[A Sea Of Blue] — Monday, October 23, 2023 6:00:00 AM
Jacob Toppin signs two-way deal with the Knicks A Sea Of Blue
[The Ringer] — Monday, October 23, 2023 2:07:11 AM
Giants Snap Losing Streak, Plus Knicks and Nets Season Previews The Ringer
[Gettysburg Times] — Monday, October 23, 2023 12:00:00 AM
Washington 131, N.Y. Knicks 106 | National | gettysburgtimes.com Gettysburg Times
[New York Post ] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 11:35:00 PM
Immanuel Quickley’s Knicks extension deadline has risks, rewards for both sides New York Post
[Bleacher Report] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 11:27:56 PM
Knicks Rumors: Mitchell Robinson Trade Asking Price Is ‘Multiple 1st-Round Picks’ Bleacher Report
[ClutchPoints] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 10:17:00 PM
Knicks make crucial contract decision on three-point sharpshooter … ClutchPoints
[WYMT] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 9:50:00 PM
Celtics vs. Knicks: Odds, spread, over/under – October 25 WYMT
[New York Post ] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 7:40:00 PM
Carmelo Anthony to headline 2024 New York City Basketball Hall of Fame Class New York Post
[New York Daily News] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 6:46:23 PM
After ankle surgery, Knicks Julius Randle trusts Skechers with his health New York Daily News
[Daily Knicks] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 5:00:42 PM
Tyler Herro’s comment about Knicks series is perfect bulletin board … Daily Knicks
[Basketball Network] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 5:00:00 PM
“A lot of alphas in one room” – Tim Hardaway Jr. explains why the Carmelo Anthony-led Knicks failed to meet … Basketball Network
[Sports Illustrated] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 3:27:40 PM
New York Knicks Reportedly Sign Recent Suns Player Sports Illustrated
[sny.tv] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 2:24:39 PM
Knicks signing guard Duane Washington Jr. to two-way contract sny.tvKnicks’ Jacob Toppin takes one of two remaining two-way contract spots New York Post New York Knicks Acquire Former Sixers Two-Way Veteran Sports Illustrated
[syracuse.com] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 2:17:00 PM
Boston Celtics sign Nathan Knight three days after New York Knicks cut the Syracuse native syracuse.com
[Sports Illustrated] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 2:03:18 PM
New York Knicks Reportedly Sign Former NBA 1st Round Pick To 15-Man Roster Sports Illustrated
[Sports Illustrated] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 12:52:44 PM
‘True Professional’ Immanuel Quickley Focuses on New York Knicks … Sports Illustrated
[Sports Illustrated] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 12:22:15 PM
Why New York Knicks’ RJ Barrett Feels More Confident Sports Illustrated
[Posting and Toasting] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 9:00:00 AM
The Knicks have finalized their 2024 roster! Posting and Toasting
[Basketball Network] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 8:12:07 AM
“We used to get scouting reports of certain guys. On him, it’s just … Basketball Network
[Daily Knicks] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 8:00:12 AM
Proposed Karl-Anthony Towns trade would send Knicks back to purgatory Daily Knicks
[Hoops Hype] — Sunday, October 22, 2023 7:42:14 AM
Keith Smith: The New York Knicks are converting Dylan Windler … Hoops Hype
146 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.10.23)”
I was pretty sure the season would start today, but looks like it’s only tomorrow. Bah!
Our roster in pictures!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9F0VETWgAAbGSn?format=jpg&name=900×900
Quickley extension day!
Haven’t been around Knickerblogger much, work has been crazy, but what has been the consensus here?
I would give him 5 for 110-120 and sleep like a baby afterward.
make it a descending structure and it’ll always be a tradeable contract.
IQ gets a 9 digit contract – even if it’s not Vassell $, I cannot imagine that he could turn that down.
I don’t think the 4 for 83 number that Lowe/Marks talked about it realistic either – although maybe Quickley himself would prefer a 4 year deal to get another bite at the apple earlier.
Re: RJ – I still think Leon outsmarted himself with that extension – or it was sort of a rebound phenomenon, like Cashman trading for Stanton after Ohtani said no. As a restricted FA we probably would’ve paid less, or much less than the deal he’s on now. I like RJ but his deal is market rate+, not any sort of a “slightly-less-for-long-term-security” deal that a non-max extension should be.
I would give him more than Deni Avidja. A lot more.
The alternate history where RJ becomes a restricted free agent is fascinating to me. Austin Reaves is approximately ten million times better, and still had no team willing to tie up 4/$100M. If we were so inclined I bet we really could’ve squeezed RJ. Absolutely no one else was willing to pay that guy.
I’m fine with us having not done that—I’ll never be too upset about a player getting a bag—but still wish we shaved a few million off that AAV.
In keeping with my promise to continue to make fun of RJ, he’s ranked 95th in the NBA by The Ringer, but somewhat damned with faint praise, including given just one skill (interior scoring) when almost every other player in the top 100 has 3-4 skills highlighted. Here’s what they say, which is a bit peculiar:
“The Knicks starlet is still in the early stages of his NBA career, but with every new arrival, he seems more and more surplus to requirements.”
