Probably a good time to test out the polling function…
Rank The Knicks FO during Leon's Tenure
- 3 (55%, 90 Votes)
- 4 (20%, 32 Votes)
- 2 (15%, 25 Votes)
- 1 (awful) (5%, 8 Votes)
- 5 (awesome) (5%, 8 Votes)
Total Voters: 163
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Pre-Season Poll 2022 – Rank the Knicks Front Office
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104 replies on “Pre-Season Poll 2022 – Rank the Knicks Front Office”
My comment got eaten. I voted 3, but could just as easily have gone with 2, since the overall Rose administration philosophy kind of sucks, even if many of the individual moves have been good.
I gave him a 2.
I can see Z-Man’s POV, especially as an educator. If I were to grade Leon as if he were a student, I think it’s fair to say he’d earn either a 3 or a 4 depending on how confident I am in his future.
When I had to evaluate graduates, it wasn’t about whether or not their trades made money. They could make a lot of money and still fail. It was about whether or not they made the optimal choices at the critical times.
In simple terms, imagine you have the opportunity to invest in either gold or pork bellies. You choose pork bellies, and you double your money. Had you chosen gold, though, you would have returned 10X. So as your evaluator, I can’t ignore what you could have done and give you good marks for your trade.
Leon’s job to get on the optimal path. I think he has made gains but he has consistently failed to get us on the right path.
I still see a path forward, though. I don’t know if he’ll find it, but it’s there. If he’s patient and makes the right choices, this could easily be a 4 in two seasons.
I gave the FO a 3. It would be hard to go above that, largely due to the original sin of hiring Thibs, although he’s way better than lots of other win-now choices. Everything else has been a mixed bag with more that I liked than didn’t like. I haven’t felt that I could fully judge their performance until after next offseason unless they made an ill-advised blockbuster trade that turned the team into a largely finished produce. So 3 sounds about right.
That’s an interesting and fair take, Hubert. One thing to consider is whether Leon had to market himself as a proponent of “hybrid” rebuilding just to get hired by Dolan. In other words, is it fair to judge Leon vs. say, Presti who has a total green light from his governor to tank as long as it takes, or is it more fair to judge him against other “hybrid” rebuilders?
Hey everyone, it’s Silky here. Figured I’d reintroduce myself since I changed my display name from Dave Chappelle to Kundera…
I voted 3 on this poll, but really I took this as a referendum less on the Knicks FO and more on one’s optimism or pessimism regarding the Knicks’ current roster. There’s lots of reasons for both, in my view:
Reasons for optimism:
Obi
IQ
Grimes
Brunson playing more like he played without Luka than with
RJ (?)
Mitch/Hartenstein, which is an *excellent* C rotation if healthy.
Reasons for pessimism:
No stars/the “net the big fish” strategy of Rose
Randle the mystery man
Obi’s minutes
Thibs
Leon’s puzzling moves at the margins (incineration, Cam, hello!)
Overall, though, I feel cautiously optimistic about this team. Enough so that I bet the over on their W-L for this season. In general, I think it fairly likely that most of our reasons for optimism will obtain (it’s easy to bet on improvement in young players) and only a few of our reasons for pessimism will obtain. I for one cannot imagine that Randle will be as putrid as he was last year this year, and that itself is enough to add wins to this team.
I think one issue that we on this board have is an undue focus on optimality of decision-making given our usually-reasonable assumptions. This isn’t necessarily wrong given the fact that we’re armchair quarterbacks par excellence (I don’t even mean this pejoratively!). And KB has a great track record compared to the Knicks FO. But it’s not hard to do better than Scott Layden, Isaiah Thomas, and Phil Jackson.
It’s true that there have been trades that are laughably bad and were treated as such here (such as the incineration and the Cam trade given that he got no minutes under Thibs); Rose should shoulder the responsibility for them–though luckily they were at the margins. There are strategies that don’t exactly look like they’re going to work/require unforeseen future events to obtain in order to work(net the big fish…though one could say the same thing about top 3 in the NBA draft). There were simple regressions (all of our merc signings failed.) Finally, there were conditions we were not privy to (perhaps Leon, as a function of working for James Dolan, was literally unable to tank–is that really that far-fetched? Well, we don’t know.)
But also, we have a pretty solid young core, who are only going to be moved for a franchise-altering star on Mitchell’s level or better. We have projectable upside and a trove of picks. When’s the last time we’ve had both? Probably the pre-Melo trade. There have surely been bumps in the road, and Rose’s track record isn’t exactly inspiring. We can question overall strategy and approach, given reasonable assumptions. We can evaluate what could’ve been had we tore this team down to the studs–whether or not that was a realistic possibility. It’s often an exercise worth doing, in my view! But for me, the product actually in front of me (not the imaginary one we would like) is one I’m genuinely excited for, which I haven’t felt in quite a while. And that’s enough, at this juncture. However, if we lose in the play-in (and not because of injuries), Leon and Thibs should be fired. No more excuses. I want a perennial playoff team for a bit, even if getting to the Finals is too much to expect for us right now.
Can I just say that I am really struggling with all the new screen names?
Sincerely,
The Artist Formerly Known As AlSep73
I waffled between three and four. I ultimately picked four. There were two main factors that swung me to the four. One, there are lots of front offices that haven’t done well by the standards most fans set for their own front offices. Read Z-man’s post in the last thread if you want a list of some of them. Two, it is my belief that the most important thing the front office has to do well for there to be a good Knick’s future is to draft well and develop players well. They are clearly doing that. As long as they keep doing that (and don’t make disastrous mistakes) the Knicks will get better and mostly be fun to watch. Of course I’d like a path to championship contention, but teams that have that have often had some luck along with competent GMs. I’m not going to bash the front office for not being lucky.
