From Shams:
The New York Knicks are signing center Norvel Pelle to a multiyear deal, sources tell @TheAthletic. His second 10-day deal ended today. Pelle finds home after stops in Brooklyn and Sacramento this season.
Now, this is the sort of thing you should do with your cap room midseason. I’m sure it’s non-guaranteed. Good stuff. Buy any upside and if he sucks, cut him.
Great signing.
104 replies on “The Athletic: Knicks Sign Norvel Pelle to a Multiyear Deal”
Continuing from last thread
I think it’s unlikely the Knicks draft 3 players with the picks they have.
These are smart basketball people. They know they can’t have Mitch/Nerlens, Bullock, and Payton on the court together as the starting lineup. That’s not enough scoring. Randle and RJ are wildly exceeding expectations as shooters, but it’s no mortal lock either will shoot as well next year (even if RJ improves overall). That’s an additional risk. They also know they aren’t likely to get the upgrade they need at either PG or in Bullock’s role with our pick or Dallas’s pick. Maybe if they are lucky they’ll get a player that can be that in 2-3 years, but not next year. These guys are trying to get better now while managing the long term.
They have to try to package picks and move up or they have to try to package picks and players to get that upgrade. If they don’t, that most likely means they failed to execute what they hoped to via trade or free agency.
I think Mitch, Knox, and maybe even Obi are all eligible to be used in a trade combined with picks (assuming they keep Noel).
Frank will be released to test the waters but IMO there’s a chance he’ll be back. IMO Thibs likes Frank. He defends well and his 3 point shooting is improving. When Bullock came into the league he was older than Frank is now and he was terrible. Frank is on the bench because Bullock is better at Frank’s future NBA role as a 3&D player. With the lack of scoring on this team, Frank can’t be on the court in many lineups. Frank is out if he gets an offer they don’t want to match, he simply wants out of NY for a fresh start, or they find a better prospect in free agency at a similar price. IMO it won’t be based on Thibs and basketball. Thibs likes Frank in the same way he likes Bullock.
I think I read the Pelle’s deal has a partial guarantee for next year
Makes sense, or else why would he even sign, right?
Re: point guards in the draft, I actually think Miles McBride might be the best option, but he’s ranked as an early 2nd rounder for some reason. Mitchell is maybe the top defender at his position, though.
Just thought I’d gush that I passed Steve Nash on the street today. We nodded at each other and he seemed to have great vibes.
Strat taking huge rips off da copium pipe.
Justin Termine and Eddie Johnson spent the first hour of their radio show raving about the Knicks. I called in to tell them about the experience of going to the game last night, how the fans love this lunchpail team, how they were dancing in the streets after the game. They went on and on about how the Knicks are the most fun team in the NBA to root for right now, and about how good it is for RJ, Quickley, and the young players in general to learn early on what it takes to play winning basketball in meaningful games. Termine elaborated on how last night’s game might have been the biggest game in the NBA careers of Julius, RJ, IQ, Trae, Collins, Huerter and Bogdo. I kind of agree that playing in playoff-level games, or sitting behind better players because the games are meaningful is good for development. Eddie said that when you sit and your team is losing, you tend to become resentful and think you could do better than the player in front of you. When you’re winning, you have less to say and are more likely to accept that you are sitting because the players in front of you are better than you. Their analysis of what OKC is doing was really dumb, they seem to forget that they had a winning team last year so the young guys like SGA already know what it takes to win.
Anyone know Lonzo’s pick n roll numbers? People keep saying he’s not good a the rim, but he’s shooting 63% 0-3 according to basketball-reference. I’ve also seen highlights of him and Randle running pnr in LA. LaVine is a better shooter, but Lonzo is a better defender and passer. Lonzo is also 3 years younger.
Lonzo’s pick and roll numbers are poor despite his good FG% at the rim. Very low PPP when Lonzo is the primary ball handler in a pick and roll, something like 10th percentile.
It’s one of the main arguments against Lonzo in my opinion.
Nothing says “I like this guy” like nightly DNP-CD’s
Some peripheral players will take those deals just to stick in the NBA. You know, like Austin Rivers.
Guessing Pelle knows the Knicks need somebody pretty desperately though. Maybe we keep Pelle over Taj next year
The way we play, or maybe the way our centers play, it seems like we need four centers on the roster. They are physical and throw themselves all over the place (except maybe Taj) and get injured every so often.
