[sny.tv] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 23:57:03 GMT
- Sources: Knicks haven’t had advanced trade talks with Bulls on DeMar DeRozan or Zach LaVine
- NBA Rumors: Knicks Monitoring Trade Market for ‘Star Player’ They Can Go ‘All-In For’
- NBA Rumors: Insider confirms what fans already know about Knicks’ star trade hunt
- Knicks Have Not Engaged In Advanced Trade Talks With Bulls
- NBA Trade Rumors: Knicks inching closer to making a big splash move for star player?
[Celtics Blog] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:53:32 GMT
- Kristaps Porzingis says hell return to Celtics lineup Friday against the Knicks
- Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis expects to return Friday night against Knicks
- Celtics star big man announces return from injury
- Kristaps Porzingis Says He’ll Play Friday Vs Knicks
- Celtics starter shares positive injury status after 4 missed games
[hoopsrumors.com] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 18:05:00 GMT
- Knicks’ Grimes Expresses Frustration With Role
- Knicks’ poor roster construction has led to mounting frustration
- Quentin Grimes: I Feel Like I Just Gotta Get More Shots
- Do the New York Knicks officially have a Quentin Grimes problem?
- Disgruntled Quentin Grimes rants over Tom Thibodeaus short Knicks leash
[Daily Mail] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 23:07:25 GMT
New York Knicks WAGS ring in the holidays with ‘Knicksmas’ party full of karaoke and special drinks… before
[NBA.com] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 06:50:34 GMT
Knicks-Celtics, Kings-Suns to play Friday as NBA updates schedule
[Bleacher Report] – Thu, 07 Dec 2023 02:45:50 GMT
Knicks Rumors: Immanuel Quickley Was Offered Non-Guaranteed Contract, No Incentives
[Daily Knicks] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:00:00 GMT
- Knicks’ Josh Hart hilariously replies to Jose Alvarado’s prize money wish
- If New Orleans Pelicans win NBA in-season tournament, guard Jose Alvarado has plans for prize money
- Josh Hart: What a loser. Go get you some ice https://twitter.com/TheDunkCentral/status/1732
- Knicks’ Josh Hart brutally trolls ‘loser’ Jose Alvarado over plans for tourney prize money
- Fans Reacted Strangely to Jose Alvarado’s Heartfelt Plan For Pelicans’ In-Season Tournament Money
[Sports Illustrated] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 19:33:39 GMT
NBA Legend Makes Announcement
[Wisconsin Sports Heroics] – Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:55:53 GMT
Giannis Antetokounmpo Can’t Believe He Just Made a Guaranteed $100,000 After Milwaukee Bucks’ Win vs. Knicks
146 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.12.07)”
Now the Yankees need to go out and get some pitching, and I might stop hating Brian Cashman again for a while.
200 comments yesterday! Tell me Leon Rose is a failure. Just try it.
Soto is impossibly good. Yankees fans should be stoked.
I hate to throw cold water on the Soto acquisition but I don’t understand why we keep acquiring players who play the same position as Aaron Judge.
It’s undoubtedly great to add his bat to the lineup but I think we should have just kept Judge in RF and looked for great players who play other positions.
Judge is absolutely going to get worn down playing CF. Putting him there full time is stupid.
This is going to make us much better, no doubt, but it’s suboptimal team construction and the faults will manifest.
Thoughts?:
https://www.postingandtoasting.com/platform/amp/2023/12/7/23991335/is-tom-thibodeau-losing-the-knicks-locker-room
I hear you Hubie!
I’d feel better with Grisham playing center, Soto in right (left field is big in YS), Judge in left, Verdugo as the 4th outfielder.
Or better yet, Verdugo in the lineup with Judge/Soto taking turns at DH and Stanton on his way to unconditional release…
Now let’s get Yamamoto… (finger crossed)
P.S. I was hoping they would use Verdugo for another trade, but it looks like my hopes are dead…
Players need to show they can do something when called up, Grimes in particular needs to stole some pages out of DDV’s playbook, move more and shoot every time he’s open*.
At the same time it’s really hard, especially for shooters, to play well when you’re used sparingly** or your number is called so rarely (or you’re subbed after the first couple of miss).
I was very surprised this summer by D-Rose’s words about Thibs’ practice habits (or lack thereof). Wasn’t he one of his pretorians?
Anyway, barring a team collapse Thibs isn’t going anywhere, while Fournier and Grimes could be on the next train to Tradeville soon…
* Maybe there’s a chance Grimes fears doing something “out of the script” will get him benched, I don’t know…
** Playing very well in his one-night stand against Philly didn’t help Fournier’s case last year, Thibs isn’t the most “flexible” coach out there…
Judge will only be playing CF until Dominguez returns hopefully by June or July.
Why is the tournament semi-final game being played at 2:00pm on a Thursday? Did the league research reveal that Iceland was the region driving the uptick in ratings and wanted to hit their prime time?
Well, 5:00 p.m. on the East Coast, but point taken…….very odd. I hadn’t noticed it until you pointed it out.
Pretty good interview with Porzingis on the JJ Reddick Podcast
You are much more tuned in than I am, please explain to me how it’s supposed to work. Is it supposed to be…
CF – Dominguez
RF – Judge
DH – Soto
Fournier Island – Stanton
That would make more sense, but it would mean we’re using Soto as a full time DH. And maybe that’s his best position (his defensive metrics are bad), but if we’re going to acquire a superstar I’d like it to be someone who can play a position (and not the one our current superstar plays).
This has always been Cashman’s thing… Arod, Stanton, Soto… Arod made it work bc he’s one of the best baseball players of all time… Stanton was a disaster… Soto, I don’t know… I’d feel much better if he had a position, that’s all.
As for Verdugo… the Red Sox are a smart organization with a strong manager and they thought this guy was too much of a problem to keep around. So much so that they were willing to give him to us. That should tell us something. I trust their judgment more than ours, frankly.
No doubt we will be much better, but this strikes me as the same old broken Brian Cashman team building process. We’re going to have two superstars who play the same position and 7 guys whose batting averages are less than their weight.
