There are so many bad arguments in this post.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It does if he has a below league average TS% in those other 1300 minutes. But it really isn’t that important…. these are all just opinions.

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.

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.

One thing I will caution about is the incredible magnitude of DDV’s outlier December which skew his offensive numbers for the year.

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.

My statement was a virtual tautology.

It is not.

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.

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.

He can still be a very useful player if he can sustain what he’s doing in Toronto and play defense.

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.

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.

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.

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.