NY Post: Angry James Dolan cuts check for Malliotakis campaign after Max Rose trash-talk

Resposting…

Dolan told The Post New Yorkers should expect to see him become more politically active in the future, as his Madison Square Garden “hemorrhages” money as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I think we’re going to start taking more aggressive positions, particularly in New York politics,” he said. “New York is really a one party city, particularly the city, I don’t think that’s healthy democracy. I think that you will see us be very pro-two party democracy and do more to help balance the scales.” (…)

The sports boss added that Rose was dreaming if he thought he had any intention of abandoning the Knicks.

“I have absolutely no plans to sell the team,” he said. (…)

“Glad to see James Dolan is taking his talents to boost Nicole’s campaign. God knows he’s got the Midas touch,” the Congressman snarked. “Never forget the Eddy Curry trade! Proud to say that I don’t take money from Corporate PACs, federal lobbyists, or worst of all — James Dolan.”

OK guys, which one of you is Max Rose? You can come out 🙂

Mr. Dolan sir I was only joking all those times please hire me as General Manager when the new guys fuck up

I can totally see Thibs believing that he can turn Okoro into Butler 2.0. And if the guy could shoot, he’d be a top 3 pick, since the rest of his game seems very well rounded. But can he learn to shoot?

Kilgore had a pretty good day for himself. They choppered
in t-bones and beer and turned the LZ into a beach party.
The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they
made everybody miss it.”

I know this probably won’t make much sense, but, watching college football today with fans and the whole band blowing hard in the stands made me think about what martin sheen had to say about col kilgore…

bubble basketball, baseball with cutouts in the seats made me pause a bit, but, was still able to reconcile myself with sports and the virus stuff…college football, just looks dicey like that sturgis biker con thing…

Lebron and Mike Malone conspiring to keep Denver from getting to game 6

I wonder if Marcus Morris is still in the bubble. Has he been shown in the players’ families section?

Is it smart to play your best player 29 minutes in an elimination game? Who can tell, really

That was some weird ass coaching.

Brian Cronin: That was some weird ass coaching.

Look. The coaches know more about basketball then… lol, jk. That was so stupid.

I don’t live in NY, so I don’t know the intricacies of those issues- but I will concede that Dolan does not make it easy to be/remain a Knicks fan. This move was beyond petty. What’s he gonna do next? Have the Knicks not play any games because the NBA community, by and large (especially fans), think that he needs to sell the team? These days I can’t discern who is more of a petulant child- the POTUS or Dolan. Yikes!

So RJ Barrett widened the base on his shooting form and it makes for a less clunky release. If he commits to the changes in his shooting motion it could raise his 3PT% 3-4 points, and at his current volume that would be a really helpful development.

Also, my guy Tyrell Terry is currently 20 pounds heavier and 2 inches taller than when last seen at Stanford. All in all, that brings him to 6’3”, 174 pounds which is still on the small side, but this is the guy we need to draft at point guard. I do not think the Knicks can afford to not land Terry in the draft. Trading up for Ball would cost assets while trading down for Terry might land you an extra 2RP or get Dennis Smith Jr off the books a year early.

Also, I’m not shocked when rich white billionaires do GOP things like Dolan is currently doing. Hopefully his newfound interest in politics will get him to reveal his problematic nature in a way that is irredeemable and forces the NBA to take the team from him.

Honestly I’d be shocked if any of the NBA’s owners were not republicans who donated to various political campaigns. What I’m really saying is maybe if Dolan becomes a public figure he’ll say something racist and be forced to sell the team. He got really lucky the Browne Sanders case happened in 2006 and not 2016.

Dolan may be a petulant asshole, much like the president he supports, but he has never said or done anything racist. Underlying Cronin’s post and all the posts above is this assumption that for anyone to support the GOP they must be racist.

To label people racist because of their party affiliation basically says half the country is racist, alienates them from your party, and disrespects whatever they may believe – much of which you may agree with. If we’re being socially active like the 60s lets show some love too.

Someone recommended The Boys here. Alan?

Wasn’t me. I had very mixed feelings on the first season and haven’t watched the second yet. I also hated the source material — the writer, Garth Ennis, is often one of my favorites, but The Boys seems to collect all of his most immature and self-indulgent tics into one place — though I think the show does some interesting inversions of it.

The Glass Half Rebuilt: Also, my guy Tyrell Terry is currently 20 pounds heavier and 2 inches taller than when last seen at Stanford. All in all, that brings him to 6’3”, 174 pounds which is still on the small side, but this is the guy we need to draft at point guard. I do not think the Knicks can afford to not land Terry in the draft. Trading up for Ball would cost assets while trading down for Terry might land you an extra 2RP or get Dennis Smith Jr off the books a year early.

I really like Terry, he’s got a chance to be the best player in this draft. It would be ballsy to take him at #8, but this is the draft to not worry about reaching, no one in the top 20-30 is a sure thing either way. I like how he has approached building strength and just the way he sounds…seems like a very cerebral kid who already can shoot the lights out. I feel pretty confident that he will be a lot better a lot faster than Hayes.

To be clear, the GOP has A LOT to answer for in terms of racism, racist tinged language, and their stance on social issues. Any Republican supporter should be held to the fire and asked if they condone things said and done in recent years. But it wasn’t considered a racist party back when W was president. And there are many party policy differences that do not boil down to good vs bad. We have to stop perpetuating this.

Z-Man, that was a Strat-level disingeneous take. Yes there are undoubtedly some far-left Dems who hate the police. But the vast majority are looking to find ways to re-vamp police departments to lessen the clear racism that directs violence (and incarceration) toward people of color, and that forces the police to do things they are wildly untrained to handle. That’s what the party is looking to figure out (although it’s the Democratic party, so I have to presume they’ll mostly fail). On the other hand, the actual leaders of the Republican party are clearly using racist tropes to drive their re-election efforts. To compare anti-racist attempts to revise a system that clearly isn’t working for a significant portion of the American population to the attempt to increase the wedge between white and non-white and continue (or grow) the level of fear and unfair practices experienced by people of color is just sad. If you are willing to vote for that second group, if you’re not blatantly racist you’re (as Alan said) clearly not giving a fuck about racism. Which, as people have been arguing much more eloquently than I can for the last six months, is in fact actually racist. I can’t imagine how even a one-issue person (abortion, lower taxes) can act as though the rest of the party platform isn’t happening.

Par for the course

Just drove past a sign on my way to Southern Oregon. “Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again.”

wetbandit: Sadly enough, I don’t think Dolan’s support of a political party is enough to mean anything or lead to anything

  

Dolan’s support may not amount to much. But his very public censure of Rose may just provide the boost needed to push his campaign past the finish line.

Even if Max Rose were in favor of raising taxes on all New Yorkers by 100%, paving over Central Park, and abolishing the last vestiges of rent control those egregious positions would be largely overlooked so long as he made this the centerpiece of his campaign:

“The Knicks suck… and have sucked for a very, very long time. This is a travesty. New York & its long suffering basketball fans deserve better. The NBA deserves better from what should rightly be its flagship franchise. I pledge to use everything within my power as your elected representative to put the team back on the winning path by compelling its feculent owner, James Dolan, to relinquish his stranglehold on it by selling as quickly as possible to any party able to provide a more responsible stewardship of this storied franchise.”

Talk about an issue that the vast majority of New Yorkers could rally behind & heartily support. Hell, I’d vote for him twice and I don’t even live in Staten Island.

Z-man, apologies for the insult (although I love that calling someone Strat here is such an insult!). And yes, I don’t really disagree with most of what you say (but see my post above). Again, the difference between parties is that one is led by a bunch of (admittedly inept) centrists like Biden, with the fringe angrily yelling from the back seat, while the other is led by an example of its most vile fringe (and the whole front seat is packed with them), And I struggle to accept that it’s some ‘fringe’ these days when such a huge percent still see Trump favorably. Not Republicanism favorably (e.g., particular agenda items) and holding one’s nose to vote for Trump, but Trump favorably and all he stands for.

Okay, I just hijacked this thread. I’m going off to be productive.

That said, Biden is trying to brand himself as a centrist who is sensitive to the fears of folks on both sides and who will listen to their grievances with an open mind. He’s ham-handed at it, but I think it’s a smart strategy. The folks I know on the extreme far left (2016 Jill Stein voters, e.g.) are not going to vote for Biden anyway, so he’s not going to lose many votes by moving to the center while paying enough lip service to progressives in the Democratic platform to get them to turn out. For example, painting aspects of the Green New Deal as job-generating rather than environment-saving is smart. Painting universal health care as an incremental aspiration rather than an all-or-none proposition is smart. Painting police reform as a goal that might require more funding rather than less is smart.

I thought Biden sounded great in an interview he did yesterday. He’s surely going to have gaffes, but he’s so prone to them it seems like it won’t make much difference. His messaging seems to be pretty locked in and that should play well if Trump gets nasty.

