NY Post: Knicks take down Timberwolves, get Ryan Saunders fired

Yeah, that game wasn’t quite the textbook definition of Not What You Want, because Randle and RJ mostly played well (though RJ very stubbornly drove twice on KAT in the closing minutes), but it was pretty close.

I will say that some of Thibs’ worst tendencies get exacerbated when he plays one of his old teams. On the whole, I’m not worried about IQ’s minutes. (Toppin, on the other hand…) But this was a win you can take very little pleasure out of. When the Wolves took the lead, I actually started thinking about ping pong balls. Which I haven’t for the most part this season.

There is no point, and this isn’t sustainable.

The only annoying thing about the rotation for me is Rose playing 20 minutes and Quickley playing 10. Rose is who we thought he is. Quickley sucked yesterday but it’s not all on him that the Knicks got outscored by 11 over 3 minutes.

comeon:
I just don’t think that you can build on the respectable level that Thibs will bring us to. It’s a ceiling. The Knicks will have wasted 2 more years and the chance to develop IQ/RJ/Obi/Mitch to their full potential.

Not with these players…but many won’t be here next year. Deals and signings are coming.

That game also had me thinking about ping pong balls, especially with Kuminga and the Ignite team really showing out.

It’s hard to hate a coach that wants to win as badly as Thibs, but the argument before his hiring that he wasn’t the right fit for a rebuilding team still seems to hold water.

I’m bracing for a Beal trade… 4 firsts plus Mitch and Toppin? Or is it Quickley? That would be rough.

ess-dog: It’s hard to hate a coach that wants to win as badly as Thibs, but the argument before his hiring that he wasn’t the right fit for a rebuilding team still seems to hold water.

As I keep saying, I would have preferred that the team just roll with Miller for another year, and keep their eyes open for a young dynamo. Once they hired Thibs, the direction was clear and immutable. So I’m not disappointed at all, this is exactly what anyone should have expected. It’s only a question of how many wins he can grind out of a roster.

I don’t prefer it per se, but the phrase “it is what it is” has never applied more aptly.

ess-dog: I’m bracing for a Beal trade… 4 firsts plus Mitch and Toppin? Or is it Quickley? That would be rough.

One PF and one C (starter) for one SG? Wouldn’t that be even more a disaster than to trade for Beal in the first place? Next step after the trade… Cousins? Oh man, please don’t do this, Leon, we like this team!

It’s a Thibs problem, too, because he’s unable to stay in his lane and just coach the fucking team. (Which is why over the years all the people higher than him on the org chart have quickly grown to detest him. Dude’s like the Typhoid Mary of dissension.)

But, yeah, it’s up to Rose to make him stay in his lane. This isn’t the first time this has been written here; it was written in the Derrick Rose run-up and even before.

Hubert: This is a bit much. Of greater concern to me is how much influence this all has on Leon Rose. I remain deeply troubled by the fact that he took his eye off the big picture to give this team a boost in the form of derrick rose. If wins like this contribute to more stupid moves like that, then we have a problem. But that’s more of a Rose problem than a Thibs problem.

I would still love to know how much of Thibs influence went into our obsession with Obi Toppin. I suspect we passed over much better prospects bc Thibs wouldn’t play them. But again, that’s a Rose problem. You’re the team president, draft the best player and make your coach like him.

This is all entirely fair. Trading for Rose, while not the most consequential move, doesn’t pass the smell test of good management. You almost have to hope that Rose doesn’t play well enough to be part of the future, which means you burned an asset for nothing. Unless he turns it around and starts to play something like he did in his first 2 games, Rose is vets-minimum roster filler. I don’t think he’s as bad as he’s played in the last 3 games, but still not worth burning a 2nd.

E, all merc’d out: But, yeah, it’s up to Rose to make him stay in his lane. This isn’t the first time this has been written here; it was written in the Derrick Rose run-up and even before.

We can agree on this, but it’s unlikely to happen. Rose is probably reveling in the wins right now. Unless and until the team starts losing, or at least until Rose builds a team in Thibs’ image and it still goes nowhere and remains in the Nets’ shadow, Thibs will continue to be who he is.

There is zero chance that the management team is looking at a 15-16 record at this point and is beginning to question anything Thibs is doing.

It’s hard for me to read any harsh criticism of Thibs at this point and not laugh hysterically or hurl out insults.

This team basically sucks on talent and was atrocious on both sides of the ball last year. He has them playing close to .500 ball, among the league leaders in defense, and sharing the ball and trying to the play the right way on offense despite the lack of talent. The one good player they have (Randle) was so bad year last it was assumed he was going to be traded to make way for a 22 year old rookie that can’t do much more on offense than Mitchell Robinson. Now Randle is passing, playing defense, and scoring efficiently again. He may be an all star through his personal hard work and good coaching.

Exactly WTF do you want?

He’s in the conversation for coach of the year for getting these dregs to play so well!

And to be clear, I’m not talking about last night. When they were up 20 points they eased up and “allowed” Minny to get back in the game. Thibs should have blasted them during a timeout when they were clowning and laughing like the game was over. Fortunately, Minny has a lot of “losers” on their team and found a way to not put it away and let us steal it back. I hope Thibs gave it to them good after the game for easing up.

I’m sure Rose and Quickley will turn it around, but it sure makes it tougher when you assume your bench has an edge over most other benches and it turns into a huge liability for a couple of games. Neither of them can throw the ball into the ocean right now. Most teams are better than us. We need to play better defense (which we mostly have been) and get better play from the bench to make up for the overall talent gap and lack of shooting on offense.

There is zero chance that the management team is looking at a 15-16 record at this point and is beginning to question anything Thibs is doing.

If they were, I’d assume they know less about basketball than the Mills/Perry combo or it was time for a mental health check or they enjoy losing endlessly instead of building the right way.

They should be judged by their next big move IF they make one.

“Dolan’s penchant for starfucking looms large. ”

I may be grasping at straws here, but Bradley Beal isn’t going to fill seats at MSG or increase TV ratings. Dolan probably doesn’t even know what he looks like.

So I doubt it’s Carmelo 2.0

There is zero chance that the management team is looking at a 15-16 record at this point and is beginning to question anything Thibs is doing.

Just because management is happy doesn’t mean we should be.

Knicks are 14-15, 7th in the East, their best player is 26, their second best player is 20, they have the lowest payroll in the league, 3rd best defense, 4th youngest team, have 2 first round picks this year, one in 2022, and 2 in 2023. Dallas is currently out of the top 8 in the West. Oh, and we’ve won 4 out of 5 with our starting center (who is also super young) currently hurt.

How many times over the last 20 years did we watch The Knicks fall behind big only to mount a fake comeback and lose at the end? Crap teams can do that. Every team in the NBA, even the worst ones, can make a game close and its not like Minny doesn’t have one very good player.

Yet I come on here and its doom and gloom. Yeah, it was sloppy. And maybe thibs should loosen the reigns a bit, but give me a break guys! We’re having a great season and the future is bright.

I jus don’t see us making some huge win now move for Beal and mortgaging our future. We’ve been down this road before with Melo and Dolan knows how it ends. And Beal isn’t even as big of a name as Melo. not trying to debate if Melo was better than Beal at that time. Just saying, Melo was a much bigger star than Beal who was on a much better team than Beal has been. I just don’t see it happening.

The NBA is full of very good players, even a decent amount of stars (even some super stars) who weren’t picked in the top ten or even the top 15. With two picks and future picks we also could potentially move up if we really want to grab someone. I’d like Obi to play more too but with Randle playing the way he is, its hard to argue against the logic of Randle playing so much. We can lament that we wasted the pick. It is what it is. We made up for it with Quickley, who had a rough game, that’s why his minutes were limited last night.

Its just weird how so many people go to the darkest, most pessimistic take after a sloppy win.

Hubert: Just because management is happy doesn’t mean we should be.

Just wondering – what do you think management should do at this point? Trade Julius Randle for picks?

The Derrick Rose trade was /- for me. Hard to argue that the FO doesn’t value assets when this FO has added many picks for basically nothing, and that the pick they traded away is currently #48. And that is for a draft in which we already have 3 other picks.

I think the only thing one could possibly be upset about thus far with Thibs is that Quickley isn’t playing 25 minutes/game (he’s played 21 or 22 minutes in 5 out of the last 6 games), and that Toppin isn’t getting more run. Elfrid Payton sucks and he should play Frank, but that’d probably be controversial even on Knickerblogger. RJ’s getting tons of run, Mitch was playing career high minutes, Quickley has played a lot, and the team is vastly outperforming expectations.

Once the team started outperforming expectations, the idea that a tank would happen became implausible. Sure, maybe with the old lottery rules one could get away with it, but short of going full Hinkie, it’s hard to find good outcomes from teams literally trying to lose games from early in the season. From my memory it is basically impossible to find teams trying to tank their way out of the playoff race when they’re actually IN the playoffs.

The general consensus on this board was always “I’d be fine with wins if it was the kids leading us to wins”, and right now RJ, Mitch, Quickley, and an age 26 Julius Randle are leading us to wins. Sure, some vets are playing, but it really is hard to be upset with the age mix in terms of contributions to winning.