You know what’s a good way to build a team? Get a good 1B, get a good 2B, get a good 3B, etc etc. This top-heavy bullshit of his fails every time.
Silver has to be in bed with a glass of warm milk by 7 pm at the latest.
Juan Soto is not Julius Randle
When you can get one of the best left handed hitters of all time who just turned 25, and you can do so without materially damaging your farm system, you do it and figure out the fielding alignment later. This is such a no-brainer.
In any event, the fielding alignment is fine. Soto usually plays left, Judge usually plays right, and you can Frankenstein center with Grisham/Verdugo/Judge until Jasson gets back. Truly a non-issue.
I don’t think the Yankees care how this impacts Stanton at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s DFA’d if he doesn’t look much better in the early going. Having the added flexibility of an open DH slot may well be worth more to them than a full-time DH like Stanton who isn’t all that good at the H part anymore.
We of course now need to get more pitching, but every indication is they’re willing to spend to do so. Yamamoto would be ideal, but as long as we fill King’s slot with someone pretty good we’re in very good shape.
Yankees already have a very good 2B and if he’s over his concussion Rizzo is still good at 1B.
Verdugo is really just a 4th outfielder who I assume won’t be re-signed after this season but he’s LH and is not a HR or K hitter so he does diversify the lineup a bit. Plus he is a very good defensive corner OF. Nice decent player who didn’t cost much in prospects to acquire but I don’t like him cause he’s a douchebag who played for Boston.
Juan Soto is undoubtedly incredible I just imagine Cashman’s going to assemble a lineup that has 4-5 easy outs to compensate for acquiring him. And that tempers my enthusiasm quite a bit.
It’s a Knicks blog, so I won’t do too much here about the Yanks, but it isn’t the same process, Hubie. The moves so far bring a lot more balance to the roster with players who hit righties well. Verdugo is a short-term stopgap until the Martian returns and they gave up nothing to get him. Soto isn’t great in the field but is playable, 25, and one of the top 5 players in the game offensively. He’s had a fantastic eye and good on base percentage, again, just 25. The Yankees really need left-handed hitters who can get on base and hit home runs, and you can’t really do better than Soto. It’s only for one year, and though they gave up a potential star in King, King has enough of an injury history that he’s a risk. They lost pitching depth, but if they sign Yamamoto they should be OK.
It ain’t perfect but it’s a huge step forward. In a contract year Soto is likely to be great, and the Yanks will be in good position to sign him. They should never have taken on Stanton, but this isn’t a Stanton situation at all. They can’t give Stanton away, so he’ll probably ride they pine and/or they’ll play him until he gets hurt, which will be soon enough.
Big roll of the dice, but a good one. They need Soto to be playable in the field; they need the Martian to be real once he returns; they need the other fielders they brought on to be decent when they’re spelling Judge. Some “ifs” there, but a long way from hoping Josh Donaldson will age in reverse, with no lefty hitters, with guys who either can’t get on base or can’t hit home runs.
Good stuff, rama, Noble, and BBA. I appreciate it.
For the record, I am expressing concerns from the point of view of someone who has not followed baseball closely in a couple years. I am not dug in to any of these positions. In fact, I put them out there in large part to hear you guys tell me I’m wrong so I can feel better about it.
My gut tells me, though, that the acquisition is great but the team is not.
Meanwhile, the Mets will be paying Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and James McCann (lest we forget) a combined $50-65 million this season to play for other teams (depending upon which source you look at). And don’t forget they’re still paying Bobby Bonilla and Brett Saberhagen.
And you Yankees fans are complaining about getting Soto?
Disagree actually, and this Fangraphs article lays out why:
What you’re describing is what the Yankees have tried and failed to do since acquiring Stanton–surround Judge with a bunch of 110ish wRC+ guys. The problem with that is 110ish wRC+ guys don’t have much margin for error. They can become scrubs very easily.
It’s much easier to build a lineup around two dynamos like Judge and Soto than it is to spend the same, or in some cases even more, money on one dynamo and eight guys who are a standard deviation away from being below average.
Top-heavy works…if your “top guys” are in fact top guys. It didn’t work with Stanton because he crashed and burned almost immediately upon coming here, but I have far more faith in Soto.
I don’t think the lineup is too shallow anyway. Gleyber is pretty damn good, Volpe should take a step forward, and while it remains to be seen if Wells can stick at catcher it sure looks like he’ll hit the ball.
Even Verdugo has a 115 career wRC+ against righties, and within a few months Dominguez will be back too. We’ll see what we can get from Rizzo and DJ, but it’s not like they project to be zeros.
The cost for Soto was low enough that I do wish the Mets had gotten in on the bidding, as they clearly had enough prospects to get a deal done. The best prospect the Yankees gave up was a 45 FV pitcher who projects as a back of rotation starter. Hard A+ for the Yankees on this deal.
I know very little about baseball other than casual fan watching and playing little league, but it always seemed to me that there was more to winning than just fantasy league style team building. The players often fit together for a certain style of play (similar to basketball) and have great chemistry in the dugout/locker room. Whatever the Yankees have been doing, it has been failing badly relative to some teams that are spending way less. That’s screams you are doing it wrong.
Well yes, but they at least bought themselves three excellent prospects for all of that Scherzer/Verlander money, two of whom are close to the majors.
🙂
Serious question.
Do they track in the lineup/out of the lineup for baseball?
There have to be things that top players contribute offensively and maybe even defensive that are not captured by their own stats. Just having certain guys in the lineup will change the way pitchers pitch to other players in the lineup which in turn impacts their stats and the team’s success.
I think this has been pretty much disproven in baseball, which really is — with very infrequent one-offs — an every man for himself enterprise.
There really is no analog to the type of thing we see in basketball where Julius Randle tops off one of his pointless forays by passing you the ball at your shins with three seconds on the shot clock thus materially depressing the likelihood of you making the shot.
Well the 1996-2000 Yankees lay out why you should agree.
Randle actually has the best assist-to-pass percentage on the team, indicating his passes put guys in a good position to make a shot.
