From Ian Begley:
A source confirmed an ESPN report that the Knicks and Mitchell Robinson’s agent – Thad Foucher of Wasserman – have had multiple conversations over the course of the current league season about an extension for Robinson.
New York can offer Robinson an extension of four years for around $48 million at any point prior to June 30.
In at least one of the conversations between the Knicks and Robinson’s representation prior to the deadline, the team and player were “not close” on the terms, per an SNY source.
I’d be lying if I told you I knew the exact numbers discussed at the time. But a source familiar with the talks said one of New York’s offers wasn’t close to the max that the club can offer Robinson via extension.
If the Knicks and Robinson don’t agree to an extension prior to June 30, Robinson will be an unrestricted free agent.
The worst-case scenario for New York would be letting Robinson sign with another team and not receiving any compensation via sign-and-trade.
We all know the Knickiest thing ever would be to not even sign and trade Mitch, right? And since Detroit was interested in him and has plenty of cap space, the Knickiest thing seems pretty darn plausible.
The Knicks’ decisions about when to pinch pennies on players and when not to seem to be based on shaking a Magic 8-Ball.
Mitch, meanwhile, chimed in with a tweet that seems to be a pretty reasonable complaint (although making it on Twitter is a bit less reasomnable) about how the team neve ever looks for him on offense, noting “Everyone knows when everybody gets involved and the ball moving and everyone touching the ball the energy and effort goes to another level let me as you this and be 100% with your answer how would you feel just running up and down the court for 48 or even for 20 minutes?”
Boy, why in the fuck do they never run any fucking plays for Mitch? The guy crushes in the pick and roll and they never run pick and rolls for him! It’s some really shitty offensive coaching, even with the Knicks’ lack of point guards.
80 replies on “SNY: Source: Knicks, Mitchell Robinson ‘not close’ to potential extension before deadline”
This is bad. Maybe the market ends up favoring us, but that rarely happens.
This is so dumb. We handed out contracts this summer of $9 mil per for Noel, $10 mil per for Burks, and $14 mil per for Rose. None of them were even signed to be starters and all of them have no long-term future with this team.
I cannot believe that we are not even close to $12 mil per for Robinson. Starters in the NBA don’t cost less than $10 mil a year. We are going to lose him for nothing because we are pinching pennies after wasting all our money resigning our mediocre vets to mediocre contracts.
The MLE is right around $10M. There’s almost no chance he goes for less than that amount. So unless there’s a $2M disagreement, we should have moved him at the deadline.
I think the max extension is 4/54M just like the Timelord’s one.
(help me out, Noble, as i have a tendency to miss something on the numbers! LOL)
But yeah, Timelord has a 4/48 guaranteed and 6M are incentives. Mitch seems a little behind Robert Williams, but as he’ll be paid on his potential, there’s a good chance he gets that. Or even more, if the Pistons are really buying into his potential. They can easily overpay (4/60M) and then he leaves without the Knicks getting something in return. If they’ve tried less than 10M, it was foolish. Let’s hope it’s a small amount that blocked the deal and that they’ll still have this done.
Yeah, even if you think he’s “only” a MLE guy, to let him get to free agency where he will get plenty of MLE offers (plus I bet some offers for more) by not even offering the full extension (which starts at just $2 million over the MLE) is just so pennywise and pound foolish. He’s obviously not going to sign an extension if you’re only offering the MLE and if you’re only offering the MLE, then why is he still on the fucking team?!?! To help with the never-going-to-happen play-in push?
Although, since the Hornets fucking lost again, the Knicks will probably still be in this thing until the final game of the season.
I think the issue is the length of the contract more so than the money. That’s dumb, too, but I think that’s probably the issue.
Do you think we’re still in “get the 10th seed at all cost” mode? Even with Jericho playing a lot more?
Well, the Kings managed to win a game, and that’s good. To get that 6th seed in the reverse standings would be amazing. It has a 37.2% of jumping to Top4.
At all costs? Probably not, but just “Sims over Taj until Noel is back and then Sims goes back to the bench” in terms of difference in the team. Which is better than nothing!
Did someone read Mitch’s tweets?
