I sort of like that the Knicks/Lakers/Raptors possible deal was leaked, because it allowed people to say, “Oh man, gotta at least give Rose credit for pivoting” and then he…didn’t do anything. So it’s like they pulled the rug out from under a defense of the guy. Pretty funny.
That the Knicks couldn’t even dump Burks or Kemba says a whole lot of how poorly they managed the assets of the team, in the sense that they don’t really have many veteran assets, just deals waiting to expire. However, if the Knicks were at least considering dumping Burks and Noel to clear cap space for this offseason, it suggests that there might be a willingness to try that again in the offseason. It’s much harder to do that in the offseason since contracts or no longer expiring, but…well…fuck, I dunno, man, maybe they can still find a way? But probably not.
As an aside, the Knicks can’t cut Kemba, since his deal is guaranteed for next season. They really have to try to trade him somehow.
The Knicks didn’t trade Mitch, which would suggest that they now plan on keeping him longterm, which would be great, but, well, this is the Knicks, you can never rule them out of saying, “Burks and Noel, we gotta lock down before free agency even starts, but Mitch…hmmm…I guess we can just let him go for nothing.”
“They still have their future draft picks!” Why the fuck SHOULDN’T they have their draft picks? It’s like, “Hey, they tied their shoelaces! You can’t say they didn’t tie their shoelaces! Previous Knick GMs ran around tripping on their laces every other day, but not these guys! They tied their shoelaces!” Not to mention that they already burned through one of their draft picks to get Cam Reddish, so if “they still have their draft picks” is such a bonus, then that was a bad thing, right?
In other news, while his injury didn’t seem too bad at the time, RJ is now in a walking boot, which is hilariously bad. With 50 seconds left and the Knicks down 17, Thibs took Randle, Fournier and Burks out of the game, but chose not to bring Reddish in for RJ. When asked why not (after RJ, of course, injured himself with 18 seconds to go), Thibs explained that he had put the starters back in when the Knicks had cut the lead to 13 (it was actually 15, but whatever), ignoring the fact that, again, he took three of the other starters out with 50 seconds left but not RJ for…why? The guy doesn’t just make curious decisions, he then can’t even own up to the decisions he makes! What’s up with that dude?
Boy, it was nice to have a year off from this organization being a laughingstock.
61 replies on “The Knicks 2022 Trade Dudline”
Repost:
No one is all that upset we didn’t do anything, I mean it’s impossible to evaluate without knowing what was on the table.
People are upset for the following reasons:
1) we have a bunch of veterans on the books no other teams want
2) we basically have to play them to make sure they don’t lose all of their trade value
3) playing them stops us from playing the young guys on the team
4) the young guys on the team aren’t the most impressive bunch compared to the other bad teams
I notice no one on Team Optimist responded to my question, so I’ll repeat it: which situations are worse than ours? I think you could make decent arguments for the Kings, Spurs, and Pacers…that’s really it. Also all of those teams have players better than our best player and will likely have a higher pick than us this year.
50-52 (29%, 43 Votes)
41-45 (19%, 28 Votes)
53-55 (7%, 11 Votes)
36-40 (3%, 5 Votes)
58-60 (2%, 3 Votes)
56-57 (1%, 1 Votes)
Over 60 (1%, 1 Votes)
Below 36 (0%, 0 Votes)
Can’t criticize the FO unless you voted below 36
As BC points out here, we very well may try again to move the merc types in the offseason. That leads one to the unpleasant conclusion that we basically have to play them for the rest of the year, lest they lose any and all value.
For the love of fucking god at least play Deuce.
How did Rokas do today?
The title of the thread is super funny, Brian, congrats. At least that cheered me up, because the rest of the dudline left me depressed about the Knicks.
He’ll play tomorrow, I’ve already set my VCR and then I’ll have a long film session…
We should absolutely play Deuce more, and I guess play Jericho instead of Taj. All the other kids play. I mean we should cycle Randle down some and play Obi more, but if Grimes ends up playing 700 minutes this season instead of 900 minutes is that really going to kill his development?
