[news.google.com] — Saturday, November 26, 2022 2:25:21 AM
Memphis plays New York on 3-game road skid The Associated Press – en Espa?ol
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Brooklyn hosts Portland after Grant’s 44-point game The Associated Press – en Espa?ol
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 11:15:01 PM
Portland 132, N.Y. Knicks 129 | Agate | observer-reporter.com Observer-Reporter
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 10:41:09 PM
Jerami Grant scores 44, Blazers beat Knicks 132-129 in OT The Associated Press – en Espa?ol
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 10:35:09 PM
Simons Says Knicks Lose; Return to MSG Features Heartbreak in OT Sports Illustrated10 Observations from the Blazers’ OT Win Over the New York Knicks Blazer’s EdgeKnicks allow unlikely scorers to erupt in let-down overtime loss to Blazers New York Post Knicks vs. Trail Blazers: How to watch online, live stream info, game time, TV channel CBS SportsTrail Blazers vs. Knicks – NBA Game Recap – November 25, 2022 ESPNView Full Coverage on Google News
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 9:05:06 PM
New York Liberty: A Black Friday Wishlist Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 8:51:20 PM
Moose on the Loose: Critics hush, Brunson proven upgrade for NY Knicks PIX11 New York News
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 6:24:28 PM
Knicks’ Tom Thibodeau Not Concerned About Obi Toppin Slump: Very Confident in Him Bleacher Report
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 6:02:54 PM
Damian Lillard’s Injury Status For Trail Blazers-Knicks Game Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 5:48:22 PM
Knicks’ Cam Reddish: Out Friday CBS Sports
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 3:29:59 PM
Happy Knicks-Giving! 3 Things to Be Grateful For Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 12:55:38 PM
Portland Trail Blazers at New York Knicks odds, picks and predictions Rockford Register Star
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 11:31:51 AM
Horace Grant reveals Michael Jordan approached practices like they were games vs. Pistons or Knicks Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 9:00:00 AM
Ep. 178 Shock Jacques Knicks Podcast Posting and Toasting
[news.google.com] — Friday, November 25, 2022 8:00:00 AM
4 things Knicks’ RJ Barrett must do to get his game back on track Daily Knicks
83 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2022.11.26)”
Losing to a Dame-less Blazers team, even in a close game, should be yet another wakeup call to the FO that this approach is going nowhere. But it won’t. RJ continuing to play like crap should be another wakeup call to Thibs that he can’t keep giving the kid unlimited minutes and usage. But it won’t.
Time is a flat circle.
It wasn’t a game, it was armed robbery, with the refs wearing their balaclavas with style.
RJ Barrett was just obscene (but the Knicks’ coach used him a team-high 40 minutes), in a classic Knicks moment Jerami Grant got his career high while Anfernee Simons reminded us that in 2018 we drafted Kevin Knox.
All things considered an entertaining game and we had a shot for the win in regulation.
A lost chance, we missed too many open looks and played 4-on-5 most of the time RJ has been on the floor.
After 19 games I’m on par with my wins prediction, but I’m not feeling too well…
Stats Of The Game:
51-28. This one’s easy, the FTs difference was huge (40-20 at one point) and decided the game. Fuck the refs.
Play Of The Game:
Overtime, Randle ties the game at 119, Grant misses a shot, RJ gets the rebound and passes to Randle, Randle dribbles… and with 16 seconds on the clock he hoists a mindless three and misses… on the next Blazers’ possession Nurkic scores on an and-1, game over.
Grades:
Barrett F
He’s lost in an unbelievable spiral of regression and the way his coach uses him doesn’t help.
Lead the team in minutes and shots despite vomit-inducing statistics (6-22, 1-7 from three, 5-14 in the paint).
Slow, lethargic, ofter careless with the ball. Honestly he’s never looked so bad at everything, this version isn’t even close to last year’s.
He needs a reboot.
Randle C +
Not too many mistakes, he can’t go too long without making an infuriating choice but I can live most of the time with this type of Randle, especially with the artist known as Obi in his “opaque period”.
