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66 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.07.18)”
Rokas Update:
He confirmed that Barcelona did pick up his option for next year, so he’ll stay in spain.
Talking about Spain, do you know who’ll play in ACB next year?
Former big dog and bigger bust* Jahlil Okafor (drafted one spot before KP), who just signed for Saragozza.
* To be honest, changes in the game made him an outdated kind of player at NBA level.
I know he has some fans here so a lttle Jean Montero update 🙂
The former Knicks’ summer leaguer and exhibit 10 (still 19, he’ll be 20 in a couple of weeks) is talking with a couple of Euroleague teams (Real Madrid and Virtus Bologna), stay tuned.
Montero will probably play in the FIBA World Cup for the Dominican Republic, Rokas will play for Lithuania.
When Okafor was drafted the major questions were rebounding, defense, TOs, personal fouls, FTs and things like that. He reminded a lot of people of Eddy Curry. He might be an efficient scorer inside, but bad at everything else. In the end, he scored efficiently in the post, rebounded well enough, got the TOs down a little, but was so dreadful on defense he was unplayable.
Well, this will get ugly. Evan Fournier did a long interview expressing his displeasure with still being on the Knicks, how miserable last season was for him, his lack of a relationship with Thibs, etc:
https://basketnews.com/news-192208-fournier-lashes-out-at-knicks-and-thibodeau-i-have-nothing-to-say.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1689675924
I understand Fournier’s frustration, but he’s in denial if he thinks he deserved to play more on merit. Maybe there were a few games where everyone was bricking 3s that Thibs could have tried Fournier, but Grimes, Hart, and Quickley are better two way players. You can’t get by just shooting 3s well.
I think he’s going to have be patient for a few more months until guys like Lillard and Harden are resolved and then any other potential deals lined up behind them are done. They clearly want to use his salary as an asset.
He was so professional for so long… 😀
This kind of “candid” interviews always happens when they go home and speak to their countries media outlets.
It’s classic behavior for footballers, now apparently learned by basketball players too… 🙂
Anyway, if you have ever worked for a dickhead manager or in the wrong environment, you know how Fournier feels…
P.S.
Kemba basically said the same things last year, it’s not about the merit, it’s the total absence of communication and human sensibility.
I don’t disagree, Strat. But he’s gone from playing good soldier to openly voicing his displeasure, which now becomes a thing the beat writers will ask about a ton in training camp, and perhaps as long as it takes Leon to unload that contract. Plus potential locker room issues. To quote Joe Girardi, it’s not what you want.
Hard to say as he didn’t actually shoot 3s well
Yeah, for all that Macri and others talk about how Thibs has finally fixed the team culture, our coach is really bad at communicating with players who are not his guys. Since the great majority of the roster qualifies as his guys, it’s not a crippling issue. But it’s a bad look for him, and an unnecessary one.
Alan you are really glossing over Fournier saying he is coming back like Goku
It does seem that when Thibs makes one of these tough decisions on playing time, he shuts down communication with the player. Kemba, Fournier, and Reddish all said the same thing. It sounds like Rose felt that way also.
I don’t think he’s making incorrect decisions in terms of merit or winning games (which is his job), but I think he probably has to do a better job of letting the players know what he’s thinking.
At some point though, the player has to understand, if you aren’t good enough to be in the rotation on this team you aren’t good enough to be in the rotation on this team. You don’t automatically get playing time because of your salary, draft position, how good you used to be etc…
If the player is very unhappy, it’s on Leon to try to find a mutually beneficial trade or at least something the Knicks can live with like they did with Obi.
i doubt thibs’ communication skills would matter all that much to fournier if the end message still left him as a decorative bench gnome for two years.