His comments sound straight out of Kareem’s skit in “Airport!”
but I doubt he did ever watch the movie… 🙂
Would Broadway Danny’s streak of “no major mistakes” still be rated unbroken if he allows Mitch to walk for nothing?
I’ve generally thought our current Knicks management has made good decisions about contracts and such. But in this case, I think they made two mistakes that have put them in a bind with Mitch. One, they overpaid Noel. Noel is basically getting close to starter money for a center who’s not an offensive force, but he’s not our starter, Mitch is. Two they negotiated a contract for Mitch where he’s terribly underpaid. Even though they could get that contract, they probably should have paid him more anyway. Now we have a situation where Mitch feels he been screwed over salary wise and that he should get more than Noel. He’s not going to want to put the blame on himself for taking his current low salary, nor is he going to think that Noel is overpaid when he’s considering what he’s worth. The Knicks, on the other hand, probably don’t think he’s worth more than the comps we’ve been discussing (like Time Lord). The situation is ripe for confrontation and it is the fans who are likely to lose.
After last year’s feel-good season, this one has been such a kick in crotch.
Thibs is clearly not the right man for this job and the FO is not adequately assessing talent. Idk who should go first, it’s that much of a mess.
Signing Mitch should be a no-brainer. Dumping our shitty vet contracts should be the priority (yes, including Julius). It’s sad that I’d much rather be a Pistons fan today. Almost every team in the league has a better young core than us.
After the Cam trade and now this news, this FO is sliding into Phil Jax territory. I’m checking out until the draft.
New thread!
We go from accepting that RJ will get paid about $100 million more than he is worth in one thread to accepting that we’re going to lose Mitch for nothing when all he wants is a market value contract in another thread. Leon Rose, everyone.
As bad as the FO has been, Thibs could still leverage some interest from the fan base by just playing the goddamn kids. How fun would it be to watch a lineup of Deuce, RJ, Cam, Obi, and Mitch play 30 minutes each? It’s not like we could lose any more than we already are. And sorry, I’m not going to waste my time watching Julius, Burks, and Fournier fumble the ball and chuck shots.
Comparing Mitch’s worth to Robert Williams’ contract is very silly. Williams is providing excess value on a max extension. Mitch can be not as good as Williams and still be worth the same amount of money.
Put it this way: RJ Barrett is not as good as Jaylen Brown. Jaylen Brown signed for 4 years, $107mm. No one would argue that we shouldn’t offer RJ Barrett 4 years, $107mm because he’s not as good as Jaylen Brown.
Put it another way: when LeBron James was on his first max contract, no one expected Dwight Howard, Deron Williams, and Chris Bosh to accept less than the max because they weren’t as good as LeBron.
Whoops, no new thread. HomerSimpsonRecedesIntoBushDotGif
I don’t think his rookie deal has anything to do with it. I think he wants to get paid more than Noel because he’s a lot better than Noel, which is, uh, pretty fair if you ask me.
In any event, there’s plenty to be said about the relative fungibility of centers and the like, but no one can convince me there isn’t something viscerally wrong with pinching pennies with someone who has produced since day 1 and has never complained about anything despite being here for all kinds of turmoil.
To be clear even with the fungibility of centers I think his full extension would be a fine-to-good contract, hence the heavy interest in him at the deadline. I’m just saying that even if it wasn’t, this all feels wrong.
Hopefully we can all agree on one painfully obvious thing: if we let Mitch walk without having traded him despite confirmed interest at the trade deadline of an obviously lost season, we *seriously* fucked up. This feels like something people will try to deny if/when it happens.
LOL. You got me like a yo-yo on this. First i thought you were talking about a new thread, and went to the bottom of the page to search for it. Then as there wasn’t a new thread there, i thought “oh, Alan was talking about this thread”. Case closed. But then you made this comment and i was like “wait, i was right, Alan was talking about a new new thread but it was mistaken because there’s no new thread”. (HeadExploding.gif)
Letting Mitch walk without offering him the max extension is just shitty talent evaluation, plain and simple.
Letting Mitch walk for nothing would officially put me in the camp that the FO has no idea what they are doing.
If this was a normal team and you heard this about Mitch, you probably would think they have something up their sleeve or see something in Sims and have big plans for him. But it probably means they think Taj has a couple of more seasons left in the tank.