Can we get some Randle for Gordon Hayward steam going?
I’ve been saying for a long time that’s the most logical path towards moving Randle and I hear Macri may have mentioned it.
Sent the team into intentional purgatory while showing no real indication that he even comprehends the idea of NBA purgatory.
Made an absurd offer for a second-tier star who can’t play defense and led his team to consistent playoff washouts. Then pissed and moaned that he didn’t get an opportunity to make an even more absurd offer.
Chased and obtained ping-pong ball killing marginal wins that few if any teams in the association — and no competent teams — would ever chase. Still chasing them.
Some young pieces, overrated — understandably so, given fandom — but overrated nonetheless. There’s no sense in which he’s assembled a high-quality young core. Only three of them even in Tier 5, RJ, IQ, Grimes. I’m higher on RJ, but this FO didn’t draft him and seems as if it wants to trade him.
Extended Randle, showing no ability to evaluate anything beyond the superficial. All the signs were there and he completely missed them.
Punted on good draft picks, including laughably a lottery pick.
Hired a coach who’s completely mismatched with the project in front of the FO.
Well-deserved “1.” Nothing there beyond the natural hope and optimism of fandom. Literally smack-dab centered exactly where you don’t want to be.
Just to expand on this statement of mine a bit, to prevent misunderstanding:
I think one issue that we on this board have is an undue focus on optimality of decision-making given our usually-reasonable assumptions.
Figuring out what is optimal decision-making in a given circumstance requires, among other things, a “small world” of possibilities (and a commitment to a criterion of optimality, such as expected utility). We need to know, exhaustively, the state space of possible acts, outcomes, and payoffs of the outcomes in order to optimally update our evidence and optimally choose the greatest-payoff option. As the armchair quarterbacks we are, we engage in such kind of small-world reasoning when we talk about Leon Rose. We take for granted, for example, no outside interference from Dolan; we take Woj’s word regarding the state Knicks offer as gospel, and then we imagine ourself in Rose’s situation and ask, among other things, whether 1. his offer was a sensible one given the assumptions; 2. (which partly determines 1.): what the expected payout would be (would it make the team better or worse in the short run? in the medium run?), perhaps we do this by consulting various all-in-one stats that can give us a group on a player’s relative contribution, plus some statistics on the average productivity of any surrendered draft picks; 3. What the range of choices were (trade for Mitchell, stand pat.)
This is all sensible, given where we are–fans on the outside looking in. But clearly all three moves are done to make our discussion coherent and tractable, not because they actually characterize the Knicks situation when facing the Mitchell trade. The Mitchell trade did not occur in a small world. It occurred in a large one. And in large worlds, you don’t get the full state space with associated payouts; and without that, you don’t get optimality. You can get approximations to it; you can sample large worlds and see if the outcomes observed conform with the predictions of Expected Utility Theory; but you can’t know in advance what optimal looks like (that said, you can still tell what a *bad* decision is, if you know enough of the structure of the decision situation–such as in the incineration). In the Mitchell situation, we can’t know, for example, all permutations of all the deals offered, listened to, and/or rejected. We can’t know how many teams came calling, or whether the Gobert trade drove up the price. We can’t know, even, whether Mitchell really is the revolving door he was in the playoffs (he wasn’t always *that* bad on D!) All of this is speculation. There may be more or less informed speculation, but still–it is speculation. Without all of this fine-grained information, it’s pretty futile to try and figure out whether Leon acted optimally. We don’t have access to such information. In fact, Leon doesn’t either. No one does. But we are certainly informationally impoverished in comparison to the Knicks FO. So, per usual, I think whether you think Leon and Co did a good job is not dependent on some clearly quantifiable reasons, and more a matter of trust or lack thereof.
So I opt instead for a different heuristic, one a little less reliant on supposition: do I like the look of this team, or not? I do–and that’s why I voted 3. I think a lot of this board’s anxiety regarding our team’s performance stems from wanting definitive proof of things that we could really never have (e.g., definitive proof of Leon’s competence or incompetence), coupled with the general catastrophizing attitude that we’ve developed over long decades of suffering. I’m not saying those people are wrong, or are wrong for doing such things–but I prefer to take a relatively unsophisticated, flat-footed approach here. And I (cautiously) like what I see!
I gave them a 3.
I would have given them a 4 if it wasn’t for allowing Bullock to walk and putting Kemba/Fournier together instead (made no sense defensively) and giving Fournier 1 more year than the other mercs.
I’m forgiving of the extra year for the Burks, Nerlens and Rose because they earned it after playing so hard below market the previous year and because other than getting hurt, I’d be fine with Nerlens as the backup C, Burks off the bench, and Rose off the bench. The real mistake was Kemba/Fouriner and that extra year.
God, I can’t wait for the season to start. I think this team will be ok. They might even play .500 ball this year. The defense could be top-5. Yes, I’m being positive for my own sanity but so what? Oh and I gave Leon a 3.
I’m not sure how well we’re drafting and developing, because well, one of our best players just might be a guy we drafted 2 years ago and can’t get more than 11 minutes a game (and is stuck behind a guy we gave a big contract to that we now wish we didn’t). RJ and even Mitch might both be overpaid.
I think the front office has been ambivalent at best in regards to the draft, and is clearly looking to send a lot of that capital for whatever disgruntled star is out there. I’m tired of that same old song and dance and gave them a 2.
I voted 2, though there’s a good chance if I wasn’t specifically a Knicks fan and only followed the team as much as any other NBA fan does it would’ve been a 1. I think it’s harder to give a front office a mulligan on the whole “they’ve chosen a laughably bad overall strategy” thing from afar, even if there have been legitimate individual successes.
