[Yahoo Sports] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:55:00 GMT
- NBA trade deadline 2024: Winners and losers, featuring the Lakers, Knicks and our collective perspective
- 2024 NBA trade deadline buzz: Latest news around league
- NBA trade deadline rewind: Reassessing 2023 moves, one year later
- 2024 NBA trade deadline tracker: Buddy Hield, Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington moved, see every deal
- 2024 NBA Trade Deadline Winners and Losers
[ESPN] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 16:22:00 GMT
- Pistons trade Bojan Bogdanovic, Alec Burks to Knicks
- NBA world can’t believe what Knicks did at trade deadline: ‘Legit title contender’
- 5 winners, losers from 2024 NBA trade deadline
- DETROIT PISTONS ACQUIRE QUENTIN GRIMES, EVAN FOURNIER, MALACHI FLYNN, RYAN ARCIDIACONO, TWO FUTURE SECOND ROUND DRAFT PICKS AND CASH CONSIDERATIONS FROM NEW YORK
- The New York Knicks Won NBA Trade Season
[New York Post] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 03:16:00 GMT
- Luka Doncic, Mavericks too much for shorthanded Knicks as new injury concern emerges
- Mavericks 122-108 Knicks (Feb 8, 2024) Game Recap
- Game Recap: Mavericks 122, Knicks 108
- Stats to know as the Mavericks defeat the Knicks 122-108
- Game Preview: New York Knicks vs Dallas Mavericks, February 8, 2024
[ESPN] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 22:28:00 GMT
- Sources – Knicks’ OG Anunoby to resume hoops activities in 3 weeks
- OG Anunoby out at least three weeks after undergoing elbow surgery in major Knicks blow
- OG Anunoby injury update: Knicks forward out at least three weeks after undergoing elbow surgery
- Knicks OG Anunoby has surgery to remove loose bone fragment from right elbow
- Knicks’ OG Anunoby to miss at least 3 weeks after elbow surgery
[Sports Illustrated] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 01:44:29 GMT
Mavericks’ Luka Doncic Left NBA Fans Floored With Perfect Behind-the-Back Pass
[WXYZ 7 Action News Detroit] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 19:16:11 GMT
Pistons trade deadline: Hayes waived, Bogdanovic & Burks sent to NY
[New York Post] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 07:17:00 GMT
Knicks’ Jacob Toppin scores first two NBA points in career on dunk
[Daily Mail] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 07:49:34 GMT
Mariska Hargitay wears statement suede coat for Knicks game with her son August Hermann in New York City
[sny.tv] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 10:13:00 GMT
5 most impactful Knicks trade deadline deals ever
[New York Daily News] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 03:21:18 GMT
Knicks injury woes compound with Isaiah Hartenstein leaving loss to Mavericks with Achilles soreness
[New York Post] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:48:00 GMT
Knicks better than Bucks and can beat them in playoff series: Kendrick Perkins
[Sports Illustrated] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:04:51 GMT
- Knicks Turn Down Mavs’ Josh Green Offer for Quentin Grimes? Could Dallas Want Pick?
- Knicks rejected Mavericks trade offer for Quentin Grimes
- Knicks Rumors: Latest on Alec Burks, Quentin Grimes, More Ahead of NBA Trade Deadline
- Hawks miss out on ‘coveted’ trade target on eventful trade deadline
- Knicks Reportedly Close To Trading Quentin Grimes
[Sports Illustrated] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 02:27:11 GMT
- Isaiah Hartenstein Leaves Games vs. Mavericks – New York Knicks Injury Tracker
- OG Anunoby’s Injury Status For Mavs-Knicks Game
- The Knicks injury report keeps growing: two surgeries coming?
- Knicks stars not returning from injury for Grizzlies clash
- Ian Begley: Tom Thibodeau on OG Anunoby, who has missed four games due to right elbow inflammation:
[ClutchPoints] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 02:16:00 GMT
Knicks’ Josh Hart admits RJ Barrett left him hanging after his ‘lovely text’ following trade
[The Athletic] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 11:01:35 GMT
Knicks, Cavaliers opt for different trade deadline approaches. Will either pay off?
[Heavy.com] – Thu, 08 Feb 2024 15:46:00 GMT
Blockbuster Knicks Pitch Sends Julius Randle, 4 Picks for Miami Heat Star
[New York Post] – Fri, 09 Feb 2024 05:48:00 GMT
Taj Gibson appears certain for second 10-day contract with Knicks
197 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.02.09)”
I was up early this morning running a few hundred more victory laps…had my headphones on listening to various reports and podcasts in the national sports media world gushing over the job that Leon Rose has done with the Knicks. While my enthusiasm (gloating?) is tempered by the reality that this isn’t a championship caliber team at this very moment, it’s pretty cool to be the talk of the league, not because of our record, but because of our management team. What I’m hearing over and over is that Leon has done a fantastic job. No one out there is saying, “Yeah, but those draft pick they whiffed or punted on…” or “Yeah, but those mercs they signed and had to pay to dump…” or “Yeah, but the hybrid method sucks….”. We’re still maybe a piece or two away from a sure-fire, sustained contender (if there’s even such a thing any more) but we have as clear path of a path to that level as any team except the Thunder, who probably have the best FO in the business (if we forgive Presti for the Blunder of the Millenium.)
I’ll be at the game Saturday night to greet our new cast sans the walking wounded. Hopefully in 3 weeks we will have a much better idea of what this team can really do.
In watching last night’s game, the one thing that kept standing out to me was how fucking awesome it was to watch Donte DiVincenzo do his thing. I keep rubbing my eyes and pinching myself whenever he pulls up off the dribble to drain yet another rainbow three, or drive to the hole for a twisting layup. He’s not even a poor man’s Klay Thompson…he is like a reasonable facsimile of prime Klay! Here’s a statistical comparison between Donte this year and Klay’s age 24-28 seasons. The usage is lower for DDV (mostly because Klay took more 2’s) but beyond that he’s doing as well or better in pretty much every category. And we have this guy locked up for 4 years/$50M????? Holy shit!
Fun to wake up to a podcast where Zach Lowe can’t stop raving about how we’ve become “the smartest team in the NBA.”
Yeah, I’m having cognitive dissonance with basically every smart pundit praising the Knicks.
Brunson/DDV/OG/Randle/Mitch or IHart is a contender and you cannot convince me otherwise.
Agree with the above sentiments, but optimism for this season must be tempered by what happens to all of the injured players as the season progresses.
If everybody is healthy — or even if everybody but Mitch is healthy — I really like our chances to make some noise in the playoffs. And maybe our increased length/shooting/versatility will even help us match up better with the C’s. We just have to survive this MASH unit stretch and give the reconfigured roster some time to gel.
I think the biggest change for me has been Brunson being so damn good. At the end of the day teams contend as much as their stars allow it, but there’s very good reason to believe Brunson can be that guy if the team around him is good enough.
At the end of the day you have to take your chances, and we have a chance. It might be small but who knows, this is the modern NBA, stars get injured, stuff happens, and all of a sudden a team like ours can make a real run if the pieces fall in the right places.
I’m happy that we have a clear direction and are acting on it. The hybrid method pissed me off before because it led to signing dudes like Beasley or Derrick Williams and trying to make it work with inferior pieces. This is not what’s happening anymore.
This was Zach’s rejoinder to the notion of us trading all of our recent first-round guys: Brunson being this good changes the timeline on everything. You can’t wait anymore for Grimes to get more aggressive, for RJ to find consistency (and learn how to be effective in a unit with Jalen and Julius), and for Obi to be more than what he is. You are a win-now team, but with a real reason for being win-now, and that’s why you put guys like Good Donte and OG around our two All-Stars, rather than continuing the youth movement. (Ideally, we’d still have a couple of prospects, but Leon has decided that picks are more valuable than young players when it comes to trades, and we’ll see if he’s right.) Bojan and Burks are our only rotation guys over 30, and Bojan is the only really old guy, so he’s a gamble. But he can also shoot and score in ways we desperately need right now, and will still need with the Quickley-less second unit even when other guys come back. Grimes was the only thing of value we gave up for the two Detroit guys, and I can live with saying goodbye to a talented but frustrating player when we badly needed to rebuild our early season depth around this more talented and more sensible roster.