Yeah, if you really think Terry is significantly better than the guys around him just take him 8th

Re: Boston vs. Miami, it worries me that the games have been so close and that when both teams play well, Boston seems to have the upper hand. It would be excruciating to see the Celts pull this series out after being dead in the water at halftime of game 5.

man, dude’s 77 and still jumping on his bike for a ride…trump looks like he’s one big mac away from a heart attack, we need a person with a solid moral compass more than anything leading our country…

i mean, biden is a professional politician – he’ll do fine at the debates…hopefully he does “lose it” a bit during the debates, it’ll be entertaining…it’s really really really hard to imagine there’s a ton of “undecided” voters out there that will be influenced in either direction…

what’s interesting is that msnbc or cnn couldn’t field one single moderator…trump forces the situation to become personal…

i know joe bungled it a bit early on in the democratic primaries, but, looks like he’s on the good good stuff now…i do wonder what kind of cognitive enhancement supplements joe is taking…good for him, good for his team to recognize the need – if it’s even a thing (which it probably should be)…

i don’t know, i’m trying to stay off them news channels, and just waiting for my ballot to arrive, but my understanding is that yes, out of the some thirty-six thousand election precincts this election may very well come down to a couple of dozen of them…

i can only imagine how inundated those areas are with campaign marketing…choice, gun control, business/environmental regulations, healthcare – going forward it’ll be 6 to 3 in the supreme court…despite who gets elected, the cast is already being dyed…hmmmm, maybe 12 justices ain’t such a bad idea…

wetbandit: So unconsciously supporting a system that oppress people of a different race is racist? What about people who devote their time to other pursuits in life? Are they racist because they are not “anti-racist?” And labeling them racist has undertones: what is their punishment? Who decides, the angry mob?

huh…what happened to the “educated brown folk”…now they are the unconscious or can’t be bothered to get educated on certain topics brown folk..some might call that ignorant rather than unconcious…but whatever…this is like whack a mole…just default to the “I had no idea that was what they were about” fall back position…. and get back into your bunker…

huh…what happened to the “educated brown folk”…now they are the unconscious or can’t be bothered to get educated on certain topics brown folk..some might call that ignorant rather than unconcious…but whatever…this is like whack a mole…just default to the “I had no idea that was what they were about” fall back position…. and get back into your bunker…

No, I was responding to Raven saying “Supporting those things, consciously or unconsciously, is racism.” So I asked, unconsciously supporting the systems in the US is racist?
But: what does that have to do with “educated brown folk?” Are you talking about my family, that I noted before are Republican (again, I am not), and do not espouse any of the thinking you keep writing about. They aren’t the bad people you claim them to be. And a lot of what a conservative says does have merit. At least to listen to. You can’t seriously believe that all Democrats are right on everything, and all Republicans wrong on everything.
Geo, Z-Man, I hope you’re right- but a lot of what I see when Biden talks is a man who should be retiring. I hope I’m proven wrong in the debate. But Trump is a fucking asshole who will wipe the floor with anyone who can’t think of a quick comeback like back in 6th grade.

wetbandit: But Trump is a fucking asshole who will wipe the floor with anyone who can’t think of a quick comeback like back in 6th grade.

  

That worked for him the first time around, because a) Hillary and his Republican primary candidates were easy pickings, b) Trump didn’t have to defend his miserable record then, and c) Biden is attacking that very thing about Trump (his divisiveness via ad hominem attacks) and can just quote Trump’s former team members (Mattis, Kelly, etc.) who are now the equivalent of Biden surrogates, if not actually endorsing him. It is a perilous thing for Trump to do outside of his rallies, and won’t help him with swing voters.

Biden’s biggest concern is being viewed by undecided’s as an enabler of violence against police and business owners in cities. Attacks on his mental fitness won’t work, and may backfire.

Donnie Walsh: What medical school did you go to where they taught you to diagnose patients that you haven’t examined and post it on the internet?

I don’t think it takes a medical degree to conclude that Biden has lost something off his fastball to a degree that hints at some early stage stuff. But he’s certainly not an advanced dementia patient either. More importantly, I don’t think there’s a single voter that will pick Trump solely because he/she thinks Biden is mentally “shot”. That’s just red meat for Trump’s base.

thenoblefacehumper: I disagree with Z-Man re: the extent to which Trump is a symptom or cause of the current GOP (I think he is very much a symptom)

We probably agree here too, maybe I’m just not articulating what I’m trying to say very well. If you are saying that much of Trump’s base is racist beyond passive ignorance, and that the positions that led to his winning the 2016 primary in a landslide are proof of that, then we are in complete agreement. This most definitely applies to non-college educated white males (females too but probably to a lesser degree). But he did not get elected because he promoted racism. He got elected because he a) wasn’t Hillary, b) pandered to cultural conservatives on issues that mattered to them, e.g. guns, abortion, prayer in school, immigration, etc. You could argue that these things are all wrapped up together, but I think that the latent racism component is low on the list of what drove many of them to Trump. Let’s keep in mind that Obama was elected twice, and that Hillary lost largely due to the folks that voted for Obama but didn’t vote for her. It’s hard to make the case that latent racism was the reason that these voters switched.

Now Trump HAS been successful in making folks think about things like “law and order” in racist ways. At the same time, there is growing consensus in Republican ranks for accepting kneeling by athletes, abolishing Confederate flags at NASCAR events, and police reform of some kind. There are voters who are fine with these things who will STILL vote for Trump (or against Biden) for other reasons.

@wetbandit, no one here stated that Dolan was racist or that we objected to him on those grounds, you injected that into the conversation.

I’m perfectly capable of morally objecting to Republicans on grounds other than racism.

As far as non-toxic conversation:

I’d love to trade 27 up for a shot at Terry. I would not draft Terry 8 because that seems like a waste when we can get him elsewhere. If nothing else trade down & pick up something else too (Poku?).

I’m still not sold on Terry as better than the next Jimmer Fredette, but if he’s real he could be a game changer.

I could get behind this team:

Terry
Vassell
RJ
???
Mitch

Early bird- was responding to The Glass Half Rebuilt who conflated Republican and racist. I was also speaking to the notion that you can find out someone like Dolan is a Republican donor and then judge their character solely based on their political party.

Grocer – if that’s your take on the world you live in, that most people are evil human beings, I would venture to ask if (a) that’s a worthwhile and honest opinion, (b) it leads to more or less suffering in your life, and (c) if your perception of evil – much like your description of racist versus Racist – is that evil is on a spectrum too, and there is evil and Evil. In which case, sure, everyone’s got evil and good, but few are Evil or Good, so what’s the point of using such binary language

Where all the Daniel Jones stans at

Is it possible that Jimmy donated money to a Greek/American politician as a sneaky pitch to the Greek Freak ?

If i see a Nia Vardalos or JAnniston hire on MSG crew i ll be fully convinced about his genious!

The Honorable Cock Jowles:
Just saw a guy wearing a shirt that said “I Have a Dream” with a picture of the Capitol Building with a confederate flag above it. Because it did not use a racial slur, I’m sure Wetbandit will say “nuh uh not racist.”

That’s a little harsh…

***I don’t think it takes a medical degree to conclude that Biden has lost something off his fastball to a degree that hints at some early stage stuff. But he’s certainly not an advanced dementia patient either… That’s just red meat for Trump’s base.***

Yeah, exactly. Which is why I thought it was weird that wetbandit, a doctor and a democrat, would repeat it as if it was fact.

When Watergate era Senator Biden said “I don’t think a woman has the right to say what should happen to her body”, did he have early onset dementia? When Reagan Era Biden said, in trumpian fashion, “I probably have a much higher IQ than you”, was he in cognitive decline? When 2006 Biden told a guy in a wheel chair to “stand up and let ‘em see you”, was he already senile? This guy has a long history of saying things that “polished politicos” shouldn’t say. But, now that he looks old and it can be armchair attributed to age, all 50 years of his so-called gaffes are retroactively diagnosed as dementia and cognitive decline? That’s like saying that 31 year old Jason Kidd was over the hill because he shot a TS% of .506 that year while ignoring that his career average before that year was .507 (then watching him play another 8 years, make 4 all star teams, and win a championship).

wetbandit- Yes, and yes. Mostly irrelevant, recognizing the world for what it is (or not) doesn’t change how the world is, but I prefer truth to contorting myself justifying evil. Obviously it’s a spectrum, western duality thought needs to go die in a fire. I dunno, what’s the point of morality? Of ethics? Somethings are worse than others, that doesn’t make any of them good.

Z-man, I’m not sure it’s just definitions. I suspect some folks who have their hearts in the right place are also engaging in willful blindness.

Time for basketball!

God i miss “O Canada”
Damn you Raptors!

Mitch should study Bam’s game first.
AD is the next far step.

geo:
the older i get the more familiar paths i seem to like to follow, occasionally though i stumble on something old or new that’ll grab my attention – in this case: pictures of you by the cure…i got a buddy that likes them a bunch, never really paid much attention to them…this just happened to pop up on youtube cuz of some other stuff i was listening to…it’s stuck with me now…

just because i know – there is pretty much nothing musically which you all are not tuned in to – just wondering suggestions for favorite tunes by this band…

oh yeah, i’m totally okay with rooting for the heat, i like spoelstra, i think he’s a really good coach, i like riley, that i can remember – he’s always had style, and, he had/has an intense grace about himself…their roster rocks…i’m completely jealous…i don’t know much about the owner, i’m thinking that’s a good thing…

Geo…you can’t go wrong with the Cure…that song is off of Disintegration…very good album…I think the one before it is Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me…that is my favorite…Head on the Door preceded that..it was kind of when they were peaking…if all else fails …go for a Greatest Hits album…

good to see dragic playing well, he had seemed to fall off the map there for awhile…last i remember crowder looking this effective was with boston…this is his sixth team in his 10th year…

i like how no one has a penchant for dominating the ball on offense, they cut, set screens and pass, defense – they don’t just slap and swipe at the ball…the more i watch him the more impressed i am with bam…him alone could give a franchise some hope…toss in nunn, herro and robinson…it’s unfair…

Iggy!!

bye bye boy wonder…

Miami and Los Angeles should be a short series. The Heat don’t have an answer for AD and the Lakers have more than enough beef to contest with Bam. LAL in 5.