Grimes B-
Slowly rounding into form and showing interesting chops as a passer (5 ast). One of the few Knicks that try to move on offense. Now he needs to refind his stroke.
Robinson B
Some very good stretches, his presence changed the energy of the defense, alas he fouled out too early. And please man, work on the free throws…
Brunson B +
Barely missed the winning shot but lead the team all night long.
Few assists, but that’s his teammates’ fault.
Great addition, a little bit wasted if some of his teammates don’t wake up.
IQ B
The microwave was hot at the start, not so much later. Good effort on defense, usual work on the boards and 5 assists.
Sims B
Nice effort, it’s a shame we wasted his heroics.
Hartenstein C
Our inability to use him on offense is a stark contrast over the way Lue used him.
Thibs must have lost his notebooks about Noah and high-post offense.
McBride B
Careful defense and a couple of drives, can’t be upset with his performance.
Obi C-
The living proof that plus/minus is a useless stat.
I don’t know where he’s gone, but it’s a place unconfortably close to Barrett-Land.
Fournier DNP-CD
Can he really be worse than RJ in night like this? I don’t think so.
Thibs C-
Nice mix of personnel for most of the game, stuck way too much with RJ when the game was on the line.
Too many times our halfcourt offense is a swamp, with players moving as if they’re ankle deep in mud.
RE: RJ Barrett
Until the start of this season we debated ad nauseam if he can ever become a star, with many settling on “3rd or 4th option on a good team”, not great for the 3rd pick in a draft but still a very useful player.
Truth is, it’s not (only) the bad shooting, this player is not even close to what he was last year or even the year before.
Listless on defense, careless with the ball, often inattentive, slow of feet and hands, stubborn in his predictable forays at the rim.
I don’t know if the new contract put too much pressure on him to be “a star”, or if this summer trade rumors put a dent in his confidence.
Or maybe he’s injured, maybe he has some personal issues… I really don’t know.
But this is not the, far from perfect but useful, RJ Barrett we knew (I said it again: it’s not the shots not falling) and Thibs is not helping him.
Does he need to be removed from the starting five? Get benched a couple of games? Be traded?
But they need to do something, right now he’s costing us games and falling deeper in the hole, reminding me of Chuck Knoblauch or Rick Ankiel…
There’s a player that can help win games down there, I hope he’ll find himself soon.
I didn’t think I’d miss Evan Fournier too much
I never thought I’d miss his defense
But here we are
I was always opposed to the Mitchell trade, but in hindsight if it involved RJ, Obi and Grimes and a bunch of picks, it would have been well worth it.
Although who knows if Ainge would even have entertained it?
Poles all over the world saying to themselves,
“Ball don’t lie”
If RJ’s truly regressed for good into Leon’s burgeoning stable of negative assets, it cements the Knicks as being in the worst situation in the entire association.
Kristaps Porzingis — good player but injury prone and diva, impulsively traded for pennies on the dollar.
Frank Ntilikina
Kevin Knox
RJ Barrett
Obi Toppin
Lottery pick attached to move miniscule contract signed a year earlier as a buyout.
No organization can survive that. (*) Other discussion about the Knicks and their recent past and their present and their destiny can certainly be had, but that’s the airborne toxic event hovering over it all.
(*) The Incineration was dumb and reckless as fuck, too, but let’s not let that interfere with the primary point.
Agree w/ Max that it’s time to take a page from the Jet’s playbook and Zach Wilson reset RJ. He remade himself as a slasher( and also claimed to want to make All-NBA Defense), but he’s been atrocious offensively, meh defensively, and not so hot passing. The only positive is that he’s facilitating the accitank.
Keep playing him to get more ping-pong balls.
I’ve been a big fan during his “apprenticeship” but at this point, he’d be in the NBA even if this was still 30 years ago when guys stayed in college longer and if you’d picked him 3 last summer after three years at Duke and he was doing this, you’d be thinking unequivocally “bust.”
Right now they’re probably like the 7th worst team in the league, so they project to pick something like 7/8. You could package 7/8 with the Dallas pick and the Washington pick if it conveys and move up maybe — underline maybe — two spots.