We’re clearly between the winners of this year market.
There’s always a price to pay in trades but roster construction is more important than pure players’ value.
Burks is a useful jack of all trades and Bogdanovic is a deadly shooter (and all around scorer) and may hold his own with his underrated strenght if used to defend 4s (he’s a lot worse defending 3s).
It comes a moment when you stop thinking about the future because the future is now, the East is open (on paper a full healthy Boston is the only team someone can say is better than us) and once you accept that we’re a win-now team the moves are totally understandable even if losing the youngsters is painful*.
Now health is the real question, because a JB/DDV/OG/Julius/I-Hart starting-5 with a Burks/J-Hart/Bogdanovic/Achiuwa/Mitch bench (and Deuce as a wild card) is a very physical and flexible lineup nobody would be happy to play against.
They decided it was time to go for it and I’m okay with it, the years of the laughingstock are over, now it’s time to scare the League again.
Let’s Go Knicks.
* And we still have all our firsts!
“I’m happy that we have a clear direction and are acting on it. The hybrid method pissed me off before because it led to signing dudes like Beasley or Derrick Williams and trying to make it work with inferior pieces. This is not what’s happening anymore.”
I have repeatedly said over these last years that Leon Rose is following the Pat Riley hybrid template, and he has executed it in a very Pat Riley-ish way, complete with some head-scratchers…and Riley has certainly had his share over the years.
Although it’s obviously premature in the big picture, one could argue that Rose has actually out-Rileyed Riley! He built this team while actually accumulating picks rather than expending them!
Yesterday’s move is a case in point. It reminds me of how Riley brought Kevin Love on board last year and Kyle Lowry the year before that without any first rounders being involved by sacrificing a kid they drafted at #20 named Precious Achiuwa.
The four main reasons why the Knicks are so well positioned right now are: hiring Thibs, having patience with Julius, whiffing on Spida and hitting on Brunson. Even though Thibs has major warts, having a highly-regarded coach that stabilized the team and gave it an identity has turned out to be way more important than I thought it would be at first. I think BBA was the only one actually excited by the Thibs news (although many were relieved that at least it wasn’t someone like Mark Jackson, most would have preferred a novice that signaled a down-to-the-studs approach.) But Thibs has become sort of a poor man’s Spo…and to his credit, he has adapted the offensive philosophy somewhat to the modern game.
Coming on briefly to say one tempered thing, which I’ve said before and that makes me boring and redundant but it’s true about more players now so I’ll say it again — just remember it’s not OG is out for three weeks — it’s OG (and all the others) are out for X weeks PLUS Y games to get back into playing shape and get their shots back etc. etc.
Randle was HORRIBLE those first six game to start the season after surgery. I think we have to assume that’s going to be the story again, not just for him but for OG and Mitch and I’ve lost track of who else is hurt.
So it might end up being an interesting race between getting players back AND in game shape and the playoffs.
Now back to euphoria.
I missed a “often”, I’m not talking about superstars here (no one involved in our trades is a superstar).
Speaking of “supposed superstars”, I’m reading rumors about Trae The Rat being on the market this summer, I’m pretty sure we’re not interested…
Raven, stick around, we need you!
While I’m optimistic about OG (better do the surgery now), I’m worried about Julius, because without surgery shoulder dislocations tends to repeat and he lives on physicality.
Mitch’s situation is a box of chocolate, it usually takes time for him to round into game form…
I am weirdly hanging on the announcement of which two 2nd Rd picks we gave up.
We have some really good ones I’d like to keep, like Utah’s this year, Brooklyn’s next year, a 2028 Suns.
In the incineration debates, that was the argument I made for why he was doing what he was doing. Personally, I think he’s correct on that. There may be exceptions depending on the player, but I think most teams would rather make their own pick.
There is no doubt in my mind that this team if healthy is a championship contender. By healthy, I mean a healthy Mitch by April as well. I was a hard no on Bojan, because of his decline on defense and the price I thought he would command. Getting Bojan and Burks for Grimes, Fournier, Flynn, and what sounds like the Obi picks is an unbelievable fleecing of Detroit. I know Burks is a pro’s pro and will accept whatever role he is asked to perform. I just hope Bojan comes in with the same attitude. If not, he is a better trade chip than Fournier. I’d be looking at Booker rather than Mitchell. Mitchell is showing that his best position is pg. Cleveland should be looking to move Garland and selling Mitchell on being the long-term point guard. For us, why create the 2 small guard dilemma, if you don’t have to?
At this point Leon has to be considered the front runner for executive of the year. We have a contending roster and still have a full war chest and salary flexibility. For me, it’s hard to believe what they have accomplished. My question is will they have room to add a max player after signing Brunson to a max contract, and Randle and OG to near max contracts?
I think Mitch’s health is more important than people realize, especially with a Cleveland matchup looming. Hartenstein can do a lot but Mitch’s ability to make the Cavs quake in their boots was pretty singular.
Same thing here.
It’s not about the path. It’s about the execution. You can build a contender via draft, trades, free agency or all of them. For some organizations, the draft makes more sense, but for places like NY, LA or Miami you have more of a choice. The one advantage using all options available is that if done well, it happens faster than years of drafting and developing. The key for NY was to get good enough to become attractive first. Once you get to that stage, then good players want to come to your team.
The “hybrid method” was always pejorative and needs to disappear.
That is certainly the consensus but I wonder if there’s an alternate possibility: maybe Leon just decided that these particular young players weren’t worth signing at their expected market rates and he plans to use these picks to get new young players.
Chances are pretty high that someone like Grimes is going to be available with one of our picks this year, you know? Someone like IQ is a little harder but still not terribly unlikely.
Personally, I think the Knicks optimism is a bit over the top. We came into this period expecting a lot of wins because the schedule was a bit easier and we were getting more home games. We got those wins. There were a couple of very good wins mixed in there, but the primary positive attribute of this team is that it shows up and plays hard almost every night. We don’t lose to bad teams very often. When finally healthy again, I think we have to show we can beat the best teams when both are at full strength and playing for positioning or something else important.
Why?
I don’t see it as “always pejorative”.
Which alternative short definition you suggest to use between “rebuild” and “win now”?
Keeping up with another language is becoming harder and harder… 😀
Bojan and Bogdan are *not* brothers (in fact, they are not at all related, and are not even friends). Therefore, they should stop being referred to as brothers.
That was almost certainly part of the thinking with Quickley. And I think they were smart enough to see that RJ’s development was disappointing.
I still have a tough time thinking we are going to make two 1st round picks in this draft. There’s going to be another trade, rollout incineration (😉), or attempt to move up.
I think the first half of that answer is more probable than the second. IQ is the only one of the four who is a significant loss. But you have to give something to get something, and OG is both better now and a vastly better fit on this roster. Obi is extremely limited, and we’ve all discussed RJ to death. There will definitely be a Grimes type available with one of our picks. Whether or not he’d be as good as the good version of Grimes from last year, I don’t know. And then it becomes a question of how many picks we wind up moving this summer, along with whatever players we draft prior to free agency. I think for the long-term health of the roster/cap, we need to bring in a new player or three at the start of their rookie contract. But if Leon decides to go full Godfather to get Spida or whomever, it may be a while before there are genuine kids on the team.
The good news is that we shouldn’t have much trouble with bench scoring anymore. The bad news is that we traded away a solid low usage perimeter defender for two superior scorers, one of which is a matador and one that likes Swiss cheese. 😉
Way to go Doogie!
They’re from different nations for god’s sake (and even not-so-friendly ones, Bojan is born before the war)!
Yeah, I’m trying to be optimistic and presume Leon will actually use the picks. As much as his recent moves have turned doubters like me into believers, those old blunders are still blunders and should not be repeated going forward.
He really has been amazing.
