[news.google.com] — Sunday, November 20, 2022 6:45:00 AM
What Will Knicks Do With Jericho Sims When Mitchell Robinson Heals? Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Sunday, November 20, 2022 3:31:50 AM
Knicks vs. Suns: Start time, where to watch, what’s the latest Hoops Hype
[news.google.com] — Sunday, November 20, 2022 1:23:00 AM
New York Knicks at Phoenix Suns odds, picks and predictions USA TODAY Sportsbook Wire
[news.google.com] — Sunday, November 20, 2022 1:01:00 AM
Knicks overreactions: New York needs to blow the whole thing up ClutchPointsThe New York Knicks Are on a Fast Track to Nowhere Bleacher ReportThunderstruck! What’s wrong with the New York Knicks? The AthleticTom Thibodeau lacking answers as superstars Knicks missed on still haunt them New York Post 3 things Knicks learned from their recent tough schedule stretch Daily KnicksView Full Coverage on Google News
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 11:26:41 PM
“Marbury and Francis ended up bonding and uniting against Brown” – Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis’ short but epic stint with the Knicks Basketball Network
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 8:02:00 PM
Mitchell Robinson’s status Sunday vs. Suns revealed ClutchPoints
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 5:22:00 PM
Knicks Player Calls Steph Curry Greatest Player Ever Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 4:12:00 PM
Suns PG Chris Paul out Sunday vs. Knicks, to be re-evaluated next week Arizona Sports
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 3:42:56 PM
Cam Reddish Injury: How is Knicks’ Starter Feeling After ‘Fun’ Friday? Sports IllustratedCam Reddish could miss time after trying to keep up with Stephen Curry New York Post Knicks: Tom Thibodeau believes shortening rotation help Cam Reddish flourish Empire Sports MediaStrikingly efficient: How the Julius Randle-Obi Toppin frontcourt is paying off for Knicks The AthleticKnicks’ Cam Reddish: Exits with groin injury CBS SportsView Full Coverage on Google News
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 12:52:56 PM
Jalen Brunson owns Knicks loss to Warriors: ‘I played terrible’ Empire Sports Media
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 10:30:00 AM
Report: New York Knicks open to Rose, Quickley trade scenarios NBC Sports
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 9:59:39 AM
New York Knicks ace RJ Barrett issues challenge to NBA rivals despite embarrassing record The Mirror
[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 19, 2022 8:00:00 AM
Quentin Grimes’ status called into question with nonexistent Knicks defense Daily Knicks
48 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2022.11.20)”
Yesterday I wrote:
gkhenmansays:
November 19, 2022 at 20:57
If Lavine becomes available and he might the way Chicago is playing. I think he’d be a good fit, especially if the package started with RJ and/or Fournier. He’s not a good defender but, at least he’s 6’5 and wouldn’t pose the same obvious height issues that Mitchell would have. I don’t know who the competition would be or the price tag, but he is a legitimate number 1 scorer who would instantly make us at least playoff contenders.
Later I read see this:
Knick fan not in NJsays:
November 19, 2022 at 21:44
Ok you guys have convinced me, Barrett and Fournier for Lavine. I mean, how could Chicago say no?
Is this a personal dig at me? If so, why? It’s a total misrepresentation of what I said. Why the cheap shot? Please explain.
Nothing of the sort was intended. I’d love that trade, even with Lavine’s recent injury concerns. But no doubt to make it happen we have throw in some valuable picks. But I don’t really see Chicago in the market to trade Lavine
Did some quick research on the likelihood RJ ever becomes good. Queried players who played 7,000+ minutes within their first 5 seasons and had a BPM of -2 or worse during that time: https://stathead.com/tiny/xyXKd
tl;dr: it’s 82 players, and I can spot 4 who even arguably went on to be good one day. Naturally one of them is Eddy Curry, with the others being Wiggins, Rex Chapman, and Colin Sexton.
It might make sense to run a query using RJ’s career TS% (I think even skeptics would agree that using the current one right after a monumental cold streak early in a season would be biased) and at age 22 to see how many eventually reached a respectable level.
I’m not sure using minutes or years into their career is correct since many former top players didn’t even get drafted until they were 22 or at least older than the current trend.
Thanks TNFH. That illustrates the issue nicely.
Strat – Raw ts% has moved a ton over the years and TS+ isn’t available.
TNFH, thanks for the list. Interesting. I see at least a dozen players who went on to be good (perhaps we differ on what good is, I am using it loosely-eg Glen Davis and Kevin Duckworth were valuable contributors to really good teams). Agree with the general conclusion that the odds are not favourable for RJ, just not as minuscule.
