– Huerter is from Albany 😐
– Jonathan Isaac might be a nice “buy low” candidate, he’s from the Bronx

Jose Alvarado and Kyle Anderson are both ok I guess, but there aren’t any stars in that group. Maybe Leon will open it up to NJ as well lol.

Donovan Mitchell has a 7.3 BPM right now.

We chose to hold onto the nuts and bolts.

I think it’s more fair to say Danny didn’t want our nuts and bolts once Cleveland offered chrome and leather.

If your definition of mediocre is a .500 team, then yes this is a mediocre squad.

Sorry I just laughed a little at the irony here, Bruno 😉

To me, mediocre just means a team with moderate quality and ability, and I think that’s a very fair assessment of us.

I don’t think it’s a Thibs thing, as KBA suggested. I think it’s a Randle and Barrett thing. If they could be their best consistently, they wouldn’t be Randle and Barrett, you know? This is who they are. When they’re on, we’re gonna look good. But at the end of the day, they’re not that hard to stop.

As for Noble, I think it’s reasonable for him to change his assessment after 34 games, but largely because he was pretty far behind everyone else. He essentially needed these 34 games to catch up.

Again, did we really pass on Spida or did Utah just wait and take a better offer?

They passed. The Cleveland offer was a pre-existing one that Ainge returned to once the Knicks wouldn’t change their 2025 first rounder from Top 5 protected to no protection.

I mean, yes, we probably should’ve upped the ante earlier, but Ainge is obviously a bastard to deal with.

It seems clear that Leon is prioritizing homegrown products (hence the Tobias Harris news)… any other good players from NY state we might want?

Kawhi is at 2.6 BPM this year. That’d be a huge improvement over RJ, but let’s assume he can hit his last year BPM of 7.3. This would make the Knicks near (if not) championship favorites.

The presumptive favorites—the Celtics*—would be putting up a lower total BPM than the Knicks among their top 8 players, around 16 or 17 based on what I believe is their rotation, but likely lower overall if we made some adjustments as Brogdon plays backup minutes. (Note that Robert Williams and Jaylen Brown are slightly underperforming previous years, they’re probably even more dominant than they’ve already shown.)

The Knicks would put up 16.3 for their rotation players (replacing Sims with Obi, which I assume will happen, otherwise the Knicks would be over 17). That said, I’m guessing several other players would see their BPM lower with the addition of Kawhi as there would be fewer shots to go around.

Crude method, as has been noted, but the starting unit is incredibly well balanced despite not having any true stars. The one exception, of -course, is RJ who is -2.0 BPM.
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Worth also mentioning the Nuggets since Jokic nearly gets the Nuggets their himself with a massive 12.6 BPM, but after Jokic and Aaron Gordon (2.6 BPM) the rest of the Nuggies are putting up negative BPMs. Jamal Murray and Michael Porter, if they get back to form and stay healthy, could make the Nuggets favorites… but that seems unlikely.

*Tatum is the only player on the Celtics who currently has a BPM over 4. The Celtics are just a deep well-balanced team, although Robert Williams will likely finish over 4 and Horford did it last year too. I believe only the Lakers and Philly actually have two players currently over a 4.0 BPM. Knicks have Randle and Mitch as the 2nd and 3rd player below a 4BPM with Brunson having fallen off to a 2.5

Maybe Dallas screws up enough around Doncic and he asks out, or something crazy happens, but getting that final piece is so damn hard.

Donovan is shooting 42% from 3. He’s been great but I don’t quite believe that number is real.