Knicks Morning News (2024.04.05)

So in terms of playoff positioning, we have 6 games remaining, what’s the magic number situation with our competition? [(—) owns the tiebreaker]
Bucks (MIL): 9
Magic (ORL): 7
Cavs (NYK): 6
Pacers (IND): 4
Heat (NYK): 3
Sixers(NYK): 2

Does this seem accurate?

Speaking of Deuce, a critical moment came when he picked up his 4th foul with 7:57 left in the 3rd, seemed to be getting abused by Fox, and yet Thibs left him in. He was asked about the decision in his postgame presser, and said he didn’t want to look back and regret that he took him out.

And speaking of Thibs, this is a game that sort of epitomized his continual refrain of “the game will tell you what to do.” Folks like to blame him for the offense being primitive and unimaginative, but the second half run was beautifully executed, and the two key figures were iHart and JHart. Obviously it would not have worked as well if the Kings had better rim protection, but it still suggests that the efficacy of Thibs’ offensive schemes are only limited by the b-ball IQ of the players running them.

In that sense, Randle is a mixed bag, and Thibs kind of encourages his low-IQ tendencies. And Mitch just doesn’t have the ability to see the floor and execute the passes that iHart does. So maybe, just maybe, the team might play better without Randle gumming up the potential of what we saw last night, and with Mitch is a more limited role. It is certainly critical for a player like Bojan to play in an offense where the ball moves like it did last night.

I know folks are down on Burks, but imo Shake is not the answer. I’d rather hope that Burks snaps out of this funk and plays his way back to being a useful rotation player. I have zero short-term hope for Shake being anything other than a quintessential replacement-level player.

If Bronny wasn’t LeBron’s son, would we even be talking about him?

That said, if/when he enters the draft, it will be interesting to see whether someone drafts him just to extract something out of the Lakers. I would guess that there is a covert agreement to get Bronny on the Laker roster as soon as he commits.

I wish there were public service announcements encouraging all citizens to peruse multiple news outlets across, let’s say, the standard deviation from the center of the political spectrum…or even just Fox and MSNBC…just to get out of their own echo chambers. Most of the people I know have little tolerance for the “opposing’ side. For example, my wife won’t tolerate even one second of Fox News, not even to hate-watch.

“Curious to hear people’s thoughts: losing Julius feels like the end of any small hope of getting to the Finals this year. But question: do we think we could have beaten Boston WITH Julius? What’s the ultimate difference, assuming OG is healthy? Losing to Boston? Losing to Milwaukee before we get to Boston? Losing in the first round to the Cavs/Magic?”

Even with Julius, we’d be heavy underdogs vs. the Celts. We were a well-oiled machine when Randle went down, but also were in a soft section of the schedule. I would have liked that series, though, and would have given us a puncher’s chance. Still, the question of whether of how much we have lost with Julius going down is significant. It comes down to which Julius would have showed up.

Looking at it differently, you could ask it this way: does replacing healthy Mitch, healthy Julius, and RJ in the starting lineup with healthy iHart, healthy OG, and Josh Hart make us match up better with the Celtics starting 5? I think you can make the argument that if Julius was anything less than peak all-NBA Julius, then yes, it is a net gain. And the bench of Mitch/Deuce/Bojan/Precious/Burks is at least comparable on paper to Horford/Prichard/Hauser/Tillman/Kornet. So in that sense, I would still give us a puncher’s chance based on a higher floor without bad Julius, and possibly a higher team b-ball IQ, better shooting, and better defense.

I think we match up well vs. CLE, ORL, and IND. Not so sure about PHI w/ Embiid, MIA or MIL. We just don’t have enough data.

“I do research before the draft starts and Keels was a name that came up. I liked him as a 2nd round flyer.”

I suppose he might come up, but in the context that there are names that pop up in draft speculation about late 2nd rounders, but just as mentions, not really topics of discussion. I mean we mentioned guys we might have drafted with the 58th pick we used to draft Sims.