I don’t particularly care for how Thibs runs his rotation, and if I were the coach I’d certainly be giving the young guys some more burn (I’m not even a Frankophile and still 42 total minutes this season for him seems ridiculous to me) , but carping about Thibs at this point just seems like trying to find something to complain about. There isn’t any actual evidence that force-feeding your young guys minutes is actually developmentally preferable and plenty of teams have had consistent success with developmental approaches based more around asking their young guys to contribute meaningfully in small roles on good teams and gradually earn more minutes and bigger roles – see e.g. San Antonio and Toronto.

I do think from an asset management perspective it’s probably not great to have young guys who aren’t playing or are barely playing – I don’t think you could realistically hope to trade Frank or Knox for anything right now and Obi’s value must be in freefall as well, but in terms of internally developing them Thibs’ approach is a reasonable one. Certainly we’ve got multiple guys who are performing better than most of us would’ve hoped this year – Randle, IQ, RJ, Mitch (in some respects, this one is debatable), even Knox when he has seen the floor. There’s definitely real risk of management overreacting to our okay-ness and doing something dumb, but for now, things are pretty good. Picking at the nits seems like choosing to be unhappy.

Its hilarious how so many people here look for the smallest things to immediately jump on this team and especially Thibs. The Knicks were up 16 going into the 4th quarter, struggled to close it out but in the end they got the win. If Thibs stayed with the bench and they lose everyone here would’ve jumped all over him, he puts the starters back in, including RJ, they get the win yet people are now complaining he took the game too seriously and should’ve let the bench play longer.

Seriously most of you guys don’t deserve to root for a good team, you deserve to be miserable fans for the rest of your lives.

E, all merc’d out:
The management team is wondering why Thibs is playing their lottery pick — the guy they were willing to trade up for — so little and developing him so poorly, in lieu of people like Taj Gibson.Bank on it.

I doubt anyone is watching Obi Toppin play and thinking “damn, why doesn’t that guy play more.”

I jus don’t see us making some huge win now move for Beal and mortgaging our future.

Have you followed the New York Knicks over the past 20 years?

But seriously, from the beginning, Thibs presence had me believing that Rose was going to make a “Beal level” trade as soon as he could — he wanted Gordon Hayward a few months ago!

What’s our next move here? If there’s no free agent prize for being respectable, you’re just getting rim rocked.

I agree with this. There needs to be a plan to capitalize on these wins somehow, otherwise they’re own goals. We can capitalize on them by signing free agents that make sense for us, or being the preferred destination of guys demanding trades.

I think I’ve established over a long period of time that I’m skeptical of this method as compared to keeping your destiny in your own hands via the draft, but it’s not impossible it works out. No one can give it anything but an “incomplete” as of now.

Can’t get excited about draft picks in the 12-18 range when it’s Tom Thibodeau that’s going to be handling them. He’s handling an 8 pick now and doing a piss-poor job of it. He’s got one of the top rookies in the class on his team and he’s still got the guy on some silly probationary status. To this very second, Thibs has RJ Barrett on quasi-probation. He’s a Neanderthal.

And no, it’s not crazy to think Obi has been approximately fine when he’s played. He gets literally nothing run for him, he always plays with second unit guys, dipshits like Payton and Rivers never passed him the ball even when he’s wide open, and he has a ton of athleticism. He just needs to find for himself what works best and the only way to do that is to play him. There are things he does very well and there’s more than enough raw material there with which to work.

There’s no sensible “next move” because this thing isn’t being operated as a platform of growth to the next step. Nor is it in fact such a platform.

The “unconfidence” needs to be coached out of him, because he has much more there than he thinks right now. He just needs to have something he trusts and then build out from there. But nothing is really run for him when he’s in the game and he just gets leftovers and backwash and has to improvise.

Coaching the “unconfidence” out of an athletic, talented guy is pretty much one of the textbook ideas behind … you know … development.

The New York Knickerbockers do not have a coach that does these kind of things. That needs to be faced, rather than rationalized or apologized for.

Obi plays 1 position, he doesn’t play it very well, & he plays behind our best player. He’s not going to get much burn.

I’m not sure why Rose is out there when Elf or Rivers are starting to look like the better option.

thenoblefacehumper: He’s been able to protect his box score aggregators and TS% by keeping his usage low, but I think that’s more of a red flag than anything else. There’s an eye-test element to this, as it feels less like him picking his spots carefully a la Mitch and more like him just being totally unconfident about his ability to do anything on offense.

I basically agree with all of this, but I think it’s important to separate concerns about what his play so far for this season mean about his future vs. the issue of how much he’s currently helping/hurting the team when he’s out there. It’s definitely a massive concern that our nearly 23 year-old top 10 pick who was supposed to be basically the finished article offensively doesn’t look like he has much idea how to get points outside of wide-open dunks and moonball 3-pointers.

But separate from that he has basically been playing at a reasonably respectable level for a bench big right now. We’ve seen some of our rookies in recent years be at a level where they were actively tanking the team every minute they were out there, and this is not that. In my estimation Thibs really could be trying to play him more right now, and provided it’s not at the expense of Randle it’s not clear the immediate downside would be that huge.

I can’t believe no one mentioned Nigel Tufnel in the ranks of the all time great guitarists

I find thinking about Thibs and all his presence will demand from the front office pretty depressing.

Owen:
I can’t believe no one mentioned Nigel Tufnel in the ranks of the all time great guitarists

That goes without saying. On a 1-10 scale, I’d rate him an 11…

E, Obi plays PF behind Randle, who is having a career season and is 26. That’s a problem with the FO for drafting him, not Thibs for not playing him.

Again, the NBA is full of excellent players who were picked in 16 to 18 range. Hell Butler, Kawhi, Giannis and Gober were all picked 15 or later and they are all top 10 players.

ess-dog. I have followed the Knicks. Dolan might be a horrible owner but he’s now older and maybe a little wiser? Even an idiot gets smarter with age. HE has past experience now to reference when he feels compelled to force someone to make a trade for a star. And Beal isn’t really a star in the sense that he’s not doing shoe commercials and hanging out with Lebron. I just don’t see Dolan interfering to force a beal trade. Unlike 2010, we don’t have a star with weak knees. That team was a house of cards even before the Melo trade bc STAT wasn’t going to be elite his entire contract.

Julius Randle, if he is actually the player he’s shown himself to be so far this year, is a really really good player, so I do not understand what you mean when you talk about the limits of a roster built around him.

I know it seems counterintuitive, but “really really good players” are often the hardest obstacles to overcome when building a championship team.

The secret sauce isn’t very secret… you need elite players at the top and a quality supporting cast. Randle is not elite, but he can make a compelling argument to paid like he’s elite, and that will prevent us from getting someone who is elite.

His age is not that important here, it’s his contract.

It’s Randle’s contract, plus his niche style, plus the massive expected dropoff in his production if his role gets rightsized. He’s not good enough to helm a contender in this role.

Figuring this out early is the job of the front office. The longer things linger this way, the less and less confidence we should have in the front office.

Other than this E guy, I don’t think anyone is really talking about Thibs being a problem. We’re just being cognizant of how good this team really
is.

Our best hope is still our draft picks.

The secret sauce isn’t very secret… you need elite players at the top and a quality supporting cast. Randle is not elite, but he can make a compelling argument to paid like he’s elite, and that will prevent us from getting someone who is elite.

His age is not that important here, it’s his contract.

I’m sorry, are you talking about the contract that he hasn’t signed yet?
And so, fearing this contract that he hasn’t signed yet, you’d like to just send him out?

This is what I think will happen.
If Randle continues this play, then he is deserving of a gigantic raise, but I do not think he will get a max from anyone, including the Knicks. He’ll get paid something like 4 years $120MM like Gordon Hayward. If he’s continuing to put up these numbers, then that’s a fair contract, and will not prevent us from adding to the team. I guess the real question is if the Knicks are having extension discussions with him — ie. adding 3 years to the $20MM he’s already guaranteed next year at, say, 3 years $80MM, meaning it’d be in total a 4 year $100MM contract, and perhaps even have it be a declining contract – that would be a 4 year deal for basically his entire prime, and not much if any of his athletic decline. If you’re Randle, you’re locking in 100 freaking million dollars, playing for a team and coaching staff you love.

I think that would be a good deal for both sides if and only if what the Knicks are seeing in practice measures up to what we’re seeing on the court (ie. 80% FT%, 40% 3P%). He’s obviously a very hard worker, seems like a great guy, has bonded with the team and the coaches. That’s the kind of guy you want to reward with a big contract… just not a max. (I’d prob even go up to 3 years 90M on the extension)

Here are the ages of the Knicks’ leaders in VORP:

26, 22, 21, 26, 29, 22, 20

It’s scary to be in this position, as one outstanding PG or point-capable win transforms this team into a prospective Semifinals team. What makes it scary is how bad the FA class is, this upcoming year. Really says something that I’m hoping Zach Lavine becomes available for conditional picks and some combination of Toppin, Knox and Frank before the Knicks give Lowry 3/$60M or Oladipo 4/$90.