i also think it would be difficult to engender a ton of sympathy for him if he would have rejected a hypothetical choice to accept full buyout and sign instead, say, for the cav’s $4.5mm biannual with an expected rotation spot. in that world, we can instead imagine leon calling free agent fournier just as he was about to sign with the cavs on july 1, and offering him $18mm pretax to instead abstain from basketball while spending at least 5 hour days within earshot of a barking pug. maybe fournier prefers the money, and, presumably, sympathy largely eludes. or maybe temptation betrays him and he predicts himself poorly, “wrongly” taking the money. a tyranny of choice. but even then it’s not all that empathy inducing.
on the other hand, it would really seem egregious if he was actually willing to take that buyout but the knicks wouldn’t accept it because they would lose his tradeable contract. in that case it does seem like there’s a pareto improvement to the cba to allow buyouts to count as trade exceptions. are there unintended consequences here i’m not considering that’s aren’t already covered by the various other cap constraints? i could even imagine letting buyouts count as special trade exceptions that can be combined like normal contracts. it would seem unnecessarily tragic to idle an athlete for a year if they weren’t implicitly choosing the money. of course, in real life fournier preferring the hypothetical buyout seems a bit remote.
Fournier is well within his rights to voice his displeasure. He’s a legit NBA rotation-level player in his prime who is rotting on the bench of a team that doesn’t need him for a coach that doesn’t communicate with him. I don’t think it’s unprofessional to voice displeasure about getting dicked around like that.
This is the dark side of Thibs. It’s one thing to commit to a 9-man rotation. It’s another to have a doghouse from which there is no escape other than calamity. It’s why I have frequently compared Thibs to D’Antoni in that regard. It’s also why there is a gulf between Thibs and Spo in that regard. Duncan Robinson is no better than Fournier, and was benched by Spo for similar reasons, but somehow Spo figured out how to make Robinson a key contributor in the playoffs. Obviously Herro’s injury was the underlying reason, but we had injuries as well and Thibs never even considered shaking things up, nor would Fournier have been ready if he did.
On the positive side, there are legitimate reasons for Thibs benching DRose and Fournier and playing Obi so little that he became the odd man out in dumping salary regardless of his draft status. Like many here, I’m not a fan of absolutism from a coach, but there is at least a coherent logic to it.
Yeah, pt, what I mean by getting dicked around is holding on to him because the nature of his contract might be valuable in a trade down the road. While maybe shrewd, it’s pretty dehumanizing to do that, and it would be nice if the NBPA had negotiated some clause where a player could be freed up in a way that benefits both parties, e.g. by paying a specific tax, or via draft/tax compensation of some sort to both allow the practice but discourage it at the same time.
I don’t think that was the case last year. He was given his shot starting, lost his spot, and that was that.
This year would be different. That’s why I suggested we wait until Lillard and Harden are resolved. I think a few more deals are being held up until everyone knows what’s happening with those two and who else might become available as part it.
If he’s still on the team to start the season then he should just request a buyout and the Knicks should probably give it to him instead of letting him ride the line until the trade deadline.
From the players’ association perspective, anything making it easier for buyouts to occur is a pretty slippery slope.
Too old to fully enjoy his reference, I’m afraid.
fournier should’ve tried to fight thibs or hired caa….
the 4th year is a team option which probably won’t get exercised but might get used as salary filler next offseason or maybe even go through the next season with it… which he might be happy about but he might rightly think he has more left in the tank to get another long term deal….
the whole problem is that he never really got a shot… he had a bit of a cold spell but he has a whole career of being a dependable 3pt shooter…. he didn’t really deserve to be banished completely and if people were clamoring for options in the heat series and loved the donte signing… i mean there was an option sitting at the end of the bench that was never looked at….
instead we got 5 minutes of deuce mcbride that probably lost the game all by itself…. not nearly enough scrutiny on that choice or some of the other questionable choices…
“From the players’ association perspective, anything making it easier for buyouts to occur is a pretty slippery slope.”