The reason I’ve tempered my enthusiasm about our good fortune is that you generally don’t see such huge leaps at his age. It’s not a shock that he’s peaking, it’s the sustainability of what he’s doing now that’s a question mark. The way he’s playing now, it’s going to be hard to find an upgrade.
(Klay was a better defender in his day)
He’s still a massive playoff risk.
Let me repeat a very important question from late in the trade deadline thread, since it got overshadowed by the OG surgery news and then the game:
Do we use Bogey or Bogie as our preferred spelling?
My vote is for Bojack.
This is an incredible quote, given to Scotto before we made the Detroit trade:
Definitely Bogey, not Bogie.
Why not just Bojan?
He prefers Bobo and will enjoy playing beside Devo.
Frank just got waived, a reunion is possible!!
“I think the Knicks are the second-best team in the East,” a rival NBA general manager told HoopsHype. “I don’t want to see the Celtics and the Knicks in the playoffs. Then Milwaukee and Philly. It’s amazing watching Jalen Brunson. That motherf***** just finds a way. I’d take him over Tyrese Haliburton. I’d consider taking him over Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He’s got the perfect coach for him in Tom Thibodeau. Anunoby has been great for them. Donte DiVincenzo is shooting like Steph Curry all of a sudden too.”
Trying to narrow down who could have said it. Got to be an EC GM, so down to 15. Can’t be Knicks, down to 14. Can’t be Det, Charl, Wash (won’t see the playoffs), down to 11. Can’t be Celts, Mil, Philly (talking about these teams), down to 8. Can’t be Cleveland (no way saying Knicks are better), down to 7. Can’t be Indy (dissing own player) or Tor (praising player just gave up), down to 5. So Heat (my bet), Atlanta, Chi, Orlando (my second bet) or Nets (long shot).
Gets my vote.
Flaw in your logic.
“…I’d consider taking him over Shai Gilgeous-Alexander….”
Whoever you are, you just lost all credibility. If Scotto ever snitched, you would immediately be fired and never get another job in the NBA…except maybe as a talking head on TNT.
I love Brunson, but come on…
Flaw in your logic.
“I don’t want to see the Celtics and the Knicks in the playoffs.”
Last word is not “finals”.
I have no problem using both Bojan and Bogey interchangeably. Bojan is more clear since the guy on Atlanta can be Bogey, as well, but I’m also pretty certain that we’ll be talking about our new guy a shitload more than the guy on the Hawks.
Get ready for no defense through the all star break. Thibs will likely rest Hartenstein and insert Bogdanovic into the starting 5. With him temporarily as the starting 4, we should have no problem scoring if Brunson plays again before the break. But BOY! We will give up alot of points until Hartenstein and Anunoby are back. I’m ok with it though. The rest of Feb will be an adjustment period to the new look, then the team will be SCARY for the stretch run. If we drop in the standings, higher seeds should worry
The thing that is really special – which Zach Lowe also pointed out – is that the Knicks have build this roster without really going “all in”. You can debate whether they should have kept some of the players they gave away – I’m fine with that (miss you, IQ!) – but they inarguably made the leap to at the very least tier-2 contender while still have a whole lot of assets to improve.
And frankly, at this point, I’m not even sure a super star trade is what they should aim for, unless a true top 10 player becomes available. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There will be ways to improve on the margins or around the core (something like the OG upgrade) which might prove more impactful than getting a star that doesn’t fit).
I love this site so much.
If it’s Knicks v Celtics full strength I would bet hard on the Knicks.
The Celtics choke, guys. It’s in their DNA.
Bookmark this shit bc I’ll tell you exactly what will happen at the end of close playoff games between the Knicks and Celtics:
Brunson will get in the paint every time down court. The Celtics will retreat to behind the three-point line, bomb away, and miss.
The one thing that could stop us is if Thibs fails to figure out the Josh Hart thing. If that guy is closing playoff games, all bets are off. But I trust it’s becoming overwhelmingly obvious that Devo > Hart.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Bojan kills the Celtics. Almost beat them single-handedly in Boston this year, at that was during the losing streak.
I’m more worried about Milwaukee than Boston. Seems like a worse matchup for us.
Z-man, the Shai part of the quote stood out to me, too. I am so happy we have Brunson, to the point that it hurts my heart less that we passed over both Shai and Hali. But SGA is gonna be All-NBA first team, and Brunson probably is not, even with the new positionless approach. (I could see second team pretty easily, though, assuming full health soon.)
Touché
Yeah E that’s not too hyperbolic. Jeez man cmon.
Hubert, a healthy KP really screws with our entire defensive scheme. And Jrue can still make life miserable for Brunson. At the same time, we now have way more reliable 3-point shooting, we are much longer than we were at the start of the year, and a healthy OG in turn can make life miserable for either Tatum or Jaylen. I still think they’re a bad matchup for us, but I like our chances now more than before the two trades.
Alan, you’re right, but I have watched this Celtics team for nearly 7 years now and in close games they stop attacking the rim by their own free will.
I also think Bojan is the perfect antidote for KP.
Bojan’s defensive weakness is very specific: ball handlers can blow by him. But KP doesn’t blow by anyone. He either shoots over people or he posts them up. Bojan can handle that.
Also…
I actually don’t think he can.
Jrue was powerless to stop Butler last year and I think he’d be powerless against Brunson, too.
I think a big problem with Boston is that it’s hard to hide Brunson on defense (I suppose you can put him on Jrue, but not ideal). But then again, the Knicks were fine on defense against Garland/Mitchell.
I agree with Hubie – Boston is one of those teams that just sheds IQ points with every minute down the stretch. It’s bizarre. On paper, they’re better, but I’d bet on Brunson. Not to mention that Mazzula is not impressive.
The Heat have a better coach, but it won’t matter when the talent gap is this large. There only do much Spo can do.
The Bucks are interesting – they could cause us problems, but honestly I think we’re better. Giannis is amazing, but Julius actually plays him pretty well and the rest of the team can compensate enough for the difference.
The Sixers I write off because Embiid is never healthy come playoff time.
The Cavs are the wild card. They got a lot better too. I wonder if we’ll be as dominant without Mitch.
To me it all comes down to health: if everyone is 80/90% come playoffs, we could go to the Finals. But that’s a Big If.
Well, in the original incineration debate this turned out to be wildly wrong. We traded the ashes of the incinerated pick for Cam Reddish, who it turns out is one of the worst rotation players in the NBA.
Agree, I mean there has to be some term for “trying to get better without maximizing the value of your own draft picks.” That’s really all people were trying to describe.
I think it’s definitionally not pejorative, because I standby the term but also think Leon has executed it quite well!
For the first time in my life (not including things that happened when I was 5 or younger), I would say there is no team out there the fully healthy Knicks have a 0% chance against in the playoffs.
Of course there are teams I’d strongly favor over us–the Nuggets are the presumptive favorites against anyone, the Celtics are a handful, etc.–but we’ve accumulated an incredibly intriguing mix of offensive and defensive talent. Ideally we’d have a few more guys that bolster both categories since OG is kind of the only clear cut bona fide two-way player, but with enough mixing and matching I think we can cover for everyone’s flaws well enough.
I know the trade deadline for players has come and gone, but can we still trade two unprotected firsts for a really, really good team doctor?
As for the trade, I didn’t say anything yesterday because it makes me sad. We’re no longer a young, promising team. And I still believe Grimes could be something special. But…more special than Devo today? Probably not. So the front office is correct to go for it now, and the two players we acquired fill needs. They’re old, but Bojan is as much about a salary slot as a player, so it really comes down to that last move, the final play: what we do this summer with his salary and all those draft picks.
I think our guy got to “Bogey” first by: 1) predating Atlanta’s in the NBA and 2) having more 20 PPG/60 TS% seasons to his name, which, IMO, is “Bogey.”
I am not as worried about stretch 5s anymore with OG in the fold. Having him makes it much more tenable to have Hartenstein/Mitch venture out of the paint.
That was why OG (or a guy like OG) was such a clear need for this team earlier in the season.
