made them myself but my understanding is that it’s a relatively labor intensive process and is usually done with a group of people so one person isn’t getting worked to the bone doing everything.
Some interesting odds here. Milwaukee’s a steal at +260. They’ve been by far the best team in the league this year: SRS over 10 (next best is LAL at 7.75), double digit point differential, a top 10 offense and best DRtg by nearly 4 PPG, and a greatly weakened East since last year so it should be relatively easy to get to the Finals. And they’re not even the favorites! The Lebron effect has LAL as title faves.
If I were still gambling I’d put a fairly heavy wager on Milwaukee to win it all and hedge with smaller bets on Houston +1600 and Toronto +2000.
I haven’t been called that since I gave up teaching…
to a dung beetle elephant shit tastes better than a jowles tamale
Thank ye kindly, Cock, vincoug. The basic problem is I’m never going to want to make two dozen tamales, I’m only going to want to make two. Ah well, I shall continue to dream the impossible dream.
To be clear KYN, I have no ill will towards you or your posts. Just not my cup of tea. Full disclosure, I don’t like mushrooms or Ariel Pink or Mulholland Drive either.
OTOH, I’m really digging Fleabag.
I kinda like Knew Your Knicks. Good taste in music, has a sense of humor, probably a cool guy in real life, not-so-great basketball takes. All in all not a bad package.
where else can you go for such unabashed and honest feedback…
this site feels like the dinner table when i was young…me, mom, and sis would sit around the table taking turns criticizing each other…
what’s funny is – during our last meal together a week or so ago – things haven’t changed much over the last four decades or so…
you guys are pretty tame actually…
No problem Z-man.
Not even Pink Floyd are everyone’s cup of tea.
Some prefer Justin Bieber, others prefer The Beatles and others prefer Iannis Xenakis.
#Perfect Fit is the real shit#
I thought that my basketball takes were my tour de force!
Seems like i have to upgrade my other talents’ self-evaluation!
This one, not so much.
Always room for more in the Greek Chorus. Except Tucker Carlson and his racist-as-fuck ex-head writer.
There is not a player developer that ever lived who could have turned Tatum from KB’s “most likely to be a bust” to the excellent player that he was in 2400 rookie minutes and 700 playoff minutes. Do you really think RJ (or Frank or Knox) would have been anywhere as good ad Brown or Tatum as rookies had the Celtics drafted him?
let’s dump on trump baby…doesn’t it feel like our whole country is being run by james dolan…oh man, those goya beans…mmmmm, go perfect with them trump steaks…resolute infomercials…
And some snoop dog red wine as the perfect accompaniment to the trump tbone…gonna be 12 bucks a bottle
I can’t believe there are people who think sending kids back into school in like a month isn’t going to be an unmitigated disaster.
You don’t know the half of it
I’m just over here, walking around with my whole body braced for the ‘Jason Kidd’ announcement.
Gotta love the periodic low-level stress of Knicks fandom.
The “waiting for the inevitable Jason Kidd announcement” dread is at least an improvement over the “waiting for the inevitable Mark Jackson announcement” dread we all experienced during the Knicks last coaching search.
Baby steps.
I’d home school my children or hire a private tutor (if I could afford one) before I’d send them to a public school if there was no Covid-19.
Among healthy children the risk of death is so extremely low, your child is way more likely get killed in a car accident than die from Covid he caught at school. The bigger risk may be bringing it home to grandma or grandpa, but I don’t think that has been studied as well. We’d have to look to the European countries that have kept schools open while closing or limiting other parts of their countries for reliable data to see if children pass it to their parents, grandparents, etc..
I’m not sure why, but most people are not very good at risk assessment when it comes to death. They fear certain risks to the point of being paralyzed by them and live with other risks (that can be higher) without thinking much about them. I have a higher than normal fear of terrorism. Then again maybe that’s because I was downtown on 9/11 and when the towers fell and haven’t gotten over it.
This is a real fucking problem because good luck finding other brands of beans in my neighborhood! Also I’m not going to waste the ones I already have but I’m going to have to hide the cans and bags somehow because it’ll embarrassing if my neighbors see them.
This has been a demonstration of white privilege.
In Brooklyn near me most of the non-fancy grocery stores will have goya in the ethnic or international food aisle and then a “non-ethnic” dried bean like jack rabbit somewhere else. Which says something, because they’re all the same.
RJ’s rookie year is something like Tatum’s but with Jaylen Brown’s shooting ability. Which is not a great combo, and it’s why he was much less productive than either of those guys. RJ seems to be working out with Drew Hanlen so maybe some of Tatum’s shot making will rub off.
At the Stratomatic Home School For Contrarians they teach the Austrian school of economics and there’s a magnet program for Phil Jackson Studies
Ok let’s accept that as a given. School districts across the country are now offering estate planning and teachers young and old are drawing up their wills. Teachers are going to get sick and die. Kids will bring the virus back home to their parents and grandparents and those people will die. And the people who don’t die will just spread it to other people.
We don’t have this shit anywhere near under control and it’s lunacy to just shrug our shoulders, send kids to school and see what happens. This is all gonna go tits up, you watch.
Easy to say when you have no skin in the game, bud.
I think I’m starting to gravitate back toward Haliburton if we pick in the 6 – 9 range.
I’m just not sold on Hayes as a lead guard (turnovers, lack of speed/hops, no right hand), and at least Hali can legit shoot threes and has the ability to play the 2 effectively. With Hali and RJ, at least you’d have 2 perimeter guys that can slide to different positions, so if we do luck into a Cade Cunningham in ’21, you can move these guys to suit your needs.
I’m still high on Deni too, but I’m guessing he’ll go top 5.
If schools were filled and staffed by only healthy children this would be a good point.
yep…my wife works in the school district in our county as an occupational therapist…she is talking to teachers and they are freaked out…most of them are very high risk (at least based on what has evolved to be defined as high risk)….we are starting the year on distance learning…I don’t think many of them want to go back into the classroom…they are worried about dying..
There are other outcomes for covid19 other than completely healthy and death. It can cause blood clots (which leads to a whole host of issues) and lung scarring at the least. Also, it’s not as if the children are at the schools by themselves. There are bus drivers, teachers, custodians, admins, food workers, school nurses, guidance counselors, and security.
… and parents and grandparents and neighbors and grocery store clerks and random passersby and oh yeah, the whole fucking economy closing down again and tanking big time and all of us unemployed and living on, well, nothing but Goya beans. Moron.
Different parts of Brooklyn I guess, Goya is the staple around me.
I have never day traded. It’s a guessing game.
Israel had a very poor experience with school reopenings. Other countries seem to have been able to manage running daycares and schools without incident.
I’d say that if you are in a region that has gotten new case counts down to a very low level, you have to very strongly consider doing it. The boroughs are reporting 100 or less cases per day on average and we have six weeks or even 2 months to play with. We could maybe target Oct 1. Coupled with other measures like increased testing, accommodation for at risk populations (teachers and students), masking and other measures devised by smarter people than me, and given that maybe 25% of people might have some immunity, well, it seems a manageable risk.
I wouldn’t reopen in Texas, Florida, or California though.
The costs of not reopening seems catastrophically high in terms of learning losses, impact on working parents, socialization for young kids, basic nutrition, mental health, you name it. Kids will be at risk if they aren’t at school too also, it’s not like the alternative is markedly better for safety. Most will have parents who are working and putting their lives on the line every day. That fact too is going to make this a pretty spicy meatball politically for teachers and teachers unions.
FWIW I checked around my connections and no one will touch odds like the ones listed. The best I could get for Dallas was 15-1.
As expected, all the doom and gloomers came out to attack a statement that was clearly qualified as saying we need to look at the data from European countries where schools have been open all along and are going about business as usual. If it suggests a higher risk, we don’t have to and shouldn’t open the schools. If it suggests that children are not getting it and not presenting any incremental risk of passing it on to teachers, parents, and grandparents then schools can be safely opened.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, I strongly suggest you stop driving your kids to school, stop putting them on school buses, and start making them wear bullet proof vests because you are taking even higher risks with their lives now.
Feel free to go back to being incapable of reading comprehension and risk assessment again.
Coming from the Cosmic Brain who said that Russian kleptocrats are more free market than the American Left.
Talk about illiteracy. You have no credibility here because your ideas are garbage. Sorry, but them’s the facts.
Does this seem like what is happening to you? Like does it seem like we have national leadership that’s saying “we need to look at data from European countries and assess the risk and if there’s too much risk we shouldn’t open schools” or anything even remotely resembling that? Because from over here it sure looks like there’s a lot of pressure to open schools at any human cost. I’m all for “let’s look at the data and make the hard choices we need to make based on sober assessment of empirical data.” That’s not a choice we’re being offered though.