If the idea is to keep Frank around to see if he becomes anything, just sign him to the Westchester Knicks. He gets plenty of playing time and can stay on the margins of the organization in case he gets to a point where he’s worth a roster slot. They would also be able to bring him up to the big leagues on ten day contracts in that scenario, no?
JK, totally unfair. He got a little over 2 seconds in the last game.
i did in fact watch the game; however, i did not notice that occurrence…i must have blinked…
edit: oh yeah, will you look at that – he has zero minutes played, but managed a minus three in the box score…
Frank Ntilikina will not be back. The team is 3rd in defense and 20th in offense. The dumbest GMs in the sport would know not to invest a valuable roster spot in Frank Ntilikina under those conditions. I mean he’s arguably not an NBA player under any conditions, but he’s particularly ill-suited to this team.
Sorry Strat.
Frank came in with 8.4 seconds left. He actually did a great job defensively, but they threw the ball to Bogdanovic who drained that corner three. Out came Frankie, for 6.2 seconds of failed Julius hero ball.
So yes, you blinked and missed it.
Frank Ntilikina will be nothing but a footnote in a few months
Lonzo is a terrific cutter but he doesn’t drive to the rim with the ball
C’mon, Jowles. Frank is ALREADY a footnote, and an excellent one at that. He’s leading the NBA in fewest seconds per game. Last six games he’s been in, he’s played 1.5 minutes. Total. That’s definitely worthy of a footnote.
On the other hand, Lonzo is an anagram for Loozn.
Lonzo’s pick and roll numbers are poor despite his good FG% at the rim. Very low PPP when Lonzo is the primary ball handler in a pick and roll, something like 10th percentile.
that was last year. this year’s he’s over 1 ppp, which is like the 85th percentile.
And the Suns came to Boston to put on the following “show”:
– 17.1% from 3P land
– for a total of 86 pts
And this with a starting 5 with all of their primary players (CP3, Booker, Mikal and Ayton).
I highly doubt we’ll have this kind of opposition on monday.
On better news, Chicago beat Charlotte and now i think it’s safe to say we’ll probably be Top7 which is fantastic because if we fall to the play-in we’ll have 2 games at MSG to win one and go to the playoffs.
But keep fighting, Knicks, Top6 is much better and maybe we can do it.
About Frank, i think he’ll get a chance in the league, go check some bottom dweller rosters with players that i don’t even recognize the name, and you’ll know he can stick around some more. Now if he makes something of it, i’m not so sure. I want him to go to San Antonio or Dallas to check if his father (Strat) is right, that with the right coaching he’ll be a great player.
Note to you, Strat, that argument is a little old, because we have a COTY candidate and Frank still didn’t get things right for his career.
For me, it’ll be refreshing to put an end to the Frank-arguments, which our campaign this season already is doing a good job at shutting it down.
I am like obsessed with this team.
Injury news relevant to the Knicks-
Porzingis out again with a sprained ankle. You hate to see it. Not that KP means that much in terms of outcome for them – they’re a +1.3 with him on the court and +0.9 with him off the court. That contract is going to be an albatross (if it isn’t already). For all the horrible management decisions Perry/Mills made, the KP trade ain’t one of them.
Durant might be back against the Celtics tonight and also against the Suns on Sunday – KD is one of the least likable players in the league (seriously Kevin, just stay off Twitter) but he could really do us a favor by beating the Celtics and having a nice 2OT war against the Suns on Sunday.
by the way – highly recommend Woj’s podcast with Randle that came out this morning. he just seems like a great dude. The story about his dinner back in Nov 2020 (pre-Leon Rose!) with Aaron Mintz, Kenny Payne, and Wes is pretty wild.
Bobby Marks:
I’m unclear on whether “no protection” means the money is unguaranteed, or something else.
The problem wasn’t trading him. It was trading him for so little return other than cap space. We lucked out in that we used the cap space on Randle, though I believe we could have afforded him even if Hardaway and Lee were still on the roster at that point. The picks will be useful but likely not game-changers, and Pills obviously guessed wrong on DSJ (though he at least turned into Rose). We could have gotten much more if we’d prioritized asset accumulation rather than using KP as a sweetener to dump contracts in a futile pursuit of KD and Kyrie.