I’ve never been quite as sold on Mitch as the true blue believers, but yeah — letting him walk for nothing would be lolKnicks stupid. No halfway competent FO lets assets of that quality just walk out the door.
And, also yeah, they should be running p/r with Mitch as the roll man to death, but they barely even run it at all. This is like gobsmackingly obvious. Instead they run three man weave, Julius fake pick and roll, and Julius at the elbow.
This franchise can just never do things right.
IMO, right now, Mitch is not an elite defender and is too limited on offense to be a starting C on a serious contender. He has also been somewhat injury prone. That’s why we hear rumors of interest in Myles Turner. Management thinks that too.
IMO, they didn’t mind tossing a few extra dollars Nerlen’s way because it’s a short term contract, but they are more hesitant about doing that long term with Mitch because if he doesn’t develop into a starting C they would be overpaying a bench caliber C that would be tough to trade for 4-5 years.
Of course, if they feel that way they probably should have traded him rather than let him walk for nothing, but I think all the injuries and fitness issues have made it more difficult to judge what he is and what he can become. I know that’s the way I feel about him. So they’ve probably been debating it for awhile while they watched his progress.
I’m not sure what all the trade rules are but they may still move him as part of some kind of deal.
My guess — or maybe just my futile hope — is we’re gonna sign and trade Mitch in the offseason. Which I’d be fine with. Letting him walk for nothing would be extremely Knicksy, yes.
Yep. I’m not familiar enough with all the rules and what Mitch actually wants, but that makes some sense.
They have around 20 more games to evaluate him and Sims and see whether they think they are better off with Sims (or someone else on a cheap deal) plus an asset from trading Mitch or Mitch on a long term contract.
Mitch plays stretches of elite defense. Last year he looked the part. At times this year he looked the part. But the last few weeks he’s been a non-factor.
It’s not impossible, but a sign-and-trade would be more complicated than it sounds because I’m pretty sure Mitch will be a base year compensation player. Long story short (http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q93), that means his outgoing salary would only count for 50% of his actual salary for matching purposes.
So for example, if his new salary is $13M AAV, he’d only count as $6.5M AAV in a trade. That’s obviously not an easy number to work with.
I don’t follow this stuff as closely as you guys, so I’m wondering why they don’t run plays to get Robinson some easy dunks? It seems to be his only offensive skill, and it doesn’t take Chris Paul to throw a lob to a big man. Heck, even Jamal Crawford, who was the most ill-suited point guard ever, would throw a few alleyoops to Fat Eddy every game. It does kind of seem like they are repressing his value on purpose. That’s how I’d feel, if my boss refused to let me utilize my one skill (if I had one skill).
There’s no good reason, we’ve been complaining about this for 4 years.
Why would the Pistons agree to send us assets when they’ll have cap space to sign him?
Lack of PGs & Thibs just seems to prefer Cs setting hard picks which makes it difficult for them to flash to the basket.
There seems to be consensus on the way they have handled Mitch being dumb. It just doesn’t make sense.
I love Mitch as much as anyone. There are times when they try to feature him and it generally doesn’t go well in a way that reflects mostly on Mitch’s limitations. He isn’t a complete player. But he is still an awesome force out there and could easily be the center on an NBA contender.
Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, if the Knicks end up not offering Mitch a full extension, maybe there are some off the court/mental makeup issues that concern them? Lots of guys in sports get “paid” and drop off a cliff, effort and/or production wise.
Maybe they have cause to believe that he’s one of those guys?
Of course, if they do feel that way, maybe they should have dealt him at the trade deadline?
Why would the Pistons agree to send us assets when they’ll have cap space to sign him?
because they no don’t know if we will match. if we had favorable priors on our front office, you could imagine a reasonable strategy that goes something like this: they actually think there’s a decent chance mitch won’t get a 4/55 offer sheet. it’s not always easy to be a rfa. sometimes teams don’t want to waste their time on an offer that might be matched. maybe they lose out on hartenstein or malik monk or colin sexton in the interim. in that case he might sign for the 3/40 or whatever the knicks prefer. if that doesn’t pan out, then you can still match many possible offers that are in the same 4/55 range, or credibly threaten to and get sign and trade value. if someone is willing to make a big offer, say, 75/4 with a player option, you still have a small chance of first getting S&T value and secondly perhaps (but probably not) matching the offer and taking a fairly modest annual hit relative to 55/4. i am not sure they’ve been crazy so far. it seems maybe wrong but close.
mitch’s development has been disappointing. it’s a shame we haven’t paired him with a good point guard and a more thoughtful offensive coach. but it’s also him.
