OK I’ve opened up site registration, and the ability to comment. Feel free to give both a try.
Note: You’ll have to verify your account by email. Check your email spam, because that’s where mine went. If you ever published an article, you might already have an account & may have to reset the password.
I’ll try to check in regularly during the day & there’s still a ton to do on the back-end. Fingers still in a know.
104 replies on “Site Update 2022-09-02 v2”
DRed can indeed see the future. DRed for GM!
OK so I just realized that no posts after 2010 have showed up. I’m going to play around with the database to try and fix it…
That means things will be unstable for a short time. I may even have to do a full database restore as well, which means everything will be lost.
Was DRed the one to predict that the site would be down when Ainge finally decided to trade DMitchell?
But should we discuss Sergio Rodriguez and Toney Douglas with Ted Nelson? There’s not much else going on right now…
LOL! I have great expectations for both Sergio and Toney, let’s see how it goes! š
@MikeK: It wouldn’t be a genuine Knicks’ blog if things were to go smoothly, don’t you think? š
I have definitely chimed in, just not today.
And we’re back!!
Thanks to Mike K for putting all the work in to get this site back online.
Mike – as always if you have some sort of crowdfunding to help cover the costs of this reboot + ongoing costs, I would be willing to contribute.
And re: Donovan Mitchell – you know it’s a different world when literally the only talking head that says the Knicks messed up = Stephen A.
I’m happy Leon had a line and did not cross it. It does seem like he did not believe Ainge had another credible offer and was wrong on that front? But 25/27/29 unprotected 1sts + 2 unprotected swaps was way more than I was ever willing to give up, and I’m glad we did not come close to that.
I hate Danny Ainge but he really did a nice job with Gobert and Mitchell trades. They are certain to stink now with Collin Sexton as their #1 option and will likely have top 5-6 picks in the next 2 drafts at least. Will be interesting to see if he ends up making the Wolves/Cavs picks (his draft record outside the top 5 or so is very spotty, really outside of Robert Williams).
And in terms of our team? I would love to see us move Randle but I just do not see that as a real possibility. I would not be opposed to a Randle+Fournier+Cam for Westbrook (to be waived) and picks, but I don’t imagine the Lakers would want to do that (would we do a top5 protected 2027 pick for Randle/Fournier/Cam? Would they??)
Anyway, this relatively shocking turn means we really need to see 20+ min/game for IQ/Grimes/Obi. Not sure how Obi happens with Randle around, but that’s why Thibs gets paid the big bucks.
@cyber – Good point.
We’re back?
So Donovan Mitchell is not going to be a Knick (at least not this year). I’m sure a lot of people are thrilled we didn’t pay the admittedly very, very high price but I really keep coming back to the question of what exactly the plan is to add elite talent to this roster if it wasn’t making a trade like this. I guess it’s just assume that a year from now there will be someone as young and as good as Mitchell available only that guy will also be 6’8″ and a good defender. A lot easier to dream on that player than to try to actually come up with a scenario however. How long until Cade Cunningham is a FA? 8 years?
Also the East is looking loaded after this move. You’ve got six teams in Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Cleveland and Miami that even in optimistic Knicks scenarios look a cut above us and Chicago, Toronto and Atlanta all probably see themselves as playoff teams as well. Even if we’re improved from last year it’s going to be an uphill battle towards a playoff spot and even the play-in is definitely not assured. Looks like another year of sitting in the ugly middle – not good enough to win a playoff series, not bad enough for a high lotto pick.
We’re back up!
I did predict the website would be down when Mitchell got traded but I thought it would be to us. Sad he’s not going to be a Knick but the price would have been to high for us so like I’ve been saying I’m pretty happy to see what the current team can do.
thank you so much Mike K for all your efforts…
Thanks for putting in the work to remake the site. The DB transfer sounds like it’s a pain, which is not uncommon.
Just want to wish you good luck, we’re all counting on you.
How much more did Ainge value Sexton over RJ that the Cavs only needed to trade three 1sts?