But not necessarily as draft picks. Trades and free agent $ are probably the surest way forward.

Maybe. The Dallas pick still looks good, and Haliburton was there at #12 — a reasonable expectation for the Knicks’ own pick if some bad luck or unexpected regression goes their way. Remember that 2022 is going to have a shitton of high school prospects, so the normal scale of draft pick value will be all fucked up. The #10 could be like a #5 pick in normal years.

I don’t get why people here don’t think that Beal has gotten better and is now a legit superstar. Is there any reason to believe that he can’t learn to play marginally better D and continue to be one of the best offensive players in the NBA?

I get not wanting to sell the farm to get him…I don’t want Rose to do that either. What I don’t get is the thinking that he’s not a legit max player.

My intuition is to agree with the people saying we should run more plays for Obi, but it also reminds me a bit of the school of thought that Frank Ntilikina could be doing so much more if only he was more aggressive and/or his various coaches would let him. Obi might just have an acute sense of his own limitations, like it turns out Ntilikina did.

I know it seems counterintuitive, but “really really good players” are often the hardest obstacles to overcome when building a championship team.

The secret sauce isn’t very secret… you need elite players at the top and a quality supporting cast. Randle is not elite, but he can make a compelling argument to paid like he’s elite, and that will prevent us from getting someone who is elite.

His age is not that important here, it’s his contract.

I agree with this, but we also can’t say it’s a problem until, well, it actually becomes one. If the Knicks pay Randle at a rate that precludes them from getting elite players, it’ll become a problem. There’s still over a year before a decision really had to be made though. He might be traded, his play might fall off, or something else might happen that changes the calculus.

We really just don’t know as of now how well the Knicks are handling the Randle situation.

derrick rose is a thief of joy…he’s making me long for the austin rivers’ days…

rose has been here now for 5 or so games, in at least 2 of them elf outplayed him by a bunch, and still thibs closed with rose…

Since the Rose trade IQ has really been the odd man out. His minutes, other than last night, haven’t changed much but both his role and his importance to the team seem to be diminished. The biggest place you can see it is in his 2pt efficiency. Before the trade he was picking his spots better and was shooting 44% on 2pt shots after the trade he has shot 26%. He seems much more unsure of his role and that has caused some poor shot selection because he is getting the ball less and forcing more.

Toppin has been mediocre but if you watch him play you can tell he has no role in the offense. He is often relegated to the corner and hanging out on the three point line, far away from the play. This seems more like coaching than inexperience. How can he be expected to do anything when he never touches the ball?

Thibs is by no means succeeding with either of them and if the trends keep going how they are I wouldn’t be surprised if both are out of the rotation by the end of the season.

Even RJ, who despite a couple forced shots was still out most effective player down the stretch yesterday, seems to be on a shorter leash and Thibs seems more and more quick to pull him for Burks or Rose.

What is the actual argument here? Put E aside, bc he’s just doing his thing.

So BC pointed out that Thibs needs to play Game 7 minutes to eek out a win over a bad team. It’s just an observation, it’s not “doom and gloom”.

I’m not mad Thibs is winning. I’m just wondering where all this goes. What’s the next move? If Giannis hadn’t signed an extension, I’d be feeling pretty good right now. But he did. And the next time a big free agent class is up, we’re going to have to be paying our top guys much more than they’re making now, so you can’t just chill, let them develop, and slide a guy into this core 2 years from now. So what’s next?

You can win in the NBA with a lineup of very good players who aren’t elite. I mean as good as Giannis and Harden have been their teams have never made the NBA Finals. Ditto Chris Paul. Put together the best team you can and if it means we’re doomed to perennially winning 50 games and struggling to get out of the East that’s still a helluva improvement over the last 20 years. I’ll gladly take an extended run of the 2012-13 Knicks.

BigBlueAL:
You can win in the NBA with a lineup of very good players who aren’t elite.I mean as good as Giannis and Harden have been their teams have never made the NBA Finals.Ditto Chris Paul.Put together the best team you can and if it means we’re doomed to perennially winning 50 games and struggling to get out of the East that’s still a helluva improvement over the last 20 years.I’ll gladly take an extended run of the 2012-13 Knicks.

Seems most likely the Miami Heat version of team-building is where we are headed. No one (significant) on their team was any higher than like the 12th pick. Then they pounced on Jimmy Butler when he became available and he took them to the next level.

Just remember that it’s not super-common that a generational player picked at the top of the lottery takes their drafting team to the championship. You pretty much have to go back to guys like Duncan and Wade. Lebron won for the Cavs, but only on his 2nd time around there. Steph was a mid-lottery player. Nowitzki was #10 or some such thing. Paul Pierce was #10. Durant/Harden/Westbrook made it to the finals, but that was pretty much an unprecedented 3 years of drafting.

*Note also that Duncan came as the result of total tankage by the Spurs in a year that David Robinson was hurt. It’s just not common that a good organization gets an extremely premium draft pick. And basically only good organizations get championships. So premium draft picks lose with their crappy drafting team, then get traded or sign with the good organization, then wins championships.

The question isn’t whether or not we should tank. The question is whether or not Thibs is more interested in developing our young players than winning meaningless games in February. The problem is he is not.

You can see it with his substitution patterns. The second things start going south Thibs runs to the players he is comfortable with. He never lets our young players play through diversity. IQ has to play well to stay on the court while Payton and Rose get their minutes whether or not they are effective. It doesn’t matter if Obi is playing well because when our team struggles Thibs cannot get Randle back in fast enough.

Ultimately this season doesn’t matter very much and we are not very good. We need every move, every substitution pattern, everything to be focused on the future and Thibs seems unable to do that. Treating every game like the playoffs works until you make the playoffs and other, better teams start matching your intensity. We are not developing a bench, we are not developing our young players, we are simply leaning on our best players as much as possible to squeeze every drop of advantage right now with no regard for the future.

Frank: One should remember, though, that the way the Nets got Kyrie, Harden, and Durant was by doing basically what the Knicks are doing right now.

No! No it is not!

The Nets, Clippers, Lakers all pulled this trick with a specific, franchise-transforming free agent in mind, one who was available within months. They had a goal and a plan.

Without the free agent pot of gold, the Nets would be a perpetual 7 seed with an overpaid D’Angelo Russell playing with Jarrett Allen and Carais LeVert.

We should be trying to avoid that, not aiming for it.

Timing matters.

Hubert: No!No it is not!

The Nets, Clippers, Lakers all pulled this trick with a specific, franchise-transforming free agent in mind, one who was available within months. They had a goal and a plan.

Without the free agent pot of gold, the Nets would be a perpetual 7 seed with an overpaid D’Angelo Russell playing with Jarrett Allen and Carais LeVert.

We should be trying to avoid that, not aiming for it.

Timing matters.

I’m sorry – it totally is.
They didn’t trade Russell 1 year before free agency hit. (meanwhile most people knew that Russell wasn’t good).
They didn’t trade Caris Levert because he was up for a new contract – they actually signed him to one.
They didn’t trade Jarrett Allen because they were worried that he’d be too good and would tank their draft position.

They traded Russell when the time was right, and honestly would’ve just let him go in FA except the Dubs wanted a S&T.
They traded Levert and Allen FOR the elite player – Harden. They didn’t trade them for parts and hope that those parts lucked into something greater against all odds.

Sure, the Lakers signed Lebron, but they didn’t trade away any Randle-type players to get worse on purpose before doing so. They traded their young players for AD.

The Clippers collected assets for years (not tanking, not trading good players for unknown draft picks) before pouncing at the right time for Kawhi, then TRADED their young assets (and draft picks) for PG.

Find me the example of a team that traded an All-star caliber young player for flotsam without an actual plan and had that lack of plan actually work out for them in the end. (if your answer is Porzingis you win!)

Find me the example of a team that traded an All-star caliber young player for flotsam without an actual plan and had that lack of plan actually work out for them in the end. (if your answer is Porzingis you win!)

This isn’t what they’re saying, though. They’re saying the Nets specifically did have a plan and actually available superstar targets in mind. Who, specifically, are we gunning for? If we don’t have a real answer, the current strategy loses a bit of luster.

we’re not misremembering, your analogy just blew up. Russell was to the Nets what Randle is to the Knicks right now. Young, really really good, helping the team get to respectability. But ultimately a stepping stone. You guys are talking about making the stepping stone the end game.

And by the way, why do you keep bringing up tanking? For once, no one is saying we should tank. At most, people are arguing for a minutes distribution that more closely resembles an average NBA team than one playing in a game 7.

You do not draft players because of their fit with Julius Randle as ringleader. That’s exactly what you don’t do and why this whole Julius Randle as ringleader thing needs to be cut off at the pass.

And, yes, the Nets and DLo is a prime example of what “our” faction is talking about. The whole purpose of being a GM and a front office is constantly asking yourself, “Can I win big with this guy??” If the answer is no, you move on.

Can you win big with Julius in this role? No, you can not. Next question is, “Is it worthwhile to put Julius in a reduced role and will that work????” The answer to this one, for a myriad of reasons, is also “No, it is not.” (Can you imagine a Bradley Beal trying to do his thing with Julius’s all too frequent passes to his teammates’ knees? Kind of a horrifying thought, we’d have to admit.) It’s certainly not Julius’s fault and the way he’s gone about his business this year is both professional and admirable, but that’s at the end of the proverbial day beside the point.

