Knicks Morning News (2022.12.27)

swifty, hope you are just bluffing, we “hope springs eternal” types need you!

Nothing that happened these past 2 weeks should be particularly surprising. We are an undersized lunchpail team with glaring weaknesses. We are now at the point in the season where teams are settling in and reckoning with their own realities. Philly is much better than us and a legit title contender with two MVP-level players and a strong supporting cast (and Maxey didn’t play so we lost even though the ITH was still at it.) In other words, if you went back to the original DAL game and said we would go 7-3 in the next 10 I would have been fine with that.

The fivesome of Brunson, RJ, Grimes, IQ and Deuce is going to hurt us vs. teams with lengthy scoring wings like Harden, Siakam and DeRozan. Now that there’s ample film from our winning streak after the rotation change out there, we are being exposed in that regard. I don’t think DAL has the same formula as the 3 teams we just faced, so it would be disappointing if we lost in the same fashion, but not necessarily surprising.

Still, I don’t think it’s a problem that we have to solve right now. Let’s see what happens between now and the trade deadline. Beyond that, I’d be fine rolling with whatever we have for the rest of the season.

While I *love* our young guys, stepping back from that, there’s only three kinds of trades I’d do by the deadline:

1) Trading any/all of the banished trio for anything or nothing, but not with anything of note attached.

2) Trading Fournier for an equally bad contract if if brings back draft equity

3) Packaging any 2-3 of our young players and a pick or two for a legit core piece who shakes loose from a team who “gives up” as a playoff team. Kuzma, LaVine and Oubre do not qualify. OG does.

“Mitch has the highest overall on/off on the team, we’re 11.4 PTS/100 worse with him off the floor. He might add the most value relative to his salary on the team. We pretty much just shouldn’t trade him, period.”

I would be fine with trading Mitch for an impactful guard or wing player. As good as he is at what he does, he’s still very limited in some significant ways.

The problem is that you couldn’t possibly get the return for Mitch on his own that would justify trading him. Seriously, what is the market for him? How many teams would he start for? Would anyone give you more than a heavily protected first?

So unless you package him with someone else in a blockbuster for a star, you might as well keep him.

If we are serious about winning more games, one guy I would consider trading for is Jae Crowder, assuming you can prove that he is healthy, in shape, and not washed up. Not sure how you’d make it work with Fournier, but he’s sort of what we need.

These last 3 games were good indicator games…two teams trying to shake off a malaise and one legit contender missing its starting PG but still formidable.

Clearly we don’t belong anywhere near the “contender” discussion. The only thing left to ascertain is what side of the “middle of the pack” we are on. My guess is that we are smack in the middle. Any of those teams can beat us when their best players go off or some role player has a career night or they just don’t miss from 3, and we can beat any of them the same way. The CHI and TOR games showed that, and tonight’s game is another example.

Since there’s nothing we can do to change that, we can either stay put or make a move that moves us more towards the top of the middle group. I’d prefer the former because we would probably wind up with a better draft slot.

Let’s face it, a Big 3 of Randle, RJ and Brunson doesn’t scare anyone. Unless Grimes or IQ go into turbodrive, this is pretty much it. Bringing in a merc like Crowder or Gordon or Kuzma just muddles things.

My sense is that most folks use the word “albatross” to describe a contract that has almost no likelyhood of being traded for anything near neutral value, i.e. will never be movable without attaching assets, or in a deal for a better player. Amare. John Wall. Chandler Parsons. Eddy Curry. You might say Zach LaVine is flirting with being one due to his knee. It is probably the worst possible adjective you can attach to a player or contract, except maybe “cancer.”

Referring to a healthy 27yo Randle who was one season removed from being all-NBA as an albatross even before his extension kicked in was never really appropriate. It was certainly a “worrisome” contract, kind of like RJ’s is right now. And similarly, it was always one that should have been viewed with patience, rather than dumped via sweetener at rock bottom value.

I’m just glad we aren’t watching him play this way for another team after using significant draft capital to dump him. Not that I love his game all that much, or that I’d mind if we traded him in a neutral to positive deal, my only quibble is in terms of asset valuation and management.