Reading about the offers we made to Utah it seems like our ‘mistake’ was repeatedly offering the Jazz good players when all Danny wanted was picks. Should be interesting to see how quickly Lauri and Sexton are on the move again.
i need to brush up on my bulletin board code stuff…
can we gif now?
hmmm, let’s see what we got…
hello hello hello
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PepperyGrizzledClownanemonefish-max-1mb.gif
ah, no comment edit function…oh shoot, pressure on to get it right the first time š
oh look – we got emojis…cool…
Thanks Mike! Iām ok with no š· given the price. Hope we get some fun basketball!
the no gravitar folks seem to now be assigned the minecraft pic…or is it really just some low key rorschach test thing…
i promise not to break the site just dicking around…i promise not to break the site just dicking around…i promise not to break the site just dicking around…i promise not to break the site just dicking around…
;3
Has someone tested the image function yet and it didn’t show up?
Anyway here that goes…
When you see that it’s 2010 again:
Okay…logged in at least.
It appears to not work or I’ve forgotten how to make img work
|;ā)
o_O
ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
āā©ā®ļ¼ļø¶ļøæļø¶ļ¼āā©ā®
ā¹ļøāāļø
š§
Gravatar still a headache.
Is there a way we can zip right down to the bottom of the page in a click?
trying to site out on my phone now…looks really good in this format š
The Cavs are feeling great right now, but let’s see how they feel in 2025 at the start of a 5 year span surrendering ALL their picks to Utah (2025 to 2029, with the unprotected swaps).
if there’s anyway you might be able to squeeze in a wait function – that would be awesome…
if possible maybe a bit longer than 5 minutes please…
darn, meant to write: squeeze in a Edit function for comments…
I figured now was as good a time as any to finally change the username I made at age 14, while still paying homage to my Knickerblogger roots.
Hey DRed, what are your thoughts on this weekās lottery numbers?
Anyway, I unsurprisingly am in lockstep with āstam. There are so many different rumors flying around in terms of what we offered, what the Jazz countered, what wouldāve gotten it done, etc. that itās impossible to say with any certainty that I think we should or shouldnāt have made a particular deal.
There are definitely formulations Iāve seen that wouldāve made me, at a minimum, uncomfortable. Itās thus entirely possible not making this trade was the right move.
The problem is breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back for not getting fleeced by Ainge doesnāt make our resulting situation any better.
This season we are likely to be around .500. Thereās a good chance weāll be a lower seeded play-in team. Weāll pick in the 9-12 range and have the Dallas pick to boot. Like everything else about the Leon Rose era, thatāsā¦not terrible.
I get that I sound like a broken record at this point, but being ānot terribleā is supposed to be a means to an end, with that end being ābeing good.ā
Our paths to goodness are looking like theyāll require extraordinary amounts of dumb luck at this point. We will probably need *a combination of* a draft pick that returns historically significant value for its slot, another Mitchell level player to hit the trade market (who, for some reason, will be both better for the Knicks and cheaper than Mitchell himself), and the free agency landscape changing in a major way.
Iām just not seeing anything resembling an inspiring vision. Iām seeing a front office that seems highly motivated to keep their jobs. Thatās about it.
I wonāt argue much with anyone who says we shouldnāt have made this trade, but donāt think we have much to celebrate either.
On a desktop, Ctrl+F and “Leave a reply” should do it. š
Testingā¦
This is the first time I’ve ever posted a comment, although I’ve (unsuccessfully) tried to register many times before.
Let’s see how this goes. I’ve been a Knicks fan since 1978. (Ouch.)
Are you afraid you’ll post a lot of comments in a row and are asking for the site to restrain you? š
Go away for the summer and come back to a whole new neighborhood.
Cavs are a good young teamā¦but that back court is tiny and Iām not convinced Mitchellās game will age well.