Russell was good for the Nets but was he playing like a top 10 player good?

Cause Randle is playing like a top 10 player.

Is Randle actually playing like a top ten player though? Aren’t Sabonis and Jokic doing the same things, but better, and I doubt all three of those guys are actually top ten.

(Not meant as a knock on Randle – he’s exceeding all expectations and has won me over from last year. But top ten feels hyperbolic.)

Randle is something like a top-5 PF in the league right now. DRuss is around a top-20 PG.

I’d much rather have Randle than DRuss.

Also, Randle isn’t godawful on defense the way Russell is.

Randle isn’t a top-10 player either, or anywhere close. However, I think Randle is a borderline max-player based on how he’s playing right now.

He’s also our only decent player on offense and arguably looks better on a team that has another player resembling an offensive threat. On his good days IQ counts.

Mike Honcho: Is Randle actually playing like a top ten player though? Aren’t Sabonis and Jokic doing the same things, but better, and I doubt all three of those guys are actually top ten.

jokic has been waaaay better, different class.

But yes, Sabonis’s numbers are remarkably similar to Randle, and he signed a 4 year ~80MM deal last year. That’s why I think all this worry about Randle demanding a max is completely overblown. Sabonis is the comp, and barring any crazy contracts being signed for bigs this summer, it’ll remain the closest comp.

Ricky Rubio looked pretty good last night.

rubio was one of the “vet” point guards i was hoping to pick up this off-season…truth is though, he doesn’t look much better than elf right now, plus he’s making like 12 million more this year…

Randle is currently top-10 in VORP. HOWEVER, Randle has played significantly more games than others because the Knicks have had so few games cancelled.

He’s currently played 3 more games than the players immediately behind him, 6 more games than Beal, & 8 more games than AD who are close behind too.

So I don’t think VORP is indicative of his talent level. It’s valuable for the regular season, and there’s something said for being healthy, but in the playoffs you’d rather have the player with the higher BPM than VORP.

geo: rubio was one of the “vet” point guards i was hoping to pick up this off-season…truth is though, he doesn’t look much better than elf right now, plus he’s making like 12 million more this year…

I think that he’s better than Payton and makes his teammates better. Who knows, we might actually be able to gain an asset by picking up his salary, while improving at the same time.

The Nets have like a 2 year window with those 3. They’re record is whatever and their defense is suspect. For all we know, this time next year Kyrie wants out and they’re looking to blow it up.

Comparing us to them and saying those names are why we shouldn’t build around Randle is some bush league whack ass sh*t that shouldn’t fly on a blog that takes itself seriously.

No one is saying Randle is going to be the top dawg alpha first option on a championship team. Just that he can be one of the top players on a really good basketball team. He’s legit playing like a top 10 player right now and is 26.

I mean a few years ago people thought LOL Lowry and Derozan are fake stars on a fake contending team and then they traded Derozan for Kawhi. Who’s to say Randle couldn’t eventually be flipped in 2 or 3 seasons for another super star? Or not. People are already trying to stop this thing before we even get it started because of some theoretical ceiling they’re afraid we won’t reach. Its beyond dumb.

Though D’Angelo Russell was a left handed young player brought to NYC as a stop-gap for a rebuilding franchise who learned to shoot the NBA 3pter consistently and thus made his first all star appearance for a weak eastern conference, I don’t think it’s an apples-to-apples comp with Randle. Russell wasn’t a factor in BK landing Durant or any of their Big 3. He was traded for Durant out of convenience, not necessity. They could have signed Durant and just let Russell walk. He wasn’t turned into future assets.

It was Lopez who is the Randle comp in the Nets rebuild. He was a popular player, who was adapting to the modern NBA but was still, ultimately, expendable in the long term vision for the team. He was cashed in for younger assets. That’s really the first step of any successful rebuild. You can’t plan for a hall of famer inexplicably jumping ship to play for you. When it happens, great, but in the meantime, deal your non-essential parts for a diversity of future assets (like Marks did).

Ben R: I for one would rather have Collins, he needs the ball less to be effective, has a much longer track record as a three point shooter, and is younger. Defensively they are similar, Randle is a bit better but Collins is every bit as good or even better than Randle was at the same age.

Everything I’ve heard is that Collins is atrocious on defense, otherwise he’s a surefire max contract. Seemingly, ATL doesn’t even want him.

Also, Collins gets Trae Young passing him the ball. Randle has effectively nobody passing him the ball. If we get Collins, then we need another player who can create for him.

Randle also had a reputation of being a bad defender. I think big men who cannot protect the rim get bad reputations defensively. Since so many teams want to play one big having a true PF like Randle or Collins or Sabonis or even Toppin seems like a liability since none of them can play the 5 defensively for long stretches.

I think Atlanta is hesitating giving Collins a max contract because true PFs haven’t been max players lately and I believe there is a bit of drama between Collins and Young. I don’t think defense is a huge part of it except the fact he cannot play the five.

I think they are all fine defensively when paired with a good center. Toppin not yet but should be okay in time.

Julius is a nice player. He’s never actually been the proverbial “one of the top players on a really good team,” so the only way to get there is by projecting him there and once we’re in the projection game, it’s just as easy (and IMO more persuasive) to project him as someone who really can’t be. In any event, it’s a risk I’d much rather slough off on some other team rather than take myself.

He can be the top player on a meh team, as he is now — that he’s proven. His ability to fit into a more secondary role in which he routinely plays winning basketball on both ends with the ball in his hands far less is very, very much an open question. Again, some other team can take that risk.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you just bumble around in the dark throwing your money at whomever is desperate enough to take it, as the Knicks did in the summer of 2019. You wind up with corned beef hash only with spam instead of corned beef. And then everyone goes, “Hey, be happy — at least it’s not five-day-old liver and onions!!!”

FWIW, to Ben R’s point, a quick survey of RPM, 3yr-RAPM, & RAPTOR says John Collins is actually an above average defender. So perhaps he gets a bad rap because ATL sucks on D in general. Or perhaps ATL sucks so bad on D that Collins looks good by comparison according to these stats.

It’s a weird divergence between scouting/eye-test & numbers.

E, all merc’d out:
The one time Julius played a more secondary role with better players on a team with actual expectations — the Pellies with AD and Jrue — it was basically a shitshow disaster.Not exactly the thing that fills you with confidence.

If you ever want to stop beating a strawman, then I’d be happy to engage.

If it’s just going to be more apologies and rationalizations and blaming other people, it’s probably not worth the time. There’s just nothing there in his career that should really give anyone any confidence that he can play a more secondary role on a really good team. He might in fact be able to, but nothing to date would reasonably lead one to that conclusion, other than just wishcasting. If we want to be fans and we like the guy, go ahead and wishcast; it’s part of the fun and enjoyment of being a fan and I’ve certainly done a bunch of it myself over the years and I’m probably guilty of it on KB sometimes. If we want to be hardened armchair objective GMs though, there’s just very little there on which to base the projection and it’s not even remotely worth the risk.

The record is:

1. He didn’t even want to play with LBJ in LA and so asked out. LA quickly obliged.
2. He went to the Pellies for a year, had AD and Jrue as running mates and it was a disaster.
3. He came to the Knicks and has played the initiator on first a godawful and then a meh team.

That’s the record. Red flags positively ablaze. You can even add:

4. He’s playing to get paid.

“Hey, be happy — at least it’s not five-day-old liver and onions!!!”

ahhhh, making another grocery list (i wonder if there’s anyone else out there whom gets as jazzed as myself to go grocery shopping 🙂 – will need to include some liverwurst…

probably couldn’t pay most people to eat it, but – my nana hooked me on liverwurst, bread & butter pickles, with gulden’s spicy brown mustard, on toast sandwiches…

The complaints about Randle amaze me. Of course things could go wrong, but at the moment it’s his play that is making the Knicks a playoff team. There aren’t many players in the NBA that can do that and when you get one you try to keep him.

As for Toppin, to my surprise, I find myself one pessimist posters here. I’m usually an optimist. I’d love to be proved wrong, but I think he’s not scoring on the inside because he can’t do it against NBA players. He can make a fancy dunk if there’s a nice opening, but he can’t create the opening and those openings don’t come along often.

Game 7 Cle-GS

Lebron played 46:49
Kyrie played 43

Draymond 46:34
Klay 42:17
Steph 39:16

The only Knick who played a ton of minutes last game was Randle at 39, and that’s been true all season. Thibs has maybe been playing Randle too much this season. Are Nets fans killing clueless neophyte Steve Nash because fat James Harden leads the league in minutes per game? There’s nobody else on the Knicks playing more than 34 minutes a night. I think you can validly criticize how Thibs has divvied up the minutes-Payton is probably playing too many because he’s been bad and IQ has been surprisingly good, and maybe he could give the young guys who probably suck some spot minutes, but we at least so far the fear we had that Thibs was going to run the starters into the ground hasn’t been justified.

