Knicks Morning News (2022.09.12)

I don’t see the point of debating whether we should buyout or play Westbrook because this trade will never, ever happen.

The Lakers are saving those picks for real difference makers, not an awful contract in Randle and a neutral-ish one in Fournier. They wouldn’t even make the trade without the picks unless the Knicks were the ones throwing in sweetener. Nobody wants Julius Randle.

If Russell Westbrook ever becomes a Knick we should waive him before he even gets a practice jersey for a number of reasons, but again, this is a less relevant conversation than those we’ve had about Toure Murray’s ceiling.

Today’s KFS pod raised a more interesting question, as Macri said, correctly IMO, that winning 30-40 games would be a failure.

Below 30 would give us a shot at game changing talent in the draft, while above 40 would mean it’s fairly likely we saw some player development that at least arguably outweighed the benefit of getting more ping pong balls.

To those of you who argue that things are just fine and dandy in Knicks land, what’s a win total you think would vindicate that opinion?

I’ll put my cards on the table and say between 30 and 42 wins would likely make me feel vindicated in my opinion that we’re directionless to an extent that outweighs the legitimately good things we have going for us.

Of course, this is an inexact science and the win total itself might not tell the whole story. I could still feel good about a season within that range if we saw a lot of player development, it’s just a little hard to believe we could have a lot of player development and still fall within that range.

“But despite their choice of the dreaded hybrid path to rebuilding, there clearly is a direction, and it is substantially different than the direction was under Mills, or Phil, or Grunwald, or Walsh, or Isiah, or Layden, or Checketts, or DeBusschere, or whoever I left out.”

Genuine question: what is the direction?

Are we trying to win as many games as possible next season? Because then we honestly shouldn’t give RJ much of *any* playing time barring substantial improvement.

There will also at least be nights in which Quickley and Grimes shouldn’t play much either. We also definitely shouldn’t have traded Alec Burks if this is the case, and arguably should have traded for Donovan Mitchell.

Are we rebuilding? Because then Evan Fournier and Derrick Rose shouldn’t play one minute. We also probably should’ve, you know, made a lottery pick if this is the case. My understanding is that’s the kind of thing rebuilding teams look to do.

Signing Brunson can at least arguably fit in to either plan so I can give that one a pass, but the flip side is Julius Randle now fits into neither plan. He doesn’t really fit into any plan at all. So whatever their goal(s), the front office shit the bed on that one.

I understand the answer will probably be that we’re trying to do a little bit of both or whatever. I said from the beginning that this approach seems likely to make us better than the tanking teams with fewer future assets to boot, but not nearly as good as the actual contenders. Is there any reason to believe it hasn’t turned out precisely that way?

Lest anyone think I’m being unduly harsh in suggesting the Knicks are uniquely directionless, let’s take a quick look around the league.

The Knicks are one of four teams with a projected win total in the 30s.

The other three are Charlotte, Sacramento and Washington, who I think we all agree are not model franchises and in Charlotte and Sacramento’s cases at least arguably have more going for them in terms of the future than the Knicks.

Washington is just a god damn mess, so if you want to argue we’re only the 2nd most directionless team feel free.

The closest team to the Knicks is Portland at 40.5, who are also straddling a rather bizarre middle path but can switch to a full teardown very, very easily if/when they decide to trade Dame. Simons is better than any of our young players and Sharpe may well be too.

Everyone else is in the 20s or at 43.5 or above. Now obviously not every team will be within reasonable range of their preseason O/U, shit happens. But almost every team has chosen a more coherent direction than the Knicks.

The NBA has left the middling team behind. Teams that don’t care about present wins have become too good at soaking up all the surplus future assets. This is just not a viable path anymore.

A Mitchell trade may well have been stupid, but it also would’ve clarified what exactly we’re doing here. At a certain point we’re going to have to answer that question. The problem is by the time we do, there’s a good chance all the present and future assets will have been taken by the teams that didn’t take three years to decide.

I think there’s an even more obvious problem than the potential for asset depreciation, though that’s a very real problem too.

We saw it during the Mitchell saga: if you acquire your *first* star via trade, you simply will not have enough assets left to get the second star everyone knows you’ll need to contend.

This doesn’t apply if you draft the first star or sign them in free agency. It’s a problem unique to the “trade or bust” plan.

Even if you’re lucky enough to have a bonafide star who fits your age timeline and your team concept generally hit the market, as we were on all fronts with Mitchell, there’s just no way around this problem. These guys will almost always cost too much to have enough left over for the second guy. No GM is going to do us any favors in this regard.

“Right now simply being a respectable franchise is of equal importance to winning. Leon’s moves are working.”

Again, “being a respectable franchise” eventually needs to be viewed as a means to an end. That end needs to be the Knicks being a contender.

I understand that the idea is that respectability will lead to stars wanting to come here via trade. What I don’t understand is how these future situations, if they do in fact arise, will be any different than the Donovan Mitchell situation. I promise you Danny Ainge is just not that unique in wanting a hefty return for a star player.

“The problem is that there is conceivably a path to 40+ wins that does not involve most of the “kids” getting better. i.e., Brunson is what we signed him to be, Randle gets his head right, Mitch and Rose both stay healthy, and Fournier is Fournier.”