Although I know in my head that obtaining Donovan at that exorbitant price was *not* the right way to go, I still feel a slight amount of non-buyer’s remorse. I would have advocated for giving Ainge a goodly amount of picks, but did not want to part with Obi, Grimes, Barrett, IQ, or any other young players at all. DRose, Fournier I would have been OK with them going out the door. Probably Reddish, too, since I haven’t seen anything at all from him to care whether or not he is on our roster. I don’t love Julius, but I truly have hope in my heart that this can be a redemption year for him. Isn’t he good every other season? This should be his “good” season, and then we can get rid of him next off-season ahead of his next horrific one.
On the plus side, the site looks great and is running well on my phone, despite the fact that itās connected to Spirit Airlines Wi-Fi at the moment. Thanks Mike!
Also, I think the Cavs made the right move. Theyāre nothing close to favorites in the East this year, but hey, weird stuff happens all the time and if you told me they were in the conference finals I wouldnāt be shocked. Adding Donovan Mitchell to an elite defense without losing much of any present value is a damn solid formula.
More importantly, theyāve got 4 young, all-star caliber players locked up for the foreseeable future, and Mobley has the upside to be even better than that.
Betting against a championship is always the safest best and these Cavs are no exception, but Iād much, much rather be them than us.
I spent a little time reading a Cavs blog to see what Cavs fans thought of the deal. Many were happy they got Mitchell, but some thought the price was high. And besides the picks, the ones who didnāt like the deal were unhappy about the players they gave up. Agbaji actually sounds a lot like Grimes. He was actually compared to a young Klay Thompson. They thought Markannen was a wing who defends and shoot and losing him and Agbaji was giving up a lot of their three point shooting. They didnāt mind losing Sexton much, which makes sense because they didnāt have him last year and they have no place for him, but he actually was an excellent scorer last season he was fully active. So if I compare those three to Knicks, itās like besides trading five picks, we traded Fournier, Grimes and Quickley except that Sexton was better than Quickley when he last played a full season. Thatās a lot for a small guard who doesnāt defend and more than I would have given up. I can see why Ainge liked that package better than anything he thought the Knicks would offer.
Hooray! Thanks Mike, you are the bomb!
I was the first knicks fan to call in on Mitch Lawrence and Eddie Johnson’s show and express that smart Knicks fans were thrilled that this trade didn’t go down and that Cavs are in a different place than us so what was good for them would have been terrible for us. Eddie seemed impressed.
I like this trade very much for Cleveland. They are simply in a much better position than us, and it makes much sense from their POV.
It also seems they gave up less than what the Knicks were being asked to give up.
I guess I’m here…slightly changed my official username.
How does Mitchell feel about the trade? Didn’t he want to go to the Knicks or Miami?
Woo, we’re back! Looking forward to another season of the mediocracy treadmill!
Mike, the new look of the site is great, but refreshing the website doesnāt put you back at the comment you just posted or clicked. Not having this makes it hard to follow long threads where step away for a while and come back to it. Can you please put that feature back?
TNFH, I absolutely think we have reason to celebrate. Not making the trade suggests that our front office is not a bunch of bungling starfuckers or Dolan puppets. There was both temptation and pressure to make the deal and the FO resisted going beyond a certain line. To put it differently, this is the kind of deal that Ainge doesn’t make if he’s on the other side. Of course, Ainge would possibly go for the full rebuild, as he is now, but what could he get for Randle? RJ? The rest? It’s easier to go full rebuild when you have stars to trade for massive hauls. We don’t have those guys. So not sure how Ainge would handle our current situation, but he definitely wouldn’t have made that deal.
well. it seems you’ve found something to fill the time already š
Welcome DDB! The new site is already attracting new posters. Cool. š
@KFNINJ: Are you on mobile? I’m on a desktop and it goes to the comment i just published, like before.
Next step is Mitch and Eddie inviting Z-man to be a regular commentator on the show. š
Thank you, cybersoze. I’ve been a lurker here for quite some time, although it’s not for lack of attempting to register previously. Doesn’t matter now. I have a new sports time suck now, in addition to all the other ones I already had.
