Congrats to Immanuel Quickley For Making the All-Rookie Second Team!

I’d vote Quick ahead of Bey and Tate, but to be honest i almost didn’t watch Tate. I like Bey a lot, i had him on my list for the Knicks picks last year, but it’s not the same to shine on the 4th placed team or the last. It’s the old story of putting stats on losing teams. And the same for Tate, even though i don’t know his game well.

This troll that voted “None of them” it’s probably the same that voted “Hawks in 4″… i’m onto you, better watch your back! LOLOL

okay, so bpm and vorp are our things:

Ball: 1.9 bpm, 1.4 vorp
Edwards: -2.6 bpm, -0.3 vorp
Haliburton: 1.1 bpm, 1.4 vorp
Bey: -0.8 bpm, 0.6 vorp
Tate: -1.2 bpm, 0.4 vorp

our man quik: 0.6 bpm, 0.8 vorp…so there it is…on top of that – the hornets, wolves, kings, pistons and rockets all had a sub .500 season…

Alan:
Yes. I’ve had several of the songs stuck in my head since.

My wife was a fan before (I was largely indifferent), but she said she watched it and was like, “Oh, so this is real art by an artist.” And I have to agree. Good luck to any comedian trying to make a stand-up special about COVID in the wake of this one. Feels “big,” if that makes sense to say about a one-man show in a single room. And I loved the ending. Spoilers ahead:

Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina If you’re going to pull a false/twist ending, I ask that you at least make it thematically consistent. And Burnham did just that. Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina Frank Ntilikina

cybersoze:
This troll that voted “None of them” it’s probably the same that voted “Hawks in 4?… i’m onto you, better watch your back! LOLOL

Hey, cybersoze, it wasn’t me. Plus I like Queta too. Lol.

Jowles, I think there are other ways that comedians could take on 2020 — particularly a female and/or BIPOC comedian — but this certainly felt like it could stand as the definitive one if nobody else wanted to try.

I think tonight Philly wins and forces a game 7. What do you guys think?

#I think tonight Philly wins and forces a game 7. What do you guys think?#

I really wish for a Mil-Atl ECF but I’m ok with any result as long as its fair and Not Refmade.
Tonight it’s Atlanta’s Huge Chance and Philly’s Last Chance.
Philly looks better on paper but…we saw many papers during this season turn to toilet papers so… Let’s wait and enjoy this battle!

After Boston’s first playoff run with Kemba/Hayward it was obvious that these 2 albatrosses would fuck Celt’s future.
Getting rid of both players/contracts was the obvious move even from back then but i really think they missed precious time and assets before completing it.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/article/rj-barretts-experience-important-canada-finding-international-success/

RJ starting olympic qualifiers with Canada… they should at least advance to the championship game i think and then they’ll in all likelihood play a tough game against Turkey for the right to play in the olympics… Turkish team is pretty stacked and Alperen Sengun should be playing I think if you want to take a peak at the next great international big to come over… Canada is also no pushover and pretty nba stacked lineup for them and should be a good experience for RJ… i’m kind of rooting they don’t make it to the Olympics though…

I think tonight Philly wins and forces a game 7. What do you guys think?

i really hope they do but it’s all dependent on how good embiid feels in the 4th since philly literally implodes whenever embiid suffers on offense …

I would be shocked if Philly lost. I was shocked when they lost each of the last two games.

I’m in for total chaos as long as the Nets don’t win.
It could be funny to watch how Philly, Clippers, Bucks and Jazz will react to a “premature” exit…

Another mediocre start by The Hawks.

Thybulle D on Trae don’t impress till now

Okongwu looks tough

This changed fast

Maxey is Feeling it

Trae is Unstoppable

the travis schlenk job security chart this year looks like amc

I did not see trae young becoming this dominant a player…he’s like allen iverson out there doing whatever he wants…

3s will give the W

Not only should that not be a foul on Embiid, it should be an offensive foul on Collins. It might even deserve to be a flagrant.

Dwight Howard is an evil genius,
this disallowed three can be huge…

This game is brutal to watch.

Ben Simmons with 4 points. I don’t care about all the other things he does, that’s just not acceptable from your #2 guy.

Perfectly fair snub, IMO. IQ only played ~1200 minutes. Tate and Bey were at ~2,000 and ~1,900, respectively.

Desmond Bane probably has more reason to feel snubbed.

quality > quantity

That Embiid arms spread wide “what’d I do?” bullshit is really hard to take

It is bullshit but I was raised on a decade of Knicks doing it all the time. And I loved it. So I have some mixed emotions.

Wow Trae

Fantastic basket by Trae, against a good defense.

I think ice trae was long before whomever is announcing this

Philly is literally attacking 4 vs 5, they’re doing everything to avoid giving the ball to Simmons…

it doesn’t look it.. but philly has been playing pretty good D all series…. i think with this game their D rating should surpass their regular season mark….

you can’t expect to stop certain guys… that’s why defense isn’t about one dude locking up another dude.. not when there’s screens involved.. what makes simmons and thybulle great defenders…. besides being good on-ball defenders… is that they’re really good rotating and on help… and they have been putting the clamps on atl most of the series (besides game 1)….

their problem is that their offense outside embiid and curry.. with some cameos from harris, maxey and milton… have been really really bad… both teams have been scrapping for every point… good defense from both teams all series…

I have to be honest, I’ve never heard of Tate in my life. I don’t even know what team he plays for, let alone whether he’s any good at basketball. Was he ever mentioned on this blog, either pre or post draft? Cause if so, I must have been sick that day.

ty lue…pulling all the right strings

I mean, good for the Clippers and all, but boy, the Suns must be fucking salivating at the thought of playing the Kawhi-less Clippers instead of the Jazz.

can’t stop Terrence mann… only hope to contain him…

That was an embarrassing ass loss by the Jazz. I know no one really took them all that seriously, but still, dang, dude.

***I have seen Bo Burnham: Inside. Go.
did u like***

My wife, who is on bed rest and content starved, put this on this evening. I watched it over her shoulder until she said “I can’t take another second of this” and shut it off. I would have maybe given it another minute or two, but she is highly offended by talentless white men so I didn’t fight to keep it on.

Lesson to learn for the Knicks: no matter how good on defense, no matter how good a rim protector, you can’t pay a boatload of money to your center if his not able to stretch the floor and be a real threat on offense (I’m looking at you Mr. Robinson).

I don’t think that’s the lesson at all. You just can’t have a rim protector who can’t also close out on threes, which is pretty much Mitch’s specialty. If you had Mitch on the Jazz last night, Mann would not be taking wide open corner threes constantly.

Donnie Walsh:
Who needs Kawhi when you have the Boat Rocker

Plus 1

I was workshopping a Field of Dreams joke but you nailed it

I can’t believe the Jazz lost that game

For my hot take of the day, i don’t think Gobert is a max player, and is definitely not a #2 on a championship team (he’s a #3 and that’s it, a very good one, but you’ll need 2 stars with him to win it all).
So Mitchell just rised on my list of potential disgruntled superstars asking a trade to come to the Knicks. A homecoming is always a beautiful story. 😉

About rim protection, close out on threes, and offense (this is important), from the center spot, i think there’s a lot of bias in favor of very good rim protectors because of the flashy plays (i for sure love to watch a thunderous block), but there’s a reason the players like Noel are paid around 5M each year… you can’t play them in the playoffs… if not at all, at least you can’t play them when the other team goes small.
I agree with Brian that Mitch is better than the Noel type because of the close out on threes, and a better offensive game, although a very limited one, but that can put you at what? 10M AAV? 12M AAV?
Either way, you’ll have to play center by committee, having a Noel type when the other team has a rim protector on the floor, and a Brook Lopez type (or a small ball center like Obi) when the other team doesn’t have a rim protector.
All this words to come to the conclusion that yeah, i’m feeling even more justified for my Myles Turner push because he’s both a very good rim protector and an ok offensive player (a average stretch-5). He’s making 18M AAV, and that seems high for you guys, but he’s not making the max like Gobert and the difference between them clearly doesn’t justify Gobert’s max money.
I think we should try to grab him before another team realizes this. And i’m Mitch’s number 1 fan here, but Myles is way better.
(note: if we can find a superstar magician PG like Trae, then it’s ok for the center to “just” be a very good rim protector, like Capela is)

Cyber, I have thought the same. I do think Luka is a much better player long term though.

I wonder what Hubert is going to do with all that Suns bet money. Wait till they make the Finals and cash it out? Let it ride?

suns the current vegas favorite. keep your head down hubert. if your bookie was willing to go full yakuza in round one, this might get ugly.

i am still thinking about clippers jazz. the only thing i know for sure is that i don’t agree with the takes above (“gobert is a number 3” or “you need a center like mitch who can close out in 3s”), but it does raise hard questions. watching last night i did think that snyder should have tried going to 1-4 (huh?) zone. it’s a pretty unusual situation where almost every opponent can blow by all or most of your perimeter defenders without a pick or even a play. utah’s injuries were part of it. but if you know are getting blown by there is no point in your smalls constantly chasing from behind like they were doing.

I like Luka over Trae long term because of the size difference but I think Trae plays the PG position better now. He still has mental lapses where you ask “WTF is he thinking”, but he’s getting better at that and has fewer than Doncic.

IMO, it’s too soon to throw in the towel on Reddish. He came in as a perimeter defender that needed to develop a more consistent outside shot. He only played 26 games this year. At 21 it’s too soon to call him a bust. They weren’t expecting him to come in and be a star on offense right away. If he makes no progress over the next year or two, then there’s a problem.

The Jazz deserve every bit of shit being thrown at them, but it was totally nuts how every single Clippers player couldn’t miss from 3 in the 4th quarter. At one point near the end of the game, Patrick Beverly, not known as a 3 point marksman, just said what the fuck and tossed one in.

The Clips were 8-10 from 3 in the 4th quarter…crazy.

If I’m ATL then I’m happy to get a 1st along with Trae for Doncic. Cam Reddish was a joke of a pick. Maybe he turns into something, but I’d bet against it at almost any line.

I would have maybe given it another minute or two, but she is highly offended by talentless white men so I didn’t fight to keep it on.

This might be your best “I didn’t do the reading, but” performance yet! I mean, even the New Yorker columnist watched it before panning it. Or calling it a “virtuoso performance.” Can’t remember which.

On the Athletic the Jazz beat writer wrote that letting Mann shoot and protect the rim was the game plan and Snyder later said that they weren’t able to adjust when they start to bleed too much…

If true the strategy backfired but on the other hand 14-19 on 3PFG in the second half (including a couple from Beverly) don’t happen every day and It’s close to impossible to recover from 25 down if the other team’s offense don’t stop getting points, just as Utah did.

I went to sleep with the Jazz up by 20+ points and woke up this morning to learn that the Clips had come back and won.

I remember back in the late 90’s that 15 point lead seemed insurmountable. 25 point deficits, even in the 3rd quarter, mean nothing these days.

also the 2nd round featured 5 out of the 8 teams with big defensive oriented plodding centers… ayton..gobert… embiid.. lopez.. capela… only lopez and embiid shoot 3s…

what makes mitch unique is that he’s more mobile than almost everyone here cept maaybe capela… and he’s much more effective and able to defend the perimeter and rotate effectively… one of the best things he does is swatting 3pt attempts like he’s a missile defense system…

going 5 out does mitigate his impact on the defensive end like we’ve seen in these playoffs.. but he’s fast enough to recover to help towards the rim out of almost everyone in the league… that and the fact that he’s one of the few bigs that gives embiid some problems defensively… which obv is going to be key for us since we’re in the same division…

that said.. as a counter to 5 out.. i hope i start seeing some team start putting their centers on the worst shooter on the court… and just play off them the whole time and just relegate the offense into the reggie jackson/blake griffin/john collins 3pt shooting offense… sometimes they won’t miss like the clips entire lineup seemed like it couldn’t miss… but a lot of times i think you can live with them shooting 10 3s a game and living with the outcome…. certainly better than the alternative i think…

I watched “Inside.” I was impressed by the technical skill required to make something like that all by himself and I liked parts of it but got tired of it by the end and the more I think about it, the more self indulgent it feels to me.

***This might be your best “I didn’t do the reading, but” performance yet!***

I’m considering a blog called “30-Second TV Reviews”, only instead of reviewing the show in 30 seconds, I’m going to take all the time I want in reviewing the first 30 seconds of the show. Would ou subscribe?

I’m with Ingmar in not having watched enough Luka, but Trae has been absolutely stellar the last 2 years and closed the gap between their rookie year numbers.

Luka came in with an otherworldly rookie year, but Trae has made bigger improvements since.

In the longrun I like Luka to improve more, but I don’t think it’s clear we can even say Luka is guaranteed to have a better career than Trae straight up. Add in an extra first and I’m absolutely fine with that trade.

Re: roundball

I can now defend Trae over Luka, even though at the time it was a head-scratcher (again — Euroleague MVP as a teen). And if they had taken Thybulle, I think you could make an argument that it was, on the whole, a decent trade. It’s a lot to ask your volume scorer to also be a lockdown defender on the league’s best ball-handlers, so having two excellent but one-way players instead of one transcendent talent (Luka is not a great defender at all, but he’s better than Young on O and has a higher ceiling IMO).

The Jazz just put up an all-time collapse, but as noted, 14-19 from three in the 2H is one of those things that you just can’t stop through good defense alone. You need luck. If you had those guys in an empty gym, there’s a good chance they struggle to hit 14-19 without defenders on them.

And I still like Clarke but he had a disappointing season to say the least. I also didn’t understand all the Hawks’ signings, and they’re one win from the Conference Finals, led by a 12-year-old boy. I took a lot of Ls this year.

I also think Luka has a higher ceiling. But right now I’m struggling to think of a young player with a higher offensive IQ and skill than Trae. He’s becoming the terrifying guy you know will kill you in the end and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’m very curious to see him perform in game 7 on the road.

