Knicks Morning News (2022.12.09)

This is a lot like last season when we had officially benched Kemba, only to see every other guard on the roster get injured or get Covid. We’ll see how far gone the Cam situation is–if we try to patch this together with a Woodson-esque Hartenstein/Sims pairing we’ll know he’s all but traded for the fakest first round pick of all time.

Really sucks for Obi. Feels like we won’t find out what he is or isn’t until he’s on another team. Reasonable people can disagree about his ceiling but regardless we’ve botched this situation, and that’s only referring to what we’ve done after making the (very bad) pick itself.

Macri’s newsletter today makes the depressing point that all of our 2021 free agent signings, who accumulated $139M in guaranteed money, basically did absolutely nothing but take minutes away from our draftees, and convince the front office to incinerate the 19th pick. They’re all either now in the doghouse or playing for the Pistons as a result of a salary dump.

A semi-interesting what-if: the current team might be materially better with Alec Burks instead of Hartenstein.

“There’s plenty of basketball left and imo not much left to learn about where he is right now anyway.”

Obi Toppin has played a grand total of 2341 minutes, or a little less than a typical starter gets in one season.

Saying we’ve seen all we need to see seems a bit inconsistent with the approach you’ve taken in evaluating, um, other players, who were a lot worse than Obi Toppin and played a lot more than him.

“And that’s why I don’t read Macri’s newsletter LOL.

Look, it was a bad free agency.”

You don’t read Macri’s newsletter because…you agree with it?

It sounds like you want people not to talk about enormous blunders that have laid waste to the team’s current position, because, uh, it makes you upset.

Might I provide you with a recommendation: https://www.reddit.com/r/NYKnicks/

I am all for holding oneself accountable but can’t say I stepped over the line in politely recommending an alternative to someone who responded to me citing a particular newsletter by telling me he doesn’t read it

I did not think Swift was responding to the substance of my post in good faith and still don’t, but I apologize if he was offended by my recommendation.

A more sincere recommendation: read Macri’s newsletter! It’s good, and it’s ironic that you seem to be saying you don’t read it because it’s allegedly too pessimistic, as Macri is generally known to scratch and claw to try to find the bright side.

“But laid waste to the team’s current position? Come on…”

Yes, those mistakes made the team’s current position a lot worse even if they didn’t have implications for the series of unrelated transactions you listed.

By the way…

“24yo Mitchell Robinson wrecking shit in the middle on a descending contract that will be chickenfeed by guaranteed year 4”

Agreed this is a great development, sure would’ve sucked if we let him walk for nothing huh? Good thing no one was saying it in fact would’ve been all good and well if we did that.

“I would be a bit sad if we all had to reign in our creative juices around being funny because sometimes things land wrong (or are misinterpreted) and people feel hurt.”

Agreed, which is why I was a bit surprised Z-Man thought I was being “dickish.” I think my response pretty standard fare Knickerblogger banter. I also didn’t have a problem with what swift said.

I do think darules occasional posts in which he mostly just reiterates that he doesn’t read mine don’t exactly contribute to a thriving discussion, but I also don’t really care, which is why I said he was being a dick and moved on.

I have given up on telling Strat that the idea that we “had to put something into that space” is simply a falsehood. I probably told him 100 times but he never stopped saying it, so he kind of wore me out on the matter.

“Did you not suggest that he could easily get more money from another team that what we could offer him? As a way of saying that the chances were unacceptably high that we would lose him?”

I definitely didn’t, because I understand enough about the salary cap to know this would be factually incorrect.

What I said was *if* we were going to let him walk, then it would’ve been very dumb that we didn’t trade him at the deadline. That was true, and lots of people were saying it, both on this board and elsewhere. I never once weighed in on the likelihood, and if you’re going to pretend I did at least pull up an actual post. Again, these threads are still around.

I’m actually surprised you’re bringing this up, because you disagreed that it would be very dumb to not trade him and then let him walk for nothing. Now *that’s* the view that looks ridiculous in hindsight.

“It’s pretty clever when folks try to position themselves so that they can claim to be right no matter how things turned out. And now you twist my position to suggest that you were more right than I was then, even though my position all along was be patient and let’s see how things turn out, and if he walks on his own accord, it’s not a big deal (which it wouldn’t have been, as he’s a nice but not elite player on a roughly market-value deal.) Nice try, though!”

I have no idea what you’re on about at this point. I’m not spinning anything, my position was clear: if we let Mitch walk for nothing, it would make the decision not to trade him at the deadline of a season in which we couldn’t so much as make the play-in game very, very stupid. I feel completely vindicated in this position based on how he’s playing this year.

To be specific, I said “Hopefully we can all agree on one painfully obvious thing: if we let Mitch walk without having traded him despite confirmed interest at the trade deadline of an obviously lost season, we *seriously* fucked up. This feels like something people will try to deny if/when it happens.” (https://knickerblogger.net/2022/03/01/sny-source-knicks-mitchell-robinson-not-close-to-potential-extension-before-deadline/#comments)

You did not agree, and argued it would actually not be a big deal if we let him walk for nothing.

Now that you’re characterizing Mitch as someone who is “wrecking shit in the middle on a descending contract that will be chickenfeed by guaranteed year 4,” I am assuming you now realize that was wrong.

“And had they lost him for nothing, what real difference would it have made? They’d still have Hart and Sims. They’d still have his salary slot. They’d still have draft picks to pick up the next Walker Kessler or Jalen Duren that comes along.”

I don’t get it, Mitch is “wrecking shit in the middle on a descending contract that will be chickenfeed by guaranteed year 4,” but also, it would’ve been fine and dandy if we let him walk for nothing?

I agree with the characterization! But sure doesn’t sound like a player you just…let walk for nothing.

We also wouldn’t have “his salary slot,” we’ve discussed this. We signed him with Bird Rights and wouldn’t have any cap space even if his contract was off our books.

You know, I actually don’t think there would’ve been some kind of mutiny if Leon Rose said re: the cap space “we explored all options but didn’t feel there was an opportunity worth sacrificing our flexibility for. We will continue to explore options and if nothing materializes we have no problem giving our players a bonus.” The idea that this would’ve caused some untenable backlash sounds like the “you can’t rebuild in New York” thing that I also think is bunk.

Strat is just dead wrong that you can ever justify a stupid expenditure by saying an expenditure “had to be made.”

Simply not spending the cap space at all is always the bar a transaction has to beat. It’s not terribly high, but it’s also not actively damaging.