I think we’re further from contention than we were when Rose took over, as it would’ve been fairly painless to start building through the draft back then. Now, we’re so invested in being .500ish it would be extraordinarily difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.
It’s easily arguable that every other team in the NBA is closer to having the elite talent you need to contend than we are, whether that’s because such talent is already on the roster or because they project to make very high picks soon. I think the only team whose situation I wouldn’t trade for ours is the Wizards, though I could hear arguments for the Bulls, Hornets, Kings, and Blazers if I were to be maximally inclusive.
Still, if the best possible ranking in terms of long-term position I can get to is 24th in the league, a 2 seems more than fair. Maybe even generous.
All that said, I actually agree with Silky to a large extent that there are things to be excited about on the current roster. I think the over on 39.5 is a decent bet.
As Macri details in his newsletter today, we pretty much *have to* trade Randle to get anywhere remotely interesting with this group, but putting that aside for a second there’s a chance it’s the most aesthetically pleasing team we’ve had since 2012-2013. I can watch Brunson-Grimes-RJ-Obi-Mitch every night.
I just don’t know where winning 43 games in an optimistic scenario really gets us. That may be a worse scenario than disaster striking and us winning 22 games, if we’re being honest.
I remain less convinced than most that players who fit the needs of our current team as well as Donovan Mitchell hit the trade market all the time, and don’t know why the consensus seems to be that the next one will be better than Mitchell, but also cost less than Mitchell.
I guess the path to contention is the young players all improve such that they’re all worth more to the opposing team in the unknown next trade, and because of that we can include fewer total assets, leaving us with the best package for the unknown trade after that.
It’s…not impossible? But I don’t see good front offices making me use my imagination this much.
“I think a lot of this board’s anxiety regarding our team’s performance stems from wanting definitive proof of things that we could really never have”
IMO, it’s impatience and the fact that Rose didn’t use the all out multi year tanking path for rebuilding that some prefer. The latter is understandable if you really believe that’s the best way to do it in every market. But the two things are not consistent. If you going to relentlessly tank until you get the star, you need the patience of a Holy man. It’s likely you are going to drop in the lottery, select the wrong player, no true star will be available in your lottery slot etc.. It’s going to take a LONG time unless you are very lucky. We had 2 shots at it and came away with KP and RJ. If you have the patience and can tolerate all the unknowns related to lotteries, you should have the patience and be able to tolerate the pursuit of players via trade and free agency, especially after a year that we added two very nice young players in Brunson and Hart.
Gave them a 3. Don’t know how can anyone give a 1, no one was here for the Isiah years?? 😀
Isiah had several individual moments of success. The current regime hasn’t done anything close to as worthy as, say, David Lee at 30.
Which just goes to further show that the occasional good individual move isn’t remotely what this is about.
I went 3…everything speaks to average to date…coach, transactions, record…
With that being said..if we can remove Randle from the team photo…I am excited to see this group play…
I gave them a 4. I think 3 is a failing grade. They haven’t failed yet. They have a lot of promising young players and multiple draft picks. This could easily be a perennial 50 win team in a year or two. That’s good enough for me.
I don’t think it has to be this complicated. I just ask WWMUD (what would Masai Ujiri do?) and then I grade Leon on how far off his choice is from that.
Of course this requires assumptions on my part. But I can look at history as a guide. For example, Masai Ujiri fired Dwayne Casey a day after he was named coach of the year, and replaced him Nick Nurse. That was both ballsy and brilliant. There was none of this “but he made the conference finals” bullshit.
So Masai Ujiri, IMO, would have cashed in on Julius Randle within days of being named MIP and 2nd team All NBA, as I suggested at the time. Masai would not have been fooled by unexpected results and his eyes would have been on the future instead of now.
There are two curves you can grade Leon Rose by:
1)The learning curve of him as a first-time basketball executive. I do not want to give him a curve here, because we should have just hired an actual basketball executive to begin with.
2)The James Dolan curve, which factors in whether our owner would have allowed someone to make ruthless Masai-like moves to start over from scratch. Based on the people Dolan has hired since he bought the team, I unfortunately have a hard time believing he would have ever brought in somebody willing to do a full rebuild. I still hate Leon’s overall strategy, but it may be the only option available to him.
(You could compare him to Dave Gettleman, who seemed to have been hired by the Giants for two reasons: 1)Because John Mara only liked hiring people he already knew, and 2)Because John Mara wanted someone who would promise to try to win one more time with the rotting corpse of Eli Manning. The difference is that, even when allowing for that, virtually every move Gettleman made was mortifyingly awful and left a huge mess for his successor to clean up, while Leon has made a mix of good and bad decisions, and the team overall is in better shape than when he was hired.)
@TUKB ( nee Slinky) awesome posts. We have the benefit of hindsight in rating the FO(see eg. the almost universal approval of the Julius deal, when inked). That said, I give a 2.75. FO has been hitting mostly singles, but to drag on this hackneyed metaphor, we only have one out. Leon needs a 2-run homer to vault us into a perennial 2nd round team. Hopefully the FO will do better at bat than the Yanks and Mets have recently.
I was torn between a 5 and a 1, so I split the difference and voted 3. Purely mathematical, you see.
@cybersoze
In order to account for Isiah Thomas, the poll would have to be changed to a 0-5 range. Or lower…
I’ve been a Knicks fan since the mid 90’s. It’s really hard for me to give Leon less than a 3 because I’ve lived through Isiah, etc. And while we can quibble with certain moves it’s hard for me not to be optimistic or hopeful about our future because we still have a great path forward to being a good team and at the worst we’re now an average team.
