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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 10:36:00 PM
Why Julius Randle feels like he’s entering his prime, and how Knicks teammate Jalen Brunson motivated him Yahoo Sports
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Marc J. Spears: Kevin Durant should have went to the Knicks … Nets Wire
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Ex-Knicks High-Flyer Added to Timberwolves Coaching Staff Heavy.com
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 4:05:14 PM
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 3:00:38 PM
Pascal Siakam Trade Rumors: Knicks Form ‘Best Frontcourt’ with Julius Randle? Sports IllustratedThis Raptors-Knicks Trade Proposal Swaps Pascal Siakam, RJ Barrett NBA Analysis Network15 Way-too-early 2024 trade deadline candidates for Knicks to monitor Daily Knicks
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 2:22:02 PM
Offseason NBA Grades: Knicks, Sixers Facing Harsh Reality Heavy.com
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 1:03:30 PM
Crazy 8th: Knicks’ Charlie Ward Talks 1999 NBA Finals Run … Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 12:40:26 PM
Knicks: RJ Barrett, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Duel in Shootout Heavy.com
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 11:26:19 AM
Here We Go Again: Knicks Land Donovan Mitchell in Trade Proposal Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 11:16:02 AM
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, August 2, 2023 10:26:00 AM
Spurs’ Devonte Graham picks Knicks as America’s basketball team KENS5.com
47 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.08.03)”
I don’t think extending RJ was a blunder at all, let alone his biggest.
If we had let him play the season out, he would have gotten paid on the back of the Cleveland series alone.
Its really refreshing to hear Randle talk about JB’s off court impact on him and the team. This free agent signing is going to age really well. Might actually be the best signing in history of the franchise.
Rose has actually managed to overcome most of his blunders, which is pretty impressive bc he’s had a lot. But the best free agent signing in franchise history is one hell of an eraser.
But the one that’s going to haunt us for a long time is the one that didn’t make your list: his bungling of the 11th pick in the 2022 draft.
There were so many players available at that spot, ranging from franchise altering (like Jalen Williams) to incredibly valuable right now (Ochai Agbaji, AJ Griffin) to tantalizingly promising (Ousmane Dieng). That’s to say nothing of Tari Eason, who some love but I don’t particularly care for.
And he traded it for a bag of dicks:
– the 2023 Nuggets first (27th)
– two picks (from Washington and Denver) that are so highly protected they may never convert.
That’s the big one.
The incineration was dumb but it’s not like we’d be world beaters if we had Jalen Johnson.
We could be sitting here with a Jalen Brunson Jalen Williams backcourt, though, if it weren’t for the bag of dicks trade. He’s gonna have a hard time overcoming that.
At age 19, AJ Griffin:
-Shot .390 from 3PT, with 6.7 attempts per 36
-Had a .560 eFG%
-Averaged 1.1 steals per 36
-Had a respectable -0.8 BPM
-Shot 89% from the FT line
This was in his age 19 season. He has his flaws: he’s mostly a spot up shooter, doesn’t get to the line a whole lot. But you don’t have to do the “if he learns to shoot” caveat with that kid. I think I’d rather have that kid than the bag of dicks, or as we used to call them, the sack of magic beans.
And he’s not even the best player Rose passed on.
Austin Reaves had a much better postseason than RJ, and has been much better overall, and was only able to parlay it into 4/$60M in RFA. I don’t think RJ would’ve come particularly close to what we gave him.
Anyone who was particularly high on Jalen Williams can take a victory lap, but I personally have never found this to be a particularly compelling critique.
We got three firsts for the 11th pick. Wound up being able to parlay one of them into an intriguing MIL pick. It’s far from out of the question that we can create a lot of value with these picks.
My guess is in hindsight just taking Jalen Williams will still turn out to be the better move. He’s really good. But it’d be disingenuous of me to really hold that against Rose. Sam Vecenie ranked Williams 18th. He was hardly a statistical darling. He was barely mentioned in the Knickerblogger draft thread.
It’s reasonable to ask Rose to exercise sound process. He didn’t in the 2021 draft. He did in the 2022 draft, even though the 2022 draft results might turn out to sting us more than the 2021 draft results. Sometimes it just happens that way.
I still think it’s incorrect to evaluate trades AFTER the fact. Everyone is a genius after you get to see how everyone plays, what teams do later that impacts the value of picks etc..
You evaluate trades based in the intrinsic value of the players and picks at the time the deal was made.
Reeves signed a max extension, it was just capped by the Arenas rule. It was the most he could play his way into, unlike Barrett, who’s max was much higher for the typical arcane reasons regarding high draft picks.
Reeves is a very disingenuous comp, and Donnie explained why.
I actually think Rose did fairly well getting RJ for the mini-max instead of the full five year.