Also, upthread I made comments about Dolan, Republicans, and racist remarks. My point wasn’t that all Republicans are racist (but I would argue they all exist in a world that benefits directly from racist policy), but that if you give Dolan enough time in the public he’ll probably end up saying something to piss off a large group of people. Whether it be a racist comment, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic etc, it would eventually push him to sell and that’s all I was getting at.

Boston is in a bad way right now. They have to max Tatum and Hayward is going to opt in. So they will be spending $100mill plus on a core of Tatum, Brown, Kemba and Smart, and the cap is contracting. Even if they ditch Hayward, they don’t have much cap room. Their recent draft picks are not looking like future stars (Langford, Semi, the Williams’s, etc.). They have 3 picks in the first round this year’s shitty draft, and after that the cupboard is bare.

Five years ago it looked like a dynasty was surely forming in Beantown. Not so much any more. Maybe they still get to the finals in the shitty east, but can’t imagine them beating any of the good teams out west. Miami and Toronto aren’t going anywhere. Milwaukee has some maneuvering to do to make Giannis happy, but they might get better. Their best bet is to package Hayward with some young players and draft picks and go after a win-now guy or two. Not sure what they can do beyond that. In particular, Kemba is going to wind up being an albatross for them.

Man am I enjoying reading the game thread on Celtics Blog. Shockingly, they are incredibly down on Brad. Stevens may have gotten out-coached, but i don’t think if you switch coaches Miami loses.

If we took Hayward, we’d better get a pick. Don’t see a good reason to help out the Celts for 1 year of an overpaid Hayward. If we can cobble together a decent team (unlikely), then we might be able to sign him to a reasonable deal next year as a UFA.

If you really hate Randle that much you can do it, but the move wouldn’t benefit our timeline at all.

Hayward can shoot at least and is a heady player, but yeah, I wouldn’t take him on without significant sweetener. I also don’t know why Boston would want Randle, he does nothing for them.

Miami and Los Angeles should be a short series. The Heat don’t have an answer for AD and the Lakers have more than enough beef to contest with Bam. LAL in 5.

It sure seems that way, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Spo pulls a rabbit out of his ass here.

But yeah, in general, the Lakers are a terrrrrrrrrrrible matchup for Miami.

The only time that the Knicks were even close to the same win curve as Miami was right when Jackson took over, and most of us were fine with Jackson trying to do a similar approach as Riley that year. Jackson then did a terrible job, the team had its worst season ever and tanking was the only way out from there. Only he didn’t do that, just compounding his failures.

Miami’s worst season in the last six years was five wins better than the Knicks’ best team in that same span, and that worst Miami team had Chris Bosh, Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside on it. In other words, some actual NBA talent. If the Knicks were in a similar situation as the 2014-15 Miami Heat, I’d be fine with saying, “Sure, let’s try to rebuild in a similar fashion.”

They weren’t.

Heck, just look at last year’s Heat team. They won 39 games. Adding Jimmy Butler to that is a lot different than adding Jimmy Butler to a team with 17 wins (or even 29 wins). It’s just apples and oranges.

I personally don’t care if we tank or not as long as we don’t trade draft picks and consistently draft well. At 8 any of Tyrell Terry, Aaron Nesmith, Aleksej Pokusevski, and Devin Vassell should be available for us and all of those guys appear to have a good shot at being good NBA players. Drafting 8th in 2017 wasn’t the mistake; taking Frank over Donovan Mitchell, Bam Adebayo, John Collins, and OG Anunoby was. Drafting 9th in 2018 wasn’t the problem; taking Knox over SGA and Mikal Bridges was the problem. Miami did well to draft Bam and Herro as well as adding Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson off the scrap heap. You can’t build a sustainable product in sports without drafting and developing well, but you do not need to tank in order to draft and develop.

Tanking is for Losers
Knicks are Winners

The Lakers are a very tough matchup for almost everyone in the NBA in the small ball era, but Miami appears to be in an especially tough spot. If it wasn’t Riley and Spo, I’d give Miami no chance at all, but they are such basketball geniuses, they’ll probably get creative and come up something mere mortals can’t think of now and at least make themselves competitive by playing hard and smart,

The reason small ball is successful much of the time is that most traditional big men are slower, can’t guard the perimeter as well, and if you can drag them away rim on defense it takes away some of the rim protection and gives you a better chance of offensive rebounds.

The flip side of that is that “some” big men can dominate the boards and inside paint on offense.

These days there are very few big men that are good enough around the rim to totally dominate inside and more than offset the disadvantages. Many Cs today give you 10-15 points and 10-12 rebounds. They have little to no post game, have nothing to offer if you can take away the roll and lob, can’t put the ball on the floor etc.. So the smaller quicker teams have the advantage most nights, especially in the REGULAR season.

The Lakers are very big and very good inside.

No matter what happens in the finals Miami fans should be very happy.

Two years ago everyone was saying they were in a horrible position, Riley was over the hill because he made a couple of bad signings, and Miami was one the last teams they’d change places with.

Now they are in the finals and have an excellent mix of veterans and youth so they can be competitive now and still have a good young core for the future.

Riley knows what the FUCK he’s doing. He just kept trying to get better by accumulating the right kind of young and veteran players that fit together well. Time quickly heals the inevitable trade and FA signing mistakes you make as you are rebuilding over a few years. If you understand basketball, get high IQ players willing to play team basketball on offense and hard on defense, you’ll put together a good enough team to attract players in trades and free agency. Then good opportunities and good things will happen.

Boston is also obviously in a very good spot, but Ainge has one weakness Riley does not. Ainge is looking to steal on every deal. Sometimes you have to make a tough deal or a deal you really don’t want to make.

It was obvious from the start of the season they needed to get better at C to be ready to win it all. Instead of giving up some picks and putting himself in a position to win a championship this season, he wasted time signing Kanter and playing an overmatched Theis. He has to learn to pull the trigger.

Lakers are probably taking this series and it could even be a short one.

That being said, people have been doubting The Heat all playoffs. People dismissed them taking down The Bucks as Giannis and The Bucks are chokers. Ignoring the fact that The Bucks had the best record in the NBA this year.

Also, I don’t think the top half of the East is that much weaker than the top half of the West. I think the bottom half of the East (5 through 8) is weaker but I think the East and West a little more even than they were 3 or 4 years ago. You’re talking The Bucks, Heat, Celtics and Raptors vs. The Lakers, Nuggets, Clippers and Rockets. I don’t think there is that much of a difference there.

The Heat could pull this thing out and I wouldn’t be surprised. They don’t get down on themselves at all. They’ve got a great team. Bam has to step up against AD and Butler has to step up against Lebron but I think the Heat role players are better than The Lakers. We shall see. I’m genuinely excited for it and hope hte Heat can pull it out.

Also, we know this is the end of hte world when Knicks fans are rooting for The Heat.

There goes strat again, mixing the painfully obvious with the laughably stupid.

I think the Lakers are deserved favorites but I think it’s closer than some people are making it out. In particular, I’m interested to see how the Lakers handle the Miami zone. They’re not a particularly good half-court offense and they have a lot of inconsistent jump shooters. So I see it being a series where feedback cycles are really important. If Miami can score the ball to keep the Lakers out of transition and get the zone set up I think that could be a real issue for the Lakers. The Lakers are a really good defensive team though and have good matchups to throw at all the most important Miami guys. If they get stops and can get in transition they force Miami out of the zone and that could be critical. I do think Miami has a lot of defensive talent though and will find enough ways to make it hard for LA to score to make a very competitive series.

Lebron’s jumper is (as usual) a giant swing factor. He looked really lacking in confidence in it through most of the Denver series until the stretch run of Game 5; of everyone in the league I’d expect Spo and Riley to have the most success figuring out ways to junk up the game and force him to beat them with it.

Lakers:Heat :: Lakers:Pistons

Lakers: Kobe/Shaq ….. Bron, Davis
Heat/Pistons: No tier 1 star, excellent defense

Miami also has potentially the advantage from 3 point land, which is enough to swing a series if they can get hot. Lakers are a force inside but more shaky with the outside shooting.

“i don’t think if you switch coaches Miami loses.“

Did you watch the series? Boston choked away at least two games and lost the series when they straight up panicked in the fourth quarter of game six. I’m not sure there was a single minute when Boston didn’t have the most overall talent on the court.

Stevens is obviously a good coach but it was really clear in the series that Miami played with far more consistent effort and focus than Boston and at least some of the blame for that falls on Stevens.

Mike

this Lakers team was better in the regular season than the Lakers team that lost to the Pistons.