Knick fan not in NJ: The complaints about Randle amaze me. Of course things could go wrong, but at the moment it’s his play that is making the Knicks a playoff team.

Stephon Marbury made us a playoff team once.

The question of where Randle fits in to the rebuild quandary is legit. I think E’s take is off-putting in it it’s level of cynicism, but sure, how much to pay him and for how long relative to his actual on-court value is a very tough call.

But all I know is, he’s gone from a guy who everyone here couldn’t wait to dump to a guy we’re even having a serious conversation about in pretty short order. He’s the only reason we don’t have like 7 wins right now. Aesthetics aside, he is surely playing like a true max player who can be part of a big 3. He has a bunch of ways to score in big spots, and his passing would mesh well with a couple of stars. His teammates love him and seem to look up to him. He seems to have connected with the coaches and with the media. And the dude has absolutely no help on the floor, none. Without him, we’re by far the worst team in the league and it isn’t even close. Who’s out second best player in terms of if he went down would be tough to replace? Tell you what, for all the shit he gets, it might be Elfrid fucking Payton. This is a team of the scrubbiest scrubs in the league and Randle is carrying them on his back.

Look on the ESPN schedule page. He has led the team in points, rebounds and assists in 13 games, in 2 of the three categories in another 13. And he’s doing it while passing the ball and trying to make his teammates better. His usage% is the same 27% it has been for the past 2 years.

All I can say is that he’s wearing that #30 well. Any guy that is prepared every night to play that hard and that well for that many minutes can be on my team any time. He’s not a top-10 player, but he’s a durable, tough, rugged badass with an expanding skillset. He’s an excellent problem to have.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: I hate to play defense counsel for Mr. Randle, but here we are:

(1) Davis missed 26 games.
(2) Holiday missed 15 games.
(3) The #4 through #16 minutes players for the Pelicans (accounting for about 67% of all available NOP minutes), and their respective BPMs. I will put boldface on those with a positive BPM:

Darius Miller, -2.9
E’Twaun Moore, -2.3
Elfrid Payton, -1.4
Frank Jackson, -4.6
Kenrich Williams, -1.9
Ian Clark, -5.1
Jah Okafor, -1.5
Mirotic, 1.4
Tim Frazier, -1.3
Cheick Diallo, -0.9
Solomon Hill, -3.6
Wes Johnson, -3.1
Stanley Johnson, -4.5
Christian Wood, 0.9 (189 MP)
Dairis Bertans, -8.8 BPM

Man, Randle really sunk that team!

(5) Alvin Gentry was the coach

Like all citizens in the dock, Mr. Randle deserves a competent defense. And he received one to be sure. But as a matter of law, “it’s everybody else’s fault” isn’t a valid defense to the charge.

The lineup data is just brutal. Holiday, Davis, and Julius together were only a plus-2.9; Randle with AD, a mere plus-1.8. The other guys’ BPMs isn’t an independent variable; it’s directly dependent on how well Randle, AD, Jrue are clicking. They were perfectly fine the previous year with Boogie swapped in for Julius.

It just didn’t work for Julius with Jrue and AD. Guilty as charged. (Thus, his ready availability to the Knicks on short money.) Might a secondary role work for Julius in the future? Anything’s possible. Not worth the risk, clearly not worth the money.

pels played 834 mins with AD, Jrue and Randle on the floor and they were 8.75 per 100.

The lineup data is just brutal. Holiday, Davis, and Julius together were only a plus-2.9; Randle with AD, a mere plus-1.8.

???

The other guys’ BPMs isn’t an independent variable; it’s directly dependent on how well Randle, AD, Jrue are clicking.

Like half the guys on that list are out of the league and the other half (excluding Wood) are 12th men. But yeah, okay.

Collins’ max is a lot less than Randle’s max. In 2022 Randle will be a 7 year vet and will be eligible to make $38,000,000 a year, almost $9mil more than Collins can make in the first year of his next deal. (Same for the Sabonis comp). Besides, NBA agents and front offices don’t usually make salary comps based on BPM and VORP. They base them on things like all star selections, of which Randle may have a few by the time he’s negotiating his next deal (Collins won’t, but like Sabonis, he’ll have all star incentives that will kick in, making the contract more expensive than the initial perception).

There is literally zero hysteria. Just some reasonable disagreement over how satisfied we should currently be.

Yeah the whole “I CAN’T BELIEVE ANYONE IS COMPLAINING” shtick is tired. We’re trying to figure out how this team can go from .500ish to something better than that. That’s…eminently sensible and normal. The only person being irrational is E because when he digs in on something he ain’t being budged, but that’s just him.

To clarify my view of Randle’s potential role on a contender, it’s obviously not true that he could never play a role on a contending team. Tons of players way worse than Randle have done just that. That’s not the question though, the question is could he do so while also providing value relative to his share of the salary cap? If the answer is no, that makes the already tall task of building a contender that much more difficult.

My concern is once you’re approaching contention, you almost definitely have a player more worthy of being your primary playmaker than Randle. This means you lose a lot of the value he provides as a playmaker, and suddenly looks a lot like the bigs who tend to be available on the cheap. The problem is he’s demonstrated he has those playmaking abilities and will (rightfully) expect to be compensated for them, even if they won’t be utilized on a good team.

So you’re paying for skills you’re not getting, and what’s left over is basically strong rebounding (easy to find on the cheap), and high-ish usage/high-ish efficiency scoring (not as easy to find on the cheap as rebounding, but you can get something reasonably close to it for a lot less than I think Randle will command).

I think we need to figure out how to play him at the 5, be willing to try some of the things Denver’s done with Jokic to make up for his defensive shortcomings. If you could put Randle at the 5 with 4 other playmakers and shooters, you could have a pretty darn good team.

I’d like to see some lineups with Randle, Quickley, Barrett and two shooters.

i don’t think we have a lineup that can succeed with randle at the 5, bc we don’t have a jerami grant or millsap type player who can space a little while still being a plus defender helping to mitigate randle’s deficiencies as a defensive 5. i sympathize with thibs’ desperation to replace mitch with another big bc randle is just too porous as the main paint help defender to not kill your team, even on max effort. it’s hard to get those sorts of guys. i wonder if zach collins might be an affordable flier next year given the horrendous start to his career. i would love obi to be that guy but i don’t think obi is that guy.

i don’t think we have a lineup that can succeed with randle at the 5, bc we don’t have a jerami grant or millsap type player who can space a little while still being a plus defender helping to mitigate randle’s deficiencies as a defensive 5.

I agree. I tried to put the lineup together myself and kept getting stuck at the 5th guy. I wish it could be Toppin or Knox, but unlikely.

But I’d still try it and get information before the off-season. If it looks promising, we should make finding that missing piece our priority.

geo: top that if you can…

grilled cheese

At this point, Randle deserves a share of the creating duties even on a contending team. Are there any teams that have a #1 option that does 100% of the creation? Maybe MIL? Even HOU had CP3 & Westbrook to help Harden.

Hubert: Did they draft Obi Toppin or is that not a fact any more?

Unless you have some other numbers backing you up, Obi Toppin’s rookie season to this point has been perfectly acceptable for a mid lottery guy. He can’t get minutes because the guy in front of him is an All Star, and to this point both Randle and Toppin are really only playable at power forward. I’m perfectly okay with taking a wait and see approach there (with regards to how we end up managing both as assets and how Toppin develops) and I definitely don’t believe Toppin has been a train wreck on the court. If you want to lambast the pick because we should have taken Halliburton, you have to note that we landed a comparable player to Halliburton much later in the 1st round which was absolutely a part of our draft strategy. All in all, I do not believe taking Toppin was a dumb decision or even a bad one.

Also, two guys I’d look to pair with Randle long term are Jared Vanderbilt and Mo Bamba. Bamba’s a plus defender and rebounder, plus he can score at all three levels of the court. Vanderbilt, another ex-Wildcat, is a switchable defender that plays in the dunker spot on offense. Vanderbilt should be a good buy-low option for the Knicks this summer, and Bamba could probably be had for Knox and a 2nd round pick at this point.

thenoblefacehumper: Yeah the whole “I CAN’T BELIEVE ANYONE IS COMPLAINING” shtick is tired.

This is an oversimplification. It’s more “I CAN’T BELIEVE ANYONE DOESN’T GET THAT ONCE THIBS WAS HIRED, CERTAIN THINGS BECAME IMPOSSIBLE AND THERE’S NO USE COMPLAINING ABOUT WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE TEAM IS SORT OF DOING WELL AND IS IN A GREAT POSITION TO DO SMART THINGS THAT WORK.”

We can debate what those moves are, given the playing field. That includes things like whether we should sign or trade Randle, whether we should trade for Beal, etc. That does NOT include things like not playing Payton, playing Obi over Taj, developing players by letting them play through their mistakes in extended minutes. etc., because those things simply have zero chance of happening while Thibs is coach. Zero. That’s the schtik that’s tired, and really, only one poster is dug in there. No one is “continually” saying “I can’t believe anyone is complaining!” BBA has said it, but he only posts on occasion.

