A lazy GM (by your own definition) would have caved on the Donovan Mitchell deal. There is nothing Leon has actually done that would suggest that obtaining stars at any cost (i.e. lazily) is his MO.

“Still crickets from Z-Man on the criteria he’s going to use to judge Leon “after the 2023 offseason.””

Copied from above:

“My goalposts are, and have always been: wait until after the 2023 offseason to pass overall judgment on the success of the hybrid approach to teambuilding. I’ve been pretty clear that my goalposts were constructing a team that was a sustainable winner with a reasonable path to contending for a championship.”

If you’re asking for more specificity, I can’t oblige. I CAN tell you that I like where the team is at right now and where it seems to be heading. I also am feeling pretty good about the possibility that I will feel even more that way come opening day next year, no matter what happens in the playoffs.

In response to JK’s post, I don’t think Leon is doing the legwork on draft picks. He has what I believe to be highly-regarded scouts and capologists on his team, specifically Aller and Perrin, as well as other well-connected voices. Ultimately the buck stops with Leon and it’s his call in terms to the risk-reward analysis of a move (in this case, more like a conjoined series of moves). I also get that these decisions are made in the context of Dolan’s proclivities (in case anyone forgot, he just made a statement to the press that he expects the team to make the playoffs this year.)

I do think the guys below Leon are grinders. This is apparent from the sheer number of draft-day transactions. I believe there are intensive efforts to maximize valuation in a moneyball kind of way. That is not the same as saying that I agree this is the optimal way of making decisions, or that the decision-makers are unfailing. Clearly errors have been made that were obvious to most everyone at the time, e.g. picking Obi over Hali, or getting something like 80 cents on the dollar for #19.

As to the #11 pick, the FO decided that it wanted to clear cap space to sign multiple players to free agent deals. My guess is that their risk-reward analysis, which Leon bought into, suggested that getting as much future draft capital as possible while clearing cap space (including the $5M cap hold was a better use of the pick than expending it on any of the prospects available at that slot, since the actuarial odds of that player contributing much to winning in the next 2-3 years was less than what could be acquired with the 3 picks + cap space that the trade resulted in. In this case, I thought the return on the picks was reasonable, definitely better than the return on the 2021 #19 pick.

The point that a better GM might have decreased the risk by having a better draft evaluation team than whoever works for the Knicks is certainly valid. But even those guys miss quite often. For every Jalen Williams there’s a Johnny Davis. Even the best GMs pick Aaron Nesmiths or Lonnie Walkers that, while eventually helpful rotation players, are not going to retain their “pick” value or help the team in the short window working for James Dolan provides.

There obviously is no point arguing with anyone who feels that you MUST make a pick no matter what the circumstances because that is the most optimal way to find high-level talent on the cheap. I’m just not going to ever be that rigid in evaluating particular decisions or set of decisions (and I think the decisions this past draft day were connected and should be looked at that way, not broken up into components.) I think it would be fascinating to sit down with Brock Aller and Walt Perrin and have an honest conversation regarding 1) their thinking behind these decisions, and b) whether they were pressured, constrained, or overruled in ways that contradicted their own thinking. I definitely have more respect for those two than anyone else on the management team, anf frankly, for those on this board who are outraged by these transactions. This is especially true when there isn’t consensus, which is the answer to your fundamental question. No insult intended there, hopefully no one takes it that way.

But at this point management team clearly prefers the short-term efficacy of building through trades and free agency to building through the draft, and sees trade-outs as an actuarial exercise in preserving asset value for future transactions.

Leon’s lazy. He can get away with it because the only expectation from his boss is that he obtain stars. And so that’s what he does. He occasionally locks in on particular draft picks well in advance and that’s the way he approaches the draft. If his locked-in guys aren’t there, he incinerates the pick. If they are, he takes them even if it’s way before their actual projected draft place. His act is now crystal clear.

Beyond the superficial, I doubt he even knew who Jalen Williams was. He’d made the decision to trade the pick well in advance, as Windhorst reported, which freed him up for cocktail time. Unfortunately, the other GMs were actually working.

If you punt lottery picks because you’re too scared that you’ll draft Johnny Davis, this really isn’t the job for you.

Still crickets from Z-Man on the criteria he’s going to use to judge Leon “after the 2023 offseason.”

The picks that the 11th pick were traded for (3 of them) have rolled that risk over, so that they will likely have more value combined, or even individually, than the player selected at those spots.

I do think it would be nice if we could reach an agreement on the facts here. As my friend (he hated me), Bob, used to say “you’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.”

Here is the press release:

https://www.nba.com/news/knicks-trade-11th-pick-thunder

We received Denver’s 2023 first and two heavily protected firsts from Washington and Detroit.

As of today, that amounts to one first round pick, and it’s the last pick in the first round.

If you trade the 11th pick in a loaded draft for the last pick in next year’s draft and two picks that have a good chance of never converting, I do not think it’s reasonable to conclude that you have retained or increased the value of that pick. That is a very, very significant reduction in value.

Respectfully, Z-Man, that did not answer my question at all.

A. JK47 laments the fact that Leon failed to identify Jalen Williams as someone worth drafting.

B. DRed refutes that criticism by pointing out that no one on Knickerblogger was mad about it at the time.

This is an argument you use a lot, too. I do not understand it.

The Challenger post which you sighed at presented my logic, i.e. the fact that no one predicted it doesn’t mean we should just let it go. We don’t have scouts and we’re not rocket scientists (other than ptmilo, of course).

if you add them all up though – what’s the success rate: health and talent wise…

it really may be a crap shoot that some feel the resource could be used elsewise…

leon doesn’t seem too shy about grabbing guys after 20…

If a given evaluator doesn’t feel like the players available at that slot merit the risk of that pick losing some, most or all of its value, given that they are looking to improve the team right now via transactions like the Brunson, Hartenstein, Josh Hart, and sadly, Cam Reddish trades, having surplus fungible picks, even lottery-protected ones, is less risky in the short run.

I don’t doubt that is what Leon Rose is thinking, but that’s in a nutshell why I think his approach to the draft is, uh, let’s be nice and call it sub-optimal.

You’re basically admitting up front that your ability as a talent evaluator sucks if you’re punting on a #11 pick. You’re telling yourself you’re probably going to fuck up the pick and end up with a bust. The good GMs don’t think this way. The good GMs know a good player when they see one. Being an agent is not really a great background for this job. This is not a guy who has spent thousands of hours breaking down game tape. He likes to hedge his bets because at a certain level he’s kind of a layperson.

The benefits of knowing what the hell you’re doing and nailing a draft pick like Jalen Williams are obvious. Leon tries to play a shell game with draft picks, shuffling them around so it looks like he has a bunch of them, but that’s a really low-impact strategy. The other teams in the league are aware of the protections on those picks. By nature just about all of those picks are going to be lower than #11, which means Leon probably won’t like anybody on the board, which means he’ll probably trade those picks for other future picks, etc.

You’re just throttling a major avenue of talent by approaching the draft that way. Maybe I’m mistaken but most good GMs in this league aren’t looking to get rid of lottery picks like they’re hot potatoes. You can’t be THAT afraid to make a mistake. His handling of the draft puts us at a disadvantage. He makes up for it in other ways, but that’s a clear weakness to me.