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Rising Knicks square off with sinking Nets Yardbarker
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, March 1, 2023 7:00:00 AM
New York Knicks: 4 reasons why red-hot Knicks will make noise in playoffs Sir Charles in Charge
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Brooklyn takes on New York, aims to stop 3-game skid Yahoo Canada Sports
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, March 1, 2023 1:02:00 AM
Knicks’ Tom Thibodeau won’t be pegged as just a defensive wizard New York Post Knicks deliver statement with stifling win over NBA-best Celtics New York Post The Knicks just had their best February in more than three decades Posting and Toasting
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, March 1, 2023 12:02:01 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 9:40:00 PM
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The Knicks just had their best February in more than three decades Posting and Toasting
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What is happening with the Knicks? They are winning and good, but how good? The Athletic
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 7:00:00 PM
Malcolm Brogdon’s comments after Knicks’ win over Celtics show NYK is feared Daily Knicks
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 5:00:02 PM
Stephen A Smith told ‘fix your face and listen’ by First Take guest after fiery live TV exchange… The US Sun
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 2:05:17 PM
How LeBron’s Injury Affects West. Plus, Can Knicks Win a Playoff Series? The Ringer
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 1:47:54 PM
Knicks sign Duane Washington Jr. to two-way deal Posting and ToastingKnicks Sign Duane Washington To Two-Way Deal hoopsrumors.comKnicks To Sign Duane Washington Jr To Two-Way Contract RealGM.com
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 1:23:41 PM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 12:01:50 PM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 11:47:26 AM
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Knicks’ Mitchell Robinson: Third straight double-double CBS Sports
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 10:57:00 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 10:30:00 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 10:17:00 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 10:08:00 AM
Knicks To Sign Duane Washington Jr To Two-Way Contract RealGM.com
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 9:25:57 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 9:12:15 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 8:44:02 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 8:30:16 AM
Josh Hart thinks Knicks can make noise in playoffs, but ‘can’t get complacent’ Yahoo Sports
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 7:48:36 AM
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[news.google.com] — Tuesday, February 28, 2023 7:40:00 AM
Can the current Knicks create a legacy that will endure? New York Post
122 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.03.01)”
If we go by the (far fetched) idea that the team with a better record will win a game, the Knicks will go 16-3 to finish the season and end up with a 52 win season.
While it won’t work that way, it’s a nice thought to start the day with!
Good optimistic — if, as you say, unrealistic — thought to start the new thread, GoNY! Hoping we can leave the strife of yesterday in yesterday’s thread. But I fear that is also unrealistic.
Funny bit on today’s Macri podcast where Macri tries pooh-poohing Melo’s accomplishments with the team, before his producer and Fred Katz jump on him. It’s almost like Macri has become one of us in his recognition of how un-fun nearly all of the Melo era was.
Hope today’s thread is less of a shit show…
Macri’s newsletter today addresses something I’ve been wondering about—what’s the track record in the playoffs of oddball, successful offenses like ours? That means offenses that succeed in the regular season despite not being all that good at putting the ball in the basket, due to excelling at the other three factors.
tl;dr they can still win in the playoffs, but they do seem to underperform relative to equally successful offenses that are better at putting the ball in the basket. However a lot of the historical examples weren’t *as good* on offense as this oddball successful offense.
The better, more precise way to proxy that question is simply through the delta between Tom Thibodeau’s .572 regular season winning percentage and his .410 winning percentage in the playoffs.
Did his “oddball” schemes that worked in the 2021 regular season work in the 2021 playoffs? I mean, we’ve literally seen his act play in the playoffs already. I get the perhaps exaggerated sense that people think his playoff act is some kind of indeterminate blank canvas mystery … but it’s anything but.
Hollinger has a fun article about panicking teams in the NBA today.
https://theathletic.com/4261008/2023/03/01/nba-playoffs-contenders-hopefuls-pretenders/
He thinks only three teams are real contenders (Boston, Milwaukee and Denver) and thinks that most of the other teams trying to win now are close to being in panic mode (except for NY, Cleveland and Sacramento who are happy with their seasons so far).
I left my responses to E and Hubert’s most recent questions in the previous thread. While both the questions and responses were politely delivered, I would ask that they continue those particular conversations there so as to not trigger anyone. Thanks.
He thinks only three teams are real contenders (Boston, Milwaukee and Denver) and thinks that most of the other teams trying to win now are close to being in panic mode (except for NY, Cleveland and Sacramento who are happy with their seasons so far).
This totally checks. Outside of those 3, I can’t see any team that actually win it all. MAYBE Philly, Memphis or The Suns? But I don’t see Durant actually helping the Suns that much. At least not this season. I don’t know. They lost some very good role players and CP3 is still ancient. Adding a big name like that at the deadline makes it tough to get in enough reps as a team to be ready for the playoffs. And he hasn’t played yet (although I think his debut is tonight?)
We’re in a really good spot despite what some people think. A legit top 8 team in the league with a young roster, plenty of future assets to build with and a solid coach. Are we gonna win it all in the next 5 years? Probably not. Only one team wins it all every year after all. But I feel pretty confident we’re going to the playoffs the next few seasons. If RJ can ever get his shit together…watch out.
Unsurprisingly, Z-Man wasn’t willing to get specific on any kind of criteria for judgment on Leon, even after the four full offseasons, which keeps him in the position he likes of not really committing to anything and just lobbing various random spitballs and “let’s waits” at various Knickerbloggers, at his whims.
Katz yesterday: “The Knicks have made a conscious decision to acquire people who fit into Thibodeau’s passionate personality.”
So let’s please cease with the pretending that this is some kind of controversial statement or mystery.
They’ve gone full-on Thibsball. It is not going to work. It’s never worked.
E please just stop. You’re ruining this blog dude.
Thibs in the NY Post, re the “defensive coach” label:
“So they expected you to be able to coach offense, coach defense, player development, game-plan, scout, evaluate personnel. And that’s the way I approach it.”
Carefully note the “evaluate personnel” part ….
“E please just stop. You’re ruining this blog dude.”
People insist on re-litigating obvious shit like Thibs having personnel say and Thibs being a major factor in FO decisions, so when people say things like “I haven’t seen any evidence of that” or “You’re just making that up,” we’re going to re-litigate it.
Things would be a lot easier around here if there weren’t repetitive calls to re-litigate obvious shit.
Today’s commentary played off TNFH’s citation of Macri’s newsletter. I added my thoughts on the questions. So be it.
E is correct. I am not going to set some ironclad hurdle that must be cleared by opening day 2023. I’ll evaluate where we are and determine if it is good enough for me. Sorry if you are offended by that response.