If the guy behind you is JT Snow and your name is Barry Bonds
What I’m describing is the way Gene Michael and Bob Watson built the 90s Yankee dynasty.
What you’re describing is the way Cashman laid waste to it in the following 23 years.
It doesn’t indicate that because he can get an assist on a shitty pass (and for other reasons which I’m not going to bother getting into today, this topic having run its course at least for now.)
Those Yankees didn’t have to choose. They were top-heavy and deep. Bernie put up a 158 wRC+ in ’98, and they had 5 guys at 120+. In ’99, Jeter put up a 156 and Bernie put up a 149.
Various CBA changes as well as other teams catching up from both a financial and front office savvy perspective makes that kind of thing nearly impossible to replicate. If you have to choose between the dynamos who a mortal locks to be extremely productive, and trying to piece together an army of 110 or so wRC+ guys, you go with the former every time. Those guys are simply much harder to get, as evidenced by the Yankees being able to get Verdugo for basically free.
E is furious at the rest of the Knicks for making shots when Randle passes them the ball, thus making his claim empirically unsound
Lol, if Randle passes the ball and the person who catches it scores off the pass, how exactly is the pass “shitty?”
It hasn’t run it’s course because you responded to it!
Why does this feel like we’re building to somebody making the argument that David Eckstein was better than A-Rod
There are very few things left in baseball that are not captured by a stat. For a quant-leaning person like myself who has been screaming that RBI’s and batting average are overrated statistics since like 1987 it’s like the future has finally arrived… I mean managers even understand relief pitcher leverage now!
Some people don’t really like the hyper-quantization of baseball and I can’t really blame them but I am here for that shit. The nerds won.
Wasn’t somebody supposed to say “I know this isn’t Yankeeblogger, but……..” It doesn’t look like anyone did.
Harrumph. We have standards, rules, and policies around here. Come on! 🙂
I am not convinced we have to, either.
Look, I’m thrilled to have Soto, it’s a great acquisition. But I am skeptical we’re going to build a complete team around the two of them. I suspect we’ll get to October with 3 or 4 guys who should be #9 hitters at best littered throughout the lineup like we always do. I’ve just seen it too many times to feel otherwise.
The nerds definitely won. Not just with Fire Joe Morgan. In every way.
That is interesting about Randle. I do have a sense that a lot of his turnovers actually happen in situations where he is mentalybcommitted to shooting rather than passing. So many of those horrific live ball turnovers come when he puts his head down. It’s always a slow motion train wreck.
I don’ have the strength to argue about him. In classic Knickerblotger fashion we have managed to have a rager about him despite the fact we all essentially agree he is a good not great player who could never be the 1-2 on a championship squad.
It’s a big part of what we do around here
It’s not like there was an option between Soto and 4 120 wRC+ guys for the same cost. The latter would undoubtedly cost more in terms of money and/or prospects, in the event it was even available (it wasn’t).
FWIW, the Steamer projections think the 2024 Yankees have pulled off the whole top heavy and deep thing:
Soto 170
Judge 157
Gleyber 121
Rizzo 115
Stanton 114
Verdugo 107
DJ 106
Grisham 104
Volpe 98
Wells 98
The 2019 Yankees had 10 players with OPS+ above league average which mightve been a record. Not to mention how deep the 2009 Yankees lineup was.
Building deep lineups has always been a Cashman strength which is why the past couple of seasons have been so different from what we usually see from them.
Let’s talk about DeRozan.
IF you were going to do a trade for him, what would that look like for you.
I’m warming up to the idea if the price isn’t too much. My question, though, is who do you move in a trade to make it make sense for us.
Those seem like some pretty optimistic Steamer projections for some of those guys but the Yankees’ offense should clearly be better than it was last year. At any rate they’ll be locking Soto up for many years so this move is a long-term kind of move anyway. They have their next-gen superstar. I’m less convinced they’re going to be great in 2024 but this was a great move for them long-term.
Just finally getting over the IST loss. For me more brutal than the loss to the Heat in the playoffs because I thought with the Celts out of the way we would get to the final and have a 50% or more chance of winning that game. Anyway, my positive take-aways from the loss in some sort of order of importance:
-Julius showed he can step it up in a pressure filled game.
-It laid to rest the notion that our ceiling with the current roster might be in tier 1. Assume the FO has taken note.
-Wake-up call for Thibs to do some line-up/minutes tinkering.
-Potential team bonding as the 23rd and Christmas day should be circled on the locker room calendar.
Swiftie, I just wouldn’t trade for DeRozan. He’s good but he’s graying. I suppose if it was a straight swap for RJ, maybe, as he’s the version of RJ we’ll likely never see.
I maybe could see it if the New, Improved version of DeRozan (37% from three as compared to a lifetime at 29%) is real. Since that’s a thing we need more than a taller version of shifty Brunson shooting 2’s.
But then again, we’re all about redundancy, so why not.
Maybe they’re thinking about europeans, yeah, not only Iceland. 😛 It’s 10PM here and in the UK, 11PM in the rest of western europe and midnight where things start to get crazy (Hahaha, just messin’ with ya, KYN! 😉).
Yeah I was thinking an RJ swap because it wouldn’t worsen our spacing issues and Derozan is a legit all star caliber player (though he is aging).
It’s not exactly a BIG THREE but Randle, Brunson and DeRozan is a pretty good mini big three. If we’re just losing RJ and get to keep IQ, etc…the team would definitely be improved.
Rama, of course Pat Riley would do that trade but why would we? The question I was answering was who would give us a good package for Randle.
IMO, the only teams in the league that would give us a good package for Randle are teams like Detroit, Chicago, Washington.
If you put him on the Bulls right now next to Vucevic and Lavine, that is a 44 win team on day 1. If you gave him to Washington or Detroit, they’d get out of the bottom third of the league immediately.
He’s not a #3 on a contender. He’s a #1 on a mezzanine team. So if you find a team that is tired of being a dumpster fire, that’s who you trade him to if you want something good in return.