If Lavine becomes available and he might the way Chicago is playing. I think he’d be a good fit, especially if the package started with RJ and/or Fournier.
really terrible idea for any team who can’t immediately contend to trade for lavine. near maximum injury risk with a second knee surgery in the offseason for a guy heavily reliant on athleticism. he limped through the second half of last year and has taken a career low 18pct of his shots at the rim to start the season, while mysteriously missing several games. there is a very good chance his team is going to wince when he opts into his age 31-32 season.
he still has current upside, so i understand why a team who might be top 8ish might try it, but it would be awful for us.
TNFH, how many players on that list were 22 years old or less before they compiled those minutes?
Owen, not to belabor the point, because I agree that D Lo was never my kind of player even at his peak. I’m only saying that at that time there was a perception that he was a 22-23yo top-3 draft pick who was finally putting it together after a very mediocre couple of years, and that his stats backed that up. Even so, I don’t think many people thought he was worth the max extension he signed. But more people were raising eyebrows about why Bob Myers would take on the utter albatross that was Wiggins, even with the pick included, than questioning why Minny would take on D Lo.
As it turned out, Minny got totally fleeced in that deal. Although maybe Kuminga was not the best use of that pick!
Markiten is just putting up absurd numbers after 18 games including a gaudy 64.8 TS%
So a change of scenery is all it takes. NBA GMs take note, RJ is primed for a breakout season, just has to be somewhere other than NY.
Lavine is actually a guy you could point to as a positive comp for RJ. He had his first really solid year at 25.
I definitely don’t want anything to do with Lavine. I never have. But I would begrudgingly admit he turned out a bit better than I expected. As PT alluded to, it’s very hard for to trust this kind of player type. I remember getting burned by Devin Harris in fantasy one year.
Same reason I don’t trust Ja completely. So much injury risk. Although he is obviously great when healthy and a good bet to make.
Yeah pt, for all of those reasons I’d rather hold on to RJ and Fournier for now.
Great sports day for me…Jets at 1, Knicks at 3:30…Looking forward to 2 big wins!
Chris Paul is out, and he always kills us…remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbdP_zr19Zo
TNFH — thanks for the list. Makes it clear. And compounding the worry is that, unlike some players, RJ has prolly been schooled on 3pt-ers since he was 3. In basketball years he may be approaching middle age, so capacity for change? Who knows.
Our offense is basically “Last one in the paint is a rotten egg” so it might not be ideal for RJ’s development, but I have to believe his only path to real success is hitting that outside shot. Even Randle who is like twice RJ’s size going to the hoop is only “special” when he’s hitting from downtown.
I didn’t know LaVine was coming off another knee surgery. That would certainly lower what I would offer for him. I still see him as a potential acquisition target for the Knicks.
RJ has to consistently hit like 38+% from 3 to justify his contract. I can live with the adventures at the rim if he can do that.
In addition to Chris Paul, even Knicks killer Cam Johnson is out (career high 38 points, the banked game winner at the buzzer and 9-12 from three in our last meeting with the Suns).
On ESPN The Suns are favorite by 6 points, but they’re 2-3 in the last five games.
If we play like in Utah or Minneapolis it’s a winnable game, if they come out of the gate as they did in San Francisco we can turn the TV off at halftime…
“It seems we all agree RJ is in very dangerous waters.”
Who is with me on the Barrett break-out game today?
One would think that Brunson could torch Cameron Payne…otoh Mikal should have slow-to-close-out Randle’s number.
A win in either of these two games makes for a very successful road trip in my book. I like our chances better in this game than in OKC, even with the revenge motivation. I just don’t think we match up well with the Thunder’s positional length, especially if Mitch and Cam are out.
I’m positive he will have a “decent” game, maybe for RJ this counts as a break-out… 🙂
Raven, I’ll go as far as getting on the causeway to the island…
“Who is with me on the Barrett break-out game today?”
Sorry, can’t go there, I got burned calling it for the Warriors game
***how many players on that list were 22 years old or less before they compiled those minutes?***
This is starting to sound like the Ntilikina discussions.
It wasn’t a guarantee that Frank Ntilikina would never become a good player, it’s just that he would have had to have bucked 35 years worth of statistical precedent because no other player ever would have had his development curve to success. RJ has been really underwhelming as a pro with only some mild unsustained improvement to speak of. Age alone really doesn’t matter as much as we’d like to think. What really matters is sustained improvement, of which Barrett hasn’t had much over a LOT of minutes.
