cybersoze: Sources tell Marc Berman of The New York Post that Reddish and RJ Barrett didn’t get along well at Duke, and some in the Knicks’ front office wanted to trade back to draft Reddish in 2019.

This is either Perry and/or Mills shit-disturbing and/or positioning.

What I now is that RJ is in Thibs’ circle of trust so Reddish better straight himself up or his playing time will quickly reach Knox’s lows.

Reddish knows this is his chance to answer the critics, let’s see what he’s able do with it.

I’m not sure where this “happy Duke reunion” narrative thing happened. Those dudes played together for like six months and underachieved like crazy. Their Duke tenure is a fraction of their NBA careers at this point. Seems pretty unlikely that Zion gives a shit, too.

I agree. But I also do not take stock in Twitter saying RJ and Cam didn’t get along.

Re: Cam and RJ not getting along

I’m not sure where this “happy Duke reunion” narrative thing happened. Those dudes played together for like six months and underachieved like crazy. Their Duke tenure is a fraction of their NBA careers at this point. Seems pretty unlikely that Zion gives a shit, too.

cybersoze: This isn’t correct for the 19th pick debate. People must choose one of the players, and then we’ll have to wait and see who’s right and who’s wrong. I think the consensus was that we should have picked Jalen Johnson. So let’s wait to see if Reddish (or whatever we do with him) outplays Jalen Johnson or not.

That’s true, but it’s also true that the Knicks FO would not have drafted JJ at #19, as there were no rumors whatsoever that they had interest in him.

Sources tell Marc Berman of The New York Post that Reddish and RJ Barrett didn’t get along well at Duke, and some in the Knicks’ front office wanted to trade back to draft Reddish in 2019.

What a mess of things, they didn’t get along and the Knicks wanted to take Cam instead of RJ. Who else would be behind this “made up in a hurry” stuff, if not Berman?

BernieEarnie: You could also squeeze Julius Randle’s 2020-1 season in there as well (taking a very broad meaning of “didn’t put in the effort”).

If Cam can give us a season of All-Star and All-NBA play, sign me up for that. 😉

What I would say is that we’re starting with a higher floor with Cam as compared with the other two.
All are great NBA-level athletes.
But Mudiay and DSJ never showed, really, any NBA-level skill. When we took him on, Mudiay was a big guard who didn’t pass that well, shot 31% from 3 and low 70s from the line. DSJ was a crazy athlete but a relatively small guard who didn’t play defense, shot mid 60s from the line, and couldn’t shoot at all.

The skill that matters most in the NBA is shooting, and Cam is shooting near 40% from 3 and 90% from the line. That establishes a fairly predictable floor for him as a long 6’8″ guy who is athletic and is at least ok on defense. From what I’ve read / heard, Cam’s issue seems to be discipline — he puts the ball on the floor without a plan, isn’t necessarily good at reading what is in front of him. Gambles too much on defense, etc. If there’s anything we’ve seen from our development staff, it’s improving discipline on just these things: Quickley is making much more advanced reads on-ball now than last year. Ditto with RJ. Mitch is gambling way less and definitely is playing with more discipline in general.

now one might say – Knox is 6’8″ and long and is a good shooter and we couldn’t do anything with him. That would be a fair point, but there is just something missing from Knox’s athleticism – still looks like newborn deer with limbs everywhere. And I think you just can’t teach awareness.

Question about Cam is — does he have the work ethic that RJ/Quick/Obi have? Haven’t heard much about that. My sense is that this FO cares deeply about players being workers, and so I would assume he is…