[New York Post] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 05:57:30 GMT
- Jalen Brunson sparkles in return as Knicks dominate red-hot Magic
- Jalen Brunson has 26 in return from knee scare as Knicks roll
- Mike Lupica: Playoff basketball comes early for Jalen Brunson, Knicks
- Knicks display determination and intensity in much-needed win over Magic
- Knicks dominate Magic, 98-74, in Jalen Brunson’s return from injury
[New York Post] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 07:23:00 GMT
Donovan Mitchell playing for Knicks wouldn’t surprise ex-teammate
[sny.tv] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 12:26:00 GMT
Where does Precious Achiuwa fit in a fully healthy Knicks rotation?
[Posting and Toasting] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:36:21 GMT
Knicks’ Upcoming Week: March 10-16, 2024
[hoopsrumors.com] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 15:31:00 GMT
- Knicks Notes: Anunoby, Hartenstein, Brunson, Achiuwa
- Knicks Bulletin: “We know it’s going to be a battle.”
- Ex-Knicks GM Scott Perry Raises Concern About Knicks All-Star Julius Randle
- Knicks Notes: How Isaiah Hartenstein is playing through injury, Josh Hart’s big minutes
- Scott Perry Answers Curious Question About Knicks’ Chemistry
[New York Post] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:41:00 GMT
Knicks catch slumping, Joel Emiid-less 76ers at the right time
[Liberty Ballers] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:07:03 GMT
Tyrese Maxey ruled out for battle vs. New York Knicks Sunday
[Daily Knicks] – Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:00:00 GMT
Knicks could sneakily turn fool’s gold into key piece this summer
38 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.03.10)”
Re: Yesterday
Of course, we’re here to discuss things, but to put it simply, i’m more than happy to have Divo and OG in the starting lineup instead of Grimes and RJ. And it’s nice that RJ is doing great, it bodes well for KB’s hive mind opinion that RJ and Randle were duplicative. Well, and between the two, it’s obvious we should keep the best player and send out the other. Sorry, RJ.
Now for our bench, i think the changes we made with the trades are being saved by Deuce, because i expected a lot more from Burks. Bojan is starting to be what we thought he would be, so the Detroit trade still looks ok to me. I think we just need one thing to be a dangerous team for contenders to face, yeah even the Celtics, we need to be healthy.
‘Maxey will be out on Sunday along with Embiid, Robert Covington (knee) and De’Anthony Melton (back).’
I don’t want to say very winnable game, but…
Any idea why RJ was out yesterday? After the chatter, I went to see how he did and he wasn’t there, but no mention of an injury in any write-ups.
I believe RJ is sick.
How many 30 point triple doubles in a row will Luka need to get into the MVP conversation?
What Luka is doing with the triple doubles is really incredible but somehow the team is only 5-5 in their last 10. He is so ball dominant you have to wonder who else on that team is gonna step up besides Kyrie (who is never a sure thing).
Some good stats yesterday but context lacking.
It wasn’t just “Enter OG” wrt to the offensive explosion.
Much ink was spilled about the usage problem after the trade in large part because no one conceived Donte could expand to 24+ USG on high percentage. Prior to the trade, in 11 games as a starter, Donte averaged 21 mpg and took 5 shots or less 8 times.
In January he averaged 27.5 mpg, took 13.25 shots, and converted them with a TS% north of 60. Problem solved.
We went from Grimes, Barrett, and Mitch to Donte, OG, and iHart. That’s three major offensive upgrades, but by far the biggest contributor to the offense was Donte.
Will be at the garden tonight. Was hoping to see a healthier squad but with the vibes officially healing it should be a good atmosphere regardless.
“Must win” is a stretch…but please take care of business. Philly without Embiid and Maxey is not very good.
A random-ish thing I would like is for Alecto Blumenstein to get it going. He has been absolutely brutal since re-arriving here, but I still believe there’s a need for the not-terrible version of him on this team even when fully healthy. I might be the last Amish Brooms stock holder so he better reward my faith.
RJ is playing much better in Toronto, mainly because he’s not being asked to create his own offense, a job at which he is terrible. Assisted basket percentage is way up. The Knicks were using him as a Devin Booker type guard and asking him to create his own offense. His assisted basket percentage for NYK was often in the high 30’s/low 40’s, and it’s up at 65 for Toronto.