Yeah but when it turned dark it hit the same note over and over again for like 20 minutes. I’m all about the comedy special that turns serious but to me it just felt repetitive and self indulgent and it was just like “everything’s fucked and the worlds gonna end.” I don’t know if it was 10 minutes shorter I probably would have loved it. I was super into the first part of it.

i think people are going a little overboard on trae…. he’s good but a lot of his game is foulbaiting… he’s a 6ft 1 guy that gets to the line as often as a 7ft 300lbs guy and he doesn’t even so much as sniff the rim the entire game…

the officiating will hopefully adapt and evolve to account for this because it is increasingly getting exploited and ruining the watchability of some of these games… yes that also includes our own quickley…

so much of trae’s value depends on getting to the line a ridiculous amount and if his ftr were to ever tank then he’s probably still good but not anywhere near this level…

Yeah, just the fact Trae is 6’1″ means Luka’s game will likely age better.

But I also expected Luka to step his game up more than he has. It’s an extremely harsh curve to grade him on, but when your rookie year already has the makings of an all-time great talent that’s what you grade it on. Luka is so talented he can coast his whole career and still get max contracts every year.

Part of me wonders if Luka is going to put in the work to be the best. Luka showed up to camp this year having downed a few too many Texas-sized cheeseburgers. I absolutely give everyone a pass for the pandemic, but it nags at the back of my mind as a sign he may not have the commitment to reach his potential.

Luka should be better than Trae, but it hasn’t been as clear as I think it should be.

I was the first to mock Atlanta for that trade but maaan…this short MFKR is turning mind-blowing!
Yesterday i felt my jaw dropping multiple times while watching Trae Young.
Otoh Luka is Luka but…that trade looks much better than back then..

Donnie Walsh:
***This might be your best “I didn’t do the reading, but” performance yet!***
I’m considering a blog called “30-Second TV Reviews”, only instead of reviewing the show in 30 seconds, I’m going to take all the time I want in reviewing the first 30 seconds of the show. Would ou subscribe?

Hey, that’s too close to Alan’s show “Too long; Didn’t Watch”, you can’t do that unless you pay royalties to Alan. 😛

cybersoze: Hey, that’s too close to Alan’s show “Too long; Didn’t Watch”, you can’t do that unless you pay royalties to Alan. 😛

Thanks again for being the best agent a guy like me could ask for!

Geo. Check out The Age of Entanglement by Louisa Gilder. She puts words in the mouths of the major thinkers involved in the debates around quantum theory in general and entanglement in particular. Turns huge amounts of scrupulous historical research including diaries, letters, notes, etc. in various languages into plausible English conversations. She makes sure to get the ideas right and clearly indicates where she’s inventing the dialog.

The result turns all the versions of ideas from competing perspectives into a series of immersive dramatized debates by vibrant personalities. It goes up to the 70’s IIRC, and only glosses the huge amount of work since then fairly lightly.

She gives a lot of time to the participants and state of debate around the 1927 Solvay Conference and then the work by Bell in the 60’s and it’s consequences. It gives a nuanced picture of the struggle the whole community of physicists has had in accommodating some of the most radical ideas about reality ever to be posed and rigorously tested. It might not give you the clarity you’re looking for, but it will probably be very fun and make you feel better about the residual confusion and uncertainty.

ephus: During the Knicks series, I was upset that none of the Knicks could stay in front of him or even force him left.

I’m not a Rose fan, but recall the surprising effectiveness of his standing directly to Trae’s right. I think it might have only been when he started by setting the offence from the left side of the court. But Rose just completely gave him the path toward the baseline i.e. did not attempt to stay in front of him at all, and it stopped him because he refused to go left.

I don’t know how often he did it and doubt it would pose a significant obstacle if someone did it every time. But I remember that it seemed effective the few times it caught my attention.

I kind of just wish we could sit down for a meal and you could give me the tl;dr version 🙂

i’ll remember the name louisa gilder…

Hubert: Imagine Christopher Moltisanti owed you a shit ton of money?

You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease?

I’m considering a blog called “30-Second TV Reviews”, only instead of reviewing the show in 30 seconds, I’m going to take all the time I want in reviewing the first 30 seconds of the show. Would ou subscribe?

I would 10,000% subscribe to a podcast of you and Alan talking about shows you stopped watching after 10 minutes.

It’s great to have Marv Albert back in Brooklyn, where he grew up, as his great career gets closer to it’s end.

You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease?

🙂

Nets are playing a weird match-up zone defense.

DudeInKnicksTown:
It’s great to have Marv Albert back in Brooklyn, where he grew up, as his great career gets closer to it’s end.

We have already gotten a Marv Albert, “Yes!” after a made basket.

I am hoping for a “Yes . . . and it counts” after a made basket & foul.

man do i hate that tech call

Did anyone else listen yesterday to MBreen saying “BANG! What a Man!” about Terrance Mann and going silent for a few secs after (probably from laughing) or was i just imagined it?

for a big goofy dude…lopez is good at stripping the ball around the hoop

Nets are matching Griffin with Giannis. When Giannis sat, so did Griffin. When Giannis checked back in, so did Griffin.

ephus:
How did Harden steal that jump ball from Giannis?

I’m still laughing about it.

That was not a good free throw attempt.

Based on that air ball, if the Bucks are up in the 4th Q and there are more than 2 minutes left, I’m going with Hack-A-Giannis.

Holliday is playing like he laid money on the nets with hubie’s bookie

pepper:
Holliday is playing like he laid money on the nets with hubie’s bookie

LOL

Max:
They must impress a PG-13 mark on the screen,
the Bucks’ offense is an unmitigated horror show…

They should fire Bud and hire Stephen King, if it’s an horror show, at least give us a good one. 😀

Blake did a good job on Giannis in the first half. When they sat him near the end Giannis took over.

Middleton and Holiday both with 2/11 (18,2%)
You go straight back home with a 4/22 guard combo
No Chance if those two continue bricking

blake has played as hard as i’ve ever seen him play

The Nets at least had a chance to get Kyrie back and do something interesting in the next rounds, but if this Bucks team goes through… Just more dumb basketball that wont get anywhere.

I think I’d rather watch a forfeit in the east finals than watch Giannis take another 3, so yeah, just end this series please.

The Nets have Durant and the Bucks have Giannis, so if this goes down to the wire I think we know how it ends.

It feels like the Nets should feed Durant the ball more.

Barkley was right, the Bucks just play unbelievably stupid basketball. They should be destroying this series with their talent and everyone healthy but they keep shooting themselves on the foot. Middleton taking fadeway turnaround jumpers with Brown on him who’s like 4 inches smaller than him. It’s insane.

I used to really root for Giannis and the Bucks but they simply don’t deserve to make it far.

Airball Giannis?

jrue is one miss away from 2-18

oops

I think Durant might be superhuman. How does he not look exhausted?

Brian Cronin:
I think Durant might be superhuman. How does he not look exhausted?

Has literally anything changed with him after a crippling injury? He looks exactly the same as he did before, he might not be human after all.

Epic!

Fatigue seems to affecting the other Nets, though.

If only Starks had done this in his game.

Hate that the Bucks were rewarded for Giannis bricking another free throw.

The Nets are really seeing the downside with their other players of not giving them any rest. Some sloppy defense.

Ugh what a garbage game.

I’ll have to root for the Hawks tomorrow so we at least get some watchable basketball in the east finals, I don’t think I can handle Sixers and Bucks out-trashing each other.

off browns foot?

I hate that the Bucks were bailed out twice by terrible shots that bricked badly enough that they rebounded it.

God is this Bucks team some horseshit

A SHOT CLOCK VIOLATION

Brook should have just thrown that ball straight up in the air

That was amazing defense. Durant just is that good.

Lot of time left for Milwaukee. I’d look out for possible foul.

Insanity all around, what the hell is going on. At least it’s an entertaining dumpster fire now

Durant might be the greatest offensive player in nba history

The Bucks played Durant well, he just made a sick shot. The Nets have got to try to foul Holiday out.

Exhausted, injured Harden is quite a look in overtime.

This is like a slap fight between two really old dudes.

Aesthetically unpleasant in some ways but damn exciting?

Feels like rugby

One bucket in overtime is a little nuts

There’s exactly one good player in this game

harden is 2-12 from three and he banked one

underrated aspect of Duran’ts game… his fitness. He has no muscle, but never seems tired

If the Nets lose, Joe Harris is gonna be thinking about that missed 3 all summer

yep…Harris felt the pressure

oh my word… fabulous defense from jrue…..

An airball!?

Durant finally ran out of gas.

I even wanted the Bucks to win and I still found that pretty unsatisfying

Bud looks like a man forced to sleep in his car after a bad divorce…

I’m okay with the Nets losing,
but Durant nearly pulled out a miracle,
carrying a one legged Harden, Griffin with his 70 years old knees,
a masked man and a bearded homeless from Brooklyn
literally one inch away from winning the series…

Brook Lopez the unsung hero.

I don’t see it as terrible basketball. It was a ’90s-type brawl, which is a form of basketball. I’d rather watch this than a 3-pt shootout where zero defense is played. Multiple guys played over 50 minutes and left everything on the floor. Not to mention that two all-time greats had epic games, and one hit a massive shot to send it into overtime after playing all 48 minutes and scoring 40 points. I’m sorry, calling it garbage or trash is fucking stupid.

Yeah the Nets will be heavy favorites to win it next year, but none of those guys are getting any younger.

Thanks to Lopez FTs the overtime final score is 6-2 Bucks…

DudeInKnicksTown:
Joe Harris choked.

Everybody choked. And everyone came through. That’s what made this game so great.

Different people have different ideas of what makes a sport enjoyable:
Z-man: “you’re fucking stupid”

This is like a slap fight between two really old dudes.

stop – you know i can’t resist this type of stuff…

Bruno Almeida:
Different people have different ideas of what makes a sport enjoyable:
Z-man: “you’re fucking stupid”

Yeah, some people think Rodin’s sculptures and Matisse’s paintings and Beethoven’s symphonies are “garbage” and “trash.” They’re fucking stupid.

Generally speaking, if one doesn’t want to be called fucking stupid, one shouldn’t use words like “garbage” and “trash” to describe things that other people are really into, especially if they have some level of respect for those people.

There’s exactly one good player in this game

For all the justifiable love KD got tonight Giannis was just as good, the Nets had absolutely no answer for him

Z-man: Everybody choked. And everyone came through. That’s what made this game so great.

Blake played well. Brown played well. Harden did all he could. Durant was terrific. Harris choked.

All right I was a little harsh on Giannis there in the 4Q

#Hey KYN, there were a lot of greeks at Barclays Center greeting Giannis. Nice.#

Greece’s on fire!!!
Very Happy for Giannis!
Even More Happy for Nets elimination!!!
That was a fkn entertaining game!
KD is GOD but sometimes BALLS beat TALENT!

Is the moon there when nobody looks?

Second Hour at the Meetinghouse – The Age of Quantum Entanglement with Louisa Gilder

what a super neat person louisa is…i enjoyed her disjointed pattern of speech…strangely it’s really easy to follow…her passion and joy for the subject is super appealing…

i am even more confused now reference bell’s theorem – i really would have assumed there was some type of programmed information within these tiny particles to make them behave in a certain way…although the thought that these tiny particles have different physical rules does seem to make sense…

from my perspective it would seem to serve a purpose, but why…

thanks for sharing unreason 🙂

Brian Cronin: It’s fascinating to have really no idea who will win it all.

Same here, and that’s really amazing. Everybody can win it, and we’ll have to wait to know who that team will be. 🙂
I think now the Hawks have a non zero chance to make it, what do you guys think?

As long as ATL has a fully heathy core they might be as good as any other candidates out there right now. If they get past philly who knows…

The only drawback for me was knowing that no matter who won I was going to be rooting against the winner in the next two rounds. Other than that it was a fun 4th quarter/OT. (I guess if you’re not entertained by someone playing 1-on-5 to a stalemate for 52.5 minutes, then I suggest you avoid watching these other things too: Spassky vs the Marshall Chess Club, Davie Hogan in a pie-eating contest, Fezzik storming the castle, the Spy Cobra vs Meerkats episode of BBC Earth, and any Jackie Chan movie.)

You really can’t infer much of anything about one’s intelligence from what kind of basketball games they enjoy watching

You really can’t infer much of anything about one’s intelligence from what kind of basketball games they enjoy watching

stop pimping your knick tshirt ideas fuckface

The antipathy for the Nets is mostly due to the following things;
1) they moved to Brooklyn and immediately set out on a mission to replace the Knicks as New York’s team (and their Russian oligarch owner was hardly more likable than Dolan)
2) after demolishing the team by trading their entire draft stash for the corpses of Garnett and Pierce (two of the most hated Knicks-killers ever btw) they rebuilt faster than we did.
3) For better or for worse, they pulled off the 2-superstar coup after Dolan promised a very fruitful free agency period in the aftermath of the KP trade. They literally pulled the rug out from under us. And at the time, there was no end in sight for Knicks ineptitude. And when they traded for Harden, it seemed like they were locks for a cakewalk to a title, while we were supposedly on our way to another disaster of a #8 pick. And It’s not like Harden, Kyrie, or Durant are all that likable.
4) as I said earlier, given the progress we made this year, only a championship would have made the Nets the best basketball story in NY for this season. Going down in the second round solidified it as a relatively bad season compared to expectations for them.
5) it is still highly likely that they will contend for a championship in the next two years, but at least the prospects of a dynasty have significantly dimmed.

Happy Father’s Day to everyone, especially the fathers among us. I hope we can put differences aside today of all days.

I have always rooted for metro-area teams against all teams but my primary metro area teams, but in the case of the Nets they have built up a reservoir of goodwill with me because of the good deeds they did for my school during the Bruce Ratner era, which I realize is twice removed. The Nets were quite generous. They gave my and other schools up to 100 tickets to five games a season. While given these seats would have been unsold, the team went beyond that. After my students sent Ratner thank you notes, the next time we went to a game, Ratner’s SO found me and had me select two students to sit courtside, which came with club seat privileges. She gave me her email and had me notify her each time we were going so that she could repeat the gesture. The looks on the students faces sitting court side was priceless.

Off topic, but:

Who is the consensus worst player ever to make all-nba first team? D’Andre Jordan? Joakim Noah? Latrell Sprewell? (I’m not familiar enough with the pre-modern era players to know who stands out from those years). I suppose it’s probably Jordan, who only made it because the league couldn’t accept that 6’6” Draymond Green played 500 minutes at center that year. But Jordan made other all-nba teams in his career, whereas Noah and Spree don’t really have much else on their respective resumes.