Not sure what you mean by this. Of course, a player would have to agree to a buyout, and any buyout would result in a player having lots of options for going to another team while making additional money. It would appear that any situation involving a buyout could not possibly work against the player. The issue seems to be totally on the team side, specifically the dead cap created by the buyout, which is why so many buyouts occur after the trade deadline. Kemba was an offseason buyout, but the terms of the buyout were very friendly to OKC, and they were under the cap and weren’t trying to compete that year anyway.
So the question for me is, how can buyouts be more team friendly, yet not friendly enough to overly encourage the practice? One thing that is part of this conversation is the new CBA’s second apron which prohibits those teams from acquiring players that have been bought out.
Obviously the trade into a tanking team’s cap space followed by a buyout by the tanking team is still a possibility, but it would a) require sweetener and b) would require a team with enough cap space to absorb a contract like Fournier’s to participate, which are now increasingly few and far between.
I’m in favor of shorter contracts. It’s the years, not the dollars, that always causes these problems. If I was owed $18 million, I wouldn’t take a penny less unless I had something else lined up. Shame on the Knicks for giving him the extra year. I don’t think he was in great demand after getting exposed as unplayable in the playoffs when he was in Boston.
I think Indy has the most remaining cap space if they renounce all their cap holds with about $7.5M.
The best option would be an expiring salary swap. Someone mentioned Doug McDermott awhile ago.
If we want to keep our star trade potential we’d also need to take back one of Khem Birch or Bullock from SAS who are also expiring.
We may need to include DaQuan if we take back Bullock to stay below the lux tax this year.
Hypothetical question for the Lawyers Army:
If a player ask for a buyout, willing to leave all the money on the table, and the team says “no” but continue to keep him on the bench and never play him, can the player sue to team for mobbing or something like that?
(I know there are a lot of differences* but there have been some issues like that in european football. They never really got to court, it was settled before, with a buyout or a trade).
*
No salary cap, no draft rights and full NTC (right to refusal) for every player are only the first that comes to mind.
Not sure what you mean by this.
I was probably replying more to pt’s statement of “are there unintended consequences…” One is that you are tinkering with the leverage dynamic between a team and player in buyout discussions. I think of buyouts like divorce. They should be rare and obstacles put in the way of making it an easy default choice. Just because a player has to agree to one (like each party in a divorce) doesn’t mean he is under no pressure to do so, should the team want him to. For example, If you incentivise a team to offer a buyout, it means if the player wants to refuse, he is hurting the team in an additional way (because the team cannot capitalise on the incentive), putting him at further odds with the fanbase.
I don’t think you mean divorce
Not a lawyer but I assume they wouldn’t have to agree to the buyout.
The team can argue that he’s allowed to walk and seek employment for a European squad or in any other job sector but shouldn’t be allowed to join a direct competitor and his contract with their team is what enforces that.
They also lose trade rights if he walks while still being harmed by his cap hold.
You can’t force a player to work for you but that doesn’t mean he needs to work in the NBA.
Curious what the actual lawyers think though.
Fournier really is in a shitty situation and I’m not sure how it gets resolved.
From a cold-hearted realist perspective the Knicks would be crazy to buy him out. Short term, high salary is somewhat hard to come by and obviously very valuable in terms of facilitating trades.
It’s a scenario the NBAPA should look to render nonexistent, but giving teams TPEs for buyouts seems ripe for abuse. Teams could sign guys they don’t really want and buy them out immediately for the TPE, with the idea being TPEs are even better for trade facilitation than players (you don’t have to worry about the receiving team’s roster size and the receiving team doesn’t have to worry about potentially thorny buyout negotiations).
I don’t think it would happen all that often, but it’s the kind of cap gamesmanship the CBA looks to prevent in most contexts.
Then again, I’m not sure that being an option really hurts anyone. Some players get some extra money and a few trades get a little easier. So it might be a good idea, but I have my doubts the owners would go for it since they tend to try to root out cap gimmicks.
“If you incentivise a team to offer a buyout, it means if the player wants to refuse, he is hurting the team in an additional way (because the team cannot capitalise on the incentive), putting him at further odds with the fanbase.”