Accurate passing is probably mostly captured in assist and hockey assist data. You can see how important it is if you watch games closely
If a pass is accurate it increases the probability of getting off the shot. If your teammate has to adjust to a bad pass, it gives the defense time to close out or adjust and he will often wind up having to pass it on. Also, accurate passing helps when it’s get swung around involving multiple passes. The quicker it gets to the other side, the greater the chances a player is going to be open.
Does this account for Brunson making more dump off passes after bringing the ball up? He brings the ball up and gives it to somebody else to enter it to Randle a lot and those passes have zero chance at getting an assist- especially when he gives it to Grimes! That said, Randle really does embody the Thibs ethos of draw two and kick- Randle wants touches for sure (hence maybe not a third option) but he’s as willing a passing big as you’ll find. I’d also be interested in seeing the point value of Randle’s assists vs. Brunson’s because I’d guess he assists on a higher % of the Knicks threes.
Maybe they’re thinking about europeans…
Given that the final starts at 1:30am/2:30am for Europeans…
Interesting.
My guess would have been that at the league level there’s nothing to see, but there might be a few high impact players (like Judge) where you want to walk or pitch around them and that forces you to pitch to someone else you would otherwise pitch more cautiously to or walk.
Ideally yes, but you can’t just go get whatever superstar you want. Outside of Judge last year the Yankees did not have any good hitters, they badly needed a bat and Soto was the best one available to them (Ohtani seems to not want to live in NY).
Soto can’t field, so he probably has to play left because unlike Stanton he can at least move. Maybe you put this Grisham guy in center and Judge in right, with some game of Judge in center and Verdugo in right. See if Stanton can bounce back at DH most of the time to start the year and if he can’t you just suck it up and release him.
I agree with this entirely, but there appears to be some disagreement on the first sentence. There’s virtual unanimity that he’s not a 1 on a contender.
So as not to infringe on Hubert’s trademark, I’ll again note that Julius is the quintessential face of purgatory. Central casting.
I’m a hard “NO” on DeRozan
I obviously put a lot of weight on fitting players together properly. IMO DeRozan would just add to our already bad spacing issues. I also don’t think he’s a particularly good defender. In fact, he may even be bad at this point. So if he was replacing Grimes in the starting lineup our defense would take a hit. Plus, there’s no lock he has 2-3 more productive years left. He’s pretty old.
Some interesting numbers from Macri’s 20 game check-in:
-The starting lineup is still a very solid +6.4 on the season, but in the last 7 games, i.e. since RJ and Grimes returned from their injuries, it’s -8.5, owing to an offensive rating of 104.3 that would’ve been unimpressive in the ’80s.
-In those last 7 games, we’re +12.5 in the non-Grimes minutes and +8.4 in the non-RJ minutes, both largely due to 123+ offensive ratings.
-Brunson-IQ-Hart-Randle-Mitch is by far our best lineup at +29.1, but has only been given 61 minutes. I would simply give that lineup more minutes!
Basically, it’s untenable for RJ and Grimes to continue to be as bad as they’ve been lately. They’ll have to cut that out, or we’ll have to make changes.
Katz wrote a great article about Grimes’ struggles, and his conclusion is largely the Knickerblogger consensus–this might not be the ideal situation for him, but he’s hardly doing himself any favors.
Not much more to say on RJ at this point. Seems like the most realistic thing to hope for is he keeps hitting 35%+ of his 3s.
I think the question is whether he would be more efficient on lower usage as a #3 option or whether essentially he’d be the same exact Randle but take fewer shots (and reduce his value).
I would argue that if you already have a solid #1 and #2 option, what you are looking for is someone that can absorb that #3 option usage as efficiently as possible, maybe give you a little more if #1 or $2 is injured, but more ideally gives you something else at an elite level (like defense) to compliment the #1 and #2. That’s not Randle. It’s OG.
Wow the Randle hate after a great little stretch of games is ridiculous. Especially this assertion that he dumps off shitty passes at the end of the shot clock to teammates lowering their shooting %.
If anything, Randle is the recipient of those passes way more than anyone else. I can’t count the number of times early in this season where no one is getting anything and they dump it off to Randle with 4 seconds on the shot clock and him not in any sort of position. The fact he often turns those opportunities into anything is impressive.
I like this team. I think if we can find one more all-star or borderline all-star wing we’d be a contender. If I were FO I’d offer Grimes/fournier, 3 unprotected of our firsts and Milwalkee’s first for Bridges as soon as it’s clear to the Nets they’re not doing anything this year. I think that gets us there. If it doesn’t work we have plenty of desire-able players to blow it up with and start over, but you gotta push your chips in at some point.
BBA, let me take you back to the 2019 ALCS.
We had DJ, Judge, Gleyber, and then you could go take a nap for a couple innings until the three of them came up again.
Edwin Encarnacion went 1-18 with 11 strikeouts
Gary Sanchez went 3-23 with 12 strikeouts
Brett Gardner went 3-22 with 10 strikeouts
Didi Gregorious was 2-23 but hey he only struck out 2 times.
That’s what I’m afraid of. He surrounds his superstars with these guys who can hit home runs against bad pitchers but cannot get their bat on the ball against good pitchers in October. That’s not a deep lineup to me.
Why is this not surprising and of course I agree with you.
Has anyone given any thought as to why Mitch’s 2p% is down so much?
He’s bigger and stronger. So maybe he’s lost a little vertical on the lobs, but he’s getting so many OREBs you would think he’s still getting opportunities to dunk at the rim.
The FT% and his technique are just ridiculous.
When we needed a 3B, Machado was available.
When we needed a 1B, Freeman was available.
When we needed a C, Realmuto was available.
We didn’t even bid on those guys.
But when we did not need a RF, we got Stanton.
When we did not need a RF again, we got Soto.
Look, I am thrilled we got Soto. But to me, the optimal way to run a death star is to keep your star RF in RF and go sign the superstar 1B, 3B, or C that your team desperately needs. Not to keep getting more RFs.
Soto played primarily LF last season and has played 454 games there in his career compared to 301 in RF. He doesn’t play the same position as Judge, and is both better and younger than a lot of the guys on that list.