That’s pretty much what they need to do and all the rest is noise.
Of course, there’s pretty much zero reason to trust Leon Rose with those draft picks — so there’s that.
Correction: FOUR years at Duke. If he’d stayed the typical BITD three years at Duke, this would be his second year in the NBA.
He sucks.
It’s ironic that some people are still complaining about the approach when the problem has obviously been poor drafting.
It’s way too soon to give up on RJ, but I have to say this period is more distressing than prior ones because we are 4 years into this and he has a solid PG that can score and pass available now to ease the pressure of trying to create for himself at high usage. He should be approaching at least tolerable efficiency this year. The gap between what he is and his own perception of what he is is HUGE.
The key is what to do.
I think the obvious answer is that RJ should be coming off the bench in a much smaller role behind Grimes and Cam. Cam is not quite proven to be consistently better on offense, but he has more talent and IMO when he’s focused he’s the better defender. He has the much higher upside potential and should be re-signed if possible. That was a good deal.
Getting from where we are to where we should be is problematical.
RJ is the hyped 3rd pick from an all out tank year, with a good college and family pedigree, and he was just extended. Benching him could cost Thibs his job. You don’t want your stars (used loosely) to revolt. Not benching him could also cost him his job because imo RJ is clearly costing us wins with this minutes allocation and this usage.
By the way, I think I finally understand why Thibs has been reluctant to bench Randle and RJ at times. It’s not a front office politics thing. It’s a player relationship thing. I think he knows that if he loses the “stars” (again used loosely) he’s out. That’s the way the league works now. The players pick the coach.
Every team loses a few games they should win. But the way we do it is usually at home and in embarrassing fashion. Jerami Grant shot 28 free throws. TWENTY-FAWKIN-EIGHT!! I do not like this trend- we are punching below our weight. Thibs has to figure out his personnel- and fast! Either that or Leon & crew has to figure it out for him. They both have a job to do and that is to give the team a path towards competitiveness and hopefully contention. I say let Brunson lead the kids in the starting lineup, and have a vet behind each starter- except maybe PG and C. We are fine there with Hart, Sims, Quickley, and Deuce. Let’s move Randle, Fournier, Rose, and Cam for vets to play behind Obi, RJ, and Grimes. Wherever that leads the team this season, I’m fine with it because we have firsts to throw around. And it needs to be done like yesterday. I’m not sure I want to watch anymore Knicks games until we have an actual direction. And don’t tell me an old school coach like Thibs can’t coach the kids…look at Pop. Granted, Thibs isn’t on Pop’s level- I’m just saying it can be done.
Just get the shit done Leon!
deeefense, I agree that Thibs’ job and RJ’s success are related. But nothing is more important to keeping his job than W’s and L’s. Playing RJ the most minutes and letting him take the most shots runs contrary to winning.
Something needs to change.
The Frank/Knox/RJ/Obi run of picks is such garbage.
We lost enough games in that stretch, even without a full out tank, to have rebuilt this franchise. Instead we got some fringe NBA players and Obi Toppin who looks like a bench warmer.
Jerami Grant is an interesting player. He doesn’t rebound or pass but seems to be a matchup problem. The numbers from 3 will come down but he can clearly shoot, score, get to the line, and defend. I wonder what his next contract will look like.
Simons seems to be making the leap, maybe he turns out to be better than CJ. Sharpe is looking like a future star. Hart is like a mini-Rodman. Winslow is another glue guy. Maybe Portland still doesn’t have enough to contend, but with a healthy Dame, if they gel and the young guys mature over the year, they could be a really tough out in the playoffs.
Yeah, Obi’s deterioration is pretty alarming. What is he doing lately that a journeyman from the G-League couldn’t do? He’s an energy guy off the bench except with no energy.
Portland’s a pretty good team, but they’re a good indication of the scope of the task the Knicks face.
Give or take, their two best players last night are in line with the Knicks best player (and clearly better than the Knicks’ second best).
In reserve, surplus to requirements for beating the Knicks on the Knicks’ home floor, they have an unquestioned still essentially in his prime, elite superstar.