We got lots of young players. That’s rarely been the case the last 20 years. Young players tend to get better. All we need is for one of them (RJ, Mitch, Obi, IQ, Grimes) to make a big leap forward (as opposed to just incremental improvement) and we’re suddenly in a much better position. Even if they all just improve incrementally, we could be a super fun and competitive team.
our biggest headache is Randle and yet, even with him, we know he is capable of being an all-star level player.
Brunson may not be an all-star but he is right below that level and he is the best PG we have had since…Mark Jackson and Rod Strickland? I mean Steph was super talented but a headcase. IT’s been that bad and we have finally gotten our guy and he’s also still pretty young and a professional’s professional.
We have a solid coach. I get some people think he’s rigid or too old school or whatever. But he is solid.
We got a lot of first round picks. True, if we’re a 500 team or better none of them will be high lottery picks. But stars get drafted later in the draft all the time and we still have the ability to package those picks and some of our youngsters for a star if they become available. It didn’t work out with Mitchell. Sucks but it might be for the better. Another one will come along at some point this season or next off season. IF they do become available, we will be a team that will be in the mix.
All in all, I’m happy. I want us to be better. I do wish Leon had made a few more picks in the draft. But I see a path forward for us. We haven’t painted ourselves into a corner like we did in the past. So for that, I’m grateful. And this next season is going to be fun because our young players are going to play a lot of minutes.
I thought about that, 1 would be flattering to Isiah.
I think Leon’s family reads KB, because there’s five votes on AWESOME !? :O 😀
I think Leon’s family reads KB, because there’s five votes on AWESOME !?
We’re all knicks fans. We’re family. Only family can screw you up this much,
I gave them a well earned 2. The failed free agent signings (requiring assets to move, ill fitting or both), the Julius/Obi situation remains unresolved, hiring Thibs, trading a first rounder for Reddish with no plan or agreement with the coach as to how to use him. The ridiculous reported offer for Spida. After 3 years, I still can’t figure out exactly what this FO is trying to do. They seem to want rebuild and compete at the same time. A tough trick to pull off.
The mitigating factor is the draft record. Mitchell, Grimes and Quickley all seem like useful rotation players. Simms also looks like a good backup center. Finally, the draft and stash euro player seems like he might be a solid contributor one day.
So far, all of Leon’s vaunted connections have netted us is the low hanging fruit of his Godson.
This is a weird team in a weird spot.
On the one hand, the young and young-ish talent base is pretty good. The only players older than 26 on the entire roster are Randle, Fournier, and Rose. Rose has only this year remaining on his deal, and if he stays relatively healthy he’s a perfectly fine backup PG who isn’t going to eat into anybody’s minutes.
On the other hand, the other two older players (Randle and Fournier) both have multiple years remaining on their deals, and both figure to get about ten million minutes a piece, blocking younger and probably better players. There is now another big long-term contract on the books that was given to a player (RJ) who has had a devil of a time trying to throw the ball into the basket.
At a glance, the roster looks somewhat promising. But when you dig into it, it just doesn’t seem to fit together well. There aren’t enough strong wing defenders, there’s not really enough shooting, and there are too many shots built into the offense that will be taken by low-eFG% players. We could have had a few more promising young players added to the mix, but those opportunities were frittered away with draft pick paper clip trading cuteness that has so far amounted to pretty much nothing.
As of now there’s not much of a path forward to truly meaningful basketball unless Julius Randle and RJ Barrett start playing a lot better. Doesn’t seem like a great bet to me. There are problems with the roster, and Leon needs to show me he knows how to solve them before I give him anything better than a 2.
“In simple terms, imagine you have the opportunity to invest in either gold or pork bellies. You choose pork bellies, and you double your money. Had you chosen gold, though, you would have returned 10X. So as your evaluator, I can’t ignore what you could have done and give you good marks for your trade.”
You’re forgetting that Orange Juice, Oil and Silver markets crashed and Leon avoided all those shit sandwiches. He doubled the money with Pork in a short time. Those are historically above average returns for us Knick fans. It matters very little that he didnt pull a Cathy Wood and 10X-ed first two years, then blew it all up in year three and got fired. If he improves the team at this rate, we’ll be an EC contender in 2-3 years. Slow and steady…
Great Moves:
– Ed Davis (NYK MVP) arbitrage
– Drafting Immanuel Quickley
– Trading down and drafting Grimes
– Trading down for two 2nds
– Derrick Rose trade
– Burks signing & re-up
– Noel’s original deal
– Drafting Sims
– Trading pick 11 for 3 future 1sts
– Hartenstein signing
– Waiving Elfrid “The Plague” Payton
– Signing Theo Pinson
Good Moves:
– Taj
– Drafting Obi Toppin
– Brunson signing?
– Mitch extension
Bad Moves:
– Charring pick 19
– Evan Fournier signing
– Walker signing
– RJ extension
– Noel’s 2nd deal
– Keels?
Very Bad Moves:
– Randle extension
Worst Moves:
– Cam Reddish incineration
– Letting Theo Pinson walk
Moves I’m forgetting:
– ???
He’s made very shrewd moves overall, but it’s still a hung jury until he can acquire a star.
I have him a 3 btw
F+
***Hey everyone, it’s Silky here***
So, are we all accounted for now? (I was worried about Silky. Hadn’t heard from his since he was in LA. Was afraid maybe he’d visited Santa Monica after dark. Phew)
Oh yeah, I should mention that LABlogger gave me lots of great recs. I had a great time visiting, and got a good taste of LA given the six days I had. I ended up doing Malibu, Venice, the Wisdom Tree trail, a bunch of dives (HMS Bounty being a highlight, as was mentioned before), a couple of great restaurants (capped off by a great visit to Orsa & Winston downtown), quite a few museums (of which the Getty was the most impressive), a bit of Silver Lake and Echo Park (no Zebulon visit was in the cards this time, however) and lots of other fun. I also tried biking in LA, which was an experience, since I almost got hit like twice (I’m a fairly experienced city cyclist). All in all, it was a lovely time.