But in what possible case would a player want to refuse a buyout? The only reason I can think of is that he would not want to uproot his family, but even that makes no sense because he can accept the buyout and still get paid while staying put as long as he wants to, and actually have more time to spend with his family rather than rotting on the bench while still being required to travel with the team. It seems like the case you present above is so extreme that it shouldn’t be factored in to any policy discussions, no?
“It’s a scenario the NBAPA should look to render nonexistent, but giving teams TPEs for buyouts seems ripe for abuse. Teams could sign guys they don’t really want and buy them out immediately for the TPE, with the idea being TPEs are even better for trade facilitation than players (you don’t have to worry about the receiving team’s roster size and the receiving team doesn’t have to worry about potentially thorny buyout negotiations).”
I don’t think this would be a hard thing to remedy. For example, you could mandate that a player would have to have been under contract with the buying out team for at least 2 years before a buyout would trigger the TPE…or that the contract signed with the buying out team would have to be at least a given length (3 years seems reasonable) so that the TPE’s benefit would be overtaken by the dead cap’s cost. Whatever, discouraging or preventing the sort of abuse you mention shouldn’t be such a hard problem to solve.
“so that the TPE’s benefit would be overtaken by the dead cap’s cost…”
*if* the buyout team tries to execute the buyout in the first year of the contract, i.e. while substantial contract years remain…it’s rare that a team would prefer a ton of dead cap on their books for multiple years under the punitive terms of the current CBA just to take advantage of a trade exception…
The TPE is a nice consolation but doesn’t affect what the Knicks reallt want to do in potentially making an offer for Embiid or PG.
Unless you’re allowed to aggregate TPEs with players, then the Knicks may still hold onto Fournier.
The NBPA should feel an obligation to vocally advocate for a player in any situation where a healthy established veteran player is being prevented from playing basketball in multiple years by a given governor/front office for the sake of his contract’s prospective value in a trade somewhere down the line. It might not change anything, but it is bad publicity for the FO engaging in the practice. The Knicks have tried to rebrand itself as a player-friendly team…but when your coach gets ranked the one players would least like to play for, you get set up for this kind of blowback. And as a former agent, I doubt that Leon would sit quietly by if this was happening to one of his former clients.
Which is to say that I don’t think this situation is tenable for the Knicks and that Fournier will not be on the roster when the season starts.
+1 on this, Z-Man.
Fournier did not start off the season well but he’s not so incompetent that he should have been banished to permanent DNP-CD land. This is the difference between NYK under Thibs and Miami under Spo/Riley. You get the feeling Miami would have found a way to both use Fournier, and to keep him happy.
We seem to have a narrow concept of what makes a “good” basketball player here, and that’s a legitimate criticism of Thibs/Rose.
I don’t really feel bad for Fournier that he has to go watch Knicks games in order to make 17 million dollars in a year I mean fucking come on.
And yeah, sure he wants to play, but he sucks on D maybe even more than RJ sucks on O.
If we wanted to do him a solid, we could take back a longer contract for a position we need like for Brandon Clarke maybe? But I don’t think Leon would ever do that unless it was a star coming back.
He’s just not a starting-caliber player and not a cost-effective way for a team to get bench shooting. He might have to wait til the trade deadline, which isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Would it change your mind if he was making something in the ballpark of $18,857,143 instead?
He got a couple opportunities when players got hurt and in the final 4 garbage games.
He sucked in most of them.
To clarify, I don’t feel sorry for Fournier in the grand scheme of things, but have empathy for him in the context of his career as an NBA player. more importantly, it is bad PR for a team seemingly trying to market itself as a player-friendly destination.
I’ll only say this…
Every time I saw Fournier step on the court this year, he missed a few 3s (Evan, you had ONE JOB) and played some of the worst defense I’ve ever seen…
Or maybe it’s Fournier who has a narrow concept of what makes a “good” basketball player, i.e…you just have to be really good at shooting three’s and defense, rebounding and playmaking don’t matter.