Of course, I still wish we pursued those guys when they were free agents. It’s mind boggling how much superstar talent the god damn Yankees have passed on under Hal, especially during the Judge era.
But the Soto acquisition represents a deviation from that. Hal finally paid up for a superstar that fills a gaping hole instead of trying to scotch tape over it with the Josh Donaldsons of the world.
How can the first part of this statement be proven? When has Randle ever been given the opportunity to be the #3 on a contending level team?
To me, saying he’s not a #3 on a contender but only a #1 on a mezzanine is just us putting our own bias about his personality on him.
I mean, didn’t many people swear when we got Brunson that there was no way selfish, brooding Randle would ever concede sharing the spotlight with a PG like Brunson because he clearly preferred being the #1 option on a team that loses in the first round. And then he put in a great season last year sharing hte spotlight with Brunson.
Why do we think he can’t do the same with a superstar? Why do we assume that he would rather lose in the 1st or 2nd round being a 1 or 2 option than win it all as a 3 option?
lineup data over whole seasons do not mean anything let alone 10 games… we were flogging strat over this just yesterday but he’s not the only offender…
stop doing this… there’s absolutely no reason to be using it at this point or giving any public writer any oyxgen who wants to lie with stats…. we all know better yet we can’t help ourselves for whatever reason….
Fact of the matter is many of you cannot ever forgive him for giving the finger to fans after he was booed for half a season or you read into a frown on his face when we’re struggling as him “pouting.”
By the way, watch Jalen Brunson after an offensive posession where he drives, doesn’t score but thinks he was hacked and there was no foul call. He does not run back on defense. He complains to the refs too.
But Brunson is small! It’s ok that he sucks on defense or complains to the refs when he doesn’t get a call! He’s trying so much harder than Randle obviously!
Everything I read this morning says Soto is going to play RF and Judge is moving to CF. It could be wrong, but that’s what I’m going on.
rim%s are not that volatile but tipped balls are… and the difference where mitch is now to his career averages are about 10 baskets… we know it’s not much because he’s at a career high in orebs and oreb rate so a spike there probably means a spike in tipped balls which probably make up a good chunk of his attempts….
as the season progresses.. he will get more legit rim attempts in proportion to his overall shooting… the orebs will likely regress to his career avg… and his 2pt rate will stabilize…
in other words… nothing to see here…
Soto isn’t going to play an inning of RF unless there are a lot of injuries. He’ll rotate between LF and DH. Judge will rotate between RF/CF/DH, and my guess is Grisham gets the bulk of the CF innings until Jasson gets back, but Verdugo and Pereira figure to factor in there too.
An individual player’s +/- means nothing. I’m not sure I agree that lineup data, which is a different thing, is useless. Of course there should always be caveats about sample sizes, competition, etc. but given that teams with a lot of continuity tend to see repeat good lineups, there’s probably something to it.
Good point.
I remember seeing him miss a tip recently and it brought me back to period I was telling Dallas fans that KP was trying to tip way more balls than usual and missing a lot of them. It was impacting his FG%. I didn’t realize that was a thing with Mitch.
It’s not Brunson’s fault he can’t average more assists than Randle even though he has the ball in his hands just as much as Randle! And even though he is our Point Guard. Its cool that he ISOs all game and not cool Randle ISOs all game because Brunson has cool footwork moves that he does in the paint to score and Randle scoring doesn’t look fluid or cool like Brunson!
And hey even though Randle carried a team to the playoffs by himself without Brunson with Elf as his PG and old man D Rose as the second best player…Randle could never be part of a WINNING team but Brunson can even though Brunson has never taken a team by himself to the playoffs but has only been there with Doncic or Randle.
I don’t think represents a deviation at all.
In 2017 we acquired Stanton and then we ignored all the gaping holes on the team for three years.
In 2020 we acquired Cole and then we ignored all the gaping holes on the team for three years.
In 2023 we’re acquiring Soto, and I feel pretty damn sure we’re going to ignore all the gaping holes on the team for the next three years.
I can’t say this enough: I am thrilled with the Soto acquisition. But the MO around here has been make big splashes & leave big holes.
The big splash isn’t going to make me a believer. Plugging the holes will.
Disagrees in 1923-1938 Yankees.
Disagrees in 1977-1981 Yankees.
I am pretty sure the answer is no. Did this actually happen?
I wouldn’t trade for a 34.5-year-old Derozan, but if we did, Grimes, Fournier, a 2024 first, and a pick swap would probably get it done. I feel like an RJ trade would be undesirable for both sides.
Assuming RJ shifts to starting 2-guard, that gives you a fairly poor 3pt-shooting team and not very good wing defense. I suppose you could move Quickley to the starting 2 spot and have RJ lead the bench, but that’s probably not ideal either.
My only other thought is that maybe you do this (and other trades) as a cap-clearing move where you can bring DeRozan back if it seems to work out or else use extra cap space on OG or another UFA you like. That approach seems very Leon to me.
You should tell that to Thibs and all the other NBA coaches that are trying to build lineups where player skills compliment each other.
Thibs is always talking abut Net Rating of various lineups looking for evidence his basketball ideas are working on the court.
I’ve been screaming for Brunson and IQ together for how long now?
IMO we need that extra scorer/shot creator/playmaker on the court.
Hart adds a lot of intangibles not fully reflected in the boxscore but that you see on the court when you watch him and you see on the scoreboard.
So you throw them together and you see what happens.
It may or may not work.
Of course short term lineup numbers like that are not statistically significant enough to PROVE anything. But when you are coaching, gambling, or doing anything that require moving fast while there is still value, you start with a logical idea and if the short term results are verifying the idea, you stay with it. If not, then you worry about what it means, try to learn, and adjust.
If I would have waited until all my best gambling ideas were statistically significant I never would have had any of the biggest scores of my life. Everyone else would have known everything I knew and all the value would have been taken out of the idea (which is what eventually happened to those ideas).
I don’t know who Soto is, and I don’t know how to interpret any of the new baseball stats that are out there, but I have a few broad questions about what I’ve read here so far today:
#1 How can Soto be the best left handed hitter when I spent a full day of my life this summer driving “across town” to Anaheim to see the Best Baseball Player Ever play, and that guy, I noticed, hit left handed.
