BernieEarnie: Ah yes.Thanks for the clarification.

It probably means if you are a poorly run franchise, it doesn’t really matter what you do (you still will suck, but less) as the short term benefit of getting a good pick is outweighed by bad long term decisions.Lucky for the Knicks as they have never been poorly run, and now shy away from making ANY long term decisions.

If good picks can be outweighed by bad decisions then less good draft picks can be helped by good decisions. So we should pray for smart management more than for draft luck. Of course, both are nice to have and somehow draft luck seems the preferred path dd or many Knick fans.

Just hire Masai. It’s not hard.

Brian Cronin: Only one of the Pellies and Spurs can win the play-in

Ah yes. Thanks for the clarification.

Knick fan not in NJ: Just on a very simplistic level, Orlando’s draft picks and success are an argument against tanking

It probably means if you are a poorly run franchise, it doesn’t really matter what you do (you still will suck, but less) as the short term benefit of getting a good pick is outweighed by bad long term decisions. Lucky for the Knicks as they have never been poorly run, and now shy away from making ANY long term decisions.

Z-man:
Well Orlando’s young core certainly SHOULD be better than ours. In the last 10 years they have drafted 2, 4, 5, 11, 6, 6, 16, 15, 5, and 8 plus multiple late 1st and early 2nds, and have one playoff series where they lost 4-1 to show for it with a high water mark of 42 wins and 7 seasons in the 20’s.

Just on a very simplistic level, Orlando’s draft picks and success are an argument against tanking

I agree, Brian, and certainly am not writing him off, he clearly has lots of tools and could easily turn it around. Darius Garand is a good example of a guy who had a terrible 20yo season and is now an all-star candidate on his rookie deal. But man, Suggs was really rock-bottom awful for a guy who actually got minutes, and he was so highly touted that it was kinda shocking.

Oh, it’s super shocking. I was re-watching the Gonzaga/UCLA game the other night and if you watched that game live and someone told you, “This guy Suggs is going to have a shitty rookie season,” you’d be stunned. “This guy? The guy who looks like he has everything you need to be an NBA star? This guy?” But that’s what I was thinking when I mentioned the Masai thing earlier. Suggs seemed to me to have all the tools to be an NBA stud, so for Masai to say, “Nah, I’m good” really made me think that maybe there was some issue we were all missing with Suggs’ ability to translate to the NBA. Yes, it could just be that Masai liked Barnes a lot, but it still stood out to me that Suggs seemed to fit Toronto perfectly and they wanted nothing to do with him.

If I understand the play-in/draft position rules correctly, if the season ended today we would want the Pellies and Spurs to win the play-in. If that happens, we move up 2 slots in the lottery odds.

Sort of correct. Only one of the Pellies and Spurs can win the play-in, since they play each other in an elimination game for the first play-in. But yes, we definitely want one of them to make the playoffs, as it would move the Knicks up one spot in the draft order.

While it would have been a huge disappointment, definitely, I know I’m always prepared to throw the first year out the window nowadays, with how young these guys all are. It’s the second year that has become key for me. You gotta show me something in the second year and if you don’t, I’m pretty much writing you off (which I did with Frank and Knox). RJ improved enough in his second year that I wasn’t out on him, but he definitely needed to keep improving. So if the Knicks had Suggs and he just had that shitty rookie season, I’d still want to give him another year before worrying about him.

And yes, dudes sometimes suck for years and then become good players but not often enough for me to pay it any real mind. You just get into wishcasting at that point.