Stuff like not trading for Russell Westbrook will not impact my grade.
***Moves I’m forgetting:
– ???***
Um… not trading for Mitchell? (or for Dejounte Murray).
I can’t see how anyone can choose anything other than a 2 or 3. I chose 3 because the team will be fun to watch and there is a possibility that a major deal can happen. But for all the negatives stated above, 2 is certainly fair.
4 and 5 are unattainable so long as Thibs is coach. 1 is a nonsense grade as we all know what a 1 really is (David Lee excepted.)
If Ujiri or Ainge took over the team right now, they’d be very pleased with the possibilities of the situation. That alone merits a 2.
I was about to say something similar. The team isn’t necessarily set up badly. A creative GM would probably be able to come in here and get this train on the right track.
Unfortunately Leon Rose is not really a “creative” GM. His moves are pretty vanilla. Now, mind you, some of them are pretty good moves and vanilla is actually a pretty good flavor sometimes. Brunson and Hartenstein are like the top shelf vanilla ice cream you get at Salt and Straw. Evan Fournier and the Julius Randle extension are like a pint of supermarket brand vanilla ice cream that has been in the freezer for too long and now tastes like freezer burn. Still vanilla, but bad vanilla.
The real problem is that what we really need is a pint of like honey balsamic fig ice cream or something like that. This situation requires creative problem solving, and I haven’t seen evidence that Leon can really do that.
***and vanilla is actually a pretty good flavor sometimes.***
Like the vanilla scented candles you burn while listening to The Range?
The bad thing about the fournier and noel and burks and rose deals was not really any of the individual deals. Even Fournier, the biggest overpay, probably doesn’t matter all that much. He’s still a great shooter. The problem was doing all of them. There was no real reason to lock that team in for 2 years.
Luka just scored 47 points (!?) to lead Slovenia to a win against France. It’s very hard to score this many points on a much more physical game than in the NBA. And keep in mind that here in europe the quarters have only 10 mins.
Too bad Frank wasn’t available to play Luka Stopper, Cyber.
Whatever I am doing with Seth Partnow will happen in about 15 minutes: https://www.callin.com/room/peak-tv-and-knicks-pique-with-alan-sepinwall-SXYtpwrcEa
there does appear to be creative problem solving going on…its just that the result most of the time is that they create more problems that need to be creatively solved rather than a solution to the original problem…
but…the brunson signing might be really underated and he could be the panacea for many of the ills..given no real pg has been in the house for awhile…
The first move an Ainge or an Ujiri would make would be getting Randle. You have to get him out of the way not just because he’s crap, but because he’s redundant of RJ Barrett, the guy you have to try to build around and bet on.
If Leon sees that, and executes — and then enforces it against Thibs’s inevitable bullshit — recovery is possible.
After that, you have to clear out Rose and Fournier. Marginal wins on the back of geezers can no longer be a thing. Not a single one. If it means Thibs walks, so be it. Would have been better if he’d never arrived.
” 1 is a nonsense grade as we all know what a 1 really is (David Lee excepted.)”
I voted 2 and probably stand by it, but I don’t think this is the proper way to view the exercise.
To make sure there’s some standardization, the best way to go about this would be to assume only 6 teams in the NBA can get each grade. The best 6 front offices get a 5, and so forth.
What that means is a 1 would be appropriate if you think the Knicks have a bottom 6 front office in the NBA, which is perfectly debatable, perhaps even more likely than not, even if there have been worse front offices in the not-so-distant past.
Go back and look at the chazerai roster we trotted out in 2019…have to give some credit to pivoting away from that horror show…
Listening now, Alan, and i’m having to take the sound down on my beloved FCPorto that is playing a Champions League game at the same time. I don’t have a profile, so i’m one of the undefined listeners. 😀
Well TNFH, I think it was the Dunc’d On podcast that rated every team in the Eastern conference’s off season with a letter grade. The Knicks were a C or something, but that is average for them and the Knicks ended exactly in the middle of the fifteen teams. So that would be a three in your system. Intuitively, that seems reasonable to me. There are just as many teams out there with mediocre or bad front office track records as teams with good track records.
And now i have a profile 🙂
Went with 2.
Alan, I am with you on the name changes although my initial choice was perhaps unwise. At least both of my bad mid aughts takes are buried forever.
I couldn’t figure out how to listen to the pod but if it shows up on youtube will definitely listen. Enjoyed the last one you did.
I think one of the reasons people are sour right now is because the Mitchell trade saga went on for so long we all thought it was inevitable, good or bad, that we would get him and then we didn’t. We all got kind of blue balled on that. Before it was a possibility, everyone seemed to be relatively positive about our off season after signing Brunson.
I think people were ready to go all in and now we’re waiting, yet again, for Leon’s BIG regime defining move that we can judge him on.
So we continue to wait. But I just again think it is kind of ironic that many of the posters who advocate for a full on tear down and rebuild would be fine with a 4 or 5 season rebuild but are now mad at Leon going into his third season for not being consistently good yet. But if we were going into year three of a tank job, people would say “well this all just takes time” and would be happier if we had more young high draft picks on our roster even if those players didn’t actually turn out to be any good.
There is no world where you have a ton of cap space like the Knicks had last year and you don’t put somebody into it.
First you try to fill that cap space with players that fill a need and match your timetable for contention (kind of like Brunson and Hart this year). But if that fails (and it often does when the team is not very good), you don’t have many options.