Us “doom and gloomers” don’t want our wives and children to die or suffer lifelong complications. What a bunch of fucking mopes.
strat – what we really all wanna know – what’s up with your playing???
i know you were working hard on learning some new “licks” (isn’t that what they’re called) on your guitar…any success?
yeah, so much for american “will” and ingenuity…
seriously, we couldn’t get our shit well enough together to actually slow down and minimize the spread of the virus – so, now we’re at a point where people are just saying – so what, people are gonna die, get over it and stop making such a big deal about the whole thing…
it is just so incredibly discouraging…
and, as vincoug pointed out – there’s a whole lot of not good stuff happening in between: i hardly noticed i was sick and death…
Yeah, sorry Strat; while I’m no epidemiologist I have played on the periphery of viral outbreak work in a previous life, and ‘hey maybe kids don’t give it to adults’ is one of the stupidest takes I’ve read here outside of, well, some other take of yours.
I’ll counter with my own hot take. Nothing has happened over the last few months to shake my feeling that Haliburton is by far the best choice for the Knicks. Great shooter, good passer, big upward trajectory in his short career. All about what the team desperately needs.
The risk of death is not the only risk assumed by children who are infected. There is the possibility of enduring pulmonary problems in the future and the virus has not been around long enough to have data to assess that and other serious health risks.
Here in East ( a/k/a Spanish) Harlem, stores carry Goya and Iberia. No difference in taste.
Here’s the thing. In European schools, the class sizes are generally smaller.
In European countries people don’t think being told to wear a mask means the government is trying to take away their freedoms, so they all comply and wear masks no questions asked. They don’t attack minimum wage fast food workers or grocery store clerks when asked to wear a mask. They listen to their leaders because their leaders give them consistent messaging about what to do.
I just read about a town in upstate NY where a person infected with coronavirus refused to tell authorities where he had been the last week and who he had interacted with so they could do contact tracing. The authorities literally had to get a subpoena for him to comply with this request.
American individualism, which has in the past been a strength of ours, has been twisted and contorted by the right to now mean I can do whatever the hell I want and any authority who tries to get me to do something is a fascist. Its fucking ludicrous. Lets just do away with stop signs and seat belt laws while we’re at it. Why require restaurants to refrigerate meat so they don’t get people sick?
I don’t know what the answer is with schools. Its a nightmare. Its one we could avoid if everyone just started wearing a mask when they went out in public and practiced social distancing. But what is a school supposed to do when people are demanding they open up but also refusing to wear masks or have their children wear masks?
The more I think about the draft, the more I lean towards wanting Nesmith and Kira Lewis. After that, I’m lookin at Deni and Lewis, then Lewis and Jalen Smith. But that’s like 1A, 1B, & 1C for me. I also like the kid out of Stanford, Tyrell Terry and I like Tyrese Maxey. Of course if we land in a position to draft Ball, you take that chance. But I think I would like seeing my 1A-1C on this roster every bit as much
just read on espn …”zion left the bubble for an emergency family matter”
All my teaching friends here in East Tennessee are pretty nervous about returning to work, even the conservative ones. It’ll be interesting, and sad, to see retired teachers being begged to return (as I was in 2018) as others get sick. Maybe need lots more subs as well (and GOOD subs are pretty hard to find around here). Many teachers are not exactly in very good shape…
There could be a lot of sick and dead teachers this fall. One “solution” being bandied about locally is to keep all middle school and high school kids in one room during the day (even eating lunch in the room), while the teachers rotate around. That seems so impractical for teachers who use specialized areas like science (labs), PE (the gym), art teachers, etc. You’re still probably looking at 30+ kids per classroom in most cases, and some teachers being exposed to well over 100 kids per day as usual.
Totally agree with this. I don’t think Haliburton has a ceiling of a superstar, MVP caliber player but I don’t think anyone in this class has that. Almost everyone in this draft has major bust potential but Haliburton at least should have a really high floor. If he can be a Mark Jackson-type player that’s a great outcome for this draft.
Why are we talking about COVID as if death, full recovery or being asymptomatic are the only outcomes? There are all sorts of COVID-related syndromes that cause debilitating illness and possibly permanent damage to vital organs. You have to be a real simpleton to only think in those terms.
Damn straight. If we’re going to talk about car crashes as our analogous situation, yeah, let’s not talk about binaries like “survived” or “died,” let’s try a little nuance: 38,000 people die every year from car crashes, but 4,400,000 need medical attention after one. Even if you assume, having pulled a number out of one’s ass, that only 5% of those people need serious and immediate care (as opposed to treatment for a minor laceration or neck strain), that’s 220,000 people who had their lives turned upside down. But they didn’t die!!!!!!!!
(And car crashes aren’t fucking contagious, either.)
RJ didn’t shoot anywhere near where Jaylen Brown shot his rookie year (.539 TS%, 50% from 2, 34% from 3). In fact, Jaylen Brown’s shooting has been quite average over his 4 year career. The only thing he has problems with is FT%, and this year he seems to have fixed that, which by itself bumped his TS% up to .589. I don’t know where the myth about Brown being a poor shooter came from, but RJ has a long way to go to catch up to him, let alone Tatum.
Having been a public school teacher before, I cannot fathom the way some people think this is going to be anything but a massive disaster. This is not a profession where social distancing is possible, period.
The data on kids as vectors of transmission is unclear, but unless COVID-19 simply cannot be transmitted from someone ages 0-18 to anyone else the sheer scale of the public school system means there’s potential for massive carnage regardless.
To be sure, reopening public schools should be priority #1 when it comes to learning to live with COVID. This is true for many reasons I won’t bother to belabor.
However, placing doing so at priority #1 means actually fucking prioritizing it. It means sacrificing plenty of other things (e.g. indoor dining, bars, etc.). It means giving public schools every god damn dollar they want for PPE and other COVID related preparations. It means drawing up detailed plans for vulnerable teachers and staff to stay safe, and if that means you pay them to stay at home so be it.
There are countless other things I could name, but it is unimaginably incompetent and cruel to do none of this while pounding the table and insisting schools reopen.
I was probably too harsh on Knew Your Nicks earlier because the whole “hurr durr where are yur analytics now” thing is a particular pet peeve of mine.
I was an early adopter of Moneyball/Sabermetrics in the baseball context and had to deal with that shit for like 10 years until the “traditionalists” or whatever you want to call them quietly realized they were wrong about everything and mostly shut up. As far as basketball goes I think we’re close to reaching that point but there are still clearly holdouts and they’re annoying.
Anyway, sorry KYN, but yeah, please drop that shtick.
Basketball is such a contrast with baseball when it comes to stats. There was some low hanging fruit obviously back in the day. There was a time when just invoking ts% was seen as some sort of dark art (rather than arithmetic). There were literally years of just idiotic stuff like arguing over pace adjusting or per minute vs per game stats.
But it’s been surprising how little basketball has yielded to analysis compared to baseball in the last ten years. Just look at what has happened in the quantification of outfield defense for instance. They cracked it.
Meanwhile, passionate basketball stat enthusiasts still are scraping by with data and analysis that, while far better than what we had, we would admit has very large error bars to it.
I guess it’s just fundamental to the nature of the sports just like the fact that basketball is so much better to watch.
I’m going to need actual stats before I accept this as true. Most American kids spent a fair bit of time in cars, 38K americans died in care accidents last year, a lot of them were not kids, so that’s a real real low incident rate. Covid is a lot more deadly than driving in general, and when the kids are bringing it home to everybody you’re going to have to factor in that risk as well.
I poked around looking for pediatric mortality rates and couldn’t find anything. I suspect the numbers are just too variable to be meaningful at this point. It was fairly clear that kids are at a different risks than adults (their bodies work substantially differently), but that permanent lung and heart damage were things that had happened to otherwise healthy kids who did not have compounding risk factors. The other thing was that everyone seems to think that kids can spread the disease whether they’re exhibiting symptoms or not.
Without the ability to rapidly trace and contain outbreaks school in the US is going to be a disaster everywhere. But at this point, I don’t see how the US isn’t a complete disaster no matter what happens. The US is the Knicks of nation states.
So very true.
Yeah, I think the key difference is in the nature of the respective sports like you said. Baseball really can be almost entirely tangibly measured whereas I don’t think we’ll ever reach that point for basketball (and I’m not sure it’s even possible).
Obviously, despite the caricatures of Strat and co., we’re all happy to debate and critique the utility of any given metric in any given context. I get annoyed when people essentially troll the basic idea that we should be using metrics at all, though.
Great points Swift, tnfh, and the rest,
As a father of a middle schooler and an elementary schooler, I just know this will not work, and my kids go to a highly-managed and meticulous private school with smaller class sizes.
This catastrophe really all does reach back to President Dickhead, who has ignored doctors from the beginning. Politicizing everything is obviously his MO, but in the case of a deadly and highly contagious disease, his go-to move backfired big time.
At best, his negative influence only emboldened some of his moronic followers to spread Covid around their locales, but what’s worse is that he’s left a power vacuum when people/states/cities need real, unified guidance, desperately underfunded schools and medical professionals, and caused thousands of deaths while actually lengthening the toll this will take on his precious economy.
