From Marc Berman:
After working with his trainer in Southern California, Barrett said he’s tinkered with shot technique, moving his right hand more to the side of the ball to get a more fluid release.
“I was working with Drew Hanlen over the summer, we changed it up a little bit, tweaked a couple of things,’’ Barrett said. “It’s been good so far. We’ve just got to keep working on it, get reps.”
There were rumblings the Knicks’ previous coaching staff was concerned that Barrett, who wore a pink suit on draft night, was too Hollywood and not enough of a gym rat as a rookie.
There’s a new Kith/Knicks digital advertisement showing Barrett working on his shooting in a late-night session with a security guard falling asleep while waiting for the workout to end. It’s not fictional.
Asked the best part of Barrett’s preseason, coach Tom Thibodeau said, “Probably the way he practiced. He set a great example for everyone. If he continues to work that way he’ll continue to improve.”
According to sources, the Knicks coaching staff has a new vision for Barrett, turning him more into a small forward than shooting guard so as to give him less early-possession ballhandling responsibilities.
Former coach David Fizdale, stunningly, gave Barrett the opening-night start at point guard last season and it backfired.
That won’t happen Wednesday in Indiana. Both Alec Burks or Reggie Bullock can play alongside Barrett as the shooting guard.
New guards coach Johnnie Bryant, who turned Donovan Mitchell into a superstar, has made an impact on Barrett, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
“I just thought his rim reads were terrific,’’ Thibodeau said. “His all-round play. His ball pressure [on defense] got a lot better as time went on. Offensively he scored a number of different ways — transition, cutting without the ball, off the dribble, catch and shoot.’’
This is partially why I’d be thrilled to be done with Perry, as he was part of the “braintrust” that looked at RJ Barrett and saw a shooting guard who they needed to surround with power forwards. I still can’t get over how dumb it was to play Barrett as a guard last year. The dude clearly is not a guard. He’s a forward. He could be a very good forward, so just let him be a forward. Surround him with other shooters. It really isn’t hard.
Barrett played very well in the preseason. He looked very comfortable out there, hitting his free throws and getting to the basket with ease. He still needs to shoot better from three (he was awful in the preseason), but even without a three-pointer, he has shown enough in these past four preseason games for me to be really excited about him making a big step forward this thing. It’s one of the things that I’m most looking forward to about this Knicks team (#1 being all of those amazing plays that Mitch makes).
Just give us some hope, RJ! That’s all we want! And Leon Rose and Thibs actually seem prepared to give us hope. I am very pleased with the Knicks at this moment.
235 replies on “NY Post: RJ Barrett making it look ‘easy’ in promising Knicks start”
I really don’t get how a few different teams didn’t take Avidja. I’m not even a huge fan of the guy but he seems like a perfect player for the modern NBA. The type of guy who typically goes top five. When I was considering possible picks for the Knicks, I didn’t even consider Avidja, as I assumed he wouldn’t be there at #8. It’s strange that he was.
It’s early, but I can’t avoid the nagging feeling we should have taken any of Deni, Vassell, Hali, or even Bey and they’d have been more useful roster fits for us in the modern NBA. But Obi also seems like a good kid, the dunks are fun, and hopefully the jitters go away soon. Four exhibition games — where he rarely played with a good point guard — are just a blip.
Whenever I saw Avidja play in Israel I thought he’s too skinny for the NBA and would take years to develop. Looks like I was wrong. I would trade Obi for him without hesitation now.
I like that Obi is from NYC. I don’t think we’ve seen his best yet, considering that he hasn’t played in a regular season NBA game yet and won’t sell him short. I liked Avidja a lot but my focus was on a point guard, so I was disappointed about our draft (until I saw IQ become the “best basketball player in the history of the world”). Avidja was rated a smidge better than Obi by most analysts.
Are you in Israel? Where? I used to live in Netanya.
Deni is definitely the more modern NBA player (as are Vassell, Bey, and several other guys we could have taken). That said, Budget Amar’e Who Can Shoot Some Threes is still a fun and valuable player to have, especially with the eighth pick, and we’ve barely seen Payne and Bryant work their magic with Obi yet. So I’m not worried. But grappling with buyer’s remorse on draft picks is also a big part of what we do here.
I also thought Deni looked like a shrimp who didn’t have the physicality to excel in the NBA. Interested to see how it turns out.
Avidja is pretty great in 2K too
Oh man, the late-night session and knowing it’s guaranteed (lol!) that Johnnie Bryant will turn him into a superstar… this is becoming such a great time to be a Knick fan! 🙂
But please, be ready… we’ll lose a lot, and that leaves its marks, and if Kyrie/KD are performing at superstar level, the media will spend the year teasing the Knicks about it. We gotta grind through it.
About the draft, i was in on Killian Hayes, not looking good at the moment, IQ is looking better and we got him with a lower pick, but this is preseason so by half season we’ll see how things are going… i sure hope by half season Quicksanity is still a thing! 😉
Deni was high on my list, and also Hali, and would’ve taken both before Obi, but this draft was very tight and i don’t think anybody would put a lot of money on the player they thought was the best option. So let’s hope in time, after adjusting to the NBA, that Obi will be a very useful player for the Knicks.
The thing about IQ is that its not even about if he’s going to be good or not. Its that he has shown that he is capable of being in the rotation and our PG’s are not so good that it is clear that he is worse than Elf or DSJ. Elf probably is “better” overall but Quickley is a much better shooter and if RJ and Randle and Noel or Mitch are gonna start, having just one more shooter out there makes a huge difference. Also, splitting up the IQ/Randle duo is good for both of them. Randle pretty much has to start because Obi is not ready yet, so it just makes sense to start IQ even if he does turn into a pumpkin (he won’t).
I’m happy with the Obi pick even after a lackluster preseason. Even with Haliburton, Avdija, and Vassell having nice preseason efforts. But I would not have been upset with either of those guys. Like him or not, Randle is better than Obi right now, and should hold him off until he gets traded.
Question- am I the only one worried about what this Gobert deal means for Mitch? I think Mitch’s ceiling is a better version of Gobert because of his athleticism and jumper (that he doesn’t use). That could very well take him out of our price range- depending on the growth he sees under Payne and Thibs’ tutelage
I’m willing to roll with any young hungry team as long as they’re working to get better. What I cannot abide any longer is the same shit we’ve seen 70% of the time since the Melo era – a team full of mercenaries with no future in our long-term plans playing for nothing but their next paycheck.
For what it’s worth, Deni barely got to the line and when he did he shot 40% there. He was a bad free throw shooter in Israel as well. I don’t think the shooting is for real yet. He was better than Obi in preseason but I’m much more confident in Obi’s ability to find easy buckets than in Deni’s, so I think on offense you shouldn’t be too worried yet. I have no read on Deni’s defense though, so he still might have been a better pick overall. Either way, he would’ve interfered with RJ’s move to SF in the short term, which would be bad imo.
In general, let’s just pump the brakes on everyone. Start IQ for all I care, but we can’t draw anything off two game samples–that way lies folly. So let the chips fall where they may and revisit drafting and rotation decisions near the end of the season, I think.
You had it right the first few times you’ve posted on this. There’s no sense in which Elf is better than IQ. And that’s not a development thing — it’s a now thing. The only reason for any kind of hesitance is based on draft position and he was underdrafted in part because of misuse at Kentucky, in part because of COVID.
This “hard to believe it’s really true” thing is probably something all fanbases go through when they hit the jackpot in the 20s or lower. Nuggets fans probably said many of the same things about Jokic and you can add a bunch of players to that list, I’m sure. Gilbert Arenas would be an interesting 20-year-old case study.
Counterfactual Quickley tearing up summer league and having 5 good preseason games rather than 2. The only reason that’s a counterfactual and not pure factorial is Covid. Elfrid Payton ain’t starting over counterfactual IQ and there’s no real reason he should over factorial IQ. If you want to wait five games or whatever, “just in case,” I don’t really have an issue with that. It doesn’t really matter.
He’s not a perfect player, obviously, and he’s going to have some stinkeroos as he goes, but he’s a distinct class above the Elfrid Paytons of the world. It’s not really even close.
Obi is old for a modern lottery pick ant that’s concerning, but we shouldn’t think that his game is done developing. From all accounts, he’s very driven and very coachable. I like that he isn’t forcing it and he’s thinking pass first, letting the game come to him so that he can figure it out over time. I don’t like that he is showing the same concerns that he showed in film breakdowns….stiff hips, slow, off-balance reactions on D, lack of strength in lower body, suspect shooting from 3 (shot well but low sample size.)
Avdija struggled with physicality and pace before the Maccabi games. He shot poorly from the line and from 3. I think all the teams in front of us passed on him for a reason, and we had Obi in the crosshairs anyway so it didn’t matter whether he dropped or not.
Obi needs to develop some kind of go-to move when he gets in the lane instead of always going in there with an eye to a kickout. Nothing wrong with a kickout, but we need more. I think he’ll develop something, but it might not be this year.
It’s nice to see these guys finally coached by someone who actually knows what he’s doing. It’s been a loooooong time in coming. Thibs looking closely at things like net rating is a very good sign.
the whole ‘it’s preseason’ mantra applies to other teams too…. i mean theo maledon should be winning roty if we’re judging by preseason performance also… it’s early… it happens every year where there’s a number of players that show out but then fall flat during the regular season… remember last year with nickel-alexander walker where everyone was wow’ed by his performance against us and other teams? fizdale even called him out…. then he flopped during the reg season….
the preseason is not like the regular season.. you have guys seeing tons of court time that won’t be in the reg season… veterans don’t particularly care or play that much and coaches are trying out weird things or haven’t even put in regular season packages yet….
there’s more focus on preseason this year since we’ve all been starved for basketball but it means the same as it did before… it’s not much…
That’s funny, because I see Deni’s future as a stretch 4, not as a 3.
Guys like A-W get fluky hot in preseason (46.7% from 3) and then it doesn’t carry over. If anything about IQ was based on him being fluky hot — or fluky anything, really — it would be a different story. But there’s no fluke there. And, naturally, the eval of him goes way beyond numbers and includes things like moxie, poise, knowing when to go fast and when not to, court awareness, leadership skills, etc. His intangibles are very, very high. If they weren’t, again, different story. If DSJ — the anti-intangible — had gone 22/5/5, it’s an entirely different thing.
frank wasn’t a fluke either right?