Speaking of the Celtics’ lack of IQ in the playoffs (where they really seem to win based off of talent in the past, outside of Derrick White, that is. And now they do have Jrue Holliday, who has a high basketball IQ), that reminds me of the Cavs last playoffs. Holy shit, did those guys not know how to play the game. Hell, now that I think about it, most of the other top teams in the East just seem like guys getting by on pure talent.
My fear with Boston is that they have so many guys now that even if the Jays choke again, someone else will probably pick up the slack enough to win 4 out of 7 in a playoff series. Porzingis is an extremely good fit for them and Holiday and White can be very dangerous too at moments.
I feel good about the Knicks chances against anyone, but I’d rather avoid Boston and Milwaukee until the ECF if possible. Milwaukee looks like a mess right now but Giannis is still Giannis and mega superstars can swing entire series by themselves.
Hubert, given the way the rotations have worked this year it’s most like Thibs will be subbing out DDV for Burks, not Josh Hart. Josh has played almost all his minutes with IQ, DDV or Grimes on the court at the same time.
I’d be quite pleased if the Celtics chose to run their offense through Jrue Holiday.
Lowe with a fun piece on us this morning:
“Well, in the original incineration debate this turned out to be wildly wrong. We traded the ashes of the incinerated pick for Cam Reddish, who it turns out is one of the worst rotation players in the NBA.”
Once again I have to point out that the former Team Apoplectic can’t have it both ways. Either the trade out for the diminished return resulted in a marginal loss on return, in which case the Cam Reddish trade was the actual incineration, or the leftover ashes of the trade-out were so worthless that expending them on Cam Reddish was hardly worth getting upset over.
Most importantly, neither transaction was worth getting worked up over, at the time nor since. Both were hiccups, not anything more, and even the best GMs have them.
Sign Frank to the Theo Pinson seat.
Normally I’d chafe at trading away young players for win-now pieces, but:
1. The young players we traded away were mostly mediocre, and
2. It was actually the correct time to go win-now because of Brunson playing like a top 10 player
I am afraid that Thibs sees Josh Hart as a key player who needs 30 plus minutes, and that he will take those minutes from whoever he can.
With Burks and Bojan on board, Hart is the 7th best non center on the team now*. There’s usually 8-10 minutes available for someone in that position, and I just can’t see Hart playing that little.
* behind (in no particular order) Brunson, DDV, OG, Randle, Bojan, Burks
DRed’ question from yesterday is still valid: is Zach Lowe with CAA?
With a depleted team yesterday, Hart was 4th in minutes played. He played less than DDV, Deuce and Precious.
I’m not going to fall into the trap of underestimating the Celts. They and their rookie coach got stupid last year and yet they were still a Jayson Tatum sprained ankle away from winning 4 straight over the Heat and getting into the finals.
And now they’ve upgraded their already formidable starting lineup more than any team in the NBA by adding perennial all-star and all-defense candidate Jrue Holiday and should have been all-star Kristaps Porzingis. All five of their starters are all-star caliber on both sides of the ball, and every player in their 8-man rotation has positive OBPM and DBPM.
We have a puncher’s chance against them or anyone else, but I think we will be decided underdogs against them, if we even get that far….and deservedly so.
I think yesterday was a completely meaningless data point. This is does nothing to quell my fear. (And mind you, it is just that: my fear. I’m not killing Thibs over my anxiety.) (I will, however, kill Thibs if my anxiety comes to bear.)
This is not a binary choice. It is both. We diminished the value of the asset on draft night, and then even further diminished the value of the asset by trading it for Scam Rubbish.
Shame, the breakout was just around the corner!
It did last year.
In terms of the DDV risk, it would be one thing if this regular season was a big huge upswing from previous regular seasons such that you could then project that secularly-changed regular season into the playoffs.
But this regular season, while somewhat better than last year’s, isn’t some big, huge secular change and so that argument doesn’t work. He was a very good/excellent regular season player last year in almost 27 mpg and had a crap playoffs and there’s no reason to think that there’s no chance that this excellent regular season won’t result in the same thing. It might not, but the risk is absolutely there.
It still is!
E staking out a brave claim: DDV might have a good playoffs, but he also might not.
Gotta make sure those bases are covered!
I deal in risk/reward/probabilities. He’s unquestionably a playoff risk.
I always thought we traded one pile of ash for another. Equal value.
Do people really think this changes past arguments? Signing Jalen Brunson means you did great and you deserve credit. It means everyone like me who said you could never do it were wrong.
It doesn’t mean Leon didn’t immensely fuck up the 2020, 2021, and 2022 drafts.
And frankly, Leon still hasn’t built a team that’s better than the one he would have had if he’d just drafted Jalen Johnson and Jalen Williams.
..
Fyi, I have a brother named Bojdan Bogdanović and he just likes to go by “Danny”.
The DDV risk is next year, I think.
Guys having career years usually don’t stop having them in the playoffs.
But they often find them difficult to repeat when they come back the next year.
Guys, I know bpm is not an universal truth or anything. But Bojan has a lower career bpm than Grimes (who has not even got to his prime), is having his worst season in the NBA since 2016, is 34, has been quite injured lately, and can’t even raise a little bit the floor of a terrible Detroit team.
I really think that Bojan getting playing time in the playoffs is a bad sign. I want to be wrong, but at least, let’s temper our expectations.
EDIT: I mean about Bojan. I am really high on the team right now, and if healthy (which to me equates to Bojan not playing at all in the playoffs) I think we have a puncher’s chance at the title.
Every player in the NBA is a playoff risk.
This is one of the more ridiculous constructions we see regularly on this site, the idea that there is a binary “good playoff player/bad playoff player” ruff rydah trait that secretly lurks inside of every player.
There are like 5-10 elite players in the NBA who are kind of money in the bank at all times, and then pretty much everybody else is susceptible to playing well or not playing well over a five or ten game stretch.
This fallacy is probably why E was so high on a brutally bad player like Cam Reddish: he got hot from 3PT in one playoff series, over literally a few games, and thus is one of those “good playoff player” types. Was Jerome James a smart signing by Isiah Thomas because he averaged 17 and 9 in a playoff series against the 2005 Sacramento Kings? Turns out he was not. Like Cam Reddish, he was a scrub who got hot at the right time.
This is basically the David Eckstein Theory but applied to a different sport.
Mark Lemke was the original David Eckstein.
First of all fully healthy it’s not clear how heavily Bogey will factor into our playoff rotation anyway, but more importantly I think you’re leaning way too heavily on BPM despite it’s well-known issues properly valuing off-ball players.
Since 2019, Bogey has never been below 85th in the league in offensive EPM, and just last season he was as high as 39th. His defensive EPM is absolutely woeful, no way around that, but given that he’s been a heavy rotation player on multiple top-5 defenses I think his offensive prowess more than outweighs those drawbacks.
Again, a lot of how good you think this team is comes down to whether you think we have the defensive personnel to cover for our decidedly one-way guys. I’m cautiously optimistic, largely because of OG Anunoby, but it’s definitely an open question.
It has nothing to do with clutchiness or “ruff rydah.” The playoffs are different games, played at significantly higher intensity and focus, prepared for differently with far more intense focus on the tendencies of players and teams and a far more intense focus on closing those off.
That doesn’t really matter very much for most players and for most players the regular season is a decent proxy for the playoffs. For some players, it does matter. When you see clear evidence in the record of it mattering, there’s obviously heightened risk.
This doesn’t change the fluctuations intrinsic to 3pt shooting. Hitting 3/10 or 7/10 shots in a playoff series is just as meaningless in predicting long-term 3p% as doing so in the regular season.
What you can conclude is that certain players can’t shoot (RJ) or defend (DLo) well enough to play major minutes in the playoffs. You don’t do it based on their percentages, you make those assessments by the way the opponent attacks and defends those players.
Brian Doyle!
But yeah, no one has quite had the same aura as Eckstein.
OG can help, but will not stop Bojan of getting blown by. In this case, Mitch is more important of being a deterrent behind Bojan.