The full analysis is better, although blaming us online whingers for him not being Ja or Zion misses the point (since most of us would be ecstatic if he became just decent at various things besides driving and getting blocked):
“Barrett’s got a worse rep than his numbers suggest he should, probably due to the vocal nature of many extremely online New York Knicks fans who will never forgive him for not being Zion Williamson or Ja Morant. It’s hard to know where he fits on a Knicks team that features Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle and has obvious aspirations to add more big-name players. Barrett is a handful going downhill but pretty negligible at shooting from distance while playing a position that demands proficiency at just that. His contract will make any interested team think long and hard about the cost of acquiring him, but you wonder whether a change of scenery would do him some good.”
I’m sure Leon thought Ainge really wanted RJ -> and so he threatened Ainge that unless the deal was done, they’d extend RJ by some day. Ainge called his bluff, and Leon had to go ahead and do the extension. And if RJ’s agent Bill Duffy is any good – and he apparently is – he probably knew that Leon had to either meet the number Duffy wanted or represent to Ainge that it was totally a bluff. And that’s how you end up with this contract.
https://spotify.link/LAHZyIZ97Db
A little over an hour in, please enjoy some smart guys gushing over Quentin Grimes.
I think there’s a path for RJ, the good player. He needs three improvements. Defense is one, and he only needs to play defense like he did on his sophomore season. He was average, which is much better than the last 2 seasons. So it’s not some impossible goal, he’s done it before. Second, he needs to get better at 3P%, if he could get back to his sophomore season numbers (.401) too, it’d be great, but i’d say .380 would make him a much better player. Again, he’s done it before, so it’s achievable. The third is more tricky, he needs to improve his FT% numbers to at least .780, he shot .740 last season and his sophomore season is also is best season at .746, but he needs to improve it to be a real contributor. And i’m predicting he’ll get a lot more respect from the refs, now that he has 4 years in his belt and is not on a rookie contract anymore. You can say otherwise, but i think refs give some respect to players based on their play, on their contracts and on their status around the league. I’m hopeful he’ll have a good season, but i’ve been wrong before.
They are really buying Quentin Grimes stocks. 😉 But what I found even more interesting is that they weighed 3 possible candidates for the most important leap – RJ, Quick and Grimes. And although they ultimately opted for Grimes, i think it’s really good that we have several players that can make a leap and take the team to new levels. Usually we had one player we were hoping to do this (KP at some point) and we also “believed” in players taking a leap that were totally unrealistic (Frank, Knox, DSJ, Iso Zo, …). I’m feeling great about the prospects of this team. And yeah, i know at some point we’ll need to bring in a big dog, but until then let’s enjoy this team.
I know Fred Katz keeps saying he believes IQ deal will get done at the last minute, but Leon, Gersas, et al are taking that prediction a bit too literally for my liking. Does anyone know of any significant rookie extensions in recent years that got signed with hours or even minutes to go before the deadline?
Gersson, not Gersas. I combined his two names
every other team… most of whom with not so dumb front offices… gave their 2019 draftees questionable extensions too…. the impending cba negotiation was a big factor….
simons… poole… herro… hunter….
restricted free agency is a thing most teams should be exploring more… and probably should’ve happened with RJ… and also IQ… but it’s really not that much a mistake at the time and now in today’s dollars….
I think the IQ and RJ extensions are unique as during the normal period where you would expect them to extend the team has been open to a star/consolidation trade which could include them. If you factor that in, going right to a deadline (for RJ, a deadline imposed by Leon per Frank’s comment which sounds very plausible) seems smart. As a few posters have mentioned, this is one area Leon has excelled at, so whatever happens with IQ today— even if he signs for more than I think he is worth or doesn’t sign—I will give Leon the benefit of the doubt until future events show otherwise.
For a positive note on RJ, even though his playoff “break out” was overrated — he pretty much played at a league-average level — in his 500-plus playoff minutes, he pretty much reached the same all-in-one stats as the regular-season stats of guys like OG and Harrison Barnes… and he has been better in the playoffs than either of those guys.
So even if RJ sucks during the regular season, it seems as if he can at least pitch in during the playoffs.
I think the bigger question (one we’ve asked before) should be: Is there too much overlap between RJ and Randle? I say this because RJ seems to thrive in the playoffs as Randle suffers.
Some of this is coincidental, but I do think there was some overlap in the past. That said, Randle has really worked to become more of an outside threat whereas RJ is clearly working on getting to the rim more.
I’m sure this is a coaching decision, and hopefully they will continue to smooth out these kinks on offense during the playoffs.
*sight*
I may have to break down and buy League Pass for this season. As a basketball fan, I am really interested in seeing how Beal/Book/KD work together now that the Suns have nicely filled out their roster- and will probably end up adding Wall to their bench at some point to have a true PG on the roster with some real experience running an offense. I don’t think the Suns will be dominant, but they will be must see TV as long as they’re healthy. I think I also wanna watch Portland, the Dubs, Wemby, and Orlando some this season too when I’m not watching the Knicks. *’Nother sigh* Shit is expensive lol
I was glad the for the second sigh. It helped to explain the first sight. 🙂
“I say this because RJ seems to thrive in the playoffs as Randle suffers.”
Ess-dog, as with your note about RJ not really shining in the playoffs, just not sucking (a significant improvement, it must be noted), I also think the ‘Julius sucks in the playoffs’ to be a questionable narrative. I do think he fell apart that first run (and I wonder how much that collapse led to the next season’s meltdown), but this past year the guy was playing hurt in the playoffs. I’ve got a bum shoulder right now, and if you throw me out into the local Y, I’d really suck (worse than usual).
I’ll always worry about Julius’s mental fortitude, but I give him the benefit of the doubt about his playoff experiences to date.