Let’s not pretend NBA execs would have been rational with a 22 year old former #3 pick coming off a good playoff run. RJ Barrett was never going to have to settle for a two year deal w a team option.
The question is are we better off without RJ at all than with RJ at market price. It’s a fair question, but there’s enough support on both sides of the argument to make calling it a blunder unreasonable.
The max from the Lakers, but any team with cap space could’ve thrown up to around $100M at him. They didn’t, largely due to a lack of cap space around the league and the knowledge that the Lakers would match regardless.
Why would these dynamics have been any different for RJ?
Sorry but you’ll have to wait til they actually convert before declaring this.
Claiming we got three firsts is like claiming the cat is still alive because no one observed its demise.
It’s Schrodinger’s Bag of Dicks.
This was/is the issue with RJ.
When you tank and draft very young players in the lottery, you are not always going to get a player that’s showing all star potential right out of the box. Only the very fortunate teams are going to wind up with some clear cut star that obviously deserves to be maxed. The rest of the world is going to have to either trade that player away or overpay to extend him and hope he develops into a player worthy of what you gave him (or better).
If you keep trading every young prospect that isn’t immediately showing star potential because you don’t want overpay in the present for a projection of the future, you are probably going to make some good moves and some bad moves, but you are almost certainly going to be tanking for a lot longer time.
We overpaid to keep RJ around because Rose and Thibs must have thought he’s going to get better. Again, with the benefit of seeing the future (he was extended before we got to see last season) it looks like an iffy deal. But several things have to considered.
1. Rose offered him as part of the Mitchell deal and Ainge apparently would have taken him, but the overall deal price was too high. That means Rose understood his value (willing to trade him) and Ainge was willing to pay him also. So it’s not like Rose was way off in his valuation at the time.
2. He’s still young and IS going to get better.
We’ve had our share of 19-year-olds that didn’t get better. RJ didn’t do anything to distinguish himself to me. If we had just waited, he still would have been a restricted free agent. I don’t think he would have gotten more than Keldon Johnson or Dillon Brooks. We used his extension as a way to distract from not trading for Mitchell. It was a bad move.
The alternative option was allowing him to enter restricted free agency, allowing us to match any offer he received. No one is saying we should’ve simply let him walk, but no part of your rationale for keeping him would be contradicted by letting the market dictate his salary.
The risk involved with this approach is that the player gets disgruntled and eventually forces his way off the team. It’s absolutely something to consider if you’re dealing with, say, Anthony Edwards. Not RJ Barrett.
We got three firsts. I would say two of them project to convey as such, plausibly at #11 or higher.
One of them probably won’t (though I wouldn’t rule it out–top 8 protection in 2026 isn’t exactly a security blanket), but in that case we’ll get two seconds in the 30s.
If we wind up with, say, 15, 25, 35, and 38, which seems more or less like the median outcome, no one will be able to convince me that’s an outrageously low return for 11.
I tend to judge individual transactions in consideration of the odds at the time the transaction is made relative to known information. In other words, the comparison of whether the value what is received in the transaction to what is given up in the transaction was likely to be positive or negative. Beyond that, I mostly focus on the aggregate. In that sense, I’m pretty much past the spilt milk FOMO stuff.
That said, I think it’s fair to debate whether it was a good idea to pick RJ at #3 in the first place rather than trading down or trading out, based on the premise that you would likely not be able to trade RJ down the road for a #3 pick in a subsequent draft. Same with signing him to his extension…would he ever be valuable enough to trade for a player actually worth as much as he is getting paid. But these were all tough calls, and I think the jury is still out.
OTOH, Obi was just a bad pick and we all knew it at the time, case closed. The odds that he would retain the value of a #8 pick were remote. He has a physical obstacle in his hip movement that is virtually impossible to overcome, and that was apparent in his college film. There were other equally bad picks taken before him, e.g. Killian Hayes, but none as old as Obi. As it turned out, you would have had great odds of doing better by just picking randomly from the group of first rounders picked after him. Not that Obi is as much of a bust as Frank or Knox, but it was a totally unforced error, a rookie mistake by Leon & Co.
Picking IQ over Bane was also a mistake, but not nearly as egregious of one. Grimes was a win. Deuce. Sims. All of the other stuff is not all that consequential.
I don’t care much about any of the draft day trade-outs in principle, beyond whether we got fair value back in draft capital. The trade out at mediocre #19 wasn’t anywhere nearly as annoying to me as blowing the even more mediocre acquired protected pick on Cam Reddish. But whatever, not a biggie.