It’s so much fun being a Knick fan right now.
I’m so interested in this question of what our unexpected progress means for how the team *should* approach the off-season. If this year is a real reflection of where we are, the next step has to be trying to cement ourselves as a top 4 EC team. Looking at previous years that basically equates to being a regular 50-win team.
By being so much better than we thought, we’ve made it harder to build through the draft and harder (because our picks are less valuable) to build through trades. But we still have assets and at least two summers of decent cap space, internal growth and lots of (likely mid-1R) picks.
To become a 50 win team I think we’re all clear we need a starting calibre PG and more efficient halfcourt and transition offense, PnR playmaking and general offensive creation, without sacrificing our D. Ideally we get those through a starting PG and another wing.
Looking at who is out there, it does feel like Ball and Lavine or Beal tick most of the boxes. No, Lavine and Beal aren’t Lebron or Kawhi but very few guys are. The players we want have to actually be available. At this point I think I’d sign for Lonzo this summer, plus using our picks and hoping to hit on at least one more contributor, then signing Lavine next summer. If someone better to fill the shot creating wing role comes along via trade, I’m in with Obi, Knox and some picks – but I’m not sure how much that buys if the picks are generally in the high teens and twenties.
I’m curious why the general sentiment in the board is so anti Lavine?
I’m more agnostic on him than anti but I also have a feeling he’s not going to make it to free agency, so the question is moot. Chicago didn’t trade away so many assets in the Vuc trade if they weren’t going all-in on LaVine and pushing for the playoffs every year.
“We could have gotten much more if we’d prioritized asset accumulation rather than using KP as a sweetener to dump contracts in a futile pursuit of KD and Kyrie.”
I feel as if this hindsight 20/20 bias. Pills rightly moved to trade KP immediately the moment his dipshit brother gave them an ultimatum because they didn’t want it to get out. Had the news gotten out their leverage would’ve conceivably vanished with teams knowing KP bolting and going to create a circus.
You know, outside of hiring David Fizdale, I don’t know if the Scott Perry era was all that bad.
1. Traded KP. OK, maybe he could have gotten more and he failed on getting Durant/ Kyrie. But if we didn’t trade KP or traded him and didn’t include Lee and Hardaway, we probably wouldn’t have signed Randle AND Morris. And both of those signings turned out to be kind of huge for us. Randle because we signed Randle and Morris because it netted us the pick that became Quickley. Plus, we don’t have max KP hanging over us like an albatross.
2. He also got Bullock. And got the team option for him that allowed us to keep him this year. And Bullock has been huge for us.
3. Draft RJ and Mitch. RJ was a no brainer but there’s a lot of people who were saying we should have traded down to get another pick and funny, I don’t hear that talk as much these days. And then drafting mitch and signing him to 4 years at $1 million a year. Now maybe we end up trading Mitch this summer because we decide that Noel, etc…is the way to go but even with just one year at one million, I think Mitch is still a very valuable trade piece.
So yeah…traded KP, signed Randle and Morris and Bullock, drafted RJ and Mitch. These were all solid moves. Its really just Fizdale that did him in and drafting Kevin Knox (Frank was a phil mistake…his last gift to us).
Is there any way to isolate the impact of Zion on Lonzo’s pick and roll numbers? I might have some good numbers in the pick and roll too if he was on the other end of it.
As an advocate of efficiency in player salaries for (checks account details – way too long) I do have to say it’s kind of wonderful how many games we have won this year while being under the salary floor. It’s a sign of how warped I am by years of overpaying overrated scorers (and reading WOW stuff) that I actually take a lot of joy in it.
I also think we are in for a super interesting offseason. I didn’t see this season coming and didn’t want a bunch of mercs killing our draft slot, I will own that, it’s worked out great. It’s been fun.
On the positive side of the ledger, we really are going to have a lot to talk about as RAller work to replace Bullock, Rose, Burks, and Noel.
And re RJ, I am still not completely sold on him being a franchise cornerstone. But he’s been better.
It’s a reference to a post strat made on Jan. 6 that I don’t want him to forget, because I certainly won’t. And Ntilikina is just another L on the scoreboard.
I find the Frank attitude kind of amazing.
The one skill he needs to remain in the NBA is to hit 3s. That’s it!