FYI, in that Ringer ranking (Julius 40th), they say this:
“The only other players to average 20 points, 10 rebounds, and four assists in each of the past three seasons are in-their-prime MVPs: Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo.”
LOL! Damn autocorrect…and my not paying attention
Yeah, but if the the parameters are shifted slightly to 19pts, 12rebs, and 5 assists, only Domantas Sabonis is on the list, so the only thing that Athletic comp highlights is how interesting it is that Jokic and Gianni’s are top-5 and Randle barely makes Casey Kasem’’s cutoff for radio airtime.
Does anyone know of any significant rookie extensions in recent years that got signed with hours or even minutes to go before the deadline?
buddy hield with the kings in 2019 was very last minute. jaylen brown was also pretty late that year. gobert’s extension in 2020 was pretty close to the deadine iirc.
TNFH is not Dua Lipa. I am Dua Lipa.
Dua Lipa vs. Taylor Swift is a major battle in my house. But until Dua comes out with a movie she may be permanently in second. The tide has turned.
Nesmith just signed an extension, which leaves IQ, Patrick Baldwin, and Jaden McDaniels as the last three guys of note who are taking it down to the wire.
Also, I don’t think anyone mentioned yesterday that Steven Adams is out for the season, on top of our beloved Brandon Clarke being out for the bulk of the season. Memphis will have to trade for another center. My guess is they hope Time Lord can stay healthy for a full season, or close enough. But between these injuries and Ja’s suspension, they’re starting the season in a big hole.
What’s the reason to not try to trade for Harden, again?
Cause he’s old, fat, and unhappy?
Memphis has done a really fantastic job of putting a team together through the draft and it’s probably not going to end up winning them anything
this drives me nuts, negligible means very small, essentially nothing. RJ is not very small at shooting from distance, he’s a mediocre 3 point shooter. Mitch provides a negligible amount of shooting from distance. RJ provides a lot of shooting from distance, it’s just not good shooting.
That falls under where I said “some of this is coincidental.” 🙂
League average is 36 percent, right? So I would say right now he’s not a mediocre 3 point shooter. He’s below average.
I don’t know if there’s necessarily “overlap” between RJ and Randle, but there definitely isn’t enough shooting/spacing when they’re both on the floor. Those two combined shot a quite bad .330 from 3PT on roughly 13.5 attempts per game. That’s a lotsa bricks!
That’s really one of the core problems of the team: poor 3pt shooting in high volume from two of our starters, which then needs to be papered over by aggressive offensive rebounding, which then hurts the defense.
?
I don’t think the RJ/Randle pairing is built for the long-haul. In the modern NBA you tend to need a lot of 3PT shooting from the wing and PF positions if you want to have a high-level offense. This isn’t necessarily the case if you have a stretch 5 and/or if the players in question have truly elite skills otherwise, but alas, neither applies to us.
Randle can be maddening, but since I assume we’ll have to pick one or the other eventually, give me the guy with multiple unambiguously good seasons to his name.
I defer to Downtown, but in my book mediocre is a polite way of saying below average.
LOL, ok. I usually take mediocre to mean average, but fair point.
League average last season was actually 34 percent and RJ shot 33. So he’s not THAT far below league average but still below average.
League average last season for small forwards, though, is 35.4 percent. So for his position he’s way below league average.
League average was .361 last year. RJ shot .310.
That isn’t mediocre, that flat out sucks.
Not only was RJ’s percentage far well-below average for a wing (17th percentile), but his 3PT volume was too (16th percentile). The portions were small and the food was terrible. He’s got lightyears to go before he’s respected as a shooter.
Robert Williams plays for the Blazers. 😛
Yeah, I mean, Randle shot .343 from range on over 8 attempts per game last year, which is truly “mediocre,” but that volume is what Thibs wants from him. And I think Randle has some room to improve that number.
RJ took a little over 5 threes per game, which isn’t outrageous. He needs to take enough of them to keep defenders honest but not so many that he’s losing games for us. But yeah, if you have a starting wing who can’t shoot threes well AND plays poor defense… that’s not good.
That’s one of the teams I bet to win it all this year. They’ll start off slow with all the injuries and Morant being out for awhile, but they should be good when/if they get healthy. I wasn’t expecting Adams to miss the entire season. The year hasn’t even started and I’m already questioning the wisdom of that bet even though I got a very nice price.
RJ’s 3 point shooting is kind of strange in that he’s been pretty bad from the corners the last 2 years. I think I read or heard on a telecast recently that’s he’s way better from the right corner than left corner. That would be an area he should work on because he wasn’t terrible in year 1, was good in year 2, but has been terrible the last 2 years. Some of it could be the quality of the shots and how defenders are closing out, but he has to get better on corner 3s.
Three things for Leon to do today.
1) Send RJ packing, if Rosas can get 2 medium protected firsts and an expiring bruiser type PF in return.
2) extend and start IQ between Grimes and Brunson.
3) go back to sleep
If either one or two are is not possible, – focus on number three.
Cyber, I meant that Time Lord is probably the best available option for Memphis to target in a trade.
Also, on The Social Media Site Formerly Known As Twitter, I asked Fred Katz my question about these things going down to the deadline:
RJ is 34% for his career. He certainly sucked last year tho I won’t argue
Despite the mediocre 3pt shooting the Knicks were a high level offense last season.
This is like the first time Shams scooped Woj.
The challenge has been issued, Downtown Doogie.
