Knicks Morning News (2022.10.04)

Personally I don’t think there is anything wrong with criticizing the FO for choosing to trade picks on draft night rather than making them.

I just don’t see the necessity to amplify the criticism by mischaracterizing the return received for the traded picks, or inflating the probability that the picks would result in an impact player, including by cherrypicking those players after the fact.

It’s also frustrating when those who don’t find these mischaracterizations and the inflammatory language used to make them humorous are characterized as shills for the FO, even when they say time and time again that they didn’t like not making the picks.

There’s really only one poster who actively defends the FO in making these moves on their face. While his defense, imho, does not make a case for validating the moves, it does make a case that the preponderance of the draft-day moves are not nearly as negatively consequential as portrayed by the most ardent detractors. That’s just my opinion. I disagree with him overall, but give his posts a fair reading and agree with some of the logic he uses.

“cybersoze says:
October 4, 2022 at 08:05
This twitter thread is hilarious. Why do we believe the offseason crap season after season? 😛
https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1576996476840214528”

Right now I would bet that we will still be a bottom 5 team in pace. If so, I hope that interviewers like Katz will refer back to these pronouncements as the season goes forward. I don’t remember many questions specifically about the team’s slow pace during last year’s post-game conferences with Thibs.

My take on this team is that we will have a worse starting lineup and a better bench than most non-lottery teams. By Thanksgiving weekend we will be 20 games in. Early on we will have a 7-games in 12 days stretch where we play @MIL, @CLE, ATL, @PHI, BOS, @MIN, @BKN. It is very possible that we will be 3-8 after that stretch, and if so, the grumblings will start. If we start 8-12, I’d say that the under is in play, especially if a key player gets injured. OTOH, if we emerge close to .500 the over looks very good.

I hate to say it, but so much will depend on Julius Randle. For better or worse, he’s the one player that I think hitting the over depends upon most. If he continues his poor play, or if is out for an extended period due to injury, I just can’t see this particular team getting to 39 wins. Every other player has a reasonable replacement just by shuffling minutes.

If that comes across as a lack of confidence in Obi, it isn’t necessarily intentional. I suppose you can squint and see an Obi-Cam-Hunt PF rotation holding the fort, but I’m just not seeing it. And I don’t think Thibs will go away from Julius unless he becomes a complete disaster and the crowd mercilessly boos him every night at MSG.

“There’s no two ways about it, that necessarily means the calculation the front office made was wrong.”

No more wrong than the other FOs were in passing over Hyland for the many players who haven’t panned out as well as him thus far. And as I’ve said many times, the Knicks passed over him 3 times, meaning that they just weren’t going to pick him, period, probably for the same reasons that nearly every other team didn’t pick him (including teams that could have easily traded for the pick that he was taken with.) I don’t really take it too much to heart when our FO is no more dumb than most smart FOs in terms of who they value in the draft. This is not nearly as egregious as picking Obi over Hali in my book. It’s a blip.

In any case, what I mean by cherrypicking is that you can’t just pick a player to substitute in to the #19 slot. I’ve said often that if the Knicks had just picked McBride at #19 and Grimes at #21, the criticism would have been much more muted. IIRC, both of those guys were on your draft board as first rounders, maybe not before Hyland but certainly not grotesque reaches. That was the chalk thing to do, and they outperformed that outcome. So we’re essentially criticizing them for things we wouldn’t have criticized them for had they been less creative. Even so, they passed on Hyland 3 times, so they would never have drafted him over all the other players available.

PS if the Knicks drafted Hyland, who would he have replaced in Thibs’ rotation? I agree that he’s a much better prospect than Cam Reddish (and yes, I separate the use of the CHA pick from the draft night trade, they are not one continuous transaction) but let’s not put him in the all-star game just yet. And I’m sure you don’t think that it would have prevented the Fournier signing. Would he have made the Brunson signing unnecessary? Not if you think that IQ is a better player than Hyland already, as I do and I’m sure Thibs would. This is all conjecture of course, but interesting to think about in a what-if sense.

For a deep dive into Bones and his defensive issues, here’s a great Forbes article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelrush/2022/09/28/how-high-is-bones-hylands-defensive-upside-and-can-he-reach-it-film-study/?sh=5e09c7cca3e6

This doesn’t sound like a Thibs kind of player:

“the disparity between offense, where the Nuggets were a plus-2.4 with Bones on the court, and defense, where their opponents were a plus-3.9. More simply put, although the difference was rather small, for the season as a whole when Hyland was on the court, Denver’s offense was good but their opponents’ offense was better.”

The author goes on to say that Hyland’s splits were better in the second half of the season, but issues still remained. Lots of film clip-based analysis.

Just a wondering, how many people here would trade either IQ or Grimes straight up for Bones Hyland? I’m a no on both (although if Grimes keeps getting hurt that could change…)

I know that the debate is really Hyland vs. Reddish but that is obviously a no-brainer.

It is true that Aller and Perrin are very highly regarded. The question is whether they are being “influenced” by less highly regarded folks like Thibs and Wes. For example, it was Wes that kept calling for drafting IQ…possibly overruling Perrin. It was Thibs who likely convinced Leon to “run it back” with the mercs, who referred to Aller as Hinkie, who sabotaged Kemba, who kept rolling with Julius at Obi’s expense, etc..

It’s quite possible that Aller and Perrin had a major hand in the 2022 draft night moves, with the directive to find a way to create cap space without any dead cap, which I’m sure Aller hates. My guess is that Perrin weighed in and said there is no one outside of these guys who seems worth the flexibility cost of dead cap space to draft.

We can second-guess this to death, but it seems like a B+ to B- set of decisions to me. I really liked some guys in that range and would like to have picked someone there. But I like the picks we picked up as well, I like that Burks, Kemba, and Noel are gone, and I like that we have Brunson and Hart with no dead cap via a Kemba waive and stretch.

“Unless Miles McBride’s NBA trajectory changes fairly quickly, this would’ve been a mediocre-to-bad draft performance if it occurred.”

In hindsight perhaps, but not according to many draft boards at the time, including yours.

“Z-Man and I have our disagreements, but I’ve always felt like he reads what I have to say and thoughtfully tries to respond.”

Thanks, the feeling is very mutual. I think we have both flirted with the line sometimes but more due to sheer volume and semantic inefficiency than willful disrespect.

At the end of the day, we are both frustrated diehards who desperately want a return to at least the ’90s level of success, although I at least got to fully savor the greatest era in Knicks history and maybe am somewhat less aggrieved than younger fans.