Is anyone here foolish enough to think the small volume of 2s and free throw he’s taken this year are an indication that he suddenly got worse at those things?
He’s obviously did not.
What we don’t know is whether he’s still a 32% 3 point shooter overall and close to 40% from the corner or whether he has actually improved because the volume of those this year is also still to low. But the fact that he has been better from 3 is certainly a plus.
As to not playing, his role is the same as Bullock’s (3 & D) but he’s clearly not as experienced or versatile as Bullock yet (Bullock was worse at the same age). So of course he’s playing behind Bullock. We are trying to win games. And since he’s a lower usage player like Bullock they can’t really play together often. They shouldn’t play together at all, especially on a team with players like Nerlens/Mitch, Payton, Taj, etc.. You need enough scoring punch in the lineup and we still have gaps there.
I’m sure the Knicks will want to bring Bullock back unless they find an upgrade, but if neither happens there’s a very good chance Frank is back if that’s what he wants. Thibs doesn’t read this forum (thankfully or we would have traded Randle for bag of rocks, traded down and not have RJ, missed on Quickley, and be battling the Pistons in the lottery). Thibs knows Frank still has the potential to be a productive role player on a very good team.
Remember earlier this season when some people here were saying Frank should be playing instead of Bullock lol.
The Perry era would look SO much better if we didn’t screw up what is shaping up to be an historic 2018 draft lottery. We could have taken literally any of Mikal Bridges, Miles Bridges, Shai Gilgeous Alexander, or Michael Porter Jr at 9 but we chose Kevin Knox and I hate that. I would be throwing a party for us if we had SGA (I’m using him because he played on the same Kentucky team as Knox AND worked out for us before the draft), RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson with a real shot at adding Jalen Brunson AND 5 1st round picks in the next five years. There’s no getting around it; drafting Kevin Knox when seven of the next 10 players picked are at least good rotation players is absolutely a fireable offense.
Thank God someone gets it. And yes we could have signed Randle and kept KP. I liked the the Randle signing and said he would have been a better fit with KP even when he was playing poorly because of the makeup of the team and the role he was given. Thankfully, Randle is a workhorse and found a way to improve his 3 point shooting a lot (at least so far this year) or this year would not look quite as good as it looks now. Even I didn’t see that coming even though I knew he was a lot better than the consensus here thought.
i don’t remember anyone being anti-lavine… but i imagine lavine will be the prize of the 2022 free agent pool … barring something crazy like steph, kawhi or the brooklyn guys coming available… that probably has some implications for us this offseason…
PERRY IS NOT GOOD.
Half of what he did that worked out well was broken clock stuff and much of the rest was either a clear mistake or a mistake of omission. If you sign some reclamation project to an overpriced 1 year contract, it may not be a long term debacle, but you haven’t done anything productive. That’s still not good. We saw “good” this year when we signed the same or better players for less money and had the theoretical option to keep them or flip them for a pick depending on how the season was turning out. Bullock, Noel, Burkes, Taj, and even Payton (for less money) were all good. The Rose deal (another move probably prompted by Thibs that the consensus didn’t like) was very good, The only suspect move is Obi and the jury is still out. He’s clearly not ready to be a rotation player but he’s getting his chance because we don’t have a backup PF. We’ll see what he can do with it the rest of the way. He seems to be inching forward.
Well I did say not that bad which is not the same as good. Also the expression is that a broken clock is right twice a day. So if Perry did more than two good things he is better than a broken clock.
All I’m saying is that he made moves that gave us extra picks, didn’t burden us with a pseudo star on a Max contract who is always injured, drafted RJ and Mitch and signed a now probably all NBA player in his prime to a good contract. And Bullock. And those one year reclamation projects none of them hurt us long term. His biggest mistakes were Fizdale and Knox.
So who should we take with 2 picks in the low 20s in the draft?
I have always been skeptical of Lavine but he has been much better than I expected this year. But ultimately I feel the same about him and Devin Booker, they will always be Curry and Lillard wannabes. Maybe they surprise me but the bar is so high for pint sized one way guards.
In a perfect world we would have gotten more for KP but it was crucial to get rid of him. He’s not a good asset based on injury risk alone.
TGHR – Yeah, that Knox pick really stinks. At the time, now, next year. Just a disaster.
