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26 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.07.27)”
I can’t help but wonder if Randle were healthy, would he have joined Hart and Brunson on Team USA this summer? Would have really been nice to see him play after a summer with that team.
Ouch!
https://twitter.com/NBA_NewYork/status/1684331286373048321
First, who cares whether Leon talks to the press? Certainly not me.
Second, you see Mitch doing his usual goofy thing and it makes me a bit uneasy to hear talk about consolidation trades. I really have grown attached to this team…the only guy I have mixed feelings about is Randle and he’s not going anywhere.
People give RJ shit, but he was the one to proclaim going into last season that the Knicks were gonna “shock the world”, which they kinda did, and his playoff performances were a big reason why.
It even hurt to see Obi traded…even though he was imho our worst rotation player, I really liked him.
I would love to give this roster a chance to shock the world again this upcoming season. Maybe there’s a hard ceiling in the conference finals, but I want to see what RJ, Grimes, and IQ really are before swapping them out for a hired gun.
That’s just me, of course. I have two championships in my lifetime so I’m a little less desperate than some others here! If a big trade is made, so be it. But for now, I’m good.
Regarding RJ:
Happy to see him go, happy to see him stay. But unlike previous years, the reason I am happy to see him stay is not because of a possible “leap”–those days are gone. His high usage is valuable to the team, and he is one of 3 Knicks who embraced playoff intensity by playing better. If he goes, we probably got fair value for him and his high usage most likely would be a detriment since I assume he goes in a trade for an equally high usage player.
“But unlike previous years, the reason I am happy to see him stay is not because of a possible “leap”–those days are gone…he is one of 3 Knicks who embraced playoff intensity by playing better”
This seems a bit contradictory…his most recent sample at the ripe old age of 22 in the most important games the Knicks have played in recent memory has been the most positive out of all the young players, yet the days of him making a possible leap are gone?!
I’m very comfortable taking the over on whatever the median expectations for RJ are for the upcoming season. If any of the Big 3 Kids is primed for a leap, it’s him. I am deeply concerned that using him as salary filer in a trade for a star might be a fool’s errand (assuming that he probably doesn’t have much value right now to other teams…).
OTOH If you can get OG for him plus a couple of picks, that’s different.
I don’t think it is contradictory as I don’t consider his play-off performance a “leap”. My definition at least the last 2 off-seasons of his “leap” was borderline all-star play. I don’t think he has it in him, but playing well when it matters is a very nice quality to have.
Another way I look at it is that 2 off-seasons ago I thought the RJ leap the biggest factor to the Knicks season, last off-season I thought it the second biggest factor. It’s now not even on the list, just like having Mitch make a decent amount of free throws has been removed from my list.
BE I get it. RJ’s lack of progress (and regression in some areas) has tested the patience of even his most ardent supporters.
But the RJ we saw in 7 out of 11 playoff games is indeed a fringe all-star. Once he got rolling vs. the Cavs, who had the best defense in the NBA last year, they had no answer for him. Then he had 4 strong games vs. the Heat. Despite his dismal shooting in game 6, it could be said that he and Brunson were the only two guys to really show up in both series, and without him we might not have beaten the Cavs and even if we did we might have gotten swept bu the Heat. And, as I keep repeating, he was 22 at the time.
What that tells me is that he has something solid to build on this offseason, including a year of experience playing with Brunson and a significant amount playing with Brunson and Hart, both of whom are all about winning. RJ didn’t just make shots in those 7 good games…he played winning basketball.
I’m sure that RJ feels the pressure of Josh Hart crawling up his ass to take his minutes, and is now hearing his name in trade rumors. He never really had to deal with that in 3.5 years of coddling, and was given an extension on blind faith. Despite his issues with consistency in the regular season, I was very impressed by how he responded to that pressure in the playoffs. And now that there’s a higher bar and competition for minutes, I am expecting him to continue to respond favorably.
RJ has shown flashes throughout his 4 seasons in the league. Every year we get a stretch of 10-15 games where he seems to have figured out out…except he becomes the same player again soon enough, driving into traffic and turning the ball over. It’s nice that his stretch of a 10 good games came in the playoffs last season, but I expect him to be the continually frustrating player he’s always been.
Good news is that, as BE said, people used to be believe that his play had a direct impact on our season, but it hasn’t. That thread from last summer sealed it for me – so many people were saying that whether we’d be good came down to whether RJ could make the leap. He didn’t, and it didn’t matter.
This is Jalen’s team. He can win with any collection of half-decent players. A flawed Julius, two-dimensional centers, a collection of limited or green wings – he’s the actual key.