It would be like taking a trip to Florida and constantly complaining that the downhill skiing was terrible. Expecting Thibs to change his rotation towards anything but what he thinks gives him the best chance of winning is like expecting a Paricutin event in Tallahassee.

The Glass Half Rebuilt: Unless you have some other numbers backing you up, Obi Toppin’s rookie season to this point has been perfectly acceptable for a mid lottery guy.

Maybe for a 19-20yo but not for the oldest guy in the upper first round. It wasn’t a reach per se, but the problems he is having on both ends were clearly defined in the “weaknesses” section of most reputable scouting reports. Obviously way too soon to pass final judgment, and you might argue that spending an entire off-season doing whatever Julius did might help his game for next year. But the clock is ticking faster for him than the 19yo’s for sure.

This version of Julius Randle can absolutely be the 2nd best player on a contender. If you put Julius Randle in Portland, Denver, or Utah you could argue he’d be their second best player and those teams would be 55-60 win locks in a normal 82 game season.

Z-man: Maybe for a 19-20yo but not for the oldest guy in the upper first round. It wasn’t a reach per se, but the problems he is having on both ends were clearly defined in the “weaknesses” section of most reputable scouting reports. Obviously way too soon to pass final judgment, and you might argue that spending an entire off-season doing whatever Julius did might help his game for next year. But the clock is ticking faster for him than the 19yo’s for sure.

I get this and I fully agree with that. If he’s not league average by next year, he’s pretty much finished as a pro. I’m not so quick to draw conclusions on him though just because Julius Randle has been a top 25 player in the league this year according to BPM and top 15 according to VORP. That’s a bigger reason for Toppin’s low minute count than his skills, I think.

Looks like Dallas is resting KP…front end of b2b, 4 games in 6 days.

Z-man:
Looks like Dallas is resting KP…front end of b2b, 4 games in 6 days.

That must be why they’re controlling against Memphis tonight

geo: hmmmm, no ham, huh…just cheese and bread with some butter on the outside…no dipping “sauce” (like mustard, mayo or ranch) with it…

simple and minimal, tasty enough though…

you have to cook it in the butter, geo. Throw some high quality, unsalted, grass-fed butter into a cold pan. Put it on medium-low heat til it oxidizes, drop the sandwich into the brown butter, and cook until the bread is crispy and the cheese is gooey.

You can add things to it if you want, but to me that’s a perfect sandwich. Goes great with a thick tomato soup.

Z-man: This is an oversimplification. It’s more “I CAN’T BELIEVE ANYONE DOESN’T GET THAT ONCE THIBS WAS HIRED, CERTAIN THINGS BECAME IMPOSSIBLE AND THERE’S NO USE COMPLAINING ABOUT WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE TEAM IS SORT OF DOING WELL AND IS IN A GREAT POSITION TO DO SMART THINGS THAT WORK.”

Z-man – You post good things and I like discussing stuff with you but this is a terrible take. Complaining about what is wrong with the team is a large part of what we do here. How much space has been used complaining about Phil Jackson, Carmelo Anthony, or James Dolan?

As for trying to win, of course, a coach is going to try and win, but maximizing winning each game all the time is actually not the best way to build a winning team. Take a look at Pop, he routinely lets his bench and young players play through a bad stretch, often without even taking a timeout because he knows that while it might hurt the team in the moment it will help those players grow and better prepare them for the next moment. He knows that it’s okay to lose a couple midseason games if it better deepens and prepares his team to overcome future adversity.

We are not doing that, every time we hit a bump we are back to relying on Randle and the starters to bail us out. What happens if Randle gets Covid or twists his ankle? This team is not prepared to win games with him gone for a week or two. Maybe if Randle played closer to 30 minutes and Toppin played closer to 20 and we went long stretches with Randle on the bench we could better weather such a scenario. Developing your bench and your youth is a big part of what good teams do to help them overcome injury and player turnover.

Ben, I am not disagreeing with your complaints at all, they are at least arguable. My point is that no amount of complaining will change anything. That’s who he is.

Where we differ is in determining whether his brand of coaching is good or bad for the team, either specifically for young player development, or more generally for a healthy rebuild. I think that there are good arguments on both sides, and that it’s way too early to say whether his preferences will work out better or worse for the players involved, or for the team.

Hornacek and Fizdale let Knox and Ntilikina play an obscene amount of minutes and it didn’t help their development one bit. Miller played RJ a ton and he still sucked, then came into this year, and Thibs played him even more than Miller and he sucked worse! Did Thibs let him play through it? Yes he did. Mitch couldn’t break the starting rotation last year and nearly everyone begged for Fiz and Miller to play him more. Thibs lets him play through his many mistakes so long as he stays out of foul trouble.

There is no right answer as to whether a player should be allowed to play through stretches of poor play. Thibs helped turn Butler into one of the best players in the league via a first year of tough love. Why are you convinced that Obi and IQ won’t benefit from the same approach?

pastrami….rye…mustard…boom

i’m personally not a big pastrami fan, it’s hard now for me to recall exactly what it tastes like – those three items are a great mix though…

Goes great with a thick tomato soup.

pairing the right dish/snack compliment(s) to a great sandwich is an art in of itself…for myself tomato soup best pairs with peanut butter and jelly on toasted sourdough…you can actually use the soup to dip the sandwich in…

From ESPN’s Weekly power rankings (where the Knicks are 15th and Dallas 16th)

Kristaps Porzingis has found his rhythm offensively, averaging 22.8 points on .500/.423/.903 shooting splits in February. But Porzingis’ defensive struggles are a major problem for the Mavs, who rely on him to protect the rim, a role he excelled in last season. He has the worst defensive rating (119.5) of any player in the league who averages at least 20 minutes per game — and it has shot up to 128.2 this month. “He’s had to play his way into shape, and it just hasn’t been the same,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s a work in progress.” — MacMahon

Obi looks like he needs heavy steroids to play the power forward right now. He’s got the forward but lacks the power.

Ben R: Complaining about what is wrong with the team is a large part of what we do here. How much space has been used complaining about Phil Jackson, Carmelo Anthony, or James Dolan?

I’ll give you that, with some caveats. Phil Jackson was given varying amounts of rope until he signed Noah and traded for Rose, and tried to win now with expensive albatrosses at the expense of picks and cap space. And of course, the whole how’s it goink thing with the triangle. Strat was the lone voice in the wilderness for a long time.

Re: Melo, the most heated debates were between those who saw Melo for what he was with a hard ceiling and those who thought he would change his game to be a better alpha dog. Wouldn’t you say that the ones who predicted that Melo was who he was turned out to be 100% right? Ruruland was the only one left shouting at the wind for years.

James Dolan is universally hated by just about all KB posters. But there’s legitimate debate on how much of the team’s disastrous run through the last 2 decades is a harbinger of what is to come under the Rose regime. Dolan has had substantially more success with the Rangers, so it all depends on whether you consider them a control group or not. Sure, the Dolan bomb could explode at any time and PTSD is justified. But so far, this has been the rosiest (npi) scenario Knicks fans have had to stress over in a long time.

In any case, it’s all relative. Even the “haves” are subject to hyperbole. Celtics fans are calling for the heads of Ainge and Stevens en masse just because they are underperforming for a short stretch. Most of us would have done handsprings to have the situation they were in 5 years ago. We’re not there, but objectively speaking, there is ample room for at least a modicum of optimism. There will be plenty of time to bash Thibs and Rose if/when things go sour. The DRose trade was certainly not a good sign.

I like Wins, sandwiches and fuzz guitars!

until i looked it up today – i never knew a gyro was different than a doner kebab…i always thought they were the same thing…

whenever i visit a place that servers gyros or kebabs – i get transfixed by the spinning meat thing…

The Bulls might be having their own Randle issue with LaVine. They’re winning more than I think anyone expected and LaVine is obviously a big part of that. I think Arturas Karnisovas is a very smart basketball executive, so what he does with LaVine will be fascinating.

EDITED TO ADD: Ha! I mixed Brooks up with Donovan. My bad. So never mind, Donovan has always been good.

Brooks got some bad luck with injuries (especially Wall) and Grunfeld is no genius god love him OAKAAK.

I’ve been a Lavine hater since he was at UCLA but he’s pretty interesting right now. It’s hard to get a handle on how bad his defense is outside of the Bulls as a whole, but if it’s mediocre he’s a good player.

I also have been a Lavine hater for years. I feel exactly the same way about him.

He and Randle are both playing out of their mind relative to what I thought was their baseline.

I don’t know what I would do with either of them. But I think I’d trust Karnishovas more than Rose to make a big call.

The Jazz were ahead of the Hornets 91-90 after 3 quarters. Final score Jazz 132 Hornets 110.

That team can score in bunches, with so many good shooters. Don’t think they can get past the Lakers, but they’re putting together quite a season.

https://twitter.com/bleacherreport/status/1364072505581785089?s=21

Any ideas who could use KP?

The Mavs got fleeced ahahahaha

Wow, the Wizards just beat the Lakers.

It’s amazing, man, the difference a star player can make. You can be a bunch of G-Leaguers and you add Bradley Beal around them and suddenly they’re competitive every night.