The Glass Half Rebuilt:
Yeah if Miami’s best chance against the Lakers is the zone defense there is no way that series lasts longer than five games. Smoke and mirrors won’t be enough against Anthony Davis and LeBron James.

Underestimate the importance of the zone at your own risk I think. The #1 staple of Lebron’s offense these last few years (originating in all the battles vs Curry) is calling up whoever is being guarded by the most exploitable defender on the other team to set a pick for him and either getting downhill or getting the switch and then going to work 1 on 1. Dragic, Herro, Robinson – these are extremely exploitable matchups for Lebron but the zone allows Miami to park those guys in the corner and keep them completely uninvolved in any primary actions all of which are funneled to the excellent defenders they have at the top and in the middle. Lebron obviously will find a way to adapt – nothing you’re going to do is about shutting him down, just making it hard for him – but I think it’s going to be a big factor in the series. We will see.

AD on the other hand I agree should be able to eat against the zone.

“when you’ve seen it all, you’ll swear there’s never been anything like it”

i’ve seen the film at some point in the past, other than the fact that frank sinatra was in it, i can’t remember much…

i thought the reboot from 2004 was really interesting, first time i really remember being aware of liev schreiber…absolutely loved the first few seasons of homeland…

happy mole day daddie donnie…and yes, fact can most definitely get stranger than fiction…

Remember when Jayson Tatum had a month long stretch in which he hit off the dribble 3s at a ridiculously high clip and every lamestream media journalist in the country started saying he was a superstar? Fake news!

DRed wants soooooo badly to be right on Tatum….

geo:
“when you’ve seen it all, you’ll swear there’s never been anything like it”

i’ve seen the film at some point in the past, other than the fact that frank sinatra was in it, i can’t remember much…

i thought the reboot from 2004 was really interesting, first time i really remember being aware of liev schreiber…absolutely loved the first few seasons of homeland…

happy mole day daddie donnie…and yes, fact can most definitely get stranger than fiction…

The original Manchurian Candidate was released in the days of “Better dead, than red”, “Kill a Commie for your Mommy”, Soviet missiles 90 miles off our shores, and kids (me) being herded to school basements to survive a nuclear attack. It was a unique point in threats to the US and made the movie current with the times. Angela Lansbury was stellar in her role.

However, nothing compares to our situation today. It is unparalleled.

*yawn*

No one has ever said tanking is the only way to build a contender. You evaluate your place on the win curve and decide accordingly.

The post Phil Jackson Knicks were one of the most talentless, asset barren disasters in the NBA. They were truly unique in their lack of both future assets and contemporaneous production. This is why people wanted/want them to go into asset maximization mode, not because people think it’s the only way a team can ever possibly be good.

Now, is it fair to say a lot of us, myself included, would’ve come to the same conclusion about the Heat fairly recently? Sure, though as BC went over it’s not a great comparison. Even as dire as things looked for the Heat, they were much closer to contention than we’ve been in…a while.

More broadly though, I am not ashamed to say I would generally not recommend the path followed by the Heat. Riley deserves tons of credit for pulling it off, but it involved tons of characteristically good fortune. I mean, if Philadelphia doesn’t recklessly decide to hemorrhage a top-10 player we’re not having this conversation.

Everything had to go perfectly for them and it did. Good for them, but equating that with it being a genuinely sound, repeatable strategy is silly and ignores all of the specific details of how this Heat team came together.

DRed’s passionate hatred for all things Celtic is an inspiration.

Y’all are talking about Tatum all logical and shit. DRed’s just gleeful when he fails.

Tatum/Brown looks like the best driving wing combo in the league right now.
If they continue working hard and improving their game they will be Boston’s big dogs of the ’20s. Good hearted-Hayward and Hobbit-Kemba look expendable right now.

Tatum is a very good young player. If he’s one of the best players in the NBA in a year or three I won’t be surprised. I’ve been right about Tatum the whole dang time!

Imo Tanking is good ONLY in these situations:

1 a generational talent is on the draft

In fact, I think it’s insanely stupid to tank with a specific player in mind. This was true even before the lottery reforms, and is more true now.

You tank for an incredibly simple reason: having a higher pick helps you, marginal wins do not.

Until you can get your team to the point where wins are no longer marginal (i.e. wins are being produced primarily by players you have under reasonable contracts for a while), this basic calculation doesn’t change.

“In fact, I think it’s insanely stupid to tank with a specific player in mind.”

Yeah! Why go after Zion or Lebron or Shaq when you can go after the hidden gems of each draft?
My bad

It makes sense to continue tanking until your young players are capable of winning too many games for the tank to be viable, the Knicks have yet to hit that point.

“So yeah, intentionally tanking for a specific player is probably a bad idea.”

While tanking for no specific player is a good one i suppose.

No one has ever said tanking is the only way to build a contender. You evaluate your place on the win curve and decide accordingly.

Yep. Win curve, win curve, win curve.

The Knicks have been on the bad side of the win curve for quite some time now, and yet they’ve only tried to actively tank once. And it got them a possibly really good player. So they promptly said, “Well, we’re never doing that again.”

Wow. Doc Rivers is OUT as Clippers coach.

Rivers out in LA.

Really curious about their next coach. Lue is a natural candidate, for sure.

Tanking is a difficult term to define. A team can just be bad and simply be stanking or the front office can move out veteran players to give their young guys floor time. Given that the Knicks closed out the season starting Payton, RJ, Harkless, Randle, and Taj, it is surely not indicative of the tank mode.

It’s actually difficult to conceive why Rose didn’t intervene to get some of the young talent more action and improve the draft spot. But then again, it’s the Knicks.

Although, imagine D’Antoni there…

Wowsers..I might actually get one right! Lue in LA, Doc in Philly. I’d imagine they’d jump at the chance to hire Doc. It would be hilarious if Doc fools everyone and goes to OKC lol

Going from 22 to 26 (or whatever) wins from riding mediocre veterans does nothing for you long term, while improving your draft position can give you meaningful upside if you’re not completely incompetent at talent evaluation.

I’m always confused why people seem to argue that lower draft picks and pointless marginal wins are better than higher picks because of your Jimmy Butlers and Nikola Jokics of the world being picked late in the draft. Those players were available earlier; there’s nothing set in stone decreeing that they could only be picked late in the first round or in the second round or whatever. Having a better pick gives you more options to choose from, increasing the likelihood that you come away from the draft with something useful, similar to how having multiple picks in a draft increased your likelihood of hitting on a pick by giving you more bites at the apple. It’s not complicated.

No one prefers lower draft picks via marginal pointless wins when your team sucks.

Otoh smart and good teams don’t give a shit about that.
They prefer to remain competitive to attract big dogs instead of sucking for years to try and hit the draft jack pot.

howdy bo, i hope all is well for you sir…maybe not now cuz we’re hot on basketball and doc getting canned, but, at some point down the line i’d really like to hear more of your thoughts on “legacy” skills within the educational process…

Holy shit. Have we not covered this a thousand times?

If you draft good players with your tanked picks, it is literally impossible to keep tanking. You cannot do it. You cannot have Durant, Westbrook and Harden on rookie contracts and remain in the lottery. You cannot have Simmons and Embiid and get a top-5 pick. You cannot have Tatum and Brown and hope to land Zion or Doncic.

Tanking most often fails because the same clueless GMs who land in the high lottery are the same ones who can’t spot a superstar when they have the first right of refusal. See: Vlade Divac! He didn’t fail because of poor culture or lack of talent due to years of intentional tanking — he failed because he got to see the same Luka Doncic we did… and he passed on having him for ten years!

This is so simple. Why are we still talking about it?

Right of first refusal*

A little surprised but not shocked about Doc. For a team expected to challenge for the title losing in the second round to a team that got fairly soundly beaten in the conference finals is a major disappointment. Add that to a string of disappointing finishes since he’s been in L.A. and yeah, not shocking that he was let go. That said, does Lue offer anything that Doc doesn’t? D’A does but they’ve got nobody to really run his offense and it comes at a cost on the other end anyway. The fact they there’s no clearly superior option out there (and you’d think they’d absolutely want someone with head coaching experience) does make it a little more surprising.
It’ll be interesting to hear how much George and Kawhi had to do with it.

Is it possible that if we have tanked harder in 2017 and 2018 and have gotten higher picks we would had picked Frank and Knox again but higher ?
Imagine getting Knox at 3 instead of Luka?

Or pick other players that would suck such as Frank and Knox while Frank and Knox would blossom in other teams ?

yeah, the sixers do seem like a really good match for doc…

The ESPN article notes there are six coaching vacancies in the league plus three vacancies that have already been filled. That is nine total or 30% of the league. It’s a bad year for coaches in the league. Rose probably did the right thing by hiring Thibs before there were this many vacancies.

Thunder, Sixers, Pelicans, Clippers. You really couldn’t be a looking-for-work head coach at a better time.

Well Paul George and Kawhi Leonard (.381 and .383 3pt%) looks better than Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons (.319 and .083) from a D’Antoni perspective…

Does anyone think the Knicks with the same ownership and management would really have been more successful if they just tanked harder?

