[news.google.com] — Tuesday, September 5, 2023 6:48:56 AM
“I believe he’s in a market he don’t wanna be in” – Stephen A. Smith suggests Zion Williamson will be more locked in when he’s with the New York Knicks Basketball Network
[news.google.com] — Tuesday, September 5, 2023 5:00:00 AM
Orthopedic specialists Hospital for Special Surgery opens outpatient office in town of Southampton Newsday
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 11:15:38 PM
Mitchell, Knicks Trade Rumors ‘Haven’t Gone Away’ Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 9:05:13 PM
New York Knicks’ Jalen Brunson Reveals Key to USA Victory as … Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 8:07:06 PM
NBA Rumors: New York Knicks Linked to Taj Gibson and Ryan Arciadiacono Last Word On Sports
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 5:43:19 PM
Recent Trail Blazers And Knicks Player Is Still A Free Agent Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 5:00:45 PM
When does NBA Training Camp start? Dates Knicks fans need to know Daily Knicks
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 3:00:09 PM
‘Going to the Olympics, Baby!’: Knicks’ RJ Barrett Dances to Paris … Sports Illustrated
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 2:26:45 PM
Knicks need to stay far away from one blockbuster deal Empire Sports Media
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 11:43:01 AM
Knicks’ Evan Fournier Ends World Cup Stint in a Whimper Heavy.com
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 9:50:00 AM
Which Knicks players played for the Celtics and Trail Blazers? NBA Immaculate Grid answers for September 4 Sportskeeda
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 8:00:56 AM
3 Red flags Knicks must consider before going all-in on Joel Embiid … Daily Knicks
[news.google.com] — Monday, September 4, 2023 7:40:00 AM
Biggest 2023-24 NBA preseason questions and predictions – ESPN ESPN
49 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.09.05)”
Well at least Team USA won’t lose to Lithuania again….
Rokas had a pretty good game. Maybe he has some value. He’s still only 22, but the clock is ticking…
I want to hate Haliburton soooo bad…but he just wins me over every time!
Mikal is ballin’!
I will say that Hali’s defensive footwork needs work…
How’d our guys look, Z-Man? I’m stuck watching screeners for work.
They were sort of fine in the first half…but it’s been the Mikal Bridges Show for the most part. Hart just hit a 3. US running away with it now.
OMG Bridges is en fuego!!!
The ‘Nova boys are going supernova…
Italy is gassed, USA just pouring it on.
I assume he’s never going to play for us, but I’m curious how much value he’ll have as part of the inevitable star trade package. Or if he doesn’t, I suppose we should try to hang onto him and have him become Brunson’s new backup if/when Quickley gets moved.
In a lineup of Hali/Mathurin/Hield the Pacers chose to defend the opposing star with Hield… the Pacers are gonna have some defensive issues if Mathurin & Hali can’t improve their defense
“In a lineup of Hali/Mathurin/Hield the Pacers chose to defend the opposing star with Hield… the Pacers are gonna have some defensive issues if Mathurin & Hali can’t improve their defense”
But now they have DPoY candidate Obi Toppin, so problem solved…
“I assume he’s never going to play for us, but I’m curious how much value he’ll have as part of the inevitable star trade package. Or if he doesn’t, I suppose we should try to hang onto him and have him become Brunson’s new backup if/when Quickley gets moved.”
I doubt he has any more trade value than a lousy second rounder…and I doubt he would play over McBride unless he can defend. But anything can happen I suppose!
Hali and Banchero showboating…
If the Knick are insane enough to trade Quickley I could see a backcourt of Rokas and McBride off the bench. In fact, I like that combination if Rokas is actually NBA ready. McBride is not a real PG, but his defense would be invaluable next to Rokas who would handle the ball and be the primary playmaker. I haven’t seen enough to know if he’s ready for the NBA.