We haven’t seen enough of Obi, but I think he’ll be fine IF his game stretches out to the NBA 3 point line. If his college shooting stats were a mirage and he’s only going to be efficient around the basket, then we have a more athletic Randle that might be worse defensively. He’s got a few years of improving to do even though he’s 22.
It would be pretty hysterical if we’ve done it again where we got the better player after the lottery pick like we did with Robinson and Knox.
IQ’s heads and shoulders above Frank. Frank’s a glue and D and maybe an occasional 3 guy, which has been my read of him for 18 months. There’s no comparison.
head and shoulders above frank… oh man we’re either throwing frank under the bus or you must think IQ has some all star appearances with the amount of trolling you put the board through last year.. and seem to be attempting to do again…
Man, are you hoping that IQ doesn’t pan out, just because you didn’t had him on your top targets?
I’m not worried about Mitch getting a max, but I do think the Knicks need to start thinking about what kind of an extension to give him. Even without a jumper, a foul-savvy defensive destroyer version of Mitch is probably worth at least $15mil AAV. They should try locking him down sooner rather than later, his value is probably on the rise.
I agree with E.
It was probably close to 100% that Quickly was a good shooter based on his college stats and over the top praise he was getting from Thibs about what he was seeing in practice every day (that we weren’t seeing). What we didn’t know was how he handles the ball, how he passes, his basketball IQ etc.. Once he showed he’s not just some spot up shooter, we have every reason to think he’s a very good prospect. You can get hot or cold shooting, but you don’t get hot and cold with your handle, reads, passes, IQ etc.. He has skills to go alone with the shot.
what part of what i wrote was targeting quickley? have i badmouthed his performance at all?
what do you think i’m saying about him?
Yeah, to go old school Kentucky, he was kind of advertised as like a Tony Delk 2.0, an undersized shooter who kind of stands around and knocks down open shots when they come to him and occasionally gets white-hot and goes off for 30 only since it’s 2020 and not 2000, a bunch of those shots are 3s. He’s nothing like that. I didn’t watch enough college last year to know this, so had to go on word of mouth and draft talk. (And I love the story of him basically telling everyone who’d listen that he was a point guard, even though Cal hadn’t used him that way and, yep sure enough … he is.)
I’m one of the biggest Frank supporters and I agree. There’s no comparison. Unless Quickly is a terrible defender (and I haven’t seen any sign of that yet), Quickley is going to be the much better player.
My pro Frank argument all along has been there’s quite a bit of value in having a plus defender that can guard opposing PGs, switch, and disrupt an offense like Frank can as long as he gives you something on offense. I think it’s too soon to give up on that kind of player when it comes to shooting 3s given he’s in the 32% range now and has pretty good form.
In fact, if Frank could ever put it all together I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE a Quickly, Frank, and RJ pairing.
Based on what I’ve been reading, it appears the new coaching staff is smart enough to see that RJ’s future is probably at the 3.
ok let’s get more ppl on the record since ppl are sensitive about it….
who here thinks the 2 quickley preseason games were not a fluke and what we saw was his true skill level?
Yeah, everyone’s still confusing, “I don’t want Frank’s progress and development blocked by dreck like Elfrid Payton and Dennis Smith, Jr., and Emmanuel Mudiay” with “I think Frank’s going to be an all-star.”
If Mitch stops fouling like crazy, and RJ hits his free throws and forces fewer shots, and IQ breaks down typical NBA D and hit 3’s at a good clip, we’ll probably win a bunch more than I’d expected. A few minutes against the worst of the worst doesn’t give me much faith that any of that will pan out. But it will be really fun if any of it does.
If I had to bet on which is most likely, I’d pick Mitch reducing his fouls. I think an intense competition between him and Noel will be a thing. And fouls seem likely to be the key weakness they and the coaching staff will focus on. For both of them, it seems like an impulsivity control skill that ought to be trainable.
no you were part of a handful of posters who unironically thought frank was better than payton based on his defense alone…. and gave everyone else grief that they couldn’t see it… so no… that’s bullshit ….
Assuming the standings hold, in back to back seasons, two NY football teams will have missed out on Chase Young and Trevor Lawrence because they couldn’t comprehend this. Remarkable.
Please don’t misinterpret me, as i don’t want to spark a war of words, but Z-Man tried to explain the differences between what we are seeing in IQ that we didn’t see in previous candidates (eg Ntilikina, Frank), and you kept saying the same thing – you think he’s a fluke and he will be what he is (a number 25 pick) pretty soon – which is ok to be your opinion.
But then you replied to everybody that said IQ is already a good player, stating that he isn’t. How come? Do you have a crystal ball? If you think he isn’t, we say you might be right and that that’s your opinion, but you say we shouldn’t have the opposite opinion and i keep trying to understand why. Are we not allowed to have our opinions once you made up yours 100% on one of the sides?
I think he isn’t a fluke because of how he plays, i might be wrong, but that’s what i think. And that gives me hope, and we (Knicks fans) sure need it… a lot!
And by the way, yes, i also overreacted to the first Frank explosion… so as i said, i might be wrong, but for now we have to wait to know better, and i’m hopeful again!
no you misunderstand…. everything i’ve said about him was that you couldn’t make hard determinations about two preseason games…. many people seem to think the two preseason games are indicative of his true skill level… i’m saying that’s a bit silly…
literally everything i’ve ever said about any prospect ever has been that no one has a crystall ball .. i have literally said that half a dozen times in the last two weeks… and two other posters had to repeat this also… i posted my 2015 board to show that i don’t care about being wrong…. i get some wrong i get some right… who cares!
that didn’t stop me from criticizing the decision.. and the decision was bad whether quickley works out or not…. it was a bad process because there’s a high bar to clear in order for it to work out… i care deeply about process… it’s what i do… that’s why i talk about it…
that does not say anything about quickley’s performance… i highlighted parts of his performance that are probably not sustainable but that’s it….. nothing else…
do you understand me now or do you need more help?
I’ll go on record right now.
Its not a fluke.
It just appears that way because we picked him at 25. Over 40 percent 3 point shooter, both he and Cal say he can play point, SEC player of the year who was getting better and better as the season wore on. He missed out on the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. UK was a top 10 team last year. So they would have most likely won the SEC Tournament and gotten to at least the sweet 16. If he’d kept up the performances he was putting in the second half of the season throughout those tournaments along with team workouts, etc…he would have been drafted much higher.
I don’t know why this is so hard to fathom. It was a weird season and a weird draft with no real consensus outside the top 8 or so. And it was considered not a great draft at the top, which means more room for variances and flukey late picks that become much better than expected.
Will IQ be our starting PG in 3 years? I don’t know. But he’s right now probably the best PG on our team right now (Elf has more experience but that’s really it). I believe at the minimum we’ve hit on a good rotation player and I think we’ve drafted the dude who’s gonna help turn this thing around. His shooting and IQ opens things up for RJ cause it puts another shooter out there with him and allows RJ to do what he does best.
We’ve reached a tipping point. Its not going to be immediate where we’re suddenly a force to be reckoned with. But our finally making patient and good decisions over the last few years is paying off. We made a good one trading Morris for another pick and we’re being rewarded for it. Good luck is really just being prepared for opportunity.
Everybody understood your point. You don’t think these 2 games showed he could be what we are seeing, because it’s preseason and it’s a (very) small sample, and that’s ok. Normally i would agree with you, well i agree with you, but IQ showed “something” i can’t explain very well that makes me think he’s going to be a terrific player… could have been at Rucker Park (probably less indicative than an NBA preseason game) and i’d say the same.
So please, let people say they think these 2 games means a lot, because we can feel whatever we want and come here to say it amongst friends, and then by half season, if IQ has come down to earth, you can say “i was always right” and if he’s looking like a starter in a championship team we can say “we knew it, those 2 games gave us all we needed to know”. As simple as that.
endowment effect is strong in this thread
I speculate part of the reason you’ve been involved in conflict on this board is certain level of condescension that comes across. Perhaps you need the help – articulating your position better, not necessarily helping others see the gospel from your exalted point of view.
Being a fan of the Knicks does not require the acute ability to accurately predict player performance. People enjoyed the game Friday night and want to see more of it. I think most people know the sample size is small, but optimism is more interesting, and dolan’s razor should be ignored once in a while.
i mean.. if ppl are being ridiculous and over exuberant… i’m not going to be shy about telling ppl they are being ridiculous and over exuberant… and i don’t think anyone should take offense to that unless they really do hold their opinions as a deeply personal thing i’m attacking….
there are other knick internet communites that are renowned for their pollyanna attitudes that treat the knicks as their personal barbie and ken goes to preseason … kb is not one of them despite some posters best efforts…. (not saying that about you in case it’s unclear)…
I’ve been extremely impressed by IQ so far (obviously) but I’m still expecting a lot of regression back to earth. You can be pretty high on him long-term based on what we’ve seen and still recognize that it’s a big jump from two impressive preseason games only parts of which were against NBA competition to being a consistently productive NBA player. Many rookies have impressive moments, few are able to consistently produce over a season, even those who go on to good or even great careers. Elfrid Payton is an average-ish NBA player and I would still be very pleasantly surprised if that’s a line IQ clears this season, few rookies do. He’s clearly earned minutes on this team and should be seen as a developmental priority over the other flotsam in the backcourt, but no real need to go further than that at this point I think.
We’re all very lucky that IQ is sucking up so much oxygen because otherwise there would be a lot of garment-rending about Obi I suspect. He flashed some tools, but certainly didn’t look like a guy who was as ready to go on offense as expected. If he was 20 that would be one thing but he’s not, he can’t really afford to be a project. Lack of dominance when he was out there against scrubby opposition was pretty worrying.
There’s a term you hear in baseball prospect analysis, “carrying skill”, which refers to the one thing that you know the guy can for sure do at a pro level and that can “carry” his weaknesses giving them time to develop and putting a floor on his value in the meantime. For IQ the carrying skill is his shooting and that looks legit. I’m very worried that Obi lacks a carrying skill right now. What’s the one thing you look at him and say, “he for sure does this at a good NBA level”? Doing cool dunks when there’s nobody near you doesn’t count.
Yeah I kind of feel the same way about Obi so far, but it’s obviously early.