Also, defense if a team effort. Bojan might throw away a lot of our defensive schemes.
Maybe, but Grimes is also off-ball, isn’t it? And bpm also hides a bit your defense, and Bojan also has a pretty high TOV% for an off-ball player. I know bpm is not the end of all metrics. But I think we are acting as if we just signed a 6th man of the year, and I see a declining player who was not that good to begin with.
Maybe I am overreacting, but Bojan will get 25mpg the same way RJ was playing 30mpg, and this team was clicking together.
I think it was only fair to address the backup PG position and be done with it. Or take the real risk, roll the dice, and see what happens with DJM. But for me, Bojan is very disappointing, and I don’t understand the hype of all the media around him.
As entertaining as it is to watch this group debate whether to call him “Bogie” or “Bogey” or “Boogie”, I can only the fun we will have like listening to Clyde struggle to pronounce “Bogdonovich”
Bojan is a forward. Is he taking minutes away from OG or Randle in the playoffs?
Is he playing SG over Donte & Hart?
I don’t see where 25mpg comes from in the playoffs.
I don’t know, is he? Some posters are saying that we will beg for Bojan to take Randle’s minutes. And to me, Hart should be the one talking the forward spot bench minutes.
Acquiring a 35-year-old poor defender to play 15 mpg in the playoffs when he’s never even come off the bench before doesn’t really seem to warrant all manner of hosannas.
In theory, he could be DDV insurance, but I don’t see Thibs going in that direction absent DDV just goes completely silent. I frankly wonder whether Thibs even wanted the guy.
i was kind of hoping we could keep these 3 guys each making less than 40 million a year…
actually, less than 38 million a year…
OG this summer will be the first test on that…
Only Hubert is asking for Bojan to replace Randle, which won’t happen because Bojan can’t play defense, rebound, or pass well enough.
And I’m skeptical that Thibs plays Bojan over Hart unless he absolutely needs the scoring.
so, how do folks feel about alec burks being our backup point guard for the foreseeable future?
i was really surprised, and a little disappointed when thibs had him playing point guard for us during his first stay with the team…
we had a really bad roster then though…
i think it should be fine, with the roster we have it doesn’t seem like we’ll be that dependant on alec to create/run the offense for long periods of time…
“As entertaining as it is to watch this group debate whether to call him “Bogie” or “Bogey” or “Boogie”, I can only the fun we will have like listening to Clyde struggle to pronounce “Bogdonovich””
Absolutely no one has ever advocated for calling him “Boogie.” And it’s “Bogdanovic,” not “Bogdonovich.”
Other than that, I’m having trouble parsing “I can only the fun we will have like listening,” other than to assume that you inadvertently omitted the word “imagine” and randomly threw in the word “like” for no specific reason.
hopefully i am wrong, my first thought was that bojan was replacing evian on the roster…
we shall see though…this is a pretty great situation for both of the detroit guys…
they went from the very worse, to now one of the very best teams in the league…
are we back to all sitting at the long table together, getting eating etiquette reminders every two seconds from miss manners…
let me eat in peace please 😇
I think he’s fine with the 2nd unit. He’ll have Hart, Deuce, and Bojan as outlets. If nothing else, it should be better than what we had.
I would set the +/- for Bojan’s playoffs mpg at 7 (assuming everyone is healthy).
I think there is a wide range of possibilities of how the Bojan/Burks for Grimes swap will eventually work out. But the most likely outcome is that it helps significantly in the short run. Bojan has been one of the most reliable high-volume 3pt shooters in the NBA over the past decade and he’s not washed up. Burks has shot over 40% from 3 going on 4 years now. I’ll take my chances with a Deuce-Burks-Hart-Bojan-Precious (or iHart, OG, Randle, Mitch) second unit over whatever we’ve been running out there. I will also take my chance with either of them being spot starters when someone tweaks their ankle or something.
Not that pundits and analysts are to be blindly trusted, but the consensus has been overwhelmingly positive, even among traditional Knicks bashers. I’m gonna roll with the crowd on this one.
I’m not totally unhappy about the trade, but it gives me pause that media pundits love it. These are the same pundits that are convinced the Lakers are a good team and that Miami is probably just playing possum. I’m worried because pundits are so often wrong. Grimes is pretty good and could be better. Of course, we did trade that potential for hopefully present performance, but it’s not necessarily a slam dunk, just a statement prioritizing present over future. In its defense, we needed competent bodies because of all the injuries and we definitely got that.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp10w0sq99fhc1.jpeg
Works?
Trolls be trollin’.
#lolKnicksSupv chimed in this morning:
“So the Knicks finally did what I told them to do via trade this year. You can thank me later [my government name].
They’ll still be an early playoff exit though. They’re the Knicks…“
😑
I haven’t noticed the coverage on the Pistons’ side of things. Whether Burks and Bojan are great gets for the Knicks or not, Grimes seems like a great get for a team that clearly didn’t have a future with Burks and Bojan. Pairing Grimes with either Cunningham or Ivey gives you a nice defender to pair with the more offensive-minded Cunningham/Ivey.
It’s weird how the media perception is always a couple of weeks behind. They’ve caught up to our hot January and now the narrative is that we’re emerging as a contender, but that’s pretty outdated. The current situation is that we’re the most injured non-Grizzlies team in the league and it’ll probably be at least 25 games before we’re healthy, if we ever are. It’s looking like we may be so depleted that we lose 15-20 of those games and end up with a worse record and seed than last year. At that point I’m sure the narrative on us will dial back down.
In that context, trading future value for present value that is highly time limited feels very dicey. Burks as our backup PG feels similarly dicey. It’s nice to feel good now, but when we finish 42-40 or something and have to face down the Bucks without HCA, likely without Randle/Mitch, and probably without one of iHart or OG, we may regret giving up on Grimes’ limited but extant upside.
There is also a very real chance of things getting significantly worse in a long-term fashion as we redline Brunson/DDV/Hart every game while shorthanded. All it took was one play for Derrick Rose to go from youngest MVP in league history to replacement level for the next 10 seasons.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmzyblvkj9lhc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6afb8e906ffc061a976a71d8fbb40124a996f4a4
Lol…doom and gloom already? – if we had Brunson last night and iHart didn’t get hurt, – we easily beat those two primadonas.
That’s just me, and it’s admittedly a far out prediction. Bojan will never be better than Randle but the source of that bold claim is my belief that Brunson will be supercharged in lineups that feature the spacing DDV, OG, and Bojan can provide.
“These are the same pundits that are convinced the Lakers are a good team and that Miami is probably just playing possum.”
I dunno, some of these same pundits feel that the Lakers are not very good and needed to do something before the deadline to get good. Ryan McDonough has been making the rounds on NBA Radio saying exactly that. Yet I have yet to hear one pundit that is suggesting that the Knicks made a bad, or even questionable move here. I agree that some are over the top, but still…
The Heat are hard to figure out. They have a lot of new players and Butler isn’t getting any younger. Still, it’s tough to underestimate them given what they pulled off last year when everyone doubted them.
Thank you, Director!
So we still have two firsts and the Utah 2nd this year. I am pleased.
“In that context, trading future value for present value that is highly time limited feels very dicey. Burks as our backup PG feels similarly dicey. It’s nice to feel good now, but when we finish 42-40 or something and have to face down the Bucks without HCA, likely without Randle/Mitch, and probably without one of iHart or OG, we may regret giving up on Grimes’ limited but extant upside.”
Who or what is “HCA”?
hi cdiggy, i guess that just means the knicks will need to go deep this post season…
just to spite LA nation…
gonna hit Victoria Gardens out in rancho in a new knick t-shirt, in a bit…
LeBron is old. AD is frail.
together they make like 98 million a year…all their hopes rest upon russell having a good post season…
yeah, good luck with that…
it seems to have taken leon a few seasons to figure this new job out…he is building a really solid house right now…
next is our draft and then how much (if we can even) sign OG for…if our front office can work out a favorable deal with OG – that would cap off an excellent season…
roster construction wise at least…
Home Court Advantage
How long do you think a fully healthy Knicks team needs time to gel? I think if we can get 10-15 games with everyone I will feel good going into the playoffs (establishing rotations, lineups, and whatnot). Obviously if we can get Mitch around April that will add another wrinkle.