Wait, is this not glaringly obvious to everyone?

oh – YOU ROCK Bo!!!

that’s perfect info…okay then:
1). critical thinking:
– analyze analogies
– create categories and classify items appropriately
– identify relevant information
– construct and recognize valid deductive arguments
– test hypotheses
– recognize common reasoning fallacies
– distinguish between evidence and interpretations of evidence – question everything (i love that part – honestly, of all the things i learned in school – my 12th grade english teacher teaching critical thinking sticks with me the most)…

funny story (at least to me), went to sachem (large school, lots of kids) out on the island, my first period class was english which overlooked the faculty parking lot…i drove the same car, mustard color convertible MGB, as the principal so i used to park there all the time…i was late a lot, and when i showed up at class people would just look and laugh, they could hear and see me coming…i remember one time i was so high that when i was speaking to the teacher i was waving my hand around and accidently marked up the poor lady’s nice blouse with the pen i had in my had…i was pretty goofy…

2). executive functioning:
– retain information
– focus attention/filter distractions
– switch mental gears

my goodness, that’s great stuff right there mister Bo…thank you sooooo much…this is a very good start for me…i don’t have an exact plan at the moment to evaluate them and make this work with the kids, but – at least i got the goal posts set up though 🙂

oldest of 3 god kids is actually on her own now, i’m bad with out of sight, out of mind…parenting definitely doesn’t end when they leave the house…i need to reach out to her more…

hopefully i can learn and get better with the two youngest…provide the necessary skills for independent living and give them the confidence/humility and love to be “successful” at life…

If I were Doc, I’d strongly consider the Thunder.

Billy Donovan literally just left because they don’t plan on spending money, so I suspect that would be a huge demerit for Doc.

Knicks should have tanked for Mahomes

Early Bird: I have more faith in Heat role players than in Lakers not named Lebron

I wouldn’t underestimate role players named Kyle, Rajon, Dwight, Kentavious, Danny, or Markieff.

Sorry for not responding, was working. To give you guys some perspective on where I come from, my family is from a tiny Asian country smaller than most states, and we were a heavily persecuted family there, with more than a few tragic experiences. I was born here, but I speak with an accent, so I was always considered an outsider through school. Anyways, my family came to this country with nothing, had many disadvantages, and now lower-middle class, but devoted all of their time, money, and energy in getting me to and through medical school. My family (and my culture as well) believes very much in hard work, personal responsibility, having as little to do with government as possible. As you can imagine, this belief evolved from generations of having very bad encounters with unfriendly governments. Anyways, you can see how this led to a freedom/small govt/freedom of enterprise/don’t tell me what to do type of mindset, which is not exactly wrong, but led them to the GOP. I am very aware of the differences between the slogans and actual politics, so I’m very much a Democrat.

To get back to what I was saying before, I defend the right of anyone to believe in what they believe in, their political views are their private property, and if they are a Republican, as long as they do not espouse hatred or evil, I am fine with it. I do not think the person is a bad person because of their affiliation. I try to understand why, and what their views are, and more often than not, it is something I agree with too.

My original post was a reaction to everyone here saying “look, Dolan is contributing to the Republican party” and then The Glass Half Rebuilt said something about racism, which he later clarified. But my point stands. I later said something regretful about Biden, which I retract and apologize. Something does seem off about his speech, but I cannot diagnose anything substantial in this way.

As Mr. Miyage said, “For person with no forgiveness in heart, living worse punishment than death” and that is where many in the left wing is today. We need more love and empathy, and less purity and penalty.

Z-man: I wouldn’t underestimate role players named Kyle, Rajon, Dwight, Kentavious, Danny, or Markieff.

It’s not possible to underestimate Kyle Kuzma who sucks at literally everything

Donnie Walsh:
***To give you guys some perspective on where I come from, my family is from a tiny Asian country smaller than most states, and we were a heavily persecuted family there, with more than a few tragic experiences.***

Timor?

I would be very surprised. Timor, like Brazil, was colonized by Portugal. The Iberian tradition is one of heavy institutions. States that came from that tradtion are about hard work and personal responsibility as well, but they are much more present in everyone’s lives than in the United States, for example, for good and for bad. Free initiative is not so championed as in the USA, in general, and there’s more social protection.

(EDIT: OMG, the Indonesians promoted a semi-genocide in Timor-Leste?? I didn’t know it. Hope your family didn’t have this kind of trouble, Wetbandit).

Thanks Donnie.
I can’t say the country, it is rare enough that I could probably be identified, but yes, if not Timor Leste it is a country very similar to it, with genocidal features over the years, and a healthy amount of anti-European animus – but all of that is fairly pan Asian. But years of struggle did instill a strong anti violent and altruistic culture, that affects how we see the world and US politics today. It’s often very hard to describe my views to Americans.

So in total, in TEN drafts, only 3 (Luka/AD/Harden) look to be true franchise changers, and two of those players are no longer with the teams that drafted them. Only 12 out of 30 are All-star-type players. And I’m not a RINGZZZ guy but it’s sort of notable that a grand total of ONE top 3 pick in the last 10 drafts actually has a ring (Kyrie – and only because he ended up on a team with one of the 2 greatest players ever). AD may join him this season, but again — not with the team that drafted him, and only because he’s with Lebron.

Now this total confounding — of course in a vacuum you’d rather have better picks than worse picks, and bad teams will tend to do a bad job developing their own players. But the point is, it’s much more important to be a good organization than to have good picks. Ideally you’d like both, but that really is pretty rare. it’s Boston making an amazing trade with Billy King to get Tatum. It’s Sam Presti who had really an unprecedented run of amazing picks with KD/Harden/Russ/Ibaka. it might GSW this year with the perfect tank year except it’s reportedly a bad draft.

So – it’s a very low hit rate on these high picks, and meanwhile you are just dumping seasons and disheartening your fan base. My son who is 10 couldn’t care less about the Knicks, and why would he? He was 2 when they last had a semi-ok season.

more continued…

by the way – I only went to 2009 – but it’s not that great even going further back:

2008 – Rose, Beasley, Mayo
2007- Oden, Durant, Horford
2006 – Bargnani, Aldridge, Adam Morrison (!)
2005 – Bogut, Marvin Williams, Deron Williams (CP3 was drafted 4th)
2004 – Dwight Howard, Okafor, Ben Gordon
2003 – Lebron, Darko, Melo, Bosh, Wade
2002 – Yao Ming, Jay Williams, Mike Dunleavy
2001 – Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Pau Gasol (drafted by Atlanta?)
2000 – Kenyon Martin, Stromile Swift, Darius Miles
1999 – Elton Brand, Steve Francis, Baron Davis
1998 – Olowokandi, Bibby, Raef Lafrentz
1997 – Duncan, Van Horn, Billups

Out of all those, the only franchise changers were Duncan, arguably Yao, Lebron, Wade, Howard, Durant, and arguably Derrick Rose minus the injuries. So out of another 12 years (36 picks), only 6 could be the best player on a contender, and arguably 2 of those would be nonviable in today’s NBA. So in the last 22 years and 66 top 3 picks, fewer than 10 players total were real franchise changes (and really probably more like 7). And again, not that RINGZZ are everything, but out of all those only Duncan and Wade won a championship with the team that drafted them (not counting Lebron although of course he did get to a finals with the 1st Cavs iteration).

It just reinforces how maddeningly super-dumb it was for Sac/PHX to pass on Doncic. Even AD, who I characterized as a franchise changer… didn’t change the Pels. They sucked even with AD and then lost him. The only guys who are REAL franchise changers are the ones who not only are personally great but improve everyone around them by creating easy shots. Honestly looking back it seems ridiculous to take a center, and especially a non-shooting big, with a lottery pick. Zero chance GSW takes Wiseman.

It really is pretty shocking to look at the top 3 picks going back (I’m going to start with 2018 since 2019 is a little too close to know):

It’s arbitrary to limit this to top-3 picks. The idea of avoiding marginal wins is not to secure a top 3 pick, or any pick, specifically. It’s to avoid getting a pick that isn’t reflective of the talent you can reasonably believe will be both on your roster and productive for the foreseeable future.

This is a laudable goal because:
1) despite great players being found all over the draft, there is still a clear correlation between draft position and future productivity
2) higher picks have more trade value

For example, the 2016-2017 Knicks got the 8th pick and drafted Frank Ntilikina despite having one (1) genuinely intriguing player on that roster in Porzingis. What in the ever loving fuck was the point of that?

No one has ever said all free agents should always be avoided. Christian Wood, for example, would probably increase the Knicks’ win total, but he also would have a good chance of being a productive player under contract for a while. So you could make a reasonable case that those aren’t marginal wins.

What we’re talking about is the practice that in all of the years we’ve been having this exact argument, no one has been able to defend: adding wins that everyone knows damn well will not be there in future seasons.

The question isn’t whether the top 3 picks are franchise players, the question is whether those players are better than the 8th or 9th pick. The answer is yes more often than not.

Would you rather have Ayton, Doncic or Knox?

Tatum or Frank?

And are you really complaining about Ben Simmons & Embiid? Either one would be the best rookie contract player we’ve had since… idk, Ewing?

Speaking of high picks, the T’Wolves seem eager to trade theirs:

>> According to a Western Conference executive, word around the league is Minnesota isn’t leaning one way at No. 1, sounds “confused” and feels pressure after “messing up last year by trading for Jarrett Culver.”