“One side would just disregard such an announcement as another psyop by the Deep State.

This sounds like a false equivalency to me — there is no counterpart on the otherside to Fox News, OAN, and the other networks that make up the right-wing griftosphere, and there are significant structural reasons why there can’t be.”

I’m with you, but still hope that we can evolve into a less echo-chamber-ish divide. Doesn’t seem very likely at the moment, I guess.

Then there is the amount of these new jobs that are swallowed up by people illegally in the country. This NY Post piece estimates that as 6 in 10 of all new jobs. https://nypost.com/2024/02/13/opinion/job-gains-are-going-to-immigrants-and-keeping-young-us-born-men-out-of-the-workforce/

This article was written by someone from The Center for Immigration Studies.

“The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an American anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton in 1985 as a spin-off of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). It is one of a number of anti-immigration organizations founded by Tanton, along with FAIR and NumbersUSA.

Reports published by CIS have been disputed by scholars on immigration, fact-checkers and news outlets, and immigration-research organizations. The organization had significant influence within the Trump administration, which cited the group’s work to defend its immigration policies. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated CIS as a hate group with ties to the American nativist movement. The CIS sued the SPLC over the designation, but the lawsuit was dismissed.”

I’m wondering how many of the readers of this stuff bother to fact-check it, or to read contrasting opinions. Nah, not really wondering, since it is clearly click-bait for the echo chamber.

I’m not into paying multiple one-way players max money. Brunson is surely getting the max next year. Neither Booker nor Mitchell seem like ideal guys to pair with him.

DDV may not be ideal either, but he’s going to get paid less than 1/4 of what Booker or Spida will make in 2026-27. I’d rather pay big money to a somewhat less efficient shot-creating wing or big who is a plus defender than blow it all on one of those two and have one of the worst defensive backcourts in the league. DDV’s off-the-ball defense seems pretty impactful to me, to the point where it largely offsets the $40M+ you are paying for whatever the EPM difference means compared to the BPM difference.

I won’t be disgusted if they go in that direction, but not thrilled either.

I’m way more into the Mikal camp than Booker or Spida. Mikal was the second best player on a finals team, and kicked ass last year as a go to guy for the Nets. Plus, he’s on a great contract and there’s the Villanova connection. I’d be fine with overpaying as a cost of doing business with the Nets.

“Shit changes quick, but some shit changes slow. Bron is still a top 10 player in year 21. The Sixers are still contenders (with a healthy Embiid) even though the process ended 8 years ago and many of its benefits were sabotaged by Bryan Colangelo.”

The Cavs didn’t win anything despite having the GOAT, until the hometown kid came back for an encore. The Sixers’ owenership ran out of patience after being the league laughingstock for numerous years, and they haven’t gotten out of the second round.

If Presti didn’t cash in on his failure (it’s obvious that he totally fucked up by not keeping Harden) he’d be in the same boat we are in right now. Kudos to him for doing so.

But the reality is, we have no idea how tanking under a non-Presti GM would have worked out since 2020. We DO know that we are a very solid playoff team (when healthy) with surplus picks and a favorable cap sheet under Leon’s stewardship. We are in a competitive situation with the Cavs right now with more future leverage than they have. Remember how they were held up as an example of what could have been? How’s that goink?

And you can’t separate Leon from landing the best free agent signing in Knicks history, solely because he is Leon and he has a relationship with Rick Brunson and Tom Thibodeau.

“This is purely because they were too poor/cheap to keep that team together. We would have been able to, and championships would absolutely have followed.”

But this makes the point that there are always confounders built into any rebuilding process. If we could have been “golden” by properly executing the “make your picks” part of the hybrid method, then the whole dissent against the hybrid method fails on its face, because ANY method relies on proficient execution of all aspect, doesn’t it? In other words, if you keep drafting duds in the draft, the down to the studs rebuild also fails, doesn’t it?