They have a young guy from the ’22 draft with upside significantly in excess of the Knicks’ highest upside young.
And even with all that, they’ll be lucky to win a single playoff round this year.
“It’s ironic that some people are still complaining about the approach when the problem has obviously been poor drafting.”
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Do you really think you can remove “poor drafting” from “having mediocre picks?” I mean come on, that’s ridiculous.
We’ve gotten more or less the expected ROI from our picks in the Leon Rose era. Sure, ideally we’d have a front office that could beat that and we’ve made some objectively bad picks during that time e.g. Obi over Haliburton.
But if your “approach” requires you to be the smartest guy in the room and make the single best pick in every single draft, your approach sucks. Sam Presti actually is one of the smartest guys in the room, and even he doesn’t think it makes sense to approach the draft that way.
Halliburton is putting up amazing numbers. I love Obi’s entertainment value but we have some huge and avoidable errors on the ledger. And we should have drafted higher. Especially the year we took RJ.
Oh, but I forgot — the Knicks have the functional equivalent of 1.25-ish extra unprotected first rounders (*) Portland owes Chicago a 15-30.
So I guess the Knicks will be lapping the Blazers soon. My bad.
(*) The three they got for theirs from a smarter guy can’t possibly seriously translate into more than the stupider guy gave up for them. Dallas’s is worth something like .25 unprotected 1s, though I guess that could be quibbled with. 1.25 is a sound rough estimate.
Even when Obi was playing well I flagged his shot distribution as a potential issue. He has pretty much become Steve Novak, except not nearly as good of a shooter. That’s, um, not a very good player.
He’s taking just 36% of his shots at the rim (down from 45% and 64% his first two years) and converting just 57% of them (down from 68% and 72%). Meanwhile over half of his shots are now threes.
This was all well and good when he was shooting 45% from 3, but we all knew that was coming down and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It’s rare that I’ll chastise a player for taking too many threes because as well know the math on the matter is pretty clear, but I think it’s starting to become detrimental to Obi’s overall game.
When the Knicks drafted him 8th overall, I highly doubt they celebrated landing the next Davis Bertans. The best version of Obi uses his physical gifts to finish in the pick and roll, cut, and even post up mismatches. Of course he should keep teams honest by shooting 3s, but he’s overcorrected too far in that direction.
My best guess is he realized being a pretty generic stretch 4 was his best path to minutes on this team and he might not be wrong. So some of this goes back to our clunky, pinheaded roster construction. We’ve set up a team that makes a lot of guys look worse than they might be.
The Knicks basically have one exploitable advantage over other teams re: positioning and it’s that without Brunson we truly might be the worst team in the NBA.
Obviously, that’s not easy to actually exploit because we in fact have Brunson and if the Knicks tried to convince him to stop playing he’d be well within his rights to tell them to fuck off.
All paths out of this morass that don’t involve trading or “resting” Brunson are extremely low-probability events that are available to every team.
While obviously it is ultimately on the players, if you have players making mental lapses like this without any consequences from the coach, then how will it ever be resolved?
https://twitter.com/Tom_Piccolo/status/1596351098826424325
They weren’t remotely in a position where signing Brunson made sense. Like literally not even close.(*)
I wouldn’t be shocked to hear some kind of post-mortem in a year or two, when Leon’s gone, where he locked in on Jalen Brunson’s free agency from the second he took the Knicks’ job.
(*) Just like they weren’t remotely in position to trade out of 33, incinerate 18, or trade out of the 2022 lottery. Completely clueless operation.
While obviously it is ultimately on the players, if you have players making mental lapses like this without any consequences from the coach, then how will it ever be resolved?
yep. game was full of unforced defensive errors. the ot play where randle switched onto nurkic and then just stood at the foul line guarding air while nurkic walked in and took the the dish from simons for a layup was the most painful.
“The best version of Obi uses his physical gifts to finish in the pick and roll, cut, and even post up mismatches.”
The Knicks don’t do those things.