When I mentioned our win total I should’ve made it clearer that this is my biggest fear. In Brunson, Rose, and Fournier we have a lot of minutes going to guys who can reasonably be expected to play to their reasonably productive basketball cards. Who the hell knows what Randle will do, but maybe he’ll be decent too.

Because tanking teams don’t acquire guys like this, 40 wins without much growth from the rookie-scale/recently extended guys is quite plausible.

I barely feel the need to respond to Z-Man because he’s once again decided to take potshots at me instead of answering any of the perfectly fair questions I raised, but the idea that I’ve never taken my lumps on here is nonsense. I’ve done it a million times and that’ll continue.

I said specifically that the win total itself might not be a great indicator of the success of the season, and Alan’s post makes it clear why that is. The only guarantee I’ll make is that I’ll give my honest opinion on how successful the season was from a long-term perspective regardless of anything I said prior to that point.

Leon Rose’s job is to make the Knicks a contender. So here’s the deal I’ll offer you Z-Man, I’ll give him his flowers when he does that. Seems fair!

That Reddit thread about Hartenstein is 99% tongue in cheek, but it’s definitely true that he’s put up some eye-popping numbers in a semi-decent sample size.

Macri’s newsletter today was also about Hartenstein, as he speculated that based on the timing of various rumors we’ve heard about Mitch’s involvement in a potential (Donovan) Mitchell deal and the Gobert trade, there was a point at which the Knicks were comfortable with making Hartenstein their starting center.

He’s definitely at least theoretically a better fit with RJ and Brunson (and Randle, bleh) given their propensity for driving as opposed to shooting.

Consider me Hartenstein-curious…

“The direction is clear: they want to patiently build a sustainable contending team.”

This is not a direction in any sense of the word, it’s just the goal of every front office in the NBA.

“Direction” refers to how a team intends on getting there, given that 29 other teams are also trying to do it and some basic facts about the NBA mean most will fail.

Leon Rose seems to think he can get there by trading for *multiple* stars. We know you need multiple stars to contend, and we all agree there are zero on the roster. We also know star-tier free agency is dead, and that the Knicks have decided to pick in the draft in areas that produce stars extraordinarily rarely.

I would posit Rose is the only GM who has chosen this “direction,” and I would further posit that’s because, again, it has a glaringly obvious flaw: it’s pretty much impossible to make two of these kinds of trades. You need to draft or sign *at least* one of your stars.

This is why all the comparisons to the Heat fall flat—they signed an elite player, a genuine top 10 guy, in unrestricted free agency. I don’t see anyone here even pretending we’re going to do that.

“I don’t know why you think that any of the young players will “depreciate” over the next 2-3 years.”

I don’t know why you’re pretending you don’t understand this. We heard multiple times during the Mitchell saga that the Jazz were relatively cool on RJ specifically because he had just about exhausted his rookie-scale deal.

It is obviously not the case that if our rookie-scale guys get paid, they will per se be better assets than they were because they’ll have improved. This ignores an obvious reality about rookie scale contracts: they drastically underpay even semi-productive players.

Obi, IQ, and Grimes could not improve one iota and they’ll still all earn more than they currently earn. The Jazz were interested in these guys because they represent value on their *current* deals.

In order for them to become better assets than they are on rookie deals, they’ll have to improve by an amount that renders them valuable even *after* they’ve been extended. This is a category that is almost exclusively limited to max players (not completely exclusively so I won’t rule out that we can somehow sign them to below market-value extensions, but it’s a silly thing to bet on).

If you’re going to say “well, if those guys are so valuable on rookie-deals, then Leon must have done a good job picking them,” yes! I’ve made this point a million times. I think the Rose regime has gotten above-average value on their draft picks.

I’ll just repeat that eventually all the singles and competence compared to past Knicks regimes and good vibes and whatnot need to ripen into, you know, a good team if I’m expected to worship at the altar of these guys.

“They have already passed final judgment.”

Do you really think I’ll hesitate to give Leon Rose his due if he builds the first sustainable Knicks contender I have literally ever seen? That’s nuts. I’ll name my damn first born after him.

The idea that Leon Rose has “cap flexibility” is popular in Rose-sympathetic circles but seems to be nothing but a relic from the time (pre-2021 and 2022 offseasons) it was actually true.

We don’t have significant cap space on the horizon without major trades. We have the worst contract in the NBA on the books. This is not “cap flexibility.”

The ‘90s Yankees were really good because they drafted multiple star level players and signed a bunch more in free agency.

That is the polar opposite of the Leon Rose approach.

“Yes, I do think you will hesitate, and will attribute it to mostly dumb luck after taking a very dumb path.”

This is such nonsense. I’ve given Leon Rose credit for every last positive thing he’s done, including in the face of some pushback. You simply want me to celebrate him before he’s even come close to achieving his goal for some reason, and I’m not gonna do it.

“Randle’s contract is currently bad, but a) it could improve substantially with improved play, b) it is not nearly as bad as other bad contracts that have been moved by attaching an asset, and c) we have picks/assets to attach without affecting future flexibility all that much.”

A is true of every single bad contract in the history of the NBA, B is just saying there have been worse contracts signed in the history of the NBA, which, congrats Leon! C is completely speculative, we have no idea what it would cost to move Randle and the fact that we’re even talking about sweetener shows just how bad the contract is.

“I believe he would agree with the characterization of the Knicks as having cap flexibility and that Brock Aller knows what he is doing in this regard.”

I know him personally. I’ll ask him in the morning.