In the last preseason game he made a really quick baseline move and a nice finish, so I guess what I’m hoping is that he’s got a super quick first step that will get him to the basket and also draw fouls. Sort of what Amare used to do if we want to stay with that comparison.
And he definitely has to make his 3 pointers at a better clip.
let’s make this clear…. i was being accused of bias and i don’t take that lightly… that comment was relatively harmless relative to that and there was no malice intended… if it wasn’t i’ll apologize… but i never instigate here….
the only reason i’m part of any conflict is that ppl seem to think that they are entitled to being right and have a hard time having their opinions challenged and they are overly sensitive about their fantasies getting poked at…. i never get personal… i back everything i say and when i’m wrong i’m not shy about it either…
is it really a crime against humanity that the 2 preseason games may not be indicative of quickley’s true skill level? it seems so!
And that’s why i said all i needed to say, and now i let others speak their minds.
Oh, and by the way, the thread was about RJ, which most of us are also very hopeful right now, so you can go for your optimistic side and tell us what you think he’ll do this season. I for sure, would like to read it, as i’m always trying to find optimism wherever i can, which with the Knicks has been a very challenging task in the past years, but thank God we seem to be turning the corner…
With Obi Toppin, he was a 5 at Dayton who benefitted from the spacing on court, and now he’s a 4 who has to be the spacing. That’s a really big difference in roles if we’re being honest, and now we have to wait and see if he can adjust to his new role against the best athletes in the world.
With Immanuel Quickley, I actually hadn’t considered this and I think it’s a good point.
Maybe we did get lucky with IQ. Something else along these lines would be how connected William Wesley and Kenny Payne had to be with various scouts and front offices around the NBA, and how losing those two sources could have affected the scouting of Immanuel Quickley in a year like 2020 where you can’t do in person meetings or workouts. Maybe he would have blown the doors off the NCAA tournament on a team that had 3 NBA players and got drafted 14 overall to Boston or 13 overall to New Orleans. I personally get the sense that he’s a good bet to be a 3&D starter level point guard as long as you pair him with a ball-dominant wing like Doncic, Simmons, and Harden. Obviously getting a guy like Cade Cunningham to pair with him would be great, but even a player like James Bouknight or Joshua Christopher make a lot of long term sense to play with him and RJ Barrett on the perimeter.
if we judged obi by the first preseason game then we would have a wildly different one than having all 4….
the preseason not mattering also applies the other way…. obi hopefully should not be shooting 8 three’s …or whatever it was… in any game this season…. but the early returns shows roughly what he might be… he’s probably going to depend a lot on others to generate offense for him and his defense needs a lot of work.. namely the steals and blocks…. we knew that going in and preseason wasn’t going to change that anyway…
same with rj… his 2p performance has been real good but a lot of that has been driven by transition buckets… if you want to be optimistic… his free throws are competition agnostic and probably a true signal that he’s turned the corner there… he’s been hot from midrange also and is looking to pass more on his drives to the basket… those are exactly the improvements he needed so there’s more meat here to be optimistic about…
and rj should be the focus… if he figured out his free throws .. say 70-75%… and his 2p shooting is closer to 47-48… he would be a solid actual nba starter .. and doing that at age 20 would put him on a trajectory for a few all star appearances if he made more improvement the following years…. that’s a huge deal and that means more for us than anyone on this roster….
The one takeaway from this weekend is that I’d much rather have spent the #25 on IQ than the #5 on Darius Garland.
Either IQ will be very good or Darius Garland really sucks… maybe some column A and some column B.
As to people who keep saying “IQ says he can play point and SEC player of the year”. Every combo guard and even lots of SGs & SFs say they can run the point, most can’t. Maybe IQ can, but him saying so doesn’t move the needle. It’s a standard line from self-marketing leading into the draft. As for the SEC award, there’s a lot of very unimpressive names on the list. By itself, I wouldn’t give the award much weight unless there’s some really impressive prospects he won it over.
See? Now we’re in agreement! 🙂
I’ve expressed my thoughts on RJ previously, but I’ll reiterate them since this thread talks a bit about RJ:
I did not like RJ in the draft. This is me and not the numbers or scouts, who I normally defer to.
RJ last year & at Duke needed the ball in his hands and forced a lot of drives against a set defense. He got away with it at Duke but struggled in his rookie year.
In the preseason he’s mostly eschewed driving against a set defense, only 2 or 3 instances come to mind. I don’t think he looked great on those drives, but I’m not a scout/video analyst. He still manages to make the right read and pass out, but I think his passes look a little erratic.
In preseason he’s managed to score on breaks, cuts, and drives against off balance defenders. I love this because (1) it’s the game of a 2nd/3rd option that he projects to be, & (2) shows a lot of maturity and growth.
RJ probably doesn’t look as good against good teams, but letting the offense come to him will improve his efficiency greatly. Meanwhile, he can keep working on his drives against a set defense.
I’d guess he ends the year around .510-.520 TS% which is encouraging progress from a young 2nd year player.
I rarely post here but do check in most days to follow the conversation. Although my memory is not as good as it once was, I cannot recall having seeen that viewpoint expressed by the “many.” A couple of posters have indeed gone on the record as saying that IQ’s showing against the dregs of the Cavs roster was indicative of his true skill level. But they’re a tiny minority.
I think a more accurate characterization of the overall response to IQ’s preseason is pleasantly surprised. He was a player that was not on most NBA fan radars prior to the draft so many did not have much in the way of first hand observation of his game. Most of the scouting reports painted him as strictly a 3 and D guy. The consensus here was if that he was not much more than that, then he was badly overdrafted at 25. When his preseason showing suggested that he might possess a much more diverse skill set than originally thought – well, that caught a lot of people by surprise. Knick fans have grown so used to overallocating choice assets to acquire middling production, that we tend toward overexuberance when it apears that the opposite may have happened. If nothing else, IQ has at least given a perpetually gloomy fanbase a glimmer of hope – something we don’t get a lot of up in here. If that hope eventually winds up slashed to tatters by Dolan’s Razor, at least we’ll always have the Cavs game.
So those are the only 2 choices? What about:
“How many people are far less concerned about him being a reach at #25?”
“How many people would trade him straight up for _______________? (insert name of player you would have picked at #25)
“How many people are excited about what they saw in preseason and the legitimate possibility (not certainty of high probability) that it’s for real?”
“How many minutes do you predict that Quickley will average this year?”
“How many games do you think Quickley will start this year?”
“What per 36 box score stats do you think Quickley will put up this year?”
Stuff like that is a lot more interesting than the pissing contest you seem to want to engage in.
This is a fun one. After two preseason games of Quicksanity against one of the league’s worst teams, who would trade Quickley for Malachi Flynn? For Desmond Bane? For Tyrell Terry?
there’s no pissing contest that ppl haven’t themselves wanted to involve me in….
it’s a harmless question i’m asking so we know where everyone stands and to prove that i’m not talking out of my ass that there aren’t a ton of ppl who are putting a lot of weight on these two preseason games….
you can avoid answering those questions like you seem to generally do…. i know where you stand.. i’m more curious about others so we can revisit this at some point to see how it’s evolved ….
and the fact that you think we should be asking these questions after two preseason games is really indicative of the reactionary attitude…
i know it’s been a long time since we’ve seen games but it’s still preseason …. theo maledon actually has put up better numbers than quickley… should we trade him for quickley? what about anthony edwards?
ya think?
I noticed that passing thing too, particularly on that one inside pass that Mitch looked like he was about to fumble but threw down for the dunk despite not having complete control of the ball! I hope RJ can continue to tune that up, because turning into a guy who can get 4 to 5 assists per game from the 3 will unlock a lot more out of him and the team. To be able to run an effective PnR with Mitch can be the thing nightmares are made out of – for the opposing team… not us (for once).
My read is most people like what they saw from Quickley but understand there’s a very long way to go, but every now and then you have someone saying something like “he is definitely better than Elfrid Payton, right now.” That is highly unlikely to be true. Djphan, you could probably do a better job of distinguishing the camps here.
I didn’t particularly like Avdija in the draft (his shooting stats were bad and nothing really stood out) and am not going to let a few decent preseason games move me off that. If he hit 3/11 instead of 5/11 from 3 in the preseason the conversation would be a lot different.
I was surprised by how quiet Obi was in the preseason, especially coming from Dayton where he was basically an offensive scheme unto himself. There’s obviously something to be said for not forcing things and am glad he’s not inclined to do so, but when you draft a 22 year old in the lottery you hope for more immediate impact. I thought his handle looked decent and bodes well for a face-up game against less mobile 4/5s. I’d like to see him in some lineups in which he’s a focal point of sorts because his fit with the team isn’t very clear if he isn’t a high usage/high efficiency scorer.
I love me some Count de Pennies.
Nice. Yeah, I’m in Israel, Tel Aviv. Politics is awful, coronavirus is handled with Trump level efficiency and everyone is at each other’s throats. But the weather is 20s and sunshine day after day after day, so as my countrymen say no complaints.
The thing is, DJ, when you go to the knickerblogger page description it says three things.
Statistical Analysis. Humor. Knicks.
So when you needlessly criticize people for being pollyannas, you’re ignoring the second and third parts of this blog in favor of the first. Yes, Knickerblogger is a place where Knicks fans can rationally discuss the knicks using stats to defend their arguments. Reading and commenting on this blog over the years has made me a far more intelligent Knicks fan. But I’m still a knicks fan. And we’ve had little reason to be happy or hopeful the last 20 years. So immediately throwing water on people for being excited that their late first round draft pick might be good…you’re gonna get grief about that.
HUMOR. KNICKS. That’s two thirds of the description of this place. It ain’t ALL about rational statistics.
that’s why i asked the question… ppl think i’m misinterpeting… i don’t think i am and it doesn’t seem like i am but if ppl want to clarify they can do so…
i understand there’s a contingent that like what they saw but have reasonable expectations…. i said good things about him too… i’m certainly not immune… i just do not let preseason games sway me too much…
and that’s generally been the case on this board… we’ve had rookies before that showed out in preseason… rj was an example last year and it still took a hot first 10 games to finally say that they thought he was the future… knox was another one…
but it seems like with the pandemic and so much time in between games everyone is just hyper sensitive about what they are seeing and they are super entrenched on this in particular… even so far as accusing ppl of bias for disagreeing….
i don’t agree with that… and i think folks need to just chill out… if IQ is the worst player in the nba it’s not the end of the world…. and my whole world isn’t going ot get crushed if he turns into an all star….