#2 Speaking of said Best Player Ever and the so-called “evil empire”, why is the Best Player Ever not being courted by the Yankees right now. Back when I abandoned baseball and started denying its existence there was a 0% chance that George Steinbrenner would have let him sign with any other team. But right now they’re talking about the Mariners, and the Cubs, and the Toronto Blue Jays??! Has that much really changed in 15 years?
According to NBA.com, 45% of Mitch’s shots this year have been tips compared to (exactly) 25% last year.
He’s also hitting only 46.3% of them compared to 52.9% last year, and all of his other fg%s by shot type are down ~5% (which includes the “extensive” list of dunks, layups, and alley-oops, I’m just gonna ignore his 1 hook shot and jump shot).
He’s taken about 2.48 tips/36 this year and 1.59 tips/36 last year.
4.76 regular shots/36 last year and 3.09 regular shots/36 this year.
1.57 shots/36 are assisted this year and 2.45 shots/36 were assisted last year.
So part of it is his teammates are feeding him the ball less, which means a larger % of his shots are the relatively very inefficient tips, 46.3% this year and 52.9% last year. Non-tips are 66% and 71%.
Another part of it is he’s maybe tipping the ball a bit more and coming down with it cleanly a bit less, which would account for the higher number of unassisted buckets last year (he hasn’t had that many crossover drives).
And then he’s just missed more this year, which is probably natural variance. Shooting 5% worse on various shot types is about 1.5 total makes per shot type.
you got lucky…. you don’t have to wait for a suitable sample to make conclusions with THAT data… you just can’t use solely that sample if the confidence levels are not suitable…. you need other tools and other datasets… sometimes that involves intuition and experience… sometimes that involves more quantitative rigor….
but if you’re simply using the data to confirm your priors… it’s basically an ego exercise that just happened to work out… which i’m sure has happened to a lot of folks as there’s a lot of idiots with money these days…. but you also see this out in the real world with academics and ppl who post on the internet… it’s an epidemic of sorts…
We all want this. This isn’t a you thing. Unless you think we should start IQ over Brunson, which is an opinion I saw on the dead bird site last year, your opinion of him isn’t that much higher than a lot of people.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m highly entertained by watching Swiftie wrestle his anti-matter doppelganger to death…
You are wrong.
Gambling and basketball are not a classroom activity where you are taught to prove something is statistically significant before acting. This is a world where you have to move fast to take advantage of any potential edge you find before it’s gone.
I’ve made huge bets off a sample of 1 (which math would tell you is beyond idiotic) and profited. I’ve made mistakes that way too. But it all netted out to profits because I’m experienced enough to know when to do that. I could give you examples, but no one wants to hear my gambling war stories.
We don’t have to be right 100% of the time in basketball or gambling.
We are just trying to be right often enough to add value.
If you think Brunson and IQ will work great together because of your basketball knowledge and it’s working great after 10 games, you’d have to be nut to not try it even more. It may turn out it was just noise, but this was not a random idea. It was an idea supported by basketball knowledge. If you are competent, that means it’s evidence you are right. We don’t have to wait for 2000 minutes before trying some more of it.
An unfortunate product of the cheap and easy data era is that everything that can’t be proven statistically significant by inference is default attributed to luck.
The idea that human beings don’t differ from one another in ability to comprehend the world and the things in it is beyond proposterous.
I wasn’t saying it was my idea.
I’m saying certain combinations with those two make sense to me based on my basketball knowledge. It’s not some random thought. Even though it’s based on basketball knowledge, it could still be right or wrong. None of us are perfect, especially me. You have to try it to see what happens on the court.
We have a limited sample so far. That means it’s not statically proven to be good yet, but the early evidence has been positive. I’m saying if you have a sound idea and the early evidence suggests it’s working, stop worrying about whether you have a statistically significant sample yet and just go with it and raise the minutes. If it turns out it was just noise (which will happen sometimes) you just back track and try something else that makes sense. The goal is not 100% perfection.
I’ve had enough of this for today.
There is a world where where math can give you certainties and a world where you can’t wait for certainties. You have to act quickly based on knowledge and limited evidence or you will make even more mistakes of omission by waiting.
It looks like KP may play tomorrow against us.
Judge and Soto for their careers have been better hitters than Ohtani and its not really close, especially Judge it’s insane the career he’s had so far.
you’re basically trying to trial and error your way into a heuristic you have wildly insufficient data for… which is a lot like momentum investing and technical analysis… which are also bullshit…. and a close analog to your basketball analysis which you pass off as based on ‘instrinsic value’ but more closely related to whatever vibe you had when you had your cheerios for the day…
the winners deploying those strategies have no more of a skillset than astrologists…. if there’s more rigor to what you’re describing we should talk about that but at this point you’re calling yourself a skilled coin flipper….
if you haven’t learned by now… here’s the #1 rule of gambling… if you can’t quantify your edge and be able to explain it to a 5 year old… you don’t have an edge…
Shaq, Kobe, Randle >> zero rings.
Garnett, Pierce, Randle >> 1sr round exit.
LeBron, Wade, Randle >> lottery.
Did I get it right about Randle as the losing #3?
I am not sure why some are putting Brunson down. I would think most GMs in the league would take him over Randle. I would much rather have the ball in Brunson’s hands in the 4th quarter than Randle’s.
Also, it is still not good, but it seems like Brunson’s defense has improved slightly this year.
hello strat don’t go yet you are mostly right. don’t let the frequentist propaganda machine get you down. there is no rule whatever that you need to meet any particular empirical threshold to say something useful or theoretically ahead of the market when the underlying process in question, say bounce bounce shoot, is neither inherently random nor fully known. maybe your basketball knowledge allowed you to form a superior bayesian prior to the market. that is allowed. congrats! just don’t think your tiny wisps of data are doing any of the heavy lifting. what you may think is out of sample validation is just dust in the wind. the data doesn’t gain power because you have a kick ass prior, as counterintuitive as that can
be. if you won you won early.