Zach Lowe talked a few times last season about how the Knicks “have broken math” by being so efficient with that mediocre 3pt shooting. A lot of that was the focus on offensive rebounding and second chance points. Mitch is incredible at that, iHart is good, and Josh Hart is a genius at it. The question is whether opponents can better gameplan for it after several months to think on the subject, or whether this kind of approach is less volatile year to year than 3pt shooting can be.
RJ and Randle are both a part of the Knicks’ biggest problem but Hart and possibly Donte (I don’t trust his GS numbers) are as well. None of them are good enough 3 point shooters to prevent teams from sagging off of them and clogging up the middle of the floor.
We have 4 above-average 3-point shooters in Brunson, Grimes, Quickley, and Fournier and all of them are guards and Fournier doesn’t even really play. To get good spacing in the NBA you want to have at least 3 good shooters on the floor most of the time and we pretty much never have that.
RJ’s contract and role would look better if we didn’t have Randle and Hart also being unreliable from 3. We always have 2 mediocre shooters at the 3 and 4 and a non-shooter at the 5. That is not good enough and, I think, is the main reason RJ is struggling to improve. Moving RJ works but so does moving Randle. Long term at least one or preferably both need to go or they need to become good shooters which at this point seems unlikely.
That was because rebounded the ball very well on the offensive side and kept TOs down. We should be able to continue that to some degree, but teams learned in the playoffs that one of the keys to beating us is keeping us off the boards. Some teams will make adjustments this year.
Edit: I see Alan beat me to it.
I would pretty much agree with this: “this drives me nuts, negligible means very small, essentially nothing. RJ is not very small at shooting from distance, he’s a mediocre 3 point shooter.”
I would also say that I tend to think of “mediocre” as “average” instead of a nicer way of saying “below average.” But I don’t feel strongly about it.
On one of the game telecasts someone said the internal goal is to have a top 10 defense this year. I wonder how they expect to do that with RJ, Randle, and Brunson starting and also continuing to attack the offensive boards.
I think a “small part” of the problem on defense last year was that they hit the offensive boards so hard. That opened a few extra easier transition points because we didn’t get back fast enough.
There are a lot of theories on rebounding.
It seems to me there are tradeoffs.
D’Antoni was a big proponent of leaking out to get more fast break points. He sacrificed a little on defense (rebounds and possessions for opponent) for better offense.
Doc Rivers was a big proponent of getting back in transition instead of trying to get extra offensive rebounds.
But teams didn’t keep us off the boards in the playoffs. We had the best oreb% in the playoffs last season and actually were better than during the regular season. We also led the playoffs in ft/fga.
The problem is despite that we were still the fourth-worst offense in the playoffs and easily the worst offense to make it out of the 1st round. We had the 2nd worst efg%, the 2nd worst TO%, and the worst 3pt%.
Does anyone here believe will will be a top 5 offense again this year? Looking at our players and our performance in the playoffs, last year’s offense looks a bit like a fluke and I would not be surprised if we are closer to an average offense than a top offense next year.
I didn’t check the data, but it sure seemed like Miami knew exactly what to do against us after watching the Cavs series.
🙏
That’s a very good idea from Memphis pov, but i think the Blazers also want RWIII for the future. He’s only 25.
We’ve spilled a lot of ink about the sustainability of the bizarro elite offense. The jury is still out, but I would say the playoffs are a strong datapoint in favor of the idea that good defenses can mitigate a lot of it by forcing more turnovers (we were 2nd in TOs/100 possessions in the playoffs after being 25th in the regular season).
When you don’t make shots, your margin for error is basically zero with regards to the other three factors. We somehow made that work in the regular season, but I’m inclined to believe we’re gonna have to make some shots to succeed in the playoffs.
They traded for Ayton. He’s going to be there guy at center. I assume both Time Lord and Brogdon will be moved to a contender before the trade deadline. They were acquired to increase the haul of picks/prospects that the Blazers have gotten for the various Dame-related deals.
@FredKatz
Yes, there are always a few that get done at the 11th hour. Brandon Clarke’s last year happened a nanosecond before the deadline.
think he maybe has this confused with de’andre hunter. think clarke was the day or two before the deadline.
Jaden McDaniels got 5/136M !? 😮
Well i wouldn’t do it, i’d keep RWIII because there’s a decent chance in one year the Blazers will come to the same conclusion as the Suns – Ayton is not a winning player. But i agree that they’ll probably do as you said.
OK so this McDaniels contract gives me the heebee jeebies because that means Minny has $167MM in contracts for just 5 players next year, and per Keith Smith, just 23-24MM to fill the rest of the roster before hitting the 2nd apron.
This feels like prelude to a KAT trade, and it makes me nervous that Zach Lowe spoke with such blasé-ness about KAT->NYK.
Questions for the group:
1) Who is a worse defender –> KAT or Randle?
2) If KAT and Randle were traded for each other (we’d have to give a small salary to make the math work) — which team would have to give up draft compensation? I think on balance, KAT is a better player than Randle, but his contract is MUCH worse…
OMG, when first dred (negligible) and then Swiftie (mediocre) have gone all red pencil, it appears that Doogie has poisoned this well for the lot of us.
Although I agree with his summary post; ‘mediocre’ has always struck me as ‘average’ with a bit of a sneer.
I agree that the Blazers should keep RWIII long-term. I think he is perfect on a team with Scoot and Sharpe. They should be running as much as possible and Ayton isn’t the best center for that.