“You can’t plan for something that hasn’t happened yet” – Betsy Devos (US Secretary of Education), when asked what she would do if there is an outbreak of #Covid19 in schools.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-pbc-health-director-covid-children-20200714-xcdall2tsrd4riim2nwokvmsxm-story.html
“Nearly one-in-three children tested for the new coronavirus in Florida has been positive, and a South Florida health official is concerned the disease could cause lifelong damage even for children with mild illness.”
Even if President Big Boy somehow solves the vulnerable teachers and staff problem (maybe he’ll make a Very Good and Strong Deal with Covid-19), what exactly is his plan for this?
No way. [looks it up] Okay, she didn’t exactly say that, but it wasn’t much better.
This is very head-in-the-sand, and completely backwards. Probably ought to take preventive measures in advance, but that’s the US for you. Short-term planning only.
There’s also a weird thing throughout where it feels like they think all the ‘kids’ they’re talking about are under 10 years old.
I saw that piece. While I agree it’s a possibility there could be a long term impact, this is just the opinion of one person in Florida who looked at some x-rays apparently. The scientific consensus at this point does seem to strongly support the fact that kids, especially younger kids, generally have very mild symptoms and very very low fatality rates. It’s the piece about whether they transmit like adults that’s very much up in the air, with the only real evidence of that being the lack of any evidence confirming the contrary.
Also, the 33% here seems like it could use a little context. My parent’s friend’s grandkids got tested only because there parents had it and they of course had it too. I’d love to know how many kids in the data set were tested because of exposure and how many were tested randomly.
No way. [looks it up] Okay, she didn’t exactly say that, but it wasn’t much better.
Shit. Just copied it from someone on Twitter. Fake News for real.
This one seems real and quite apropos
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1283839301734801410
I was an early adopter of Moneyball/Sabermetrics in the baseball context
more fake news from the libs. globalracetrumper is too young to be an early adopter of microwaves, answering machines, deloreans, la law, midnight oil and bill fucking james. what else is he lying about.
Like I wrote before, I couldn’t find any numbers on kids at all (other than as a percentage of the infected in Wuhan). The doctors they were quoting about pediatric covid were very much saying kids do and had gotten long term effects just as adults have. What they said they don’t know is the prevalence and nature of long term effects in kids with milder cases.
He claimed he knew who shot JR.
That sentence came from a person who graduated from Harvard Law School. Positively shameful.
I’m dying.
I thought about clarifying that I meant “from an early age” but the wording seemed clunky. Alas, in hindsight it would’ve prevented me from getting dunked on by ptmilo.
#standingovation
Btw, re: Haliburton, I don’t think he’s necessarily a low-risk guy.
I remember last year thinking a very similar player, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, was going to end up a great sleeper pick, and he even had a stellar summer league… before stinking it up for the Pels this year.
I think Haliburton’s a much better passer than NAW and probably a better shooter, but Hali has other issues (the idea being that RJ could balance/mitigate his issues fairly well).
But he for sure brings great passing, good team defense, and an ability to run the break, so if he can get that shot off against NBA defenses, I think he could definitely be a solid piece.
This sums it up for me. The people who are demanding we send all the kid back to school and reopen everything up are the same people who refuse to wear masks or social distance or make any of the sacrifices people are asking them to make to make opening up schools and other things even a possibility.
If schools are going to be open, then those schools need money and plans. They need money for extra clearning. They need money for masks and plastic shields between desks. They need money for extra part-time workers for cleaning. Probably need more substitute teachers, portable schools, etc…to make class sizes smaller so that social distancing is possible. Also, its asking A LOT of kids to keep masks on all day and social distance.
If they wanted this to happen, then plans should have been put in place months ago. Like when we first shut shit down in March. But we don’t have any plans because our federal government is controlled by a group of people who don’t believe the federal government has any responsibility in leading this thing. And that they should only interfere with a state when the state does something they don’t like.
This whole thing required massive leadership from the top. Even our spring shut down..it didn’t really flatten the curve because it wasn’t implemented across the board evenly. So the virus kept spreading and people got impatient and are frustrated. They should be frustrated but not at teachers and people who are still advocating masks and shutting shit down. Other countries are doing so much better bc they wear masks, they do mass testing, they do contract tracing and the governments aren’t politicizing a public health crisis.
I think I may cancel Jom Acosta and my habit of quoting political twitter.
Apparently that McCenany quote was in reference to a JAMA study supporting reopening. Ht Jake Tapper
Bob, if you are still reading, I apologize.
I have no clue about the school issue. We know so LITTLE about this thing that any politician (ahem) who speaks confidently about what works is an idiot (no news there). I do think schools should be open, because honestly, watching my kindergartner learn to read via Zoom in 20 minutes a day was sad. Thank god we were home to pick up the slack. Parent are all stressed, kids are undersocialized. My daughter has developed a nervous tic out of nowhere. There’s got to be an answer. A system where the school is divided in 2 or 3, with weekly rotations of home-school and at-school may work. Kids should wear masks. Plexiglass between desks was offered as a solution. Honestly, until the vaccine comes (and I hope – really, really hope – that there was politics interfering with the testing of the vaccine)- we will be SOL. But keeping families completely home until that day may cause more damage than we want.
From the medical side, I’m on a few physician chat groups, and it’s incredibly dismaying how many physicians are struggling with basic answers to basic questions. All the medical literature seems to announce to me is that we don’t know shit. Everything is unknown. That’s what’s scary. Simple things like reinfection, asymptomatic carriers, child carriers, cotton masks, six feet.. are all fraught. I can probably answer to some degree all of that, but with reservations. It’s pathetic.
Yeah, we’re all in agreement that there will be costs to both opening without a plan, Betsy DeVos style, and remaining closed, depriving children (especially the youngest) of valuable socialization skills. Worse yet, K-12 kids of all ages who are in cramped, unsafe homes will fall behind incredibly fast without intervention.
Coming up with a viable, safe, and productive solution is a gargantuan task. It’s just a shame that our Dept. of Education is run by a person who wants to abolish the Dept. of Education.
I blame this ruined thread on Owen, because it’s fun.
I’d be much more interested in schools reopening if Zoom School wasn’t superior to actual school in every way for grades 6 and up. No more sitting by yourself at the dance, no after school detention, no pubes on the sloppy joes, no pigs blood at the prom, no having people pay $1 to have your panties displayed in the boys bathroom…
The argument against opening schools is the thing that’s going to happen: a shitload of people are going to get sick and the whole thing is going to have to get shut down anyway. When the first wave of bad headlines hits, and it’s like “mother of three, age 31, dies of COVID” and “10-year old boy catches COVID at school and dies” everybody is going to panic and pull their kids out of the schools.
It seems so obviously inevitable to me. Like gobsmackingly stare-you-in-the-face obvious.
I guess we’re gonna find out whether I’m right.
I actually like this discussion, because it’s not stupid 24-hour-news-cycle BS.
By the way, the best news to come out in the past month was the extremely low infection rates among healthcare providers. This means that masks and hygiene really helps. The few doctors I know who caught this thing were either pooh-poohing proper mask wear, or caught it in the community. But given the fact that these are the people in the midst of contagion, this is great news.
Bad news for the antimaskers.
I was on line at the ice cream truck for one of my kids about a month ago, and this 18 year old wasn’t wearing a mask behind me. I told him to step back 6 feet. The answer- “What are you afraid of a little Corona?” Mind you, I was still in scrubs. Idiot.
Agree one thousand percent. I just don’t see people agreeing to keep their kids at home for the next 6 months, and I see what staying at home ad infinitum does to kids and parents.
I think if we’re smart, schools could open with smaller classes, masks, only teach 3-4 hours a day, barriers/space between desks, and no socialization time. I could even envision an AM class and PM class, if they could get the school sanitized in a couple of hours. It may be asking a lot, but it CAN work…
Yeah, nothing like opening a school during a pandemic.
There are plenty of things that COULD work. Unfortunately many of those things cost money that nobody seems willing to spend, and it would take leadership that we don’t seem to have. Teachers would love smaller class sizes. How do we achieve that in one month? Who’s gonna pay for the plexiglass barriers? How about masks and PPE, where are those going to come from? The resources are simply not there, and it’s too late to get the ball rolling to make sure kids, teachers, school workers, parents, and grandparents are going to be anything close to safe.
I live in Los Angeles County. Our neighbor to the southeast is Orange County. They are not mandating masks OR social distancing in their schools, they’re just gonna send kids back and see what happens. Since there is no wall separating Los Angeles County and Orange County, their bad decisions are going to have an impact on us.
They’re going to regret their decision before long. I’ll be shocked if Orange County schools are still open in like mid-October.
Seriously, are we really saying we can’t afford masks in order to educate our children? We are now four months into this thing, with no clear end in sight. Can we really tell kids to stay home indefinitely?