This is a rare day when I might be just as excited about football as basketball…J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!
My rationale for the Barrett break-out is only that once the KB Hive Mind gets to near-unanimity it causes a rupture in the deductive ratiocination continuum with the result being a big F You back.
No Chris Paul today? The basketball Gods must really like us these days!
RJ has to consistently hit like 38+% from 3 to justify his contract. I can live with the adventures at the rim if he can do that.
not sure that alone would be enough. recent rj rhymes pretty well with the last year plus of keldon johnson, except johnson has shot 40pct plus from 3 on almost 7/36 attempts. i thought keldon got a pretty fair contract at $75/4, and i slightly prefer his defense to rj’s (though i think both are a little overrated on d). i think rj would need to improve a bit more than just reach 38pct from three to be worth his deal, unless that 38pct also came with, like, 7-9 attempts per 36.
Since we’re piling on RJ, anyone else think he looks a little chunkier and slower this year?
And (just to balance that crit), I’m with Raven. This this must be RJ’s breakout game 😉
Yeah, big game for the Jets. Some on JN already saying that if the Jets lose that that’ll prove that they are just the Same Old Jets.
That’s pretty harsh. They’re 4-0 on the road so far, with a very young team, which is rather amazing. So, falling to 4-1 would make them the SOJ again?
As for the Knicks, are they the Same Old Knicks if they lose today?
🙂
pt, RJ vs. Keldon is a good comparison. Difference is, folks were on to Keldon pre-draft, and his stock dropped from a high lottery pick to probably below where he rightfully belonged, whereas RJ didn’t.
I still think that a 23-24yo RJ shooting 38+% from 3 and his current 75+% from the line is a marketable player on his contract. Keldon probably has significant plus value on his deal, I doubt that the Spurs would trade him without getting a significant return involving at least one unprotected pick, and I think they could get that return. On RJ’s deal, I think he could be swapped in asset-neutral fashion. But yeah, the volume would have to go up as well, and that assumes more off-the-ball spot-up play, which is in his best interests. I don’t think he will ever be much of a pull-up threat from 3, unless they are all 30-foot falling down bankers vs. the Celts.
Sorry, TNFH, I just don’t buy the logic of a list that includes so many situations not even remotely similar to RJ’s. It includes scrubs from the 70’s that piled up minutes on tanking team, purely defensive C’s, guys that didn’t hit the 7000 minute mark until they were 28 years old(I mean, Marc Blount? Really??)
I think the question of how many players on that list compiled 7000+ minutes by age 21 (he’s now 16 games into his 22nd year) is essential. Even a guy like Evan Turner isn’t a good comp since he didn’t hit the 7000 minute mark until he was 25. We have no way of knowing how many eventually “good” players would have put up -2.0 or worse BPMs if they played 7000 minutes before age 22.
BTW, I just want to clarify that I am not suggesting in any way that RJ is headed for stardom, or even to being a good player. I’m only saying that the jury is still out and will be out for a while yet. For the record, I have never been all that optimistic about him, even when he played better during his sophomore year. (If you recall, I openly mocked a particular Paul Pierce reference.) But I think he can and will be a pretty good player once he settles in to the right situation and role, probably at a Wiggins-ish level.
as we all get ready to partake of this fine sports sunday…
let us not forget the sobering tale of one mister charlie brown, as it relates to his struggle to ever really connect with success, as lucy ever so seductively readies the ball for him to make his dreams soar…
“as lucy ever so seductively readies the ball for him to make his dreams soar…”
Wow, I never quite thought of Lucy that way…
🙂
“Sorry, TNFH, I just don’t buy the logic of a list that includes so many situations not even remotely similar to RJ’s.”
Gonna refer you to Donnie’s comment. At the end of the day you can always find something arguably distinct about a given player’s situation, but I haven’t seen much evidence that age should be weighted more heavily than NBA experience.
If you interpreted the list as me saying there’s no chance RJ becomes a good NBA player, you misunderstood the point. Sure, the jury is still out. Trends get bucked. It happens. It just appears to be quite unlikely.
For the fun of it, here’s the list of guys who accumulated 6,000 minutes by age 22: https://stathead.com/tiny/JukK0
The -2 BPM club is Sebastian Telfair, Emmanuel Mudiay, Ben McLemore, Al Harrington, Stanley Johnson, DeMar DeRozan, Tristan Thompson, Collin Sexton, Spencer Hawes, Enes Kanter, RJ Barrett, Eddy Curry, Zach LaVine, and Andrew Wiggins.