Leon had another window to address the PG situation and opted to do nothing. If anyone feels this is good GMing, i don’t know what to say.
Can’t criticize the FO unless you voted below 36
that makes no sense.
i don’t see any evidence to date that thiba doo doo is going to play the youth until we have that x next to our name in the standings that means you are mathematically eliminated…and even then …he would likely have some convoluted explanation as to why taj and kemba need to play cuz it will enhance our odds of being good next yr…and because the 10th place team sucks..its going to take a while to be mathematically elminated..
In the renowned tradition of Courtney Lee (aka The Human Surefire 1st),
our movable veterans’ contracts didn’t look so movable.
I’m taking solace thinking that we didn’t trade for Westbrook or The Plague.
Worse off franchises:
Portland
New Orleans
San Antonio
Sacramento
Indiana
Washington
Lakers
Detroit has Cade, but mostly garbage
Orlando & Houston have promising pieces but nothing surefire. I’m not sure where to put them, too many unknowns.
DJ Augustin is free, the Rockets waived him, that’s our PG… ops, no, we still have Burks.
Also, Dallas is extending Finney-Smith (4/52), their other “important” free agent…
Any franchise with Zion, AD, or Lillard is in better shape than us. Beal, too, probably.
I’d also rather build around Hali & Duarte than what we’ve got.
Sounds like it will be a bit more than that, probably the max they can give him (a little over $54 million). I’m fascinated with the question of whether the Dinwiddie trade made Brunson more available or not. Again, it’s immaterial if the Knicks can’t clear out cap space for him, but it’s interesting.
Hell, Ingram would probably be the Knicks’ best player.
Brian, the Dinwiddie trade could be a hedge against Brunson leaving, it could be an acknowledgment that they already know he doesn’t want to stay, or it could just be a desire to get the hell out from under the KP contract, and the hope that Dinwiddie will be better running their bench unit than he was trying to start next to Beal. (Zach Lowe also talked about what a bad fit those guys were together.) The first seems the most likely.
We would still need to clear cap space to sign him outright — and might could have an easier time moving the vets once they are expirings rather than with a year-plus left on their deals — but if Brunson says he’s leaving and wants to go to NY, then at a certain point, the Mavs kind of have to trade him here or let him leave for nothing. Could we do a mutual sign-and-trade of him and Mitch?
Guys we didn’t need a PG at the deadline we have Rose coming back to win us some games we absolutely should lose
Not just move them, though, move them to teams for just cap space. What team with cap space is going to want Alec Burks? Expiring helps make teams more willing to take a guy, but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to move a guy in the offseason just to clear out his salary. They’d have to move at least two dudes without taking salary back to get enough to be a legit threat to sign Brunson. Seems like a tall order without adding sweeteners. That’s why it made so much more sense for an expiring contract now.
NOP don’t really have Zion. He’s always injured and wants to leave anyway.
Ingram may be a better player than anyone on the Knicks in a vacuum, but their team is worse than ours and just gave up a 1st for the corpse of CJ McCollum & the $33M/yr attached to him. Also, he sucks on defense.
They’ll have to attach, bare minimum, the Dallas 2023 pick to get enough cap room for Brunson. Probably two 1s. Assuming there are even teams with cap space, which there probably will be.
No, my poorly-articulated point is that we could send some of these guys to the Mavs. They need more help up front, and could also use some more help on the wing, whether or not TH2 comes back to full health for next season. Some combo of Burks, Mitch/Noel, a pick and/or Rokas might be enough to get it done if Brunson absolutely wants to come here and the Mavs would otherwise get nothing.
I’m not optimistic about this, mind you, because my faith in this FO has been utterly shredded. But it’s not impossible.
Oh yeah, there will definitely be teams with cap space. The Spurs, for instance. Just not teams that would take Alec Burks just for the sake of taking Alec Burks. It likely would require sweeteners, which is annoying.
But what does it matter if he absolutely wants to come here if the Knicks don’t have cap space to sign him? Remember circa 2001-03, when every free agent wanted to come to the Knicks, but they were capped out every year?
Which means, at worst, they have one of the best assets in the NBA for a trade.