As things stand now, I hate not having fresh fish to root for, but it’s not that big of a deal compared to the makeup of the rotation and the capacity to improve it. I am very happy with our current position in that regard.
re: RJ, I think the regime has weighed off-court and current team culture considerations in evaluating what to do with him. Leon has been committed to building a culture that at least projects stability compared to prior regimes. For better or worse, that is exemplified in his relationship with his head coach. Since Thibs clearly believes in RJ, and believes that he sees things that others don’t (he said as much here) the downside to waiting to extend RJ was a) he might have had a breakout year and become much more expensive or disgruntled and b) the narrative about the Charlie Ward curse would have continued.
I agree that it would have been more shrewd and perhaps more wise to wait, but I also think that as an “bet on upside” contract it is not a massive overpay.
We know exactly what they received and these deliberate attempts to obfuscate don’t fool anyone.
Just felt I should weigh in here and say that regardless of the perceived accuracy, “It’s Schrodinger’s Bag of Dicks” is likely the winning line of the week.
Tip o’ the cap to Hubie.
so… how do you say this is the median outcome.. and still say we got 3 firsts a few sentences before?
RJ should’ve gone to rfa… probably as prime a candidate as any… there is a compelling argument against doing so because of the projected increase in cap space at the time and how that would impact prospective bidders…. as we’ve seen most gm’s are pretty eager to unload whatever money they do get….
as we’ve seen basically every other gm was compelled to extend their very similarly valued players when given the choice to do so…. simons, herro, poole etc…
so given that i don’t kill the front office for the extension.. it was a bad move .. preventable… but there’s some argument for it even tho i probably disagree with it….
some of these other moves are inexcusable and absolutely worth blasting the front office over…. and before we anoint the front office with overcoming these bad moves…. we were very much the 7th seed before josh hart and a few others decided to go super saiyan from 3 in the second half of the year…
and so how much would we have overcome if we are actually the 7th seed next year?
the mistake with #11 should be judged through the lens like any draft pick…
there’s the ability of giving yourself opportunities to draft the best possible player…. this is stuff every good gm understands… trading for and making the picks available to you…. and then there’s the ability to make the best possible pick….
not drafting jalen williams…. that’s a forgivable mistake but that’s a mistake… same with bane…. haliburton less so but in the same realm of mistake…. not giving yourself the opportunity to make that choice .. as with the incinerated pick… is the big blunder…. especially when you forego that opportunity for the sake of … signing hartenstein….
incinerating the 2021 pick.. maybe doesn’t have huge immediate consequences much like the 2020 2nd rd incineration.. but that idea… led to the 2022 blunder… which did have huge immediate consequences…
and it’s that idea that’s so terrible because instead of using a draft pick to fill the 20mpg you just shelled out 60mm for over 4 years to do so…
Thanks, Raven. That one felt good coming off the fingers.
OK. Fair enough. If either RJ extension, Obi or 11th pick blunder were his biggest mistakes in his first three years, than its safe to say that he’s did a great job so far. Think we all would have been happy to be here 3yrs ago.
With low hanging fruit picked, will Rose have the witts and luck/karma to deliver the last piece which turns NY into a contender?
okay, you all sucked me in with schrodinger talk…i only vaguely remembered the cat thing…
listen, even without much looking, easy to see genius level intellect…
first re-glance, i’m not really getting the cat story…it ain’t real unless you see it happen – sounds more like a bad personality trait than a rule set for keeping the universe running…
there must have been a lot of cocaine use by really smart people back in the day…stock your labs full of caffeine and cocaine…
What?!
No.
It’s like saying “since all he did was shoot himself in the foot, the butt, and the knee, giving him a gun has turned out to be a great decision.”
It’s one theory of what happens and there’s a lot of variations on that theory. The “observer” isn’t necessarily a human or intelligent creature (but apparently some scientists suggest it must be) it could be a particle that runs into one of the indeterminate particles.
It’s the leading theory but that’s more of a popularity contest than a reflection of the real world.
ahhhh, damn EB…smart is understanding – really smart is being able to get other folks to understand stuff…
okay, that makes sense…
i’m still coming to terms with the fact that the universe is expanding…i kind of was hoping we were on some really long expansion/contraction cycle…nope 🙁 …the universe ends as a cold and lonely place…i find that a bit disheartening…
i’m okay now with stuff being able to exist in more than one place at a time…it’s just a thing now…
i saw sometime a while ago that it may be the energy for the “big bang” may have just “appeared” – from some other “place”…okay…i read comics – i’m cool with a multi-dimensional-verse…why not…
Actually that’s completely wrong. The cat is dead. It was just a clever way of telling certain physicists that they were being silly.
I can feel the RJ is a room temperature semiconductor argument coming…
I’m clearly not a huge believer in RJ, but his contract is probably in line with what he should be getting. As the #8 pick, Sexton, who is about as bad as RJ but a lot shorter and a worse defender, will make 17.5 mil next year. I think Rose will come out ok on that one, hopefully.
And even though I’m clearly an Obi fan, I absolutely wanted Hali over him… Rose just straight up blew it on that pick.