The idea that human beings don’t differ from one another in ability to comprehend the world and the things in it is beyond proposterous.
is it doogie’s birthday? the first ever q.e.d. for the wrong reasons! gödelian irony in the name of shitting on julius randle! geo tell me you are getting this.
This whole idea that we need to move up to the top three in EC conference tier immediately is super silly. We just got to the 4-7 level. Chill out folks. Next step is to just stay in this tier all year and get to round two of the playoffs again. That’s actually a win. So many teams (i.e. Atlanta, Dallas, etc) go backwards. OT. Loosing the Luka revenue streams had to cross Cuban’s mind when he was presented with the offer to sell.
This summer Leon must re-evaluate Fiz and look to consolidate picks and young players for the best player available in free agency (sign and trade) and/or trade market. If nothing he loves is available, kick the picks down the road, extend IQ and ride the same team into November.
Chill out folks…baking a contender from scratch is a little harder than boiling water.
Soto is a weirdly inconsistent fielder, who has swung back and forth between mediocre and awful and the other guy is also one of the best pitchers in baseball.
Strat is right about how to bet. You have a prior and a posterior. You need the posterior to help confirm the prior, and if you have a good prior then you don’t need to wait for your p-value to reach .05.
If you do wait, Vegas has already adjusted and you’re still wrong 1 in 20 times
i am already looking for the late night infomercial…”Knickerblogger guide to beating vegas, aqueduct, wall street et al” yours for only 19.95 (all 10 dvd’s)…and if you order before chanukah…you get the whole Suze Orman collection as well…
btw..the over/under for this pacer buck game is like 257…on espn they said it is the highest in 30 years…i’m thinking it had to be doug moe or stan albeck teams in that one from 30 yrs ago…
“Leon must re-evaluate Fiz”
PTSD much?
Since I don’t gamble because coward, I tend to think of this in terms of, you know, the scientific method. You see something that might be a trend, or a behavior predicated on something, or whatever, and you devise an experiment to see if you’re right (or really, if you’re wrong). So, like, running Brunson and IQ out a lot more together and see how it goes.
And for the record I liked Director’s take, as it were.
Bancini has the right of it: i’m tired…
Even Melo wanted Hali:
Ehi, a defensive battle in Vegas!
Seems like a small subdued crowd…can’t tell…they darkened the stands. …
Why did the Knicks apparently make a non-guaranteed contract extension offer to IQ? Why would you even bother?
Italian announcers are saying it’s far from a full house (2 PM start in Vegas, neutral site, small market teams…).
Lowest ticket for this game 25 dollars, for the Lakers it’s 100…
listening to Doris and Cheryl…is painful…
How exactly is this going to happen? The players we’d want to trade (Randle, RJ, Mitch) have minimal trade value, and the teams that have been serious about asset accumulation will easily outbid us for any real blue chip unless we gut our team so that we’re not competitive with the new acquisition.
Unfortunately kicking our picks down the road has significantly reduced their aggregate value so far… Some have even referred to this process using inflammatory, or should I say “incineratory” language…
Good game here wow
OBI
I’m not up on baseball much, but I do read about the Yankees occasionally and have noted the following that wasn’t mentioned above. The Yankees did miss the playoffs last year and a significant part of the reason cited in the press was a lack of left handed hitting that made their offense anemic. Cashman just fixed that. It’s not a miracle fix, but it should be a big change. And if you were deservedly out of the playoffs because of your roster you take what you can get to get back there even if the fit isn’t perfect.
Halliburton is so good
I mean, he will never get his shot off in the NBA, of course….
Hali is ridiculous
Maybe they meant never off-target
Very good game, the Pacers are a blast to watch…
And that kid Hali-something looks good, Indiana was lucky to draft him… 😛
I still basically don’t understand why we didn’t draft him
Congrats to the Pacers. What a W.
We should have drafted Halliburton. It’s time for you all to finally admit I was right.
When Leon writes his memoir…perhaps he’ll take the reader inside the knick war room…and divulge who thought obi was the guy…
‘When Leon writes his memoir…’
This might be the funniest thing written all day…
Haliburton and Fox in the same backcourt would’ve been pretty crazy.
Nembhard reminds me of JHart a lot, and not just the headband.
The Bucks should have saved some of those 3s for the semi-finals
Add the Pacers to the list of teams who will be better than us for the foreseeable future. Haliburton is some sort of Curry/Nash hybrid, better than any player in the history of our franchise by a country mile.
Kind of amazing how many guys like that are running around with us being the oldest franchise in a league that’s been around for almost 80 years.
the pacers-who have a worse record than us-have spent most of the last 20 years refusing to bottom out and get high lottery picks
If only we too had a PF averaging 20-10-5, then maybe we could trade for a talented young player… Unfortunately we’ll just have to let Randle go via waivers, where nobody will sign him
better than any player in the history of our franchise by a country mile.
Thanks for the confirmation…
The Pacers don’t have a worse record than us, both teams are 12-8 and we’ll be 12-9 after Boston finishes toying with us tomorrow,. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to see that their future is inherently brighter than ours by virtue of having a generational superstar.
Nt saying they’ve followed my ideal path, and they do have financial constraints that we don’t, which somewhat changes their incentives. But they have generally tried to draft and develop BPA at their slot and build a modern team — no incinerations and no gimmick offenses that Erik Spoelstra can teach the entire league how to neutralize in 5 minutes.
They also managed to play much better defense against the Bucks than we did despite their poor rating on that end.
Do you dispute this? Please list all Knicks who have ever approached a 10 BPM season.
Yes, and then take that list and put it on the fridge. Then stare at it incessantly until you have it memorized better than your own tax id.
Revel in just how not great the knicks and their players are – relative to everything else that could be.
Why oh why must it make folks feel so good to point out how shitty things really are. Like a teenager boasting they can tie their shoe.
Oh, you mean things aren’t perfect, wow, really?
EB, pretty sure we had that very same 20-10-5 PF in our employ when Hali was available, but there is no chance Dolan would have signed off on trading a “star” for a prospect. Nor is there any reason to believe SAC would have accepted Randle over Sabonis. It turns out that not all 20-10-5 guys are created equal, and ours has a few quirks that make his trade value lower than just about every other 20-10-5 guy to ever play.