Favorite Knicks moment: I was at Madison Square Garden on Christmas Night 1984 (I was 20 years old at the time, and on Christmas break from college there with my Dad). It was the game where Bernard King scored 60 points against the Nets, and the Knicks lost (I think) by a score of 120-110. This was in olden times when Security would actually let you down on the floor before the game whether or not your seats were there (ours definitely weren’t). Bernard King walked by me and stepped on my foot—the best foot-stomping I’ve ever got. I credit myself as good luck for him going out and getting a 60-burger that night.
This could have actually gone badly. If he stepped on my foot and instead got a sprained foot or sprained ankle injury, I could not have forgiven myself.
Thanks Mike!
ahh…success…glad it was Cleveland and not us…made more sense for them…just need to 86 randle now…
very cool to see you here DDB, welcome š
Idk, I think Ainge might’ve screwed up. Sadly, those Knick firsts are going to be substantially better than those Cleveland firsts now that Cleveland has 4 potential all-stars. So what if one of our picks was top-5 protected? Also, RJ for $110 mil is still better than Sexton for $74 mil. In fact, I’d rather have Quickley than Sexton straight up, and he was thrown in, too.
The trades are fairly even, but the likelihood of better Knick picks would’ve made me lean towards a Knick trade. Yet apparently, there was “animus” after we signed RJ to an extension, so spite was probably involved.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we didn’t trade 3 unprotected firsts, Barrett, Quickley, and other stuff for Spida. I just don’t think it was a good move by Ainge.
Spida makes a lot more sense for the Cavs than he did for us. Glad we didn’t overpay and lock ourselves into an ill-fitting team.
Hey everyone! New site looks good MikeK. Thank you for your hard work!
I’m disappointed in not getting Mitchell, but not disappointed that we didn’t sell the farm – Ainge wanted just a little too much. Knicks would have ultimately need to reshape their entire roster over the next couple of seasons and still needed to find their 1A guy, which I would’ve been fine with although I admit it would be a risky strategy.
It’s just unfair that the layman reaction (read: Laker fans who only understand starfucking b/c they get away with it more times than not) will be #LOLKNICKS YALL BLEW IT AGAIN AHHAHAHA!!!
We’ve placed a large bet on two birds in the bush. I’m ok with it because I didn’t think the bird in hand was a great fit. But there is a very real risk that a better opportunity never materializes and this is as good as we get.
Thanks Mike K.
I’m glad we didn’t pull the trigger. Other players who fit better will be available. OG Anunoby is unhappy about losing minutes Barnes. I think he’d be a perfect fit here. Maybe Fournier, Thomas and one of the excess picks could get it done. Then slide RJ to sg and we’re ready to roll.
7:40 in the got-damned morning. That’s how early #lolKnicksTrollSupv texted me about the Knicks not getting Mitchell. (lol)
This is my life.
If you set a right below the comments section and before the comment writer box, you should be able to link to it.
For everyone else, it’s sometimes easier to go to the home page, scroll down, and click on the most recent comment.
Had a chance to actually look around the site and I like the look but do have some suggestions:
1. It would be nice to have formatting buttons for comments back, i.e. bold, italics, link, etc.
2. It would probably be better to have a link to the archives that goes to a separate page rather than a list at the bottom of the page. A long list of every month that going back to Feb 2004 isn’t great.
3. It would be nice to have the previous post/next post links at the bottom of the comments rather than the top.
gkhenmansays:
September 2, 2022 at 12:50
Thanks Mike K.
Iām glad we didnāt pull the trigger. Other players who fit better will be available. OG Anunoby is unhappy about losing minutes Barnes. I think heād be a perfect fit here. Maybe Fournier, Thomas and one of the excess picks could get it done. Then slide RJ to sg and weāre ready to roll.
I’d be happy if we poked around for him. I could be wrong, but after glancing at his stats, he seems like a guy who contributes to the the type of team whose sum is greater than its parts.
It’s a commonly held belief that his made more sense for the Cavs than for us. Let’s examine why.