The only thing in my proposal that may be expensive is plexiglass. Fine. Ditch that. Just keep 15 spaced out kids in a classroom from 9-12 , sanitize, and another 15 from 2-5. Give homework. Come on.
Brown wasn’t a good shooter, but he had great shot selection. He only attempted open 3s (by the NBA tracking #s a majority of the 3s he took were wide open) off of assists and shots inside of 10′. Making 34% of your open 3 point attempts is not good by NBA standards. RJ made 33% of his open/wideopen 3s. But he sprinkled in some off the dribble 3 attempts which he sucked at making. I don’t know if even the Celtics coaching staff could get RJ to stop taking dumb shots, he shot too much at Duke too, but he shot from distance as well as Jaylen did when you look at the types of shots they took in common.
…the Federal Gov’t has really nothing to do with decisions about opening schools…that is done at the state and local level…so it is going to be a similar fact pattern, with clueless governors and mayors who won’t require masks and have the head in the sand as the ones pushing to open, i.e., get them in the classroom and in other areas where they are trying to balance safety and proper schooling…as an example here in NorCal, alot of the districts were going for some kind of hybrid…once the curve went up…they announced that was out and going to distance learning with potentially an exception for special needs kids who just can’t do online learning..
My wife teaches special ed. Most of her kids have behavioral disorders of some sort. They can’t stop touching each other, they can’t stop fidgeting, and good fucking luck getting them to constantly wash their hands and wear a mask all day long. She teaches in an inner city neighborhood that is ravaged by the virus. Many of her kids live in cramped environments with various parents, cousins, grandparents all under the same roof. These schools are horrifically underfunded.
It’s just not gonna go the way you think it’s gonna go there. It’s not gonna be safe. There is no amount of “keep the desks six feet apart” that’s going to keep that environment safe. Luckily she teaches for the Los Angeles school district and they have the good sense to be doing distance learning when school opens in the fall. If the number of cases ever gets under control they can think about returning to the classroom. It is what EVERYBODY wants. It is not realistic right now.
Our leaders here in California and specifically in Los Angeles fucked this up, they reopened way too soon, so unfortunately this is the price we are paying. I work on a TV show and I’m going to work again approximately never. If this had been handled correctly we might have been in production by the end of summer. Now, who knows.
How are you keeping class sizes to 15 kids? I went to some relatively small schools from K through HS and I was never in a class that small.
In NYC, many public school buildings are in serious disrepair. Poor or no ventilation, ancient. air filtration systems, insufficient number of sinks for handwashing. These are the tip of the iceberg.
There is also the issue of child care when you have staggered days or times of attendance, although DeBlasio announced a vague plan to provide childcare for 100K families on days where the children will be doing remote learning.
Congress earmarked $669 billion for the PPP, which is 100% forgivable if certain employee retention and qualifying-expense usage is met. No surprise that certain companies, which should have not been eligible for the funds, were still able to get this free money from the SBA
But no, we definitely don’t have the funds to manufacture 332,000,000 masks at $2 a pop and mail them to every person in the country. And since our Commander-in-Chief was a mask truther until recently, but still refuses to issue guidance to the people he was elected to help protect, I don’t see anything like this happening anytime soon.
Some kids will lose their masks every day, or forget to bring them to school every fucking day. You’d need an awful lot of motherfucking masks.
“If the number of cases ever gets under control they can think about returning to the classroom.”
Hmm. I’ve been looking for someone who not only has no idea on the actual risk to kids from COVID-19 but is completely clueless as to the negative aspects of distance learning/no in-person classes on both children, their families, and society as a whole.
I can’t wait to see the look on people’s faces when the bill for all this shutdown hysteria comes due in the form of massive tax hikes, crippling budget cuts, and the long-term cost of dealing with all the mental and physical health problems both going untreated and being exacerbated by this stuff.
Mike
Why are we bringing up special ed?
Class sizes are small because I would half class time and double amount of classes (or triple..)
No mask, no school. Lose your mask, I don’t know what happens. Someone out there must have an idea. Maybe call mom and dad to pick up and yell at said child.
Masks cost 10 cents to manufacture.
–says the man who will never have to step inside of school during a pandemic.
::clutches pearls::
How dare those corporations have to pay their fair share!
Because… it’s… a part of K-12 education?
Hey Mike, I’ll reiterate again that my wife teaches in a public school and I’m acutely aware of the impact of distance learning versus in class learning. It’s not ideal. I know more about that than your dumb ass knows about the risks to kids from COVID, because like everybody else, you don’t know jack shit about it. We don’t know what the long term effects of COVID are going to be on children. Personally I don’t really want to run the risk of my kid having fucked up lungs for the rest of his life.
So until you’re willing to go sit in a classroom with hundreds of little disease vectors for eight hours a day why don’t you do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.
hmmm, seems you forgot to include rampant black on black gun crime in our cities…oh yeah – they’re tearing down monuments and trying to cancel out all of our “glorious” american history too…oh and those fools are still making a fuss about seeing trump’s taxes…they ought to just mind their own damn business and let our president guide us towards a beautiful winning future…
yeah, we all just need to “man up” like good little lemmings and follow daddie donnie over the cliff…fuck jim jones junior…
you know what the real answer is – come around february or so of next year we’ll all start digging ourselves out of this shithole we are currently in…
until then – the outlook for kids who got to learn, parents who got to work, teachers and staff who got to teach and support, health care workers that will have to deal with all the collateral damage is all pretty fucking grim…
Special Ed should be dealt with separately. My sister is involved in administration at a big special ed school and they have no answers or solutions. It’s not all or nothing, if you have a solution for older kids but not younger, you do what you can.
Hey, glad to see you all are still hanging in there.
I run the Twitter account for East Los Angeles College Athletics. JK47, there’s a sports writer from the LA Times named Eric Sondheimer I follow – he focuses on HS sports. Your comment about Orange County reminded me of his recent tweets covering a recent OC Board of Ed from last week. They voted to reopen schools with no masks or increased social distancing – between that announcement and the tweeting of commentary from the meeting, it’s no wonder folks here say the OC is the Florida of California. *sigh*
In case anyone is wondering, Cali JUCO sports have been pushed back to Winter/Spring/Summer 2021; half the sports will start mid-January start for preseason activities, with the other half starting mid-March.
Cdiggy, I saw a tweet from somebody, I forget who, that said the United States is the world’s Florida.
good to read your words cdiggy, hope you and the family are all staying safe and well…
Putting aside everything else for a second…this is a situation you “can’t wait” to see? Sick shit man.
KYN, don’t fret, so long as Mike Bunge is around you’ll never be the worst poster in this board.
I am an LA County employee. The department I work for (library) has been closed to the public for over four months now. During that time, the County has moved us around like chess pieces to address various emergency needs as they arise. Once or twice a week I have been deployed to a series of drive-thru food distribution events throughout the county. Each 4-hour event typically draws 1,500-2,000 vehicles, sometimes a lot more.
About a month ago, I worked one in the massive parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl. What was especially striking about that event was the number of late model. higher-end vehicles that came through. It was such a departure from what I’d seen at the other food drives that I mentioned it to one of the food bank veterans. She said that many of the cars we were seeing that day were most likely folks employed in the film industry who had been earning comfortable middle class livings up until the virus halted production citywide. This was just the first wave of folks from that sector who woke up one morning following months of no income and found themselves skint. They certainly won’t be the last.
This thing is such a shit show on so many levels, it has impacted so many far beyond just the truly horrific stories one hears about on the nightly news, that it’s impossible to wrap one’s brain around it. That so much of this could have been mitigated with a semblance of competent governance is a national fucking disgrace. I am mortified whenever I ponder what the next six months of rudderless, aggrieved, and vindictive “leadership” may bring.
It’s no consolation, but it’s the same in NY. I’ve had six days of work since this started, locking some eps that were put on hiatus when this started. I’ve heard a couple rumors about a production going but it’s always just folks trying to preemptively line up some staff in case maybe something starts. There’s no work, and there won’t be any for fucking ages. The only upside (ha!) is that most clients pay via W-2 here so getting unemployment hasn’t been as hard as I hear it’s been in LA.
well, y’all shitted on my plans to bitch about work earlier…thanks for that…fortunately the bonds of decency loosen their hold as the evening goes on…
my nice work/life balance going on last couple of months has gotten wrecked the last week or so…got a little animated at work this morning, only thing was – i was at home…which after a while made me just annoyed about the whole situation…which wasn’t really a big deal in of itself, just the fact i had to deal with it from my house…
no surprise, when things aren’t so busy, it’s nice…madness ensues – it feels like a home invasion (yes, hyperbole all the time)…
i am thankful for having the chance to spend a lot more time with the god kids than ever before…hard to parent well though when work grabs hold of you…
finally had time to get god son out the house around 8:30pm…hanging out in the pool for a while and he suddenly asks what’s wrong – realized i was staring off in to space thinking about – fucking work…
i just can’t wait to retire…i’m in no rush to put a bunch of extra years on my body, but, my real employment dream – is to work part time at a book store…hopefully they’ll still be some left by then…
actually had that exact job at walden books in the del monte shopping center – a little bit of heaven on earth…nice walk to work through some woods, and, when i got to work would just talk a bunch about books, to book people…it was really nice…
Thats a nice dream Geo. Found myself walking past a bookstore yesterday that was closed and stopped and kind of drifted off, gazing wistfully in. I mean, I use a kindle but there was a real longing inside me….