All of the on-court issues stem from Thibs featuring Randle on offense in the half court. It’s going to be the hill he dies on, just like the coaches who fucked themselves featuring Kristaps and Melo. Note to Knicks: either get a true #1 guy or play the kids. Anything else gets coaches fired.
Leon Rose sucks. He’s as shitty as every other Knick GM, which is to say he is shitty indeed. It’s kind of amusing that anybody thinks Leon Rose is going to make the kind of shrewd moves he would need to make to break the team out of the rut of mediocrity.
Mitch isn’t David Robinson, but with him gone, you now have a black hole at center, when you could have had a reasonably decent starter on a fair contract. So, another problem to solve for a GM who is not real good at solving problems.
I told y’all on draft night that Leon Rose was a bum. He’s an asset arsonist.
I have no problem losing Mitch. Limited player, injury prone, not always engaged, flaky.
I have no problem keeping Mitch, if both parties find an adequate deal.
I have a BIG problem losing Mitch for nothing, it would be a big ugly stain on this FO.
Mitch is an unrestricted free agent. He can sign anywhere he wants.
Mitch is an unrestricted free agent. He can sign anywhere he wants.
whoops. better make it a 3 cup morning.
edit: prior post rendered stupid by facts
Leon will simply sign a bargain bin free agent center like Tristan Thompson or Ed Davis or some shit, then move Nerlens Noel into the starting lineup where he’ll play about 600 minutes before getting injured, at which point Tristan moves into the lineup. That will be the “solution.” Think of the least impactful, least creative solution and that will be the solution.
Forget letting Mitch walk for nothing. That’s some cloudy ethereal future. Right now Thibs should be arrested the next time Mitch’s box score is 0-1. That’s downright criminal.
I’m not sure what would be Knicksier: drafting a broken Zion and missing out on Ja, or having the best lottery odds and missing out on Ja by one pick, in favor of a play whose scoring numbers have big 2002-03 vibes.
You give them way too much credit by assuming they would’ve taken Ja at 2.
I’m in agreement with this. I can understand being hesitant to commit to Mitch for 4.5 years. This front office has been very focused on avoiding long-term commitments and Mitch isn’t such an obvious building block that you have to compromise those principles no questions asked. At times he looks the part, at other times he looks very replaceable.
But if that’s how you feel you need to make a decision and act on it. 20 games really shouldn’t dramatically change your evaluation one way or the other, and while you may hold out hope of signing and trading him it’s completely out of your hands now. That’s value squandered and unfortunately I assume the biggest reason is that they didn’t want to trade their starting center in the middle of a “playoff race”.
Assuming the FO isnt completely incompetent I would like to believe they think they can Sign and Trade him in the offseason. Probably for Brunson.
I can’t believe we wouldn’t taken RJ at 2. Zion and Ja were far and away the best 2 prospects in that draft, not even the most incompetent front office would’ve passed on Ja at 2.
Taking RJ over Ja would have been like passing on Luka for Bagley
The only incentive a team with cap space would have to deal with us in a sign-and-trade for Mitch is if we sent them a small asset in exchange for the TPE we’d get. This is why we engaged the Celtics in one for Fournier despite having the cap space–they sent us a heavily protected 2nd (top 55 protected from CHO) in order to get a TPE.
In other words, there’s a strong possibility the only “asset” we’d get in a sign-and-trade is a TPE we might not even be able to use.
And what if the ping pong balls had run true to form and the Knicks wind up with the #1 pick that year? Of course, they select Zion over Ja – as pretty much every other front office would have done in that spot. Just as most NBA front offices would have taken Oden over Durant with the first overall pick in 2007.
The 2019 draft ain’t quite at that level yet but it does grow closer with each additional inch added to Zion’s waistline.