Yes I agree we’d be in a much better situation if two of our top 6 players were not hurt in addition to the injuries suffered by another 3 of the top 6. But they are hurt. Hart and DDV came up wincing and limping a couple of times yesterday as well so they may be next man up on the injury carousel.
This isn’t my typical doom & gloom, I recognize that the roster is very good if healthy. I just also recognize that “healthy” is looking very far away, and seems to be receding even further with every passing week.
Thanks, Pags. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen it acronymed that way.
I don’t know anything about Bojan (and I was thinking of the nickname Triple Bogey but that has bad golf connotations) but you would think he has to be totally fired up to go from the dumpster fire in Detroit to a team that has championship aspirations.
I do know he’s not getting any younger, and if he’s gonna be pissed about his minutes and rather take more shots with an awful team, then I guess we do have a problem.
Typically you’d get the players’ buy-in to a big minutes cut before pulling the trigger on a trade for him, particularly when it’s a long-time veteran starter who’s had a nice career. Whether that happened here is at the moment inconclusive.
The overwhelmingly positive media coverage does concern me a little, too, as they are usually wrong.
Something similar happened to the Rangers last year. They added two great but old guys (Kane & Tarasenko), the media wildly praised them, and the old guys looked washed in the playoffs.
Right now the media’s acting like we can play 7 men at a time. What if Burks takes time away from Devo? What if Bojan is just a Fournier who we’ll sometimes play? These seem like real possibilities they are overlooking.
“Right the media’s acting like we can play 7 men. What if Burks takes time away from Devo? What if Bojan is just a Fournier who we’ll sometimes play? These seem like real possibilities they are overlooking.”
Re: “a Fournier who we’ll sometimes play.” I mean, yeah, we technically sometimes played him, but I think that playing 39 minutes total after 52 games falls way under the normal definition of “sometimes plays.” I mean, Thibs wouldn’t even put him in with a 30-point lead.
From what I’ve heard, pundits are killing Detroit, not so much for getting Grimes (though Zach Lowe was pretty unenthusiastic about him), but for failing to realize that they should have traded Bojan a year ago. But overall I think there’s just some puzzlement about what the hell Detroit is doing overall.
This is bullshit. It’s the same game. This goes back to your dumb hustlebunny idea that there are teams and players who don’t try at all during the regular season and then just save it all and turn it up to 110 for the playoffs.
Of course the game is more intense but it’s not like there aren’t games or stretches within games during the regular season when teams aren’t going at it this hard.
The only real difference is shortened rotations and the teams are better. Unless you can prove that Denver or Minny or The Clippers don’t try as hard during the regular season, your assertion is bullshit.
Plus DDV has played well in the playoffs before. He just didn’t last playoffs, which was one series.
There is no ruff rydah gene for the playoffs.
“It’s the same game, other than it of course is more intense, the rotations are shorter, and the teams are better.”
Got it, Swifty.
(You left out “and these better teams can and do prepare like maniacs for the precise tendencies of 12 guys” and some other stuff, but the gist is clear.)
Damn, Doogie.
I said “a fournier who we’ll sometimes play”, not “a fournier, who we’ll sometimes play.”
Punctuation (or in this case, the lack of it) matters.
But there’s like a dozen torched straw men gasping for air on the Knickerblogger floor.
If anyone has a recommendation for New Orleans/Mardi Gras, let me know
No, it isn’t.
I don’t what this “ruff rydah” shit has to do with anything. Let’s throw that away.
And I’m not talking about all the playoffs. A 3 v 6 matchup in round 1 is most likely the same as any regular season.
But in what I referred to recently as “the league within the league”, i.e. when it’s real contender vs real contender in a 7 game series, it is a different game.
What makes it different is the attention to and the ruthless exploitation of players’ weaknesses.
You’re Ben Simmons, for instance. You get by without being able to shoot 99% of the time. Not anymore.
You’re Donovan Mitchell. Teams don’t target you every single play down the court in the regular season. They do now.
Maybe you’re Julius Randle. It didn’t matter that making quick decisions with the ball in your hand isn’t your strength. And now you have to do it every single time.
You have to either be able to fix your weakness or compartmentalize the anxiety you feel bc you’ve suddenly gone from hero to bum.
That’s a whole new skillset. You can be an all NBA player like all three of those guys are. But when someone attacks your weakness on every single play, it impacts your confidence.
Next thing you know you’re passing up layups like Simmons, you’re missing open threes like Mitchell, or you’re throwing the ball away before the double comes like Randle.
Bullshit it’s the same game. You know better.
Doogie, what do you think Alex Burkina-Faso will bring to the table? 😀
To have… fun! 😀
Hubs, I know its a more intense game, competition is better, teams are better prepared, etc.
What I’m saying is that there is no real argument that X player can play well in the regular season but not in the playoffs cause they just don’t have it.
The superstars will almost always perform well. Everyone else will either sometimes do well or sometimes not, depending on match up, how they are playing at that time, etc.
People called Dirk a choke artist before 2010. Then, suddenly he was a franchise player who can win it all. Did he fundamentally change his game in the 2010 playoffs and find some new level of intensity that didn’t exist before? Or did he simply have a better team around him, have more experience and face favorable teams during the playoffs?
Lebron has had great playoff series and bad ones.
Coaches too. Carlisle wins a ring and suddenly he’s a “championship caliber” coach. Nevermind how he’s done since then. Doc Rivers has a ring, Thibs doesn’t. Is Doc a better coach than him?
Giannis has a ring but got swept in the first round last year.
KD has 2 rings but won them with STACKED teams.
Role players like Bruce Bowen or Robert Horry would never have rings if they weren’t on the teams they were on but they constantly get praised for being playoff caliber players.
“Playoff Rondo” only existed because he played on teams with Garnett, Pierce and Allen but “Playoff Rondo” continued to get mentioned by announcers whenever he made a basket or an assist long after he was actually good because of his play with the celtics.
Most of this is media driven narrative bullshit.
Randle had ZERO help against The Hawks. The second best player for us in that series was ancient Derrick Rose. Randle was clearly hurt last playoffs too but people see the numbers and say he can’t play in the playoffs ignoring the very real reasons why he would have underperformed.
Anyone can have a bad series.
You want to go to war with Ben Simmons? I don’t.
So Hubert, just so I’m understanding correctly, how do you account for one of your examples, Donovan Mitchell, absolutely dominating in his 2020 and 2021 playoff runs?
If the terrifying pressure made him miss all his open threes, which is his career playoff 3pt% virtually identical to his regular season mark?
It’s just really weird how these very strong conclusions can be drawn from data that is… exactly in line with typical expectations. Mitchell has been about as good overall in the playoffs as he has in the RS. We only see differences when we look at tiny samples, and with your approach our conclusion varies dramatically based on which sample we choose.
Maybe we should just treat tiny samples in the playoffs with the same skepticism as we apply to them in the RS instead?
My brother in Christ, no one wants to go to war with Ben Simmons in the regular season or the playoffs.
Horrible example. Simmons sucks now.
I’m too lazy to look it up but did Simmons do poorly in the playoffs pre 2020?
It’s a meaningless data point because 2022 was the year Dallas overwhelmingly targeted him. His shooting in 2022 was 200 bps less than 2020 and 100 bps less than 2021.
If my argument were “Donovan Mitchell is incapable of succeeding in the playoffs”, you’d have a point. But it wasn’t. Not every team can punish your weakness.
But if that’s true, then he also had ZERO help in the regular season, including against the Hawks, when the Knicks went 3-0.
The fact that it looked like he had zero help in the playoffs but didn’t look like he had zero help in the regular season is proof positive of why people say the playoffs are different.
When the playoff lights went on at MSG that spring, the regular season was plainly yesterday’s news about four minutes into Game 1.