I can state with certainty that where we are right now is good enough for me. I am quite optimistic that I will like the product we roll out on opening day 2023-2024.
I can also state that I will definitely be disappointed if we don’t win a playoff series in 2024. But even then, if it’s after we made an asset-draining all-in move (e.g. a Spida-like move) the disappointment will be more acute. If it’s based on either unexpected injury or we still have a ton of picks to trade to make improvements, I’ll be more OK with it.
Agree that Boston, Denver, Milwaukee are the only teams who will prolly be disappointed without a title this year.
As for the Knicks’ chances, posters have rightly flagged that any opponent will likely focus on harassing Brunson to throw him/us off. For me this makes IQ the real lynchpin of our success in the post season. Quick has been up and down his whole career so far (as we know), but of late, he’s just been amazing (IMO). And he looks like he can sustain it, i.e. his success now is not really from streak shooting as much as he is finding new ways to score and is picking better spots.
If the Knicks consistently get the IQ who played against Boston, we could go far in the playoffs. I still think Brunson will play well most nights, regardless, but if he does get bottled up by defensive schemes, IQ is the answer.
“E is correct. I am not going to set some ironclad hurdle that must be cleared by opening day 2023. I’ll evaluate where we are and determine if it is good enough for me. Sorry if you are offended by that response.”
I’m not “offended” by it, or anything close; it’s just par for the course. You simply want to shill and tone police for the guy. We all get it.
“I can also state that I will definitely be disappointed if we don’t win a playoff series in 2024.”
Winning one playoff series in year 4 when you inherited a bunch of cap space and two extra 1s is replacement-level GMing at best. If you’re happy with that, it’s a free country; just don’t pretend it’s any kind of accomplishment and not expect pushback.
E took an innocuous quote about a coach’s role that any coach in the association might have uttered and extended it to Thibs is running the entire personnel acquisition show.
Even though we have hard evidence that he isn’t. See: Kemba Walker, Cam Reddish (acquired against his wishes, permabenched).
I wonder if there are some posters on Thunderblogger.net who complain after every win that Sam Presti traded Immanuel Quickley for Poku
“Even though we have hard evidence that he isn’t. See: Kemba Walker, Cam Reddish (acquired against his wishes, permabenched).”
See? — re-litigation of obvious shit.
To repeat, Katz: “The Knicks have made a conscious decision to acquire people who fit into Thibodeau’s passionate personality.”
This is obviously, self-evidently true. And Katz is most likely hearing that directly from Leon; he’s certainly not just throwing it out there on his own accord.
And no, the other coaches in the L do not all say or conceptualize their role as “evaluating personnel.” You’re making that up, too.
Thibsball has never worked. Historical fact. You want to have fun with this year’s playoffs and hope that it finally will? Fine, I’m right there with you. But it’s never worked. There’s no real reason to think it will now. Again, I’ll suspend disbelief for the playoffs — I did two springs ago and will again. Maybe he’s finally found the answer. Let’s hope so. But if we want to cold, hard GM and evaluate in the dead time of now, well, that’s reality.
“You simply want to shill and tone police for the guy.”
E doesn’t get that this is a dickish thing to say. Or maybe he does.
“We all get it.”
“We all” meaning who? Don’t bother, we all know who “gets it.”
I think you have to have a healthy Memphis in the real contenders slot. Philly too-Hollinger is overreacting to a bad week to troll Sixers fans for clicks. Cleveland are 4 games under their pythag. Are they a contender who is unlucky or is there something meaningful going on there?
And the West also has the Suns and the Warriors who for different reasons might be substantially better in the playoffs than in the regular season.
“E doesn’t get that this is a dickish thing to say.”
It isn’t really dickish at all. If Leon meets your subjective criteria that’s great, but then why do you perpetually insist on interfering on substance when a bunch of us want to more closely evaluate his moves objectively?
There’s nothing objective in “I’m fine with him.”
““We all” meaning who?”
Everyone who enjoys evaluating and talking with other people about basketball GMs philosophies and transactions on a deeper and more objective and rigorous level than personal satisfaction or “This is a really fun team.”
There are plenty of those people here. You know who several of them are.
God damn it, E. Give it up.
Seriously. We just handily beat the best team in the NBA in a game that was never really in doubt, moving us 9 games over 500 and a 6 game win streak. Can’t you just be fucking quiet for awhile until we actually lose?
Hope today’s thread is less of a shit show…
lol
This is so different from the Melo Era. I get why the contrast is in such sharp relief. We have a good young core and a very reasonable path to sustained success which is a far cry from squeezing what we could out of Melo, Tyson, Kidd, Prigs er all.
“This is obviously, self-evidently true. And Katz is most likely hearing that directly from Leon; he’s certainly not just throwing it out there on his own accord.”
You seem to think there’s something inherently wrong with this. I don’t. That’s the disconnect. I LIKE the kinds of players that fit into Thibs’ eat, sleep, and shit basketball personality, and who would play 48 minutes of 82 games if they could, and are good locker room guys, or whatever that “pejorative” means. What exactly in the “fits into Thibs’ passionate personality” are you troubled by?
To repeat, Katz: “The Knicks have made a conscious decision to acquire people who fit into Thibodeau’s passionate personality.”
Why tf wouldn’t you do this??
Deuce is going to play for Westchester today in an 11am ET (?!) game before rejoining the team
“What exactly in the “fits into Thibs’ passionate personality” are you troubled by?”
You really want a new recitation of this? OK, again:
1. Better NBA coaches and managers in all walks of life can manage and deal with a wider variety of people than Tom Thibodeau can and don’t have such a relentless psychic need to only coach and manage people who fit a single, limited personality set. His rigor on this front, as with managers in all walks of life, limits the potential talent you can recruit and deploy for your enterprise. This limitation has consistently been a feature of Tom Thibodeau’s career, and its a feature of his Knicks’ career. It’s much harder to compete with this anvil tied around your legs. Which is why his teams have never really been championship contenders. You can’t get the type of personalities you need to be really good because he can’t work with them. I want a coach without this limitation. All of us should.
2. His rigor on this front makes it very difficult to find consistent common cause with co-workers, particularly personnel people whose job it is and whose passion it is, in finding talent and excellence in basketball players. The same would be true, again, in any other field in which talent procurement is an important variable. Which is why he consistently wears out his welcome with his co-workers.
3. His way, empirically, has never worked. He’s never coached anything like a championship team, routinely underachieves in the playoffs, etc. He’s given no indication he even cares that much about winning a championship and has subordinated that goal to his broader goal of working only with his type of personality. Again, long career, repetitive thing.
I’m sure there’s more that could be said, but that’s pretty much hits the high notes.