You can rent cap space, but typically to get any kind of worthwhile pick compensation you have to take on a terrible contract for a good but overpaid player (often for multiple years). You can be a scumb@g, bring in a player like that, and then send them home (as some teams do), but imo that’s not the way to treat players or run a business. If you play him, then you have those “wins” that a true tanker doesn’t want.
Typically what you do is try to bring in players on short contracts to push that cap space forward a year or two, but you still have to at least build a coherent team.
Leon Rose executes my team building fantasy and got my 5 fairly and easily!
Wouldn’t have changed a thing!
It’s hard to hold the Randle extension against them. He was Most Improved, NBA 2nd team, and the salary was not excessive. Even if you assumed he wasn’t going to duplicate that year, we would still be in decent position to move him as long as he played well. But everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. Not only did he not duplicate it, he regressed below his first season and melted down mentally with coaches and teammates. That last point is a big reason why we are in this position. Unless we do a swap for a player like Hayward that’s overpaid, but for less years, it’s going to be hard to move him until the trade deadline. And then, only if he’s playing well and acting stable with the coaches and other players.
As far as Thibs goes. He’s generally going to play whoever he thinks is going to get him the most wins. If Obi is playing better all around, he’s going to get minutes. The only way that won’t be the case is if they are actively trying to trade Randle and they don’t want to hurt his value.
Obi was better than Randle all year last season and Thibs started Randle and played him more minutes every game until Randle got hurt.
Whenever I see someone’s new handle I start feeling like I have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
Yeah, yeah, and that’s why last season he kept playing a player that was being detrimental to the team at a clip of 35.3 mpg.
I’m thinking about ZyberSoce… hmm, doesn’t sound that good… i’ll keep thinking… (head explodes) 😀
The problem isn’t that we’re not good yet. The problem is that the path to actually getting good is now rather narrow. You can see a path where this team gets to Portland-style faux contention in a few years, but it’s much harder to see a path to actual, real deal contention. We’re boxed in because we’ve invested in some questionable players, and now we need those players to produce.
I mean it says something when a vast majority of the poll gives Leon a 3, 4, or 5 but the vocal posters are the ones saying he’s doing a bad job.
It’s not narrow at all. We have a ton of picks that we can trade for a star. Just cause Ainge is a twat and we missed out on Mitchell doesn’t mean another star won’t be available. Maybe even a better one (and better fitting one) than Mitchell.
And yeah Randle right now is going to be tough to move but that can quickly change. Fournier isn’t gonna be an issue. His contract will be expiring next season.
Plus we got these young players who could all improve.
Also at the end of the day being Portland when they had prime dame ain’t so bad. They win 50 plus games for multiple seasons and had some pretty good squads. Honestly I will take that. There’s no real guarantee of becoming a title contender beyond just being a really good team. Portland had a year there where they were legit one of the best teams until they had some injuries. They got to the WCF one year but it was during the golden state peak.
Randle just signed a huge extension. It was in thibs and the teams interest last season to try and get him right. This season is a whole different situation. These things are fluid
So cleaning cap/roster retaining+gathering draft picks while getting COTY and turning NBA’s laughing stock to a serious destination means bad job?
WoW
If Leon Rose does a bad job then the Sacramento FO should be sent to prison
Alan, except Noble and KB Apprentice that have acronymized their screen names to TNFH and KBA, respectively, i think the posters that changed screen names are:
Hubert = Space Invader
KYN = Zorba the Knick
Silky = The Unbearable Knicksiness of Being
Swift = walkerandbendercornerstonessays
Totes = Poindexter Jenkins
vincoug = ThisChicanery
We have our own picks, which is what we’re going to have to trade for said star. Unprotected picks. The protected picks that we own are nice, but they’re so heavily protected that they’re not really very strong assets.
We’re locked into four years of Randle and four years of RJ, and yes, those guys right now can be traded, but if they don’t improve by quite a lot they’re going to get harder and harder to trade.
I don’t think the situation here is impossible, but if those two guys come out and stink again next year, the path gets that much narrower.
The idea that Ainge somehow acted untoward is so hilariously wrong I can’t believe I’ve seen it spread earnestly.
He had a player a lot of other teams wanted and got the best package for him. That package would’ve required the Knicks to give up more than a .500ish team without other stars should give up (as will the next one).
The Cavs are a better team with far more high level talent, so they could give it up without it having the same crippling effect.
That’s it. That’s all that happened. An NBA GM made the best move available to him. Newsflash: the next NBA GM who trades a star will also look to do that, and that also won’t be a betrayal of the New York Knicks.
Holy Mother of God. Cybersoze’s cheat sheet made me try once again to log on — due to (ahem) some life changes I have a new email address that no longer matches the one the system has, and I couldn’t start from scratch as Raven because someone had that name already (me).
But goddamn it, I made it. I voted a 3, because there’s been a bunch of good and a bunch of bad, and while I agree that the path to a chip is a mystery to me, the team itself has tons of upside and is more root-able than any I can remember for decades. Plus I try hard to avoid the perspective that every year 29 teams get an F. Even the shite is fascinating from a narrative perspective (i.e., what will Randle be); of course if it’s Bad Randle I’ll have to watch the games with furry slippers on so I don’t break the screen.
And you’re welcome, Geo.
If our “meh on paper” starts playing D and starts winning games then it will be reformed into “assets”.
Btw i googled Cavs roster yesterday to check how scary they look but gotta say that i wasn’t much frightened…A Thibs Death Squad game7 Team can make them cry for days imo
“Obi was better than Randle all year last season and Thibs started Randle and played him more minutes every game until Randle got hurt.”