Both teams started to rebuild in 2019. The Knicks ended up with 17 wins and RJ Barrett, the Cavs had 19 wins and got Darius Garland. (We’ll chalk this up to luck; the Cavs likely would have taken Barrett over Garland, too.)
In 2020 the Cavs intentionally tanked and the Knicks accident-tanked. The teams ended up with Isaac Okoro and Obi Tobbin, respectively. Neither team benefited greatly from tanking.
But in 2021, the Cavs maintained their commitment to rebuilding, while the Knicks and their new regime thought two years of losing was enough. They hired a win-now coach and committed to a veteran roster that could have been sold off for parts.
The result of that fork in the road is pretty extreme:
The Cavs got Evan Mobley at the end of the season.
The Knicks got 41 wins, Julius Randle’s extension, multi-year deals for Derrick Rose, Evan Fournier, Nerlens Noel, Kemba Walker, and the silly idea that they were too good to use two first round picks in the draft.
Three seasons of a committed rebuild is all it took Cleveland. And they didn’t even get a good player from one of them. It didn’t take 6 years of tanking. It just took a modest commitment to a tried-and-true method.
One more year is all it took to create a gulf between the two teams.
>> Mike, the new look of the site is great, but refreshing the website doesnāt put you back at the comment you just posted or clicked. Not having this makes it hard to follow long threads where step away for a while and come back to it. Can you please put that feature back?
Click on the date/time under your last post, then refresh. That date/time is a hyperlink to that post.
I feel like since I restored the 12 years of posts/comments (not all, but a majority of it), the site has become more sluggish. Is it just me?
I ran a test from a site that does such things, and it says it’s fine. Not sure what to make of it.
As for the site appearance, etc. I’m just using the default theme here. There’s still a lot to be done before I look at the frivolities.
Unfortunately this isn’t going smoothly at all. š
The Cavs were one of the most fun teams to watch from November to February. They had great on court chemistry and ball movement and it was thrilling to watch Kevin Love resurrect himself as a veteran leader of kids. But they felt they needed some one-on-one scoring and traded for LaVert. Iso-LaVert is boring as hell, and it kind of ruined what they had going. So now I guess Mitchell is going to do the stuff they thought they needed LaVert for. Could work great for them, as Mitchell is better at Iso-LaVert than LaVert is, but I’m hoping he plays more of an integrated role, as those kids on Cleveland are a great bunch to grow together.
*(If I could find an edit function in this strange new world we post in I would have spelled LeVert correctly all those times in my previous post)
[extremely fake Jimmy Fallon DJ voice]
AND WE’RE BACK!
We appreciate all the hard work, Mike, and I’m sorry it’s a pain in the ass to do.
Re: Mitchell, my feelings about it depend in part on attempting to read the mind of our unknowable POBO. Did Leon genuinely draw a line in the sand and was going to refuse to cross it, or did he mistakenly assume that Ainge would come back to him for one more counter-offer? Is he at peace with not getting an incredibly talented, if also deeply flawed, player for an exorbitant price when the Knicks are in a different spot on the win curve than the Cavs, or will he view this as a mistake and be even more desperate the next time a star hits the trade market? And what is his plan going forward beyond “stay competitive, hope the kids play well” ā assuming our stupid coach even plays some of them āĀ “and wait for another trade avenue to open up”?
I am relieved we did not pay that price. It would have been Melo 2.0, if not worse. (Even though I think Mitchell is a better ā or, at least, more entertaining āĀ player than Melo was.) But like thenamestam asked, I am not sure where the high-level talent is coming to this roster, unless RJ and/or one of the other kids makes a huge leap in their level of play. Spida probably wouldn’t have improved our ceiling to true contention, but I am not sure we have an especially high ceiling with the current group. And I like all but a handful of guys on this roster (hint: three of them are veterans and one’s name rhymes with “Ram Keddish”).
@Space Invader
https://youtu.be/qQ6wSei-NJU?t=60
It was very slow immediately after the archive restore, but fine now.