IQ over Bane isn’t a big deal to me. Bane was a 4-year senior, and every other team whiffed on him too. Plus, IQ is really good.
In the end, the Kemba/Fournier signings were probably Rose’s biggest gaffe… just a horrible call, although it was generally praised at the time.
lol…no straight path to success exists in life.
Knicks went from ~bottom 5 to ~top 10 rankings in three years. Curious what exactly are the KPIs the team would have needed to hit for Leon to earn an overall B grade?
My concern is that he’ll choke next summer to deliver the last piece that fits and that he won’t have the guts to fire Thibs and hire a championship level coach.
ugh, just read physics cat guy’s bio…no muy bueno…it’d been better had he not been born…
The cat thing was meant to show how silly the whole thing was but the Copenhagen Interpretation remains the leading interpretation of quantum mechanics
OAKAAK Update:
Langston Galloway will play in Italy, Mindaugas Kuzminskas in Greece, Noah Vonleh is talking with Panathinaikos…
I’m ticketed to watch many former Knicks play this winter and I’m still waiting for Frank and Knox…
Still 3 weeks left before the FIBA World Cup, what a boring NBA summer…
Calling IQ over Bane a whiff is ridiculous. IQ is great and anytime you pick a good player where we picked IQ it’s an absolute home run even if there is a “better” player picked after him. And it’s subjective that bane is better or will have the better career.
Like it’s one thing of you merely pick a rotation player with a lottery pick and a fe picks later someone picks an all star. But to split hairs over the 25th pick when you used it to pick a good player is ridiculous. Most of the time the 25th pick doesn’t even make it in the league, let alone turn into a player who is a good two way player, 6th man candidate who could potentially still be an all star caliber player one day.
The worst part of tossing all these first-round picks is how we’re clearly getting better and better at them. We started with a guy who shouldn’t even be in the NBA at all but has beautiful eyes; then chose a lanky court jester with hops who should be in the NBA but can’t find minutes; and last time took a bulldog with no real discernible athleticism or skills but who some oddballs think could be an all star despite all evidence to the contrary. Imagine if they had picks for three more years in a row — I see the new Zion landing in our laps…
what exactly is quik’s contract status?
is that extension going to happen…
dammit geo pay attention
1. copenhagen: quickley is suspended in a superposition of both having extending and having not extended. eventually woj will randomly collapse his wavefunction into one or the other.
2. everettian: quickley has signed all possible extensions. he has also refused to sign. he also quit the nba to run a small hvac repair shop in wichita. nearly identical copies of knickerblogger will observe all of these future quickleys independently with varying probabilities in different branches of the wavefunction. in one wispy branch, bobneptune rejoins knickerblogger and reports that quickley has overcharged him for a filter change.
3. bohmian. quick has actually already extended but only shams could see the little table and has yet to report it.
4. grw collapse. quick will remain unsigned until suddenly his extension will appear fully executed in the league office.
5. superdeterminism. quickley’s extension was to the dollar surreptitiously encoded in james naismith’s original formulation of basketball. quick only thinks he is negotiating.
6. qbism. quick will never sign an extension. nor will he become a free agent. but woj will tweet and every knickerblogger will then decide on their own to update their credences on whether quickley is in fact on the knicks.
Looks like we re-signed Obi and Nerlens on the cheap…
“Looks like we re-signed Obi and Nerlens on the cheap…”
@Z–man: Whatchoo talking about, Willis?
This…
Devonte Graham can shoot, but he really needs to work on his driving…
ahéhee’ milo, i need you like on speed dial for a cliff notes on life…this stuff gets complicated…
things happen a lot…
Cute, but there is no “Nerlens” in there, only a “Noel.” The “Obi” was tricky but sort of correct; the “Nerlens” was just plain false. 🙂
Hahaha, Milo, that was funny! 😀 I’m going with #2, because that way i feel good to know that the Knicks will be NBA Champions! 😉 I just hope we’re on the right branch, we deserve it! 🙂
That’s great, Max. 😉 And now i remembered why i don’t follow european basket, we’re bad here in Portugal and we don’t come near the upper continental competitions. 😛 But i have a former Knick playing in Portugal, our beloved Toney Douglas, that disappointed some of us that had a blind belief in his potential. LOL. Toure Murry also played here in 2019-20 but what do they have in common? They play/played for our arch-rivals and i can’t bring myself to watch their team! 😛 😀
Obadiah Noel? LOLOL! And now we know why we let Obi go, we now have a super advanced lab where we’ll re-create the perfect basketball player, using cloning technics. First experiment, just to test the system, is Obi’s offense with Noel’s defense in one player! 😀 If we waive him shortly, maybe it’s because the scientist messed up and selected Obi’s defense with Noel’s offense. Butter hands are back! LOL