I LIKE the kinds of players that fit into Thibs’ eat, sleep, and shit basketball personality, and who would play 48 minutes of 82 games if they could, and are good locker room guys, or whatever that “pejorative” means.
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That’s great, Z-Man. But a bunch of us want to talk about things beyond just what we like and the fact that you like that isn’t really an important factor in anything. I’m not unaware that there are sports fans who like acts like Tom Thibodeau’s. There are plenty of them. So what?
Macri’s newsletter today addresses something I’ve been wondering about—what’s the track record in the playoffs of oddball, successful offenses like ours?
That’s an interesting question. I know the refs don’t actually swallow their whistles in the playoffs and teams tend to get a bit more iso heavy in the playoffs. We generate free throws and run a lot of iso. It would be interesting to see if rebounding changes in the playoffs. I took a quick google and didn’t find anything. It’s possible other teams would do better because the Knicks are sort of already optimized for playoff offense, but that’s just me speculating.
OMG, they’re doing it again with this thread.
It’s like a microcosm of reading the story about the Right going after companies with pro-environment plans. They just don’t give a shit about anyone else.
Or the Fox News folks admitting to each other that it’s a bunch of lies but still spreading them on the airwaves. Fuck everyone else.
Note that I’m not calling any of you liars. Just that you clearly don’t give a fuck about anyone else on this site.
I don’t know if it’s really “triggering” if you hit the button over and over again with a sledge hammer.
How ’bout them Nets…?
Most the teams cited in the Macri article had bottom half offenses.
There were several teams just outside the top-10 offense who also lost in the first round.
The only top-10 offense, last year’s Grizzlies with the 4th ranked offense, won a series last year despite a poor efg%.
The elephant in the room is once again RJ Barrett who tanks our efg%. On the brightside the more IQ & Hart play the higher the efg% should go… and it seems like they’re going to play more.
What Macri article are we talking about?
Today’s newsletter covers teams with bad efg% and their success, or lack there of, in the playoffs
The theme has been noted before — the vast majority of teams build their offense around putting the ball in the basket. The Knicks’ offense is instead built on offensive rebounds and ball security. There’s clearly a Moneyball regular season advantage to that, and Macri’s question is a very real one.
They’re 23rd in EFG% this year and were 23rd two years ago, although this year’s team hits the offensive boards better than that one. My preference, unsurprisingly, would be to scrap the gimmicks and do things normally, with better players.
The Knicks that year were 23rd in ORTG, this year’s team is 5th.
It really can’t be overstated how badly RJ tanks the whole team’s eFG%. He has a very smelly eFG+ of 89, far worse than anybody else who is in the rotation. The only other rotation player with an eFG+ of 95 or lower is Obi, and he doesn’t shoot very much.
Quickley is traditionally a low eFG% player but he’s creeping up: he was at 92 his first two seasons but is at 97 this year and that number is rising.
For the record, I post infrequently now because I’ve tried to wipe negative vibes from my life. Being a Knick fan means having lived the last 50 years with negative vibes.
I love Thibs. It makes me cringe when folks here complain about the 2-time COY. He’s exactly the type of coach that I want. He’s passionate and authoritative. If he’s influencing trades and making personnel decisions, all it’s done was make the team much better.
And as for Leon? I love that he doesn’t talk to the media at all. I love how he has built this team which is through the draft and without crippling our cap space or shedding our draft capital.
So, back to the sentiment that the 1st post in this thread hinted at. I’m looking forward to a nasty thumping of the Nets tonight!
I mean, what are the “gimmicks” the team employs? They have a perfectly modern shot chart, this isn’t Phil Jackson and Goinkball we’re talking about here. I guess you could count crashing the offensive boards as a “gimmick” but that doesn’t really track to me either.
This would be a really goddamn good offense if somebody would either pull a Gilloolly on RJ Barrett or better yet cut his minutes to like 12 per game.
This is so good to hear. I (irrationally) want IQ to be a star.
And I’m actually more worried about the Nets game tonight than I was about the Celtics. I think we wanted to prove something that night against Boston. Tonight the Nets may be in that same mood.
If you can work with Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart and have shown that, I have no issue with you salivating over the chance to get Josh Hart, even at the cost of a 1. (*)
OTOH, if you *can’t* work with Karl-Anthony Towns, and have shown that, and you salivate over Josh Hart because you can only work with Josh Hart types, then I got a big problem with it.(**) That problem really doesn’t have anything to do with Josh Hart per se.
(*) Although I still might not have paid it.
(**) And am not going to remotely apologize for having a problem with it.
“I guess you could count crashing the offensive boards as a “gimmick” but that doesn’t really track to me either.”
They deploy a 5 way closer to the rim than the other teams in order to get the rebounds. I’m not wedded to the term “gimmick,” but it’s at the very least “not really close to normal.”
They consciously trade an EFG-reducing clogged lane and highly limited offensive skill set at the 5, for ORebs and defensive rim protection. That’s a big trend buck. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong necessarily. (I mean, it probably is, but we’ll see. Confidence level not high, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Yeah I’m confused too about the idea of this being a gimmicky team, it makes no sense considering this team’s shot profile and the way they get points.
I think this is a limited offensive team due to its pieces: Brunson is small and limited athletically so he has issues getting his shot off in the paint sometimes, and Randle is an inconsistent long range shooter, but this doesn’t mean it’s gimmicky or it’s going to be exposed necessarily. It will be difficult to keep it up in the playoffs due to better defenses being locked in and game planning, but there’s nothing essentially wrong with the way this team gets points that will be exposed eventually, it’s simply going to be a matter of if those guys can maintain the same level of efficiency when defenses are better and tighter.
Getting rebounds and not turning the ball over isn’t a fucking gimmick.
I have to admit Karl Towns without Thibs has gone on to lead many good teams on deep playoff runs. Thibsball works with proven losers like Jimmy Butler, but not champions like Andrew Wiggins.
Sam Vecenie waxes poetic about us for the first 30 minutes or so of his pod today. Fun listen.
I do my best to avoid office chair psychology but seems obvious to me that, for whatever reason, E is totally incapable of rationally analyzing a team coached by Tom Thibodeau. He sees things that are not there. Might be best to just not engage him on the subject, the same way you might avoid certain topics with your creationist uncle or something. It’s unfortunate because we *should* be able to discuss the Knicks’ coach on the Knicks blog we post on, but people with irrational beliefs never make things easy.
I mean, outside of extreme outliers coaches just don’t have much of an effect on team quality. You tend to go as far as your talent takes you. The best coaches will tell you that themselves.
Even if I agreed with E that Thibs is history’s greatest monster (I do not), I would think the effect on the Knicks would be fairly minimal.