In fact, outside of watching RJ play himself to China, and the stupidity that is Randle, the hardest thing about watching this team is its complete inability to structure its offense to benefit its players.
We’ve talked ad nauseum about Hart and what he’s good at (hint – giving him the Mitch role isn’t his best version, and may be his worst outside of playing point, which in fact maybe he’d be better at).
I really don’t think we’re as bad as we’re playing, or as bad as some of the pessimists say. But we’re as bad as our offense is, which is middle school terrible.
It’s Pleistocene sets, and utter lack of accountability. I was quite agnostic on Thibs, he was maddening but interesting, but I’m really souring on him full time.
He IS giving kids more run, which is a positive, but it’s in a system that doesn’t set them up for success.
From Macri’s bonus newsletter:
Emphasis mine.
“But if your “approach” requires you to be the smartest guy in the room and make the single best pick in every single draft, your approach sucks. Sam Presti actually is one of the smartest guys in the room, and even he doesn’t think it makes sense to approach the draft that way.”
But that’s strat’s point….you didn’t need to be the smartest person in the room…just not objectively dumb in a key moment. Taking Obi over Hali was almost as bad as taking Knox over SGA or Frank over (take your pick).
The only caveat is that Hali should have gone no lower than #5 and some reputable teams (e.g. SAS) passed him over as well. Drafting any other player picked between LaMelo (3) and Maxey (21) wouldn’t have changed our current fortunes much. Hali was clearly the guy.
I don’t really care much about or blame our FO for any other picks and don’t care about the pick swaps, which on balance have worked out fine. That was a colossal, unforgivable, franchise-altering miss, just like the ones before Leon & Co.
Changing the subject, Cam is going to return shortly, and that’s gonna result in some hard choices. He likely would have been a big help last night. We just didn’t have the quickness-length package to handle either Grant or Simons. But Thibs is gonna keep running RJ and Randle out there for 35-40 minutes, something has to give.
Obi’s offense is a problem lately, but what sucks in a more lasting way is that he really tries hard on D and STILL is situationally terrible. I feel like there’s so much attention on Randle’s lapses that Obi’s D gets swept under the rug.
“I feel like there’s so much attention on Randle’s lapses that Obi’s D gets swept under the rug.”
True, but the difference is Obi came in not having a clue on D, and he’s gotten better (slowly) over time, even if he’s not yet good. So there’s still hope. Whereas Julius is a grown-ass man, who has shown defensive chops, and now has just stopped giving a fuck. For no apparent reason.
I feel like there’s so much attention on Randle’s lapses that Obi’s D gets swept under the rug.
it’s bc obi is an 18mpg backup who is basically drawing dead at being a plus nba defender no matter what he does. randle is a primary starter who showed for extended stretches in 20-21 he was capable of very solid defense and instead commits by far the most egregious effort lapses on the team while also being the most whiny about everyone else’s foibles.
Early Bird, I’m ghoulishly curious — who are the three players WORSE than RJ Barrett at the moment? Doesn’t seem possible…
Somehow, despite having very few players who can throw the ball into the basket, the Knicks are a league average-ish offensive team. They achieve this by rarely turning the ball over and grabbing lots of offensive rebounds, that mitigates the avalanche of bricks a little bit.
The defense is the more concerning problem. The Knicks opponents shoot an average percentage from 3PT, but the Knicks have surrendered the most 3 point attempts in the league. The defense is a mirror image of the offense: the team rarely pulls down offensive rebounds and rarely causes turnovers.
The young players are all stagnating and just about none of them are exciting. The best under-25 player on the team and best prospect is probably… Immanuel Quickley? I guess Mitchell Robinson is still technically under 25? The young player I’m most excited about is probably Quentin Grimes, and let’s get real, Quentin Grimes is not going to be a star in this league either.
We’re at the “playing out the string” stage with Leon Rose and Tom Thibodeau. Rose has no clue how to build a cohesive basketball team and the game has passed Tom Thibodeau by. I think you can probably find another coach who can lead you to the 23rd best defensive rating in the league. He’s a mirage.