I actually think Ayton makes better sense with the bench players like Brogdon and Simons. Of course, he will never come off the bench player but they could stagger it so Ayton gets all of the minutes with Brogdon and some with Scoot and RWIII gets all his minutes with Scoot.
Unless I got a great offer, I would keep RWIII and maybe even Brogdon if I were the Blazers. Good veterans make the development of young players easier.
well, thank goodness we ain’t gotta guess at stuff like this:
adjective: negligible
– so small or unimportant as to be not worth considering; insignificant.
“sound could at last be recorded with incredible ease and at negligible cost”
– mid 19th century: from obsolete French, from négliger ‘to neglect’.
adjective: mediocre
– of only moderate quality; not very good.
“a mediocre actor”
– late 16th century: from French médiocre, from Latin mediocris ‘of middle height or degree’, literally ‘somewhat mountainous’, from medius ‘middle’ + ocris ‘rugged mountain’.
so yeah 😛
let’s just say: negligible and mediocre are not used too often for glowing reviews…
to sum it all up – stuck in the middle – with you
how is there even a music “video” for this song?…it came out in ’72…
you know what – just remembered mungo jerry’s in the summertime vid from ’70…
okay then – fave old time vid: dionne warwick, walk on by…she was a little cutie back in the day…
So this would have actually been Thibs bc he was the defensive coordinator for those Celtics teams.
I wonder if his thinking has changed or if he just modifies our approach to play to the strength of the team – ie, Mitch is so good at offensive rebounding.
the mcdaniels contract is another reminder that the rj contract is not great.. but you’re forced to pay the guys you hold the rights to if they show anything….
To validate Alan’s take on roster churn, here’s Katz in his most recent article:
Ms. Warwick, I served with Dua Lipa. I knew Dua Lipa. Dua Lipa was a friend of mine. Ms. Warwick, you’re no Dua Lipa.
I just listened to Alan Hahn on KFTV and it makes no sense for either the Knicks or IQ to sign a deal. IQ is stuck behind Brunson (just like Obi was stuck behind Randle), he can test the market to become a starter and reach his potential. From the Knicks perspective, are they paying a bench player $20M per year? Or more?
I think it’s much more likely, as an expiring contract, that IQ gets traded in a blockbuster.
I find this hard to believe.
“IQ is stuck behind Brunson (just like Obi was stuck behind Randle), he can test the market to become a starter and reach his potential. From the Knicks perspective, are they paying a bench player $20M per year? Or more?”
That’s kind of the point. He should already be a starter.
The idea that Quickley is “stuck behind Brunson” and is a “bench player” and therefore should be moved makes me want to scream into the void.
wait…so are you saying RJ has showed something – positive…
the deed is done…when we did sign him though – i was okay with the move, maybe mostly happy we didn’t get donovan for a steep price…
i was wrong…replace RJ with average, and we’re like 3 or 4 wins better each of the last two seasons…
I agree with Frank, i think the Wolves will be trying to trade KAT.
I actually think the RJ extension is one of Leon’s better moves.
The default was a 5 year max, and I think that’s what most teams would have done in our situation. Like Wiggins all over again.
It was a win to get him for 4 years.
I’m kind of with JK on this one in terms of screaming into the void. Quick averaged 29 minutes a game last year, with 21 starts. That’s not Obi’s 15.7 minutes. I agree with a lot of people that he should be starting daily, although he’s often been finishing games (Thibs’ ‘that’s what’s important’), and I’d rather he play 32 minutes a game rather than 29, but that’s not a huge difference.
He spent the first year of his career stuck behind Elfrid Payton, so he’s making slow but sure progress!!
Five minutes left. To quote Han Solo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this(*).
(*) Which, again, doesn’t mean we are going to Lose Quickley For Nothing. Just that the odds increase substantially on him being put in a trade package. And, if not, we’ll hang onto him in RFA and either keep him or trade him then.
How can Rose offer a contract to Quickley without first waiting to see what Morey offers Maxey? You don’t want to max one quickly, otherwise you may end up with a maxed out Quickley while maybe Morey doesn’t max Maxey and quickly maxes more 6’2”, 190lbs, 23 year old Kentucky combo guards instead.
Soooo…. Uh… Nothing? Any Twitter chatter?
Oh, it’s 5pm central, which is dumb and stupid. Somebody tell them NY is the center of the universe.
Still… Nothing?
I think looking at the strengths and weaknesses of your players is the right thing to do, but I have no idea if that’s what’s happening.
The fact that our management doesn’t seem to understand this makes me WAY less optimistic about their ability to turn the current team into a serious contender using the approach I’ve been advocating.
To build a contender using draft, trades and free agency in combination requires that you value players reasonably well in terms of their contribution to winning, fit, and appropriate salary. If you can’t, you are probably better off throwing darts at the draft and hoping you get extremely lucky.
It’s like everyone associated with the Knicks has no clue that Quickley is NOT stuck behind Brunson. He’s in that position because we lack a backup PG and he’s being the good soldier trying to improve his PG skills to help even though he’s really a SG with some passing skills. He’s actually stuck behind RJ because Thibs refuses to move a legit starter into RJ’s slot so Quickley can play SG next to Brunson and improve ALL of the offense, defense, and spacing.
Wizards just cut Taj. Even at his age, I’d rather have him as our in case of emergency PF than Sims.
Me too. #bringtajback
I’m beginning to feel some bad vibes.
And my bad on what time the deadline is. Stupid Chicago…
I don’t know why people think we undervalue IQ. He was closing a lot of games last year and finished 4th in total minutes, 6th in mpg ahead of “starter” Mitchell Robinson.