He took over 100 threes and shot .307, he was given a chance. But at some point you need to call it.
I might’ve played him in the Miami series but I wouldn’t have counted on it working either.
There are lots of guys across the league who are good 3pt shooters and bad defenders. Fournier is a lousy defender, but I don’t think he’s as bad as he’s being portrayed here. He’s not Steve Novak.
Fournier was straight up fucking awful last year. His main value is 3 point shooting and he shot like 30 percent. He had a 47 TS%, his advanced numbers were all trash.
Now, on the other hand it was only about 500 minutes, and he was serviceable as recently as 2021-22. There are some warning lights in his stats profile, he might be pretty cooked, or Thibs might have fucked up in not keeping him ready enough to come in a play 12 decent minutes a night in the playoffs.
And if he had shot like Novak then he’d still be in the rotation but he shot more like Deuce
(He’s actually never shot as well as Novak who is 9th in all-time 3p%)
my guess for the Goku reference was pokemon…
turns out to be dragonball z…
“He took over 100 threes and shot .307, he was given a chance. But at some point you need to call it.”
As a starter the first 7 games of the season, he shot 40% from 3 and has a .572 TS% and the team went 3-4. Then Grimes replaced him in the starting lineup and Fournier did not adjust well and was eventually removed from the rotation, deservedly so. But one would think that he was still capable of evolving into a decent scorer off the bench with some patience.
In any case, I don’t have an issue with benching him, just with not making a bonafide effort to trade him solely for strategic purposes.
two points here –
point 1: not showing home games of a regional team sucks, a lot of times their venues benefit from municipal “charity”
point 2: i don’t think restricting local team broadcast is even a sound financial decision…no doubt it’s immediate revenue, but…
From an Athletic story breaking down notable players on every Vegas summer league team, here are the two Summer Knicks who got highlighted:
Full article here: https://theathletic.com/4700025/2023/07/18/nba-summer-league-team-by-team-review-victor-wembanyama-chet-holmgren-and-more/
I don’t think Fournier adjusted well to being out of the rotation. If he gets a steady rotation spot on some team, I’d expect his shooting to bounce back to his typical level. At his best he was a pretty good player. He was a key player on team France that had some success. It was just a terrible fit first next to Kemba and then next to Brunson (with RJ and Randle also starting). You can only hide so much subpar defense.
I think the bigger issue with some players seemingly not wanting to play for Thibs is that they are afraid he’ll run them into the ground and shorten their careers. I’m not sure how much of that is still warranted, but he still has that reputation. He’s also very demanding and is going to clash with guys that aren’t giving 100% all the time.
This communication thing, I sort of get, but sort of don’t get.
You want your coach to tell you the reasons you are not playing so you at least understand your position in the pecking order, why, what you might work on increase you minutes and things like that. But once it’s clear where you are in the pecking order and why, don’t act like a baby. Shut up, work on your game, play hard in practice, try to change the coach’s mind and wait for number to be called if someone gets hurt.
Fournier was outplayed period.
All this talk about Fournier’s defense was because you were missing me, admit it! 😀
I’m one of Fournier’s most notable critics around here, and even i think Fournier has a point and it’s no wonder he’s upset. I was mad at his defense when he was a starter, i wasn’t saying to not play him at all. That’s madness, but hey that’s Thibs, he has a lot of good things about him, but managing the players moods and their playing time is not one of them.
I think the best way to solve this would be to pack Fournier and the pick we most fear we’ll lose (the Detroit pick) to exactly Detroit for Bojan Bogdanovic. We’d get 20M in salary, and a much needed backup PF. There’s only one difference on their contracts, Fournier’s 2024-25 season is a team option and Bojan’s is guaranteed. But i still think it’s a worthwhile trade.
cyber, I don’t like the Bojan idea because he would need to play but knowing Thibs, he could wind up with the same fate as Fournier.