In Macri’s newsletter today (the one free one per week, I believe), he picks the five worst Knicks coaches of his time watching the team (i.e., from the 90s on): https://knicksfilmschool.substack.com/p/the-clueless-coaches-ranking
I’d probably swap 1 and 2, but can’t really object. Tomorrow, he’s going to rank the five worst Knicks GMs/POBOs of the same time period. To me, there is a blatantly obvious number 1 in Zeke, but another commenter is arguing that Layden has a stronger case, basketball-wise. (To me, the sexual harassment trial easily puts Thomas over the top, above and beyond all his disastrous GM-ing.)
I don’t think Derek Fisher should be on there, not because he was any good, but because those squads were such garbage I don’t think anyone could save them
In year 1 Alexey Shved was #1 by BPM in his 16 games, Melo #2 in 40 games, and legend Cole Aldrich #3 at 0.3BPM who managed over 60 games. Prigs was the only other player over a 0.0BPM and he only played 43.
I would call Isiah as a coach more damaging than disastrous. It’s just impossible to tease out the horrific nuclear winter of his management debacle, since that’s the only reason he was coaching in the first place.
Honestly, I think Mike D’Antoni deserves special mention. I despise him more and more as the years go by. And while it’s not really his fault…he shouldn’t have been hired when he was in the first place…his hiring sort of started a whole chain reaction that lasted years after he was gone.
Did anyone watch the Little Richard documentary? Poor guy never really got his due…
D’antoni seems totally fine to me from a talent:wins standpoint, probably even a net positive. What reverberations were there from his hire after he left? We didn’t exactly build the roster to suit him, in fact I would say the bigger problem was the extent to which we didn’t do that.
I liked Macri’s list just fine, but I think the executive ranking will make for a much more interesting discussion. I don’t think we’ve had much of an underperformance of talent issue since Isiah left. We’ve had a lack of talent issue, owing to so many different executives I’m excited to see how Macri ranks them.
It’ll be interesting to see how he deals with the various era nuances. I don’t think anyone made as many obviously-idiotic-from-the-moment-of-conception moves as Phil Jackson, but because of CBA changes and the like others probably did more overall damage.
18 years later, I am still baffled by the Larry Brown season. Brown was coming off an amazing performance in Detroit, winning a championship without any star players (unheard of). He’d won at every lever he’s ever coached at over his 40 career. How could he have legitimately arrived in New York and act like he was a volunteer coach from the Kiwanis club?
“I don’t think anyone made as many obviously-idiotic-from-the-moment-of-conception moves as Phil Jackson…”
Honestly, I don’t think it’s even close…Isiah made MUCH worse and damaging moves than Phil. Right from the get-go there were the ill-conceived Stephon moves…then Curry…Jalen Rose…Crawford…ZeBo…Jerome James…
He left the franchise in a shithole with no assets. At least Phil left the franchise with all of its draft picks and only one true albatross (Noah). If they had hired a savvy GM right after Phil rather than stringing Mills along and then hiring a rookie GM in Leon, there would have been a lot more to work with than the mess Isiah left and who knows where we could have been by now? On top of being a world-class a-hole and bitter rival as a player, his tenure had zero success and his squandering of draft capital reverberated for many years.
It’s hard to evaluate a coach when he has a bad team or players that are not suited to him. You have to see how they do with good talent and players that are buying in.
He probably didn’t get long enough, but I think the worst coach on multiple levels was Fizdale – including the fact that he was instrumental in taking Knox over Bridges.
I wouldn’t even bother mentioning guys like Hornacek and Fisher.
Fisher took over as coach of one of the worst positioned teams I have ever seen. Not that I liked him, but he had zero chance for success. The one major knock I have against him is that he built a staff of assistants that were part pro triangle and part anti triangle knowing full well they were going to play the triangle and have to get Melo to buy in.
Hornacek ruined his potential coaching career by taking the job given that Phil still wanted to run the triangle, Melo wanted nothing to do with it, and Hornecek didn’t even know it. smh
People don’t remember what a problem Melo was for coaches back in those days. He drove Karl nuts, made D’Antoni miserable, was jealous of Lin, and gave problems to both coaches under Phil because of the triangle. He was team poison.
Ed Tapscott deserves an honorable mention for drafting Frederick Weiss over Ron Artest in the 1999 draft.