If you check, you’ll see Bullock got off to a poor start this season. Some of us (myself included) weren’t expecting the season to turn out this well at that stage. So yes, a few people thought we might as well give Frank a shot at those minutes in Bullocks role because he’s younger and Bullock wasn’t doing much anyway.
He wasn’t given that job though. He was mostly playing when Payton was out. That wasn’t going to work because we all know Frank is not a traditional PG. But Thibs had no PG options. So Frank got those minutes in a scoring challenged lineup. Frank has generally played when our PGs have been hurt, but not in the PG role. He brings up the ball and then stands in the corner kind of like Bullock does a lot of the time. So like Bullock, he’s not going to get many assists and shot attempts.
If you compare them this year per 36, the major difference is that Frank has been atrocious from 2 and the FT line (well below his average) in very limited minutes and attempts so far this year, but made up for some of it with his way above trend 3 point shooting, Bullock is still obviously the more experienced and more versatile player. Now he’s hot and is critical to the spacing, especially with Burks out .
I understand what you are saying, but we shouldn’t grade him on a Knicks curve. lol
The idea is to improve the position of the team. He did very little of that in a couple of years. I’ll give him credit for Mitch, but I think we sort of know why Mitch was allowed to drop. Some teams didn’t want to take the chance he was going to flake out.
It makes me all warm and fuzzy that the thing you have burned into your memory on Jan 6 is something stupid that Strat wrote…
What made the Knox pick stand out so much is that there are usually different approaches to what you want out of a pick and Knox was the wrong pick by any theoretical approach. Looking for the home run pick? That was Porter Jr. Looking for the highest floor? That was Bridges. Even if you start to narrow things down to something as absurd as “Looking for a high upside young freshman from Kentucky?” and that was SGA. Heck, looking for a guy who doesn’t even look that good but will probably at least play in the NBA and that was Miles Bridges! There was basically no angle where the Knox pick made sense. I find it hard to believe he was even better than SGA at 3-on-3s!
It’s gotta be, right? Pelle can’t have that much leverage.
Do we know who else played in that infamous scrimmage besides Miles Bridges?
I believe the angle you’re forgetting is the “we just took Frank Ntilikina last year and Kevin Knox just gave David Fizdale a massive erection” angle. By the Fizdale Boner method, Kevin Knox was the only pick possible. That year I talked myself into Knox because all signs pointed to him, but when Michael Porter Jr was still on the board and we passed on him I felt deflated. Chalk that one up to “things Knicks fans knew that the current front office didn’t.” We took our two most important assets in Porzingis and the 2018 lottery pick and turned them into bottom 20 players Dennis Smith Jr and Kevin Knox.
I would love to find out who the Fizdale Six were that day.
Man, watching the Lakers/Mavericks last night, Luka sometimes just looks like he is defying reality out there.
picking this low and especially in this draft there could be any number of a dozen or so possible names still available… there’s no telling which ones will be….
My absolute best pro-Knox argument is that the team (Perry/Fiz) – at the time – saw him as a blank-slate player with a nice jumper. And if you could squint and see that, then his hot 3-pt shooting at the start of the season was a good omen of him beginning to deliver on at least one NBA-level skill. I wanted to believe, because I wanted to at least say “you know picking Knox was still a mistake but at least he’s showing signs of salvage”. But Knox’s blank slate is looking more like poor crafting material.
I wish the both of them well. I’m perfectly fine with the team moving on from him and Frank after this season. Current team leadership has no need to try to prove anything with them, especially with the remarkable progress made this season. Cut the losses and move on.
From the latest ‘Knicks are Wonderful’ puff pieces (from Devine in the Ringer, it’s almost embarrassing how fast they’re being generated now, but still fun):
‘Barrett’s shooting 45.2 percent from 3-point range over the past three months, the seventh-highest percentage out of 187 players to hoist at least 100 triples in that span.’
Something that’s been in the back of my mind but finally crystalized after watching his highlight reel in the article — Barrett has the least expressive mouth, and the most expressive eyes, I’ve ever seen in one human.
Woj, Zach Lowe, and Howard Beck all dropped Knick lovefest podcasts today, Woj interviewing Julius Randle, who just seems from a distance to be a great dude.
Also, here’s plainer English on the Pelle deal:
*sigh* Let’s do this again.