“..and i think folks need to just chill out..”
you should take your own advice…it seems like you’re the one with their (no pun intended) knickers all bunched up…
so this is what i don’t get…. this is the second time i’m being accused of throwing cold water.. what is up with that?
what do you think i’m actually saying? is this like your playhouse or something that you want to write about knick fanfic on this board? do you think i’m throwing cold water on that? i’m preventing you from having fun is that it?
i don’t understand… do ppl just want to turn this board into reddit and p&t? would ppl prefer that because we can just turn this into memes all day if that’s what this is about…
I really liked Terry and Bane. I also liked Madelon. Didn’t evaluate Flynn very much, so would be reluctant to jump on his bandwagon but he’s been very impressive. Yet at the risk of being a poster boy for THCJ’s endowment effect rack, I’ll keep Door #1. Part of what I want in a #25 pick (or any Knick player for that matter) is rootability. Quickley just seems like a kid who is very easy to root for. He’s just the right amount of confident to push a little bit into the cocky zone, seems unfazed by the big moment, seems reasonably undeferential to veterans, and has displayed some leadership, high b-ball IQ, and enough 2-way skill and savvy to envision a favorable outcome for the gym rat that he’s purported to be. Just the shooting alone seems very for real and tantalizing. I like what I learned from his synergy numbers in college. I like his improvement arc last year. I like the way he said that he’s been an underdog his whole life so it’s nothing new for him.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure we outscore our opponents by like 60 points if we had replaced him in those two preseason games with any of those guys. There’s no way to prove or disprove that, but it was really a joy to watch the way the team played when he was at the helm.
Maybe he runs into a brick wall and goes all Jimmer Fredette once the games mean something. But I’m going to bask in the “lightening in a bottle” feel that I have about him until the bubble bursts.
really? i think you should read these posts again then.. because ppl seem to take great offense to throwing cold water all over their quickley parade….
it’s 2 preseason games people! we’re all still here the world hasn’t ended and there will be more games to play! this shouldn’t be earthshattering news yet this grates at ppl so much…
why oh why?
And folks around here know that I was out on fan (and my own) faves Jeremy Lin, Iman Shumpert, Landry Fields, Steve Novak, and Willy Hernangomez, and Frank Ntilikina earlier than many, if not most or all here. You won’t have to worry about me persistently defending how great he will be someday if he crashes and burns in coming months and years.
Hey Knicks fan not in NJ, one question i’ve been thinking to ask you, but always forgot (lost in the IQ arguments :P) – Are the Rockets still banned in China? And what about the 76ers (if they kept track on the “perpetrator”)?
Would be funny if the guy that sparked all that nonsense* isn’t banned, but his old team still is.
* – i say nonsense because Morey was totally right in what he said.
The endowment effect, such as it is (*), is a big part of sports fandom. There’s no need to apologize for it, or to turn sports fandom and commentary into a never ending set of “analyses” and “projections.”
(*) The Knicks have possessed Elfrid Payton and Julius Randle for a full season plus, and I’d give them up for another team’s spicy bag of chips. So it doesn’t really apply here in any serious sense. But there’s certainly a sense in which sports fans tend to want to see their home-grown guys make good and there’s no need to apologize for that in the least.
It’s not a matter of probabilities. And he is better than Elfrid Payton right now. Elfrid Payton doesn’t have close to his skillset and his skillset is more usable in the game of basketball.
The floor is a mosh pit when Elfrid Payton is in the game. An observer would have to be blind not to see the difference between that and when Quickley is running the 1. The difference is massive. The concept of sample size is barely even applicable to something like that. Elfrid Payton is incapable of having as good an effect on a basketball game and basketball team as IQ has shown. He doesn’t have the basketball skills to do it.
I don’t know that the two have to be separated.
He is more of a point guard than I knew when the Knicks drafted him. I know that he has a lot of room to grow but when I look at point guard skills, more boxes are checked for IQ than Elfrid. Both can organize the flow. Both tend to keep their dribble and their in-the-paint capabilities are similar. They both can see the open man and make the pass. They both play decent defense. Maybe Elfrid does some things slightly better but on the whole, there’s not much difference there. But Quickly can shoot from outside and he knows how to draw fouls and he is almost automatic hitting foul shots. Those three differences are huge and elevate him over Payton by a long stretch.
I think Quickly needs to get significantly stronger and gain 15-20 lbs of muscles. He does not have great lateral motion to keep up with speedy point guards in the pick and roll. He needs to hone a Walt Frazier type head fake in the post.
Is Quickly an all-star? No. Is he a top-25 point guard? I’m thinking that’s just about right. Is that better than Elfrid? Yeah, by about 15 spots.
so does anyone still think there aren’t many ppl with unreasonable expectations out here from two preseason games or have i made my point?
or have i made my point?
point point point
Elfrid being bad doesn’t make Quickley good. IQ has a lot of things to work on, as all rookies do. Maybe potentially he will be better than Payton, but you’ll see after we play IND, PHI and MIL that he’s not better than him (or any NBA-level PG) at this time. He’s gonna brick lots of floaters, get trapped into turnovers, get run over, shaked and baked, and torched from 3 (let the 4-point plays begin!) by opposing guards. If you expect that he’s gonna step on an NBA floor against a quality opponent and even hold his own, I got a bridge to sell you.
And even if he looks great when he catches some unsuspecting teams off guard, he hasn’t been scouted yet. He will need to make lots of adjustments to be as successful the second time around, after teams have game-planned for him. See: Jeremy Lin.
However, it’s possible that he “looks” better than Payton on enough possessions to not give a shit about who’s better right now. And it’s also possible that he’s a quick learner and that after 20-30 games he is less prone to getting okey-doked and rooked by savvy vets who just love to school overhyped rookies. The Kid’s got moxey and isn’t gonna back down. That’s enough for now.
63 minutes in preseason tells us everything we need to know
namely that the eyetest still got some of you under its hex
I mean, you could drop it as well dude.
Seems a lot like the teams were scouting the Knicks in the exhibition season — thus the zone. Thus the double team jumps of DSJ as soon as he crossed the timeline. Etc.
Yeah, its preseason and yeah the Cavs aren’t great, but people are acting as if somehow the Cavs weren’t even trying or something. Sexton and Garland had no interest in schooling Quickley? Seems a bit of a stretch. They played a bunch of stiffs in the late third and fourth quarter because the Knicks blew them out of the building and by then Quickley was pretty much out of the game anyway. And said stiffs were up 17 late in the third against Payton/Randle.
I watch basketball with my eyes, so yes, I believe in the eye test sometimes.
I’m just excited. That’s all. I’ve made some bold and bad predictions in the past and I’m not ashamed of them.
Again, Humor. Knicks. that’s 2/3 of the description of this blog. It’s not ALL supposed to be rational discussions about stats. We’re on month 9 of a brutal lockdown. LET ME HAVE IMMANUEL QUICKLEY. When he falls back down to earth, then you can run it in. But this is MY MOMENT and YOU WILL NOT TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME!!!
If you know what you’re doing, one or two possessions can tell you a lot. Thus, the swish floater on his very first touch in Detroit.
This isn’t baseball. If LeBron James is playing at Rucker Park, I don’t need to see 50 games before I’m able to tell anything about him.
so what did the eyetest tell you about frank?
There are days on here where I think a lot about this bit of wisdom courtesy of Raylan Givens.
Haha, remember when Brandon Jennings scored 55 points in his 7th NBA game and went on to shoot .475 TS%, ranked 191st of 192 qualified players? I wonder what the eyetest would have told you then.
The only thing I disagree with is “unreasonable” because ….
Right, except literally no one here is basing anything on the pointz Quickley scored.
Brilliant! And appropriate!
Dude, I just brought that up like yesterday. Put the ____ down and pay attention.
PS a Brandon Jennings that could shoot 40% from 3 wouldn’t be a terrible outcome at #25
what i find interesting though djphan – is why now???
after so many years of simply stating your thoughts/feelings on draft stuff and knick stuff – why now the need to engage?
of all the different types of engagement – why choose an adversarial approach?
i wonder what changed for you, to bring on this new you…i don’t intend to judge your communications style – that’s your choice, i’m just curious as to what in your life may have prompted this change in your behavior…
not to be weird or anything, it’s just interesting…
I’m really loving the Warriors subreddit right now. Lots of posts about how this year is the year that Andrew Wiggins finally puts it together. After five years of bandwagoning around the best basketball team on earth, you really love to see it.
But I’m not sure it’s any worse than taking 63 minutes of preseason time, 55 of those against a 15-deep team that won <30% of its games last year, and projecting an NBA career out of it. Total fucking madness. But hey, that's just my reductionist perspective. Could be some all-star games in Quickley's future, especially if he gets his PER and FG% up.
April 11th, 2018. Cleveland, OH —
On the second night of a back-to-back set with the Cleveland Cavaliers, 19 year old Frank Ntilikina scores 16 points, dishes out 4 assists, grabs 4 rebounds, nabs 3 steals, and drains 2 three-pointers against a Cavs team led in minutes by Cedi Osman, John Holland, London Perrantes, and Ante Žiži?.
This performance inspires thousands of pages of vigorous discussion, despite it taking over two years for Frank to match his game score from that day.
Here in New York, putting the cart in front of the horse is a big part of what we do. And the more quickley we can do it, the better.
You don’t have the tools or skills to do that kind of thing. Doesn’t mean other people don’t.
What typically happens in those situations, assuming amateur basketball analysis is worth the effort, is that people try to gain the skills they don’t have and add them to whatever skills they do have. You typically won’t find people saying things like, “My limited niche skills are the only ones that matter.” But again, this basketball fandom stuff is just a pastime, nothing more. If the Immanuel Quickley thing doesn’t work out, I have plenty to fall back on and will be fine don’t worry lol.
teach me, senpai
Even though the internet means we can find data to add to the discussions and can eavesdrop on counterpart bars in San Francisco, New Orleans, Dallas, Detroit, this is still the functional equivalent of a bunch of chuckleheads sitting around a sports bar arguing. I’ve kind of always found it a bit silly to make anything more of it than that and there’s no reason to — arguing about sports is a noble pastime.