Not that I wouldn’t be happy for RJ to contribute, but honestly, it would just be nice if his periods of sucking were half as long as half as frequent.
RJ had a 1.3 BPM in the playoffs. He was good. But if you say he was a fringe all-star in 7 games, that means he pretty much lost the other 4 games singlehandedly or his BPM would be much higher.
RJ was our 2nd best player, but that says more about the rest of our roster. Brunson carried us the through the playoffs.
Just realized we can field an all-lefty lineup:
Brunson
Windler
RJ
Randle
Hartenstein
“On your left” -Captain America
Katz with all kinds of thoughts, including Knicks in 5th next year (same old same old) and RJ playing the 4 a lot.
https://theathletic.com/4726403/2023/07/27/rj-barrett-immanuel-quickley-knicks-mailbag/
I’m still on the 50 yard line when it comes to RJ.
On the pessimistic side, imo he was clearly the weak link in the starting lineup and a negative on both sides of the ball last year. He was better in the playoffs, but we’ve seen him have streaks of favorable games in the past only to revert back to bad shot selection, inability to make outside shots, poor decisions in the paint (bad shots, getting blocked, TOs etc..) later. When you start selectively excluding games or focusing on smaller samples without good reason you are more or less trying to make a case instead of being an objective observer.
On the optimistic side, imo playing better in the playoffs demonstrates he can handle both playoff pressure and tougher quality competition and still play well. I also think he’s been improving every year. I know some of his stats are up and some are down, but I think that’s mostly noise/variance, defensive adjustments, and changes in his shot selection within slow steady progress. I expect him to keep getting better, albeit very slowly.
My big problem is RJ, Randle, and Mitch in the same starting lineup.
I don’t think it’s ever going to be optimal. IMO one has to go unless RJ suddenly becomes a shooter. My preference would probably be Randle because of his volatile personality, inconsistent effort, suspect basketball IQ, and because he’s older. But it seems Leon is committed to Randle.
One thread that has been glossed over lately is that RJ and Randle maybe don’t play well together. The playoffs seem to back this up after RJ took over from the possibly ailing Randle. And, in fact, RJ tended to play better with the 2nd unit during the season.
But I don’t think it’s a left-handed problem or having similar spots on the floor. The main factor seems to be that both players, probably for contract reasons, wanted to become The Man on offense and, as such, have similar games: offensive producer who neglects other facets of the game.
They both rebound and “move the ball,” albeit not at a main distributor level… but having them both take plays off on defense is surely detrimental to our starting lineup. If they could both just play average D—regardless of stocks—that could help immensely.
And obviously the shooting. Both (especially RJ) would benefit from shooting the three better, but if they can’t, it wouldn’t be horrible for them to take some smart midrange shots instead.
Thibs’ three-&-layup strategy is a good one, but it has to fit the personnel… I don’t think we can bank on Mitch having ridiculous O-rebounding numbers year after year.
In short, we need to find better ways for those two to coexist as I think they both have room for improvement.
“RJ had a 1.3 BPM in the playoffs. He was good. But if you say he was a fringe all-star in 7 games, that means he pretty much lost the other 4 games singlehandedly or his BPM would be much higher.”
We lost 5 games in the playoffs. Let’s go through them:
CLE Game 2:
RJ 4-13 for 14 points
Brunson was 5-17 for 20 points
Randle was 8-20 for 23 points with 6 TOVs
Mitchell Robinson: 2 points, 5 rebounds (1 OReb).
MIA Game 1:
RJ 10-20 for 26 points
Brunson 11-23 for 25 points
Josh Hart 5-12, 0-4 from 3, 10 points
IQ 3-9, 9 points
Grimes 1-3, 4 points
Game 3:
RJ 5-16, 14 points
Brunson 7-20, 0-5 from 3, 20 points
Randle 4-15, 10 points
Mitch 1-2, 2 points, 5 rebs (4 ORebs) 0 Blocks, 4 fouls in 14 minutes
IQ 4-12 2-8 from 3, 12 points
iHart: 0-0, 0 points in 25 minutes
MIA Game 4:
RJ 9-16, 3-5 from 3, 24 points
Grimes 3-8, 9 points
Josh hart 2-6, 4 points, 6 fouls in 21 minutes
Our bench: 4-13, 8 points
MIA Game 6:
RJ 1-10, 11 points
Randle 3-14, 15 points
Grimes 1-6, 3 points
Mitch 0-2, 2 points
By my reckoning, RJ had bad games in 3 of the 5 losses, but one or more of his teammates had equally bad or worse games. In the other two losses he was solid in one and excellent in the other. Brunson was also bad in 3 of the losses.