Imagine a world in which Frank Ntilikina has always been a 40% 3PT shooter. Amazingly, this only would’ve led to Frank hitting 34 additional threes over the course of his whole damn career because he does not shoot them.
What this means is Fake Frank’s career TS% is still a pathetic .497 in an era in which the league average TS% is .570. In other words, there is still almost certainly a debate over whether he’s an NBA player because arbitrarily giving him a great 3PT% doesn’t solve the fact that he can’t get shots off with any volume, can’t dribble, can’t rebound, is a below average passer for a point guard, and to top it all off doesn’t seem to be able to play more than 3 games in a row without having to miss the next 20.
Again, you’ve failed to understand the key difference is Bullock, owing to his quick release and ability to come off screens among other things, actually puts his 3PT% to use by shooting a lot of threes! He takes 7.3 3PA/36. Frank’s career average is 4.
In Frank’s defense, that’s largely because he sucks at shooting threes, but even Fake Frank probably doesn’t shoot much more because his release is slow, he’s a joke off the dribble, and he’s not nearly mobile enough to actually get open in the NBA.
Can you bookmark this post for the next time you feel like calling a bunch of people dumb without doing the homework? Lord give me the confidence of Strat talking about something he hasn’t spent a second looking into.
there is pretty much exactly where i’m at on these two also…our timeline has significantly sped up this season – it would appear that we are now no longer a few years away from being a few years away from playing competitive basketball (we’re not contenders yet but, there does at least now seem to be a logical path forward)…
i hope all is well for ya cdiggy – how you liking this weather 🙂
overcast socal is just the best, especially considering the heat that’s coming in a couple of months…
not too long ago there was a nationally televised game from staples center, after the game there was an overhead in the distance shot of LA…not an overcast day at that moment – but, you could just see how the air was absolutely grey, a fairly thick grey too…started feeling bad for the folks whom have to breathe that shit in day after day, until i remembered just how close i am to some major freeways myself…
The thing about guys like Frank and Knox is that the average career of an NBA player is 4.8 years. Sure, some last really long, but most don’t outlast their rookie deals. While on the rookie deal, they either show that extra something that entices teams to want to pay them a good percent of their salary cap, or they exit the NBA. It makes sense. If the Knicks are drafting two players in the first round this summer, would you rather pay Frank or one of these kids at a fraction of what Frank will earn? So the mediocre player can’t last.
this is fun
https://twitter.com/nbeinstein/status/1384258046289858567?s=21
owen i don’t have the numbers in front of me but they have run zion as the screener less than you’d think this year. i believe lonzo has run more pnr with adams in fact. zion has actually run a lot of pnr as the handler, with a ton of success. but standard ppp percentile stats are also volatile and contextual and should usually be taken w/ a grain of salt.
A more fun Frank conversation: now that he has put his hair into braids like Julius,will he somehow begin playing like Julius?
oh my goodness, now all he has to do is get a lightning bolt tat with wonderboy written underneath…
Frankie “Braids” is going to drop 20!
too funny, this time last year i’d be working (at the time i had my desk in the bedroom – which turned out to be a big big mistake) with the news on in the background (cnn, msnbc, oan, fox – did them all)…
well, this year, i’m doing the work, but, chilling with a little Ancient Aliens on in the background…lord knows i am infinitely more happy and healthy for it…
i will say this – i don’t really think it’s a matter of where these “aliens” are from, but rather, when they are from…sort of like we have little clue about the whole dna thing, i’m not so sure we understand time so well…
Hey Alan, Thanks for the tip on the Woj/Randle podcast. Really enjoyed it.
I’m only up to the story about Wes and Leon Rose showing up at a dinner with Randle last season — months before they officially joined the team — to help him through a rough time. But just hearing this guy talk, and his genuineness and understanding of what this team means, puts such a smile on my face. Love him.
Totally agree. It’s fun to have a winning team. It’s even more satisfying to have a winning team with “good” guys. I love it.
Deefense, you keep omitting that Perry signed Randle. It doesn’t matter if Randle was bad last year under Fizdale. Perry still gets the credit for going out and getting a guy who is only 26 and is probably going to be 3rd team all NBA. That signing could end up being one of those franchise changing moves and Perry should get credit for that. Its kind of a big deal.