Players like Booker are very valuable because they can maintain the high efficiency while creating shots for themselves. RJ is not that guy. But Toronto has figured out what he CAN do, and is having him focus on that instead of jamming the square peg in the round hole.
I’m not normally superstitious but maybe if we should all call him Alec Burks for a week and see if he shoots better.
Has any Knickerblogger superstition ever worked out longer than a couple of games? I feel like we kept both Shump Shump and DOOMED going long after they stopped being effective.
damn they fined the shit out of Rudy
Look at RJ’s shot chart for the Raptors:
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/rj-barrett-shot-chart-as-a-raptor-in-his-last-26-games
Look at it for the Knicks:
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/rj-barrett-shot-chart-for-knicks-this-year
Two things stand out:
1. He’s shooting the left corner 3 as a Raptor way above his career average on a very small sample.
2. As a Knick, he had to take all his assisted shots from his weak side because Brunson and Randle dominated his strong side. As a Raptor, he is the primary lefty so he gets to take assisted shots in his sweet spot.
Good for him, but I’m not sweating it at all because look at Donte’s shot chart:
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/donte-divincenzo-shot-chart
^ That’s such a better fit for us. So RJ may always be better as a Raptor than he was here, but it’s still c’est la vie for me.
Of course I didn’t even mention OG! I’m just talking about how much better we got going from RJ to Donte.
Weird, I keep trying to post some shot charts to illustrate the RJ thing but they’re getting moderated.
The cliff notes version was to not lament RJ’s fine shooting in Toronto bc the charts show it’s all coming from the spot on the court he can’t get to here bc of Brunson and Randle. Whereas Donte’s shooting chart is the perfect complement to Brunson’s.
All of 0.0024 of his annual salary.
That’s like fining a guy who makes 150k ~$370.
Enough to get his team to not be shit
Guess we really did have too many lefties. Maybe a lefty-righty balance is an undervalued market in the NBA, it makes some sense.
Also, Randle & Brunson thrive in post-up iso ball which doesn’t lend itself to attacking a recovering defense the way TOR’s faster paced offense does.
Bing bong, but in the opposite way we wanted
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/rj-barrett-shot-chart-as-a-raptor-in-his-last-26-games
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/rj-barrett-shot-chart-for-knicks-this-year
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/donte-divincenzo-shot-chart
He can still be a very useful player if he can sustain what he’s doing in Toronto and play defense.
I wanted to trade one of them for quite awhile, but for me the question was always “do you want the player that’s better now or the player that will be better 2-3 years from now?” That wasn’t necessarily the same answer at the time of the debates. Now, we’ve sorted of cleaned house of almost all the very young players and are going all in for this season and next.
The asset management problem is that they valued RJ at his “crowded out by Randle and JB” value rather than his “unlocked, truer” value. That’s a blunder.
With Brunson and Randle’s current level of play on their current contracts we absolutely should be going all in this season and next.
And even then we have yet to trade a first round pick so we could use a lot of them for another damage like player and still have some left over to restock the prospects.
If RJ was never going to unlock that value while on this team how were they ever going to trade him on that supposed value?
Also he’s played less than a third of a season with Toronto. This could very well be another blip.
What are you basing RJs value on? What are you basing OGs value on?
Please justify your claims with more than frivolous assumptions about value. The proof is in the results, and those results are showing that Toronto got fleeced.
I don’t think they did, though, E. I liken OG to a quarter and the three assets we gave up to a dime each. I am still annoyed that we didn’t give up a lesser pick, that would have made it more even. But I equate the nickel surcharge to Masai being a better negotiator and having leverage.
Often you seem to suggest it was like we gave up like 50 cents for a quarter, but it wasn’t that much extra.
My statement was a virtual tautology.
A wing who can’t create his shot and doesn’t play much defense has a ceiling on his value. I just don’t think you need to pay $27M AAV for that player.
That’s also silly. We paid a high price for OG, and he was worth it.
I wrote this yesterday:
RJ is taking 2 fewer 3’s per 36 with TOR and is only making 1.7 3’s per 36. His 3PAr is lower that it was at any point in his Knicks career. So even if his 3PT% was lower, it wouldn’t be making much difference. He’s also shooting below his career numbers (and way below his pre-trade numbers) from the FT line, so if both of those two things regress to the mean, they should balance out.