And even with his bad games, his BPM was pretty close to fringe all-star level. Is Zach LaVine a fringe all-star? He had a 1.9 BPM for the entire season. DeRozan was at 2.0. Jaylen “richest contract in NBA history” Brown was 1.3.
For the entire playoffs, ignoring our low-usage C’s, RJ had the second highest TS% next to Brunson. He also played the second-most minutes, took the second most shots, and took the second most FTs.
Was it just another brief hot streak? Personally, I don’t think so. His shot selection was much better, he got to the line more against two good defenses, and he only shot .328 from 3, hardly an outlierish number.
I know folks will bring up Jerome James and other flash-in-the-pan playoff performances, but that’s not what this seemed like to me. And for every Jerome James there are a bunch of young players who fizzled under playoff pressure, like IQ and Grimes just did.
And RJ was still 22 during the playoffs. At that age, Jaylen Brown had playoff BPMs of -3.8, 1.2, and 0.7. This year he was at -0.9. He’s never been above 3.3 in 6 long playoff runs.
This doesn’t confirm anything about RJ’s future, but it does make me want to see more before giving up on a guy who has yet to play an NBA minute at anything above age 22.
You know we’re in the dog days of NBA discussion when the algorithm is opening with stories that happened three weeks ago. 🙂
“Just realized we can field an all-lefty lineup”
Nate Knight is a lefty as well…
“But it seems Leon is committed to Randle.”
I don’t think it’s so much about him loving Randle as that he is more valuable on our roster in his role on his salary than he would be in a trade. I think the GMs in the league are well aware of his flaws, and while he has some plus trade value, it wouldn’t bring back enough to justify letting go of an all-star level player. We just lost significant value in trading OBI…you can’t keep losing trades like that and hope to improve the team.
Now if he has another solid season, maybe his value ticks up because his contract is that much shorter and that much further from the max.
The RJ and Randle fit just sucks, period. The lineup data backs it up, the eye-test backs it up, and common sense backs it up. The 3 and the 4 are positions you pretty much have to get good shooting from these days and neither of those guys are good in shooters in seasons where fans are allowed in the arenas (it’s a bit more complicated with Randle because being a little below average at his volume definitely had value this past season, but the reason for his volume is that teams leave him open with good reason).
If we’re going to become a yearly contender (this feels like a better framing of the pertinent question, as one could reasonably argue we were literally “a contender” this past season) I’m almost positive it won’t be with both of them on the roster.
The case for keeping Randle over RJ is about as simple as it gets. He’s had a handful of good, even great, NBA seasons and RJ has had zero.
The case for keeping RJ over Randle relies on a lot of projection, which doesn’t make it wrong. It just means that if we go this route we may well regret it if the optimistic projections don’t pan out.
The hang up is Randle doesn’t have trade value commensurate to his production, because teams don’t really like high-usage 4s and there are questions about his ability to scale down his role. So it’s not like we can trade him for some massive haul, even though players in his BPM range do in fact get traded for massive hauls all the time.
I dunno, to me all signs point to trading RJ if another team values him relatively highly. We don’t know if he’s good, he gets paid a lot, and even if he takes leaps in other areas his poor shooting will always force us to build lineups around him, something his production definitely doesn’t justify now and likely never will.
So now that it appears that both Trevor Keels and Duane Washington Jr. have been officially waived, we have 11 fully guaranteed deals, 1 likely to be guaranteed soon deal (Sims), and 3 two-way players (Martin, Knight, and Windler). Ignoring a consolidation trade or a Fournier salary dump for the time being, it will be interesting to see who gets that last roster spot…will it go to one of the 2-way guys or a vet’s minimum guy? I also wonder if Roby and Jeffries will stick or whether they will be replaced by the 2-way guys.
I would like to see a healthy competition and continual churning regarding the 5 fringy spots (last 3 roster spots and 3 2-ways). In other words, I like that they are keeping a roster spot open for a prospect who shakes loose due to a numbers casualty.
It annoys me how the new CBA is causing a lot of these deals now. You know, the Celtics trading a rotation piece for nothing, the Knicks trading Obi for nothing, the Suns trading Cam Payne for nothing, etc.
Nothing goofy about Mitch working on conditioning and FTs
Everything Mitch does is goofy.
Chris Duarte is another one who was traded for almost nothing…
Playoff performance is kinda noisy I don’t think it matters all that much more than it’s better RJ was good than sucked. Donovan Mitchell was a playoff monster at age 23 and is a terrific player and he sucked in the playoffs the last 2 seasons.
FYI, the Liberty are really good, fun to watch, and you can get great seats for $35 or so.