Again, I’m not saying Perry was good. But consider where the Knicks were when he took over. He shouldn’t get dinged for Mills being dumb with one week of freedom and signing Hardaway. Signing Randle (and Bullock and Morris) were legitimately good moves. Reclamation projects are just that. Reclamation projects. They usually don’t work out.
So he didn’t just draft Mitch. He got rid of an injury plagued pseudo star who wanted a max deal and got Randle instead. It doesn’t matter if Randle was plan B after Durant. He had the plan B and went for it. And no, we would not have signed Randle and Morris if we kept KP. Most likely maybe we get Morris. That’s it.
And the hilarious thing about Morris — who we turned into the Quickley pick — is that we signed him basically by accident, after Bullock flunked his physical and Morris had buyers remorse about signing with the Spurs. I’m not even sure you can call that Plan B. Plan C? J? Q?
But, yes, Perry made a lot of dumb choices, but many of them can’t be untangled from Mills, and Perry also (either alone or in concert with either Mills or Rose/Aller) has been part of doing some smart things, too. Compared to Isiah and Layden, he’s a genius. You could even argue he did more good/less harm overall than Donnie Walsh.
This front office is so much damn smarter than I’ve come to expect from the Knicks. Sounds like they told Pelle they’d pay him more this year if he gives up a guarantee for next year.
It’s a simple and obvious move, but it gets Pelle his money & frees up all our cap space for next year & 2022. Same money for Pelle & more flexibility for us.
This is interesting:
My guess is that this is just them rewarding Harper for being a good soldier all year never playing even when we were desperate for a PG. But maybe they want to keep him happy because they have future plans for him in a year with a proper offseason?
Thibs will never play that deep into the bench anyway. But if he did need to, Thibs strikes me as a guy who would rather have a player who knows his system.
In Thibs i trust
If Thibs puts you in a game, even for a nanosecond, to guard an opponent during the most important play of a game that means something.
Also, for as annoyed as I was at various points that we were “wasting” a two-way spot on Theo Pinson rather than scratching off another lottery ticket, it turns out that Pinson’s reputation as Team Chemistry Super Ingredient was earned. He’s part of every celebration in time outs, after big plays, after games, etc., and Randle and the other rotation guys talk him up often. There are definitely worse ways to use a marginal roster spot.
It means something, but we don’t know what.
I wouldn’t be shocked or get mad if we trade the whole Big15 during the off-season.
(Despite Loving them for this reg season miracle)
I would get mad if we lose Thibs tho.
#It means something, but we don’t know what.#
How about “Trusting your lockdown D even when you’re deeplyfrozen by benching”?
Man, geo, I’m blessed. My bonus daughter turned 21 two week ago and we had a good time here at the crib. Next month is my wife’s bday, and right after I’m flying to NY for like 10 days – first time back in NY since Oct ’18. Gotta hit upstate to see my best friends in the ‘Cuse, and drop in on my oldest nephew who just moved to Albany. This Cali weather has slowly spoiled me, but it’s mid-spring back home so the temps should be aiight. The Knicks will mostly be out here while I’m back home 🙁 but it’s cool.
Our boys are on an 8-game winning streak! Like, you have to repeat that to yourself a few times to believe it. When was the last time the present and future of this team looked so bright?
Work is going well too: yesterday, our men’s bball coach and his former players were guests of a Twitter Spaces interview hosted by, among others, Matt Barnes and Kendrick Perkins. Our Last Chance U series has hit the NBA stratosphere; hell… I got an email from an NBA team (not the Knicks or Lakers) this week asking for our gear! (quid quo pro). And our AD believes that with all the exposure, he’s gonna be able to secure a nice department budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Just amazing stuff.
When things open up some more here in LA geo, you me and JK47 need to get together and hit up a spot.
Co-sign on this idea.
#WestCoastKB
The most defense first coach in the league won’t play the “defensive specialist” guard on the roster for more than one possession at a time, and yet we’re still discussing this kid here. Just let Frank go have a career in europe like he’s always meant to do and let’s all move on.
Any thoughts on who we want to win the Heat-Hawks matchup?
If Ntilikina was not drafted by Phil Jackson you would never hear his name mentioned. Some people here are pretty heavily invested in the idea that Phil Jackson didn’t completely embarrass the fuck out of himself as the POBO of this team.
Weirdly, I don’t find this contradictory. Thibs can get good defense out of non defensive specialists. It’s offensive specialists he needs and his line up choices reflect this.