Nate Robinson has always been a positive and likable guy, but he’s fast becoming one my favorites. I always enjoy truth tellers, but I especially enjoy inconvenient truth tellers that manage to pull it off while remaining positive and accepting instead of angry at the idiocy around them. That’s no easy task.
I may regret asking this, but here goes anyway….
What inconvenient truth is Nate Robinson telling?
Whatever it is doesn’t appear to be trending bc I did try to google it. The best I could find is this:
The only thing I saw recently from him was him saying that he thinks Thibs would be a good hire for the Knicks.
About 6 years *ago he had an autobiography published. Maybe it contains some unvarnished truths.
https://twitter.com/nate_robinson?lang=en
https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Over-Height-Nate-Robinson/dp/1483413039
* edit
ten bucks sez he defended Jackson’s tenure as POBO
Nate played some of his best basketball under Thibs.
geo…i am right there with you…I think I have been thinking about retirement more during this shelter in place and then one of my colleagues just passed away within one year of retiring and that made me think of doing it earlier…not fantasizing about the book store…I have my sights on working in a tasting room up in Napa…sipping wine all day and bullshittting with tourists..
From Berman:
The Berman puff piece is largely based on an interview with B.J. Armstrong. Is it a PR move to drum up support for naming Thibs head coach? Seems more inevitable by the day.
One of my clients does retired to do this in St Helena. I went to see her last summer. Happiest person I’ve ever seen.
On a drinking level, I’d be happiest doing the same thing at a Tequila distillery in Jalisco or a whisky room in Islay. But the weather wouldn’t agree with me long term in either place.
Did Strat confuse Nate Robinson with someone else? I will always adore Nate Robinson–the pickings were slim for us kids who started watching the Knicks in the early aughts and he was fun. I literally have his jersey!
But yeah, I definitely do not recall him being a Brave Truth Teller.
That’s why I live in Oregon wine country, with our cool Mediterranean climate. That and someone pays me to live here.
Ah, so that’s where all the snickering and armpit-fart noises were coming from during the live stream…
What could Thibs possibly learn from a bunch of math geeks?
“What could Thibs possibly learn from a bunch of math geeks?”
What the enemy thinks?
I’ve come to terms with Thibs being next head coach.
In some ways he’s the anti-Fizdale – much less concerned with being pals with the players, is extraordinarily prepared, and has pretty consistent principles — as opposed to whatever it was Fizdale was trying to do.
He has pretty decent player development credentials. Sure he may have played guys too many minutes but that feels easy enough to adjust – it’s not like a guy who can’t process in the moment trying to learn to be a great in-game tactician.
Re: schools in the fall – I somewhat selfishly would like my kids to be in school at least part of the time. I feel like with some out-of-the-box thinking that many schools could figure out a solution that would be looked upon favorably by public health experts, teachers, and parents alike. There are a ton of logistics that would need to be figure out with things like meals, transportation, etc but smart people need to get together and figure that stuff out. Not only is it our next generation that is being harmed by our stupid president and his complete inability to think past the next news cycle, but parents can’t go back to work either if they can’t leave home.
In the Northeast where the prevalence of Covid is so low, some combination of outdoor classrooms, fans in windows/doors to improve ventilation, classes in shifts, and N95s for teachers and staff, regular masks for kids should be reasonably effective at preventing infections, at least while the weather is ok. For urban schools, close 1-2 streets around the school and have some of the classes on those closed streets. Then move to mostly remote learning through the winter. Hopefully by then there will be vaccines for the highest risk people and better treatments for those who are infected. For the teachers that don’t want to take the risk of in-person teaching, task them with GREATLY improving the quality of remote learning – we have a good school system and the remote learning SUCKED in the spring – totally embarrassing, especially in light of the fact that by all reports the teachers’ union was fighting having to do any teaching at all during quarantine (in our district, at least).
without a doubt, though, Congress has to come up with a school rescue package – how in the world will already strapped school budgets be able to handle the extra cost of doing all this. Teachers can only (be forced to) buy so much on their own dime. Government needs to step up and stop bailing out bars and bail out our kids instead.
dude, that’s like a real concern i have…i did the pennysaver thing in the mornings when i was like 8 or 9…before i turned 14 i had my first “official” job (summer job for the town where i lived – i literally worked at a land “dump” surrounded by garbage)…mom loves to remind me how she used to have to hose me down after work before i could come in to the house 🙂
hell no, i don’t wanna retire and die right away, or get close to retirement and die just before…i will be so pissed at god if that happens…
i’m within a decade of being done with this 9 to 5 stuff…hopefully if i can focus a little better on retiring it’ll be more like five years away than ten…
had this big plan to transition to a new role in the company this year, real tired of my job, but, i love the company…that’s not going so well right now…saw the team i currently work on shrink from 9 members when i joined ten years ago down to just me and a buddy (there’s only so much proficiency and efficiency you can achieve to cover for the loss of that many people)…i like my buddy a lot – but, i just don’t wanna be the last man standing…almost everything i touch at work is “hot” by the time it reaches me…that and my job is now set up to where i serve the whole company, there’s a lot of people in our company…time for me to reconnect with hr…
this tipping point came up yesterday when i had to call god son’s mom to come pick him up this weekend…i just didn’t think i could make it through another week of work and still look after him…sounds silly now, but, it really upset me yesterday…it just really pissed me off cuz he’s been a good soldier and does what he’s asked – maybe not exactly when he’s asked, but, he takes care of what needs to be done while he’s at the house…it’s not his fault…
Putting aside my utter frustration with the painfully slow rollout of the “blended learning” approach settled on by the NYCDOE, I am compelled to consider all sides of the conundrum as unemotionally as possible. While I fully understand that there are risks involved, I believe that we have to push the envelope and get kids back to school in as safe of a way as practicable, even if just for 1-2 days per week. My personal preference would be for a full remote start followed by a 4-6-week transition to blended learning. It is incredibly daunting to try to hit the ground running in September with no real planning time beforehand. As an aside, I’m not a big fan of teachers having the whole summer off…summer should have ample time built in for analyzing prior year data and planning for the year. Having teachers leave the day in June that students do and report back in September a day or two before students do is ridiculous, and never more so than this year. If we could have teachers in even two weeks before the students, it would make a huge difference.
Frank it’s completely understandable that you want your kids back in school and you shouldn’t feel bad about it at all. Like I said yesterday, there are countless reasons why schools are one of the few sectors of society in which the “trade off” conversation is legitimate. Our entire lockdown strategy should’ve crafted with the goal of kids being able to return to school as soon as possible.
The problem is we simply don’t have a federal response to COVID-19 and states, without the ability to run budget deficits and limited in other ways, can only do so much. I don’t think they can handle all of the preparations you outlined on their own, if for no other reason because, like you said, they just don’t have the damn money.
There’s really no solution here except “kick the fucking bums in the federal government out.” Luckily for humanity and tragically for bob and co. it looks like that’s going to happen, but unfortunately not in time for there to be a short-term impact on the schools question.
Then tell your pals at the district to give us a lot more damn money 😉
I’m watching the famous game five Knicks-Miami game on MSG. I don’t get how folks hated this brand of basketball. Every freaking basket was hard-earned. LJ was really a physical beast in this game.
Why are they my pals?
I would mandate that teachers should have 3-4 weeks less vacation and should get paid whatever the pro-rated weekly salary is for those weeks.
There is absolutely no logical reason for teachers to have 8-10 weeks off in the summer. It is a vestigial perq from agricultural days.
Agreed. Down here in the South, it gets ridiculously hot in July and August, so a good idea to be shut down for all of July and part of August due to the $ cost for air conditioning, but we certainly could go to school in June. It’s 95 here today in Knoxville. Schools here usually are shut down in June and July but fire back up in August.
geo….hang in there…I am in the same boat…i was thinking 65 now I am going for 60 and tucking and rolling…want to smell the roses a bit before I can’t anymore…
you hear it too – huh?
the clock is ticking pepper, and, the sound is getting louder by the year 🙂
I’m told the sense of smell comes back eventually. But on the bright side– you won’t, while you recover, have to smell the rank odor of the republic burning.
Agrees with Strat that Thibs should be the coach = Brave Truth Teller
That’s totally what it is. However, the Knicks being the Knicks, I could easily see them doing a full court press push to hype people up for Thibs, only for Thibs to take one of the better gigs, like Houston or Brooklyn.
yeah…my nostrils would have to be really fucked up to block out that stench….but it is in the back of my mind whenever I bite/swallow/smell something…if it isn’t what I was expecting..I have this thought that I need to go get tested….