Hey, he asked for an optimistic take lol
Touche! 🙂
By the way, I don’t blame Harden at all for not wanting to stick around in Brooklyn. Who the fuck wants to play with a star that is actively fucking his title contending team over just because he’s a contrarian asshole? At this point in his career, Harden just wants to be on a legit title contender, not a team where the star player can’t play in half his playoff games.
I just read a long ass article about Harden/Morey that said Harden wasn’t getting along with Durant, but it didn’t say why
***their team is worse than ours and just gave up a 1st for the corpse of CJ McCollum***
McCullum may be overpaid, and having a down year, but how is he a corpse? He’s not injured, he plays 35 minutes a game, scores 20, he has been the 2nd best player on a WCF team within the past few years. He’s not an ideal guard, perhaps, but a corpse is dead weight, which he is far from. I feel like Knick fans be starting to lose touch with the reality around them…
A 76ers vs. Brooklyn playoff series with both teams healthy might break NBA ratings records!
The best description I read about it was it is like when your college friends meet your high school friends and don’t get along and they both end up getting irked at you.
This was a disappointing deadline, except for the KP trade. That really made my day!
I don’t believe all is lost. We still have a lot of young players. Leon just has to sit Thib’s down and tell him to develop the kids or he’s fired. It wouldn’t surprise me if Thib’s decided to pack it in at that point.
I think adding Dinwiddie means Brunson is leaving Dallas. If he’s not coming to the Knicks, who else makes sense for him? Add Brunson and a top 10 pick and we’re at least watchable.
Turn Deuce loose!
I feel like the season ended for me at 3PM. I’ll still watch, but without the same enthusiasm.
I’m exaggerating, but he’s godawful on defense. Maybe they play him at PG and maybe that helps fix his defensive issues, but he’s not shooting that well this year anyways. I also don’t see how he fits with the much younger Ingram & Zion (if he ever plays).
They do have a bunch of incoming picks, which I forgot about. So that puts them above the Knicks.
But their current roster seems like a lot of ill-fitting pieces thrown together, and outside of Ingram & Zion I don’t envy them their players. And even Zion is a quickly depreciating assett.
If you want to see incompetence in action, just look at the recent Dallas moves.
Let’s assume Dallas finally concluded that KP wasn’t healthy consistently enough to bet the team on and/or the personal relationship between KP and Doncic wasn’t very good (as has been rumored). So the goal should be to move KP for a different #2 option (perhaps another player with a similarly bloated contract) or for some earlier flexibility to find the 2nd option they will need with KP gone and the 3rd option/upgrades they still need.
If you can’t do one of those two things you should do nothing,
Now let’s look where they are.
They have Doncic, 14 role players, 3 bad contracts (Hardaway, Bertans, and Dinwiddie) and no more real flexibility now than they had before the deal. The idea behind any deal is to improve your position now, improve your position in the future, or preferably improve both. They got worse now and did little to nothing to improve the future. This deal comes on top of that idiotic deal they gave to Hardaway. The Knicks paid to get rid of Hardaway and they just made the same mistake.
I think teams should already be thinking about Doncic trying to force his way out of Dallas in about 2 years.
Portland has a top-15 trade asset in Dame, and if you polled GMs around the league asking who they’d prefer between RJ and Simons I don’t think we’d like the answer. They’re also gonna have a better pick than us this year.
BC covered the Pelicans. Tons of picks coming in, great trade asset in Zion if nothing else.
San Antonio is a close call. Murray would be our best young player, but they don’t have much else.
Sacramento is another close call, but they have the best player between the two teams in Sabonis. Fox is more intriguing than at least most of our young guys, maybe all of them.
Disagree on Indy. They can get assets for Brogdon and Turner whenever they want, Haliburton is better than any of our young guys, and they’re about to make a very high pick.
Washington is a good call, didn’t think about them. Still, with the assets they’ll get for Beal it could wind up being close.
The Lakers can decide tomorrow that they want an untold number of assets for LeBron and/or AD and drown us.
