Knicks Morning News (2023.02.27)

I have to give it Knicks fans credit compared to Dallas fans. When the Knicks are going bad, people blame various combinations of the owner, management, coach, and individual players.

Dallas fans are putting almost the entire blame on Kidd when their owner has done more dumb things in just the last few years than Dolan has done in any similar stretch. That’s quite an achievement.

They have no interior defense, struggle on the boards, don’t have enough depth, have a looney bird as the co-star, still have a few bad contracts, are missing a couple of 1st rounders, and have a superstar that still doesn’t know how to play without doing everything because the owner kept building the team that way. Many of these problems have existed for a couple of years and each move has dug them deeper into a hole.

When you have Doncic and Irving, you are going to win games, but watching Cuban doing everything he could to maximize Doncic’s stats and make him happy in the short term, imo, is ironically going to increase the chances he’s eventually going to leave.

The one thing that worries me about the Knicks in the playoffs is Randle’s 3 point shooting. He’s still not what I would a good or smart 3 point shooter. He takes some really tough ones on high volume given his skill level. In the playoffs the defenses are going to be tougher on average and the pressure is also going be higher. Some of those marginal ones may start bricking a little more often. If he plays the same way, he’s going to have some 1-8, 2-10 , 3-14 nights. We don’t have enough margin for safety to win games where he shoots like that from 3. We can’t afford to have many of them.

This is an entirely different issue than the one with Hawks where they just doubled him, took him out of the game, and since we had no real PG or other scoring options we were totally screwed.

“If the Mavs played exactly the same way, with Doncic dominating the ball but instead surrounded by competent players instead of late 2010’s Knicks rejects they’d probably be fine. Doncic is not the issue with that team, nor is it “Cuban wants Doncic to win MVP.” They just have lots and lots of shitty players and have given out tons of minutes to guys who stink.”

You have it backwards (as have many Dallas fans until recently).

Cuban’s thinking has been that the way to win with a generational talent like Doncic is to play 5 out, create maximum space for him to get inside, allow him to dominate the offense, and when he gets doubled pass it out to perimeter 3 point shooters.

That’s actually a pretty darn good way to create an efficient offense, especially in the regular season.

But when you are targeting and prioritizing players (especially bigs) primarily based on their ability to space the floor, asking a player like KP to stand 5 feet past the 3 point line and not to post up mismatches or create, asking a player like Brunson that is better creating off the dribble (as we saw in the playoffs last year when Doncic was out and see again in NY this year) to do much less, you are underutilizing some quality players and leaving gaping holes in the offense and defense.

In other words, they don’t have a problem because the other players are shitty. They have shitty players because Cuban has been targeting and prioritizing spacing for Doncic over pother necessary attributes for team success and making all sorts of terrible deals.

To understand the team construction issue in Dallas, think in terms of the way Thibs thinks and then do the opposite. lmao

Thibs would rather sacrifice a little spacing and have a player like Mitch to anchor the defense than to sacrifice defense and rebounding for extra shooting.

Cuban wanted a player like Christian Wood because he’s a big that can shoot 3s even though he doesn’t defend a lick and even though interior defense and rebounding was the issue last year.

You don’t get to complain that Doncic has no one behind him to defend the rim when he gets beat or that other bigs are killing you inside and on the boards when everyone on earth knew Dallas needed interior defense and rebounding and they for Wood. The idea that McGee was going to do that starting job was laughable and as soon as they saw the spacing they sent him to Siberia, Texas. lol

When they were trying to trade KP it was partially the injury history,
but it was also because he wasn’t hitting 3s consistently enough and they didn’t want him posting up mismatches or creating off the dribble (like he has been doing so effectively for the Wizards).

So who did bring back back as part of that?

That would Davis Bertans.

You know why?

He’s a big that can shoot 3s. That fact that he stinks at everything else and also had a terrible contract was secondary to the fact he could provide spacing for Doncic.

“You cannot be serious about the Doncic criticism. That team is a lottery team without Doncic.”

1. Have you read anything I’ve said today?
2. Do you follow Dallas basketball at all?

I’ve been criticizing the team building of Cuban and not Doncic, but as long as you brought it up imo Doncic is more flawed than popular perception. He’s not a good defender and he clearly hasn’t learned to play off the ball yet as his time short time with Irving is showing. The latter being because Cuban was essentially building teams and the offense to maximize him instead of the team result.

“Continuing to believe that this team or its prospects would have been improved in any significant way by making picks (without hindsight cherrypicking)”

I would add that Randle and Brunson are via free agency, I-Hart is free agency, J-Hart is trade, and we’ve done a very good job with non lottery draft picks (Mitch, Quick, & Grimes). So we’ve used a balanced approach to building a good young team with upside, while retaining excess draft capital. The big mistakes have been draft lottery picks or we’d be further along. Only Obi can be blamed on Rose. Even dopey ideas like Fournier and Kemba were not killers.

I think you have to build x% mistakes into any approach regardless of what it is and who the GM is. They all make big mistakes now and them. What you want to do is avoid the disasters and make a couple of big winning moves.