Jowles, what the fuck is going on in Portland? Are they really throwing protestors into unmarked vans?
Or this thread could end or be resurected with a syrtaki-post from the “one man oficcial greek chorus”!
If great poster in here means blind worship of analytics and autocratic response to those who don’t feel the same way then i guess I’ll join the worst posters group voluntarily.
Treating Melo like is shit due to PER,VORP, BPM,EFG% numbers and on the other hand treating “1 season role players wonders” like GOAT cause they did great for 301 minutes on the same categories don’t seem fair to me.
I don’t know the exact reason for everyone coming here reading or posting but for me is
Read about the latest knicks news & rumors from a trusted source,
Decompress myself from real life,
Make humor and laugh,
feel as part of a healthy community.
No need for me to fuck threads or feeling that I’m in a toxic environment full of Hate.
Having trouble dealing with different (even faulty or stupid) opinions ?
Sleep, have sex, go for a walk
And for the end a famous Bobby Portis quote:
“The Way We Treat Jugoslavian Power Forwards Is A Reflection Of How We Treat Our Own selves!”
(apology accepted nfh)
KYK,
Players like Melo— one-dimensional scorers who don’t defend, rebound, or pass much— are relatively easy to assess. We know how many possessions they use to score their points and we can very easily compare them to other scoring-oriented players. Many of the “advanced stats” you seem to have a problem with are not really “advanced,” they are merely simple arithmetic. Some of us place more weight on all-in-one stats than others do. For me personally, I try to look at the big picture of what the stats are telling me.
Some players are more difficult to value accurately— glue guys like André Iguodala for instance. The value of a player like that is not easily captured in a box score. Melo is not that kind of player. Pretty much everything he does shows up in the box score.
You also seem to rail against various straw men, like the phantom idea that some of us believe someone like Cole Aldrich was a superior player to Melo based on some small sample size of minutes. We’re a smarter bunch than that.
Melo had a few good seasons here in his late 20’s when he got his efficiency up, didn’t burn so many possessions and even chipped in with some decent passing and rebounding. For much of his Knick career he was an inefficient chucker. At this stage of his career he has very little value outside of nostalgic value. He does one thing, and does not do that one thing well.
I really wish I could go to a bar, drink a beer I have never heard of, and watch the NBA playoffs.
i’d settle for just the beer….
Jk47
I know that Melo ain’t efficient as KD,LBJ or other Superstars and i know that Now is probably finished but calling him a bad player or a chucker because he shoots 17seasons with 54,1% TS while KD shoots with 61,3% TS don’t seem to me like he’s bad.
He’s just not among the very best high volume scorers of all times.
Bad ?
I’m not an expert on advanced stats but after checking Draymond Green’s i have the impression that advanced stats have a lot to do with your teammates.
Am i right ?
Player performance doesn’t vary that much when they move from team to team after you adjust for minutes, pace, natural growth and decline, team defense (box score metrics often assign it to the individual pro rats), and injuries.
Public perception of player performance however very much depends on who your teammates are.
I need some ouzo over ice to go any further.
I can’t send you Ouzo but i can ice you with my next observation:
According to advanced stats you could say that Draymond Green is a worse player or had a worse season than Donte DiVincenzo ? Or he was just lucky to be on a far better team while DGreen was on the worst one ?
Last one-i promise!
Julius Randle’s PER numbers aren’t a clear sign that the all in one advanced stats are heavily flawed ?
KYN, at some point you need to do your own research and not depend on posters to educate you. There are tons of articles to read about advanced stats. It’s not all that complicated.
PER is a garbage stat, you will not find anyone here who uses that metric
ZMan
I tried a few times to read about advanced stats but felt like i was reading to get a diploma in political science. Too many acronyms, too many links…
Jk47
Which are the most trusted ones?
*John Hollinger sheds a single tear somewhere*
The patriarch of this site, Mike K, wrote this back in 2007. It used to be the first thing linked at the top of the home page. Some of the stats have changed, but the idea still stands.
https://knickerblogger.net/a-laymans-guide-to-advanced-nba-statistics/
DW
It looks as big as the East man…
but i promise to give it a try before the next time i
try to defend Melo ! Thanks
Stats like eFG% and TS% are simple arithmetic, simple rate stats. eFG% is simply FG% but with the extra point from three-pointers factored in. It’s a very important stat, generally the teams with the highest eFG% tend to be the best offensive teams. TS% adds made free throws to the equation and is the best quickie indicator of a player’s efficiency. But USG% is also an important number— if you have both high usage and high efficiency you’re really cooking. A guy like Tyson Chandler or Mitch Robinson will have a sky high TS%, but the value of that is limited by the player’s low usage.
The all-in-one stats like BPM, VORP and WS48 are more controversial. I use WS48 as a shorthand— .100 means you’re a roughly average player, .200 means you’re a true star, .000 means you’re Frank Ntilikina. It tends to overrate bigs and underrate guards though, so you have to take that into account. WS48 also punts on defense, in fact all of the all-in-one stats fudge the defensive side of the ball to some degree.
Some of the brainiacs here can probably describe the other all-in-one stats better than me.
PER according to retired Wins Produced types like me is garbage because it rewards players for taking more shots even if they dont hit them.
And Julius Randle can’t defend.
As for Draymond, anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests he mailed it in. I actually have no idea what happened with him but someone smarter than me will explain.
Actually, I find PER useful for predicting a player’s market value. Players with a high PER tend to get high salaries, even if that means they are overpaid or underpaid. And I would add that according to Hollinger, who created it, its not totally a volume based stat.. I don’t know the math well enough to judge the truth of that claim.
I do agree that PER matches perception well enough. Heck, we could just say PER stands for “perception.” 😉 What’s funny is that when it came out, it was far from that, as PER suggested certain players were stars that conventional methods didn’t respect, but now they do.
As for the volume thing, it’s not volume per se, it’s volume at a certain level. There’s a certain point where every additional field goal adds to your PER, no matter the amount of shots taken to get there and that, of course, is just absurd.
That is an often cited flaw, but by and large there’s a reasonably high correlation between PER and WS. And clearly, other advanced stats have had serious flaws as well (RIP WP48). Their flaws just don’t push the buttons of stats geeks like the volume shooting-related flaws of PER because the prime directive of the early stats movement was debunking the myth that players who scored a lot were inherently more valuable that players who didn’t. So anything that seems to reward volume inefficient volume shooting is crucified, while anything that turns extremely low-volume/high efficiency players into superstars is given a pass. Ultimately, PER is not so flawed relative to other common metrics except maybe for extreme outliers.
Case in point:
This year, of players with at least 1,000 minutes, Extremely low-volume/high efficiency Mitchell Robinson has a PER of 23.5 (13th) and a WS48 of .230 (5th), BPM of 3.0 (32nd) and VORP of 1.8 (39th).
Volume shooter Donovan Mitchell: PER 19.1 (49th), WS48 .115 (45th) BPM 1.9 (55th) , VORP 2.1 (30th).
In these two cases, PER neither penalized Mitch very much nor does it reward Donovan very much. If you value PER, Mitch is a lot better than Donovan. If you value WS48, Mitch is a superstar and Donovan is slightly above average. If you value BPM, Mitch is marginally better but far from a superstar. If you value VORP, Donovan is marginally better but far from a superstar.
Throw out a player’s per game stats, and look at per-minute stats instead. Per minute stats are usually measured per 40 minutes. Study, after study, after study shows a player’s per minute production to stay the same despite how many minutes they play. You can find them at basketball-reference for historical data, or my stat page for the current season.
thanks for the link donnie…it was fairly straightforward written, no mathematical head spinning ensued…I’ll forget it all tomorrow…but yeah. I think it makes…
Top 10 in PER:
Giannis, Harden, Davis, Luka, Kawhi, KAT, Lillard, LeBron, Embiid, Jokic
Top 10 in WS48:
Giannis, Davis, Harden, Zubac, Mitch, Rudy, Nerlens, Kawhi, George Hill, Butler
Top 10 in BPM:
Giannis, Harden, Kawhi, LeBron, Davis, Luka, KAT, Jokic, Lillard, Embiid
Top 10 in VORP:
Harden, Giannis, LeBron, Jokic, Davis, Lillard, Luka, Kawhi, Butler, CP3
If any of these stats seems to have terrible flaws, it’s WS48. Of the 10 PER leaders, Giannis, Harden, Davis and Kawhi show up in all 4, LeBron, Lillard, and Jokic in 3. Not a single guy is unique to PER. WS48 has Zubac, Nerlens, Mitch, Gobert, and George fucking Hill in the top 10, and they don’t show up on any other list.
Obviously this is not an exhaustive study, but I only want to point out that PER is no worse than WS48 and may actually be more aligned with other catch-all metrics.
