Knicks Morning News (2023.09.19)

“Surprised at Silver’s take on the Knicks Raptors lawsuit…”

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable take under the circumstances. Knowing the actual extra-NBA legal ramifications is important in determining how to address it, as it would seem that intellectual property law trumps the CBA and NBA charter on this matter unless there was an applicable provision that allowed for the behavior.

Yes, the whole thing seems strange, but not Silver’s response to the strange situation at this time. I think that if the case is limited to targeted digesting of Synergy data, it will be hard to prove illegality. But if proprietary info is involved, like photocopies of the Knicks playbook, that’s another story. Any legal finding would help Silver justify any actions he takes to the governors and the media.

It seems like it will be challenging to prove that this sort of intellectual property is legally protected…given that it’s the work product of the individual in question. If it’s clear that given enough time and resources (including his own memory)he could reproduce everything taken, it would probably come down to whether some sort of non-disclosure agreement existed.

“I’ll leave the legal stuff to lawyers, but I am interested what the compensation could be if Dolan wins.”

It seems weird to me that when a team is sanctioned for tampering, the aggrieved team doesn’t get compensated. For example, the Knicks were found to have tampered in the Brunson situation and forfeited a second rounder. Why doesn’t the pick go to Dallas?

“My theory is that it is hard to determine who the real victim is. For example with Brunson, Dallas likely decided not to pay him 100million. Perhaps Miami or another team would have if they all had the same standing start as the Knicks, so they are the injured parties. Or maybe even Brunson is the victim because there was never a true bidding war for his services.”

While all of this might be true, at the end of the day, he was under contract to the Mavs, so there is absolutely no doubt that they are aggrieved and should be entitled to compensation. All the other stuff is theoretical.

I am VERY excited for the upcoming season. The team as currently constructed is highly rootable. There are some young players non-far-fetched upside. There is roster stability so that we can hit the ground running while other teams are still figuring our a rotation.

We are quite likely to be in the playoffs unless bad luck intervenes, something that I couldn’t say for the vast majority of the post-Ewing years. And beyond that, there is a very real possibility that the roster can be further improved via trade, whether for a disgruntled superstar or a clear upgrade at a given spot. And given that a terribly flawed team like Miami got to the finals last year, I feel that anything can happen.

“…if KYN is doing his part with success. 😀”

KYN is the real Greek Freak!

I think that what’s also very exciting is that even if everyone plays more or less like they did last year, including RJ, we are STILL a very good team! There are only a couple of outlier numbers to worry about:
-Julius’ 2pt%, although there is balancing upside in his other shooting numbers
-Josh Hart’s shooting efficiency…. a TS% of .703 is not sustainable

And there is some reversion to the mean that could be positive. For example:
-RJ shot lower than his career average from 3pt range.
-iHart’s per 36 numbers were all below his career averages and could bounce back.

And if one believes that RJ, IQ, Grimes and iHart have potential to be better than they were simply due to things like maturity, work ethic, continuity in coach, teammates, playing time and role, and the synergistic effect of Brunson, JHart and DDV, there are plenty of reasons to believe that this is a high-ish floor (say, .500), high-ish ceiling team (say, 50-55 wins) team.