Honestly I think the playoffs are gravy this year. If we go out bc RJ can’t shoot straight, so be it.
The 2021 playoffs were so tough to swallow because we’d built Randle and Thibs into gods and both of them were awful. They were so awful it made you think everything that happened before that was a mirage. And then Leon’s summer of 2021 was every bit as bad as Randle and Thibs’ playoff performance in the spring. Jab, cross, uppercut. That shit was demoralizing. And the 2022 season just confirmed everything we thought.
But credit to all three of them, they’ve each come back very strong. I’m not delusional going into this one so there won’t be the same disappointment.
I’m much more interested in seeing if we can string consecutive good seasons together than if we can win a round in this one.
EB’s post is a very important addendum to my bad summary of the Macri article–it would’ve been more accurate to say it was a review of the success of low eFG% teams as opposed to low eFG% + top-10 offense teams like us.
The latter have succeeded in the playoffs, but there haven’t been that many of them.
In any event, will be interesting to see what happens to our team eFG% if the siphoning of minutes from RJ to Hart continues. Like JK said, RJ really is a one-man wrecking ball in that regard. I am too busy to do it myself but one of our enterprising posters should figure out what our team eFG% is sans-RJ.
At this point my biggest worry is injuries. We are playing some coherent ball where everyone seems to be settling into a “space” that is making the team perform well. I care much less about our record going forward or even our playoff seating (provided it is at least 6th) than entering the playoffs with a roster full of healthy people.
“I do my best to avoid office chair psychology but seems obvious to me that, for whatever reason, E is totally incapable of rationally analyzing a team coached by Tom Thibodeau.”
*******************
It’s good that you avoid the armchair psychology because you’re way off with it. If you want to get into psychology, it’s the pure rationalism and lack of any kind of passion that I use when evaluating Thibs that pisses people off. They want me to buy into his “effort” and his “passion” and his “hard work” and his “caring” and the “way he gets his teams to play” and all the rest, and I don’t do it.
Instead, I use his record and his words and his actions. In the classic Liberty Valance template, people want me to print the legend and I ain’t gonna do it. It’s not my thing. *That’s* the psychology.
“but people with irrational beliefs never make things easy.”
Please outline a single thing I’ve said about him that was “irrational.” Should be easy.
What’s “irrational” is thinking I think he’s “history’s greatest monster.” I don’t even think he’s a bad person. Most likely, he’s a good person. There’s certainly nothing “immoral” or “unethical” or “bad” about wanting to work with certain types of people, especially when you get to your mid-60s; it just isn’t conducive to success.(*) And there’s way more to life and people than being a championship basketball coach.
(*) The default with most people is “I don’t want to spend a bunch of time at work or otherwise around people who annoy me.” Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not really something you want in your coach if you want to win an NBA championship.
28% of today’s posts are by E.
Not a good omen for a thoughtful thread.
28% of today’s posts are by E.
Easy way to cut down on that by a whole bunch:
1. Don’t play dumb and demand re-litigation of obvious shit.
2. Don’t compare me to your irrational uncle and pretend that I have “irrational beliefs.”
I’ve said, in completely good faith, that Tom Thibodeau is a “good” or “excellent” coach probably at least 50 times.
+1 I’m kind of afraid to mention it. Am hoping Thibs spreads the minutes around a bit now since he’s listened to us on so many other things.
Thibs is a perfectly fine NBA coach. Our offense this year takes lots of 3s and shots at the rim. Credit to Thibs for showing some evolution there.
One thing that might hurt us should we make the playoffs is we are a terrible mid-range shooting team. A big chunk of that is probably RJ but if teams in the playoffs can keep us from getting to the rim our offense is pretty fucked.
If I may provide an answer that is wholly independent of whatever shit’s going on above….
What concerns me about Thibs getting his guys is that he doesn’t seem to weigh critical offensive skills nearly high enough in his valuations. He’s fine with guys who can’t shoot well (RJ), guys who can’t do anything when they get run off the 3P line (Bullock, possibly Grimes… we’ll see), even guys who bring absolutely nothing to the table on offense (Payton, Deuce).
You can say they expected Hart’s 3P shooting to improve, but I think that’s wishful thinking. He was shooting 30% when they got him, and it didn’t bother them at all.
If you’re so eager to acquire a lot of those guys, I think it’s very reasonable to be concerned about playoff drop off. Those skills matter more in the playoffs, and a lot of NBA players play like Thibs guys in the playoffs so that advantage is negated.
But unlike E, I do not think it’s reasonable to assume such a drop off is guaranteed. These guys deserve crack #2 at the playoffs before we write the book on them.
28% of today’s posts are by E.
Not a good omen for a thoughtful thread.
Come on, do you really want to miss out on gems like “it’s the pure rationalism and lack of any kind of passion that I use when evaluating Thibs that pisses people off.”
Well…if you think that E had crucified “Empty Arena Randle” before Julius turn it around this season,then the most possible outcome for Thibs is winning a few chips on the next few years!
I’m ready to enjoy this Ride!
These guys deserve crack #2 at the playoffs before we write the book on them.
****************************************
+10 billion. Should be a fun spring.
Mavs pick up to 17th. Lotta season left but I should’ve known better than to assume acquiring Kyrie Irving would necessarily make it worse.
Also, there’s understandably a lot of confusion about our 2022 series of draft transactions. I think it’s inaccurate to say we used a lottery pick to dump salary.
It was so convoluted that there are still differing accounts from different websites, but here was the end result to the best of my untangling ability:
Out:
-2022 11th pick
-four 2023 2nd rounders
-2024 second rounder
-2026 second rounder
-Kemba Walker, Alec Burks, and Nerlens Noel
In:
-2023 WAS pick (protected 1-14 in 2023, 1-12 in 2024, 1-10 in 2025 and 1-8 in 2026)
-2023 DET pick (protected 1-18 in 2023, 1-18 in 2024, 1-13 in 2025, 1-11 in 2026 and 1-9 in 2027)
-2025 MIL pick (1-4 protected)
The picks in, picks out result was the 11th pick and six second round picks for three future protected firsts.
Whether this was the only avenue available to dump the salaries we needed to dump is an open question, and Jalen Williams looking this good is a gut punch for sure.
But confidently declaring we got soaked is very bizarre, because we still have no idea how this will play out. The Wizards’ pick might convey at 15 this year, then all of the sudden we traded 11 and seconds for 15 with two more firsts to boot.
The series of transactions was many things and as best I can tell I would’ve done things differently, but incineration it was not.