***There’s no good reason, we’ve been complaining about this for 4 years.***
But there is a reason, we just don’t know what it is. If it’s been 4 years, that pre-dates Thib’s schemes and Burks at PG and Wes having Leon’s ear and all that stuff you’ve been complain about this year. Knicks management is full of people who make bad decisions, but they aren’t just a random convention of low-intellect individuals. Surely somebody in the organization has watched other teams throw lobs to their guy that can dunk. You don’t need a savant at PG to do that. Anybody can draw up and execute a play to get a lob. The hard part is having the tall guy that can catch it and dunk it in traffic. So there must be a reason. It just doesn’t make sense that Thibs’ obsession with winning would be trumped by his obsession to not run plays for Mitch Robinson.
Not sure vincoug. Prior to the NCAAs, RJ was 2, Ja 3. A minority of evaluators play down the NCAA, and some looked at the 2020 absence as a blessing in disguise. And as Owen notes, incompetent front offices continue to surprise. Luckily the draft was on clueless Mill’s watch, defaulting to the safe bet of the strength of outside opinion on who to take at 3. But other regimes (the east is big, we need a triangle player, can he play 3 on 3) might have picked differently since they actually thought they knew something about basketball talent.
Don’t really know what else can be said about this. Anyone who watches this team regularly has seen Mitch go off every once in a while, almost always on lobs (and put-backs of course). And then it stops.
I’m sure teams look to take away the lob since there’s no other need when it comes to defending Mitch. I just can’t believe that a) they’re almost perfectly successful in their defense, regardless of the defender, and b) we can’t run a few, you know, plays, to beat the defense.
What’s been especially painful to watch lately are the few plays that actually involve Mitch, that are almost always drives under the basket that bring a swarm of defenders and the ballhandler (usually RJ or Randle) realizes he’s screwed and tries to squeeze a short pass between three opponents who swipe the ball out of Mitch’s hands.
As I’ve been trying to tell you, Thibs is not obsessed with winning. He’s obsessed with rigidity and repetition. He plays his guys heavy minutes because that’s how the game was played in 1997.
I can’t believe anyone ever thought RJ was better than Ja once he had announced himself. His numbers were fantastic.
Mitchell Robinson is elite at the things he does well and still has untapped potential. He is easily worth his max extension and unless he gets seriously hurt he will be movable if we decide to go in a different direction. It makes no sense not to offer him the extension and be set at the center position for the next four years.
Robinson is probably the best offensive rebounder in the NBA. He is 2nd in the entire league in offensive rebounds, has averaged 6 per 36 since the middle of December (he was a bit out of shape to start the season), and I believe he leads the NBA in points off of offensive rebounds. He is also a very good defender who has solved his fouling issues and has started to recover his shot-blocking after seeing it decrease last year as he adapted to fouling less.
He is also an elite finisher around the rim and in an offense that made attempts to get him the ball I could easily see him scoring more in line with players like Jarrett Allen and Rudy Gobert.
I know he still has his detractors here but what he has done this season after getting into shape has been eye-opening. There have been stretches where he was not only the best Knick on the floor but also the best player entirely.
He is defeintely not a finished product, he needs to get his free throw shooting fixed and needs to not disappear for stretches at a time but he also came into the NBA very raw and missed half of last season and started this season very out of shape, so he lost a good deal of development time over the last year.
I would bet money that in 2-3 years he will be widely considered a top 10 center in the NBA.
***Thibs is not obsessed with winning. He’s obsessed with rigidity and repetition. He plays his guys heavy minutes because that’s how the game was played in 1997.***
I don’t think this is true. But even if it is true, the alleyoop existed back then. Chuck Daley didn’t make Shaq work for his food by hustling for putbacks. Shawn Kemp got a lot of easy dunks on his way to finals. It’s not like D’Antoni invented the “throw the ball to the tall guy who can jump high standing by the basket” play. It’s been there since James Naismith stood on a ladder and dunked peaches lobbed to him by Mr Stubbins.
Mitch is 8th in the NBA in points per possession as the roll man in the pick and roll and one of the guys ahead of him is Lebron, who is the only guy in the top ten who sees as few opportunities as Mitch (and obviously, Lebron is really good at scoring in lots of different ways, so it really doesn’t matter for him).
There is no good explanation for them running it so little.