So Mitchell dominating two straight playoffs putting up 34 and 35 ppg is meaningless, but subsequent bad performances are damning. Got it.
Mitchell sometimes plays great in the regular season and sometimes bad, settling around the same averages he has put up in his playoff career. Do the same rules apply in the RS too? Good performances are meaningless because they didn’t target him? Or is it possible that there is variance in player performance over individual games such that we need aggregate data to draw firm conclusions?
As best I can tell your argument is “Donovan Mitchell is secretly a bad playoff performer because he has weaknesses in his game that can be exploited. This is proven by his poor performance in his last 11 playoff games, and the previous 17 don’t count.”
Hypothetically, if he wasn’t fatally defective in this way, would it have been possible for him to just miss a bunch of threes over an 11 game sample? Kind of like a regression to the mean from his scorching .463 from three in his previous two good playoff runs?
Not even close.
You’re both trying to bring this back to the straw man argument that “some guys are ruff rydahs.”
It’s incredible how similar the Knicks and Cavs number are right now.
(Knicks first, Cavs second)
Net Rating: 5.7, 5.6
SRS: 5.46, 5.52
Strength of schedule: -0.61, -0.68
Both teams dealt/are dealing with significant injuries this season too.
It’d be fun if they finished 2 and 3 and met in the second round.
Without commenting on any particular player, 17 good playoff performances followed by 11 bad ones is entirely consistent with that player’s playoff rap having been figured out.
Because that’s what it really is: the idea that some elect group of players are uniquely bad in the playoffs and some aren’t. Most players perform about the same or slightly worse. While there are a few outliers in either direction, like Reggie Miller or Isiah Thomas, it takes a hell of a lot larger sample than we’re working with here to state that with any confidence.
I didn’t say that. I didn’t suggest that. In fact I specifically said “throw that out”.
It’s not though. All you guys are doing is trying to port over the baseball arguments from 2003 about “clutch” and “weakness” and “character” and no one has said a single thing about any of those things.
“Ruff rydah” is the functional equivalent here of “OK, boomer.” Meaningless.
Okay but then you went on to cite three examples of players who are allegedly defective in the playoffs because “it’s a different game.”
You gave criticisms that were indistinguishable from those leveled at Dirk Nowitzki before he dominated an all-time great team in the NBA finals. Did Dirk learn to compartmentalize his anxiety in 2011 or something?
Or is it just that matchups and variance matter in basketball and those things were more in his favor than they had been previously?
Ouagadoogie.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re saying some guys just have an inner eye of the tiger that reveals itself under pressure, and that this is repeatable, and some guys have it and some guys don’t.
Is that the argument? Because that’s the Ruff Rydah Theory in action right there.
I maintain that Dejounte Murray doesn’t have some sort of innate non-playoff-pressure-feeling gene that DDV lacks. Dejounte isn’t any less of a “playoff risk” than DDV, that is just nonsense.
There’s nothing in Dirk Nowitski’s playoff numbers that support any kind of 2011 secular break or difference from what had happened before. Or any kind of material difference between the playoffs and the regular season.
He was actually way better in the playoffs than the regular season:
Regular season: 20.7/7.54/2.40
Playoffs: 25.3/10.0/2.5.
So whoever said he was a playoff “choker” was talking out their ass.
Now do a playoff/regular season comparison between, say, Julius Randle. Or Donte Divincenzo.
You’re wrong. Neither I nor anyone here has ever said anything close to what you just attributed. (*) You’re seeing the ghost of Eckstein under the bed and by the TV and seeping into the bookshelves.
For the correction, just reread my posts and/or Hubert’s.
(*) The only thing even remotely close is the one rather side reference by Hubert to “anxiety” but he was referencing that as a very secondary symptom and nothing like the primary cause.
Frank and Knox both released on the same day, those were truly God awful lottery picks by the Knicks.
There are definitely players who can squeeze every last bit of talent out of their bodies over 7 games and those who can’t, even at the NBA level. The problem is that the latter are typically weeded out by regular season and first-round play, so by the time you get to the Conference Finals you’ve got nothing but ruff rydahz.
When you start talking about trying to discern which of those remaining stars are rydahz and which are scrubs, you get into the “vibes” territory that most of us are eternally exhausted by.
Remember when Donovan Mitchell shat the bed in the 2019 Playoffs (-4.6 BPM over 193 minutes) and then had one of the best 7-game series of the 21st century one year later? Anyone doubting his abilities after that first series took some serious egg on their face. Probably scrubbed their internet posting history after that shit.
It’s better to just plea agnostic and let the ballers ball. You don’t have to have an opinion on everyone’s ability to ryde ruff. Just shut up and (let them) hoop.
Now the people who claimed that THESE two were rydahz… absolute fucking morons.
Knox over SGA
Ntilikina over Mitchell
Let us not forget that there was no decent PG on either of those rosters…
Exactly. They are a “different game” …. and therefore differences in performance aren’t based on differences in Rydah, but on the differences in the game.
Kevin Knox — Rydah 3 on 3 champion of the universe. What a disgusting pick.
Anyone who wants to make a case that some players or some teams wilt in the playoffs has to contend with the null hypothesis. It’s harder to do well in the playoffs because you are playing better teams than the average team. Also, there will be wider variations in player performance series to series than you would see game to game in the regular season because if a player has a tough matchup in a particular series it lasts for 4 it 7 games before he gets a different matchup.
Here’s the most important comparison we can do at this stage.
Nowitzki before 2011: 103 playoff games played
Randle: 15 games played, a bunch of them injured
DDV: 26 games played averaging 18 mpg
One sample carries a lot more weight than the others.
Begley: “Knicks are listing Isaiah Hartenstein as out tomorrow vs Indiana with an Achilles injury. Jalen Brunson is listed as questionable due to a sprained ankle.”
Just as your statement is entirely consistent with recency bias.
If Randle plays like an MVP his next playoff series, will you then conclude that he’s figured out payoff basketball and will continue to do that going forward, or does this logic only apply one way?
No, not at all.
I was responding to posters who asserted that all NBA games are the same and if someone has a bad series it’s just small sample theater.
My argument was simple:
1. There is a “league within the league”, which I defined it as when two teams who are real contenders play each other in a 7 game series.
2. Those games have different characteristics than Knicks Hornets in January, or even a 3 v 6 playoff matchup.
When I gave examples of how hard that league was, I wasn’t saying Mitchell will never rise to the occasion. The 2022 Mavs ran either Luka Doncic or Jalen Brunson at Donovan Mitchell nearly every play. Of course that broke him down! That doesn’t mean Mitchell is some kind of punk. But it’s also not some random small sample, either. He got his ass kicked in a way that rarely happens to him because he was playing different basketball than what he normally plays. Specifically what was different is that there was intense focus on his weaknesses by two of the best players in basketball.
That doesn’t mean if you line up Donovan Mitchell against the Orlando Magic this spring, he’s going to fail.
Maybe the player just got old, or had bad matchups or had a worse supporting cast.
We desperately need the All Star Break and to avoid further injuries in the three remaining games before it… I’m worried about J-Hart and DDV, they were both banged up yesterday…
E, both of your examples of Randle vs. the hawks though add up to a super small sample. 8 games. And I’m pretty sure Trae didn’t play in at least one of those regular season games in 2021.
Last night was an exercise in rooting for laundry. Excited for that to change and to have the full squad back.
I’m loving the “Yeah, but…” stuff we’re seeing now, so lamely predictable!
The problem with looking at a small sample of playoff data is that it’s not apples to regular season data. Players tend to play with injuries that they would sit those regular games out for. Laymen and stat-keepers aren’t privy to vital information and no asterisks are provided. Also, players have favorable/unfavorable matchups for an extended period (i.e. a series), which distort numbers beyond use. And, finally, great players have wide coattails, and not everybody is fortunate enough to go to battle with LeBron, Jordan, Shaq, or Curry.
No! You’re inferring that.