Donnie Walsh:
Off topic, but:

Who is the consensus worst player ever to make all-nba first team? D’Andre Jordan? Joakim Noah? Latrell Sprewell? (I’m not familiar enough with the pre-modern era players to know who stands out from those years). I suppose it’s probably Jordan, who only made it because the league couldn’t accept that 6’6” Draymond Green played 500minutes at center that year. But Jordan made other all-nba teams in his career, whereas Noah and Spree don’t really have much else on their respective resumes.

It’s easily DeAndre Jordan.

If anything, it was one of those fights where the ref let them clutch and grab and there weren’t a lot of haymakers landed, ending in a split decision.

Thanks for making my point better than I made it.

This was like Mike Tyson vs Razor Ruddock II. Not a great fight.

JK47: Thanks for making my point better than I made it.

This was like Mike Tyson vs Razor Ruddock II. Not a great fight.

Nah, because Tyson clearly won and it was a unanimous decision. This one went to overtime and was close from beginning to end. The winner wasn’t decided until the final shot.

I don’t really get the “if you’re a 90’s Knicks fan you have to like 1990’s style basketball” argument. It’s not 1995 anymore.

It’s like saying “you’re a fan of the 1965 Dodgers, why aren’t you in favor of bunting all the time and letting your starting pitchers throw 300 innings?”

Kinda weird game 1 of the western conference finals is going to be a duel between Devon Booker & Paul George.

you’re right hubert nets are a basketball spac

Last night’s game was “garbage”, the hawks are “mediocre.” I don’t know dude. Sounds like you’re the jaded cynical one who maybe needs to take a break from watching basketball so you can miss it and fall back in love with it. That was a super fun game to watch. Neither team was draining shot after shot but it wasn’t a brick fest either. This isn’t NBA Jam.

Cousins with an unexpected impact,
Phoenix’s still getting quality shots despite Paul’s absence.

I almost forgot they had rondo on the bench, ever since he gave kawhi the evil eye he’s been kind of scarce…

I love his perpetual: great, you fucked up again look of disgust…

Reggie Jackson rebirth is outstanding… and he’s playing at the minimum.
I can’t help but root for him,
he’s born in Italy in the town where I did my military duties… 🙂

On another subject, the Yankees turned their third triple play of the year…

Donnie Walsh:
***Reggie Jackson rebirth is outstanding… Yankees***

Mr. June.

LOL

Devin Booker possessed!

Very nice game if you consider that Paul and Leonard are out…
The Suns are fun to watch.

I had a vision, Kevin Knox faking a corner pass and dunking in a conference final…

Nah… I need to stop drinking too much…

Rondo has range now!? :O

Every single one of us watching this game is thinking the exact same thing watching Bridges play lol.

Remember the outrage at the rumors that Phil was looking to trade KP for Booker and picks?

O what might have been!

There are a few pure scorers out there in our draft range. Cam Thomas, Bones Hyland, Charles Bassey and Luka Garza come to mind. Would it be so terrible to have a few of them on our squad?

I probably wouldn’t have been thrilled about him shooting 30% from three in the semis, but yes, he had a good game today, he must be a top tier superstar.

This game is on fire 🙂

Yeah Donovan or Shai would have probably made us a bit too good to get RJ but Bridges is the guy we could have drafted that would have given us a high floor dude but he probably wouldn’t have hurt our draft position for RJ. RJ and Bridges we’d be set at the 2/3 for the next decade. So dumb drafting Knox instead.

JK47:
I don’t really get the “if you’re a 90’s Knicks fan you have to like 1990’s style basketball” argument. It’s not 1995 anymore.

It’s like saying “you’re a fan of the 1965 Dodgers, why aren’t you in favor of bunting all the time and letting your starting pitchers throw 300 innings?”

Whut?! Are you really saying that basketball was garbage in the early ’90s? Or that baseball was garbage in the ’60s and ’70s?

These are embarrassing takes. Please stop.

Count de Pennies:
I am genuinely baffled by the depth of dislike I see expressed for the Nets.

…

I lived in the SF Bay Area in the early ’90s and the ubiquitous insufferability of know nothing bandwagon 49er fans (most of whom did not even know the NFL existed prior to 1981) engendered in me a healthy antipathy for that franchise. Every game they lost felt like a great victory to me.Our own cdiggy has frequently posted about the torments suffered at the hands of the smug, overly entitled Laker fanbase (and, yes, we’ve all met those fans regardless of where one lives)So hating the Lakers has always made a lot of sense and is just good, clean fun to boot!

But the Nets?

All I need is one. Just one truly diehard, really obnoxious “Nets rule, Knicks suck” kinda fan to allow me to experience more than the tepid “yeah, that’s nice” I felt yesterday at the misfortune of that other New York team…

I was telling JK47 yesterday that my Laker coworkers (except one) are now pivoting to pulling for the Clips ’cause LA. Two of em tried to troll me about the Nets’ losing, to which I reminded them that I do not care about the Nets the same way they (supposedly) don’t care about the Clippers. But they tried for the whole “well LA is still in it while New York is out” angle which is just fucking lame. (Con’t)

Z-man: Whut?! Are you really saying that basketball was garbage in the early ’90s? Or that baseball was garbage in the ’60s and ’70s?

These are embarrassing takes. Please stop.

That is not what I am saying at all.

The 2021 Bucks aren’t even a great defensive team. They were 10th in the NBA in defensive rating. I’m supposed to like the way they play though, because 90’s Knicks, and if I don’t I’m “stupid” or “shallow” and I can’t appreciate the fine things in life like our own oh-so-refined single malt scotch drinking Z-Man.

I don’t like the way the Bucks play, and I don’t think they’re a great team, and I don’t see what they have to do with the 90’s Knicks, who were not similar to them. If the Bucks truly played great defense, you might have a point, but they don’t, so you don’t.

didn’t somebody here run into james jones in an elevator or something?

Kevin Huerter is an odd choice for the next playoff boat rocker….

the thing i felt most when the nets loss was relief…and, all of that points back to the nets big 3…i got absolutely nothing against their franchise or fans – or anyone else on the roster, staff, front office – except for irving, harden and KD…

even my dislike for them ain’t that deep…

kyrie irving is a lot of fun to watch play basketball, i like this version of harden (i have a feeling he’ll show up next year 20 lbs or so lighter), KD is one of the best players of his generation, he’s amazing…they’re all pretty vocal stars though, i just didn’t want any of them to have the chance to talk any shit about the knicks reference this year’s season…

That is not what I am saying at all.

of course it wasn’t, but Z-Man’s going for National Troll of the Month and he needs to have as many bad faith arguments as possible to edge out a 14 year old anti-vaxxer who has been deftly flaming posters in the the comments section of USA Today.

Hard to generate offense when your weakside floor spacers are Simmons in the dunker’s spot and Thybulle at the elbow.

Man, Ben Simmons might be the most polarizing player in the league.

Adam silver is shitting in his pants at an Atlanta vs phx final…

Is Philly that much better of a market than Atlanta?

I don’t know, these NBA playoffs have been more entertaining than most I can remember. That was epic drama last night. I understand JK47’s point, it seemed innocuous to me, not sure why we are talking about it.

Trae looks so small sometimes out there….

A terrible foul by Thybulle. He’s no Frank.

RED VELVET IS A ROUGH RIDER

run free gallo

gotta hear doc’s excuses after this one

Ben Simmons is Philly’s Eldrid Payton.

Simmons’ 5 points in a game 7 not gonna cut it. Is he trade bait? Embid has to be getting frustrated

Philly fans booing

Classy

Philadelphia sports fans are the absolute worst

Another playoff flameout for Doc Rivers.

My bet is that Morey ships Simmons out before next season. Simmons for CJ McCollum works under the salary cap. Portland reboots with more defense. Philadelphia reboots with more offense.

Simmons is broken.

I lived to see Kevin Huerter interviewed after a game 7. I will tell my kids about this Father’s Day for years to come.

I don’t know if I had money that I’d think a Kardashian was a score.

bidiong the not so great:
I don’t know if I had money that I’d think a Kardashian was a score.

Kourtney is definitely a score.

Z-man: yawn…

Sorry keep trying to convince us that things were better in 1993 when you were in the prime of your 60s

Pop quiz. Which is greater, Simmons FT% this series or how many FTs he missed?

Kourtney is the most annoying one of all

What a game for Huerter and Gallo…
Who would have thought that the Hawks could win a game-7 on the road with Trae shooting 5-23?

gonna be a long summer for philly…. give up two big leads in the series…. simmons passing up a layup… the thybulle foul… all those turnovers… just multiple epic choke jobs…

they had many many opportunities to close this out early and they blew their best chance at a title…. lot of soul searching for everyone involved…

damn…I gotta renew my people mag subscription…get caught up on all the important shit…

JK47:
Anyway, Ben Simmons dates one of the Jenner kids, not Kourtney. Kourtney goes out with the dude from Blink 182

I am proud to say I needed to Google this and did not just know these factoids

Sadly I knew Kourtney goes out with Travis Barker but no clue who Khloe currently goes out with except that I know she’s been with like half the NBA players.

A few months ago Simmons was the main piece in Philly’s offer for Harden…
Good times Daryl, good times…

Ben Simmons for Kevin Knox and a Dallas 1st who says no….

Daryl morey?

Hope the KNicks and sixers would make that trade knox and dallas first is good. Bullock also and payton if you want. hope 76ers is insane enough to do it.

Before the season starts, randle to simmon is a no for philly but a yes to us.

If Simmons shot 70% from the line Philadelphia wins the series. Hard not to put it on him.

I am happy for Gallo!

Embiid comments pretty ruthless….

https://twitter.com/rich_hofmann/status/1406817068813635586?s=21

I will say, it will never stop bothering me the way people insist on picking out one single moment in the game and calling it decisive. That’s how narratives get made though.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Sorry keep trying to convince us that things were better in 1993 when you were in the prime of your 60s

lol, thing is, that actually happened, not some cannabinoid induced wishful thinking. Whats the o/u on when the elam ending will be adopted by the NBA? Cue: Zager & Evans

How long before we hear Simmons to Knicks rumors?

You had to really love the Knicks to enjoy watching their games in the mid-90s. All the non-Knicks obsessed people I knew pretty much hated watching their games and rooted for the Bulls or Sonics because they were so much, ahem, better… which seemed like blasphemy at the time, but I was the crazy one back then, not them… (and it wasn’t until I gained some perspective that I understood why. Once I’d matured, and saw the 2015 Golden State Warriors play basketball, I wanted to retroactively gouge my eyes out and forget everything I witnessed at MSG during my formative years.)

That said, I still enjoyed the game last night. I think it was fatigue more that skill and/or style that made it a grind out. But I’m rooting for the Hawks to beat the Bucks for most of the reasons JK47 outlined. I just wish Kawhi and Paul were available to play against each other in the west. I want to root for the Clips, but I just don’t think they can win 8 more playoff games without Kawhi, and I prefer the Suns win it over the Bucks or Hawks.

Donnie Walsh:
You had to really love the Knicks to enjoy watching their games in the mid-90s. All the non-Knicks obsessed people I knew pretty much hated watching their games and rooted for the Bulls or Sonics because they were so much, ahem, better… which seemed like blasphemy at the time, but I was the crazy one back then, not them… (and it wasn’t until I gained some perspective that I understood why. Once I’d matured, and saw the 2015 Golden State Warriors play basketball, I wanted to retroactively gouge my eyes out and forget everything I witnessed at MSG during my formative years.)

You know, I came onto the Knicks in full in 1992. I haven’t taken to any extensive replaying of those games in full; I rather remember the beautiful defense they played and how much heart they played with. In a lot of ways, they’re style, as unaesthetic as it was particularly in hindsight, matched the onset of the hard core genre of rap that began to emerge at the time. I say that bc I came up in that culture of rap as a teen, so all of that came together to form the foundation of my love for the team. That, and I felt Ewing’s story of how he was teased and ridiculed heavily in college – i had spent a majority of my childhood being picked on regularly and socially treated as an afterthought. They would become not just my team, but part of my heart.

Basketball is better now. There’s more talent, and the playstyles i feel allow for more flexibility for a variety of talent to shine. As much as this season’s team reminded me of those 90s Knicks, I was also reminded that we need to continue to upgrade our talent so someday we hopefully won’t have to keep in the shadows of the top talented teams in the league.

Fell asleep again (here the games are very late), and went to check the score thinking that with Embiid playing well the Sixers had pulled this one off, but the Hawks don’t cease to amaze people, i guess. And with Trae not having a good game, i think it’s time to give props to McMillan, he’s the mastermind behind this run and has done a terrific job all around.

Donnie and CDiggy, I was lucky enough to have taken in nearly every game of the Knicks championship years, and those teams combined ball movement with great team defense. The ’90s Knicks did not move the ball as well but played even better individual and team defense. It was a highly successful team, and whatever DWs friends had to say about them, they were fun to watch. Let’s remember that Pat Riley of the Showtime Lakers was coaching them. If they were capable of playing a more uptempo ball movement style, they would have. If a team in constructed to best fit a certain style, you play that style.

Dogs make lousy cats and cats make lousy dogs. If you try to have Jrue Holiday or Derek Harper play like Steph or CP3, you will lose, and vice versa. If you try to have Giannis or Ewing play like KD or LeBron, you will lose, and vice versa. That doesn’t make a team with Giannis and Jrue, or Ewing and Harper, inherently bad to watch. It’s just a different style. And the Bucks are proving that you can win with that plodding, bruising style today. If you have no tolerance or appreciation for that style, that’s about you, not about the basketball. No matter what the talent or how the rules are changed, big, physical teams who grind out offensive possessions are going to be around.

I wonder what dreck we could pawn off for Simmons right now. We could play small ball with him at the 5.

Alan: But one of our problems against the hawks was having a center who wasn’t in any way a scoring threat. You mitigate Simmons’ lack of shooting a bit if he’s your center, but not enough.

I don’t disagree in the least that were offensively challenged at many positions. I’m figuring one of two things happens with him this off-season. He works his ass off and improves at the free throws and overall shooting, or he just becomes a complete lost cause. I think that’s gamble you’re taking. If #1 happens, you’re going to be really happy with the rest of the package.