Always remember: There’s no “Kyrie” in TEAM
“It really can’t be overstated how badly RJ tanks the whole team’s eFG%. He has a very smelly eFG+ of 89, far worse than anybody else who is in the rotation. The only other rotation player with an eFG+ of 95 or lower is Obi, and he doesn’t shoot very much.”
JK47
Last year I was screaming that if we added a legit PG for this year we would take a much bigger leap up than anyone expected. I feel almost as strongly about replacing RJ. We have a negative player in the starting lineup that often takes the most shots and plays the most minutes in a game. If we put a positive two way player in that slot imo it will make a big difference. I’m still rooting for RJ to break out. If he does to close the season and into the playoffs, that would improve our chances in playoffs, but something has to be done for next year.
OT: I’m still playing guitar. I pick it up maybe 15 minutes a day and 30 minutes on weekends trying to add new licks or new rhythm techniques. To my surprise, I’m still improving at 64. I’m not good yet, but I’m way less bad. There’s something intangible going on in the way I finger and pick notes where the quality of what comes out is better. I could never explain it when I was really bad and heard someone good playing and I can’t explain it now, but it’s better. There’s hope for old guys like me to keep learning new tricks.
I really want this win against Brooklyn. We have some tough games left against Miami. Just in case that doesn’t go our way, I’d like to drive a nail into Brooklyn to keep our spot in the playoffs.
I’ve self-imposed a 5-post-per-day limit on myself for the month of March to ensure that I don’t overrun a thread. If you’ve ever been associated with flame wars, you might want to consider doing the same. It’s time for the Cybersoze’s and the Max’s and the Pagliacci’s of this blog and its lurkersphere to set the tone here. They have much better things to say.
Concur. I’ll hang up and listen along those limitations.
“Always remember: There’s no “Kyrie” in TEAM”
Wait until they have to make the decision to max him or do a sign and trade and no one wants to give them much in a trade.
If I was a Dallas fan, I’d be melting down.
They are still going to win games with all that offensive firepower, but they are going nowhere and have a lot of work to do to get back on track.
Now i know how Randle felt in the 2020-21 playoffs… the pressure to perform! 😀
Love this! I’m a hobby-guitarist as well, and my 10 year old daughter has started learning now, too. We just played our first duet: “Go tell Aunt Rhody” Hahaha. Keep it up!
TNFH, it seems as if the FO analytics team is very attuned to the 4 factors. You could argue that they have determined that the most expeditious and economical way to win the net rating battle is to win the battle there. They did this without going all-in on a max-salary high-volume uber-efficient shot creator/scorer. It appears that you need one of these guys to advance in the playoffs, so that model will be tested.
For now, the Knicks:
-Have a lowish eFG% but hold teams to an even lower one
-Don’t turn the ball over but don’t generate turnovers, pretty much a wash
-Are an elite offensive rebounding team and a middling but improving defensive rebounding team
-Get to the line slightly more than they send opponents to the line
Clearly their ORtg vs. eFG% disconnect is due to being elite in two factors and top third in another, while winning the eFG% battle even at a low level. I guess the question is whether they can continue to hold teams to a low eFG% under playoff conditions. So far, against BOS, CLE, and PHI, we win when they shoot poorly and lose when they shoot well. The fouls, rebounding and turnover battles are critical too, but the one I’m most concerned with is the eFG% battle. Can you continue to win that battle without elite shooters in today’s NBA? Seems counterintuitive.
Also, after an initial burst, they have slowed the pace to a relative crawl. That suits this model pretty well and translates well to playoff-style halfcourt basketball. My guess is that they are relatively low in both transition points made and allowed, but that’s just based on eye test and pace vs. turnover implications.
This is interesting, and adds to our discussions about how our defense is very good.
So when Morey created a team that matched his coaches style and it did well that was obviously wrong because coaches should integrate all sorts of players and having a particular strategy for how you are going to win is a bad idea? Wherever I’ve worked it’s clear that having everyone on the same page works best.
And even though Thibs is notorious for wanting winning basketball at the expense of player development but “He’s given no indication he even cares that much about winning a championship”. I mean WTF?
And because, he like most coaches in the NBA, has never won it all, he has no chance of ever doing it?
I could go on, but this is enough.
This is replacing MSG Go, and apparently it will not come free if you are getting MSG through your cable subscription. Which means that a corporation whose business model flows out of the cable bundle model will now be encouraging people to cut the cord?
James Dolan, everybody!
UPDATE: well, never mind on that latter point. Vork explained that it will just replace MSG Go, and if you have the bundle, you will get MSG+.
Thibs not liking certain types of players comes down to two players. KAT and CAM.
That’s it.
I think that is pretty expensive for streaming
The narrative about Thibs in the playoffs isn’t even accurate. The one year he had a healthy Rose he went to the ECF and almost won it. In 2013 he took a team whose BPM leader was Jo Noah at 3.8 and whose 2nd BPM leader was everyone’s favorite Lilliputian Nate Robinson at 2.8 deep into the 2nd round. Let’s move on! (He says as he secretly stokes the fire)
cont. from last thread
ackyshally I use a bidet because I’m a civilized human being
Amen. There’s a reason I don’t talk stats much. I became an adult and realized this shit got a whole lot more complicated than the PPG vs. WP48 days. My aborted math minor is the actual shitstain on an otherwise-decent academic career, granted I was more interested in making eardrums bleed than doing my diff eqs homework way back when.
I used to be proud of being an early cord-cutter, but now it’s even worse than cable was back then.
With apologies to the artists getting shafted on royalties, enjoy the days of Spotify while it lasts. Soon you’ll have to subscribe to individual labels to listen to their records (and the artists will be fucked over just as badly).
It’s March 1st and I can already tell this is going to fall faster than my attempt to give up boofing White Claws for lent.
10 bucks for an individual game is crazy. Nobody is paying that instead of finding a stream
WAS will be interesting to watch.
Toronto, Atlanta, Washington & Chicago are vying for the last 3 play-in spots. They’re separated by 3 games.
I expect TOR to end up in the lead
I think Chicago gets it together
Can Snyder fix ATL?
WAS plays well when healthy
Thibs’ teams in the playoffs have performed pretty much exactly as you would’ve expected based on their talent. In this sense, he is similar to 99% of other NBA coaches. It’s almost as if thinking he has some significant negative effect is the result of a hang up of sorts.
Good post Z-Man. It’s worth nothing that while there still seems to be some kind of ISM effect, we’re now 22nd in opponent 3PT% which is obviously still “good” but no longer screams “smoke and mirrors.”
So we might not need genuinely elite scorers to win the eFG%, at least for a round. However we will probably need to not intentionally handicap ourselves with 15+ RJ Barrett FGAs per game.