Brian Cronin:
Porzingis probably would be a good change of situation candidate. I don’t know that he and Luka really complement each other.

If they attach a pick, we can take the poor guy back! 😀

cybersoze: Saw a trade idea from a Nets fan that i think…

Of course there’s a problem with that sentence… THERE ARE NO NETS FANS!!! 😀

I’m sure Janis and KP are taking that Bleacher Report article very well.

geo: i got a question – we don’t want any part of kemba – do we?

that’s an ugly contract…

Hell no, not unless Boston is attaching assets to dump him. He’s been terrible after the injury and he’s 30, he might never be a good NBA player again and definitely won’t be worth that contract.

I’d keep an eye on Boston. They have trade exception and Ainge has always sniffed around Porzingis.

Btw, how ironic is it that the Nets, fleeced by the Celtics, are currently much closer to a title than the Celtics? Way to blow your stash, Danny.

DRed:
I’ve been a Lavine hater since he was at UCLA but he’s pretty interesting right now.It’s hard to get a handle on how bad his defense is outside of the Bulls as a whole, but if it’s mediocre he’s a good player.

IMO, defense is one of those things where 1 + 1 = 3.

If you have 1 bad defender on the court you can usually hide him on a weak player or scheme and help well enough to get away with it. When you have 2 bad defenders on the court it seems like it often all breaks down badly.

At this point we are playing very good defense, but I don’t think it’s because we have a lot of good defenders. It’s because Thibs is a brilliant defensive coach, they are well prepared for their matchups, and he has them in top shape working hard on that end. If we throw a negative defender into the mix (like LaVine), it may turn out to be a toxic brew on defense even if he’s not terrible on his own. He may more of the kind of guy you try to hide behind a few really good defenders.

Maybe Dallas would accept vaunted offensive dynamo/assistant coach/enlightened philosopher-MVP Derrick Rose for Brunson, though we’d be well within our rights to ask for another pick in return.

sounds like more specifics from our old friend Ian Begley – that the Mavs reached out to the Warriors about KP (and not the other way around). That gives some more weight to this – specific team involved…

maybe Anthony Davis is the real MVP

Bernard King was a low calorie scoring bum before the Knicks traded for him. All you statheads out there. Is there a comp between bernard and julius? Both drafted 7th, bounced from several teams, landed on Knicks in age 25/26. Saw huge jump in performance from knick year one to knick year two.

I thought KP would turn out better than he has, so happy to take the L on that for now. I still think we could have gotten a better return for him at the time, and am sticking to that. But either way, it’s nice not to have to see him tearing up the league in Dallas while we already jettisoned DSjr as a total bust.

Having dissed Porzingis for years, though, I know have to ask… isn’t he kinda the ideal frontcourt partner for Randle? If you’re on Team Build Around Randle, shouldn’t we kick the tires on this?

We can still capitalize on the low salaries of Randle and Barrett this summer to make a good offer to a free agent PG like Paul or Lowery.

Paul
Shooter
Barrett
Porzingis
Randle

with Quick and Mitch on the bench.

I don’t know if I want to go all in on that, but that’s as good as you can get around Randle, isn’t it?

Let’s offer Frank and a 2nd for KP.
I guess that original trade’s working out for the Knicks now.

KP without the D is essentially an injury-prone Lauri Markannen. That’s pretty bad value for a max contract. I also don’t think the frail 7’3 guy with anemia is going to suddenly turn a corner re: his health any time soon.

The Knicks really dodged a bullet, gotta thank KP and Janis for being such pricks. And a major shoutout to Phil Jax for his role in the kerfuffle. We’d likely have KP on that max if PJax wasn’t so bad at managing the whole situation. Thank you Phil!

Hubert:
Having dissed Porzingis for years, though, I know have to ask… isn’t he kinda the ideal frontcourt partner for Randle?If you’re on Team Build Around Randle, shouldn’t we kick the tires on this?

We can still capitalize on the low salaries of Randle and Barrett this summer to make a good offer to a free agent PG like Paul or Lowery.

Paul
Shooter
Barrett
Porzingis
Randle

with Quick and Mitch on the bench.

I don’t know if I want to go all in on that, but that’s as good as you can get around Randle, isn’t it?

CP3 has a player option for $40M next season. If he’s opting out of that I would assume it’s to sign on with a title contender to try and win a ring before he retires. Lowry’s 35 and making $30M this year, how much are you offering him to sign with us?

Kristaps would be a good fit with a lot of frontcourt players if he can get his mobility back on defense, but that is an enormous if, and who is taking that chance with his contract?

Yeah Westbrook is having a horrible season, which is also a testament to how great Beal has been

If we had acquired Westbrook (which some idiot local sports talking heads were advocating for) , we’d be the ones watching him throw up bricks and turn the ball over. Thank god we dodged that dum dum bullet.

One of the Mills/Perry administration’s defenses of how the KP deal went down was that they needed to set up the trade quickly and quietly, because once the world knew he was being shopped, things would have gotten ugly for the team until the trade was closed. It was lame, like almost everything Mills did, but it does make me wonder what the path forward will be for KP in Dallas. Guys have been publicly shopped before and wound up staying long-term, but the Porzingis brothers are also fairly petulant, so I could see this turning into a mess, even though KP and Doncic are reportedly very close.

cybersoze:
Saw a trade idea from a Nets fan that i think it’d be good for the Knicks, but that’d only apply if we weren’t so focused on winning now.
For the Nets, they need help now and Dinwiddie is out for the season, also Noel would be huge for their push for a championship. For the Knicks, Dinwiddie would opt-in for next season (12.3M) and would be a huge upgrade over Payton (he’s a penetrating PG as Thibs likes so much, the only problem might be his defense, but i don’t know a lot about it), and Nic Claxton looks like a promising prospect.
Proposed trade: Payton + Noel for Dinwiddie + Nic Claxton

My bet is Dinwiddie opts out after this season to get a better deal. So that’s a non-starter.

At the very least he won’t prematurely opt-in before his agent gets a sense of the market.

My bet is Dinwiddie opts out after this season to get a better deal. So that’s a non-starter.

There’s a ton of cap space open this summer and not many marquee FAs out there to take it. Guards and wings are going to get paid.

The Westbrook of the last 2 games looked an awful lot like the MVP guy.

Early Bird: I would take any number of g-leaguers over Westbrook. He’s probably the difference between worst team in the league and the Magic. He’s lost WSH games Beal would have won single handedly.

I’m glad the Knicks passed on him, too, regardless of his last couple of games. The team has surprised so far, so I hope they just sit tight the rest of the season (unless a really nice deal comes around), and play this hand.

I’d be fine with taking on Westbrook’s contract with ample sweetener attached.

got my fingers crossed today for our man jules…

I have been hard on Poku but this assist is sweet.

https://twitter.com/fastbreakbreak/status/1363925740295753741

Watching Russ makes you think of all the land mines we have dodged.

Don’t understand why there isn’t more momentum on this board for Beal. Forgetting price for a second does he not seem like the absolute perfect guard fit with Randle and Mitch?

He’s gonna take like 3 unprotected firsts and 3 swaps to get him out of WAS.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: And 5-15 (2-6 FT) against Denver for 12 points and 8 turnovers. 8-22 against Houston. 6-19 against Boston.
Squint harder, bro!

So, you seem to AGREE with me that when he is playing well, the Wizards play well. His 3pt shooting and FT shooting have been horrible. I don’t think he’ll get better beyond the arc, but he’s not going to shoot 61% from the line very long. He’s a career 80% FT shooter that shot 76% last season.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: He’s gonna take like 3 unprotected firsts and 3 swaps to get him out of WAS.

Ok. Let’s start the bidding. Think I did this exercise before.

Either the NY or DAL unprotected 2021 1st
Either the NY or DAL top 3 protected 2023 1st
2022 swap
Toppin
Frank
Knox
Filler

This is a deal I would do.

Ok. Let’s start the bidding. Think I did this exercise before.

Either the NY or DAL unprotected 2021 1st
Either the NY or DAL top 3 protected 2023 1st
2022 swap
Toppin
Frank
Knox
Filler

Putting aside the merits, I highly, highly doubt this gets it done considering the competition. I’m nearly certain you’d need to add (with no subtractions) RJ to this package just to get a conversation going.

And Zingis hurt his back today…

GoNYGoNYGo – Tired of Tanking: The general trend on this board is to run the Knicks like the Wilpons ran the Mets – like a small market team.

Or it’s to not pay top dollar to add a one-dimensional player (who is very good, but not a top-tier superstar) to a sub-.500 team. Some of us are better at staring at the marshmallow so we can have two later.