I didn’t research these players too in-depth, but I would certainly have drafted all of them over IQ.
I’d still flip IQ for any of them because I don’t put much weight on preseason performance, especially given it was the injury-riddled Cavs & All-Center Pistons who are the 2 most likely to give us a run for preferential Cade lotto odds.
I will say that I’d be a lot less comfortable with those trades today than I was a week ago and that’s a good thing.
Bookmark this: The, frankly, quick backcourt tandem of Frank and Quickley will lead us to not one but FOUR NBA championships while collecting 37 total all-star appearances and 4 MVPs… and they’ll both do it without missing a single game for the rest of their careers. I have been told this by a super-secret statistical model — the same one that predicted Hitler, COVID-19, and Adam Sandler — which I cannot share. Just trust me.
As I’ve said before, I’m all aboard the Quickley train. Not saying he’s going to be a All-Star after 2 preseason games, but there’s something there that we haven’t seen in a long time. And he’s the product of the kind of “market inefficiency” the Knicks look like they’re tapping into so that they can more accurately sift through mid/late 1st round talent. With our draft luck, that’s arguably more important than hoping for a top-3 pick.
djphan, humor me on this next part: I’m a part-timer on here who doesn’t have the intellectual patience to break down and dictate posts full of advance stat info like the dedicated full-timers here. As (arguably) the first one to be on board with his selection, I will take all responsibility for IQ stanning if he fizzles out. Most of us have our one ultimately underwhelming Knick player who we’ve staked our claim to, so IQ is my turn to shit or get off the pot.
Don’t lash out at the full timers 🙂 . Please, blame me. Give me that smoke. Trust me, I’m used to it: as yall heard me say, I get heckled and trolled every week by my die-hard Lakers-#lolKnicks-fan-club-coworkers, in which my supervisor is local chapter president.
ahahahahahahahahahah we talking about him starring in a Palme d’Or-nominated film, or Jack and Jill?
Yeah dude, me too. I’m excited to see him prove himself. I sure as hell don’t expect much out of Knox and Frank, so I will be optimistic until I see him do some shit against quality NBA talent, at which point I can be a realist.
geo..you must have missed the frank, knox and kp arguments over the years… things got heated then too…. but even in my arguments with ted nelson and other renowned kb trolls i never had to resort to putdowns and what not because we generally kept it about the topic…. for whatever reason that’s changed….
it’s important to respect each other … that’s my #1 rule that i follow everywhere i go… you don’t have to earn my respect you just get it right off the bat… but i will absolutely defend myself …. nothing has changed in that regard but for whatever reason ppl lash out if it’s not their truman show…. so i will reciprocate but i will never instigate… you can trust me whenever i say that because there’s not enough time in the world to spend it being nasty to each other all the time…. but if i have to spend a whole day like i had to with Z to make a point so i can make the rest of my time here enjoyable… i will…. but that’s more an investment than actual animosity….
Can I take Flynn AND IQ?
I don’t think we have that much more information than we did during the draft but I am a believer even small samples matter. You have to bump IQ up a tiny bit based on the extra data we have.
I’d still take Flynn straight up I think. Don’t have a strong opinion on other guys. Terry’s dinosaur arms scares me. People love Bane but I don’t think he’s a guy I can obsess over.
Zach Lowe’s preview is up; Knicks are in his dregs of the dregs tier with the Thunder, Cavs, and Pistons. Didn’t realize he was a Frankophile:
He put the “Every single one” in italics. Probably the right move.
I like djphan, and I like Z-Man, and I see where they’re both coming from. I dunno maybe I’m wrong but Z-Man is pure New York, not shy about giving his opinions. So he runs into beef with people here from time to time, myself included. But that’s part of his charm. I like dj’s takes, he has a unique perspective here and also seems like a cool dude.
I don’t think the two of them are miles apart here, and I don’t really fully see the controversy. IQ looks like a nice player, the sample size is small, we’re justified to be excited but let’s not get carried away. Seems pretty straightforward.
i think i get it djphan, and, i totally understand E’s point:
i like that you’ve chosen to engage more…not much fun in a whole bunch of people sitting around and agreeing with each other, that gets pretty stale pretty fast…
+1 on all fronts.
Have you done the “debunking” of the idea that Mitch and the team were significantly better last year with Payton on the floor yet, or are we still waiting on that one? You told me it had been done many times before so it really shouldn’t take long!
When Brandon Jennings scored 55 points was it preordained that he would eventually become a bad PG?
I guess my point is that stats tell you the story AFTER the story has been told. Who’s to say if Brandon Jennings kept his nose to the grind and worked his tail off he wouldn’t have become a great PG?
Once a player gets to this level, a huge amount of their progress and success is based on how hard they continue to work and how much of a student of a game they are (their basketball IQ if you will 🙂
So its easy to say “oh haha Brandon Jennings was good at the beginning but then he sucked” and use that as some sort of proof about something but it actually isn’t proof of anything.
I’m not trying to dismiss stats or say the sample size doesn’t matter. Obviously the larger the sample size, the more the stats tell you the story because there are more chapters to it. But at this point in the game….the small sample size, the eye test, etc…that is what you are basing your hopes on with young players.
I like this quote. I certainly get caught up in arguments on KB at times and hold onto them beyond where the analysis ends and a little too far into the realm of the personal.
I like the posters on this forum even if I disagree with them on certain issues in strong words. Oftentimes I’ll disagree with one poster and turn around and support them on a different issue.
Arguments are fruitful at times because they can turn up new stats, facts, or arguments that I value in assessing the Knicks.
I wouldn’t know about Quickley’s excellent synergy numbers without (I think it was) Z-man and I’d know less about statistical draft models and Weiland without DJPhan.
The real conflict here seems to turn on the question of how to evaluate evidence that holds intuitive value but doesn’t have research backed evidence. Often, the intuitively meaningful evidence turns to dust upon further inspection across appropriate sample size. This seems to be DJPhan’s view. Z-man is usually more ready than the average KB poster to use intuitively meaningful evidence prior to any affirming or contrary scientific evidence.
There’s no correct view here and reasonable people can disagree. It simply turns on an innate penchant for what type of error you’re willing to make. Error in making too quick a judgment only to find out later that you’re wrong or error in waiting too long only to find out that the intuition was correct.
Regardless, both models are prone to error and if one of you is wrong in this instance it’s not a condemnation of you or your model.
These are human beings, not random number generators.
All of it.
Then it’s agreed. We ban them both.
dj and Z-man are valuable members of this community. If the animus goes above a 7, y’all need to drop some tincture and take a walk.
E, on the other hand, can go right back to the G League (r/nyknicks)
The only thing the two preseason games really told me was that IQ was a PG. It was too small of a sample to tell me if he was a good one or if he’ll have the athleticism to overcome legit NBA defenses but it did tell me that for better or worse he is an actual PG. That is enough to get me to want him to start. Not because he is better than Payton but because I want us to start and play long-term prospects more than one-year rentals.
Winning and losing does not matter this year, in fact losing is probably better in the long-term. So I say march all of our young prospects out there for lots of minutes until it becomes clear they have no future with this team. Don’t be stupid and put together unbalanced lineups but play the kids as much as possible, the outcome be damned.
As for IQ specifically, he has the bonus of being a better fit playstyle-wise with Randle, RJ, and Robinson than Payton so even more reason to start him. If he’s terrible you can always move him to the bench in a month or so.
Djphan I feel like you are mainly fighting strawmen at this point. Most of us seem cautiously optimistic about IQ not convinced he will be good, many of us want him to start but not because he is better than Payton but more because he is more interesting and at the end of the day this is entertainment.
We had 5 guys shoot over 35%?!? That surprises me. Can anyone name them without looking it up?
It’s probably not too hard. But off the top:
Morris is the obvious one. Pretty sure Portis did. Idk after that, did Wayne Ellington’s late hot streak get him there?
So who’s keeping the running tally of RJ’s TS% against the Iggy Line?
Morris, Dotson, Trier, Ellington, Portis.
lmao
We should have a Knickerblogger magic 8-ball that we ask all contentious questions and pin a link to its answers somewhere on the front page. I feel like we might get a kick out of that.
Somehow it’s told us to ‘ask tomorrow’ about Frank everyday for 4 consecutive years.
Okay, yeah not that hard. Should have thought about it for more than 5 seconds.
Spaced on Dotson who is pretty obvious. Forgot Trier existed for a minute. Any news on him signing somewhere?
Anyways, the truth isn’t as bad as it sounds in the article. Most those guys didn’t play meaningful minutes and Portis never shot enough 3s. Also, just couldn’t care less about Portis.
Morris is the only guy we really need to replace.
Can we talk about Zion?
https://youtu.be/ib4GSAGmBnQ?t=42
How the actual fuck? Look at where he starts that shot!
Kind of weird that Trier hasn’t gotten a gig. Gotta be something going on behind the scenes with that dude.
wow.. didn’t anticipate all the kind words.. but thanks guys….
this really shouldn’t be all that controversial… and this particular discussion today wasn’t all that heated… but i’m surprised it got the reaction it got… this whole thing has been really confusing for me … and no this is not just strawmen we’re dealing with here…
the good news is that we’ll have real games to talk about instead of the idea of all this…
Happy to talk about Zion rather than doing my nattering nabob routine. Time will tell.
He really is amazing with how he finishes. Everything they said in those clips. Second leap is just phenomenal, kind of like Mitch. Overall, his ability to find seams in the paint when it’s packed is probably the most surprising thing about Zion for me. I mean, he’s a huge human being but he still manages to slither through everyone.
Also, the magic 8 ball is funny. “THE EAST IS BIG MAN” is definitely on there.
Woj:
That is a lot of scratch for Luke Kennard, and speaks to just how valuable wing shooting has become in this league. Wow. The class of 21 continues to shrink. And Zach Lowe points this out:
All is well in Houston!
– –
Salman Ali @SalmanAliNBA:
James Harden on if he feels better about Houston’s situation than before he arrived in training camp: “Next question.”
That seems nuts and I didn’t really think Kuzma was worth what he got either, but what do I know.
Obviously shooting is valuable but people seem to by trying really hard to get it from a big wing rather than jist cheaping out with a shooting guard.
Just seems like there should be cheaper ways to win than paying those guys that kind of dough.
