Knicks Morning News (2023.06.16)

It seems likely that RJ could get close to as good as LaVine over that time and without the bloated contract

…do you know of any sportsbooks offering the other side of this? We’re going into year 5 of the RJ Barrett experience unsure if he’s a good NBA player. Zach LaVine is legitimately one of the best scorers in the game. I think there is virtually no chance RJ is ever as good as LaVine.

The valid concerns with LaVine, in loose order, are:
1) locking ourselves into a sub-contender
2) the injury history
3) the defense

I find myself modestly pro-LaVine because I don’t think the price would lock us in to much of anything (and if it does we are of course free to walk away). Let’s say it’s RJ, Fournier, and 2 NYK firsts. That still leaves us with plenty of picks and fungible salaries to play with before we project to hit the second apron. Whether it’s Anunoby or whoever else, we could still add a substantial talent(s).

As for the injuries, EB has done yeoman’s work on this front. LaVine has been sneakily durable for a while now. We all know about his past so there’s absolutely still risk here, but the question is never whether there’s any risk at all. It’s the risk involved with LaVine compared to the risk involved with the alternatives.

I am flatly not worried about the defense at all if LaVine replaces RJ Barrett. LaVine’s defensive EPM was in the 67th percentile this year and RJ’s was in the 29th. The Knicks were already 8.7 PTS/100 worse defensively with RJ on the floor this year (this increased to 13 PTS/100 worse in the playoffs). There’s just not much more damage LaVine can do even if you assume the suspect idea that he’s a worse defender than RJ.

Does this even make you a ECF lock? I strongly doubt it. It’s worse than a Fournier take 2 move, because of the contract.

Definitely not, but very few if any moves do this for any team. The Celtics assembled a #1 SRS, #1 net rating dynamo of a roster and were a few minutes away from not making the ECFs.

I think swapping out RJ for LaVine would make us a bona fide low-end contender, with room to keep building on that. The East is so jumbled that could result in us making the finals or us losing in the first round.

“The ability to self-generate usage” is supposed to be a means to an end. That end is good offense, at both the individual and team levels. It does not inherently help an offense when there’s a guy out there taking a bunch of shots. You don’t have to look any further than RJ’s on/off numbers to see this.

To be sure, a young player who demonstrates the ability to carry a lot of usage can be promising even if he’s inefficient. This is because, depending on his skillset, it’s reasonable to hope he one day becomes a player who carries a lot of usage and is efficient. There are many such cases: De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, hell, even Kevin Durant and LeBron James.

But that’s the kicker, E. One day the shots have to go in.

Reasonable people can differ on RJ’s promise in this regard. Personally I think it’s getting a bit late in RJ’s career to hope for a massive turnaround. I’m a bit busy to do a real deep dive, but my impression is pretty much all the guys I listed had at least hit average efficiency for their position by year 4. But hey, by all means hold out for the best.

Reasonable people cannot disagree on RJ Barrett’s offensive skillset right now, though. I’m not going to belabor the numbers because everyone knows them and you’ll just hand wave them away anyway. He is not doing the “hitting the shots” part of usage generation, which is the part of it that gets people excited about usage generation in the first place.

Contra one of your favorite talking points, this is not some niche Knickerblogger opinion. Zach Lowe and countless others have expressed concern that RJ Barrett is not good enough at putting the ball in the basket, among other flaws.

The Smartest Guy in the Room shtick is laughably unconvincing as is, and it’s going to fall on increasingly deaf ears if RJ Barrett is 28 and still standard deviations away from even league average efficiency.

If you’re going to keep it up, I think you owe it to everyone you’re calling stupid to tell us when we can expect the usage generation to turn into good offense.

When is RJ Barrett going to have a TS+ of 100?

Any holistic evaluator would conclude RJ Barrett is “better” and/or “more skilled” at basketball than an unambiguously bad NBA player like Frank Ntilikina.

That doesn’t mean RJ Barrett can’t also be “bad,” as in “his play does not help NBA teams win games.”

In fact, high-usage, skilled players who never become efficient are perhaps more detrimental to winning than their utter scrub counterparts. The food is bad and the portions are large.

When people say RJ Barrett is “bad,” that’s what they mean. He doesn’t help NBA teams win games. It has nothing to do with his mixtape.

E, when are we getting the TS+ of 100?

Must be soon, given his playoff TS% of .550 is so meaningful we should ignore every other data point!

No, they don’t — and that’s where you completely lose the plot. Nor does that make them “bad” basketball players or “worse” than the utter scrubs

When Emmanuel Mudiay posted a .437 TS% on robust 25.7% USG for the 2015-2016 Nuggets, was he more or less detrimental than the guys who just didn’t do much of anything because they weren’t skilled enough to play?

He’s a very promising young player who needs to hit more shots. How is that complicated? Why does that simple statement send you to conniption-ville?

You don’t get to act like the Only Person Who Gets It until the “hit more shots” part actually happens. Until then, you’re just speculating while everyone else is grappling with the present reality.

How is that complicated? Why does that simple fact send you to conniption-ville?