Classy of Doc to publicly sell out his max-contract point guard immediately after a tough loss in a big game. Just the kind of leader I want helming my ship.

bidiong the not so great:
I wonder what dreck we could pawn off for Simmons right now. We could play small ball with him at the 5.

I’m sorry. We already have players on this team that can’t score. There needs to be five scoring threats on the court at the same time. There also needs to be five strong defenders on the court at the same time. We had a few players on the roster that provided that this year. Randle, RJ, Rose, Taj and Bullock all gave you that. Mitch too, but he was out.

I don’t mind the trio of Mitch, Noel and Taj at center. Mitch is that type of 2-way player but I want to see some post-up moves from him and a mid-range game.

Replacing Payton, Burks, Frank and Knox should be the off-season mission.

If we sign Lonzo..should we start Quickley?
That really intrigues me. I wonder if we can now add Ball and still afford to retain Burks and Rose. Taj I know we can keep. Noel may have priced himself out of our range- unless we don’t plan on keeping Mitch. But back to Quickley and Ball..that would open so much up for Randle and RJ. But..it kinda would pigeonhole us into banking on RJ and Randle developing into championship level players. But at the same time- we can keep 2-3 of our picks and build the team based on GREAT depth and coaching a la LB’s Pistons

What to do here? Ball and Quickley is an intriguing combo for sure

Just throwing this out to the worry warts on this site. From a story on the Kemba trade:

‘The trade also continues a consistent trend under Presti for Oklahoma City to work with players to find them a suitable new home, something he has done with Chris Paul, Danny Green and now Horford after acquiring all three within the past several months.’

He costs too much, is now injury-prone, and regardless of those two points is not really on our (new) timeline. But outside of that, a great dribble-penetrator with a really good outside shot would surely be a lovely fit…

The more I think about it the more Simmons for McCollum is the trade I want to see. I’d really like to see Simmons tried in a pseudo-Draymond role where he’s the small ball 5 a lot of the times paired with strong guard play – ask him to play defense, push the ball off rebounds and steals, and in the half court set picks and play-make out of those situations. I really feel like the biggest issue of his time in Philadelphia was somebody becoming convinced that a 6’10” guy with no halfcourt offensive game outside of 3 feet was a “point guard”. I understand why it happened initially because coming into the league it seemed like he might become Lebron if the jump-shot just developed (and it’s easy to forget in retrospect that this seemed at least possible; 20% of his shots his rookie season were non-paint 2s and he shot 33% on them; not amazing obviously but as a baseline not awful). But it has been obvious for a couple years that he’s just never going to have a shot and they haven’t adjusted their perception of who he is as a player at all in light of that development (and in fairness the player he has become really doesn’t fit with Embiid).

Simmons is a really interesting player but Philly is in win now mode and we don’t have anything they’d want for him. going to be fascinating to see what Morey cooks up

I really think Dinwiddie is going to be the play. I’m not sure Ball gives us enough offensive firepower and that’s what we lack, unless IQ can be more consistent or RJ can improve a lot more.

Dinwiddie is an inefficient player, but it’s still an improvement over our offensive repertoire. It’s not like Rose was the paragon of efficiency last year.

Definitely a 1yr deal though, want to sell on him as soon as possible.

Kemba to Philly
Simmons to NYK
100 draft picks to OKC

That, or Randle for Simmons.

Not to go all Bargnani on you all, but it’s called basketball, not defense ball.

That said, there was a big difference between 1991-1993, when Riley was exploiting the league inefficiency in trying to defeat a single team, and the mid 90s, when every team that wasn’t good enough to compete on talent resorted to the same slow and ugly style for every game. The 93 Knicks did it well, but they begat the 94 Knicks, who begat the 95 Cavs, who made the playoffs led by a Hot Rod Williams’ .496 TS% and made time tick backwards in the process. The devolution of the game was swift and painful, and was easily corrected because the problem was so obvious.

but here’s the thing. the jazz had a 120 ortg in the series. you are not going to beat that by posting rik smits or kevin duckworth or even david robinson or patrick ewing against marcus morris.

One reason they didn’t win despite their efforts on offense was that the Clips were doing some of the same things to Utah they did to Dallas against KP. Dallas tried to adjust, but imho did the opposite of what they should have done.

Almost every player is going to have a mismatch on some nights where the other guy is too quick, too good outside, too strong to handle inside etc..

The taller stronger slower guys generally can’t defend the perimeter well against smaller quicker players, get caught in bad switches, and lose defensive value when they get dragged outside by small ball. That’s why small ball works against them.

However, to some degree it’s a conscious choice on which skills you are going to work on, what you are going to try to do with your body, and what adjustments teams are going to make.

When guys like that are spending their practice time shooting 3s they probably aren’t helping themselves stay on the court as much as if they learned to post up, play bully ball, and shoot over the smaller and weaker guys that are killing them now. They aren’t going to win a shootout with more skilled players. But that’s what teams are telling them to do (or what they are choosing to do). IMO, these players have to try to develop and use their God given bodies to keep themselves relevant and counter the bad mismatch they have now by creating a similar mismatch on the other side. Some will never be able to do. So be it. They are getting killed now against smart skilled good teams anyway. Some will though IF THEY TRY.

The 76ers would obviously be way better off if Simmons had an outside shot and was a consistent scoring option. However, imo he’s taking way too much blame.

Simmons is an elite defender, good playmaker, and can rebound. He knows his limitations on offense and generally stays within them. He does a LOT well. The problem is the 76ers have 2 major scoring options (Embiid and Harris). You need at least 3 consistent diverse scoring options unless you have 2 that are elite superstars (Harris is not).

Simmons is not a shooter. So build a team around Embiid, Simmons, and Harris that has the correct balance and be thankful Simmons is as good as he as at the things he does well. Don’t blame Simmons for what he’s not because you aren’t a good enough team yet. He is what he is. He’s very good overall. If Simmons could shoot, he’d be top 5 in the league.

Interesting discussion. The 3 pointer is worth 50% more than the 2 pointer, but isn’t even close to 50% more aesthetically pleasing and its impact on “efficiency” is far greater than any real athletic accomplishment — so a lot of the things we see in the efficiency data and to a degree aesthetics are, upon serious review, distortions and illusions. The increased “efficiency” is far more a matter of bookkeeping than it is athletics. Moreover, the conscious and way too often successful effort to draw non-basketball move, bullshit fouls, is an aesthetic debit.

With that said, to use the 1995 date mentioned above, the ball went through the basket from the floor 71 times per game, and this year it’s going through the basket 80.2 times per game. So it goes through the basket from the floor one extra time every 5.2 minutes. Standing alone, that really doesn’t seem like a lot and certainly not enough to outweigh whatever aesthetics go into generating and taking shots, depending on where you come out on those.

The zenith of the primary aesthetic change since the Illmatic era was perfectly encapsulated in Ben Simmons’s intuitive pass/quasi-kickout from a wide-open layup in last night’s fourth quarter. The idea that you would penetrate past your guy to a good open 2 pointer from like six feet and then kick the ball out to a guy way further away from the basket wasn’t even a basketball thing in the mid-90s. Now, we’re a generation into it being a primary basketball thing and a guy’s first thought even when he’s wide open a foot from the basket is to kick out. I go back and forth on the aesthetics of that, but I’m still not really a huge fan of it. Net-net, I still have the sneaking hunch that it’s just way more of a bookkeeping thing than it is anything really athletic, be it intuitively athletic or otherwise.

Also, not to bring up the “process” again but 5 years of tanking got Philly to be a perpetual 2nd round team who’s best player is injury prone and second best player can’t shoot. Considering they were a playoff team that got to the second round with Iggy and Holiday before they decided to blow it up and tank for 5 years, can we really say the process was a success?

I know what the defenders will say. They’re a title contender (are they?), they gave up on it too soon (really? 5 years wasn’t enough?) They made the wrong picks (but they picked the consensus top dudes every year).

Embiid if he stays healthy means they can retool and be a playoff team but honestly, was 5 years of having the worst record in the league really worth it? Oh but they almost won the second round with Butler (who then bolted town immediately).

Most of the talking heads keep referring up to $60 million as the Knicks cap space, but that doesn’t account for Noah and his stretch, picks 19 and 21, plus the cap holds on Rose and Bullock to retain their Early Bird rights.

With $49 million going to Randle, RJ, Knox, Obi, IQ, Vildoza, and Mitch, $6 million to Noah, $5 million for picks 19 and 21, $15 million to Rose and Reggie, and then 4 incomplete roster spots, it’s more in the neighborhood of $35 million. Surely, Rose could open up more space rather easily, but I just don’t see the higher numbers being realistic at this point.

Kevin Huerter is proving Chet Haze right.

It’s going to be a White Boy Summer.

If Ben Simmons bought into playing the 5 instead of the 1, he would be a good fit for a lot of teams — but not Philly because Embiid is going to get >30 mpg at the 5. I think that Simmons for McCollum makes the most sense. Nurkic would be a real trade asset, at only $12M for next season and then expiring. Or Portland could keep Nurkic and Simmons and figure out a way to get both of them 30 mpg.

But, by all accounts, Simmons is committed to being a point guard. I do not think a team can have post-season success with a point guard who will not shoot. At this point, his offensive range is essentially the same as Mitchell Robinson’s. It is even worse than that, because Mitch is always look to score at the rim but Simmons is not.

If Simmons insists on being a point guard, the only good fit that I see is Minnesota, because Towns is a legitimate 3 point threat. But even that does not work, because Towns wants to play with Russell – not Simmons.

Here’s the thing about complaining about “brickfests.” Every team now passes on open mid range shots in order to take a “more efficient” 3. In that Nets/Bucks game I saw this multiple times where a player would get in the mid range and be relatively open but would kick it out for a more awkward 3 pointer. I like the game overall today still but I’ve watched many games these last few years where its possession after possession of both teams missing 3’s. And I wonder if the midrange being inefficient becomes a self fulfilling prophesy if teams are passing up good mid range shots for 3’s and end up only taking mid range shots when the possession is ending and its a more contested shot.

This is part of the reason why I still believe you need the midrange game even in today’s NBA game. Maybe not as much in the regular season but absolutely come playoff time when defenses can key in on the paint and perimeter. The biggest evidence I have is Kawhi, particularly Toronto King of the North Kawhi who was practically Jordan from midrange.

I’m probably in the minority on this, but this I believe this is where and how RJ Barrett can turn himself into an offensive star or superstar. I’m ecstatic that he found his range from 3; I just think with his physical strength it’d be a bit of a waste to ask him to continually gun from 3 when instead he should be using that strength (plus more ballhandling craft) to become nigh-unstoppable in the paint. And pullup Js from 15 ft.

BTW, a few days ago I basically said that trading Randle for Simmons would be intriguing but risky b/c you’d have to move him to the 4, bring in a premiere 2-way wing, run a 3-guard lineup w/Obi (surround Simmons w/playres who can shoot from 3) and hope Obi/IQ/RJ all take major leaps forward.

I’d like to modify this statement 🙂

That scenario has a few too many ifs for me. I get the skepticism over whether Randle’s future contract will turn him from undervalued to overvalued, along with the fact he played really bad this postseason. But Randle improved his defense and 3pt shooting while playing a decent point-forward. Ben may be an excellent defender and point guard/forward/etc, but you gotta shoot at least a lil bitin today’s NBA.

There are ways to navigate Randle going forward that can make sense for him and the Knicks.

The Knicks offense was fine after we got Rose. I don’t see how being an average or poor offensive team that takes mid range shots is somehow indicative that the mid range shot is always bad and I clearly wasn’t making an argument that the midrange is better than the 3, so nice strawman I guess?

My point is just that teams now religiously take so many 3’s that it can lead to games where if one team is off at 3 they get blown out and if both are missing, its ugly basketball. Variety is the spice of life, so they say and I see this all the time where a player has an open mid range shot that they can take in rhythm but then they kick it out to an “open” 3 but that 3 is taken out of rhythm or is closed out on and they miss that shot when they could have made the midrange that was more open and in rhythm. You can absolutely tell watching a game when a player is more likely to make a shot or not by how in rhythm they are and I think tis gotten a little out of hand with so many 3’s being taken all of the time. And yes, you see it in the playoffs all the time to the point of detriment because the defense is tougher. Every team plays virtually the same way now. I still love the game and honestly the foul baiting and how quickly they call fouls on defenses is a much bigger problem for me than too many 3’s but I honestly think a correction is coming because it always comes in sports.

At this time two years ago, the Suns were 19-63 and coming off a widely-ridiculed draft night. Now they’re three wins away from the Finals. This should forever retire the “win curve” idea — but of course it won’t.

Also, not to bring up the “process” again but 5 years of tanking got Philly to be a perpetual 2nd round team who’s best player is injury prone and second best player can’t shoot.

maybe if it’s said for hundredth time instead of 20th it will finally hit home…

the point of the process is not to GUARANTEE titles or contention… but that it’s such a robust strategy that it can tolerate you missing completely on two out of your top 5 draft picks… waste hundreds of millions worth of cap space and incinerate other countless draft picks that were amassed… and STILL have you contending for titles within 5 years… what other strategy that is remotely repeatable would get you there?

some teams have performed better because they managed to get top 5-10 players in the middle of the first rd (giannis) or in the 2nd rd (jokic)… that’s great for those teams and they deserve all the credit in the world… but it’s not some sort of repeatable strategy to just identify the next great nba franchise player at whatever random place that you are picking… that requires an immense amount of luck on top of the skill it takes to find and develop those players….

the process already succeeded…. that you had isaiah thomas esque style of management after hinkie left and they’re still in the upper echelon of the league should clue you in to how successful it was….

Yeah, you think we don’t get it and we’re dumb. We’re not. We just disagree with you.

My point is that they AREN’T title contenders.

They have yet to get past the second round of the playoffs in the post process era. Yeah, they got to game 7 twice but are they REALLY contenders if they can’t even make the conference finals and get past a mediocre team like The Hawks? One unlucky bounce or not, facts are facts.

Before the process era when they had Iggy and Holiday they were a perpetual second round exit too.

So 5 years of processing ended them up where exactly? The same place they were before the process?

Oh but they got Simmons and Embiid? One who can’t shoot and is about to get traded and the other, injury prone.