I feel like I know how to instantly correct for the more obvious flaws of WS48. Like I know guys like Mitch score too high and guards score too low, but I feel like I can make that adjustment in my brain easily. Maybe it’s just because it’s familiar to me. It’s certainly not the most in-depth or accurate metric, like I said to me it’s kind of a shorthand for approximate value.
Agreed, but it wasn’t always that way. For years, WS48 (and it’s uglier cousin WP48) were trusted on face value by some here, who have reluctantly come around to at least partially acknowledge its very serious flaws, but still believe it is a better metric than PER.
You could do the same “instant correct” thing with PER, and would probably have to do it less.
Allen Iverson was the poster child for burying PER and lauding WS48. But looking back, his PER lines up quite well with BPM and VORP. In 2001-02, Iverson took 28 shots per game and had a .422 eFG%. You couldn’t possibly be a lower efficiency high-volume shooter than him. Yet his PER was 21.9….hardly an inflated number, especially when compared to his BPM and VORP.
Carmelo, too. If PER overvalues fg attempts, you’d think he’d score really high by PER, but he only cracked the top 10 twice, and stands currently at 80th on the career list, 6 whole spots behind Greg Monroe.
Carmelo Anthony was a pretty good player who added value at his position, but making him the highest paid player in a cap restricted league was a terrible way to build a winning team by any metric.
It’s an often cited flaw because it is such a noticeable flaw. If your stat has a flaw as visible as “At a certain point, any made field goal is considered a positive, no matter what” then you don’t just leave that in there. There was another early all-in-one stat that NBA.com used to feature that also had this weird bit where it literally counted rebounds twice for no good reason and that stat never gets mentioned anymore (I don’t even remember what it was called, that’s how thorough it’s been erased from history), since it was such a glaring flaw.
But yeah, Hollinger specifically designed PER to compare favorably with what we knew about players already (in other words, he sort of worked backwards – “We know Player X is great, so how do we get a number that says he is great”), so a guy with a 20 PER is very unlikely to ever be a scrub. You’re certainly not going to go way off the beaten path if all you’re working with is PER.
I think WS/48 is the best stat for the marginal players out there, but yeah, I tend to just look at the individual composite stats more when looking at players. You know, like, “I know this dude does this and that, so if he has a TS% of X, then he’s probably doing well.” I don’t really trust any of the all-in-ones, but for the guys on the margins, I think WS/48 is a good one to use if you’re like, “Huh, is this guy even a positive?” like a lot of recent Knicks have been like. But I wouldn’t use it to tell whether a guy is, like, Top 10 versus Top 20 or whatever. None of the all-in-ones are too reliable for that stuff. If you’re ever in a position where you’re, like, “This guy has a .220 WS/48 and this guy has a .195 WS/48, so clearly the first guy is better” then you’re definitely lost.
The old NBA.com stat was EFF for efficiency I think.
PIPM is the stat du jour.
They are a useful shorthand but I wouldn’t put the stock in any metric that I did WP in 2007. However I still believe strongly that using metrics and understanding them will give you a richer understanding of the game.
For me, metrics really surfaced things about players you just wouldn’t have realized otherwise, like Paul Millsap’s steal rate or Devin Harris’ ftr or any numbers of player’s scoring inefficiency.
I scout the stat line more today and I think about defense a lot. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with using metrics as long as you understand their biases.
And for PER, the fact you got rewarded just for taking shots (without making them) was a pretty big one.
It is true though that they are tightly correlated though.
My point is that even if a flaw is “obvious”, if it almost never causes a player to be overvalued, then it is no more relevant than another stat’s more obscure flaw. Now that we have more metrics, correlation with PER seems to invalidate this criticism. It’s possible that PER has a second flaw that balances out the first one, or that the flaw only “meaningfully” kicks in at absurdly high-volume/low-efficiency numbers that would generally get a guy benched (which I think Hollinger said in a relatively recent defense of PER.)
Even if Hollinger’s methodology was ass-backwards compared to, say, Berri, the end product seemed to hold up fairly well in comparison to newer metrics.
As to WS, its value lies in magnifying the value of players who would get obscured because they don’t score much. But even so, rare is the case when a guy has a widely disparate PER and WS48.
Maybe developing something akin to the RealClearPolitics average of advanced stats would help to make final determinations, on the assumption that some of the inherent flaws would get cancelled out.
Sorry for the quadruple post, but I wanted to bring up Enes Kanter as a guy who exposes both PER and WS48 for their shared flaw of grossly undervaluing defensive “efficiency” and disguising poor defense behind defensive rebounding. BPM seems to do a better job of factoring in Enes’s far below average defense, but it still seems that he gets so much credit for defensive rebounding that it is hard to balance that out via box score stats. There’s nothing in the box score that accounts for making or missing defensive assignments. You need synergy-type stats for that.
In that sense, even at the “top-10” level, Harden gets way more credit for being essentially a one-way player than he deserves, and the gap between him and, say, Giannis or LeBron or maybe Davis is larger than PER and WS can capture.
For me, I don’t quite understand the fixation on rebounding at all. It doesn’t really correlate to winning, unlike shooting efficiency. The top rebounding teams rarely win the championship. The average for a championship team is 15th in the league, dead center. One Heat team was dead last in the league in rebounding and still won the title that year.
In reality, the key to rebounding isn’t to be good at rebounding, it’s to play with people who are bad at shooting. Conflating that with player value always seemed risky.
I’ve tried to understand the statistical infatuation with rebounding. I feel like fans get frustrated when they see their team play good defense and force a bad shot, but then give it back by not getting the rebound, and they scream “rebound the damn ball!” at their TV, and that artificially boosts the value of a rebound around the world.
I just listened to part of a Dunc’d on podcast from July 13th on how did the young guys in the Atlantic Division do at improving this year. Roughly the first half hour of it is on young Knicks. The results aren’t that surprising, but it’s still a good listen. They think Robinson is our best prospect and thought he showed average improvement for the year. They thought Ntilikina was a little above average in how much he improved, but that didn’t mean they thought he was great. They thought he now has potential to be a good backup point guard. They weren’t happy with Knox’s improvement on offense, but thought he improved a bit on defense. They like Dotson, and think someone will want him as a restricted free agent (although the Knicks might match an offer). They thought Smith was so bad he might be out of the league pretty soon, but also pointed out he lost his father in law last season. They didn’t rate Iggy because of low minutes and said a few modestly nice words about Pinson.
It came back for me, and the two other people I know who had this covid symptom. I had a really mild case, and honestly the smell/taste thing was the least of my symptoms, it just showed up first. Watch out for the head shit – it’s like your brain is covered in a dense fog, you feel stupid and it’s hard to concentrate or do anything. Occasional severe dizziness. All the other stuff is more-or-less what people say about it, except worse. Good luck!
Rebounding is a conundrum. We all know that it’s a critically important part of the game. and that good rebounders are highly valuable. I just think that rebounds are way too noisy to account for the percentage of individual player evaluation that it does, particularly in regard to defensive efficiency. Enes Kanter has a higher WS48 than Montrezl Harrell because he’s a better rebounder. They are equal in PER, probably for the same reason. Yet Harrell is significantly better according to BPM and VORP, probably because they bypass rebounding in and of itself and try to measure overall impact on both ends of the floor.
I also believe that rebounding in the context of one’s larger role is important. A player responsible for using 30 % of offensive possessions is going to be at a huge disadvantage in offensive rebounding compared to a player with a 10% usage. Imagine how many rebounds Giannis or LeBron would get if that was their primary role and they played largely off the ball. Likewise, comparing Melo’s rebounding to Chandler’s is unfair.
So the player like Frank who forces a low-percentage shot gets no credit in box score-based metrics, while a player like Enes will get 100% of that credit for grabbing a defensive rebound. Inefficiencies like these are impossible to reconcile as long as box score stats are the basis for a particular advanced stat.
Rebounding matters at the team level, but it’s partly a function of role. So most models overvalue them by giving full credit to the player that got it and doubly overvalue players that do most of their scoring off OREBs.
The more I read what Thibs has to say about the game, the more I think not hiring him would be a monumental error.
In a rare event, I concur with both of these opinions, although less so with the second than the first. (See, strat? Even though I think you are largely a corrupt human being who has dangerous fascist tendencies, I am happy to respond to your basketball ideas on a case-by-case basis.)
Thibs is almost certainly going to get the job. Rose is doing a very clever PR job in trying to spin the fact that it was Thibs since day 1, but we all saw through that bullshit. I am largely ambivalent, and feel that one of the younger guys (or Miller) are better suited for where the team is right now, but Thibs is the best of the vets out there. It would be stupid to wait around for the likes of Doc Rivers, who may never consider the job and may be overrated to boot.
Even if Thibs is not the guy, I am confident that Rose is going to make a defensible decision and not be bamboozled into picking a more questionable retread like Jackson or Kidd. My gut is that he’d go with a fresh face rather than one of those guys.