I like Kennard better than Kuzma I guess. Maybe they both improve from here.
Yeah, that’s an insane contract for Kennard. I typed out this lengthy thing about the Bird Rights trap and how he even though he’s not a great player he was going to have them over a barrel next summer because they had no avenues to replace him, and then I remembered he wasn’t even going to be unrestricted next summer. He’s going into RFA so they could always keep him, it’s just a matter of price point. Luke Kennard has never posted a positive BPM by the way and he can’t stay healthy. I guess to Ballmer it might as well be Monopoly money, but sheesh.
Clippers and Lakers are so capped out that it makes sense for them to overpay on Bird rights and on retaining complementary pieces. Kennard on the Knicks or Wizards or Cavs would make no sense at all, even at $40M over four. On the Clippers, he saves them from having to use MLE or minimum money on washed-up ring chasers or unproven young players.
He’s 24 and will likely improve a bit, but “value” is a very different proposition when a seven-game CSF loss is considered a major disappointment. There is no sense in being cheap when you plan on having Kawhi and George there for the remainder of their primes.
Yeah, I’m with Jowles. The Clips are eventually going to be in cap/asset hell. But they have George for a while, and they have Kawhi for at least another season (and probably several more past that). They need to go for it now. Kennard is better than anyone they could sign for the mid-level next summer.
In other news, Malik Beasley made a plea deal where he’ll serve house arrest after the season is over. Nice work if you can afford to get it…
Stuff like this is why I say Zion is a 6’6″ & 280lb Dwyane Wade, which is ridiculous and probably not at all accurate. But it definitely conveys his ability to make a devastating crossover, blowing by his defender, and being able to finish at the rim no matter what.
Oh I mean they’re obviously almost completely priced into keeping him (as are the Lakers with Kuzma), but what risk are they mitigating by giving him this contract now? Was the ceiling for Kennard in RFA really significantly higher than this? If he has a really good year maybe he gets like 4/80? But if he has another injury plagued meh season he could easily get squeezed in RFA I think. And if Kawhi leaves for whatever reason next summer (unlikely but still) you’re going to really regret going in on this. I just don’t see what you’re getting from the team side doing a deal like this vs. making the guy prove it and going through the RFA process.
Once you’re over the cap, the practice of keeping down salaries isn’t useful (if your owner doesn’t care about his bottom line).
This may actually give them more flexibility in the future because they can trade Kennard for anyone making less money (and attach some picks). If you pay Kennard $8M per year it’s difficult to trade him for a better player making $13M.
Also, this is pretty much in line with the salaries of shooters signed this offseason of Bertans, Morris, Harris, and Beasley.
I think this means Kawhi is a lock to re-sign with the Clippers, but as i said before to get the maximum money he must wait for next summer (that’s when he reaches 10y experience).
So the 2021 FA class is left with what? Oladipo?
Extensions flying in fast and furious. Jonathan Isaac at 4/80, and OG in Toronto at 4/72.
Rose is definitely going to be making a significant trade or two in the next year, because there just won’t be free agents of note for a while.
Teams like the Clippers and Lakers are not doing exact fair value calculations on the players they are adding now. They are in a position to win a title over the next couple of years. They are trying to find and keep the players that can help them get the job done. If they overpay a couple of players it’s no big deal as long as it enhances their shot at a title. Time passes as they are competing for those titles and those mild overpays slowly become meaningless when it’s time for a rebuild.
Even for a team like the Knicks, does it really matter if we are overpaying Randle, still have Noah on the books or were even still paying Hardaway, We are so far away from contention, having that extra space would be almost irrelevant because no superstar is coming to NY and by the time the kids are starting to peak all those contracts will be long gone.
Have we officially declined Frank and DSJ yet? Or does the disappearance of the free agent class mean the Knicks might take a flyer on one of them? I get the feeling that the team is equally meh on both even if Frank was much better last year.
Derrick White: 4/73.
Everyone is eyeing Olidipo to see if he’s back to 100%. He has expressed some interest in leaving the Pacers on occasion. He’d be a good fit for the Mavericks who are only one player away from serious contention, don’t need a #1 option, and could use some defense. If he’s 100% and serious about leaving, we don’t stand much of a chance against the Mavs unless we give up a lot because their rebuild is miles ahead of ours. Miami is in a similar position. You know the are looking to add someone to go along with Butler and Bam. They may have to part with Herro/Robinson or both.
Back on the Knicks, and on a less positive note about the preseason, KFS newsletter highlighted that we had 2 players on the Top6 of most minutes played. RJ was 3rd and Randle was 6th, and both are starters. None of the other 4 players on the Top6 are starters – Kuzma, Horton-Tucker, Gary Trent Jr, Jevon Carter.
Probably because we had a lot of injured/unavailable players, but still with Thibs past it’s better to keep an eye on this.
Does this make any sense?
That’s what I’ve been saying for awhile. Attitude aside, he has clear cut desirable NBA level skills. Attitude is not enough to keep him out of a job. IMO, something else is going on that we don’t know about.
So basically we’re now at the point where, if you’re at least a decent young player, you’re going to make $18 million a year. Wow, good for the NBA players.
Price of business is ^
All these deals seem incredible. I think I’d rather have a cheap veteran.
Derrick White? Wasnt there a great dunker with that name? This is clearly a different guy.
I honestly had never heard of him.
Timothy Olyphant is a national treasure.
Or it’s the summer of 2016 all over again. In one year we’ll see a lot of teams regretting this decisions like back then. We still have a guy on our books from that FA class…
There is something in between Quickley is “God” and whining every thread about moving up to get him. He’s a 21 year old kid coming into the NBA with an excellent FT% and 3p% in college (especially down the stretch of his college year) that was getting rave reviews from his coach about practice and then followed through on that in some pre season teams against scrubs. We don’t know where he actually is now, but we know we got a very good shooter and prospect with the 25th pick with the added bonus that despite his record in college where HE WAS ASKED to play off the ball, he’s pretty good with the ball in his hands too and could be our PG of the future. So you take it one day at a time, figure out where his is now, and give him a few years before the whining starts again if he has a few too many TOs or is making other rookie mistakes against the best teams. When you rebuild with kids, we are talking YEARS, not games.
In a period when a global pandemic is impacting revenue sharply and a dust up with the NBA’s communist friends in China is still hurting the bottom line too,
Shams: No extension for Lauri Markkanen and John Collins.
All of Atlanta’s moves have basically been, “Yeah, we’re not feeling John Collins” and Arturas Karnisovas also pretty clearly wants a gut renovation of the Bulls.
As expected, we didn’t extend neither of our guys.
– –
@KeithSmithNBA
13 non-extensions: L. Ball, L. Markkanen, F. Ntilikina, D. Smith, Z. Collins, M. Monk, J. Jackson, DJ Wilson, J. Collins, T. Ferguson, J. Allen, T. Bradly, J. Hart
I like Markkanen, but he’s been injured a lot also, right? If that’s the case, better stay away.
I’m not sure what the problems have been with this kid other than some injuries, but if Obi doesn’t look like he’s going to pan out as a stretch PF, Markkanen always looked the part of a pretty good stretch PF to me. He’s almost certainly at least a little better than his stats suggest with all the injuries interrupting his progress. He’s still young and can get a lot better.
These contract extensions seem pretty insane, also have no idea why Atlanta seems so against keeping John Collins. What am I missing there?
Stefan Bondy @SBondyNYDN: Knicks complete formality and have exercised contract options on RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox.
wow, what a turnaround for fultz…
John Collins can’t play defense at all. Like the second coming of David Lee. And Atlanta apparently doesn’t want to commit long-term to two offense-only players.
It’s getting like MLB…if you throw lefty and can get the ball over the plate…you’re good for 10mm a year…
Given the state of the free agent class I wouldn’t be surprised if John Collins winds up getting a rookie max anyway. Does the fact that he’s kind of a best-case outcome for Obi worry anybody now?
I’d take Collins and Markkanen in a heartbeat. Obviously health a bit of an issue with the latter. The FO should be reaching out to those teams about those guys now.
John Collins is only what, a year older than Obi? He’d probably fit well alongside Mitch, too, since he has legit three point shooting and is a strong rebounder. Probably not worth whatever it’d cost to nab him though.
Yikes, what would I do with all the free time?
head on nail sez ouch
now? this is why people were upset about the Obi selection on day 1.
What about a swap of Toppin for Collins straight up. Does Atlanta say yes? Would we do it?
Collins is better but Toppin is way cheaper and Atlanta would probably rather start Gallo anyway.
Cybersoze,
I haven’t tried to watch them so I asked a friend who likes them. He said “ They supposed to be broadcasted by Tencent, but I didn’t follow recently.”
It might have been strat that posted the stats, I found them interesting and possibly relevant.
Part of the fun of this site is that we all acknowledge (to varying degrees) that the “science” of player evaluation is so far from exact that “intuitively meaningful” evidence can at times fill cracks in the models out there. More and more FOs use advanced analytic and scouting models to make drafting decisions, but they fail time and time again, as do even the most accurate of them. And once we get out of the part of the draft when the data is less predictive, finding diamonds in the rough, and avoiding almost sure busts, becomes even that much less exact. I think my “card counting” analogy in Black Jack holds…there are the standard odds in a given general situation, and there are slivers of information that can shift the odds in one direction of the other. That’s why I’m reluctant to criticize Rose et. al. picking Quickley at #25. I don’t know what information they might have been privy to beyond the box score-based metrics, and whether they influenced the odds at a micro level. In other words, I don’t think you can make assumptions about the validity of a process without knowing what the process actually was…especially when one’s own process is on its face loaded with hidden bugs, as measured by paltry accuracy of the results it produces.