Okay, still a little slow but better than immediately after
Hey Geo, i think some posters took the chance to change their nicknames, so we should play the who’s who game. š Vincoug is easy because of the dog picture. š
CDiggy, stay strong man, and just accept that they’ll going to call it LOLKnicks no matter what happens. Tommy Beer probably has some Laker friends too. š š
@cybersoze
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMoAhjA9dCE
I was on Corden again last night, this time with Amanda Shires. That’s me way back in the corner playing piano. It was a really fun day, these guys are all amazing musicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmCu1WlWDQ4
New York. Just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything.
New site is great. Thanks, Mike! So happy we did not pay too much for Mitchell. Happy to watch JK47 playing music. Can’t wait for the games. Life is good. E-shouts of support and joy to all on here.
Oh, and before we shut down Car-blogger for good with the redesign, an update: a local dealer claims they are getting exactly one of the car I want back in stock within the next week or two, and I put down a deposit that will allegedly give me first crack at buying it. Bo has already warned me that this whole process is super shady and the dealer might try to sell it out from under me, but at least it’s possible.
too funny cyber…hahahahaha…most of the posters here are watching the game, while you and i are at times are probably just mostly watching them…
too funny cyber…hahahahaha…most of the posters here are watching the game, while you and i are at times probably just mostly watching them…
@Alan: Let’s hope the dealer doesn’t send the car to the Cavs at the last minute! š
Taking TNFH’s lead to shorten my nickname.
And IMO no KB thread is complete until I read, “We’re on our way to the 8th seed and the 11th pick. Yay!” You are sincerely missed, monsieur Jowles. Christen the new site.
Cyber, don’t think I haven’t envisioned that EXACT scenario, alas.
There has to come a point at which we stop trying to trace the tea leaves of each move to figure out if this front office is good and start evaluating the big picture of their tenure. I’m not saying we’ve reached that point already but it now seems very, very likely that the third season of their reign ends like the first two – stranded in no man’s land. Some level of competence on individual moves will only take you so far if the larger strategy isn’t there.
The last offer Rose allegedly made was a SIGNIFICANT overpay (they were even going to be using one of the protected first round picks to dump Fournier on another team so that Utah wouldn’t have to pay Fournier’s salary!), it just didn’t involve three unprotected picks (just two and one protected top five pick) in the future, which is what Ainge was coveting the most, so I don’t know that we should be giving Rose credit for his line in the sand, when his line was way further than we should have wanted it to be. It seems more likely that he didn’t think Ainge had other options to get three unprotected picks, which, well, apparently he did.
Yes, it’s hard to come away from this thinking Leon did a good job. He offered the Jazz a ton, he just didn’t offer them what they wanted.
what if evian and julius start off hot next year…a little bit of patience could really pay off here…
hmmmm, from KB Apprentice to KBA…yeah, that’s the ticket, pretty close to NBA…very cool…
or perhaps, perhaps – simply THE Apprentice…yeah, that’s nice…
or maybe even: Noob for Life
i would say you have more than graduated from apprentice status š
ahhh, KB Pro
that woj report of the summer package including at least rj, obi, mitch and three unprotected firsts has to make you at least a bit reluctant to laud the front office for their value discipline. i’m not saying you can’t given leon a head nod for at least playing hardball. perhaps a bizarre, murdock from the a-team peripatetic brand of hardball, but hardball nonetheless. it may have even pissed ainge off into ultimately accepting a worse offer, depending on how he feels in his heart about collin and lauri. i kind of suspect that both utah and msg lost the deal in the narrow sense that there was a mutual trade they both would have preferred to the deal that happened. but danny milked early and leon played hard to get late. then danny got pissy and went vegan. future unprotected and swaps from a team with mobley and garland in tow are just a lot less valuable than from a much bigger question mark like us.
whether that deal would have been a good thing is a different story. some of the rumors seem like bullets dodged, others i would have been tempted. none were homeruns. time to pivot to complaining about the kiddo minutes. the thing about the east being tough is no myth. atlanta and toronto are really strong 7-8 type seeds, if that’s what they are.