Yes, any team would take him for free, but no one is giving up real value for him and even if they were, this franchise has never been bold enough to make a move like that in my lifetime except for when we had the worst GM in NBA history.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/07/sports/knicks-trying-ignite-spark-in-struggling-quentin-grimes/
damn, grimes sounds like he’s in a bad place mentally. Saying he feels like he’s going to get pulled every time he misses a shot when he’s been playing more than he’s deserved is not great.
Clyde was significantly better than Halliburton. He was the best player on two championship teams. It’s not close.
The stuff Hali is doing right now on the offensive end at age 23 is other worldly. His OBPM so far this season (11.23 not including today) ranks #1 of all time! (Jokic is no slouch this year, he’s at 10.68 for 2nd all-time!)
He just totally fucked up the Celts and Bucks on national TV. Fucked. Them. Up.
And nothing he’s doing seems like he can’t just keep on doing it. He looks like a budding perennial MVP candidate.
Hali and Clyde don’t really have comparable games…Shai is more of a Clyde-type player. I would compare Hali more to Steph, Harden, Nash, guys like that. Hali has a long way to go to match Clyde’s career accomplishments, and he will never be the cultural icon that Clyde was. But if he keeps this up, he’s going to pass a lot of folks on the all-time great PG list
It’s fucking crazy Lebron can still do that sometimes
better than any player in the history of our franchise by a country mile
My friend, Halliburton warmed the bench for Jalen Brunson 4 month go. His Dad wasn’t on the coching staff making decisions. It was Steve Kerr, Eric Spoelstra and Gregg Popovic. Three of the brightest basketball minds of this generation and they all agreed that Brunson was the better player/leader at the point.
This world is so sensationalized these days where everything is hyperbolized and dramatized. F. Kenny Smith and SAS.
I get it. He’s hot right now playing that run and gun style…but let’s chill out a little folks…Trae Young was suposed to be the next Curry/Nash too.
In calendar year 2023, – JB’s numbers have been insane, won us
playoff series, nearly pushed Miami to 7 by himself and he was the captain of a team where Hali warmed his seat….but the best part is that dude…not scared to play in NYC.
How about we happy and root for our guy for a change.
In the Boston and Milwaukee games, Haliburton had 28 assists and 0 turnovers. How is that even possible?
Today was the kind of day where you’re at a rehearsal and Wendy and Lisa come by and sit in on “Head,” then when you play the synth solo Wendy lets out a big “whoooo” and then after the song is over says “sick solo, Dr. Fink has nothing on you”
“My friend, Halliburton warmed the bench for Jalen Brunson 4 month go.”
This is misleading. As the games went on, Kerr went more to Hali, and Hali generally outplayed Brunson in his minutes.
This isn’t just some kind of hot streak. Hali had a phenomenal season last year and made the all-star team over Brunson, despite missing a bunch of games with an injury.
I love me some Jalen Brunson. But right now there’s really no comparison. And Hali is a lot of things, but he’s not Trae Young. Could he cool off? Sure. But it seems pretty sustainable, maybe not at this level, but close.
Obi better be ready to defend on Saturday because it’s pretty clear LBJ wants to win this thing. I wonder what Zion and Ingram think about a guy about to turn 39 taking them to the woodshed.
How come Doogie isn’t correcting the misspellings of Haliburton’s name today? Should we worry?
As for Haliburton being the best Knick of all time, it’s not by a country mile, but there’s actually a seed of possible truth to it, which is crazy in and of itself. And he looks like he plays on the 70s Knicks too, with his ugly slow shot and his high assist to turnover ratio. It would be cool if he wore super short shorts and converse sneaks, even if it was just for the in season tournament.
that sounds soooo cool jk…occasionally i would get in the zone at work – doing like operational type stuff…it felt good…
i have to imagine in a creative setting with others – it’s like a whole different level of “job” satisfaction…like a drug…
i see your going on this friday at the bellweather…sold out – nice 🙂
Missing the point, but go off
Agreed, but also, let me tease out something I particularly agree about here – “I love me some Jalen Brunson.” That the Knicks fucked up on Hali is a certainty, but, well, I mean, come on, they still acquired Jalen Brunson, and it’s nowhere near the level of Brunson being the “at home” version of “We have McDonalds at home,” he’s an excellent player in his own right! I really don’t see much point stewing on Hali at this point. It was a major screwup, he’s a star player, but it was years ago, nothing to see here, and just appreciate the (lesser) star player the Knicks do have, who is pretty darn awesome in and of himself!
I legit don’t even think about the Hali pick any more when I watch the Pacers play, except to think, at times, “Oh, I guess the site will be talking about this later.”
Brian, I agree and see the Hali’s situation only from an irony/humor standpoint.
– We drafted Obi over Hali, a thing that stirred a lot of discussions here (and in every corner of the Knicks Universe)
– Now the Pacers have Hali and Obi, we have 2 second round picks.
From a comedy standpoint it’s too good not to joke about it every now and then… 😀
JB’s an excellent player and, at least for me, the FO teases about Hali have nothing to do with him, it’s a different conversation.
I like to mock the Kings’ FO for the same reason, first they passed Luka for Bagley (and their GM was fired for that) then two years later the new GM had the luck of Hali falling in his lap… and traded him (I understand a Fox-Hali backcourt would ‘ve need a lot of work on their egos, but still…).
@Donnie Walsh re: “How come Doogie isn’t correcting the misspellings of Haliburton’s name today? Should we worry?”
I truly appreciate your concern. I’m good. In fact, I’m really good. New super-sweet and super-hot girlfriend. I go back and forth trying to figure out if she’s more sweet to me, or more hot. It’s a really nice conundrum for me to deal with, and not one that I’m used to. (One usually gets one or the other of those attributes, but not both…….especially at my age.)
Anyway, I’m just busy. But yes, Tyrese Haliburton indeed only has one letter “L” in his last name. And I sure as hell wish he was a Knick.