You are correct about our own transition frequency–we’re 23rd in frequency. However we actually are middle of the pack defensively, 11th in opponent frequency and 14th in opponent pts/play. There’s a lot of noise there though, I would think, and it’s pretty bunched up. I think it’s generally accurate to say we try to keep the game in the half court.
For what it’s worth, I think our offense is going to do fine in the playoffs. We have two elite iso-scorers in Brunson and Randle (which you need in a slow playoffs environment) and there’s lots of half-court play which will let us crash the boards. We basically already play a playoff offense but for the average to below average 3pt%. And more teams are going to have to play our way when every possession matters, no matter how many reps they had to practice the way we play.
Also, just want to say the idea that other good teams don’t have a rim-bound center is silly, see: Jarrett Allen, Steven Adams, Rudy Gobert, RWIII, Sabonis, Zubac, etc. If you’re a good team and don’t have Joel Embiid, Brook Lopez, or Jokic, you’re probably playing a Mitch-type center.
That’s almost certainly a response to Comcast dropping MSG (as far as I know that never got worked out).
There will probably be enough diehards who will pay for it, but hopefully not so the price is forced to drop.
Unfortunately the Knicks have a monopoly on the Knicks.
Let’s clarify what the criticism is:
Leon got soaked by Sam Presti in their one-on-one deal.
Out: the #11 pick in a loaded draft
In: Denver’s 2023 1st (currently 30th), Washington’s heavily protected pick that may never convert, Detroit’s heavily protected pick that may never convert.
He turned the #11 pick into next year’s #30 and two picks that you cannot reasonably expect to convert. That’s bad dude. That’s really bad. And Presti has approximately 100,000 first round picks!! How the heck did you walk away with those three fugazis??!!
It is the worst trade he’s made, by far (the 19th pick was not nearly as valuable). It’s also one of the worst trades the Knicks have ever made.
Since this is my last post, I will not be able to rebut the person who says “yeah, but you have to look at what they got back from Detroit, too.”
No, you don’t. That was a completely different trade.
Look at them closely. You can see clearly that he didn’t need to make the OKC trade to do the Detroit/Charlotte trade. He could have used the Dallas pick instead of the Denver pick, he could have used a heavily protected Knicks pick. He could have used more seconds.
This trade needs to be graded independently of everything else that happened that day, and right now it’s an F with a slim chance of becoming a D.
I don’t imagine anyone will pay the money for just one game when the monthly cost is 30 bucks. That in and of itself is high compared to something like League Pass (15 per month). But like Jowles said, you’d better get used to it. For decades, sports teams and leagues got fat on the cable bundle model, where all the subscribers would be paying extra for sports, even if only a small percentage of them watched. With all the cord cutting, it’s going to be down to just the actual customers paying the freight. Which will cost more. And we’re already basically at the point where you need to pay nearly as much to have all the streaming services you might want as you would to have the old bundle with one or two premium channels.
Everything old is new again, and corporations are not in the business of helping their customers save money.
“He turned the #11 pick into next year’s #30 and two picks that you cannot reasonably expect to convert.”
I mean, I’ve expressed my worries that those picks won’t convert but it’s a huge stretch to say you can’t “reasonably expect” them to convert. There’s a a very decent chance we get #15 this year, then all of the sudden we moved down four slots and picked up two extra picks in the process.
Oh wait, that was only 4.
EDIT: ah, fuck.
I am excited about the end of the regular season being about playoff positioning and not about the draft lottery. What a big difference! Some things I am looking for in the last part of the season include:
-Will RJ improve and go on a positive streak. Small improvements in defense, passing, and hopefully shooting (3’s and inside).
-Grimes improve on open 3’s. Hopefully just a little rut.
-Can we get the 5th seed? Maybe even the 4th?
-Interested to see where our defense ranks at the end of the year. Can we get into the top 10, or lower?
-Lastly, can we win a series? Or at least 2-3 games in the playoffs?
Go Knicks! Finish strong.
(1) Are we evaluating that specific trade or are we evaluating Leon Rose? If we’re evaluating Rose, then the end result is more important than the individual trades.
(2) Teams have deals setup in advance and contingent on other deals. It’s not a given that we should evaluate the deal in a vacuum.
(3) I don’t know where the idea that the picks are unlikely to convey came from. The protections get very light towards the end. If only 1 pick conveys as a 1st, that’s still good value.
(4) People keep looking at the downside. Both picks can convey better than 11. There could be players better than Jalen Williams available with the picks, wherever they land.
(5) To put the deal in context, Dejounte Murray was an all-star and put up a 5.4 BPM last year. He was traded for three 1sts, including an incinerated pick. We received three potential 1sts for a player that had yet to step on an NBA court.
Anyways, the Knicks should blowout the Nets and hopefully won’t succumb to the trap game.
It seems a bit much to say it was a loaded draft. I liked a few players there – I am on record for advocating trading down from 11 and picking up Eason (was sure he’d be there until 13/14) and another asset – but I wonder if any of the people calling it a disaster have watched more than 100 minutes of Jalen Williams play this year? (Or Eason, for that matter)
Co-sign everything EB said on the matter. Reasonable minds can differ on the optimal strategy–I was probably partial to trading down to 13, drafting Eason, and clearing cap space by getting rid of Cam Reddish and stretching Kemba.
But it’s lazy and wrong to throw the series in transactions in the same bin as the unambiguously bad 2021 draft shit show. We traded the 11th pick for three future firsts. Who knows how it’ll turn out, but it’s just not nearly as bad a value proposition.
As EBW and Z-man in yesterday’s post said, it’s about the overall picture. Everyone blunders – but if you get it right 67% of the time and the blunders aren’t crippling (e.g. trading the farm for Gobert), you’re gonna be pretty successful.
Obi over Hali is as close to crippling as Rose has done – and that’s only crippling because the value of Hali on a rookie deal is very, very high, not because he’s tying up cap or something more restrictive. The bad moves of 2021 were easily undone, and now we’re a deep, young team with good value deals outside of RJ and plenty of draft picks. Before the season I predicted 48 wins and a first round exit, and if anything I am now more optimistic. I feel we could win a playoff series, maybe two if things break right.
But even if we don’t, OVERALL I think the Knicks are in decent shape, and in that context it’s hard to say Leon is terrible.
I guess I’m rooting for Washington to make the playin so we have a good chance at the pick.
Well okay, but the actual Jalen Williams was sitting right there, which makes me skeptical about these guys finding the Jalen Williamses of the future. I don’t mean to harp on Jalen Williams, you can insert a bunch of players who are promising prospects into that blank.