“I don’t think you can make assumptions about the validity of a process without knowing what the process actually was…especially when one’s own process is on its face loaded with hidden bugs, as measured by paltry accuracy of the results it produces.”
bingo…
how do you know it’s not that successful? like you look at a few picks that are off and assume that it’s garbage but it actually performs relatively well against nba gm’s… and i don’t have inside information on these guys either….
you THINK something else works better through intuition… that’s fine… but don’t pretend that it’s BETTER…. when you don’t KNOW… like when you say something SUCKS but work with something that’s probably worse and doesn’t even need too much work to prove to do so….
that is what we call talking out of your ass…. and with the quickley pick… we are appealing to authority based on zero evidence when the preponderance of the evidence tells us that it was a bad process …. there’s no inside information that covers for the the really bad 2pt% and defensive #s over 2 years… there just isn’t… you can’t hide that on the basketball court….
that MIGHT not end up mattering if he improves on a few things… but he’s not going to turn into michael jordan going to the basket or on defense… those are deficiencies that have been proven…. you dont’ need the box score to tell you that… and the synergy stats don’t overcome that since there is no evidence that they have predictive power….
join bobneptune in the comments section at FoxNews.com
I like what I’ve seen from Quickley. He flashes well. I also buy that incomplete college evaluations stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic are why such a seemingly talented guard slipped down in the draft as he was experiencing a breakthrough sophomore college year. Does this mean I accept his future All Star status as a self-evident fact? No. But it doesn’t even matter, to be honest. Right now he fits. If Quickley’s showing it in practice start the guy. He’s already outplayed his competition in the preseason. I seriously don’t know what he could’ve done different not to deserve the starting job. Why not put him out there with guys like Mitch and RJ who are part of our future core? Payton and Noel aren’t part of the future. Start the kids, play them together, and let the rest sort itself out.
Say what you want about Bob but i don’t see him commenting at Newsmax or OAN.
When is this season going to start already…
What am I missing on John Collins? He seems just like the kind of guy Atlanta should’ve extended. His metrics are very good, very good for just a 22 year old.
Tyronn Lue adding element of the Triangle Offense.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/clippers/story/2020-12-20/clippers-kawhi-leonard-triangle-offense-sets
“The new wrinkles Clippers coach Tyronn Lue added to the offense this season originated from the triangle offense and the ways in which Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan found high rates of success. Lue decided to employ “a few sets” from the triangle because Kawhi Leonard has the skills to operate in the pinch-post area like Bryant did with the Lakers and Jordan did with the Chicago Bulls. And Lue is using this because Leonard expressed a desire to perform in the triangle.”
That makes it the Spurs, Warriors, and now Clippers that still use aspects of the Triangle, but in NY it’s a relic. lmao
Sometimes it does. Other times you find out it actually hurts.
Hahaha. Djphan waiting poised for hours over his keyboard for Z-Man to show up before firing off all caps commentary and ‘talking out of your ass’ insults….
He’s a very bad defender and the Hawks are already all-in on a very bad defender in Trae Young. So they’d rather go with a good defender in the middle in Capela. And while Collins clearly can shoot, having him as a stretch four is a bit of a waste of his skills.
What does “relatively well” mean? My understanding is that it means “slightly less terrible.” And that’s in a GOOD year. In 2016 it meant “objectively horrible” against nba gm’s.
That doesn’t mean various models are not “useful.” Only that one should be reluctant to speak with any certainty about the merits of a process that diverges from the model, especially without knowledge of what went into the decision. You are on record saying that the process was bad no matter what the outcome with Quickley. I’m on record as saying let’s wait and see how things turn out before judging. So far, the early returns are that he may have been undervalued by your preferred model. Still way too early to tell who is right, but since you are already on record saying that no matter what happens, you are right and Rose is wrong, its hard to have a discussion with you. Why argue with someone whose mind is made up no matter what?
Again, we’ve already been through this with WP48 (rip) whose staunchest adherents would not even consider that there were vast areas of player production that were either ignored or exaggerated by the model. I’m sure that Synergy data would have gone a long way in patching up the gaping holes in Wins Produced if anyone had the time to exhume its rotting, stinking carcass. Turns out the intuition guys like me were on to something. (lol It also turns out that evaluations based on the ever-derided PER are closer to modernized models lile BPM and VORP than WP was! Blasphemy!)
The preponderance of evidence is that he was playing so well in practice, they took him off the bench and made him starter.
Then he got so much better he became the “go to” player on the team.
Then he was playing so well they made him SEC player of the year.
This is all for a team that is working very closely with the Knicks because of coaching connections and personal relationships.
At what point do you say, guess what, his overall stats aren’t as meaningful as is typically the case because this kid was improving in leaps and bounds as the season went on?
At what point do you believe him and his coaches when they say he was only playing off the ball because of the system they were running but he actually has some on ball PG skills?
Then he comes to camp and our coach say he’s one of the better shooters in the NBA right now and we haven’t even seen his best attribute yet.
Then we see those PG skills.
At what point do you say whatever system someone else was using to evaluate him was horse crap because it didn’t incorporate loads of very relevant information on where his skills were on the night we drafted him, but our management was almost certainly ware of all of it because of the KY connections?
Systems and models are fine, but GIGO. You have to be able read between the lines sometimes. This kid had/has some unique aspects to his story that required and still require some subjective analysis.
The problem is Capella couldn’t stay on the floor for Houston for defensive reasons. Mostly he couldn’t match up with GS but he’s not really a defensive anchor anyway. Way better than Collins yes, but I’d argue Collins is already better on offense than Capella and he’s still only 23. Collins is Amar’e reincarnated who hits two three a game. Are they going to try to trade him? Maybe if you can turn him into a good enough asset he’s worth letting go but to just let him walk? A 23 year old 20 and 10 guy who spreads the floor?
Oh, I’m sure they won’t just let him walk. He’ll still be a RFA next offseason. I just don’t think they want him longterm. I imagine they’ll try a sign and trade. It’s just a weird situation because Young is such a bad defender. How do you build a winner with two exceptionally bad defenders as part of your main group of guys? Is there any comparison to that? Of a team that succeeded with their two biggest guys both being terrible defenders?
that i have about 90% of the winshares accumulated even when i didn’t even include devin booker ….
my model isn’t even weiland’s model… we have two different boards so i have no idea what you think you’re criticizing….
and what were they onto? what does synergy stats tell you about a player? what about it is predictive? you still haven’t answered that….
it’s not just my model that was down on quickley… it was EVERY MODEL….. EVEN THE PURE EYETEST ones…. so if you want to criticize me.. you’re criticizing everything else and saying their garbage too….
you can put up your 2020 board even with the benefit of it being past preseason…. it’s time to put up or shutup …. until you do you are talking out of your ass and you don’t really belong in this discussion if you’re going to talk so much shit and not back it up….
As someone said, he’s essentially what we’re hoping Obi can become with probably less feel for passing. Also, as someone else said – he’d fit in a frontcourt combination with what we already have in Mitch and RJ. And, yeah, like Brian said, playing him as a stretch 4 would keep him farther away from the basket than his offensive game deserves in a way similar to how Thibs played KAT there in Minnesota.
Nash and Amare seems like the obvious comp to Young and Collins.
Only example that comes to mind is the D’Antoni Suns teams of the 2000s which had A’mare and Nash as their primary two players. The example is fitting to me because of the obvious comp between Collins and STAT. That team was good enough to win it all if the officiating wasn’t fucked against them in the playoffs.
Makes you wonder if Lloyd Pierce shouldn’t be worried that Mike D’Antoni is now available.
Yeah, but you don’t get great value in sign and trades. He’s probably worth more now given that he only makes 4m this year. If a team like the Lakers had anything left to offer he’d make a great pickup. What contender has first rounders left to trade?
Maybe Minnesota with Towns and Russell? They are trying to succeed but haven’t done so yet
First, win shares is a more robust cousin of wins produced, people here rarely refer to it any more. That you still do tells me you’re living in the past. Second, compared to what? A) you missed Devin Booker who has turned out to be one of the best players in that draft and who was ranked around where he was drafted in most mocks, and B) you didn’t say how the GMs did compared to you. And the top of your draft is either a train wreck or is aligned with chalk picks.
You are like the paper trader who would be an absolute disaster if ever entrusted with real money. It’s bad enough that your model would have passed over KP for Mudiay, WCS, and other stiffs. You left Booker totally off the board? How the fuck can you possibly explain that? I may be talking out of my ass, but you’re talking out of a stinking garbage dump of soiled diaper/dog waste bag/old newspaper metrics.
I truly believe that motivation, character, development and psychology play a huge role in the future of a professional athlete.
Excuse my doubts but i think that Predicting careers with precision based on juvenile stats and calling that process of ranking them as good or bad don’t seem so scientific to me.
The safest/more justified ranking according to yesterday’s info. Possibly.
The best way to predict future careers? Results don’t back this up.
and you are the tuesday morning qb complaining about all the ppl out there who are actually doing the work that you love criticizing but too afraid to handle….
you had a few people try to explain it to you….. how the fuck do you still not understand it?
No explaining needs to be done. The shitty record or your model speaks for itself. It clearly doesn’t pass the smell test, by a long shot.
lmao children pls
Anyway, on a lighter note. I finished Fargo Season 4. I think they should scrap the series now. It’s just repeating itself with little left to offer outside inside references to its own mythology and very little to offer in terms of Coenesque writing.
What did people think of The Mandalorian? Yeah, its basic. Yeah, the plots had a very serialized video game side-quest type feel. But I think there’s a core of good old-fashioned TV storytelling you used to see in the Western shows of old like Bonanza or Rawhide underlying this show. Favreau actually did more to expand and build the Star Wars universe than the last 5 movies in the franchise did all with a simple story about a bounty-hunter and a baby roaming the outer fringes of The Empire.
Seriously now if the best players of the league fall to number 15 (Kawhi/Freak) why bother to use the good process ?
To get Cody and Enes ?
Think about it
i think you may have hit on something there…
The only way this exchange gets redeemed is if one of them tells the other to drink bleach otherwise it’s completely f-ing boring and has ruined multiple threads.
Are we going to see the second coming of Bleachmas in here again?
My feelings about this beef are that I am now an old man who is prepared to forget about it if none of these whippersnappers remind me tmw….
🙂
you haven’t even tried.. so how do you know? you don’t like winshares? use synergy stats then! use bpm… use whatever you like… i’m still neck and neck… see for yourself since you’re so sure about it.. and you can tell everyone the results….here’s a newsflash.. my top 10 beat out nba gms by whatever metric you want to choose… you’re eye or smelltest is wrong…. when nba gm’s picked hezonja, johnson and kaminsky and i had turner, delon wright and christian wood… how do you think it’s going to perform?
this is what it’s like in the real world… ppl do things and make mistakes… and we learn.. and we discuss like adults…. that’s how it’s been done the last handful of years on this board and there’s been zero issue on any of these interactions until you decide you know better and that all of this is suddenly garbage….
you are out of your element…. you can’t claim models are inaccurate when you have no basis for what baseline of accuracy is…. you can’t trash models when you don’t have anything better to substantiate that claim…
you are talking out of your ass.. but you have an opportunity to prove me wrong… if you just do something about it… you can show me…. it’s not hard…
Sorry I brought up WP Jowles, let sleeping dogs lie…
And that’s the reason Collins and the Hawks didn’t reach an agreement.