Not all is bad, Dude. At least the dudline made E return to his usual self and we don’t have to worry about the end of fhe world. 😉
As long as we are bad and actively hoping to get worse to improve our draft position or accumulate draft assets, free agency and trades are off the table. No one any good will come here.
A more legitimate question after today (and we don’t know the answer to this) is did they actively try to get pick assets for any of our veteran players and fail (which would mean they overpaid this off season) or did they try to make sensible deals for players liker Fox and Turner and fail because they got outbid, the deal offered was bad for us etc… The latter would mean they tried to do the right thing, but it wasn’t there this trade deadline.
Okay, this is officially the best shitty basketball ever:
I present to you LBJ & KD picking all-star teammates
Berman says a lot in this latest article
“Being sellers and dumping players just to open summer cap space was not a heavy consideration, but this offseason will now stand as one of the most important in franchise history.”
“According to sources, the Knicks still want to compete for a play-in spot — they entered play Thursday just 2 ¹/? games out of the 10th slot — and still believe they made an upgrade in adding Cam Reddish last month.”
“The Knicks explored many options in recent days, including inquiring about C.J. McCollum, Norm Powell, Harrison Barnes, impending unrestricted free agent Jalen Brunson, Terrence Ross and injured Pacers center Myles Turner, but either came up empty or showed restraint.”
“They decided not to sell low. They will deal with any further Julius Randle issues and their point-guard conundrum down the road.”
“This time of year, if something makes sense for us that can improve our team, they’ll consider it. That’s what their job is. They have to do that year round. Whoever we have, we like. If something can make us better, we’ll definitely consider it. We’ll keep working every day.” Thibs
For a brief moment there … I believed!!
More from Berman:
“Knicks management is hopeful Reddish will get more of a look from Thibodeau..”
“The Knicks have added as a consultant former Timberwolves president Gersson Rosas, who joined the team in Denver and accompanied it to San Francisco.”
I was going to write something about what a pain in the ass wealthy athletes are, and then I thought of how over half of the office experiences I’ve had were toxic hotbeds of bitter, passive-aggressive politicking. And I work in a non-competitive field.
The pandemic sucks, but at least now I work from home.
Me too. I think that trade would’ve helped all the teams involved. Let’s hope the deal didn’t break because Leon was inflexible in getting more draft capital, because that’d be stupid. Now we don’t have the picks they were already sending, we don’t have the cap space, we don’t have the placeholder PG that’d be a good solution until the end of the season, nothing.
Golden State is going to beat us by 40…..
Chet Holmgren has a 16.2 BPM
Not sure what to add. I would watch the hell out of A Sixers Nets series.
Oh well, We’ll always have Bing Bong. I’m not staying up for this game tonight I’ll be enjoying your reactions in the AM though. I’m thankful for this place and all of you.
In happier news, I just saw that Better Call Saul returns April 18! Excited for the best drama on TV to return.
I’m with Brian all the way, I’m done praising this front office for just not shitting on the bed completely. They’ve inherited about as good a situation as you’ll have in decades with the Knicks, no terrible contracts, decent picks, a promising top 3 pick, decent cap space, got a freskish great first season and then proceeded to make every single safest possible move instead of trying to capitalize on this, or pivoting when this season started going to shit.
Obviously don’t make trades for the sake of it, but also for fuck’s sake at least give us a proper direction that isn’t chasing a play in spot, because that’s not a real direction, it’s just settling for absolute mediocrity, it’s Sacramento or New Orleans levels of shit, and those franchises at least have the excuse that they’re small markets that need the playoffs a lot more than us, who are guaranteed big crowds no matter how terrible it ends up.
The Knicks season ended today for me, simply because there’s no point slogging through another half season of this garbage until we lie to ourselves again that something better will happen in the off-season. Thibs will keep playing his comfort players, we might win some games here and there, the basketball will be shit and then we can maybe make the play in to get destroyed either at the games or in the first round anyway.