Obi was better than Randle on broken stats models that don’t take into account that we had no starting PG and no real #1 option. We were forced to run the offense through other players all year. Randle was often both playmaker and #1 option. Obi could not do that job.
If you want to argue that if we had a PG and enough scoring from other positions we’d be better off with a lower usage higher efficiency player like Obi at PF, I’m with you 100%. In fact, this might be the year now that we have Brunson. But that’s not the hand Thibs was playing.
“The Cavs are a better team with far more high level talent, so they could give it up without it having the same crippling effect.”
What you are really saying is the Cavs had enough assets to pay way too much for an overrated one way player and save us from doing something almost as dumb.
“Obi was better than Randle on broken stats models that don’t take into account that we had no starting PG and no real #1 option. We were forced to run the offense through other players all year. Randle was often both playmaker and #1 option. Obi could not do that job.”
Obi didn’t have to do that job. Obi could have had IQ, who when released after the ASG averaged 16 with 4.8 asts (and 5.2 rbs) in still just 27 mpg (and don’t even get me started about that last week or so).
I do think IQ improved dramatically throughout the year, but that one’s on Thibs, too.
Welcome back, Raven. 🙂 Glad i could help with the motivation. 😉 Now i’ll shift my focus to motivate Mitch to practice FTs and Obi to practice 3Ps. I think last season i had my address book all messed, and so i probably sent 3Ps to Mitch and FTs to Obi. 😀
Alan, i can’t answer for KYN the Anarchist, sorry, Knick the Freak! 😀
I guess I just have more faith in RJ and Randle than others. I don’t even really want Randle here long term but I think last season was just a perfect storm of raised expectations that got into his head and caused a mental breakdown of sorts. I feel like he’s going to bounce back. Possibly in a big way.
And RJ. He just needs to put it together consistently and be more efficient. He’s still so young.
I also think IQ or Grimes could easily bust out in a way we aren’t really expecting to happen.
I don’t know. I’m bullish. Last year everyone had raised expectations and we fell short bc the stop gap Kemba experiment was a disaster, d rose got hurt, Noel got hurt, Mitch was out of shape to start the season, Randle had his breakdown and the team got hit hard by covid. I guess I just don’t expect all of those negative things to happen again cause shit balances out.
Alan when you see the twoshadedgreen shit on the left that looks like a tshirt and a shorts it’s me
“Knew Your Nicks”
I’m changing names to show that when you speak the truth it doesn’t matter who you really are!
;-ppp
We are willing to be patient for a well-laid plan that needs time to develop. But Leon is just throwing darts in the dark and you’re asking us to wait until he finally hits the board.
What’s kind of funny is that if Randle was the worst player in the league, and RJ wasn’t far behind, and we had no PG or backup C, how did we win 37 games?
Of our 6 highest minutes-getters, only Mitch had a modestly good BPM (2.2). the rest in descending order: 0.8 (Burks) 0.5 (Randle) 0.2 (IQ) -0.7 (Fournier) -1.6 (Barrett)
Musta been those 3000 Mitch and Obi minutes (2.0)
Or maybe RJ and Randle weren’t the two most detrimental players in the NBA? Seems like that would be impossible for the burden of 5000 minutes of those guys to overcome.
OTOH if we replaced their minutes with Grimes and Obi, would we have had like 50 wins?
Mitchell is overrated by the casual fans I guess but the Cavs are betting on Evan Mobley. If his offense develops they’re going to be rolling out 3 top 20ish players plus a mobile 7 footer who played excellent defense as a 20 year old rookie. Allen is going to be 24, Garland is 23 and Mitchell is only 26. That team is going to be a fucking problem to play.
I agree DRed. The one potential issue I see is that there is a bit of overlap between Allen and Mobley (neither guy shoots 3s) and between Garland and Mitchell (both are ball dominant defensively challenged combo guards). But if they can make it work, should be fun for Cavs fans for a long time.
The Knicks were much, much worse on both ends with Randle on the floor. His box score stats were also horrendous. Similar story with RJ on both fronts.
They won 37 games because that’s not very hard to do!
If the Cavs are great because of Mobley it’s because they threw darts at the board and one was a bullseye, not because they outbid us for Mitchell.
To a certain extent all GMs throw darts at the board. The trick is to find enough darts without bankrupting the team.
“TNFH says:
September 7, 2022 at 22:40
The Knicks were much, much worse on both ends with Randle on the floor. His box score stats were also horrendous. Similar story with RJ on both fronts.
They won 37 games because that’s not very hard to do!”
The non-tanking Wizards, Pelicans, Spurs, Kings, and Lakers all won fewer than 37 games, and they didn’t have the two most detrimental players in the NBA eating up 75% of their minutes at 2 positions, not to mention mostly mediocre players surrounding them. Man, someone on the team must be really, really good! Glad we didn’t trade whoever they were for Mitchell!
(As an aside, in a roughly 300 rotation player league, Randle’s 0.5 BPM was tied for 83rd in the NBA. His WS48 was tied for 151st. His VORP was 1.6, tied for 71st. If despite these metrics he was the most detrimental player in the NBA, we shouldn’t really use them in the future in defending positions, should we? )
Yeah cause when the 76ers drafted okafor that wasn’t a dart? Just cause it was a high lottery pick doesn’t mean it wasn’t also a dart.
Nah I’m just asking you to give Leon the same amount of time you’d give someone who was doing a “proper” rebuild.
Put it another way. If you knew nothing about the salaries of our players or how they ended up on this team. If all you knew were the ages of the players and also how many draft picks we had over the next four drafts, would you think we were in a good position? If IQ and Grimes were picked higher in the draft but the same players would you feel better thinking we got these two young players but they must get better bc they were high draft picks?
