Knicks Morning News (2023.07.04)

Strat, for RJ’s first 3 years, he was mostly playing in an offense without a true PG. His first year was the Fizdale debacle….the team started out 7-24 with Elfrid, Frank, and DSJ running the show. In his second, he played much better towards the end when a rejuvenated DRose was running the point. He didn’t shoot well in the playoffs vs. ATL but did post a 3.2 BPM…he was hardly the reason we lost. In year 3, Alec Burks and Kemba were our PG combo.

More importantly, his main role model on the court during these 3 years was “point forward” Julius Randle.

Last year was certainly very disappointing given the sizable extension he was given. It was especially concerning on the defensive end. I have no explanation as to what happened there. And combined with his regression from 3, it was an ugly year overall.

But I also saw some signs of progress on offense. His 2pt% crept up, as did his % of assisted FGs from both levels.

I don’t think his defense will continue to be as bad as it was last year. I also expect the 3pt shooting and his overall decision-making to improve, like it did during a solid playoff run. At the very least, before moving him at his lowest value, I want to see how he does on a team where the leadership is shifting away from Randle and towards Brunson and JHart.

“That’s the question at the end of the day–who do you want to trade instead of RJ?”

This may be an unpopular opinion, but now that we have Donte, it makes more sense to trade either IQ or Grimes before trading RJ.

I don’t want to trade any of them unless it’s for a star, but it comes down to market value and redundancy. Which player would count for more in a star trade? That should be the one to go. Meaning that I don’t have super-strong feelings about keeping any of them.

I would also be okay with trading one of Mitch or iHart, depending on the return. But it sounds like that’s not going to happen.

Not sure if anyone else brought this up, but I just listened to the KFS podcast re: the DDV signing. Jeremy, who is really good with parsing the cap and the impact of moves, suggested that it is meaningful as to why Donte took slightly less than the full MLE. He said that it matches up within $85K to the number that would accommodate a RJ and Evian for PG13 trade. He also said that under no circumstances should the Knicks trade IQ this year, as his salary situation is critical to a second star trade, say for Embiid. I was on the elliptical while listening and wasn’t 100% tuned it, but it was an interesting take. In any case, it suggested that RJ rather than IQ should be the one going out, and not based as much on play as financials.

Both Macri and Jeremy raved about the DDV trade and think it made our team significantly better. That’s where I’m at as well.

Bruno, that’s true, it was just theorizing on Jeremy’s part. He is trying to figure out why the number for DDV was not the full MLE, and that was one possibility that came up.

That said, fwiw it has been rumored that the Clips like RJ.

“Yeah, if the plan seriously is for Hart to be the backup power forward, that’s likely not a good plan.”

I am anticipating that in the absence of another move involving rotation players, there will be one or two disposable taller wing/PFs filling out the roster. And if something drastic happens, like Julius going down for an extended period, maybe a trade for a better player involving picks can happen.

That’s part of the reason why ditching Fournier right now simply for cap relief would be a questionable move. His expiring salary is going to be a valuable commodity up until the trade deadline. There will definitely be teams looking to offload non-expiring salary in the form of bigger wings between now and then, especially if we want to include some draft capital like the two seconds we received for Obi.

This team is in the best situation it has been in since the Ewing era. We have 9 really good to excellent rotation players, including being two deep at every position except PF, which is the position played by our relative Iron Man. We can always quibble about ways to make our situation is even better, but I just don’t understand the suggestion that there’s some kind of urgency because we have too many good players 6’6″ or under.

Bol Bol is fine by me!

A little tidbit shared by Macri on his podcast:

We now have 3 of the top 23 from last year in total catch-and-shoot 3pt makes…Grimes was 15th (140, 40%, 2121 min) Donte was 19th (132, 42.4%, 1894 min) and Randle was 23rd (129, 34.5%, 2737 min). Of the players above DDV in this category, only Niang (1512) and MPJ (1798) played fewer minutes. Only Kispert (42.9%), MPJ (43.8%), Horford (44.8%) shot a better percentage.

Most of the players above Donte on the list will be getting paid substantially more than him next year. Many are not as skilled in other areas.

I concur with Macri that this is an outstanding pickup that definitely makes us better.

I’m shocked that Max Scherzer is 8-2, every time I’ve checked in he was getting shelled…

“If Grimes or DDV are so good that being in the 20-22 minute band constitutes them being “screwed,” halle-god-damn-lujah! We’ll play the one that’s excelling and trade the other one at some point.”

I don’t get why this is so hard to understand.