Knicks Morning News (2022.09.08)

I think Julius was detrimental, but a) not nearly as much as TNFH is definitively stating and b) in the same ballpark as RJ. I think if he and RJ were as detrimental as suggested, it would have been literally impossible to have won 37 games without others on the roster being superstars. I listed several teams with fewer detrimental players and more superstars finishing with fewer wins.

More accurately, Randle and RJ were deeply flawed players who both did non box-score positive things (and didn’t do non-box score negative things) that other players like Obi and Grimes would not have made up for if they got 75% of the minutes at their respective positions. I’m trusting that Thibs knew that when he (stupidly) threw Obi under the bus.

Again, Thibs has an obsession with studying film. He sees nuances that don’t show up in the box score but that contribute to winning and losing. You could argue that Randle’s numbers were at least PARTLY bad because he had GIANT HOLES in the lineups on the floor with him in most of his minutes. A wing playing point guard. A center that can’t shoot more than 6 inches from the basket. A high-usage wing who had an eFG% of .466. A shooting guard who was a turnstile on D. So to single out Randle and ignore that context is fair but only to a point.

The much larger and more definitive point is that he was probably the worst player in the league RELATIVE TO HIS CONTRACT. If he were on a $7M AAV 2-year deal, teams would be happy to bring him aboard, or even had 2 years left on his previous deal. No one want him for 4 years/$100+ million.

“I don’t understand this at all. 37 games is simply not a very impressive win total. You can get most of the way there by simply not tanking in a season in which a bunch of other teams are tanking. Sound familiar?”

This is simply not true. Again I will point out that the Lakers, Kings, Spurs, Pelicans, and Wizards were not tanking and they didn’t reach that amount of wins, despite not having 2 of the so-called most detrimental players sucking up the most minutes by far on the team, and not a single legit star to bail them out. Of the 4000 or so team minutes, RJ and Randle were on the floor for 2500 of them, mostly together with Fournier, Mitch or Taj, and Kemba or Burks. So for the majority of the time, those two were on the floor with 3 guys who were below average for their respective positions (if you want to call Mitch slightly above average for a starting NBA C, fine, but at a 11.4 usage he was hardly an alternative shooting option.)

And remember, even the tanking teams are putting 2 much better players on the floor at the highest usage positions in their respective starting lineups. Doesn’t that logically follow from your assertion?

To reach 37 wins, either your assertions are obviously exaggerations (my guess) or some of the other 8 players in our rotation must be really, really good! Well it wasn’t Kemba. It wasn’t Burks. It wasn’t Noel. It wasn’t Fournier. It wasn’t IQ. It wasn’t Taj. It wasn’t Reddish. It wasn’t Grimes. It wasn’t Sims.

Yup, must be Mitch and Obi, closet superstars.

“Winning 37 games was just more important to us than it was to all of the other teams, for whatever reason. So we basically chose to get there.”

Really? The assumption is that the players on the floor are trying their best to win, no matter what the team’s record. If we usually had two of the worst players in the league using up over 56% of the possessions every night, even the bottom feeders would have a huge advantage on the floor unless we had other really good players making up the deficit. Whoever those players are, they must be really, really good!

lol angry chihuahua…what should I read into that?

As to Alan’s rankings, I’d rather lose Fournier than Rose. His contract is longer and he would get more minutes if Thibs thinks it’s best for winning. Rose is probably limited to 20mpg for 50ish games, and he’s not blocking Brunson, so that’s fine by me. But any vet out the door is better than no vets out the door.

And I’d like to keep Cam unless we can get something good back for him, or at least what we gave up (not including KKII)

“The Knicks’ talent distribution was a little bit unusual in that their 6-10 guys were similar in talent and production to the 1-5 guys. The starters were a pretty poor unit for most of the season, and many times the bench would often come in and bail them out.”

If you want to say that other teams’ starters were better than our starters but our bench was better than other teams’ benches, that’s fair.

But it’s a lot different than saying that we would have won more games if we played our bench against other teams’ starters.

Our bench was essentially Obi, IQ, Grimes, Taj and one of Rose/Nerlens/Sims/Cam/McBride.

Let’s say you had started last year’s version of Mitch, Obi, Burks. Grimes, and IQ, benched Randle and RJ , and allocated bench minutes to Rose (for 26 games), Kemba (for 37 games), Taj, Sims, McBride, Cam (15 games) and Nerlens (for 25 games). Does anyone actually think that’s a better than 37 win team?

The 2020-21 Raptors, coached by Nick Nurse and with the best GM in the league, went 27-45. The non-tanking Spurs under Pop and Buford went 33-39…must have been DeJounte Murray and his .509 TS% killing them, because they sure seemed like a well-coached team with lots of experienced market-level vets. Not to mention the Bulls, Hornets, Pacers, Wizards….I didn’t see any indications that they were not interested in winning.

Really, saying any old team can get 37 wins, especially one dependent on the two worst players in the NBA plus a couple of no-name vets and a rookie and two sophomores in the rotation is truly as laughable of a statement as I’ve ever read on this site.

Alternatively, maybe we should have maxed Mitchell Robinson, he must be really freaking good!

The only thing I am arguing about is whether in fact Randle and RJ were “the worst players in the NBA” as opposed to “somewhat bad.” When you make extreme statements like the worst, the best, the most, the least, and those statements can’t be verified except by cherrypicking or by attributing all blame to one source, you should expect pushback. For example, TNFH just said that Kemba was even worse than Randle. My recollection is that Kemba played the vast majority of his 948 minutes with Randle. So for that chunk of, say, 700-800 , minutes, who was more responsible for the combined on-off variation? RJ was on the floor too, how responsible was he? The team was 3.9 points per 100 possession better with Mitch off the floor than on. Was he also a bad player? How much of the poor offensive production was directly attributable to Mitch, to Julius, to Kemba, to RJ? Then there’s Fournier. The team was 6.7 points better with him off the court than on. How much of that was his fault? Is it less because his TS% was higher and his usage is lower? Or was it more because he was a fucking turnstile on defense, had a whopping FTr+ rate of 47, and was somewhere between Derrick Williams and a Coke Machine as a rebounder? Or maybe Alec Burks, the nominal point guard with the 15.7 AST% and the .378 2PT% (.064 lower than RJs!!!)

It was a shitty starting lineup with 5 mediocre to bad players and one pretty good but extremely low usage one who was a one-trick pony on offense. I fail to see the point of pinning that on one or two guys just to try to appear clever by making extreme statements.

Now again, if the statement is that Julius is the one who has to go because he was the worst in terms of what he produced compared to the size and duration of his contract, or that he has a bad attitude, or that he doesn’t fit in with the team as it stands, that’s totally fair. Same with feeling that RJ is not worth anywhere near the extension he got paid, or Fournier needs to go, etc. Just no need for the “worst player in the league” nonsense.

“I just find this behavior silly. TNFH is being clear and everyone here has the capacity to understand him.

Julius Randle had the most detrimental impact on winning in the NBA last year because he played 2,500 minutes and he was bad in them. Kevin Knox was worse than Julius Randle but he hardly played a meaningful minute all season so he caused no harm.”

Please stop patronizing. I totally understand what he’s trying to say. I simply don’t agree with it, nor do I agree with your (or his) contention that it’s “easy” for any non-tanking team to finish with 37 wins.

“I agree with your point about the flaws in BPM and how they apply to Randle, but it still seems like an awfully long way from “+0.6 BPM overrates his contribution” to “worst player in the NBA”. Like a long, long, long way.”

Funny how when thenamestam says essentially what I’m saying, Hunert doesn’t call him silly or accuse him of trolling.