I guess we’ll find out in a few days. Exciting!
This is a great take on the career of Ray Allen, who is was much better all-around player than most remember him to be.
Are you talking about raw rebounding numbers or percentages?
When Dean Oliver wrote Basketball on Paper (2002), it did matter. That’s the whole point of Four Factors — it did correlate with winning, which is why he argued that it explained 20% of a team’s wins. He didn’t just fully invent that number (although it’s certainly approximated) — it was the outcome of his regressions.
In 2020, the range of team-rank ORB% between #1 (the Knicks, thanks Mitch) and #30 was 25.8% to 19.2%. In 2002, it was 35.3% vs. 24.1%. Pace has increased by an additional 10 possessions (per team) per game (about 90 to 100), which is an enormous difference, so it’s no surprise that scoring efficiency matters even more than it used to. You’re adding 20 possessions to each game now (which doesn’t even count ORBs, as far as I know, since they merely extend a possession) which leads to a greater potential MOV.
But that difference is still relatively small, and as DW points out, being a leader in that category is hardly a prerequisite for being a title contender.
It reminds me of an admissions criteria trick that clever schools pull to be in compliance with mandates that standardized test scores, not count for more than 50% of the weight. You can have test scores count for only 10% and still be the most determinative factor. All you have to do is make the variance within a small category have a big spread. If your metric makes it so that most of the students get between 85 and 90 on the non-test score metrics, but test scores vary between 0 and 10, then the 10% is more determinative than the 90% in the final 100 pt score.
If Rebounding accounts for 20% of a win, if the variance is low, it might mean that all teams are getting 15 or more out of the 20%, and the 5% variance is easy to overcome because of a greater spread in the other three factors, i.e. good rebounding can’t overcome bad shooting.
I recall discussions on KB about “team rebounding” not being as affected by a great individual defensive rebounder because most of the defensive rebounds he collects above a lesser replacement would be collected by teammates. Whereas that is not as true for scoring percentages.
I grew up and became a die-hard Knicks fan with Pat Riley’s Knicks so yeah rebounding will always be a huge thing for me. Watching the Knicks grab 29 offensive rebs in Game 7 vs Indiana helped solidify that fact lol. When you watch again alot of those Riley Knicks games, especially playoff games, they absolutely destroyed teams on the glass when they won. Of course back then it was a much more physical game and rebounding was a way to out-physical a team. Much different nowadays although as THCJ said the raw total number of rebs isnt important, it’s the rebounding %’s that are most important. In Riley’s first 3 seasons as Knicks head coach they were 1st in defensive reb % every season and also in the top 10 in offensive reb % too so again that made a pretty huge impression on me as a youngster.
As Riley used to say, no rebounds no rings!
Are there any particular references you can share that quote Thibs?
That is not a small difference. And again, Oliver argued it as 20% of a team’s wins. We’re not talking about shooting efficiency, which is clearly (and reasonably) the most important factor, and probably always will be.
I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. How do you account for what DW points out, i.e. that championship teams are often middling rebounding teams?
I suspect that how good a team is at rebounding depends partially on their style of play. If you score a lot by going inside you are likely to have better rebounding while if you feast off three pointers your rebounding will likely be worse. So the Knicks last season were relatively good at rebounding and the Rockets relatively bad; but the Rockets were a much better team.
What passes for news on a slow news day, via Berman:
Right, and the Knicks didn’t win much in spite of their good rebounding and the Rockets didn’t lose much despite their bad rebounding. That’s the whole point. The variance in the 20% of wins due to rebounding is not very big when it comes down to how many games a team actually wins.
that fog/dizziness..doing stupid shit is thing is like every day of my life…gonna be hard to diagnosis this without a test for me!
I am starting to warm up to the idea of Thibs…we are going to be awful in the short term but I think for the few young prospects we have…to have the guidance of an established “professional” coach..should net some positive benefits…I feel the same way about Atkinson, though his track record is shorter….don’t want woody, jackson, kidd, et al…that would suck…
dang grocer, sorry to hear you ain’t feeling so great…I figured it was only a matter of time before one of us runs in to this shit…
just following the news keep hearing all these “odd” symptoms associated with this virus…
take care of yourself grocer…
I read an article saying that Thibs could turn Mitch into Noah defensively and that’s one of the strong drawing points for him wanting to coach the Knicks.
Thanks geo, but I’m fine now. I had it end of April, beginning of May. It’s been two months since I had any symptoms.
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO OF MITCH WORKING ON HIS HANDLES.
Mitch handles are possibly from a 3on3.
These 3on3s have some bad reputation…
Turning Mitch into Noah looks very possible.
But can he turn DSJ into something valuable ?
GIANNIS 2.0
We have to find a way to lock up Mitch for like half-max money. He may not be Giannis, but he really is an athletic freak with unlimited upside. And there’s something savant about him. He’s like that pitcher (Rigo) at the end of Trouble With the Curve. “Nervous?” “Nah, it’s just a game.”
Thing is, he might be one of the only guys who can match up physically with Giannis. Who else? AD? KP?
Shit, we had Mitch and KP. FUCK!!!!
Giannis is a Gym Freak with an unmatched desire to succeed.
His Will to Win is otherworldly.
He looks capable to break the basket and eat it with tzatziki if he happens to lose Nba Finals by a Kawhi buzzer beater!
Mitch looks more cool…till meating Thibs?…
How about that?
“Speculation Increasing Within NBA That Kevin Durant Supports Mark Jackson For Nets’ Job”
Good for them!
Nets are a knicks parallel universe.
The “What If KD hadn’t been injured?”.
Mavs are the other one.
The “What if KP hadn’t been given for free?”
Being a Knicks fan nowadays is a 3D experience.
Groooovy!
I only use the all-in-one metrics for very specific reasons. I think they can be useful in clearing up any unclarity after a glance at a guy’s numbers, and as shortcuts when it would be tedious to cite all the reasons a guy is good/bad (e.g. “Frank Ntilikina’s WS48 is X” as opposed to “Frank Ntilikina is way below league average when it comes to A, B, C, D, and E”). I guess they’re kinda fun when it comes to rankings too.
Otherwise just looking at the numbers tells you what you need to know, and despite the caricatures of Strat, I’ve gone into detail about all the ways I think the all-in-ones miss the mark for a lot of players.
Re: rebounding, at the individual level my rudimentary, unstudied opinion is it’s only very important at the extremes. Dennis Rodman’s rebounding helps you win (a lot) and Andrea Bargnani’s helps you lose. A lot of what falls in the middle is noise. This is one of the pitfalls of all-in-ones–by their nature they have to say, for example, a point guard who averages an extra rebound is better than another if all else is equal.
Side note: I thought the ethically fraught nature of playing and hilariously tiny number of games would make this MLB season a pretty emotionally distant thing for me…but god damn it I am happy to have baseball on my TV right now and I am ashamed.
damn…i forgot the yankees were on tonight
there has to be a better backup 2nd baseman somewhere in this hemisphere than tyler wade…how is that guy in the majors…
You mean the Mets are on?
🙂
ditto on the baseball love, just caught a couple of minutes…loved it…a lot…
I liked the presentation with the fan pics in the stands and the pumped in fan noise…
back up on the wire, season 4…man but that is some seriously good stuff…another show with a great collection of amazing actors, acting out an interesting story with compelling dialogue…immersion is pretty easily achieved…been binging hard today, hopefully I can savor season five…
I gotta say though – to date, I’m still sticking with season 1’s theme…
I feel like we can all relate to this.
missed the Dotson talk earlier – the thing that sticks with me most about dot is 6’5″…and he looks shorter than that…
I don’t see him as a small forward…he’s like a defensive 2, that can’t really defend that well…he doesn’t seem that quick…he is strong though…
hopefully our roster is moving past the point of simply reinforcing the appearance of effort…
again though, hard to evaluate…it’s been a rare thing for anyone to shine much over the last few years…mitch is just such a freak…
hey grocer, I don’t mean to intrude, i got a wierd question…just like jk does music stuff and edit man does edit stuff on the train (honest to god, before I read that stuff editman wrote about their work – I never really gave editing much thought before…I kind of get how it works now though…plus they had a cool story):
are you more on the business or creative side of things?
I love Mitch but dribbling against a bunch of stiffs and in the gym and dribbling in the nba are two wildly different things. Mitch maybe scored 3-5 half court baskets total last year where he took more than one dribble. So he’s got a long way to go between that and crossing people on the perimeter.
I love Mitch so very, very much.
Creative side. I do non-fiction video editing. It ranges from “here’s a scene, here’s what needs to happen” to “here’s all the footage we shot for this episode, do whatever you want.” Generally it falls somewhere in between. I’m fully freelance and I bounce from thing to thing. At least, I used to bounce from thing to thing, in The Before Times. Now I just sit at home. Pretend to work on a friend’s short for free.