We only plan on moving him in a star trade. The fact we value him less than Joel Embiid isn’t exactly being down on the guy. He’s in those trades only because he’s the guy a rebuilding team is most likely to want.
Yeah, I made the same mistake before editing my comment in case that wasn’t clear in my earlier post
I’m in favor of Taj over any other nonsensical thing they are likely to do. They’ll probably add a 6’4″ SG instead.
that seems cheap for okongwu
ouch
Poor Manny
I guess it’s ok that IQ didn’t get extended. He wasn’t going to come cheap anyway so perhaps this was the optimal outcome.
Whatever.
I guess it’s ok that IQ didn’t get extended. He wasn’t going to come cheap anyway so perhaps this was the optimal outcome.
i suspect not, but you’re right it could be
I know many will make a huge deal out of this but fact is he’s a restricted FA next year, Knicks still control whether he stays here long term or not.
Plus having an even more motivated IQ might be even more beneficial to the Knicks this season.
Okongwu, unfortunately for himself, plays center. Also, Capela starting over him probably deflated his price.
Well, I guess we’ll see how IQ’s season goes
This definitely means he’s blowing his knee out in game 1.
Morons
I can see why both sides were reluctant to make a deal so I’m not surprised but now in a very crowded backcourt, Quick’s minutes are going to be a thing. This has a chance to get ugly.
If we keep his minutes down, we’ll be able to sign him for less in the offseason. Plus we get contract year IQ, win-win!
But I’d rather have him locked up, for peace of mind if nothing else.
Okongwu, unfortunately for himself, plays center.
still tbd. he’s versatile enough on d to check a lot of forwards and he got his ft% up to 78pct last year and looked decent taking 13 threes in the preseason.
It’s a bummer, because he’s just as likely going than not, but I expect Leon didn’t want to be paying $25m+ per year. Given other deals, that seems a likely asking price to me.
There are few teams with cap space next year, and I’m not sure any of them will be in the market for a guard. Certainly not Detroit, Charlotte, Orlando or the 76ers. Probably not Utah. So it’s really whether SAS or Washington offer $25m+ a year. If they do, good for him, bummer for us. But the odds seem 50/50 at worst. Otherwise, we’d match $20m per, I’m pretty sure, and end up where people want to end up now.
Yeah, if Okongwu can shoot, or even looks promising, then it’s definitely a steal for the Hawks
I’m less concerned about what we’d have to pay him if he gets an offer as a restricted free agent than I am that they’ve made a decision that he’s the player that’s out in a trade at the deadline instead of RJ. IMO, they don’t understand the values. If I was Quickley I’d ask out behind the scenes. I wish I could know if he’s going to get traded at the deadline because I’d love to punch a gigantic UNDER on the Knicks if Quickley is out.
If we make a trade for an actual star (not LaVine or whoever): (1) you smash the over again and again and again (2) RJ is probably also out in the trade to match salary (3) if it’s only IQ going out it’s because the other team isn’t dumb enough to take RJ over IQ
Can Morey offer IQ some silly poison pill max amount ala JLin next summer? – Him and Pop are the only two snakes I really worry about.
With Giannis off the table now, who can RJ, IQ, + 2 unprotected + 2 protected and 2 swaps yield us realistically?
My guess is that “legit star” talk is off the table until the summer unless the T-Wolves are having a rough season and want to move Towns at the deadline. I don’t see anyone else other the often mentioned LaVine being available.
If the Knicks are flailing at the deadline, they may make a smaller move potentially using Fournier and Quickley.
After that we can probably start talking about Mitchell again and how he fits next to Brunson.
I’m losing faith in these guys rapidly given what they did this off season (nothing useful) and now not paying Quickley. They got us really close to a breakthrough, but I don’t think they actually “get it”.
@JK47
But it is reality. 6th man is bench. Yes, he deserves to start. But Brunson is better. The Knicks need to upgrade for a superstar, a clutch late game scorer. IQ is bait.
Based on the Vassell and McDaniels extensions, I’m guessing the asking price was high.
IQ is easily my favorite Knick. Hope he continues to get better and forces the Knicks to sign at a high price next year. Can’t let a guy like him walk for nothing.
Looks like IQ’s agent was shooting pretty high, he had another 1st rd pick from that class that also didn’t extend. Not sure how well this will play out for IQ next summer.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and can even be advantageous if we’re able to take advantage of Quickley’s cap hold next offseason. It’s possible after McDaniels, who was worse than IQ by all the AIOs, got the GDP of a regional European power, negotiations got tougher. Not apples to oranges given that McDaniels is a wing, but it never is.
What rubs me the wrong way is that if we’re willing to take our guys to RFA…why the hell didn’t we just do it with RJ?! I think we could’ve saved a boatload of money that way. The reasons not to boil down to intangible, relationship building stuff. I’m not saying that stuff doesn’t matter, but if we’re willing to do it in general RJ was the ideal candidate.
The answer is that our front office thinks RJ is better than IQ. Or at least they value him more. The coach does, too.
I think even with another great season IQ could get a little squeezed in RFA. Point guard is incredibly crowded around the league with a lot of teams either having a ~max level star or a young lottery pick they’re seriously invested in. While literally every team in the league could use IQ in their rotation, going after another teams RFA tends to be about falling in love with a player since you’re really committing to them being your only target, and I’m not sure a guy who would be a 3rd guard in many places is that guy. Maybe some team would see him as a starter (at either guard spot), I’m not trying to state this as a certainty, because I do think RFA is unpredictable but I think even if he has another great year this could work out totally fine for the Knicks.