The belief is that Minnesota’s priority is to trade, realistically down the board assuming an established star won’t become available. If the Wolves stick at No. 1, multiple sources say they’d bet on LaMelo Ball having the edge over Anthony Edwards. <<

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lakers-heat-predictions-nba-finals-picks-experts-favor-lebron-james-winning-it-all-but-its-not-unanimous/

Frank:
So in total, in TEN drafts, only 3 (Luka/AD/Harden) look to be true franchise changers, and two of those players are no longer with the teams that drafted them.Only 12 out of 30 are All-star-type players.

12 all-star type player out of 30 gives one a 40% chance in finding a Batman or Robin type player. Consider that there are maybe 30 to 40 all-star type players in the NBA, which means that you would have to find those 18 to 28 players in the other 570 picks.

As far as tanking goes, the NBA has reworked the lottery to lessen the reward and it appears to have worked well. With the Knicks, I feel it’s not tanking that is the issue but instability in the front office, churning the roster, and poor player development that are the real issues.

Do you want to be successful?
Copy what successful teams do.
Do they tank?
Then tank.
Do they build strong foundations with basketball geniouses and knowledgeable stuff, assemble competitive cores, create and retain assets while going for the big dogs?
Do it.
No need to invent.
Just observe, copy and adjust to the future.

pepper: i would substitute “incompetence” for instability…and then the other items are a result of that incompetence…

I’m new here and trying to be nice. lol

Clearly if you look at the state of NBA coaching you can reach no other conclusion but that political correctness has run amok. Professor objectivity here with the bold insights once again.

“I’m new here and trying to be nice. lol”

Remember being new here, provocative and restless “fighting” with 10 analytical die hard posters at the same time like Errol Flynn against Pirates!
Now it’s more civilized.
One on one Fencing Duels with referees and rules. Like an Olympic sport! lol

when i was in high school, i was in the debate club…actually, i may just be thinking of the drama club…very similar activities, and they both start with a d…

point taken on the nash thing…i actually kind of like the van gundy suggestion for the clippers…

at the end of the day, if i’m steve – i’m doing whatever jerry west tells me to do…

4. Drafting 18-19 years old over a series of years means the last drafted kid is still years away from getting the experience and development he needs. So between the hits and misses and development time it winds up being a 6-10 year process depending on how lucky you are up front or if you keep having injuries and get better picks that the talent on your team deserves. Hell, even the Knicks getting RJ because KP was hurt was an advantage and we are still a sucky team.

You say this all the time with no evidence, probably because it would, if true, excuse the laughable production of Ntilikina and meh production of Porzingis. The fact of the matter is players that will become productive tend to be productive early on.

5. Many young star players that have championship aspirations don’t want to wait around while you are rebuilding via draft because they know they may lose a few years of their peak while the team is in development. So they ask for a trade (Davis and KP being two recent examples).

New Orleans had Anthony Davis for seven seasons and got a king’s ransom for him on the trade market. Clown example.

We could’ve had Porzingis for that long too if we extended a max offer, no matter what he says. We didn’t want to do that and I’m on the record as saying that was the correct call.

6. As you do draft young players you slowly get a little better. So the subsequent picks are not as attractive. Then it gets harder and harder to land other stars even if you were one of the lucky 1 or 2 teams over a few years that landed a whale.

Directly contradicts your 3rd point. If you’re getting better, you’re making good picks and are becoming more attractive to free agents.

In 2017, Donovan Mitchell and Bam Abadayo were both picked after Frank at 13th and 14th respectively. Both would have been considered less of a reach than Frank even if they were picked at 8th.

In 2018, Mikael Bridges, Shai, and Michael Porter Jr. were taken after Knox at 10, 11, and 14 respectively. And all three, even Porter with his injury, would not have been the reaches Knox was even if picked at 9th.

These aren’t examples of late first round/second round picks that tons of teams passed on. These were players that were picked right after us that we passed over for players with far more question marks.

I love Frank and still have hope for Knox. Maybe the above players aren’t as good on The Knicks because of culture/development…but I think its totally fair to say they would have come into the league with less question marks and a higher floor than Knox or Frank.

>>> Drafting 18-19 years old over a series of years means the last drafted kid is still years away from getting the experience and development he needs. <<<

Absolutely, Strat. There is only way to skin a cat.

The last thing this team needed was to have three years of tanking and end up with 19 year olds like Jayson Tatum (2017), Luka Doncic (2018), and Zion Williamson (2019).

If we had taken that path, we'd be years away from relevance and no free agent would want to join us.

As it is most possible to get a high pick each year if you suck as a team it’s equally possible to attract and sign a Big Dog who searches for a Big Contract/Contending Team if you manage to remain competitive and salary cap controlled.
It works both ways.
The difference is that the one way is more attracted by shitty teams while the other by smart ones.

Strat’s playing the hits today.

Forget “tank.” Just forget that word. Some people can’t deal with the word “tank,” it triggers them.

REBUILD. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, USE THE WORD “REBUILD” AND THEN MAYBE WE WON’T HAVE TO HAVE THIS SAME STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT FOR 10 YEARS.

Get guys who fit into your win curve. If you suck, don’t bring in mediocre free agents who get you to 28 wins. That is fucking stupid! Can we all agree on that at least? If you can find a free agent who might someday contribute to a winning team, like an ACTUAL winning team that wins 50+ games, GET THAT GUY. If you can trade for a player who might someday contribute to your winning team, GET THAT GUY.

If you can’t find players that fit into your win curve, take flyers on guys who might improve. Convert win-now type veterans into draft picks. Rent your cap space to acquire assets. JUST STOP PUTTING TOGETHER ROSTERS OF SHITTY VETERANS WHO END UP WINNING 28 GAMES.

Why oh why oh why is this so hard to understand? Most of you people seem very intelligent.

JK47:
Forget “tank.” Just forget that word. Some people can’t deal with the word “tank,” it triggers them.

REBUILD. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, USE THE WORD “REBUILD” AND THEN MAYBE WE WON’T HAVE TO HAVE THIS SAME STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT FOR 10 YEARS.

Get guys who fit into your win curve. If you suck, don’t bring in mediocre free agents who get you to 28 wins. That is fucking stupid! Can we all agree on that at least? If you can find a free agent who might someday contribute to a winning team, like an ACTUAL winning team that wins 50+ games, GET THAT GUY. If you can trade for a player who might someday contribute to your winning team, GET THAT GUY.

If you can’t find players that fit into your win curve, take flyers on guys who might improve. Convert win-now type veterans into draft picks. Rent your cap space to acquire assets. JUST STOP PUTTING TOGETHER ROSTERS OF SHITTY VETERANS WHO END UP WINNING 28 GAMES.

Why oh why oh why is this so hard to understand? Most of you people seem very intelligent.

Yeah, pretty much agreed…this is a better way of putting it.

It seems like every time I turn around I read some article how the Knicks need a point guard, but actually the Knicks have a lot of point guards already. We have Smith, Ntilikina, Payton, Pinson and Harper and we should probably count Lamar Peters too. We don’t have anybody very good, but we have backup point guard covered multiple times. There aren’t many point guard free agents out there (only Van Vleet and Jordan Clarkson come to mind) but some teams do need backup point guards. There ought to be a trade market we can leverage with one of those guys, even if it’s a minor return.

There aren’t many point guard free agents out there (only Van Vleet and Jordan Clarkson come to mind) but some teams do need backup point guards. There ought to be a trade market we can leverage with one of those guys, even if it’s a minor return.

That’s why DJ Augustin is mentioned so often.

My TankLexicon:

Tanking: Lose games on purpose
(Goal 10-20wins)
Rebuild: Try to Win and be competent again the best way possible
(via trades,drafts,buyouts,waivings)
(Goal 30-40 wins)

20-30Wins – Twilight Zone -Team hasn’t decided which way to go. Probably a shitty team which is incapable of even losing on purpose or a freshly rebuilding one.

Bring incompetent/untradeable FAs means: Stupid GM
Same goes for drafting Busts

I’d rather win 42 games than 17 games, but I’d rather win 17 games than 25.

this right here…i hate losing games, but – being in the 20 something win category is bad news and bad management…

for a lot of our young guys this is their 3rd or 4th coach already…hopefully one of them develops nicely under thibs and his staff…

dennis smith junior is changing his number…that’s something 🙂

Brian Cronin: It’s not the picks themselves, it’s being in the position to draft #6-9. Drafting #6-9 means you are a shitty team that has decided to try to win now for some dumb reason, despite being unable to actually win now.

Not necessarily, it could mean lots of things…young players got better or were coached better, established players underperformed or got hurt, etc. For example, if you sign a guy like Randle to a reasonable deal and he takes the next step, if RJ plays like Tatum did in year 1, if Knox or Frank made a leap, if Iggy plays like Herro, you can easily wind up in the 6-9 range without trying to win now. I mean, we had one more win than the Hawks, who clearly weren’t tanking.

By your logic, you should argue that the dumbest move of all was making Miller head coach. How can you possibly expect that a 55yo rookie coach isn’t going to do everything possible to win every game?