A. They were defective in the specific series I highlighted because they faced teams capable of relentlessly punishing their weaknesses and they couldn’t adjust.
B. You don’t play teams like that every day. But the deeper you go into the playoffs, the more likely it is you will one.
C. When you face one every other day for two weeks, it’s a different game.
ADDENDUM (to address the misreading): Weaknesses are not permanent. You can get your weakness exposed one year, fix it, come back next year and not have it any more. This happens all the time.
The idea was just there is a d
“Achilles injury” sounds worse than “sore Achilles.” I’m officially worried.
I’d flip that around to “so far, playoff basketball has figured Julius out.” (And, then naturally, “it appears that playoff basketball has figured Donte Divincenzo out.”)
Hahaha, good one, Donnie. I usually make a joke about their country asking for the capital city that even babies know how to say it.
Thibs’ “next man up” strategy is reaching a breaking point… we’re almost at the point where there’s no next man. 😱
Randle illustrates the difference between what I’m saying and what you’re pretending I’m saying.
a) The Hawks definitely figured Randle out
b) That only happened because it was the playoffs
Reasonable conclusion:
c) playing a contender in a 7 game series is different
Unreasonable conclusion:
c) Randle will never figure out the playoffs
FWIW I’m actually pretty confident Randle will kick some ass in the playoffs even though the playoffs have so far kicked his ass.
In the series we lost to Atlanta, the other starters for us were Elfrid Payton, Reggie Bullock, 20 year old RJ Barrett, and Nerlens Noel.
I mean sure, in that scenario it’s gonna be pretty easy to throw everything you have at Julius Randle and let those other schmoes try to beat you.
But that’s a pretty good example of why matchups and circumstances matter. If Julius Randle’s role is “drag a lottery quality team into the second round of the playoffs by himself” then yeah, he might not be able to pull that off.
You might find that blitzing him doesn’t work as well when he’s on the court with three players who can shoot .400 from 3PT.
Truth
yeah jk47 you’re right but you’re not disagreeing with me, either.
randle played with the same bunch of schmoes for 72 games before the playoffs, right? Why do you think he didn’t get blitzed on every play of those games?
Because shit happens in the playoffs that doesn’t happen all the time.
That was the whole argument. Everything else has been straw men.
Did the Knicks go 82-0 in that year?
The 2021 team had four Julius outlets who shot 400 or better from downtown in the regular season — RJ Barrett, Alec Burks, Reggie Bullock, Derrick Rose.(*) That team shot .392 from downtown, this one’s shooting .370.
But the Hawks didn’t just take Julius’s normal stuff away; they also took away his normal way of getting the ball to his outlets. They took everything away. Because it was the playoffs.
He obviously has a better supporting cast this year. So we’ll see. That’s why they play the games, and why the games are so compelling.
(*) Five, actually, if you count Frank (.479) but … well.
Please note that this outlier shooting was accomplished in empty gyms, which went away for the playoffs. Sure enough, three of those four alleged snipers never even sniffed .400 from three under other circumstances, much like Julius himself.
I’m seen some risible arguments out of you, E, but “Randle had good shooting support in 2021 from RJ Barrret and Derrick Rose!” is definitely a level above.
Gallo cut by Detroit. Time to bring him home for the playoffs!
I want this so bad
They’ll probably win the game, but Boston just gave up 71 points to Washington at the half. They’re starting to show some cracks these last few weeks.
What JK47 said. As is generally true.
Picking up Gallo would be alright. He has about as much left in the tank as Bojan. In fact, he might be better. Over the last 5 years, he has averaged more rebounds, more assists, more stocks, fewer turnovers, and only one less point per 36. He also has a better 3pt% and a better TS%. On top of that, his BPM is 2.1 vs Bojan’s -0.1 over that same span and his +/- has been positive not only every single year over the last 5 years but all but twice in his entire career vs Bojan who has only had a positive +/- once over the last 5 years and has only had a positive +/- twice in his entire career.
By +/- I mean per 100 poss. It is about whether the team is better or worse with you on the court and has nothing to do with how good or bad the overall team is.
The plus minus stats I read for games in ESPN reflect how well the team did with a particular player on the floor. If the team is blown out, everyone’s plus minus is negative. Even if the team was less bad with a particular player on the floor than with his backup on the floor, his plus minus is negative. I don’t know where the different sort of plus minus stats are that Ben R seems to be talking about.
For the billionth time there is a ton of noise mixed in with the signal of raw on/off numbers. I’m not saying that there is zero signal in there, but I don’t think you can tell a lot about a player by glancing at his raw on/off. There are five guys on the court.
Case in point: Frank Ntilikina. There’s a guy who obviously sucks at basketball. Was just waived and probably has no future in the league. Obvious to almost anybody that watches him play that he is not a good NBA player. Yet there he is, +2.5 on/off for his career per 100 possessions. Positive on/off almost every year.
It’s not that Frank Ntilikina is a good player. It’s that the stat, on its own without lots of context, is useless.
Let’s wrap this up with a nice little bow.
Today and many times in recent days Swifty made the assertion that regular season NBA basketball played in January is played at the same level as the NBA basketball in the Finals.
I found that to be preposterous and said as much, but surprisingly met resistance from Swifty, Pagliacci, and JK47.
So let me ask the three of you guys point blank:
1. Do you believe there is no difference between a Knicks Hornets game in January and a Nuggets Heat game in the NBA Finals?
2 (a). If you believe they are the same, please explain why.
2 (b). If you don’t believe they are the same, please explain why you are building straw men to argue with.
Yeah, sure, playoff games are different. I have not once made the argument that regular season games are the same as postseason games.
The thing that I take issue with is that DDV is a “big playoff risk” but Dejounte Murray is somehow not a playoff risk, because Dejounte played well in one five game series. It’s that nonsense that I am arguing against.
Variance and matchups are real things. There is not some sort of inner playoff greatness in Dejounte Murray that makes him less of a risk to play poorly in the playoffs. E has fallen into the fallacy of weighing small sample size performances WAY too heavily.
I mean, Jerome James got a big contract with these very same New York Knicks because he played well in one series. Did that series prove something about Big Snacks’ intestinal fortitude and ability to deal with pressure or whatever? No. It was small sample size theater.
It seems absurd to draw the same conclusion about Dejounte Murray, who is a player I actually kind of like! He’s not Mr. Playoffs because he had one good series.
Let’s do Josh Hart. Crushed it in the Cleveland series, his one and only playoff series at that time. Played legitimately great, helped us win that series. Does that make Josh Hart an official “good in the playoffs” player? In the next round he stunk. Bigger sample size. Regression to mean.
You get what I’m saying?
I don’t care if Gallo is good, I just want him back
OK but several posters have, and that’s what this argument was about.
Fair enough. I agree completely.
Over to you, Pagliacci and Swift. Please explain the basis for your position that there is no difference in preparation or vulnerability between the deep playoffs and the regular season.
Specifically, please explain to me why you have spent the whole day arguing that being guarded by Kawhi Leonard every two days is no different than being guarded by Kyle Kuzma on a random Thursday in February. Because that is the position you’ve been arguing against all day and longer.
To be fair to Big Snacks, he never got a chance to play in another playoff series. He could have been saving himself for the “real season” to begin the whole time he played here.
+/- is very noisy, but when looked at over years it starts to become useful. Over his career the teams Bojan have been on have performed better when he was off the floor rather than on in every season but two.
That is concerning especially when paired with his low career bpm, -0.8. Also not a perfect stat but when imperfect stats start piling up and saying the same thing they start to gain credence.
He is having his worst +/- and second worst bpm this year. Detroit was outscored by 13.5 pts per 100 poss when he was on the floor and outscored by 5.8 when he was off the floor.
Even with a lot of noise that is a sobering stat.
This +/- stat is about comparing the teams offensive and defensive ratings when a player is on and off the floor. It is on bref under play by play, +/- per 100 poss On/off.
well, great analysis Ben, but uh, yeah – we’ll just need to wait and see what happens…
who knows, maybe he surprises everyone – who knows…