You can make excuses all they want. They made poor picks. They ended it too soon. They shouldn’t have traded for Butler or signed Harris. Fact is they sucked for 5 years and are in the exact same place they were before the process.

That said, I do think the last few years for the Sixers have highlighted how hard it is to build a title team. There are no sure things, even if you get a couple of all-stars in the draft. So if four years of huge pain are only putting you in a position that’s still pretty hard to get right, is it really worth it? That’s a fair question.

as opposed to the alternative which is to sacrifice all your future draft picks for the likes of jrue holiday.. paul george.. russell westbrook…. james harden… just so that you could be in the same place as the guys who didn’t have to do any of that…

what is the alternative strategy that we’re saying is better here?

Also, making excuses for the process by blaming all of their woes on the mistakes they made post process is kind of lame. At some point you have to have a post process period and free agents signings, trades, etc…once its time to go “all in” are always risky and can possibly fail. What competing team doesn’t have a free agent signing of trade they’d like to take back.

Is it really fair to give a franchise a pass for 5 years where they’re allowed to be the worst possible team, miss on multiple draft picks, etc…and then expect them to be perfect in the post process period with every free agent signing and trade?

Donnie Walsh: Not to go all Bargnani on you all

You mean like this -> Bargnani best play as a Knick

The thing is I’m not even saying it doesn’t work. I’m saying the pain of being absolute dogsh*t for 5 years in order to accumulate picks isn’t worth it. They could have easily built a contender in that time without processing. Look at The Nets. They had no picks at all when the KG/Pierce era ended. But in less time they were able to go from fun up and coming team to playoff team to team with KD/Harden and Irving and they did it without tanking for 5 seasons.

Sure, suck hard enough for 5 or more years and amass enough draft picks in the lottery and you can probably luck your way into drafting some good players that can make you a playoff team. But then you still have to put the pieces around them and that’s the hard part. So blaming it on Harris or Butler leaving is dumb. All teams have to wade through the PROCESS of overpaying a free agent or making a big trade for another star in order to put the final pieces together and half of the time that doesn’t work. But guess what? Their fans don’t have to sit through 5 season of horrible basketball to do it (unless they’re Knicks fans in which case they sit through decades of incompetency).

Also, making excuses for the process by blaming all of their woes on the mistakes they made post process is kind of lame. At some point you have to have a post process period and free agents signings, trades, etc…

the guy overseeing the process was fired and his replacements all cashed in and incinerated everything they had left picks and cap wise on one year of jimmy butler and tobias harris…. none of that was part of the process….

If KD, etc…don’t go to the Nets then they’re a fun up and coming playoff team. IE, not really that much worse off then Philly is now.

Again YOU’RE not getting it!

Philly sucked for 5 years and all they’re getting out of it now is a team capped out as a second round playoff exit. IE, not real contenders. You can blame that on what they did post process but every team has to make those post process moves too and there are plenty of teams that are good with contracts they’d like to get rid of. No team makes perfect free agent signings or trades all of the time. So expecting Philly to do that post process is absurd. You’re honestly going to tell me in 5 years time they couldn’t have built a playoff team with a second round ceiling without being the worst team in the league for 5 years to do it?

Come on bro! The process is dumb as shit. Suck for 5 years so you can not have to worry about sucking at drafting or developing or good coaching and dumb luck your way into 2 good players by sheer magnitude of suckiness but then after that if you fail at making good free agent signings or trades, you can say “well we should have kept processing?”

Maybe Philly should have processed for 7 years. Have Embiid sit out his first 2 seasons. Would 7 years have done it?

Dude, we turned it around in one season and our best player we signed in free agency. We tanked one year for RJ and have some late first round picks because of KP. If we draft Bridges instead of Knox we’re sitting pretty right now even if you erase the KP picks we got from Dallas.

If KD, etc…don’t go to the Nets then they’re a fun up and coming playoff team. IE, not really that much worse off then Philly is now.

really? a squad led by dlo and dinwiddie levert joe harris and jarrett allen would’ve been the #1 seed in the east? they would’ve made it to the second round in any of these years? let alone 3 out of the last 4?

if that’s not what you’re saying.. what exactly are you saying is the same?

I will say that Sam Hinkie’s website (samhinkie.com, of course) delineating his current “side projects” (*) is the closest serious thing you’ll ever find to Cosmo Kramer and Kramerica Industries, so if anyone is interested in being his “Darren,” there’s probably a chance there. Silver lining is that if you’re walking down the streets of Philly and happen to find yourself getting hit by a Swiss ball filled with oil dropped eight floors, you’ll know who to blame.

(*) E.g. — Best books. Surfacing the very best book (for you) would be a delight machine. Someone should build a real personalized recommendation system. And marketplaces where we could buy summaries, annotations, and takeaways. Or other companion elements for reading alongside people we respect.

I’ll take the perfume that smells like the beach.

swiftandabundant:
Dude, we turned it around in one season and our best player we signed in free agency. We tanked one year for RJ and have some late first round picks because of KP. If we draft Bridges instead of Knox we’re sitting pretty right now even if you erase the KP picks we got from Dallas.

If we did better with our lottery picks, yeah, we’d be in great shape. Which is kind of a good argument for having more lottery picks. It’d be great to nail every one but that’s not the way it always pans out.

What if, instead of Phil Jackson’s bumblefuckery, we had used that time to acquire some nice long-term assets? Instead of going all-in with a “win now” strategy that predictably blew up in our fucking faces?

We’d be better off, dontcha think?

“He also seemed eager to get the ball out of his hands in fourth quarters, for fear of being fouled. At one point late in the Sixers’ loss on Sunday, Ben Simmons passed up an open dunk attempt to get the ball to Matisse Thybulle, who was fouled and subsequently made one of two free throws. Joel Embiid singled out that play in his post-game comments to reporters.”
With a coach like Doc and teammates like Joel, who needs enemies?

When someone says that something “alone” disproves a proposition, it doesn’t mean the proposition is otherwise solid aside from that something; it means the proposition is so flimsy that it can be blown up by one simple and obvious data point.

The “three year” Suns rebuild is just another example of backfilling and curve fitting and data mining. (Google them if you don’t know what they mean. Not to mention that it isn’t three years from 19-63 — it’s two.)

I know nothing about Sam Hinkie the person. I’ve never heard him speak or read an interview with him. I could care less if he’s a dork or not.

Again, not saying the strategy doesn’t work just that its not a better strategy than other paths of rebuilding and is probably worse because you have to actively suck for a minimum of 3 or 4 years to really make it work and even then nothing is actually guaranteed. I don’t understand how people can keep saying they’re “set up” or “title contenders” when they have yet to get past the second round! How is that any different than any other mediocre playoff team?

E, all merc’d out: The “three year” Suns rebuild is just another example of backfilling and curve fitting and data mining. (Google them if you don’t know what they mean. Not to mention that it isn’t three years from 19-63 — it’s two.)

You can use as many buzzwords as you want, but it’s pretty fucking basic: the Suns hit paydirt on three lottery picks, THEN pushed in the chips on a max contract player. To say this somehow disproves the “idea” of the win curve is… well, there’s no other way to put it and no nice way to say it. It’s fucking idiotic.

Again, not saying the strategy doesn’t work just that its not a better strategy than other paths of rebuilding and is probably worse because you have to actively suck for a minimum of 3 or 4 years to really make it work and even then nothing is actually guaranteed.

ok so which other teams are we looking at as examples then that’s better?

Remember when E made an argument against paying D-I basketball players by claiming that he would have been fine playing for free had he actually been able to make his college team’s roster? I do. He’s not serious person.

cybersoze:
And what about Sam Presti’s process? He has gathered so many draft picks that (maybe) OKC doesn’t even need to tank anymore. 😀

Sam Presti sat his 23 year old stud combo guard literally because he was too good at basketball, and they did the same thing to Al Horford who is now back in Boston. Presti is absolutely processing his way to glory in OKC and he’s getting away with it because it’s happening in OKC and the Chris Paul rehabilitation project bought him a lot of good press. I’m only angry about this because I want SGA to be mad about this and demand a trade to the Knicks expeditiously.

@TheSteinLine
Damian Lillard. Draymond Green. Bradley Beal. Jayson Tatum. Devin Booker. Kevin Durant. Bam Adebayo. James Harden.

I think Gregg Popovich has a decent shot at that elusive gold medal with @usabasketball in Tokyo.

Yeah, that’s a pretty good roster so far. But if I were Nets management, I would really prefer if Durant and Harden just took the summer off.

says the guy who spent the whole weekend watching Cars with his 2 year old

man, once they get hooked on a movie – that’s it, chances are good – at some point you’ll be able to regurgitate the whole thing line by line…i have watched the adventures of shark boy and lava girl – soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many times…soooooooo many times…

geo: Frankenstein logic

This would be a hell of a username, here at KB. If i ever create a burner account, i’ll be FrankensteinLogic. LOL
Oh, and btw, all your post was hilarious, Geo. 😉

an rj barrett stan account: I’m only angry about this because I want SGA to be mad about this and demand a trade to the Knicks expeditiously.

Subscribed. We can give him what he wants (draft picks), maybe there’s a deal to be made. 😉

not mine soze, they’re just quotes…the whole concept of frankenstien logic is pretty darn funny, and accurate 🙂

I just find it interesting when folks are so sure of themselves…

when in reality, 90% of the posts here are simply emotional outbursts, which, in of itself is pretty funny…

people standing on perceived solid ground with their toes dug in, when the ground itself may not really be all that solid to begin with…

Oh shit, JK making the Z-man look downright charming….

I have footage of Ben Simmons passing the ball to Embiid next season, here. 😀

JK47: He’s talking about you, fam

Maybe in affect, but “The Process” and the “win curve” are monuments to misguided certainty.

there’s no such thing as a “win curve” to begin with, as disproven clearly by teams like the Suns

Bro What

In November they literally traded four mediocre-to-useless players and a pick with diminishing protections for a distressed asset in the form of a HOF point guard who will likely not be in the league when Booker’s contract is up for renewal. This is the definition of operating per the win curve. They are paying Chris Paul $44M or so to win right now. There is no chance that they would have paid him $44M to join the 19-win team from a few years prior. What are you doing?

From the Weitzman piece:

According to league sources, Simmons’ frustration at being relegated to off-ball duty during the team’s 2019 second-round loss to the Raptors contributed to the front office’s decision to not re-sign Jimmy Butler. Brown had handed Butler the keys to the offense, and management was worried how Simmons would handle having Butler around and monopolizing crunch-time playmaking duties for multiple years.

Yeah. This is the kind of decision-making that was happening post-process.

But hey, keep trolling away.

You just spent hours arguing against the concept of the win curve only to state, albeit while avoiding the term, that the Suns…adhered to the concept of the win curve.

Curve fitted doe
Back fitted
And don’t forget data fitted

I HaZ alL Da BuzZwoRdZ

When is Philly going to hang their 2020-2021 5th Ranked SRS rating banner cause that pre game ceremony is going to be LIT.

They didn’t really even “play” anything, other than sensibly taking a shot and then getting really lucky.

“Sensibly taking a shot” IS the goddamn win curve. Nobody’s saying it’s an exact fucking science, it’s more of a general principle you should follow. Following this principle would have you avoid doing things like giving Joakim Noah a 4/72 deal when your team is the dregs of the league, and signing Carmelo Anthony to a megamax when your team is the dregs of the league. Understanding this very basic principle would allow you to avoid signing pointless free agents like Derrick Williams and Arron Afflalo and instead using that cap space to try to acquire some assets.

Nothing personal, but from now I’m ignoring you. You’re too tedious to deal with.

Alan: A really good “What is wrong with Ben Simmons?” piece from Yaron Weitzman

The problems with Simmons go way deeper than i thought. He isn’t coming here, but after reading this piece i don’t think i’d want it either.

JK47: “Sensibly taking a shot” IS the goddamn win curve.

Only if recklessly taking a shot and winding up in pretty much the same place, as would have happened with the Knicks and CP3, ISN’T the win curve.

A process that allows you to roster Joel Embiid, Jimmy Butler, Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, and still have assets to spend is good.

They got Butler and Harris way after Hinkie left, at fire sale prices he had nothing to do with. Sam. Hinkie. Did. Not. Have. A. Single. Thing. To. Do. With. The. Sixers. Acquiring. Jimmy. Butler. The two crown jewels of the “Process” can’t play together. The Process is a cult. Its present adherents are cultists. The cult would not exist without the internet to enable it. Maybe one of Hinkie’s “side projects” should be “deprogramming.”

Only if recklessly taking a shot and winding up in pretty much the same place, as would have happened with the Knicks and CP3, ISN’T the win curve.

You’ve spent months arguing this season was fool’s gold and Randle might not even be good and our record was really only good because Thibs is a bad coach and blah blah blah. Now adding CP3 would’ve put us in the finals. Which one is it?

Sam. Hinkie. Did. Not. Have. A. Single. Thing. To. Do. With. The. Sixers. Acquiring. Jimmy. Butler.

Who’d they trade for Jimmy Butler?

Only if recklessly taking a shot and winding up in pretty much the same place, as would have happened with the Knicks and CP3, ISN’T the win curve.

They were at different places in the win curve, brainiac.

You really don’t get it. Okay, ignoring you for real

If we traded for Simmons and allowed Frank to teach him how to shoot (48% from three) we might actually have something.

The Suns had an EWL of 37-36 last year. They ditched Rubio and Oubre (who stunk on their teams this year) for an injury-prone star PG on the decline, and had Ayton for twice the number of games this year. They did not have any injury problems for, like, the whole year. Someone explain to me what E is talking about because I still don’t get it. I know he’s the smartest guy here, but I’ve apparently lost the thread because he keeps saying that the Suns prove that the win curve doesn’t exist but it sure looks like they made a call to snag their win-now piece (jettisoned by OKC for being completely useless to them during a rebuild) for two seasons while Ayton and Bridges were still on their rookie contracts and their volume scorer was starting his prime years. They bet on a team with an EWL over .500 and got some huge improvement out of their core. Is this not win curve? Apparently I’m too dumb for this.

Meanwhile over in Clipperland, one of the Morris twins is making an astounding $64M over four, which will double his career earnings when the contract ends during his age-35 season, yet that contract would make no sense at all on the Thunder, Pistons or Rockets right now. Win curve? Nah. Something else.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: They bet on a team with an EWL over .500 and got some huge improvement out of their core. Is this not win curve? Apparently I’m too dumb for this.