Let us remember the Jrue Holiday trade:

November 23, 2020: As part of a 4-team trade, traded by the New Orleans Pelicans with Sam Merrill to the Milwaukee Bucks; the Denver Nuggets traded a 2023 1st round draft pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder; the Milwaukee Bucks traded R.J. Hampton to the Denver Nuggets; the Milwaukee Bucks traded Eric Bledsoe, a 2024 1st round draft pick, a 2025 1st round draft pick, a 2026 1st round draft pick and a 2027 1st round draft pick to the New Orleans Pelicans; the Milwaukee Bucks traded George Hill to the Oklahoma City Thunder; the New Orleans Pelicans traded Zylan Cheatham, Joshia Gray, Darius Miller, Kenrich Williams, a 2023 2nd round draft pick and a 2024 2nd round draft pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder; and the Oklahoma City Thunder traded Steven Adams to the New Orleans Pelicans. New Orleans acquires right to swap 2024 1st-rd pick with Milwaukee 2025 1st-rd pick is MIL own New Orleans acquires right to swap 2026 1st-rd pick with Milwaukee 2027 1st-rd pick is MIL own 2023 1st-rd pick (DEN own) is top-14 protected 2023 2nd-rd pick is WAS own 2024 2nd-rd pick is CHO own

But my point is you make the offer and see where the bidding goes from there. But you would do my original deal no?

I think the original idea is so far from what it would take that, sure, it would be worth doing because at a minimum we could immediately flip Beal for more than we gave away.

I’m against trading for Beal when taking into account the actual cost because doing so would involve subtracting production from the current roster, which we can’t afford to do until we’re better than .500.

Beal is a free agent after next season (he’s a lock to decline his 2022-2023 player option) so we wouldn’t have a lot of time to impress him enough to mitigate the risk of him walking. Realistically, the current roster plus Beal, minus RJ, is a pretty low upside group and we’d lose tons of flexibility to add to it.

Wow, Tiger involved in a really bad car crash…no reports on his condition…looks horrible.

I agree that the price on Beal is going to be too high, but… who exactly are these other teams willing to step up and pay the kind of price we’re assuming? There’s not many asset rich contenders right now.

Reports that Tiger broke both legs. Doesn’t appear to be life-threatening (beyond the inherent risk of invasive surgery).

Ok, so we have to give up 10 picks but golden state can waltz in with andrew wiggins and kelly oubre. Come on. They’d have to give up Weisman and the wolves pick, and I don’t think that would be very smart.

Denver isn’t giving up Murray, and he’d be more miserable in Washington than Beal is. They can trade Porter and their first in 21 & 25. That’s not rich.

Other teams you mentioned (Houston, OKC, New Orleans), don’t have any reason to trade for Beal.

I’m just saying, we’re assuming the cost is high by looking at comparable players. That’s not how this works. What contender has the picks and the will to make that trade? I think CGreene’s trade (two 1sts and Obi) is probably as high a bid they’ll get.

The Minnesota pick is more valuable than anything you put in the original offer. I don’t know why Denver wouldn’t consider giving up Murray for Beal. If Houston, OKC, and New Orleans have no reason to trade for Beal than why do we?

Denver could build a package around Jamal Murray.

Murray turned 24 today and is under contract until the end of 2025. Beal isn’t old but he’s could get a 10-year-vet max next year worth about $240M over five, stretching out until he’s 33. Murray has a lot of unrealized potential, but he’s a far better bet. Cheaper, younger, and with a better outlook, since he’s beginning his prime right now.

OKC has a massive warchest of draft picks.

They do, but Beal would not be “the piece” on his own. I think Presti will push the chips in once he has a cost-controlled core. The picks are incredibly valuable from a rebuild perspective — they only need 1/3 of them to pan out as (at minimum) rotation players, then use cap space and trade assets to acquire the superstars — and they’re very clearly rebuilding. Their top 5 players in MP, by age: 20, 21, 22, 22, 19. Then Al Horford, who I almost forgot was in the league still.

ATL could build a package around John Collins.

This seems kinda plausible.

GSW has Oubre, Wiggins, and Minnesota’s unprotected 1st this year.

Would be a heist by GSW, unless they land top 3 with the MIN pick. Jalen Suggs as a Warrior is fucking scary, even if Curry starts to decline.

Houston could flip some their assets from the Harden trade for Beal (not that I think their cheapskate owner would do that).

Yep.

NOP could build a package around Lonzo Ball and some of the picks from the AD trade.

Also plausible, although I don’t know how much those picks are worth.

Orlando could build a package around Aaron Gordon.

Plausible because it’s so dumb!

If Houston, OKC, and New Orleans have no reason to trade for Beal than why do we?

We actually don’t have any good reason to trade for Beal, but we have a win now mindset from the coach to the owner. And there are people here who want to build around Randle.

I’m more of a “be patient and accumulate assets” guy, but I’m willing to entertain the alternative.

I would not touch Barrett or IQ. I would pray Obi still has value. I’m 1000% out on him but a lot of GM’s allegedly loved him and we can explain his lack of PT. Obi and 3 firsts is unwise, IMO, but I think it gets the job done. And we still have 1st round picks every year except 2025.

But even then, we’d still need Leon Rose to pull a CAA miracle and land us a PG

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Murray turned 24 today and is under contract until the end of 2025. Beal isn’t old but he’s could get a 10-year-vet max next year worth about $240M over five, stretching out until he’s 33. Murray has a lot of unrealized potential, but he’s a far better bet. Cheaper, younger, and with a better outlook, since he’s beginning his prime right now.

Does he have a better outlook? His counting stats are good but his BPM is 0.6 and his BPM last year was only 1.2 his efficiency is basically league average which is what it’s been for his career. Meanwhile, Denver is 16-14 and in 7th place a year after going to the WCF and have only 4 players with a positive BPM and Jokic is the only one with a BPM above 1. They need to at least consider trading Murray to improve the team.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Orlando could build a package around Aaron Gordon.

Plausible because it’s so dumb!

Dumb for who? Washington or Orlando?

Word is that at least one person in the Heat FO is discussing trading for Lonzo. Would love to have Rose scoop the young man up.

it’s amazing what kind of fantasizing having payton/bullock as your starting backcourt can generate amongst the fanbase…

lonzo/beal -2022!!!!

I’m surprised this hasn’t come up yet, but anyone think we should look into signing Quinn Cook? It’s almost definitely not happening due to the roster crunch, but I think he’d be a better use of a spot than Taj Gibson.

thenoblefacehumper:
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up yet, but anyone think we should look into signing Quinn Cook? It’s almost definitely not happening due to the roster crunch, but I think he’d be a better use of a spot than Taj Gibson.

i would go for him over both rivers and rose..

thenoblefacehumper: Are you really trying to make the case that the Knicks should’ve traded an asset for Russell Westbrook? There may be no more hilarious hill ever died on in the history of this board.

No. I’m making the case that Washington is not winning with Beal and G-leaguers, as was stated before. They are winning with Beal+Westbrook+ some NBA rotational players.

vincoug: Dumb for who? Washington or Orlando?

Not dumb for anyone. Dumb enough to happen, given that WAS and ORL are the two franchises involved. ORL would basically become the Wizards of the south, and WAS gets a player who has never moved the needle once. Orlando fans are constantly scratching their heads about why this guy with “all the tools” keeps at the helm of a perennial 35-win team.

Does he have a better outlook? His counting stats are good but his BPM is 0.6 and his BPM last year was only 1.2 his efficiency is basically league average which is what it’s been for his career. Meanwhile, Denver is 16-14 and in 7th place a year after going to the WCF and have only 4 players with a positive BPM and Jokic is the only one with a BPM above 1. They need to at least consider trading Murray to improve the team.

Beal from 24-27 has had a 2.2, 2.9, 2.9 and 4.9 BPM. This year, he’s got a sky-high OBPM because he leads the league in USG% on a TS% that’s just ahead of Murray’s (102 to 104). That’s great! He is an exceptional offensive player right now.

But again, he’s going to turn 28 before the playoffs start. And Murray’s under contract through that age. Beal is not, and is eligible for an even bigger contract, possibly a 10-year supermax if he keeps up this level of play. That’s a HUGE edge to Murray, even if his potential is as of yet unrealized. I think Beal is a much better player on offense than Murray right now, but we’re talking about a huge bet on a short-term future play. Once Beal signs his supermax, whichever team is holding it better be ready to go deep into the playoffs, because they sure as hell ain’t adding help once he’s making $50M a year. And if he declines after 30, too bad. That’s a guaranteed contract and Jokic’s prime is wasted.

cgreene: Ok. Let’s start the bidding. Think I did this exercise before.

Either the NY or DAL unprotected 2021 1st
Either the NY or DAL top 3 protected 2023 1st
2022 swap
Toppin
Frank
Knox
Filler

This is a deal I would do.

It’s not really worth the exercise. Your offer is fair. It would take a tweak or two. Nobody on this board is going to believe you get Washington to agree. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read “I can’t believe how (fill in the team) stole (fill in the star) here.

If we could add another superstar to Randle, IQ, Beal, and keep our center duo of Mitch & Noel, then I’d consider it.

We’d need to move significant draft capital and give up RJ.

I just don’t see where we get a 3rd superstar, unless we bet on LaVine’s season being real. At that point you’re betting on LaVine, Randle, & Beal maintaining their career numbers from this season as their new baseline. Randle & LaVine are young enough for it to be plausible, Beal not so much.

Even if those 3 players are all real, then I’d still probably slot us behind the Nets and a few teams. On the other hand, we probably have 4-5 year window to make it work.

There’s a path with Beal, but the window to acquire a 3rd star closes very quickly.