When you get right down to it, it’s a talent evaluation issue and not a strategy issue. They looked at who was available at 11 and said “nah, not worth the risk” when it actually WAS worth the risk. There were guys worth taking. In a value sense this wasn’t as bad as the you-know-what pick, but the approach is not really inspiring. There were good players on the board and the FO couldn’t tell who they were.
MSG GO is a very frustrating app. I often get trapped in the login page when I open it for the first time in a while. I sometimes use it to cast to a floating Roku tv I have and it used to be fine but lately it crashes after about 5 minutes. I have the Verizon app and that does not crash.
I suspect few people will be happy with the MSG Go experience coming to it afresh. If you are a Knicks and Rangers diehard maybe it makes sense but overall that seems like a totally outrageous price point.
I have spent a lot of time being truculent on this website and am a championship or bust die hard and even I am surprised that people can’t sit back and smell the roses a bit. The team gives max effort, is perfectly cromulent, and has avenues for improvement. It’s objectively in a better spot than we have been in at any point in the past twenty years. We absolutely could have done things better (rose, fournier, kemba, toppin) but if ever there were a time to have some fun with being a Knick fan, this would seem to be it.
it’s good to read your words oh honorable one…
what a long strange trip it’s been for you already…
it gets easier, just got to do your best to maintain good health, and love yourself…
sneaky and challenging thing that is…
>>There were good players on the board and the FO couldn’t tell who they were.
I just don’t think this is true, at least not literally. I think they evaluate players on more criteria than talent – given the histories of Perrin et al, it’s about ROI for that draft slot at that salary due. (They probably account for fit as well, which makes some sense when considering Kessler when they already have Mitch.)
I’m not saying they’re always right – obviously they’ve missed big – but if anything, I think they sometimes lose the forest for the trees; they get so focused on the value prop they play it too conservatively and miss out on upside. But several in the FO have very good draft records, so it’s hard to believe they have no idea who’s good.
and may I remind you all:
a thing is a thing, NOT what is said of that thing
yeah, so there…
oh, are we still arguing today? I’m a bit behind, you know – CUZ OF THE FIVE BILLION POSTS A DAY thing going on at the moment…
just kidding, only slightly, not at all…
Outside of Walker Kessler, none of the guys taken after 11 are all that good yet.
Maybe they will be. I’m high on Griffin, Eason, and Jalen Williams but none of them are actually playing like all-stars this season.
There will be good players available in future drafts. If you trust your scouts, then you bet on yourself finding productive players with those picks. So far the FO has been good at finding productive players.
Jalen Williams is a real gut punch because of how perfectly he’d fit this team, but his performance in the NBA has been a pretty big surprise.
It’s not like he was a super highly touted prospect who shockingly fell to #11. Statistical models weren’t particularly high on him as an older college player in a weak conference and #11 was actually higher than where he was projected to go in almost every mock I saw.
I do think djphan was pretty high on Williams so he definitely can take a victory lap on that front, but it would be disingenuous of me to say trading #11 for 3 future picks was a bad move because there was a can’t miss prospect on the board. I missed on the prospect and so did many others.
My wife and I cut the cord from Comcast quite a few years ago, and have not looked back.
While it’s true that with all the streaming services my wife demands, we might be paying about as much as we would with just a big cable package, we at least can cancel any individual service we want at any time. So, there’s much more flexibility than before.
The one caveat is getting a good, reliable ISP. We’ve got one, and our local utilities company will soon be offering one as well.
I think this summer is going to be the crucial last domino in Leon’s rebuild and then ~2yrs to watch and see if it actually worked. (measuring stick is Knicks are in EC finals and flirting with NBA Finals).
Pairing RJ, Obi, Fournier + Dallas and Washington 1st round picks after they both convert this summer with our own 2024 1st round pick makes for a great return on a trade for a top 5 small forward/shooting guard in the league.
1) Jaylen Brown
2) Kawhi Leonard
3) Paul George
4) Mikal Bridges + Cam Johnson
5) Zach Lavine + Patrick Williams
Then he must extend both IQ and Hart to 3yr – $45M deals.
After this is done, Leon can go back to sleep and wake up to watch the 2nd round of playoffs in May 2024.
It’s not that there was a can’t-miss prospect on the board. It’s that there were several very good prospects on the board.
One guy I liked was AJ Griffin. He’s even younger than Williams, and is playing even better. He’s a 6’6″ sniper small forward who is shooting .386 from 3PT on good volume and who holds his own on defense. Seems like easily a better prospect than Quentin Grimes. There are at least a couple of other guys who are looking like very nice prospects and who would have been nice to have on the roster.
If they’re waiting for the “can’t miss” prospect to come around they’re going to be punting a lot more picks.
As a long time reader and sometimes poster of this awesome blog, I feel that sometimes the joy gets taken away. The last few threads (and some in the past) have been very repetitive with the same negative points over and over. It takes away from the other posts and people’s voices. It is one thing to be critical, but the constant negativity is hurting the blog.
I have greatly appreciated reading a lot of many posters opinions over the years, as it has helped me grow in my own basketball and Knicks knowledge. To those people, I say thank you. I will make an effort to post more, but sometimes it can be intimidating to post on here.
Nick
Owen +10000000
TNFH who are you? (Just kidding, loving your posting lately except you still don’t get it with the 19th pick 😀
JK you raise reasonable objections, hopefully you see at least some logic in the methodology. From all accounts, Aller and Perrin are top-notch grinders with well-trained eyes for this stuff. It’s hard to get into their heads, but unless they were coerced, I am going to assume that they don’t have a massive blind spot along the lines you are suggesting. I can’t say that I have no hard questions I’d like to ask them (and Leon) or even that I would agree with it after I had the answer to those questions. Hopefully the answer wasn’t “Well if Johnny Davis fell to us we would have drafted him…”
Griffin and Williams look good, no doubt, but I wouldn’t say they look so good there’s no chance we get someone(s) similar or better with the 3 picks we got in the trade. They’re solid players but not once-in-a-blue-moon picks e.g. Giannis/Jokic. They should be viewed as the bar Leon Rose has to beat for that series of transactions to be viewed positively. Not easy, but not insurmountable.
The problem with the incineration was it really was highly unlikely we could get someone as good as the guys we passed on, because the pick we got back was so heavily protected and it was immediately obvious to me it had a strong chance of not conveying, and that was before the Miles Bridges situation.