Again, whatever the mindset going in was (win-now, tank, or some kind of hybrid) they screwed it up in every possible way…especially in using cap space to bid against themselves for shitty vets (who actually didn’t help them win anyway!)

Not necessarily,

Once or twice, of course. Shit happens, no doubt (injuries, etc.). But the Knicks do it consistently. Five different heads of basketball operations all did the same darn “Win now even if we can’t win now” approach (except for one year by Mills/Perry).

I do hope that Rose is the exception. I really, really hope so.

I just want to make it absolutely clear I am dead set against drafting good players later in the lottery, developing young players, acquiring undervalued young players, acquiring picks for veterans or acquiring cheap productive veterans with upside.

The only thing worth doing is tanking hard as hell until we can draft the Messiah and he takes us up to visit James Naismith in basketball Heaven.

Looking forward, what is the best strategy for this team? Clearly they are not going to tank, so no use even arguing about it.

Is taking on players for picks a realistic strategy?

Brian Cronin: Is taking on players for picks a realistic strategy?

I see that as more of a tactic than a strategy, no?

PS the posting barrage is killing time before the debate.

what, you’re gonna watch the debate, c’mon man – nobody is gonna watch that thing 🙂

i’m gonna guess after the final ratings: it’ll top out at about 100 million or so (including online views)…

Well you can just keep cap space open and then use it to either take on bad contracts for picks or to make trades on useful players without getting back picks or to make trades for good players where you give up picks. So the strategy is keeping the cap space available and use it opportunistically and the tactic is to use it solely to acquire picks. That’s the way I see it anyway, not that it matters much beyond semantics.

Forget “tank.” Just forget that word. Some people can’t deal with the word “tank,” it triggers them.

I tried going with “avoiding marginal wins” earlier for this reason. I’ve also gone with “asset accumulation mode” in the past. It doesn’t seem to help.

What Strat and co. keep whiffing on is the fact that the strategy doesn’t foreclose any specific type of acquisition. Seriously! You can still sign free agents, make trades, and draft players all while purposefully not getting wins that do nothing but sabotage you.

I’ll go back to the Christian Wood example–signing him would not be compatible with a strategy that calls for losing as many games as possible at all costs, but it arguably would be compatible with a rebuilding/asset accumulation/marginal win avoidance strategy (depending on the contract etc.).

The disconnect here seems to be that there inevitably will be times where a team in this position has the option to either pursue immediate/marginal wins, or make a move(s) that avoids them but puts the team in a better long-term position, and I guess there’s a crowd that prefers the former? When Phil Jackson signed Derrick Williams and Arron Afflalo for more guaranteed money than Hinkie took on in the Sacramento salary dump that brought him an unprotected first rounder and two swaps Strat thought that was AWESOME.

thenoblefacehumper: I’ll go back to the Christian Wood example–signing him would not be compatible with a strategy that calls for losing as many games as possible at all costs, but it arguably would be compatible with a rebuilding/asset accumulation/marginal win avoidance strategy (depending on the contract etc.).

1) Signing Wood to a reasonable contract now would be similar to signing Randle last year. Randle’s contract was reasonable in both size and duration. It’s uncertain how much he will command, but clearly anything beyond Randle-like terms would be risky. So the Randle signing made sense in both your world and in Strat’s.

2) Payton at $8 million is probably a reasonable flyer on the outside chance that he finally learns how to shoot. Didn’t work out, but hard to call that move “chasing marginal wins.”

3) The Portis/Ellington/Bullock (original)/Gibson signings made no sense. None whatsoever.

4) The Morris and Bullock (after the fact) signings were fine. One yielded valuable assets, the other is a possible bench piece on a value deal who can be re-signed and flipped at the deadline for a 2nd rounder.

So all-in-all it was a dumb strategy, compounded by the absurdity of #3. Without those signings, there would have been room for absorbing contracts, and more playing time for younger players. But it’s hard to argue that any move added wins more than firing Fizdale and promoting Miller. If they had just kept Fiz, they would have finished bottom 3 for sure.

geo: what, you’re gonna watch the debate, c’mon man – nobody is gonna watch that thing 🙂

i’m gonna guess after the final ratings: it’ll top out at about 100 million or so (including online views)…

i had the good fortune of having my apartment get repainted earlier today, so i can literally watch paint dry instead of that catastrophe.

My wife and son are watching the debate in the living room. She’s only yelled “Shut up” at Trump three times so far, so it must be fairly civil.
🙂

Well that was almost unwatchable.

They really should just cancel the other 2 debates

If they’re not going to straight up cut off their mics when it’s not their turn, I don’t see much of a point to the other two. I guess the vice presidential debate might be a little more palatable.

Hey congratulations!!! Can’t blame you for that. I mostly try not to engage on politics with people in my personal life. I grew up in rural Illinois, so I know plenty of classic Trump voters. Not taking the bait on their bullshit makes for a less stressful time, for sure.

Cdiggy congrats! That’s so much more important than politics, enjoy your wedding and marriage!

And yes, To paraphrase Dana Bash, what a fucking shitshow , who the fuck votes orange after a debate like that? Wow. I feel like I got peer pressured into watching the Jersey Shore drunk again, and then watched grown men fight over who gets to wear the shirt before the shirt, but that had some comedic value.

Oh, and Biden looks like has some kind of a stutter remnant from his childhood, he looked totally with it, thank God. I just wished he laughed at Trump more, looked like it really pissed him off. And he went for the unity love angle, I like it, hope it goes better than it did here. Still a bad candidate though, couldn’t we have gone with Gabbard or something, come on.

BTW: me as a Knick fan just never stops getting trolled. The Finals include the Pat the Rat Miami Heat (yeah I know we’d be better off if Knick management gave him control but whateva) vs the Lakers… and by now you guys know how i feel about Laker fans lol

The very-near-future wife is on my case to pack for tomorrow, soooo I gotta go now. Lol

Thanks again everyone for the well wishes. I’ll try to resurface again before next Monday.

Congrats, CDiggy!

And a special shout out for having your wedding at the same time the Lakers are in the finals so your soon-to-be-wife and her Lakers fan friends can’t watch the game. That’s next level, man.

I can see the Trump strategy, btw. He ain’t making up 7 points. But if he dampens enthusiasm for the election enough, in the middle of a pandemic where it’s not completely safe to go to the polls, he could get enough people to stay home to steal another one. His side’s turning out, especially since they don’t believe in covid.

The Infamous Cdiggy:
My therapist advised me to take a break from politics with my wedding coming up (6 days, y’all!) bc I have enough stress to deal with as is. So I’ve mostly bowed out of following stories and beefing with head-in-the-sand Trump supporters on social media.

Congrats! I’d keep watching, the debates between me and my wife made tonight look dainty.

@Wetbandit did you see it or do you want further context? I unfortunately wasted my evening watching it.

Another fun moment was when Trump claimed “there was no transition” between Obama and him, and that Obama and Biden tried to orchestrate a shadow coup to oust him from the start. It was so batshit I don’t think it even registered with the moderator. Mind you, this was in response to a question about whether he would respect the election result and wait for the votes to be counted in full before declaring victory.

I think calling all Republicans racists is like calling all Democrats cop-haters.

Here is what, Lee Atwater, famous Republican political advisor and strategist to Presidents Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, who was also Chairman of the RNC, had to say in 1981 on the issue:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

What does it matter if every Republican is racist or not if the party’s entire electoral strategy was to appeal to racist white supremacist sentiments since Nixon like this?

The son thing was definitely really scummy. I actually thought Joe’s response was surprisingly honest and one his strongest moments in the debate. Admitting that his son had a drug problem but has overcome it and that Biden is still proud of him seemed very genuine to me. Probably not how Trump expected it to go.

Congrats and good luck CDiggy

we can all sleep easy now that the post is reporting that RJ is dominating in practice bubble…

geo:
watching the yankee game now…just saw luke voit walk up to the plate and smack the home plate umpire on the ass – is that a thing now…

pretty bold move by young mister voit, I like it…

that’ll get him a steroid test request from the league…

I can see the Trump strategy, btw. He ain’t making up 7 points. But if he dampens enthusiasm for the election enough, in the middle of a pandemic where it’s not completely safe to go to the polls, he could get enough people to stay home to steal another one.

I don’t think that was exactly the strategy. That’s a bit too eleven-dimensional chess for a dullard like Trump.

I think the idea was to simply go as alpha male as possible and do the dominance politics thing.
He probably thought hey, I can really let it rip because I’m not debating a woman. I think he thought it’d get Biden flustered and force him into some mistakes. Which it did, sort of.

The problem though is that you inevitably turn some people off when you interrupt every five seconds, traffic in insane conspiracy theories, refuse to repudiate white supremacy, and give a tacit endorsement to the Proud Boys, who are now using your endorsement as their slogan.

So overall probably a net loss for Cheeto Benito. Dude is running out of time.

I don’t think that was exactly the strategy. That’s a bit too eleven-dimensional chess for a dullard like Trump.

Yeah, I shouldn’t have said strategy. I don’t think the guy is ever playing on a higher dimension. He just does something that sometimes inadvertently works out better than the pundits anticipate. And I think this could be an example of that.

The outcome today seems to universally be “that was an embarrassment to our country.” I think that’s good for him.