Seems like John Collins acting as Alexis Colby here
i am dealing with a baby who just can’t seem to drop it…. so if you want to look at someone who keeps this going then you can look at the dude who was rehashing old arguments and targeting me after it was over and done with…..
Brings back traumatic memories of the final days of the KP saga – which sadly seem like a lifetime ago.
Did you read what you just wrote? If you had just dropped it 3 threads ago it’d be over- same goes for Z-man but at least he’s light years less self-righteous about it.
@cybersoze
At the moment, both Rockets and 76ers games are only allowed text streaming in China, no video live feed unless with VPN to reach offshore sources. SO for Knicks fan not in NJ, if the Knicks have games against them he’s in no luck as the box scores are there but names and stuff are in Chinese.
Thanks. And wow, that’s cold war type of behaviour… in 2020!?
See, I tried so hard not to make it personal. No worries, though, I won’t take the bait. Sounds like a wide range of posters expressed sentiments about your behavior today. Maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to it.
what are you talking about? the only reason we’re talking about it today is because someone thought i was talking about IQ…
that’s what started it… and i didn’t even mention it today…. so yes i am allowed to defend myself…. if ppl are going to trash everything i say yea i am going to be pretty self-righteous cause i haven’t done anything wrong….
ppl can’t seem to get over it…. i have no idea why…. it’s not like i said anything different than what silky or dred or anyone else says but it’s like i’m the only saying it….
go read for yourself and tell me it’s me ….
touche
#At the moment, both Rockets and 76ers games are only allowed text streaming in China#
How much does a Rockets or a Sixers TeamTextLeague Pass cost in China?
OG Anunoby got 4/72. Which I guess is fine. He took a step forward this year.
I guess this is just what you make in the NBA. Not a terrible gig.
then why did you bring it up and keep trashing what i’ve done with zero evidence? unprompted/… why?
why do you keep continuing this when it was over and done with ?
Will you two just make out already?
The question really is, would you take Flynn over Elfrid Payton?
yea i’m not going to take this and be accused of instigating… he needs to explain himself or it’ll never be over…. i’ve tried multiple times… i force him to apologize for attacking me multiple times… he apologizes yet continues this war against me…
i’ve dropped it multiple times… i’m happy to again but there is a continuing pattern here and it’s not coming from me….
Actually I responded to something that Early Bird said, starting with the words “Part of the fun of this site…”and didn’t refer to you or any of your posts, just discussed my own feelings about draft progniostication. You seemed to feel personbally attacked and responded by telling me that I was talking out of my ass. Meanwhile, like 10 different posters, even those on your side, basically asked what the fuck is wrong with you today? (geo in his kind, gentle way was saying just that.) And yet you keep right on playing the victim….unsuccessfully, I might add. I would think it would get embarassing after a while.
But don’t mind me, I’m just a baby talking out of his ass.
“and tell me it’s me ….”
It’s you.
25 posts so far in this thread. Go to bed. When you get up, read Geo’s excellent question to you from earlier.
I’d definitely take Flynn over Elf and I don’t even know that much about him.
I don’t know, I probably like Elf more than most. He’s my kind of flawed player. You have to appreciate a guy who can rack up triple doubles.
But, as has been said ad nauseam, this was a great time to take a few flyers on rookie guards to see if we could find one worth keeping. Halliburton and Flynn would have worked for me too, hell, those two and Quickley too if we liked him so much.
I did read it; I’ve been reading it for days. It’s both of you. You know what’s irrational? Making the same argument to the same person a dozen times and expecting a different result on the 13th. Just let it go.
Here’s the thing with Quickley… yes it’s 63 preseason minutes, but let’s be honest: 63 good preseason minutes ranks pretty high on the list of achievements we’ve had from Knicks draftees this decade.
I mean, the list has to be:
1. Mitchell Robinson
2. November Porzingis
3. Quickley’s 63 preseason minutes
4. Knox’s first summer league
everything else we’ve seen from everyone we’ve drafted has pretty much been shit.
yes and you were rehashing old arguments.. like why? you keep saying it’s inaccurate and it’s not true … and then you got personal….
just drop it…. and don’t accuse others of instigating when you get personal first… that’s literally all you have to do….
why is it so tough for you?
Had to login just to ask if there’s any way to mute the z-man/djphan thread? Jfc.
Any more teams looking to drop deadweight contracts for picks?
yea read so much of it that you missed my response….
brilliant…. what else should i do that you missed?
Nicos, respectfully, I really wasn’t that involved in today’s back-and-forth. My posts from previous days were referred to by a couple of other posters (JK47, tnfh, Early Bird to name 3. Early Bird said something specifically interesting about me and I responded directly to Early Bird with a general reference about draft models. I don’t know what I said that triggered him, but he started ranting about me talking out of my ass.
The thing is…
The whole HK thing seems only accomplishes to bring a tighter hold from China. Some of the movement leaders are in trail, and no one seems to hear anything about it any more.
The current situation is a compromise between the NBA, its partners in China, and the Chinese government.
NBA gets to stick to its words on supporting free speech. Tencent and others don’t want to enrage anyone, unless for the fans of the specific team who employed the “sinner”, tough luck. And the government shows its power, better not pointing fingers to local authorities if you wanna do business here.
And now nobody seems to want to change attitudes. Nobody wants to apologize for anything, or to make any move to make things different. So the stalemate most likely continues, probably until the first meeting between President Biden and Xi… or the first confrontment…
Friendly advice to djphan
Your passion for draft seems genuine and your info about players are interesting and valuable to this blog.
What seems to bother Zman, Me and possibly others i feel that has to do with your style of presenting “your model and your work”.
It seems slightly cocky and pretentious and evokes strange nervous reactions.
No need to present it as the unerring plan of NASA for lunar colonization.
Especially when the results are not always great.
After all it’s sports, fun, hobby, communication
No need to fight for ego pride shit
And sorry if i was hard or unfair
i’ve literally said there’s not one way to think about this… many times… i’ve never presented as one way to think about things ever…. i’ve done this for like 6 years on this board and it seems that the only times ppl get really hostile toward it have been with kp, frank and quickley…. nobody even bothers to comment about it any other time and i was totally fine with that…. i’m not here for recognition… i’ll take it over the grief i keep on getting over quickley….
that should tell you folks about why you guys are so bothered by what i’m saying….
I really appreciate your words joinone… hong kong and china in general is a tough subject to get a good hold of…
definitely feel for those folks in HK whom have had their whole world turned upside down…
Was Landry Fields’s rookie year this decade? That was pretty good. I’d probably shove it between November Porzingis and Quickley’s preseason.
#i was totally fine with that…. i’m not here for recognition… i’ll take it over the grief i keep on getting over quickley….
that should tell you folks about why you guys are so bothered by what i’m saying….#
I really think that A more humorous and less Defending approach on your fine hobby of ranking every year’s draft prospects would do miracles.
And also when you say that even if IQ turns out fine the process would still be bad don’t you feel that something’s “rotten” in the process and needs adjustments to justify/prognosticate the results better?
I apologize for re-igniting the discussion.
Anyways, we’ll have a whole new 48 minute sample to argue over soon.
i’m pretty sure i’ve predated you and i’ve never had a problem with it in the 6+ years i’ve posted here and about the draft specifically…. i’ve only had a specific problem with bob.. who kept maga trolling… ted nelson who was a troll in general… bron.. who was a P&tT lurker troll… and z… who was trolling me in a conversation he wasn’t even in involved in and obviously wanted to pick a fight… i think i’m doing ok if these are the type of ppl who have a problem with me…
for the sake of everyone i’m not going to answer… it’s been covered…i’m sorry… if you’re really curious you can search the many posts on this topic in the last week…. i have given a good explanation as well as some other posters….
Thanks for detailing, man. For me, it’s a very intriguing subject, this new form of dictatorship where you’re also a capitalist economy, and how can they balance those two so different approaches. Well, at least in the past they were mutually exclusive.
Hey Brian, can we have a new post with a poll about how much wins will the Knicks have in the new season?
For the options, i think this range covers what people will say (and this way the lurkers can participate):
– Above 27
– 27
– 26
– 25
– 24
– 23
– 22
– 21
– Below 21
I like doing the wins thread the day of the first game, so expect it Wednesday!
Oh, you’re right, that’s a better plan. Was just an idea to create a new thread, but i’ve seen you just posted one. Thanks.
#for the sake of everyone i’m not going to answer… it’s been covered…i’m sorry… if you’re really curious you can search the many posts on this topic in the last week…. i have given a good explanation as well as some other posters….#
I’ve read every post of the last week.
Noblefacehumper explained it fine and soothing.
However i feel like “the good process is this” And also “The rankings should be that way to be taken seriously and to be considered correct”
And “if you don’t have a better method than this shut up” create the feeling of fundamentalism.
In fantasy Basketball’s draft there are projections of the places(numbers) of where each player is taken based on general perception and managers’ majority’s moves.
For example Freak,KD,Harden, Steph, AD, Lebron, Kawhi are usually taken among the first ten drafts(unless year ending injury). Rookies are usually taken much later since they are not proven yet.
Let’s say that Luka was projected to be taken in number 70 before he joined nba.
A manager grabbed him much earlier cause he wanted him badly on his team or had the “feeling” that he would be special.
Does this sound like a bad process?
Same with others non rookie players that are projected to go later in the draft but due to special circumstances or inability of managers’majority’s to rank them correctly they are also being grabbed much earlier from others more “visionary” managers.
then i think you’re misinterpeting me… it was never based on my ranking to indicate bad process … but you already responded to me in the thread where i explained it and other posters explained it also so i don’t know why you want to bring it up again…
http://knickerblogger.net/knicks-vs-cavaliers-3rd-2020-21-preseason-game-thread/#comments
here’s the thread.. it’s been covered…. please drop it…