Man have we gone insane? Stop with this throwing shade after non-lottery picks! Here are some “late” picks on the Knicks:
Immanuel Quickley – 2020 #25
Quentin Grimes – 2021 #25
Miles McBride – 2021 #36
Jericho Simms – 2021 #58
Jalen Brunson – 2018 #33
Mitchell Robinson – 2018 #36
Isaiah Hartenstein – 2017 #43
Arguing against my own position, I will say that part of Jalen being mocked lower is playing at Santa Clara instead of a name brand school. These types of guys are often underrated. Also, nobody, at least among a number of the podcasters I followes, did much scouting on him until late in the year. I don’t think it’s too surprising that he’s been very good.
How good is Griffin on D? I haven’t seen him much but he was really slow laterally in college. There was speculation that it was due to multiple high school injuries he was still recovering from, so his defense was always the big wild card.
I wouldn’t have taken Griffin at 11.
JK I vehemently disagree that AJ is a better prospect than Grimes, and the recent Athletic article suggests why. There were also injury concerns with AJ iirc.
But that’s irrelevant…he would have been a nice pick, and you can’t have too many of those types. Still, we got decent return on that pick and tomorrow is another day. Realistically, I doubt he’d make much of a difference compared with what we can get for what we got back in the trade. For now, he’d likely would have been sitting the bench right next to Fournier. And we’d be down to zero surplus 1sts if we made the Hart trade (and I would WAAAY rather have Hart as our backup wing than AJ.)
One thing I will say about the Thibs can’t win in the playoffs narrative. Narratives are usually false or only based on partial truths but once they get engrained in some people, they are hard to let go.
But all it takes is one season, one playoff run, one championships, etc…and then the narrative completely flips.
Dirk was soft and not someone who could win a championship after The Mavs lost in 06. That narrative got even worse the next year when they were the number one seed and lost in the first round.
But now Dirk is an all-time great and a world champion bc of the 2010 Finals. Did Dirk get better that season or find some extra grit? Or was his team just a better team? People view that finals as some big upset because Miami was up 2-1 but on paper, Dallas was super strong that year and rolled through teams in the playoffs. It was just bc they faced the Heatles that they were the underdogs.
Carlisle rode off the fumes of that 2010 finals win for the rest of his coaching career.
Lebron was considered a choker after those finals. Even after he won 2 in a row the next 2 years, the idea that he couldn’t win it all without forming a super team stayed with him. Until 2016 when he beat the warriors. But Draymond got suspended. If that didn’t happen, Warriors win that series in 5.
Narratives are fun and all. Honestly, they are part of the reason we watch and follow sports. But they are just narratives. Ways to tell a story about a team or a player or a coach. They usually are not 100 percent true.
Thibs isn’t some horrible post season coach who can’t make adjustments. He just hasn’t had a team yet that could make a huge run in the playoffs. His best team got to the ECF but lost to Lebron and the miami super team. Then D Rose got hurt and that Chicago team never really had a chance again to truly compete. But somehow his reputation is hurt because he still coached the hell out of those teams and got them to overperform. Like seriously, this turns into “squeezing out meaningless regular season wins.” Cause being a coach that can get the most out of your team night after night is now a bad thing?
I wonder how good and if Chicago would have won a Championship if Rose never got hurt. Would have had some good battles in the East against Lebron.
Let’s win another home game and blow out Brooklyn tonight.
+1
It’s a mistake to evaluate trades based on whether picks convey or not or who was available in a particular slot and how he turned out later.
Picks have intrinsic value based on PROBABILITIES, not based on outcomes.
For example, imagine WHEN WE MADE THE DEAL there was a 30% chance it would convey in year 1, 35% in year 2, 35% it would never convey. Whether it actually conveys or not has nothing to do with the intrinsic value at the time the deal was made. That’s just the result of a gamble part of the deal.
Thibs won a playoff series with Nate Robinson as his 2nd leading scorer.
“I think this summer is going to be the crucial last domino in Leon’s rebuild and then ~2yrs to watch and see if it actually worked. (measuring stick is Knicks are in EC finals and flirting with NBA Finals).”
I think that’s a reasonable measuring stick.
There are loads of teams being built in every way imaginable that will not win the NBA championship, eventually throw in the towel, and be forced to start over. That doesn’t mean they failed. It’s very hard to win a championship even if you do a great job. As long as Rose and company put us in a position where we can call ourselves a fairly serious contender, they’ve done their job. The rest is part luck.
I can already predict that if 5 years from now we’ve made a couple of 2nd rounds, 1 EC Finals, and then start retooling, some people are going to start whining. But people like that will whine about everything.
The goal this year was to add a starting PG, turn Randle around, get some development from young players, win over 40 games, make the play-in or playoffs, and go from there. We exceeded every goal by far with one exception. RJ hasn’t developed as much as we hoped (though others have).
The goal for next year is to clarify the RJ issue, try to upgrade the starting SG or SF position depending on what happens with RJ, win around 50 games plus or minus a couple, and be in the top few in the EC.
Idk if Leon is losing sleep over -0.8 BPM “stud” Jalen Williams or not, but the hyperventilating over this one trade during an exceptionally fun six-game win streak reads as… idk… “worrisome” behavior?
Ja Morant has made some interesting choices with his life.
Chances Darius Garland ends up having the best career out of the 2019 lottery?
“Ja Morant has made some interesting choices with his life.
Chances Darius Garland ends up having the best career out of the 2019 lottery?”
He’s a very good player, but recent revelations have lowered my disappointment about not getting him also.
“It’s a mistake to evaluate trades based on whether picks convey or not or who was available in a particular slot and how he turned out later.
Picks have intrinsic value based on PROBABILITIES, not based on outcomes.”
This drastically overstates the case. Of course the players available should influence one’s opinion on the wisdom of trading a pick on draft night. Not all 1st picks or 20th picks or what have you are created equal, some drafts are stronger than others and different players have vastly different probabilities of succeeding in the NBA.
Sure, there’s a lot of luck involved in the draft, but you make it sound like it’s literally a pure crapshoot. That’s not remotely true–NBA teams spend a lot of money and hours trying to determine which prospects are better than others. They are often not successful in doing so, but I don’t think they’d be just as successful picking names out of a hat.
It’s just kind of weird (to me) that so many of you are so hung up on one trade that probably wasn’t good in the middle of the best Knicks season in like a decade.
Good IQ thread. He is an amazing story. We are so lucky to have him.
https://twitter.com/jakebrownnba/status/1631023902590631937?s=46&t=JI5QNV28kSJZnpceT3vAig
IQ is +3200 to win 6moty if anyone feels bold
If you subtract RJ’s shot attempts, the team’s eFG% goes from .531 to .539, and ranks 16th in the league instead of 22nd.
If you really want to pick nits one could point out that the .539 eFG% would be tied with the Lakers and Pacers, and I didn’t go past three decimal points, so I dunno, maybe they’d really be 18th, but you get the idea.