“But that’s strat’s point….you didn’t need to be the smartest person in the room…just not objectively dumb in a key moment. Taking Obi over Hali was almost as bad as taking Knox over SGA or Frank over (take your pick).”
So the strategy is to hope that in every draft there’s a player who bafflingly falls to us, such that we don’t even have to be all that good at drafting to pick them at 11?
Sure seems like that’s nothing more than making things as hard as possible on ourselves with no counterbalancing benefit. I mean in a lot of drafts, there aren’t even *any* star players left on the board at 11th or later.
I often hear the following argument among Raider fans when they trade a first round pick for some aging wide receiver:
“We would have taken a bad player with that pick anyway.”
I mean, they’re not wrong.
“I mean in a lot of drafts, there aren’t even *any* star players left on the board at 11th or later.”
Won’t dignify this with the usual extremely long list (George Gervin, Gilbert Arenas, Kobe, etc.), just feel free to use that world wide web thingy to find out if this is false news.
Damn you, 15 minutes of my life down the drain.
These guys were either all-stars and/or all-defensive award winners.
Year Player Pick
2000 Michael Redd 43
2001 Tony Parker 28
2002 Carlos Boozer 35
2003 David West 18
2004 Tony Allen 25
2005 David Lee 30
2006 Rajon Rondo/Lowry 21/24
2007 Marc Gasol 48
2008 DeAndre Jordan 35
2009 Jrue Holiday 17
2010 Avery Bradley 19
2011 Kawhi Leonard 15
2012 Draymond Green 35
2013 Giannis 15
2014 Joker 41
2015 Devin Booker 15
2016 Pascal Siakam 27
2017 Donovan Mitchell/Bam 13/14
I DO think it’s fair to say that there aren’t many each year. But there’s almost always at least one star down there. Tyrese (12) and Desmond (30) being two in 2020 who will probably be all-stars this year or soon enough (and both of whom we could have gotten…).
2019 is arguably a year that might get skipped, with Tyler Herro (13) and Jordan Poole (28) being the best so far.
***Frank Ntilikina;Kevin Knox; RJ Barrett; Obi Toppin;Lottery pick attached to move miniscule contract signed a year earlier as a buyout.
No organization can survive that.***
Phoenix Suns:
2016 #4 pick: Dragan Bender (option declined)
2016 #8 pick: Marquis Chriss (option declined)
2017 #4 pick: Josh Jackson (option declined)
2020 #10 pick: Jalen Smith (option declined)
2021: best record in the NBA
(So, though the road to success with poor lottery picks is difficult and less-travelled, a good move or two and a little luck can really turn any franchise around, especially in this more forgiving CBA era. Rose hasn’t been good, but it is salvageable. There’s no Curry trade or Jeffries contract weighting the knicks down.)
2018 — Shai — 11
i think it may have been you al…
a while back i was doing some review reading on Atlanta when i was thinking of watching it…
the person writing the review mentioned some similarity to Seinfeld…i can’t remember what the comment connecting the two was exactly, but – while watching the Barbershop episode i kept wondering to myself whom Alfred reminded me of more: Jerry or George…
oh man, looks like kayla harrison is undefeated no more…i love watching her compete and dominate…i’ve watched her two fights against larissa pacheco and the second fight seemed much more competitive…
absolutely loved what larissa had to say after the bout:
When Pacheco was awarded the championship belt and an oversized replica of a $1 million check, she credited her opponent for playing a role in getting her to where she now stands in her career.
“Just like Kayla said before: I’ve always made her a better competitor,” Pacheco said through an interpreter. “Well, she’s always made me a better competitor. She drove me to this moment.”
that’s pretty cool stuff right there…
Reposting this from the end of the last thread because it’s sad but true.
we spent so many threads trying to figure out who RJ’s best comp is, and it was John Starks all along.
https://stathead.com/tiny/nvnWL
^ check it out, they’re like twins. Except Starks did it when scoring was hard, so BPM and VORP rate him much higher.
Brunson questionable for the next game
RJB turning out far worse than even the most pessimistic among us could predict is truly the Knicksiest part of all of this.
And Starks was an absolute elite guard defender
He DID look a little banged up. That sucks.