I don’t think it is, others think it is. To summarize, you can’t see the “curve” until after you get the data points and then it looks somehow foreordained but it really isn’t. But I agree that things are becoming tedious and semantic at this point. The GM-ing point is more to allow yourself the (intelligently, of course) possibility for a massive surprise to the upside because they happen all the time. Suns, Knicks, 2021. If that’s somehow the “win curve” in action, so be it.

And you don’t even have to process to do it. Lakers didn’t process to get Lebron or AD. Neither did the Clippers. HEAT didn’t process to get Butler. Knicks didn’t process to get Randle.

so how do you get to be on the lucky side of a star player wanting to sign with you as a free agent or demand a trade to your team? if we’re counting score that happened to exactly….. three teams? lakers… clippers and nets… how do you get into this club?

are you also saying the knicks are in better shape? and that miami is in better shape? both teams winning a grand total of 1 game in the first rd this year?

how are any of these better processes?

If that’s somehow the “win curve” in action, so be it.

but datamining and datafitting… curvefitting… and backfills…. what happened to that? we were all about to get schooled on these advanced concepts….

or were these datacurves and backfits?

The league has tried to discourage The Process by flattening the lottery odds, and it has sorta worked. Presti has figured out another approach that doesn’t seem to upset everybody so badly. We’ll see how the Thunder look in a few years, I would bet they’ll probably be in pretty good shape.

If we’re saying win curve doesn’t exist, let’s take it to the logical extreme: would it help the Timberwolves if they signed Chris Paul? Would it make sense for them? Or would it make MORE sense for the Timberwolves to acquire young players, draft assets and the like? It seems pretty goddamn obvious to me, but I dunno, dAtA FitTinG or something something

djphan: how are any of these better processes?

There is no “process” to be applied to any of this because none of it can be planned. That’s the fundamental reasoning flaw with both this and the win curve. The best process, far better than Hinkie’s is ” make smart trades, draft well, always draft BPA, put a good player development program in place, try not to get caught in the shitty Orlando middle, hire a good coach, be patient, prefer genuine superstars over multiple good players, plan the salary cap well. Add three more ‘get luckies’.”

That’s really as much as the thing can be planned. People like Hinkie aren’t comfortable with things like luck and uncertainty, but you have to be and that’s why they fail. Things like “The Process” and the “win curve” are efforts to bring sense and planning to areas in which luck, chaos, randomness, and uncertainty necessarily prevail.

Again, this MF says the win curve doesn’t exist, then gives several examples of how you should do things that fit in with your win curve, and avoid doing things that don’t fit in with your win curve.

I can’t

Somebody please ban me or something

They septn 5 years processing. The pressure to keep their processing dudes was so high they fucked up and let Butler walk for nothing when it was Butler or Simmons.

You keep saying five, but it was four years. Hinkie took over after the 2012-13 season and they won 52 games in 2017-18, so it was 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. Four years. Or, in other terms, Hinkie took over after the 2012-13 season (where the Sixers won 34 games) and the Sixers were at 52 wins in 2017-18. The Knicks made the playoffs in 2012-13 and then didn’t make the playoffs again until 2020-21, so seven seasons. Four losing seasons doesn’t seem like too big of a deal in comparison, no?

5 year of processing to be a mediocre team.

Uh oh, Z-Man is not going to be happy.

Congrats to Becky Hammon for making it to the final rounds of the job Chauncey Billups was rumored to be getting weeks ago (he is the other finalist, so…yeah).

Brian Cronin: Hinkie took over after the 2012-13 season (where the Sixers won 34 games) and the Sixers were at 52 wins in 2017-18.

2017-18 was over two years after he left. In non-dog years, the Sixers were a 10-win team when Hinkie left. He bequeathed his predecessors Joel Embiid and the most ping pong balls in the 2016 lottery, which they happened to luckily hit. That’s it. That was “the Process” — Joel Embiid and some ping pong balls in one lottery.

But even giving him the benefit of every last doubt that no GM has ever been remotely given in GMing history, they improved from 34 to 52 wins in five years under his watch. I’m afraid the immortal words of Derrick Coleman can’t be improved upon — “Whoop dee damn doo.”

It’s a cult.

Brian Cronin: The mid-level exception stuff is confusing, since it would only apply if the Knicks resigned all of their current free agents to go over the cap. So yes, theoretically it would then be available, but clearly, the Knicks aren’t going to be doing that, so it will not actually be available.

Brian, i think we can’t have it because our free agents are non-bird (Noel and Burks), which only allow 120% of the previous salary, and Early Bird (Reggie and DRose), which only allow 175% of previous salary. Doing the math that doesn’t put us over the cap, and not near i should say (still with 17M in cap, after doing that).

[edit] Unless we break the bank to keep the French Prince! 😀

Brian Cronin: What if they gave Mitch an extension before the draft and also resigned Elfrid?
Don’t get me wrong, I agree, they’re not going to do it, so it’s a moot point.

Yeah, you’re right, didn’t remember the extensions (Mitch or Julius) would “help” fill the cap.
No way they re-sign Elfrid, right? LOL

The people who dislike Hinkie are a lot more vocal than the people who “like” him. I don’t think it takes a tremendous amount of genius to realize that collecting assets and avoiding marginal wins at the bottom of the win curve is a good idea, it seems skullfuckingly obvious to me but hey I’m just a guy who plays synthesizers for a living.

I wouldn’t really want him running my team, and I think The Process was a little bit extreme, but it’s a legitimate way to build something. He damn sure wouldn’t have burned all his assets for one season of Jimmy Butler and he also damn sure wouldn’t have given Tobias Harris that insane contract. He probably would have been more patient, and the Sixers would have probably been set up for better long-term success. But that’s a hypothetical scenario and we don’t live on that timeline, so I guess we’ll never know.

You don’t have to be a Sam Hinkie cultist to see that the moves his successors made weren’t really so hot. Mature individuals should really be able to recognize that some of Colangelo’s moves were counterproductive but some people have a narrative hill that they’re willing to die on so here we are.

You know, the Suns don’t have Paul at the moment and they are still winning playoff games. Maybe just accumulating talent and hiring a good coach gets you results even without Chris Paul.

You know, the Suns don’t have Paul at the moment and they are still winning playoff games. Maybe just accumulating talent and hiring a good coach gets you results even without Chris Paul.

Right, they were at the point of the win curve where their wins were going to be going up ANYways, so adding a star veteran made sense, to help optimize their chances.

Jowles that’s a whole lot of excuses to justify a team that still can’t get past the second round. First round exit last year, etc. you’re doing the “if only this did or didn’t happen excuse.” That’s fine one year but come on dude. This is year four of them flaming out. They’re not contenders and the processing got them the dude who can’t shoot, remember?

Again, it works but it’s not worth the pain is all I’m saying. That’s a lot seasons of being the worst of the worst just to get to be a mediocre playoff team.

swiftandabundant: They’re not contenders

God I didn’t want to get involved, especially since I’m on break ,but what the hell. This is like the argument over ‘mediocre.’ A contender is someone who contends. A team picked to be in the top 4, who some experts said was likely to win it all, and who finishes with the best record in the East, and who gets to game 7 of the second round, is by definition a contender. They are contending, and at a very high level. Did they flame out? You bet, most contenders do. You seem to have the take that only the team that wins it all is a contender, which is post hoc and plays RIGHT into E’s explanation that things can only be known after they have happened, and discussing how and when you might increase your odds is all foolishness.

Brian Cronin:
By the way, I’d gladly start a new thread, but there is such a dearth of real Knicks news stories.

Regardless, maybe you could make a catch-all playoffs megathread any way? This is a lot to scroll through by now.

for the record, i ain’t stepping on e’s toes – who knows when i might need some lawerly advice some day 🙂

i will say this, if i was an owner and my front office came to me with some “process” of sucking solidly for three or so years in order to re-build the franchise, they’d be looking for other work shortly thereafter…

Doug Chu
June 21, 2021 at 7:24 pm
Brian Cronin:
By the way, I’d gladly start a new thread, but there is such a dearth of real Knicks news stories.

Regardless, maybe you could make a catch-all playoffs megathread any way? This is a lot to scroll through by now.

ditto, since when do we ever need a legitimate reason to argue with one another and pontificate for purely onanistic purposes…

geo:
cheery cherry syrupy filled chocolatey goodies, that sees so evilly creates, staring me in my face…

just ain’t happening, til they’re gone…

hey geo…you got some see’s for fathers day also I see…I got those block like chocolate pops that you can suck on forever…a chunk of hardened high fructose corn syrup with perhaps some cocoa in there somewhere…damn good…

maybe by the time I am done with one of them I will unscramble E’s theory of chaos and how you can’t make any personnel moves until your algorithm that tells you what move to make is shown to be 100% accurate..

I think he meant Magic Johnson wants to play here now.

And Geo, as has been pointed out here earlier, the Knicks sucked for 19 out of the last 20 years. Is that more or less maddening than having someone say we’re going to suck for 4 and then we’ll be at least better than mediocre?

E says there are no plans. Hinkey had a plan and it kinda worked, sorta. The Knicks also had a plan, but like the proverbial crazy person, they kept doing the plan over and over again even though they got the same results (less then mediocre).

Is that more or less maddening than having someone say we’re going to suck for 4 and then we’ll be at least better than mediocre?

that is correct raven – you can not say/admit or even hint at sucking being an okay situation within the entertainment industry – big no no…

it hurts our feelings…better for people to be simply angry, not saddened…

the knicks were simply historically inept, like statistically hysterically bad…

It might be super dumb to throw my hat into the ring after so many words have been spilled on the Process, but I was talking about this in a discord last night so I’ll do it anyway.

Has it been mentioned that Hinkie was forced out before he got to make any moves to turn his asset hoard into a contender? He quit before the 2016 draft, where the Sixers drafted Simmons. None of us have any idea whether the authentic Process would’ve worked to win a championship. Hinkie didn’t get a chance to move onto Phase 2.

It’s actually a credit to how effective Hinkie’s asset accumulation phase was that the Sixers under Colangelo and Brand still built a team that came within a single bounce of making the Finals in 2019, and was a #1 seed in the East this year.

What other team survives the following moves without needing to blow it up and start over:

– trading up in the draft for Markelle Fultz
– trading for Max Player, Tobias Harris
– trading away Jimmy Butler
– signing Al Horford to play alongside Embiid and Simmons

Only the Sixers withstand all these L’s! It’s a credit to Hinkie that these failures didn’t leave them dead in water. One great advantage of the Process is that with so many assets, you don’t need as many things to break your way. Not every draft pick has to hit. You can withstand coming out on the losing side of a trade. You can even fuck up as many times as Colangelo and Brand and still build one of the best teams in the East.

pepper: posting and toasting!

kind of like wake and bake…
LOL

JK47: Some folks, the whole topic just pushes their buttons and they’re not going to move into a more nuanced place with it. It failed, they were “right,” the narrative they wanted panned out (in a way) and they’re not open to viewpoints that don’t fit that narrative.

Imagine living like that! Couldn’t be me!

Like, I think Hinkie’s smug tech bro “look at me, I’m DISRUPTING your paradigms” attitude was annoying. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t right. It doesn’t mean that he got to start what he finished. Or that he’s responsible for how Colangelo and Brand have continued his work.

ptmilo:
The Knicks could operate as an “above the cap” team if they were to extend the Qualifying Offer to Frank, because his cap hold would then be 25% of the salary cap.

no it would he 300pct of his 20-21 or $18m

I stand corrected. You are right.

I think we need one of Brian’s vote threads. Like which is better, to be mediocre, or a contender?

Thanks for the clarifications in the thread about the exceptions. Very confusing stuff!

I tried to edit my last post (just to change a period to a question mark) and it marked my edit as spam.
I can no longer post anything with links.
Half the time my posts are simply refused.

Is there something wrong with my permissions? Is this happening to anyone else????

Doug Chu: He’s a blowhard, but he was right. He figured out how to exploit the system and he did a great job of it. Curious as to why you react so strongly to it and go so far as to cast it in… theological terms?

He didn’t “exploit” anything and he didn’t do a “great job” at anything. But for the cult, I’d give fewer than zero fucks about the whole thing. I find the cult around him culturally interesting, if not fascinating — but in a culture, not basketball, sense.

Thanks for the clarifications in the thread about the exceptions. Very confusing stuff!

The best way to think about it is to keep in mind the word “exception.” Basically, the “rule” is that you are supposed to just use your open cap room to sign people. When you have no cap room, though, that is when you need an exception to the rule.

I just wish one of the anti-process guys would finally explain why being purposely bad for 3 years in order to maximize draft chances is horrifying and something that has not and cannot succeed but being bad for 3 years (or longer!) because you’re a poorly run organization is just fine.

American pro sports should adopt relegation like European soccer, that would end all tanking and process controversies!

BigBlueAL: in the end sports is still entertainment.

As a longtime Knicks fan, I’ve always leaned toward the tank/asset accumulation side of this debate. Decades of watching a shitty team whose brand of hoops has long been far from entertaining led me to see tanking as the best way forward for a team that generally finished much closer to the bottom of the league than the top. I mean how much worse would a Process-style tank have been from what we fans were already being subjected to year after year after year?

That was how I wanted the Knicks to approach this season as well. I believe I am even on record here as expressing disappointment when Thibs was hired on account of a win now coach being the wrong choice for a team that by rights should be aiming for enough losses to ensure a top four pick.

I am here now to admit that I was wrong. This last season reminded me just how entertaining a competitive Knicks team can be. After years of being utterly disengaged from this team, I found myself arranging my schedule to accommodate Knick broadcasts. This was a fun team to watch and root for despite my nagging suspicions that they were likely pretenders who would get bounced early from the playoffs.

Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the Knicks would have been better served positioning themselves for a Suggs, a Cunningham this year in lieu of going balls to the wall for a 4 seed and a 1st round exit. Now that the excitement of the Knicks’ surprising season is over, I guess I’m a little disappointed to be out of the running for that level of talent. But would I trade the season I so enjoyed to have that? Naaaaa, I’m good. As BBA said, sports is entertainment and that was the most entertaining Knicks season for me in a very long time. It sure feels good to have that back again.

not by accident, by incompetence…frustrating, but honest…manipulating your roster in an attempt to produce a negative result in order to gain a future competitive advantage, is dishonest…

intentionally losing is much easier than intentionally trying to win…

All this talk about the win curve, by that measure what should the Knicks be expected do this off-season? The Knicks were 41-31 and by point differential that is exactly what their expected record should be so it’s not like the Knicks were lucky to have that record. There were obviously circumstances surrounding this season that helped the Knicks achieve that unexpected record but still they played like a 41-31 team.

not by accident, by incompetence…frustrating, but honest…manipulating your roster in an attempt to produce a negative result in order to gain a future competitive advantage, is dishonest…

and then there were none. okay. he didn’t call something trash or someone a mouth breather or insult someone’s sample size or god forfuckingbid play the mediocrity card. but let’s take note that the gig is nonetheless up. 27 wasted years meticulously forging a knickerblogger rep as a vonnegut character who congenitally yinyangs every strident argument with a wag the dog doodle of a snake biting its own tail or a mushroom tripping over ted cruz. all that uncareful effort of fully deniable smirksnark. and for what. just to come here tonight and finally prove he’s just another podium full of arbitrary takes like the hoi polloi he serenades. now who’s dishonest? who geo?

not fair milo, vincoug is fairly earnest and i felt compelled to state something that seemed somewhat righteous and true…

yeah, i don’t really care 🙂

speaking of which mister jowles, if your business travels take you down here to the city of angles, please let us know – drinks are on cdiggy, jk, KBPR and or donnie…they’ll hook us up…

Hinkie traded the reigning rookie of the year for a first round draft pick 3 years out. The rookie of the year was in the G-League by the end of his rookie deal and the pick became Mikal Bridges. That is an excellent move, regardless of “win-curve” and/or “process” context. If saying that makes me a member of a “cult”, then I guess I am. But it’s a pretty low bar for cultdome.

Thanks Joinone. I hope the kid makes it too. At least he seems to have drive. It’s not nothing that he was willing to actually come to the US just for a kind of pre-draft tryout.

I believe I am even on record here as expressing disappointment when Thibs was hired on account of a win now coach being the wrong choice for a team that by rights should be aiming for enough losses to ensure a top four pick.

I am here now to admit that I was wrong. This last season reminded me just how entertaining a competitive Knicks team can be.

I’m not sure that you are wrong. It’s TBD.

This season was fun as hell and I sure enjoyed it. But it needs to be the start of something. The point is not to have one fun season, then backslide into bullshit like we did after 2013.

Any year we start winning will be fun. I would have been perfectly fine delaying it one more year if it meant setting us up for better long term success. The fun you had this year wouldn’t have gone away, it would have simply been transferred one year forward.

The degree of difficulty to make this team a true contender is incredibly high right now. It’s not like we turned this season in ahead of a bumper free agent class. It’s quite possible, maybe even likely, that we are rim rocked in this position.

So yeah. TBD.

Here’s an idea:

Re-sigming Noel long term and trading Mitch for Wiseman.

Listen, I HATE the idea of not having Mitch on this team. But this one, I wouldn’t mind. I think Kenny Payne would work wonders with Wiseman. As a matter of fact, I’d add Knox and one of our 2nds for Wiseman and a future 1st. I believe the Knicks would be looking to add a backup C in the draft with #32 anyway..and I do like Bassey btw. I’d be thrilled if we land him in the draft, but if a deal like this we’re ever on the table- I’d take it

I will again preface this by saying how much I enjoyed the three home playoff games at a raucous MSG, but the cold, hard reality is that the Knicks have worked their way to the mediocre (*) middle. The big upward slope in their “win curve” is mostly a mirage, with little to no predictive value.(**) If I had to venture a looking forward prediction, it would be that there’s like a 70% chance that three years from now we will rue missing this year’s lottery.

–Their star player just laid a massive egg in the playoffs, is hard to build around given his niche skill set, and is a year out from free agency and a big, massive raise.

–Their roster is filled with veteran role player mercenaries, pretty much all of whom are now free agents.

–Because of shitty drafting and development, they have a hole in the cost-controlled rookie scale sweet spot. (Not a complete one, obviously, since they have RJ. But the niche is badly underserved.)

–Their coach, while very talented, is a bit of a red ass who doesn’t really like young players, thus making it hard to rebuild that cost-controlled rookie scale sweet spot.

–They’re probably going to overpay the coach’s pet point guard who, plain as day, can’t play more than backup minutes without breaking down.

–While they have cap space, they have it in a summer with a dreadful free agency class.

–Lines of authority and responsibility in the front office remain unclear and the quality of the people in the most responsible positions remain a question mark.

The one thing they did do is make themselves more attractive to superstars and that’s not nothing. This enterprise eventually probably rises or falls on whether they can attract one of them. The right move is probably moving heaven and earth to get Zion (or to a lesser extent Luca) here. Short of that, get ready for a lot of muddled middle in the Knick future.

(*) No intent here whatsoever to wade into the definitional debate. Use a different word if it works.

(**) How do the Knicks “play the win curve”? See? — there’s no answer. Because the “principle” isn’t really a “principle,” it’s just something that occasionally seems to make some sense.

Let’s take the “get a job” process, you should prepare your cv, then search for openings, then submit it to the ones that make sense, then get ready for the interview when they call you, then nail the interview… for the end result of getting hired!
Now let’s just say your father is a very powerful man (eg, Dolan, James) and he’ll get you the interview, if you were explaining to other people how to get a job, would you skip all those steps you were fortunate to skip because of your father? Or would you build the process just like i did (because not everybody has a powerful dad, it can happen but it’s not all that common)?
Should you try to skip steps if you can? Of course. But if there isn’t a way to do it, just do it the right way.

As the archives show, I was ready to go all-in on Randle, but the playoffs really, really soured me on him. (*) The right move is to sell high on him and not pay him. I’m back to where I was most of the year on him. No chance he can be a 1 on a really good team, his skills don’t really fit a secondary role, very hard to build around him in the only role in which paying him makes sense. Maxing him will be a disaster.

He’s probably a usable chip in the disgruntled star trade market and I would certainly use him that way. I’d probably even trade him for Simmons but I’d have to be comfortable with the other moves, because Simmons is also a guy with a very niche skill set.

(*) There’s a strong likelihood that this observation will bring mocking and ridicule and it does venture a little too close to Bill Simmons, ca. 2007 — but I was able to get a nice look at Julius’s body language and demeanor during his struggles, and it was … I’ll be charitable … not great. Just not a package I want to invest in, sorry to say.

Hubert: When you say you don’t believe in the win curve, what you’re saying is it makes equal sense for Philadelphia and Detroit to sign Paul.

That isn’t what we’re saying at all.

Where are the Knicks on the win curve? The teams at the obvious points are easy ones, so easy that you don’t even need to cobble together a “win curve” theory to explain it at all. The principle properly described is that “NBA teams shouldn’t waste money or assets on marginal wins at the expense of lottery position.” Adding the silly term “win curve” to it is just faux-intellectualizing things and broadening the idea to a place it has no applicability.

“Win curve” is not an idea with universal applicability. That’s the thing people are confusing with not “believing in the win curve.”

EDIT: Hubert edited his post while I was writing. I disconcur with the assertion that “not wasting money and assets on marginal wins” “is” the “win curve.” The term “win curve” is not an improvement, linguistically or in terms of basketball, on the term “don’t waste money or assets on marginal wins.”

That isn’t what we’re saying at all.

Yes it is!!!

That’s why people keep telling you you have no idea what you’re talking about.

People are arguing about which strategy is optimal for a certain point in the win curve, or where the Knicks are on the win curve, while saying there is no such thing as a win curve. That’s why everyone is talking past each other. Half the conversation doesn’t know what the fuck it is they’re arguing about.

I’ll just say this one more time and then move on. The Knicks as we sit here now disprove the “win curve” idea. Their actual win curve is trending massively upward, more upward than even the Suns’ last summer. But there’s no serious sense in which the Knicks should go all in now. The fact that you can take two teams with essentially similar actual win curves and yet have completely different prescriptions for how they should go forward falsifies the idea in and of itself. In fact, that’s exactly what it means to falsify a theory. If there are still holdouts after this obvious contemporary example, horse to water and all.

yes. yes I did. And that makes perfect sense to the people who know what the win curve is, of which you are not one.

Hubert: People are arguing about which strategy is optimal for a certain point in the win curve, or where the Knicks are on the win curve, while saying there is no such thing as a win curve. That’s why everyone is talking past each other. Half the conversation doesn’t know what the fuck it is they’re arguing about.

I’m catching up. Again, that isn’t what people are saying. The Knicks, like every other team in the league, have a win curve; you can plot their historical wins, draw a line through it, and poof, there’s something there that looks like a curve. The question is really, “Given the shape of that curve, what should the Knicks do?” and the right answer of course is “We need way more data than just the curve to know the answer.” That’s what’s meant by the assertion that there’s really no such thing as playing the win curve. No one sane would look at the essentially similar 2020 Suns and 2021 Knicks win curves and say, “I got my answer now. Cocktail and edibles time.” It’s a fatuous idea.

vincoug: That’s not what the win curve is.

When people have to say over and over that “you don’t understand the thing” to people that obviously do, and “that’s not what the thing really is,” you have in your hands a telltale sign of a defective thing. It’s faux-intellectual claptrap. Take the L on it. It’s no big deal.

1. In some instances marginal wins help attract trades and free agents. That can accelerate the process if done “intelligently” (as we have been doing since Rose/Thibs too over) .

2. Arguably the 3 best teams in the NBA this year when 100% and playing all out were the Lakers, Nets, and Clippers. 2 are out and 1 is in trouble due to injuries. Point being, when you are building a team you shouldn’t necessarily think in terms of “are we as good as the top 2-3 teams if we make this move”. Just putting yourself into that 50 win category could get you a title if there is an upset or injury or two.

3. When you make moves for marginal wins, it does not lock you into “that team”. Players contracts are assets (though people should never be treated the way Hinkie treated them). As long as a player’s contract is attractive, it doesn’t matter if he’s 22 or 35, he can be moved later in another deal that makes more sense if one comes up. You should not be asking does this 33 year old player make sense given where this team is now. You should be asking does he make us better now and can we move him later as part of deal if a much better player becomes available.

I’ll just say this one more time and then move on. The Knicks as we sit here now disprove the “win curve” idea. Their actual win curve is trending massively upward, more upward than even the Suns’ last summer. But there’s no serious sense in which the Knicks should go all in now. The fact that you can take two teams with essentially similar actual win curves and yet have completely different prescriptions for how they should go forward falsifies the idea in and of itself. In fact, that’s exactly what it means to falsify a theory. If there are still holdouts after this obvious contemporary example, horse to water and all.

You’ve already proved you have no clue what the win curve is a million times over, but this post alone shows you’re truly lost. The win curve doesn’t have a lot to do with a team’s raw win total because not all e.g. 41 win teams are created equally.

Of course you can’t look at the Knicks’ raw win total and, without knowing anything else, say what their next set of moves should look like. You have to know how much cap space they can spend without losing current production, the ages of the productive players on the roster, etc. The answer for some 41 win teams will be “trade as many players as you can for future assets” while for others it will be “make moves to maximize the production on your current roster.”

You’re lost because you seem to think this context-dependent approach somehow disproves the idea of the win curve. In reality, no one has ever said “you can take one look at a team’s raw win total and determine their place on the win curve.”

That this is necessarily a context-dependent determination is so obvious no one has ever really bothered to say it explicitly.

From here on out I will always, when I see his posts, visualize E typing madly away at his laptop, dressed in his linen undershirt with his helmet tipped back, his armor and short sword lying in disarray around him.

1. In some instances marginal wins help attract trades and free agents. That can accelerate the process if done “intelligently” (as we have been doing since Rose/Thibs too over) .

Then those wins aren’t marginal gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

3. When you make moves for marginal wins, it does not lock you into “that team”. Players contracts are assets (though people should never be treated the way Hinkie treated them). As long as a player’s contract is attractive, it doesn’t matter if he’s 22 or 35, he can be moved later in another deal that makes more sense if one comes up

Hey look, it’s that proposition you’ve restated a million times as if it’s original when in reality no one disagrees. Yeah, sign valuable contracts when you can identify them. Hot take!

The problem is there is a multibillion dollar industry dedicated to making sure player contracts are not “attractive” to teams. These contracts are very rare and tend to require some exceptional circumstances e.g. a player being so good even the max salary underpays him or Marcus Morris reneging on a deal with the Spurs.

If you actively eschew asset collection because you’re certain you can build a team of Marcus Morii, you’re going to fail 99% of the time because, unlike future assets which are virtually infinite and get traded countless times during the course of the NBA transaction window, there are very few of these contracts to go around.

This is why we couldn’t get a first-round pick for Courtney Lee whenever we wanted even though he was a decent player.

Then those wins aren’t marginal gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

That’s true, and I agree with you here more than Strat — but you don’t know whether the wins are marginal or not until you know whether you made the trades or signed the free agents. We need something with useful value for future action — that’s the fundamental disconnect here. Once the Knicks have a new 2022 data point to add to the win curve, people will talk about a bunch of things as if they were inevitable or made sense and all the rest (just like they’re doing with the Suns), but we need a guide to action now, before we know that data point. Right now, the Knicks win curve looks a whole lot like the 2020 Suns, but as we all (I hope) know, they are not the 2020 Suns.

Early Bird: Hollinger picked Queta as one of his draft sleepers in an athletic article today.

Thanks EB! Going to read the article, and when i finish it, i’m going to send it to Leon for him to take Queta with our 32nd pick! 😉

The problem is there is a multibillion dollar industry dedicated to making sure player contracts are not “attractive” to teams. These contracts are very rare and tend to require some exceptional circumstances

Not true.

We just did a great job of finding MULTIPLE attractive contracts this year alone. One could argue our mistake was not giving a couple of them more years. They aren’t as rare as you are suggesting. Your thinking is being influenced by the incompetence of the past. The probability of success is different when you have good basketball people and good financial people in charge. Previously we only had one or neither. So we failed.