I went with 6,000 because only RJ and Wiggins are in both the 7,000 minute and -2 BPM club. I suppose this list is slightly more encouraging, but still mostly resembles a who’s who in high profile draft busts.
Even the success stories were showing signs RJ isn’t. LaVine had an above average TS+ by his second season, he got weighed down heavily by BPM. DeRozan had an above average TS+ as a rookie, though it took him years to get back there.
Pretty damning, Noble. Starting to think the Knicks should only pick in the second round, where they’re very good, and trade all first-round picks to avoid making continual crippling mistakes.
yeah, Lucy most certainly represents fate in the Peanuts’ universe…
the problem though doesn’t solely include his offense…
there’s a bunch of data now that says RJ isn’t that useful for a winning team to have out on the court…
as Private First Class William L. Hudson so accurately notes: end of story
“I went with 6,000 because only RJ and Wiggins are in both the 7,000 minute and -2 BPM club. I suppose this list is slightly more encouraging, but still mostly resembles a who’s who in high profile draft busts.”
But this in and of itself suggests that the sample size is to small to reach any meaningful conclusions beyond the odds being small that RJ will blossom into a top-level star.
I dont see the value of comparing RJ to guys like Eddy Curry (ate himself out of the league) or Enes Kanter (a pure C who was unplayable defensively) or Tristan Thonpson (a low usage PF) or Sebastian Telfair (a 6’0″ PG) or Spencer Hawes (a journeyman backup pure C). Collin Sexton, a tiny scoring PG, is a stretch as well. RJ is a scoring wing, and should be compared to other scoring wings.
So if you compare RJ to the comparable players, I’d rank them from worst to best as follows:
Stanley Johnson
Ben McLemore
Al Harrington
Andrew Wiggins
Zach LaVine
DeMar DeRozan
And that’s where I’m at. I think it is extremely unlikely that RJ will ever be as good as DeMar DeRozan or a *healthy* Zach Lavine, or as bad as Stanley Johnson or Ben McLemore. So somewhere in the range between better than Al Harrington but not as good as Zach LaVine, with a Andrew Wiggins-ish median outcome seems about right to me.
he’s being targeted on defense…too slow…
“But this in and of itself suggests that the sample size is to small to reach any meaningful conclusions beyond the odds being small that RJ will blossom into a top-level star.”
Who is drawing conclusions? I posted a list that demonstrates players who are as bad as RJ over their first 7,000 minutes very rarely turn into good NBA players. If you think there are circumstances surrounding RJ that make him likely to buck that trend, you’re entitled to that opinion.
I personally don’t. He began his career earlier than many people on that list, but he also is simply lacking in essential skills that players tend to demonstrate very early in their careers.
I’ll use a random but telling example: as a 19 year-old rookie, De’Aaron Fox sucked overall. However he finished at a 60% clip around the rim, good for the 66th percentile among point guards. It was clear the guy had serious skill even if he couldn’t be productive as a rookie. Fast forward a few years and Fox is very good, with his finishing at the rim being the skill he builds the rest of his game around.
There’s no equivalent for RJ. There’s absolutely nothing that stands out when you look at his career. He’s been bad-to-average at basically everything outside of low-volume 3PT shooting during the empty gyms season.
On the bright side Mitch is apparently available today!
There’s just nothing
Mitch is available today!
“Who is drawing conclusions? I posted a list that demonstrates players who are as bad as RJ over their first 7,000 minutes very rarely turn into good NBA players…I personally don’t. He began his career earlier than many people on that list, but he also is simply lacking in essential skills that players tend to demonstrate very early in their careers.”
That’s not a conclusion?
The Pats are making it look easy…
“That’s not a conclusion?”
I didn’t know you interpret the word as tantamount to “opinion.” So yeah, I am using the data on that list along with a lot of other data points to arrive at the opinion that RJ Barrett is unlikely to be good in the future.
You are clearly making an inference, which is “a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.” So yeah.
But that’s fine, and if you look at my rebuttal, I am not even disagreeing with your inference. I think the tighter data I used set leads to a more defendable, though hardly less dire, inference. Guaranteeing the likes of Al Harrington what RJ is going to get payed for the next 5 years is a scary prospect. Could he be worse than the 28,000 minutes of inefficient usage eater that was Al Harrington? Sure. I think he will be better than that, but how much is hardly clear to me.
First time watching the Giants in a few years; is this Jones guy the football equivalent of RJ?
Man, I’m glad I’m not sitting in the stands for this football game.