Tyson Chandler pick and rolls were, like, the foundational play of some excellent Knick offenses and Thibs runs a shitty offense and says to the Mitch pick and roll, “Eh, nah, no thanks. Let me just have them walk it up and establish Randle on the elbow each time.”
While “if they don’t re-sign Mitch, that means they don’t think he’s worth re-signing” is true, it’s no more a defense than “they didn’t like anyone at #19.”
It’s just an appeal to authority when we have no reason to believe these guys actually are authorities.
Also, in the top 25 in PPP as roll men, only Dwight Powell has played more games than Mitch.
I like to put it this way, Donnie. Imagine this familiar scenario:
Tie game at the half. Starters come out flat. Knicks fall behind by 12.
Bench comes in. Goes on a run. Knicks lead by 3 with 8 minutes to go.
If Thibs were obsessed with winning, he would alter his tactics and go with the players who are playing well. But he isn’t. He is rigid, so he’s going to put the guys who got outplayed back in.
Next, the Knicks 3 point lead turns into a 6 point deficit with two minutes to go. You can play the guys who got you the lead or the guys who are getting played off the court. Would Thibs adapt or would he stick with the predetermined plan?
I think we all know the answer. To me, this doesn’t indicate a guy who is obsessed with winning. I think he’s just insane, to be frank. He does the same thing over and over and expects a different result. Rock. Rock. Rock.
I have to say that the news article quoted above doesn’t make total sense to me. Nerlens’ salary isn’t that far from the maximum the Knicks can offer Mitch as an extension. The Knicks start Mitch over Nerlens, so they can’t really be thinking Mitch is worth less than Noel. But if they are offering as much as Noel makes and Mitch wants a max extension the math says they are not that far apart. But the article reports they are far apart. That doesn’t add up.
Deuce is kicking butt in G league again tonight!
Please be sure to post his final numbers so I can be really, really angry.
The Hawks lose yet again, for Brian’s despair… still only 4 games out of the play-in
Miles McBride. 11-17, 29 points, 5-7 from 3, 7 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, 2 turnovers.
I want to print that out, staple it to a log, and beat Thibs with it.
Oh, and the opposing point guard was 4-16.
The only team more embarrassing than the Knicks is the Lakers. Granted they’ve had a lot of injuries and don’t have much of a supporting cast. But they don’t even try anymore. James basically mails games in as soon as they fall behind. He gets that look in his face like when his old Cavs teams were getting blown out by the Spurs. He just quits.
The thing I hate about LeBron, and it will certainly be something I’ll remember after his career is over, is how much he pouts and complains all the time. He’s had unprecedented power to make moves around him, to bring the guys he wanted to his teams, and when it fails he’ll inevitably go into this passive aggressive mode, get Rich Paul to work the media, etc etc. It obviously won’t take away from his all-time greatness, but it’s annoying to watch and it makes me want to actively root against him.
I know those numbers look great, but so far he hasn’t looked at all good in NBA action. He’s played a total of 153 minutes and made 15 of 59 shots for a 25.4% shooting percentage and a 31.3% true shooting percentage. He shot 16% on threes and took four total free throws. Those numbers are terrible. He does have a reasonable number of assists and the limited defensive stats I found are ok. If his NBA practices are like these stats I can imagine why Thibs isn’t giving him a lot of minutes.
I simply can’t believe that a PG who dominates in the G-League game after game with stellar efficiency stats and accurate high-volume 3-point shooting can’t get on the court for a team that doesn’t have a PG. As to his NBA numbers, he’s a rookie at the toughest position, of course there’s a learning curve. But the last thing to worry about is his shooting. He’s missing the same open shots in the NBA that he’s making with regularity in the G-League. The only reason to keep him off the court is if it’s clear that he can’t defend at the NBA level. If RJ and Julius can shoot terribly game after game and not have minutes reduced, and Cam Reddish can play 137 minutes and shoot .364 overall and 227 from 3, Deuce deserves a shot too.
Are you trying to justify a team adapting two players to play PG, and not playing the only PG available, because of a sample size of 5 games? This is the number of games Deuce has played more than 5 mins… only 5 games! He’s a rookie, he has to play even if he doesn’t play well. Not playing Deuce is malpractice, there’s no other way around it.