And that’s a legitimate concern about Thibs…as a FO you have to factor in his quirks when considering transactions, or not and live with the consequences so long as he is the coach. And to be fair, Thibs has been 100% correct about some things, like Kemba and Cam, and to a lesser degree, Fournier and Obi (I seriously doubt that Thibs was a fan of Obi at draft time, and he apparently was enamored with Grimes)… Still, at some point, it becomes so limiting that you have to move on from him.
Even while in the starting lineup Fournier only managed a .543 TS% because he can’t score inside the arc anymore. And with his defense, that just doesn’t cut it.
His attempts within 3ft have been dropping every year and now his 2p% has finally caught up. He was at ~20% attempts in 2018-19, then 17%, 13%, 8%, and now finally 7% while hitting only 50% of his shots there.
Athletically, he’s probably cooked. He could still be useful as a shooter, maybe a bit better driving with a shooting C, but he loses a lot of value without that part of his game.
Damn, why doesn’t this “as a starter” stuff apply to Obi?
This leaves out the 7th game
I’d straight up trade RJ for Bojan. He rocked a .627 TS% on 25.9 USG% (as compared to RJ’s .521 with 26.2). Also .411 vs. 310 from three. They’re basically the same size, Bojan is an inch taller (but for all you “He can play the 4, too” guys out there, RJ outrebounded him 5.0 vs. 3.8, and that’s roughly the same minutes per game, 33 vs. 32).
They both SUCK at defense, but at least one of them is good on offense.
He is ludicrous as our 17 mpg backup power forward, however. Starting big wing though?
Here’s some of the people who played PF last year that are roughly the size as a SF:
Patrick Williams – 6’7″ 215
Derrick Jones, Jr – 6’5″ 210
Caleb Martin – 6′ 5″ 205 (or Butler?)
Jeff Green – 6’8″ 235
Joe Harris – 6’6″ 220
Yuta Watanabe – 6’9″ 215
Cam Johnson – 6’8″ 210
DFS – 6’7″ 220
Jayson Tatum – 6’8″ 210
Grant Williams – 6’6″ 236
Hauser – 6’8″ 215
PJ Tucker – 6’5″ 245
Niang – 6’7″ 230
Tobias Harris 6’8″ 226
Lamar Stevens – 6’7″ 230
Dean Wade – 6’9″ 228
Cedi Osman – 6’7″ 230
Scottie Barnes – 6’9″ 227
Oshae Brissett – 6’7″ 210
Aaron Nesmith – 6’5″ 215
Deni Avdija – 6’9″ 210
PJ Washington – 6’7″ 230
Bojan Bogdanovic – 6’7″ 230
Torrey Craig – 6’7″ 221
I got bored, so there’s a lot more. But the general gist is that RJ can defend these guys or, if he can’t, he would face similar players playing SF (Tatum for one).
These aren’t the post-up behemoths of yester year. RJ can guard these guys about as well as he does players listed at SF.
EB, nicely played, but “RJ can guard these guys about as well as he does players listed at SF” made me laugh.
Me too!
I’ve been saying we should give RJ long looks at the 4 for a while. Not because I’m particularly optimistic about it, it’s more of a last resort than anything else.
I’m not all that worried about the defense. If anything, I think he’s less exploitable at the 4 than he is on the wing–his size deficit at the 4 may well be smaller than his speed/athleticism deficit at the 3.
There aren’t that many 4s around the league who can really exploit a weak defender in any event. It’s increasingly the position where teams stick guys who just don’t fit anywhere else…kind of like RJ Barrett. There are definitely specific matchups that would pose a major problem, but it’s easy enough to just not play RJ there when we’re playing the Raptors or Cavs or whoever.
Defensive rebounding is literally the one area in which RJ has excelled, so I don’t think he’d be that much worse at it than the average 4. I think it’s definitely a lesser deficit than his lack of shooting ability represents on the wing, at least.
