Knicks Morning News (2023.06.30)

I don’t know if I love that plan, but it makes some sense in terms of having a relatively deep pool of assets, so that if we have to send out two of RJ, IQ, and Grimes, we have DiVincenzo here to replace one of them. But somebody would be unhappy with their playing time in the interim.

the big problem with giving out mle’s to role players in anticipation for a trade is that not only that the trade might not happen… is that mle’s are generally terrible value to begin with… and even more terrible when you’re cannibalizing minutes from your other highly paid role players…

we have been in this really bad habit of giving up a lot of value in the seeming chase for this star trade.. and this would just be the next in a long line of them… the best timing to fill in the roster with role players is when your core players are figured out or else you have what 2022 was… you do that because not only do you not know who might fit best with your core players that you dont’ have… you have the benefit of time….

role players can be wildly volatile… just look at ihart.. he went from zero to hero in a matter of months… grimes spent half the year doing basically nothing… josh hart was a mere mortal in portland… you figure out who that star player is and then you sign and trade for whoever you need to…

divicenzo is a great role player.. but by the time you do make that ‘consolidation trade’… he could get hurt which is in his history… he could turn into another fournier… why wouldn’t you try to operate with the most information at the time when you actually need it instead of trying to predict the future exactly as how you envision it?

They’ve made the mistake with players who won’t actually be easy to move, though. Tons of contenders would give DDV the MLE happily if they had it. That guy would be in every rotation in the NBA.

at the time they were ‘very movable’ according to the kb hivemind…. or we’ve also gotten the ‘we need to match contracts’ bit also….

there’s no rush to do any of these things… guys like donte and hart are good until they aren’t… and guys like donte and hart are available every year for the mle… if you need insurance from injuries and performance.. that’s what the end of the roster is for…that’s what draft picks are for.. that’s what undrafted free agents are for.. that’s what the gleague and all the things you’re supposed to actually care about are for…

having the highest paid bench in the league is a recipe for disaster… and for the sake of ‘trading for a star’ … i mean forget the strategy… that’s just terrible tactically…

matching contracts was never really a thing since you have a salary floor and you inherently have contracts that will match somewhere on your roster… you dont need to go into the tax or the second apron for more options to salary match… if it winds up you have good players to trade that’s a good problem to have! you dont have to give up picks then.

but with the new cba it’s even easier to salary match since you can use the mle as a trade exception now.. so if the big reason to sign mle contracts is to match contracts with some hypothetical trade that’s entirely not a reason anymore….

the problem isn’t Donte right now.. it’s Donte in 1-4 years…. there’s nothing all that special about the MLE that makes this super urgent or that we lose it forever and ever… the MLE sucks…

the taxpayer MLE isn’t all that much better but due to the inherent limitations helps you find relative bargains like …drumroll… Donte Divicenzo… and Bruce Brown.. guys we’re supposedly considering for the full MLE…

and the reason why the MLE is generally terrible is the EXACT reason why we’re tryign to use it now.. it’s compounding a prior mistake.. we bloated our cap for no reason on guys like burks.. noel.. rose… fournier… and because we couldn’t unwind the fournier mistake we’re now in the position to URGENTLY use the MLE or that we lose it…

oh noes! we don’t have the MLE! we dont sign divicenzo but there’s probably a dozen or so guys who could absolutely put up a very similar season to divicenzo last year… and there’s a very real risk that divicenzo’s 3pt shooting regresses to his career 36% mark instead of the career best 40% mark and he’s back to being not worth the money…

there’s nothing special about divicenzo.. he’s good… but he’s a lot less good paying full boat retail with the ‘i got hot’ tax on top of it…

and divicenzo and hart are great role players… i would love them on the team… but just look at their last 3 years and you can absolutely still consider them good and have an exact repeat of what happened the last 3 years occur…

the ONLY way it’s worth it is if they repeat their BEST years… that’s a much harder question to answer…. and that’s why guys like them switch teams a lot because a lot depends on their surroundings and some lucky bounces…. they’re average because they don’t have defining skills which makes them inherently volatile and risky bets on long term contracts….

There’s a dozen or so guys who might do it, but 10 or 11 of them won’t do it.

yea and your job as gm is to find one of those guys like the miami heat.. the denver nuggets… the warriors…. if you don’t … what’s the big deal? he’s the 8th guy in the rotation?

and there’s no guarantee divicenzo is even the SAME divicenzo next year… our offense is TOTALLY different than what the warriors run… it’s quite possible that he’s no where near there.. and no 12million is not easy to unwind… we had a small armies worth of those guys in noel.. burks and rose.. and we paid dearly in unwinding the first two… and we still have the corpse of derrick rose doing nothing!

Fournier expires next year anyways. If we let him expire does that leave us the MLE or are we in the tax anyway? I’m asking, I don’t know.

if we didn’t have fournier and rose i’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be into the tax until the brunson extension which means we’d have the full MLE…. but it’s moot anyway.. the full MLE sucks and it’s just not that important to plan around a player for that slot since there’s no distinction between that and taxpayer MLE ESPECIALLY for the 8th guy in the rotation….

Because if this is such a horrible salary move than there must be some cap consequence that make us not want to do this deal. Otherwise it’s just concern over our billionaire owner’s trust fund.

because it just adds to the enormous risk of long term money into essentially league average players…. we will have the highest paid bench in the league… that is untenable…. if nothing changes we will be going into the apron with this squad and if ANYTHING goes wrong it will be super tough to unwind in any consolidation trade.. you could very well have a consolidation trade occur and then be left with the scraps that the teams won’t take and be forced to play guys like the 2025 version of evan fournier and derrick rose…

teams voluntarily go all-in when they have all-in stars… guys like KD.. booker… harden… kawhi… lebron… giannis… curry… we are going all-in on … josh hart… and divicenzo… i love them… but they’re not worth threatening to get into the apron over… no way…