Evaluating Knicks managements is too depressing to even consider.
Trey Murphy III tore a meniscus in his knee. That stinks. Never like to see young players get hurt right when they seem on the verge of making a leap. (Especially when said player doesn’t play for one of your blood rivals.)
Impressive how two of the very worst moves of the past 25 years were made by what were essentially placeholder GMs: Tapscott passing over Artest, and then Mills signing Tim Hardaway Jr to that ridiculous contract.
(The latter inspired the story — perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not — that David Griffin was on a plane to sign a deal to be our next GM, heard about the TH2 deal, and literally ordered the plane to be turned around, rather than go work in a place where something like that could happen.)
Interesting to see how he ranks the GM/POBOs because so much of the value derives from whatever Dolan wanted as well as handling him. But if Isiah is not top of the list, the list is wrong.
Edit: not sure of the ranking system so perhaps bottom of the list i.e., worst.
Phil Jackson was worse than Isiah.
Both had terrible execution of their plans, but Isiah’s plan actually made sense and had the possibility for success whereas Phil Jackson’s was idiotic and doomed from the outset.
Plus, Phil Jackson worked under a CBA that protected GMs from giving out terrible contracts, so the one good thing he did (not destroy the team long-term) was something he couldn’t really do even if he’d tried.
Pringles was on a podcast with JJ Reddick recently and said that his biggest regreat was not moving up to #5 spot on the draft to get Steph Curry. Donnie Walsh decided that Steph will be available at #8 and didn’t want to send an unnamed player to Minnesotta.
That guy is an idiot.
To me, the bar should be: how did you leave the franchise vs. how it was when you took it over. By that metric, Isiah is the loser (winner?) by a wide margin.
Put differently, if given the choice of taking on the GM job (ignoring Dolan, assuming that you had total control over all basketball decisions and no spending limits or pressure to win now) after Isiah was fired vs, after Phil was fired, I’d take door #2 every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
What would you call Isiah’s plan, Donnie? Because it seemed to be to assemble an Island of Misfit Toys roster filled with talented players, all of them with some kind of crippling flaw, none of them really fitting well with one another, and flinging away draft picks as fast as humanly possible.
The Isiah’s Doctrine was to use Dolan’s willingness to spend as a competitive advantage against all other teams. If executed well, the team could have gotten very good. Isiah did the hardest part well, which to convince his boss to spend hundreds of millions of extra dollars (luxury tax) for marginal wins. He just wasn’t good at targeting the right players to blow all the money on. He was bad, no doubt about it, but Phil Jackson’s plan was to implement the triangle office and show free-agents his ring-clad fingers. I’d take Isiah’s overall performance over Phil’s.
Well, like I said, the CBAs were different and the one Phil was working under didn’t even allow the biggest mistakes that Isiah made. So it’s not apples to apples.
Also, you remember Scott Layden, yes? Isiah took over a team that was capped out due to 6 year contracts to Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. He may have actually left the team better than when he found it.
Layden didn’t give out those contracts he traded for them, not sure which is actually worse…
Also, Alan— Part of Isiah’s plan involved using Dolan’s willingness to spend the luxury tax to acquire draft picks. He acquired the David Lee, Balkman, and Nate Robinson picks that way. As noted, he made some very poor decisions, but he did understand the value of replenishing picks and was quite good at finding talent in the draft.
Phil drafting Frank comes close to qualifying, as well.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, though: time proved Mills right about that Hardaway contract. Not only did he play up to it, but he earned the exact same money four years later.
He did give out those contracts, just not with the Knicks. He traded for his own mistakes!
He was overrated as a drafter. Yes, Ariza, Chandler, and David Lee were all good picks for late in first round/early second. Nate, too, I suppose. But he also took Channing Frye over Andrew Bynum and Danny Granger, and then he took Renaldo freaking Balkman over Rajon Rondo and Kyle Lowry, followed in the same draft by Mardy Collins over Steve Novak, PJ Tucker, and Paul Millsap.