I know it shouldn’t matter but RJ was the 3rd pick in the draft, it’s not that difficult to see why they would extend him. How many Top 3 draft picks with basically back to back 20ppg seasons don’t get extended?
Again I’m not saying the Knicks did the right thing and I’m well aware of how poorly he rates out in the advanced metrics, shit I’m the first person during game threads who will call RJ out. But again like it or not it’s very easy to see why they extended RJ.
I’m not that upset about Quickley not signing. It makes sense for both parties. If Quickley wants to stay with the Knicks at the end of this season and they want him I’m sure Rose can work out a reasonable deal.
IQ and Brunson don’t play the same position, and can easily play alongside each other.
The guy who is “blocking” Quickley is RJ.
I don’t want to go all Doogie on you, but I think the guy who is “blocking” Quickley is Grimes.
Signing IQ wouldn’t have prevented us from trading him if some superstar became available. Rookie extensions don’t act like other extensions. Instead, the player is eligible to be traded immediately he just has a poison pill, and his average salary over the course of the contract counts for the team getting him, and his old salary counts for what we could take back.
If we valued IQ correctly, which would be as our 2nd most valuable tradable asset, after Brunson, we would have realized that any trade that features IQ should have him as the centerpiece of our outgoing assets. If that is the case having him locked up long-term increases his value even if his poison pill complicates the trade math and forces using a third team to complete the trade.
If the team that we were trading him to didn’t value him enough to both be happy about his long-term contract and be willing to figure out a way to make the numbers work we could just replace him in the trade with a lesser asset like Grimes or an additional pick.
Wanting to keep him tradeable tells me the front office doesn’t value him as much as Grimes or our unprotected 1sts. This is a problem because he is obviously more valuable.
I don’t want predict anything, but this does incentivize Quickley to think more about his own numbers than if he was signed long term. He could get more aggressive in marginal situations.
I actually think IQ plays a lot better when he is ultra aggressive and even a bit stupid. When he is tentative he often struggles.
IQ is really good and I hope he is on the team for a long time. All I can say about it at this point.
With you, Owen. Aggro Quickley would be my dream.
If someone is going to shoot us out of a game, I’d rather it was him than “Got my 20 with 20” Barrett.
And while we’re here, and talking about shots and Grimes, can we for the everloving god get Grimes more than 4-5 shots a game? What the fuck is up with that?
Love it or hate it, this sets Leon up perfectly for a Harden trade: Quick, Hartenstein, Fournier, and 1-2 bastardized firsts for the Beard.
Starters:
Brunson/Harden/RJ/Randle/Mitch
Bench:
Deuce/Donte/Grimes/Hart/Sims
(Don’t kill the messenger!)
While not literally impossible to trade him immediately, after the extension, it’s practically impossible to match salaries when one side is $20-25M and the other is $4M. We’re also hard capped $4.6M above where we currently are. If you’re able to figure out a trade for Embiid with those parameters, be my guest.
Our most valuable trade assets after Brunson are our unprotected future picks, which would also be going out in a star deal.
The receiving team holds his RFA rights and can lock him up either way.
A team looking to trade away a bona fide star isn’t going to bend over backwards to accommodate the inclusion of Immanuel Quickley.
That said, we still need to beat offers from other teams. Quickley is
very good, but so are a lot of other players and draft picks on other teams, we may need to include him in a trade to get it done.
If we’re trading for the reigning MVP, we may very well include Grimes, IQ, and all of our draft picks.
Not coming to an extension agreement says nothing about how the office values a player relative to other players. This sounds a lot like the post-Mitch non-extension freak out. It would be nice to have IQ extended, it’s not the end of the world if he isn’t.
We should also remember that it’s not a unilateral decision. Quickley is always free to say no to a deal and bet on himself having a great season.
It’s also possible the FO thinks they can get a cheaper deal if he becomes a RFA this offseason.
There’s no reason to think the FO values IQ less than Grimes or RJ based on him not signing an extension.
I hate for all of you to dream about the 76ers ever trading Embiid to the Knicks. I can’t see them trading with the Knicks.
Us not extending Mitch said a lot about how much we valued him. As did the Myles Turner rumors and the whispers that he was available in the right trades. The fact that it worked out does not mean the front office always intended on bringing him back.
I feel the same way about IQ. First our one big offseason move is to bring in a player that is completely redundant with what IQ already brings and then we don’t sign IQ to an extension. Add to that the rumors we were more than happy to give him up for Mitchell and it sure looks like his time here might be ending and we don’t particularly value him anyway.
It’s sort of a goofy question due to the parameters, evolving CBAs, and the word “basically”, but: Ben Gordon, OJ Mayo, and Jerry Stackhouse to name a few.
The more I read the various takes of Knicks media people the more obvious it becomes what the issue is.
Everyone (and I include the Knicks management in this) has Quickley pigeon-holed into the PG position. If you think along that line it becomes difficult to justify paying Quickley a ton money to play off the bench behind Brunson, especially since Brunson will eventually be making a lot more money.
However, to me, that’s a wildly flawed line of thinking.