IQ, grimes, OBI, RJ and Mitch all have an incredible opportunity to get much much better than they are over the next few seasons.
***Also at the end of the day being Portland when they had prime dame ain’t so bad.***
At the end of the day being Portland but without a top-5 superstar player is actually bad, because it was that star player that made them perennially one smart/lucky move away from being a true powerhouse. A ten-deep roster of decent players is not the Portland model, and it isn’t going to produce close to what the Lillard Blazers managed to achieve during their 9 years under Stots.
“The idea that Ainge somehow acted untoward is so hilariously wrong I can’t believe I’ve seen it spread earnestly.”
The larger point is, what’s the difference? His job is to do what he feels is in the best interests of his franchise. You can judge his personality however you want, but the only thing that really matters is whether he’s doing his job well, which is hard to dispute.
Okay, time for a quiz. There is only one player currently on the Knicks roster with superstar potential. Who is it?
2023 unprotected pick?
Derrick Rose, as soon as Superman reverses the Earth’s spin
Z-man, that’s a tough question. It requires so much of a leap. I think the conventional answer would be Barrett, and that is my answer. But the actual youngest person on the team is Keels, who just turned 19 and is two or three years younger than everyone else. He could turn into anything. The only two others might be Randle, if he has a second all NBA season, or maybe Reddish if he stops getting injured and puts it together mentally. I really like Grimes, but I think he tops out as Klay Thompson and I’m not sure Klay qualifies as a superstar.
Maybe you have a different concept of superstar, but for me it’s a Top10 player. Donovan Mitchell is not a superstar on my book, he’s a star, a Top20 or Top30 player. So my answer is no one, we don’t have a single player with superstar potential.
Now if we have a player that might be a #2 option on a very good team, then that player is RJ. But a lot has to go right for this to happen.
This is correct. We were 25-38 and still decided to keep trying to win, ping pong balls be damned, resulting in a 12-7 end of the season. With 2 wins against Washington, that was what got us ahead of them. We didn’t lose a single game against a tanking team. And what’s even worse is that we didn’t shift to youth until the last 5 games of the season. Although Randle was out for 3 games they didn’t see the light and brought him back for 3 more games until they finally surrendered and sat him for 5 games. Seems like a joke, but it’s true. And the cherry on top, Burks kept being the starter until the last game of the season when finally Thibs decided to give the starting job to Quick.
Swifty, you’re on one. And since Jowles is indisposed I feel compelled…
I assure you that if someone was doing a proper rebuild we would grade them two years into it, as well.
Yes, I think we’d be in excellent position if none of these players had salaries that counted towards the cap.
No, but I’d feel better if we had the players who were actually selected higher in the draft, like LaMelo Ball and Scottie Barnes.
Answer: Cam Reddish
#1 – props to Alan who held his own + more in his interview with Seth Partnow. Alan – you were great on that podcast – honestly much more so than Seth, who I thought was pretty vanilla the whole time. You and I are pretty much on the same wavelength on all points you made.
#2 – I think the major problem on this team right now is – and I’m serious – this “family” atmosphere that they’re building. What do I mean by that? You always have to forgive your family and basically give them 1000 failures before you cut bait. Thibs/Rose/Wes etc go way back — way too far back for Rose to summarily dismiss him. This is a problem when you are in a business like professional sports, where the margin for error is so small.
Thibs has done his job – he has brought professionalism to the on-court product, and he 100% deserved his COY 2 seasons ago. The problem with Thibs — and I mean this in the nicest way possible — is his age. I feel it in myself, I see it in my coworkers and family and everyone. The older you get, the more set you are in your ways, and the more likely you are to believe your own priors. The only coach I can think of that probably got better as he got older is Popovich, who morphed his strategy from year to year. Look at the top 4 teams from last season – Kerr was 50 when he started coaching the Dubs, and by all accounts is a truly exceptional person and mind even outside of basketball. Kidd is 49 and seems to have made some adjustments from when he coached the Nets/Bucks. Udoka is 45. Spoelstra was 38 when he started with Miami. Brad Stevens was like 12 when he started with the Celts, and now Ainge has hired Will Hardy who I think just got out of diapers.
Thibs was in his early 60s when he started with the Knicks. there is no chance that he is going to change his ways, and even if he does, I would bet a lot of $ that when the going gets tough, he will reflexively go back to what worked in 1997.
We all see this, and I highly doubt Rose and co. don’t see it also. But they go way too far back for Rose to dump him 14 months after winning COY.
I like the Jalen Brunson signing, but when you sign your godson, are you going to be willing to trade him if that’s the best move for your team? Seems unlikely to me. Or at least it will be much harder than it should be.
Answer: Cam Reddish
********************
I can see the logic behind this. Reddish is really the only guy on the roster with the size and athleticism that superstars tend to have, and he has a ton of skill. They should clearly try to play and develop him.
Reddish tops out at a 1; RJ as a 1A. It’s way more likely RJ becomes a 1A, though.
Wow, that’s a hot take for sure. Is there a superstar that couldn’t break into the rotation on his 3rd year? :O
Grimes wasn’t even the best pick in his slot, much less a proper substitute for a high lottery pick. Bones Hyland would have been way better.
New thread!
“Is there a superstar that couldn’t break into the rotation on his 3rd year?”
All bets are off when dealing with a stubborn lunatic like Thibs.
It’s really more of a critique of our young players than a compliment to Reddish. Still, think of the way it took Wiggins to become anything decent. Cam has really special physical tools and skills and shoots 90% from the line. He was rated higher than RJ and Zion out of HS.
I’m not advocating that we max him or anything. Just would like for him to get a really good look before cutting bait. He did cost us a coveted #1 pick.