Basically, he had a decent track record of finding role players, but it wasn’t like he was unearthing hidden future stars.
And that was the thing he was by far the best at.
That’s fine, but the point is that he replenished the picks that he traded. He didn’t just fling away draft picks as fast as humanly possible. In all he traded two first rounders for Marbury and two for Curry, and he traded for 3 first rounders.
(And, personally, I think you are being a bit unfair to his drafting record by cherry-picking all those players he could have drafted, but I have spent way too much time defending Isiah Thomas today (any time is too much time) so I’ll just leave it here and let you enjoy your screeners.)
They traded their own pick for the upcoming draft and it ended up #2. The other pick they gave up in the Curry trade was #9 the following year.
And these weren’t unpredictable far off outcomes, they were the next 2 seasons.
Getting picks #23, #28, and #30 or whatever isn’t exactly recouping the cost.
As has been well documented, 3 of the 4 he traded away turned into all-stars (thank you Kirk Snyder for saving that last one). It was horrendous.
I think this is the only important point, and thus I step off the field of battle, and encourage others to do the same.
I don’t think Isiah’s approach qualifies as a plan. Sure, he could outspend other teams because he had carte blanche from his owner to do so, I’d call that an advantage to be exploited, not a plan. Regardless, Isiah’s execution of whatever constituted his plan was horrific, right from the opening act. His trade for Marbury was terrible, both in its execution and for what it said about his player evaluation and team-building acumen. The Eddy Curry trade was even worse. While Phil’s BS regarding the Triangle was embarrassingly stupid and a fatal flaw, so was Isiah’s delusions of grandeur about his ability to “fix” low-IQ players like Steph, Eddy, and others. He had six years of unlimited spending ability and a friendly CBA cap structure to build something, and failed miserably.
Whatever, we’re essentially arguing about which form of medieval torture is the most painful, or which flavor of dogshit is the most putrid.
Was any Isiah trade worse than Ariza for Steve Francis? How about during the press conference after the trade Larry Brown calling Marbury and Francis possibly the new Clyde and Pearl.
today’s discussion was like comparing the worst hemeroid any one has ever experienced…
oh yeah, that must have really sucked, wait a minute – i got something that’ll top that…here, check out this awful scar on my ass
This thread is giving me some serious PTSD. The Eddy Curry trade came right at the beginning of my embrace of advanced (for the time) stats. When there were rumors about us reading with the Bulls I was hoping we’d get Tyson. But… It was a long slide into…[shudders]
Isiah was worse. He had the most remarkable ability to put together a whole that was so much worse than the sum of its parts.
The 2007-2008 Knicks had the following players: Eddy Curry, David Lee, Zach Randolph, Jamal Crawford, and Stephon Marbury, among others. How are you supposed to play defense with that personnel? Who protects the rim? Most of those players would be useful in the right circumstances, but together they were just disastrous. Those guys won 23 games.
There have been plenty of less talented Knick teams than that team, but that team just has a special place in my heart. I can’t believe somebody thought that group of players would play well together. Phil Jackson was terrible at his job, but the 2007-2008 team is the work of an auteur of shitty basketball. Isiah Thomas is the Tommy Wiseau of basketball GMs.
Excellent synopsis, JK. The irony is that Isiah made his bones with a ferocious defensive team where all of the key players had high basketball IQs and the team functioned as an incredibly cohesive unit. Yet his culminating product he spent 5 years and all of the team’s treasure building was about as far removed from that team as one could possibly imagine.
And just like Zenmaster Phil thought he could hoodwink the universe into a triangular time warp, Isiah had some sort of “I see potential in this guy that no one else sees and only I can bring it out in him, so whatever I’m paying for him is going to be worth it in the long run” fetish. There was no consideration of “fit,” either with each other or with whatever coach he hired.
Say what you want about Leon, he’s at least got an idea about how to build a cohesive team that somewhat fits his coach but is transferrable to another if need be. The Leon-Thibs regime seem to value actual talent, b-ball IQ, complementary skillsets, character, work ethic, and leadership. It’s not perfect, but compared to Phil and Isiah?