Polls don’t take into account a person’s enthusiasm to go to a polling station in November during a pandemic. You might say you’ll vote for Biden when a pollster calls you on the phone, but it doesn’t mean you’re showing up this November. The more Trump can dampen enthusiasm for swing voters, the better.

I don’t think the anti-trump vote can carry this election across 50 states. Biden is going to need to get people excited for him and his platform, and he hasn’t been particularly good at that since 2019.

I will continue to be skeptical of the dem’s chances despite their lead in the polls. Especially with the party pushing the mail-in voting for in-state voter, which frankly seems destined to be 2020’s hanging chad.

Biden could win by 20 points and collect all of the swing states and Trump will still contest the election on conspiratorial grounds. The goal of the GOP is power at any cost, and so we’re going to have about 35% of the people in this country believing a massive conspiracy of nationwide voter fraud if Trump simply asserts, without any evidence, that it happened.

Here is a fantastic series from Lawfare on each state’s particular set of challenges going into the most consequential election since Lincoln’s.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/announcing-new-series-healthy-elections

Congrats, CDiggy. Marriage is rad. We just spent four days in solitude, 20 miles into the southern Cascade mountains. I didn’t wear pants for the duration.

Brian, any chance we can get a Lakers-Heat prediction thread/poll before tip-off? I was surprised to see a pundit predicting Herro for FMVP. Want to see what the braintrust thinks going into Game 1.

Few things dampen voter enthusiasm more than the sense of an inevitable outcome. Were this a normal election, the months-long 7-10% lead in the polls that Biden has enjoyed would certainly have led to complacency among a non-insignificant number of prospective Biden voters. Trump could have conceivably eked out another razor-thin electoral victory by using that underdog status to both rally his base and induce enough Democrats to relax, believing “Why bother? Joe’s got this” Of course, that would have required Trump to more or less conduct himself like a normal candidate, run a more or less normal campaign, and quietly nibble away at the margins as he successfully did in 2016.

Of course, Trump is emotionally incapable of conducting himself in such a manner. He was nominally able to do so last time around ago but four years in power have erased whatever limited capacity for self-restraint he may have once possessed. Loudly braying his intent to challenge the electoral process wherever the vote may be close has energized the anti-Trump vote in a way that the milquetoast Biden never could. Anti-Trump voters have been alerted – by Trump himself – that the best way to derail Trump’s gambit is by ensuring that the vote is not close in as many places as possible. Piecemeal legal challenges may have given him a victory if the election outcome hinged on no more than a couple of states. But Trump is now underwater in the swing states he barely won in ’16 and vulnerable in others he won comfortably (AZ, NC, GA, TX, FL, OH, IA) Should an energized anti-Trump turnout (which is reportedly happening already in states that have begun early voting) put most, if not all, of those states in play that’s likely too much for Team Trump to overcome solely by dint of the courts. That strategy, too, may have been workable had it not been for a candidate whose total lack of impulse control is now motivating his opponents at near-historical levels.

yeah, lot’s of sports going on at the moment…looking forward to the finals – i’m thinking it should be competitive…

i don’t know, i think maybe trump has convinced himself he’s going to lose – it’s just how his mind works…pushing even harder on his base in order to set himself and family up with 20 million or so devoted consumers going forward that him and his family can milk for decades…

trump’s impact will be felt for quite awhile, both in our courts and in congress – definitely in how presidential debates are conducted in the future…up until four years ago i used to go through a ballot and try to pick the best candidates and analyze each proposition – not anymore, straight party line voting now…

I don’t think the anti-trump vote can carry this election across 50 states. Biden is going to need to get people excited for him and his platform, and he hasn’t been particularly good at that since 2019.

There’s a theory, which seems correct to me, that by far the most dominant force in modern American politics is negative partisanship. In general voters are much more motivated by their hatred for the other side than anything else. This is why “own the libs” is a thing and it’s why Biden became the Dem candidate in the first place. Democrats wanted to elect a guy they thought could beat Trump, because they hate Trump. Trump has mashed the turbo button on negative partisanship, and after four years of his presidency it has become even more of a dominating factor.

The most positive thing you could say about this debate for Trump is that it probably bought him a little bit of vote subtraction: some people will probably not vote because of the horrible tone of the debate. But I would guess the small group of people that moved into the “not planning to vote” pile were probably undecided before this, so it’s not like he’s subtracting a lot of Biden votes.

Ntilakilla: But IMO, the debates exist at this point in American electoral history to convince the small minority of voters from both major parties, who are the only Americans who consistently watch them,

Actual debates never move the needle as much as the post-debate narrative does. Almost no one remembers the Carter-Reagan debates but forty years later many are still familiar with Ronnie’s iconic “There you go again” zinger that was replayed endlessly in the weeks afterwards.

The emerging narrative from last night’s shitshow is not so much that Trump was boorish and embarrassed himself by violating the Marquis of Queensbury rules of debate. Hell, pretty much everyone in America expected that would happen going in. No, most of the chatter today seems to be coalescing around Trump’s blatant rallying cry to the Proud Boys in front of a national TV audience. That is a new wrinkle and a serious escalation over his much coyer “Fine people on both sides” of a few years back. The campaign is aware of how damaging this was and is already taking steps to clean it up, issuing a statement today claiming he was actually telling the hate group to “get out of the way.”

As with every other Trump scandal du jour ($750, the Woodward reveal, “losers and suckers”, Bountygate, to name but a few) this one won’t cause much in the way of noticeable & immediate poll movement. More like a drip…drip….drip of the gradual leaking of support. It’s likely that there are at least some folks who stood by him after all of the previous scandals for whom the Proud Boys comment is a bridge too far. If that were to be Trump’s last outrage between now and election day, the losses may be recoverable. But it won’t be and the drips figure to keep on coming.

Heat in 5 games. Game 5 ends and Riley rises up from the stands, arms crossed like a mafia boss, his smirk hidden by his mask, as Lebron looks up towards him and starts to cry. AD opts out and signs with The Heat.

It’s pretty annoying that in this faux democracy we have here, Democrats have to consistently “beat the spread.” We’re going to not only have to overcome the Electoral College and the rural tilt of the Senate, but now we have to deal with various harassment lawsuits, “poll watcher” goons, Bill Barr’s crooked Justice Department… I mean, we gotta win by a Dukakis-sized rout in the popular vote to barely eke out a fucking victory.

If Biden manages to pull this out despite the rather large thumb on the scale, I’m all for some power grabs to restore some sort of parity. Kill the filibuster on day one. Then statehood for DC and PR, and throw in Guam and the US Virgin Islands while you’re at it. Eight new blue senators, sounds about right. Gonna need at least four more SCOTUS seats as well. Pass lots of legislation to undo all of the vote-fucking schemes that were designed by Republicans to keep people of color from voting. Do all of this while holding a giant middle finger aloft for all to see.

We’re in the post-McConnell age, so the only thing that really matters is grabbing onto as much power as you can while you have the chance. Deal with the consequences later.

geo:
looks like the ratings were way down for this debate, as opposed to 2016…i am a little perplexed by the folks claiming to be “undecided”, that just seems really difficult to achieve at this point…

Yeah, I’d really like to see the demographics of the current undecided voters. I mean, it’s like, are you rooting for Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader in the big light saber duel? Wait, you’re undecided?
🙂

vader, vader, vader…

Kill the filibuster on day one. Then statehood for DC and PR, and throw in Guam and the US Virgin Islands while you’re at it. Eight new blue senators, sounds about right. Gonna need at least four more SCOTUS seats as well. Pass lots of legislation to undo all of the vote-fucking schemes that were designed by Republicans to keep people of color from voting. Do all of this while holding a giant middle finger aloft for all to see.

jk for office…

Deal with the consequences later.

start impeachment???

other than that – this seems to be about it:

They could force repeated roll call votes on the Senate floor on items that are usually dispensed with by unanimous consent without a vote, she said. Or they could deny committees the ability to meet after the Senate has been in session for two hours, under a convoluted “two-hour rule.”

that’s not much…

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/9/30/21495166/lebron-james-los-angeles-lakers-miami-heat

Enjoyed this on Lebron. I have long said that who you play with shouldn’t matter that much. But then there is JJ Hickson.

Meh. See my earlier comment. A legal challenge along the lines of Bush v. Gore may have been viable were the election to come down to just one or two states. That’s looking increasingly unlikely with him now trailing in WI & MI well beyond the margin of error and him in danger of losing one or more of the half dozen others that were solidly red in 2016,

Greg Palast, whose diligent work on Republican electoral fraud dates back to 2000, makes the point that Trump doesn’t need win all these battleground states to make a farce out of the election so long as there is mayhem on Election Day. What he needs to do is make sure that the Republican dominated legislatures in FL, WI, and MI argue before the Supreme Court that they can’t certify the results of their elections in time for the electoral colleges to alot the requisite 270 votes for appointing anyone to the presidency. In that case, Trump can invoke the 12th amendment and have the House of Representatives, voting on a per state basis and with the same quorum requirements as under the original procedure, choose the President from the three highest receivers of electoral votes.

Again, this explains why Trump is making overt signals to right-wing goon squads like the Proud Boys to stand by on November 3rd. He’s looking for his own version of the Reichstag Fire that will allow him to consolidate political power in the face of a dwindling electoral base of support.