AD is slowly starting to look like AD again…just in time for him to be hurt again.
I do not agree. We got a good player at a good price. That always makes sense. Even Hinkie locked up Robert Covington.
I always asked myself how good a defender Starks was growing up.
As a big man stan my final conclusion that having the NFL equivalent of LT, Carl Banks and Leonard Marshall behind him was a significant contributing factor to his defensive success.
Also, was that a Sumner for Josh Hart or does getting a career high 19 boards as a 6-5 dude not qualify?
He put on a grit n grind show.
The defensive issues are a bit weird to me. Obviously the biggest issue is the 3pt line, the Knicks allow the most 3pt attempts and makes even though they are slightly above average defending it and are actually 7th best in overall FG%. It feels like they foul too much but they are middle of the pack in FT rate against so its not necessarily a big issue. Defensive rebounding though is a huge issue which is odd considering they were the best defensive rebounding team in the league last season.
Just been a really odd, up and down start to the season defensively.
It took almost two years, but I have finally won the “Leon hasn’t made any big mistakes so far” argument. (My position, of course, was “Like hell he hasn’t!”)
Not as satisfying as I thought it would be. Kinda feel like Earn after he ruined Lisa Mahn’s life. (Geo, that will make sense when you get to season 4 of Atlanta in a few weeks.)
“So the strategy is to hope that in every draft there’s a player who bafflingly falls to us, such that we don’t even have to be all that good at drafting to pick them at 11?”
It is not THE strategy. But drafting smartly is a critical part of ANY strategy. So is trading up, down, or out, if done smartly.
Me, too. I’m pretty sure having Oakley and Ewing behind him was his best attribute.
The Starks is so fascinating to me bc RJ really seems like he’s from another time. In 1993, I would have looked at RJ’s box score last night and seen 19-10-5 and thought that was a great game, just like I did when Starks would have a game like that when he missed 16 shots. Coaches, fans, and media would congratulate Starks for persevering on a bad shooting night to end up with a great line.
That’s ancient thinking today. But I don’t think RJ knows that.
Agreed, and that’s why if Masai came here and was, like, “Let’s do a hybrid rebuild,” I’d be, like, “Fuck, let’s see what you got, Masai!” 🙂
Even when it happens, the Knicks’ incompetent front office picks Toppin over Haliburton.
Not sure if you’re keeping up with the Pacers’ season but they’re 11-7 and Haliburton has a 6.9 BPM at age 22 on 20/11/4 with a .609 TS%.
The key is to stop expecting anything good to happen to this franchise. If the Knicks somehow won the Wembanyama sweepstakes they’d find a way to turn that pick into that year’s James Wiseman or Jalen Suggs.
***If the Knicks somehow won the Wembanyama sweepstakes they’d find a way to turn that pick into that year’s James Wiseman or Jalen Suggs.***
You mean like that time when they won their arbitration case to be able to re-sign Lin, then didn’t re-sign Lin?
Or that time they got gifted the Allan Houston Amnesty Provision and used it to waive Jerome Williams?
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is a big part of what the Knicks do, can’t just kick it to the curb.
The Allan Houston one at least made sense, since insurance paid almost all of his salary and since they were so far over the cap due to incompetence, wiping him from the cap wouldn’t actually have cleared up any cap room, so they actually saved more money by waiving Williams. Plus, Houston still theoretically could have returned from his injury (he actually did, and then promptly got hurt again).
Messi had an absolute banger btw and then some newcomer named Enzo might have scored the goal that sent El Tri home.
I have been having trouble processing what Tyrese is doing after checking his box scores the last two seasons. You could tell yourself he was defensively flawed as a cope last year. This year, yeah, I don’t know what to tell myself.
Yeah, but he’s got a funky shot.
Starks had very good lateral movement on defense and gave tremendous effort on the defensive end. He was a plus defender.
That was one of the greatest defensive teams ever assembled, those guys could all D up.
And he’s only averaging 19.9 ptz per game, so he’s no RJ Barrett.
@Raven
There’s nobody worse. They just aren’t 10%age points better than him.