Why are we relitigating the KP trade? Yes we probably could have gotten more for KP if we hadn’t needed cap space and that was a mistake but I am not over here worried about the 2025 1st rd pick and pick swaps we might have been able to squeeze out of Dallas. You have to remember the rape allegations were just coming out and the drama with his brother was getting worse. If we had held out for a better return we might have not traded him at all and been stuck signing him to a huge contract ourselves. I would give the trade a C grade but we have had much bigger blunders since so I do not understand why that minor blunder keeps getting brought up. I am just grateful we traded him at all. What we got was gravy. We won that trade the second he was gone.
I get the despair and despondency, I really do…
we were a for sure bottom 5 organization for years, and years…
now we’re like maybe, almost, not so far away from being a top 20 team perhaps…
not ideal, but, better than before…
That’s great news. The show was just heating up before the pandemic started.
A Breaking Bad prequel?!?!? What a terrible idea! How could that possibly be good?!?!?
I kid, I kid. And am grateful to have this place to vent on lousy fandom days like this.
In happier news, Grimes and Mitch are available tonight. And while RJ’s injury is stupid and a black mark against Thibs, it buys Reddish at least one more game in the rotation.
Lol. It’s amazing how great it’s been, arguably better than BB though some of the early stuff was a little odd because of the age of the actors.
Brian, I totally disagree about Harden. It’s one thing to want out, and another to prove that by half assing it on the court (and in Houston he got fat to boot) These guys get paid ridiculous amounts of $$ and there’s no excuse for mailing it in to prove a point.
(Remember when Vince Carter checked out in Toronto and suddenly started playing like an all star for the Nets? Same thing, it sucked)
This was a terrible trade deadline, but mainly we just wanted players gone so we could play the kids. That could still be accomplished. We wait for another 5-6 games and then we pivot to a full tank.
We shut down both Kemba and Noel, they have been injured on and off all season so let’s just let them rest. Then we tell Rose not to rush back and just get strong for next year. We then remove Burks from the rotation and tell Randle he will be coming off the bench for Obi so we can better evaluate him for next year. If Randle doesn’t want to come off the bench we tell him he is welcome to fake an injury and sit. Either way is fine. Finally, we move Fournier to the bench and make him our 6th man.
Our rotation:
McBride – Quickley
Barrett – Fournier
Grimes – Reddish
Toppin – Randle
Robinson – Sims
If Randle would rather sit we can slide Reddish to the four and play Burks.
If Thibs balks at this at all, even a little, we fire him.
Luka really going off because Frank is still on his team
Man, i went to sleep last night hoping the Knicks would trade some vets and the rumored deal of Noel and Burks looked good to me. I wake up in the morning and nothing happened. The press is reporting that we couldn’t work out the draft picks, but it looks to me like Toronto got an offer for Dragic that they liked better. I’m a bit bummed, but I rememberthat before that trade was rumored I was hoping for but not expecting much activity by the Knicks. So it’s not a catastrophe, it’s just not getting something nice you started hoping for. I have some comments on the all the stuff in the long threads that happened while I was sleeping.
Strat, I don’t think you are right that we got a bad deal in our original Porzingis trade. I do agree that we may have traded for the wrong things in an effort to get better right away instead of trying to get more draft picks and future assets. That’s a different argument. But we did use the cap space to hire Randle and he gave us one very enjoyable season. Getting an over-rated all star power forward for a different over-rated all-star power forward is not a loss, especially when you consider that KP costs more in salary than Randle and is less durable (fingers crossed here).
From the Dallas point of view, I suspect they concluded Carlisle was right, the best use of KP on offense when paired with Doncic was to put him in the corner and have him prepare to shoot threes. Bertrans can do that just as well and isn’t such a big contract. He’ll also probably be happier than KP with such a role. I don’t think the trade will hurt Dallas. In fact Bertrans could go back to being a high TS role player, which would be great for him and for Dallas. I don’t know how Washington will do. They just remade their team considerably and it will be interesting to see how the rest of the season plays out. Beale is hurt, so KP may get a big role. That could lead to strains down the road when Beale returns, but they have time to fix that in the off-season.
anyone who believes were are not going all out for the 10th seed hasn’t been following the plot to this story…
anyone who believes we are not going all out for the 10th seed hasn’t been following the plot to this story…
Grimes starting at least