What is possibly unsustainable is his 2PT%. He’s shooting 60.4% from 2 since being traded. Looking more closely at the numbers, it’s mainly because he is taking 42% of his shots at the rim (vs. 32% before the trade) and hitting 73% of those (vs. 62%). Only two non bigs are shooting better than 60.4% from 2…Cory Kispert(3.6attempt per game) and OG Anunoby (was 60.8% in TOR and 60.2% with us).
What I didn’t say is that even with what is likely to be an unsustainable 2pt efficacy (unless you believe that he is capable to be a league-leading 2pt shooter for the foreseeable future) he is still managing to top out at a net zero in BPM. He’s not going to continue to shoot 40% from 3 either.
Good discussion so far. Yes, when you shoot well with increased usage like DDV did in January you are a somewhat bigger contributor to the offense that a guy with lower usage who shoots a little more efficiently like OG did in January as compared to DDV
Of course, there are two sides to the ball and one must assess total play when figuring who is more valuable to the team.
One thing I will caution about is the incredible magnitude of DDV’s outlier December which skew his offensive numbers for the year. I took a look at Steph Curry’s best TS% month as reference. I Looked back all 15 years of the greatest guard shooter in the history of the game and looked at how many times in a month that he played 5 games or more he had a TS% as good as DDVs (TS% 74) this December. The answer….wait for it…. not never!
So in the other 50 games DDV played this season excluding his supernova historical run hotter than the Sun month, his TS% has been below league average. Just tap the breaks gently a little bit when explaining what an offensive force of nature he is.
I don’t think we fleeced Masai, and it’s fair to hold the opinion that leon overpaid for OG and Precious. But if the net result is that you have dramatically improved your team my making a more-or-less lateral move, that’s good enough for me. Nothing that RJ is doing is making me miss him one bit, and IQ is not exactly killing it as a starting PG. I’ll continue to fall on the side of it being a very smart trade for the Knicks, especially in that had to go through one of the savviest GMs in the league, and in the context of a pending inter-franchise grudge.
Man, I would put the word useful in quotations. On this heater he is still posting a 0.0 BPM, a below league average ws/48 and his defense still sucks as it has all 10,000 minutes he has played. I don’t quite see the attraction at 27M per year for the next 3.
Trade values don’t really align with monetary exchanges. If OG is worth 2.5x more than any one of IQ/RJ/DET 2nd, then trading those 3 together doesn’t result in a nickel of profit.
In a bank account you have access to every dollar and cent you own, in basketball you only have access to 5 units of value at a time and most teams can find players roughly starter-level value without trouble.
I’d also disagree on the valuation of DET’s 2nd. A 2nd round pick, even pick 31 or 32, is roughly equivalent to a penny scratch off ticket. It’s a nice asset to have, you might end up with a Deuce McBride or a couple extra cents, but rarely adds value.
We went 12-2 when OG was healthy with a large point differential after struggling in December, that’s a pretty good reason to think we fleeced Toronto.
It is not.
He played less than 300 minutes in December and only took 97 shots.
He’s played 1,638 minutes on the year and has taken 711 shots.
It’s not having an outsized impact.
There are so many bad arguments in this post.
I’ll just address the last one: you can’t determine we fleeced a team by citing our record in the first 14 games after the trade.
FWIW OG has been one of the least available starters in the NBA and he’s missed 55% of our games. That shouldn’t be ignored.
It’s mostly conventional wisdom. Under your theory, we could trade 1000 IQs & RJs for Lebron and we’d lose the trade by a wide margin. I’d rather have 1 LeBron.
It’s straightforward A/B testing, it’s far from perfect but that’s the most important result.
We can also go by all-in-ones, which seemingly nobody except me likes, but:
OG – 2.4 BPM post-trade
IQ & RJ – 0.0 BPM (individually & combined) post-trade
OG – 3.1 EPM on season
RJ & IQ – 0.2 & 0.3 EPM on season, respectively
OG – 2.8 DPM
RJ & IQ: -1.7 & 0.4 DPM
DPM & EPM are more accurate than BPM but I can’t break them down to pre- & post- trade. Of course, the flaw in BPM is undervaluing good defenders and overvaluing poor defenders who play on a good defensive team. I don’t think that’s going to help out the RJ/IQ side of the valuation.