As in RJ is shooting 31.6% and the others can’t clear 41.6%. They aren’t worse they just embarrass him less—slightly less.
Dillon Brooks, Rozier, & LaVine. LaVine is 2nd lowest & still 6% higher.
Yeah. Those Knicks teams were the best defensive teams since Russell. And one of the top ten all time.
Which doesn’t make watching Randle easier.
Speaking of Dillon Brooks, I say this every time I watch a Memphis game but I don’t know how he plays so much for them. It’s not like he is a great defender. He seems clearly worse than Tyus. Real NBA mystery for me.
I feel like screaming at their coach every time “The Dillon Brooks Show” comes on.
Ok, some positivity.
Good tweet on IQ’s defense
https://twitter.com/obimuse/status/1596624290216132613?s=61&t=tIr7SPmyLeArJUVGnicaBA
And good tweet on Grimes’ passing
https://twitter.com/iqfor3/status/1596598996910411776?s=61&t=tIr7SPmyLeArJUVGnicaBA
The zip on Grimes’s passes make a huge difference.
He squeezes a couple seconds of extra time for shooters to get their shot off. It’s the difference between an open shot and a contested shot or successful closeout.
Between Grimes’ passing and the burst (or is it just a sneaky change of pace?) he’s shown getting to the hoop I think his ceiling is higher than just 3&D wing. I’m excited to see how he looks offensively when the three is falling. Dude’s gotta hit threes consistently though.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/jalen-brunson-questionable-for-knicks-game-against-grizzlies/
Deuce and IQ better be ready to roll
https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/jalen-brunson-questionable-for-knicks-game-against-grizzlies/
Deuce and IQ better be ready to roll
(no relationship between the double post and my irrational love for Deuce)
No conscious relationship. 😉
Just saw Bryce Young in a Dr Pepper commercial during the USC game. He’s a college quarterback doing a national tv spot, hitherto unheard of, for those who don’t know.
I was told this would be the end of the world but it made me really want to drink Dr Pepper instead.
Man, Lebron is so fucking good. The rest of his team is so garbage, but he is so good.
Keldon Johnson likes the RJ Barrett comparison to him so much that he’s decided to just start shooting like crap on a very high usage.
“No conscious relationship. 😉”
lol!
“It took almost two years, but I have finally won the “Leon hasn’t made any big mistakes so far” argument. (My position, of course, was “Like hell he hasn’t!”)”
Fair enough. Most of us knew it was a significant mistake at the time. Not sure that anyone predicted that Hali would become arguably the best player of the entire draft. And as I said, we had a lot of company. The Ringer had Hali at #9, with Killian Hayes at #1 and Tyrell Terry at #8. Lots of big boards had Obi ranked over Hali. SI had Hali 4th but Killian Hayes 5th and Obi 7th. The Spurs passed him over for Vassell, who is developing nicely but is not Tyrese Haliburton.
And despite Obi’s recent slump, at least he and IQ are legit rotation players; in fact, of players from the 2020 draftwho have played at least 1800 minutes:
-Obi is 4th in WS48, tied for 10th in total WS, 5th in BPM, and 8th in VORP
-IQ is tied for 9th in WS48, 6th in total WS, tied for 5th in BPM, and 5th in VORP
Now the trajectory for Obi is alarming because that’s not what you hope for when you pick the oldest guy in the draft (he’ll be 25 before the end of the season!) That they were considering trading up for Duarte or Davion is also troubling. They obviously don’t like to draft the 18-19yo project type unless it’s in the second round (Roku, Keels).
But Hali was a very mature 20yo with a high b-ball IQ and great size, length and shooting numbers. Still don’t get why so many teams passed on him once the “big-3” were gone.
Anyone else starting to worry that the Mavs are going to wind up not conveying their first rounder to us this year?
Dallas is 6th in SRS. They’ll be fine if Luka stays healthy.
But fingers crossed they just keep straddling that protection border and fall on the conveying side.
The odd thing is this front office has done well with late first round picks and second round picks, just not with top ten picks. I don’t know why.