Oh now. Delusional agendas aside, there is an inexplicable but very real pleasure in rooting for, and even pointlessly discussing, end-of-bench players. I cheered on, and was highly amused by the heated debates about, the mop-headed hustle bunny, right up to his last day as a Knick. I’ll do the same with Smokes.
And when he’s gone, I suppose a part of my heart will migrate over to Norvel…
In fact, speaking of such I was just rooting for Luke Kornet a few minutes ago. However I think I’m going to have to turn this game off, since I hate both teams so much…
your passion for life is the true blessing…
yes, them lady bday’s are quite the event…guy birthday wishes: pizza, beer, a good ball game and the couch…at least that’s been my goal the last few years 🙂
time’s ticking away on the season, but who knows what the playoffs (if we make it, fingers crossed) might bring…down the road some sunday brunch or early dinner somewhere with the game on – might be just the thing…
It totally is contradictory to any claims that Frank has any value for this team. If Thibs is good enough of a coach that he can get relevant defensive contributions from non-defensive specialists, then well, Frank is useless for the Knicks. His only relevant basketball contribution is not necessary or valuable at all to the 3rd best defense in the league, because Thibs sees Bullock, Burks, Barrett, Quickley, Rose and Payton as more valuable in every way, and the results have consistently proven that to be true.
As long as Frankie plays in significant moments in games while also having the best 3p% on the team there’s still a slight chance for him of being a part of this knicks team’s future.
Would you bet your house that Frankie’s gone after this season?
Me not.
Sorry for the interruption, but it is truly great to watch DeGromm play baseball.
And let’s not forget that Thibs’s knicks players have a few common characteristics.
1 Defensive Loyalty
2 Team First mentality
3 High Character
4 Friendly Salary
5 Offensive Confidence
Frankie needs to work on the 5th, start driving to the hoop more frequently and shoot with confidence while being open on 3s.
If Randle can turn from a swirling scapegoat to an all nba candidate, RJ can shoot lights out while having the most spectacular bricks in nba history and Obi showing signs of life after being a walking zombie rookie I don’t see why Frankie has no chance of makin it in NY.
Hard? Definitely
Impossible? I don’t think so
Game score of 98 for deGrom tonight.
He currently has a 0.31 ERA
0.31 ERA so far this season. He should be 4-0 rather than 2-1. Thankfully, Nimmo’s 4 RBI gave him a bit of a cushion tonight so that he could just cruise through the late innings.
The Knicks might be interested in bringing him back at something like the vet minimum, but I’d guess that he’ll get more money to play in Europe than with any team in the NBA.
Hawks easily defeated the Heat tonight despite both Young and Capella missing the game.
Frankie becomes RFA this summer.
Not giving him enough playing time could also be a “smart” strategy to avoid offers from other suitors.
Right, Tom Thibodeau, who chases after every single win with maniacal ferocity, is keeping the great Frankie Smokes a secret even though he’s a good player, so he’ll cost less as a restricted free agent.
Sounds legit.
There, see? If we didn’t have Frank, I wouldn’t actually snort my scotch (which hurts, by the way).
Are we sure Frank even has a career in Europe? I think Knox has a better chance to make it overseas than Frank. At least Knox is willing to shoot.
Minutes to Frank, Obi and Knox are so strangely given this season that there are possibly strategies behind them.
Thibs’s priority is definitely the game’s Win but even in interviews he’s talking about youngster development, good deals and team’s future.
I don’t remember him pressing the FO for talented players if the price wasn’t right…
It’s nice to know who owns the head-to-head tie-breaker and that if it ended this way, we get ATL in the 1st round.
Begley:
So it seems the Harper and Powell deals are just Rose playing Santa Claus with some unused cap space to make the Knicks more appealing to future UDFA types. Again, a marginal move, but smart.
I’m just so glad that the Knick game is on at 1 and that the Yankee game starts at 5 today. Does happy hour start early today?
Fred VV is back, so we’ll get to see him run around and be a pest.
It’s not basketball, but this bit from the WashPost is just ridiculous.
No pitcher had ever struck out 50 batters in his first four starts. DeGrom hit that number in the seventh — shortly before he singled in the eighth, equaling the Nationals’ number of hits and upping his batting average to .545 in 11 at-bats.