If you actively eschew asset collection because you’re certain you can build a team of Marcus Morii, you’re going to fail 99% of the time because, unlike future assets which are virtually infinite and get traded countless times during the course of the NBA transaction window, there are very few of these contracts to go around.

Not true.

First, I don’t eschew ANYTHING! You are the one limiting yourself to draft.

A draft pick is an asset with “x” value. “X” varies with where you are in the draft, how good you are at drafting, how strong the draft is etc.. You also have to remain mindful there is a significant amount of luck involved in the draft no matter how competent you are.

A player is an asset with “y” value. “Y” varies with how good the player is, what his contract is like, etc..

Neither is intrinsically superior. Either X or Y can be of greater value.

You should typically go where the better value is at that time with some exceptions.

IMO, some people here overvalue picks. Then when one of our picks fails they blame the people making the picks as if they would never make a mistake. lol Failures come with the territory.

What you should do depends on the value in the market that year. IMO, it’s usually a bad idea to lock yourself into the draft.

Good news, i took my first Pfizer shot today. All went smoothly, and for now no side effects… i’m still a diehard Knicks fan, so no change in that! 😀
Europe is a little behind the US, but we’re getting there. Maybe by September things will be more or less getting back to normal.

cybersoze:
Good news, i took my first Pfizer shot today. All went smoothly, and for now no side effects… i’m still a diehard Knicks fan, so no change in that! 😀
Europe is a little behind the US, but we’re getting there. Maybe by September things will be more or less getting back to normal.

Way to go Cyber! 🙂

Great news, cybersoze!

I was in a store the other day where the manager (woman in her late 50s or early 60s) was masked. We got on the subject of the vaccine, and it came out that she hasn’t gotten it yet, and is hesitant, worried about possible side effects, etc. That she was masked in the first place suggested she was taking the virus itself seriously, so I just gently told her that I felt lousy for a day after my second Moderna, but ever since then I’ve just felt relieved that I can go places and not feel like I’m at risk at any moment where I leave the house. Hopefully, she gets the shot. That we have so many available and so few remaining people who want to get it exasperates me, especially when I have friends and family in other countries that don’t have nearly the vaccine supply.

If I’m 95% sure I’m going to be in the lottery, I’m running away like wildfire from all marginal wins even if I can get the wins for free because the cost in ping-pong balls is too high. That’s an inviolate principle. The less and less certain I am that I’m going to be in the lottery, the more and more I’m ok with marginal wins. Obviously there, as in the real world, the key is how good you are at projecting those kind of percentages. I’d be interested to know something like whether in the Suns planning meetings anyone said something like, “If we sign CP3 and everything breaks just right, we could contend for a championship.” I doubt it, and in reality, the looking forward odds of that were probably something like 5% (*) or less, but they hit the number. The key there is to be open-minded and permit yourself to be uncertain, including w/r/t upside possibilities. For example, every Knick planning session should include the possibility, albeit small, that RJ Barrett reaches all-NBA status. That’s just one of a zillion similar possible examples. This is a game of probabilities, best guesses, uncertainties; it’s not a game of philosophies and stubborn fixed ideas.

With the Knicks you just have a number of possible illusions to deal with — COVID, “Thibs wins,” the heavy reliance on mercs, Randle’s playoff collapse, etc. It’s very tough to plan out where to go, and several different paths could be justified.

(*) You could look at preseason Vegas odds to get something of a good start empirical read on it.

whew, i finally found a pic that perfectly illustrates what the win curve is…

i believe we are in the confidence phase now heading towards a dip, soon though we should be reaching a new summit for when “real artists ship”…

gosh, this stuff is so easy…

E, all merc’d out: The basketball analytics stuff measures and describes things that have already happened way better than they were measured and described before but beyond that … meh.As a tool for looking forward GMing, double meh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9434BoGkNQ

New Thread New Thread New Thread

Would the resigning of Frank Ntilikina fit within the Knicks win curve or send them tumbling back down into the depths of mediocrity?

It is not about whether or not you chase marginal wins. It’s about how much you should be willing to pay for them, and when it makes the most sense to pay a premium.

Even in this area, I think people sometimes put too much emphasis on the price. The more important part is making sure you are signing a key player and he’s the right fit. If you start passing on very good players that are a perfect fit because of a few million dollar overpay, you are never going to win a championship.

There’s a big difference between overpaying for role players that are a dime a dozen (bad idea) and overpaying for the harder to get key pieces (sometimes has to be done). You can easily get away with a couple of marginal overpays as long as they are key pieces to a championship. Once you have that in place, you can get always role players cheaply. Sometimes you can even get extreme bargains once you are a contender. You just don’t want to overpay for the WRONG player (meaning he’s not as good as you thought and doesn’t fit). Then you are stuck.

Brian Cronin: Sorry for that. I have no idea how this system works, either. I can go edit your old comment to add a question mark, at least! 🙂

Thanks. It must be some feature of the “new” interface.

d-mar: We just hit post number 666. If that isn’t a sign to start a new thread, I don’t know what is!

It’s a sign of the (Knickerblogger) apocalypse! 😀
KB will auto-destroy now, and we will all disappear from existence, and appear in a new world where the Knicks are always Champions, there’s no need to tank, no need to do smart trades and free-agency signings, and more importantly there’s no good contracts nor bad contracts, neither there’s a win curve! Will you all be happy in this new world?

If I’m 95% sure I’m going to be in the lottery, I’m running away like wildfire from all marginal wins even if I can get the wins for free because the cost in ping-pong balls is too high.

A number of years ago, we had a long convo here about changes in the lottery system that would make a big difference in how teams handle the end of season. The new lottery rules + the play-in have accomplished a lot, but there were still a handful of teams that were embarrassingly trying to lose for the last 20-30 games. I still think my proposal (see below) would really work – and it’s based on late season wins providing some amount of positive value to your lottery position.

The idea is that up to a certain point in the season, losses are beneficial to your lottery position. Then after that point in the season, losses are harmful to your lottery position. That “certain point” could be within a randomly selected range (say anywhere from game 60 to game 82) so that teams looking to game the system wouldn’t know whether they should be winning to get better lottery odds or losing to get better lottery odds. So given the no certain benefit from losing, teams presumably will try and win. That “certain point” in the season – let’s call it “Game X”- would be a made-for-tv event in and of itself, and wouldn’t be determined until after the regular season is over.

For example –
Game X lottery determines that for this upcoming draft, game X = game 73.
So all teams gain some amount of ping pong balls (Exact amount could be determined by math types) for each loss up to and including game 73, and for each win after game 73.

if you make the range of game X late enough in the season (ie. after game 50 or 60), teams that are actually really bad will still get relatively more balls because losses are still good for lottery position up until game X.

Max: It depends on how many times a day I’m allowed to fuck…

LOL! That’s up to your partner(s) in the new world! 😛

Frank Ntilikina doesn’t really exist. He’s just a vague concept created for dorks to discuss on the internet.

The problem with systems for eliminating tanking is that there is never going to be a good reason for really bad teams to try hard to win a couple more games. Would the NBA really have been meaningfully better as a league if Al Horford played 20 more games for OKC and they finished 25-47 instead of 22-50

Alan: Brian, I have found an article you can use to justify a new thread! Shams’ report on the rule changes the league is going to implement to cut back on foul-baiting

This is for the best, the foul-baiting was getting completely annoying… or it still is, i should say, because until the season is over Trae (and others) will still get a lot of those calls. I think the league tries to address the problems. This is one, but the tanking was another one and the flattened odds helped with it, now if you’re the 5th or 6th worst you’ll still have a very nice chance to be in the Top4, so there’s no need to tank like crazy (just avoid the… oops… marginal wins).

I was just thinking the other day about how the famous LJ 4 point play in the ECF of 99 against The Pacers was so famous that it was the beginning of the foul baiting era that has now reached this crisis point. I’m glad the league is doing something about it. Overall I do not have an issue with the 3 point/offense first era though I do have a strong opinion that a solid mid range game is still key for a championship team. But really the foul baiting, offensive players running into defenses on purpose to draw fouls, etc…annoys me way more. Its why I hate James Harden’s game so much (and Trae too). WE don’t need to return to the age of the bad boy pistons or anything like that but some balance would be nice. Even if the league average score went down a bit if it was because there were less free throws, that would make the game more enjoyable.

I’m glad they’re trying to put an end to the foul-baiting farce.

I understand Pepper’s doubts and I’m sure at the start there’ll be some mistakes,
but I think they’ll adapt and find the right balance,
as is slowly happening in football (ops, soccer) with VAR and in baseball with manager challenges.

The Knicks, like every other team in the league, have a win curve; you can plot their historical wins, draw a line through it, and poof, there’s something there that looks like a curve.

Colder.

So now the Knicks’ win curve isn’t their “win curve.” Illumination.

When I walked to get lunch today, I asked a woman about the breed of the cool, friendly-looking animal she had on a leash and she said, “Don’t you know? That’s a win curve.”

Put it in when its hard!
That’s my definition of the winning curve!
;-P

I repeatedly tried to explain how a watch works to my two year old son. He didn’t get it, but he believes
it runs on magic. By E’s logic, I have a broken watch.

Cybersoze, I am interested to see how Brian officiates this clear thread baiting….

Hubert:
I repeatedly tried to explain how a watch works to my two year old son. He didn’t get it. By E’s logic, I have a broken watch.

If you continually called a cow a truck even your two year old son would shoot you a puzzled and confused look.

The Knicks 5 year win curve is the shape formed by the plot of their wins in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. You can get more granular and do a monthly or weekly plot but it doesn’t change anything. That’s what their “win curve” is. Not only is that what their win curve is; their win curve is nothing but that. You can call that win curve a “pizzaburger” but it would still be their win curve and you can call a pizzaburger their win curve and it still wouldn’t be their win curve. If 7 million people are out there on the internet discussing a pizzaburger and calling it the Knicks’ “win curve,” the thing they’re discussing is still a pizzaburger.

The Knicks 5 year win curve is the shape formed by the plot of their wins in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Nope. That’s not what win curve is.

I’m starting to wonder how you manage to button your pants in the morning.

Nope. That’s not what win curve is.

Pizzaburger as win curve it is!

What’s next — the treasury yield curve is a “hootenanny”??

i’m probably the only one, but, i am having fun with this discussion…

i just love the part where he spits on the ground in disdain…

Between bong hits, I spent a lot of time as an undergrad analyzing graphs and curves. The term “curve” is used a lot in econ and finance — “supply curve,” “demand curve,” “yield curve,” etc.

geo: wait – i thought win curve was strictly tied to revenue???

not only that – it’s a baseball reference, which i suppose could be used for basketball…

i get what you all our saying regarding opportunity costs (in reference to roster talent and wins), but, yeah, i don’t know…i think you’re all fudging stuff a bunch…

i don’t think strat’s the only one here who just makes shit up to serve their own storylines 🙂

You hit on it perfectly before, geo — why would you use the revenue generated from a baseball win to then talk about the personnel decisions a basketball team should make for its short, medium, and long term roster? No one cares or is talking about the best way to make Jim Dolan more money, so who cares about the dollar value of a marginal win in baseball?

As to the win curve and revenue, there’s a connection in baseball and I’m sure the baseball research is solid on the dollar value of a marginal win at different levels of absolute wins — but that’s a different idea altogether than defining what the win curve is.

Alan: Brian, I have found an article you can use to justify a new thread! Shams’ report on the rule changes the league is going to implement to cut back on foul-baiting:

Based on the Competition Committee’s guidance and subject to discussions with the Board of Governors, the league will train officials to identify and properly adjudicate the following overt actions to initiate contact with defenders:

* When a shooter launches or leans into a defender at an abnormal angle.
* When a shooter kicks his leg (up or to the side) at an abnormal angle.
* When an offensive player abruptly veers off his path (sideways or backward) into a defender.

Under the new emphasis, these overt actions will now be officiated as offensive fouls (if deemed more than marginal) or no-calls (if marginal).

This will definitely impact our man IQ.

I really like these changes. Definitely gets at the major issues with abuse of the foul rules. My one concern is that these rules will be difficult to enforce. I don’t think refs actively try and call these abuses of the rules as fouls, I think it’s just difficult to make a split second call when 2 players collide. I think continued abuse should result in fines like flopping does. There will still be abuses but these plays are much easier to see in review than live.

I don’t mind the bullshit fouls where like Trae Young or CP3 beats a guy and then slow down and the defender runs over them (although I’m fine if they stop doing it, I can see how people find it annoying). The defender at least has a chance to avoid that. I hate when guys pumpfake a defender into the air and then jump forward into the defender to draw a foul, because that contact is initiated by the offensive player. If you pump a guy into the air you have an advantage now, you can just go around them or sidestep into an open shot. Rewarding the offensive player with free throws simply because they faked a guy into jumping is bullshit

geo: Milwaukee Bucks forward Khris Middleton and Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love have committed to joining Team USA’s 12-man roster for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo…

We’ve been going small in the Olympics for years. I think our advantage is in having wings that are faster than other country’s PGs and bigger than their PF/Cs.

Aside from Jokic and Kanter, I just don’t think there’s enough international Cs for us to worry about in these competitions. And of course, worry about Kanter is an exaggeration

Owen: Cybersoze, I am interested to see how Brian officiates this clear thread baiting….

LOL

What’s next — the treasury yield curve is a “hootenanny”??

just for shits and giggles, can you tell me what you
think the yield curve is?

Hubert:
I really want to take the Hawks but I can’t. Lopez is going to pull Capela away from the paint like no one on the Knicks could, and they’re really going to miss Hunter. The Bucks should win this one rather easily. I’ll give Trae 2 games, though. Bucks in 6.

I’ve been rooting for the Hawks since the moment they beat the Knicks.

Once I took a very close look at their team before the playoffs started I realized how mistaken I was to be hoping the Knicks got them in the 1st round to begin with. They were very underrated by the consensus going into the playoffs. A lot of us expected them to be very good going into the season, but I guess people sort of lost track of their talent after the bad start. That said, I agree with you that the injuries are an issue and I think the Bucks are as good or better than them. They also have more experience under extreme pressure . Still, I’m pulling for the Hawks and especially Trae and Gallo because I like their games.

A new thread.

http://knickerblogger.net/if-they-required-multi-year-market-rate-deals-to-resign-them-which-knick-free-agents-would-you-bring-back/