Deuce (on the 5 games playing more than 5 mins):
MPG 24.1, FG% .342, 3P% .250, FT% 1.000, TRB36 3.3, AST36 5.1, STL36 1.8, TOV36 0.9, PTS36 9.6
Burks (last 10 games):
MPG 26.7, FG% .356, 3P% .281, FT% .829, TRB36 7.3, AST36 3.6, STL36 0.7, TOV36 1.6, PTS36 12.1
Quick (last 10 games):
MPG 17.9, FG% .329, 3P% .261, FT% 1.000, TRB36 5.0, AST36 5.2, STL36 0.4, TOV36 3.2, PTS36 15.3
The Hawks lose yet again, for Brian’s despair… still only 4 games out of the play-in
i don’t think capela’s been the same this year. he is just so much slower to rotate to my eye, and you can’t have that when you’re backing up a defender as horrendous as trae. i don’t feel like okongwu can truly cover that sort of fulcrum role at this point, but they should try him a little more with trae, because he is just so much more spritely than capela right now — and their starters in general look like a bunch of guys playing with a step count limit. i kinda wonder if capela soured on trae a bit and just kicked it back a gear, but it could also be physical. hard to tell. they’re the 4th worst defense in the nba.
last night there were a couple tatum drives where he’s the dead obvious help candidate and capela never even made to the lane. that’s definitely not the capela that terrorized us in the playoffs.
Noel is on a three year deal for roughly $28 million, with only the first two years ($18 million) guaranteed.
Mitch’s max extension starts at $12 million a year, but with raises, can hit 4 years/$54 million.
That’s a significant difference. I think that they should definitely offer it, but if you’re pinching pennies for some odd reason, it’s basically twice the money for twice the guaranteed years (and I think the years is actually what worries them the most. It shouldn’t, but I think it does).
Z-man, I can understand your belief that Deuce can do better in the NBA than he’s shown so far. I think he can too. My hypothesis is that he is getting chances in practice but not doing very well there either. If Thibs is making him show stuff in practice first before he throws him into lots of minutes in real games, that’s not unreasonable. Thibs has mentioned looking at the numbers and I think he really does. Sims probably had a similar amount of minutes as McBride before his recent stretch of games, but his numbers were good. He actually had one of the highest BPMs on the team. And lo, he has more playing time now. Thibs is being consistent even if you don’t agree
Cybersoze, your post makes it sound like he played forty or fifty minutes total, but apparently he played enough games with less than five minutes that he ended up with the equivalent minutes of four or five games as a starter. I was actually surprised how many minutes he has played. I don’t think you can cherry pick the games with more than a certain number of minutes to do statistics.
I admit, if we had a different coach maybe he’d get more playing time, but my point is you can’t just look at G league minutes and say of course he has to play. There more data than that and it’s not a slam dunk type of decision.
Unfortunately, 3 of those 5 games came against Detroit, Houston, and OKC, which are effectively g-league-plus teams.
And if you remove his superb Houston game, where he accumulated most his counting stats, then Deuce really looks unplayable.
I’m pretty sure this also came at the height of the covid-19 g-league call ups. So as much as I’d like to see Deuce, I’m not convinced he’s as good as those numbers make him seem.
We should play Deuce because he’s young. If he’s any good that’s just icing on the cake. 🙂
Random thoughts OT:
I wonder if Hawksblogger.net is aptly disappointed in their team the way we are with the Knicks.
Exhibit J as to why no one likes LA fans: my wife switched from being a Niner fan to a Rams fan right after the Super Bowl. This was the conversation:
Her: GO L.A!!
Me: but your team is the Niners tho.
Her: I’m a Rams fan now. LA won!
Me: that’s called bandwagoning. You had ZERO interest in the Rams before they made the SB… by beating YOUR Niners, btw.
She pauses briefly.
Her: so I’ll root for them both!
Me: That’s cap! they play in the same division!
Her: So?
Me: you can’t do that! That’s violation! (Imagine being a fan of, say, the Eagles AND WFT…errr the Commanders of the NFC East. I’m sure that’s a felony somewhere)
Her: I can do whatever I want! Go LA! Go Rams!
I hate it here… lol.