Offensively, it’s possible RJ has a speed/mobility advantage over other 4s that he definitely doesn’t have against fellow wings. His 3PT shooting ability is also much closer to acceptable at the 4 than it is on the wing, and playing him at the 4 lets us deploy lineups with three serious shooting threats. Maybe he benefits from the extra space, or maybe he doesn’t, but it’s not like he can be much worse than he’s been anyway so I don’t see the harm in giving it a look.
Basically, if we stipulate that we have to play RJ Barrett 30+ minutes every game, the 4 might be the position where he can do the least harm.
Jaylen Martin got a 2-way from the Knicks according to SI. I hope he can do what none of our other 19 year olds have been able to do. Grow a couple of inches!
“There aren’t that many 4s around the league who can really exploit a weak defender in any event.”
Just to pull a reverse Early Bird:
Giannis
Davis
KAT
Mobley
JJJ
Sabonis
Siakim
Markkkkanin
Collins
Gordon
Zion…
But as you say, just don’t play him against them, and we’re talking backup minutes anyway. Just wanted to show that there are a few decent 4’s out there. EB’s list is a better example of the players RJ might have to face in backup minutes.
Raven, it’s spelled “Markaten.”
There are at least three T’s and two N’s in Markattenn.
“This leaves out the 7th game”
Oops, I used just his October data, which was the first 6 games…if you add in game 7 his 3pt% was .390, which is higher than his career average. His .543 TS% is due mainly to poor shooting from 2, which is definitely an issue, but I think it’s a bit harsh to conclude that he’s in some kind of physical decline. I get the at the rim stats are declining, but some of that is about the offense he’s playing in.
And again, I’m not criticizing his removal from the rotation, but I believe there he could be a very decent role player in a different situation…just not worth the money he’s getting paid, and not right for this team and coach. I would compare him to a Tim Hardaway Jr. kind of player right now, and he’s still in a rotation!
re: RJ at PF, I think he’ll be fine there in limited minutes, as would Josh Hart. So long as you have a relatively competent non-rotation backup on the roster….say someone like Taj Gibson if he’s still healthy enough to give you 25mpg for a couple of weeks in a pinch…and there will always be guys like that out there…it will work out fine. I am less okay with Sims/Roby in that role, but not all that worried about it for now.
To start the season, the key would be the rotation of players around the 12-14 minutes that Julius doesn’t play. Randle usually goes out near or at the end of the first Q, the last of the starters to be subbed out. At that point, he would be on the floor with iHart, IQ, JHart and DDV. So you sub in RJ for Randle, and the 2nd Q usually starts with the following lineup:
C: iHart
PF: RJ
SF: JHart
SG: DDV
PG: IQ
Then you build back up to the starters from there. After 3-4 minutes you rotate Brunson, Mitch, and Julius back in for iHart, RJ, and one of either DDV or IQ, depending on how things are going that night, matchups, etc. Then you juggle RJ, JHart, Grimes, DDV and IQ depending on how the half is going.
Same drill in the second half, with closing lineup depending on the situation and game performance.
After 20 games or so, you can tighten things up unless injury makes decisions easier. The two players most likely to get their minutes squeezed are Grimes and DDV. If Grimes stagnates at the level he was at last year, he might be the one to be relegated to Obi’s minutes. If he improves substantially, then DDV will be the one to lose minutes, or maybe even RJ.
In other words, for the start of the season (barring trades or injury) I would expect:
1) Randle, Mitch, Brunson, iHart and IQ to play essentially the same minutes they did last year
2) RJ and JHart to split 50-55 minutes or so, with who plays more varying from night to night
3) Grimes and DDV to split 30-35 minutes or so, same as above
Put differently, for the 240 minutes of total playing time at all 5 positions:
Randle (34), Brunson (34), Mitch and iHart (48 combined) IQ (28) for a total of 144 minutes
Then Grimes and DDV (38 combined) and RJ and JHart (58 combined) [probably underestimated in prior post] would get you to 240.