They also picked up THT, Malik Beasley, Walker Kessler, Leondro Bolmaro, Colin Sexton, Lauri Markanen, and Ochai Agbaji.
That’s not a bad result for a team we were told would have to accept our offer because they had no leverage.
@Geo, haha. I love “KB Pro,” but I can barely do my son’s 6th grade math, so … I will remain the eternal student š
I too hope Evian and Randle start off hot. I’m still sipping pernod on L’Isle de Fournier, so I’m genuinely happy he’s still around (sorry Cyber). And Julius must know by now that dervish-ball is no bueno, so he may surprise all of us. The (boring) post game mantra from Thibs and all the guys last year was, “Take the right shot.” Now with Brunson, the “right” shot should be more apparent, even to Julius. Can’t wait for the games.
Mike, clicking on the time and date worked! Thanks very much. Cybersoze, yes Iām on mobile.
I think something may have gotten a bit scrambled in the Woj reporting. It feels like that offer with more kids and more picks may have been Ainge’s askĀ āĀ maybe even his initial ask at the start of negotiations āĀ rather than what Leon was offering at the end. I don’t know. On Zach Lowe’s podcast with Bobby Marks, Zach said this may be a situation where so many offers were made in such a short time that even the people negotiating may not be entirely clear on what was and was not on the table.
I’m not ready to sing a ballad of Leon Rose, either. What he does with the rest of this offseason will be somewhat telling, but he’s just so damn hard to read. My hope is that he takes further steps to Thibs-proof the roster by getting rid of some combination of Randle, Fournier, and Cam (it does not sound like DRose is going anywhere, unfortunately) and just accepts whatever fate Brunson + Kids gets him.
These MFers better start Grimes if he was off limits in a trade for a top-25 NBA player, thatās all I have to say.
I think we dodged a bullet.
Iām not sure what to believe in terms of what was offered and what was asked, but personally I didnāt see a single deal I would have signed off on. If some of the supposed deals we are offered are true, it lowers my estimation of our current management.
Iām all for trying to improve the team. Im even willing to overpay a bit in some circumstances. Heck, I think reasonable people might say we overpaid for Brunson. But IMO thereās a huge difference between overpaying a bit in salary to get a very good player that fills a critical need and overpaying for a one way player thatās a very poor fit defensively.
At no time did I ever want Mitchell. The only reason I would ever traded for him was if we stole him and I could get a free look and easily flip him when/if it didnāt work out. Nothing about this deal made sense to me.
Iām happy with this team. I donāt really care if we make the playoffs this year or not. If we donāt, we have our picks and some extras to try make something else happen. We are young, better than last year, still positioned well to improve, and I like almost all of our players. The only tweaks I would make would be moving on from Fournier to make room for Grimes to strengthen the defense and move on from Randle just for my sanity. If we can do it now without surrendering picks thatās fine. If not, start Grimes, play Fournier off the bench, and try to improve Randleās value for a few months.
Letās go Knicks.
You donāt really have to know the deals that were offered to know how high the price would have been. It would have been something like what Cleveland traded ā Three unprotected firsts, two first round swaps and three young useful players. Mitchell didnāt fill a critical need for us basketball wise unless that need was for a āstarā without regard for fit or price. He would have probably have made us better, but not great. Iām happy we passed to. And I agree with what Tommy aberrĆ© said. The talking heads were like āof course the Knicks will overpay, even though they shouldnātā and then suddenly switched to āthey should have done the dealā
Agree: bullet dodged.
Friday Night Non Sequitur: Hasnāt it been too long since you listened to Maxwellās Urban Hang Suite from start to finish? Treat yourself this holiday weekend and recall the days of Knicks 1996/97 when John Starks was Sixth Man of the Year and the Knicks made the playoffs for the 10th(!) consecutive year.
Enjoy the weekend, KB.
KB 2.0 Now in Technicolor