IMO Quickley is NOT a PG. He’s a SG with some playmaking skills that was put in the backup PG role because the Knicks had no one else to play PG. Once you think of him as a SG that can play next to Brunson and also play some backup PG minutes if there’s an injury, paying him not only makes sense, it makes the Knicks a better team. But for some reason people can’t make that obvious leap anymore than they can understand the primary weakness of the team right now is RJ in the starting lineup.
This is wildly frustrating to me.
I don’t want to be so arrogant as to say I can’t be wrong about all this. I make my share of mistakes. Plus, who knows what’s going to happen this year in terms of each player’s progress. But I feel fairly confident Quickley in starting lineup would make the Knicks better on both sides of the ball, improve the play making, and improve the spacing.
IMO the people not at least contemplating that have a huge blind spot that could really bite us in the ass eventually.
The desire to trade Mitch for a very good player in Myles Turner, who is probably a similar value and could help us solve a lot of our spacing issues, is not exactly a slight to Mitch.
What valuation are you putting on IQ? Donovan Mitchell is a hell of a lot better than IQ.
He’s a hell of lot better scorer than Quickley, but Quickley is a plus defender and Mitchell is a minus defender.
You need a scorer like Mitchell more than you need a guy like Quickley to create a high level team, but if you have your #1 and #2 elsewhere, I’d rather have Quickley next to them.
I think it’s clear Brunson is going to be one of our scorers. Right now he and Randle are our #1 and #2. That combo is not good enough to contend. We don’t know how it’s all going to shake out, but assuming we find another legit star scorer to put next to Brunson, I’d sure as hell love to have Quickley on the court with them.
Not sure what your source is for this. Donovan Mitchell had a significantly better D Rating than Quickley this season and has a much better D Rating for his career. He just played the most minutes per game for the #1 ranked defense in the league.
I don’t look at defensive rating at all.
I tend to look at defensive on/off, lineup data, who opposing teams are targeting (especially in the playoffs), reputation among players, some of the FG% metrics when they are the defender, and what I see on the court. I can’t convert that into a number with fancy math. It’s more of a subjective appraisal. But I’m pretty confident Quickley is a much better defender than Mitchell.
Yes, we all want this. Everyone on this site (except maybe E) wants to keep Immanuel Quickley. But it also may not be possible to keep Quickley and acquire a #1 or #2 scorer.
The issue is that some people think that discussing trading IQ at all, even for a top-20 player or a top-3 player, means the FO doesn’t value him. You can think someone is a very, very good player and still think there’s better players.
Quote – The desire to trade Mitch for a very good player in Myles Turner, who is probably a similar value and could help us solve a lot of our spacing issues, is not exactly a slight to Mitch.
Turner is a 35% 3pt shooter who almost primarily takes wide open threes. Whatever benefit we would get from his 4 attempts a game would pale in comparison to the benefit we get from the 3.5 extra offensive rebounds Mitch gets over Turner.
Quote – What valuation are you putting on IQ? Donovan Mitchell is a hell of a lot better than IQ.
Utah wasn’t even particularly interested in IQ but we were trying to include him so we could keep Grimes or avoid putting in more picks. If it was IQ or no trade that’s one thing but to make no effort to keep him out of the trade speaks volumes.
There are trades where Quickley is included that I’d sign off on.
I think my major frustration with this situation is that I think Quickley should be starting, RJ should be coming off the bench, and the goal should be moving RJ and not Quickley. It feels like the team overvalues RJ, undervalues Quickley, and has Quickley pigeon holed as a PG. I disagree with all that in this snapshot in time and think it’s enough of an error to be called out. We’ll see what happens and how they develop.
any info on the deal the FO put forth to quik…
if he passed up more than 60 million guaranteed (20 aav) – wow, bad choice…go talk to schröder…nerlens…who else…
good move on the FO’s part for not signing him to some number they didn’t want…go leon go…
it’ll be interesting to see the next player we overpay for – besides RJ…
this is soooooo much me after a few drinks…
if donovan comes to the knicks, let’s hope it’s as a free agent…
Quickley is 6’2” and Grimes is 6’5”. I like Quckley’s activity on defense a lot but I think he usually defends the opponents smaller players. If he was the two guard, he’d have to defend larger players and I’m not sure he’d be as good as he needs to be. So even though he probably could do the scoring a shooting guard needs to do, I’m not sure he could do the defense. And he actually does do the point guard function, and almost made sixth man of the year, so he’s pretty good at it.
Unless someone leaks the numbers, we can’t know what happened. Let’s say Quick’s agent saw McDaniels contract (26M AAV) and said to Quick that he should get more. Which he can think he should, because he’s better than McDaniels. Or at least he’s not worse than him. So, would any of you pay 26M AAV to Quick making him one of the highest paid players of the Knicks on par with Brunson and Randle?
And there’s also the poison pill, as i said before if Leon wants to keep his options open to trade for a star during this season, it was better to not extend Quick. Next summer the cap rises a little, we opt out of Fournier’s last season (19M), and Quick was making 4.1M, just with this 3 things we can match 24M or 25M and the cap situation won’t change. Unless some crazy team offers him 30M+, we’ll have options to deal with this. I just hope this doesn’t change Quick’s behavior during the season.
I know this isn’t baseballblogger but it seems like every time I look at a postseason box score Jordan Montgomery has won another game. Last night he pulled the Randy Johnson coming out of the pen on 2 days rest.
I might not be Leon’s biggest fan but I like him hella more than Brian fucking Cashman, I’ll tell you that.
Randle looked great on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I think he’s getting more and more comfortable in his role here, i’m hoping he can improve from last season.