Knicks Morning News (2024.05.21)

Bobby Marks thinks we are going to hit the second apron

That largely depends on how punitive re-signing OG Anunoby is. We can definitely avoid the 2nd apron if we want to.

If we manage to make our big move this summer and it takes us over the 2nd apron, it would make sense to re-sign Burks, Achiuwa, etc.

If we don’t make our big move and OG gets near max money, we have to avoid re-signing those guys and maybe even punt picks again.

A lot of incentive to make a move this summer.

It seems like the 2nd Apron is pretty damn low, btw. We are hardly fielding a super team here.

I’m going to do a pale Alan imitation and pose a question of the day.

Which of these two teams would you prefer?

Option A = stand pat and draft:

1 Brunson, Kolek*
2 DiVincenzo, McBride
3 Anunoby, Hart
4 Randle, Bojan, Holmes*
5 Hartenstein, Robinson, Sims

^ This team scrapes against but stays under 2nd apron to maintain trade flexibility

* I used Vecenie’s mock as a stand in for our draft picks

Option B = trade Bojan and four picks (including two in this draft) for Bridges

1 Brunson, McBride
2 Bridges, DiVincenzo
3 Anunoby, Burks
4 Randle, Hart, Achiuwa
5 Hartenstein, Robinson, Sims

^ this team, having made its trade, decides to go over 2nd apron and sign Burks, Precious

This Thibs stuff is Urban Legend the more you look at the actual numbers.

Yeah, no. You’re just hiding the transgressions by making the samples larger.

Every coach in the NBA does not play his guys over 45 mpg on a back-to-back in January when he has the entire team available. Thibs did that to OG.

Every NBA coach doesn’t push his injury prone wing for 46 mpg in the playoffs because he’s too stubborn to play Alec Burks. Thibs did that to OG.

And if you guys don’t want to have minutes arguments, don’t start them.

Fornier, when liberated played 541 minutes of pure suck feverish basketball (Ts = 48.2%, WS/48 =.002, BPM = -3.8) and Alecto much worse (Ts = 42%, WS/48 = -.055, and BPM an eye gouging= -7.8) And Thibs gets criticized for trying to squeeze a few more minutes out of his rotation guys?

Actually Alec Burks, upon liberation from the dungeon, posted an 8.3 bpm over 121 minutes. He currently leads the entire NBA playoffs with a .694 TS%.

Thibs ran OG Anunoby into the ground for 46 mpg, arguably costing us the season, despite the presence of a consummate professional that any NBA coach would have turned to in a pinch. A professional who played GREAT upon his release.

The Minutes Police have graciously decided not to throw this in your face every day; the least you can do is take your L and carry on.

Hubert, can you now have the Ivy League associate tally up all the outlier minutes of everybody who has played in the modern era and then have her run a regression to see if there is any correlative data that links MP with injury. Tell her Donnie Minutes Fan wants to take the L but needs to see some actual numbers first.

Knickerblogger: “This minutes stuff is so exhausting!”

Also Knickerblogger: “Hey let’s hijack a nice offseason thread to prove that we’re the ones who are right about minutes.”

Donnie Walsh: “Good idea, I’ll throw in a straw man argument to stir the pot. Go Sixers!”

Toronto played OG 43.01 and 42.11 in NOVEMBER of last season and 46.26 and 40.07 on consecutive games in JANUARY last season.

Nick Nurse is dumb, too, Bob.

You are right, only Thibs does that…. except….

Toronto played OG 43.01 and 42.11 in NOVEMBER of last season and 46.26 and 40.07 on consecutive games in JANUARY last season.
Also , for example, but I’m not going to waste my time proving the obvious, Phoenix played the oft injured 36-and-a-half-year-old Kevin Durant 40 plus minutes on consecutive games TWICE!

Chicago played 34 year old Demar DeRozan, 40+ minutes on consecutive games Twice in December this year and in January played hi 40 plus in consecutive games and then 40+ three consecutive games.

Then we get to Luka… He played consecutive 40+ minutes in THE THIRD AND 4TH GAME OF THE SEASON! He then played 40+ minutes three consecutive games in DECEMBER. in January, he played 40+ minutes in SIX OF EIGHT CONSECUTIVE GAMES!

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is coaches play their best players a lot of minutes early in the season as well as late in the season and 40 minutes plus on consecutive games is not an affectation of Thibs alone. Lots of coaches do it with their best players with little regard for their age or injury history. Facts are damn nasty things.

Oh, and thank you for doing all this work just to prove I was right about no other coach playing an injury prone wing 45 mpg on back-to-backs in January with a full roster available. I will let me my associate know that he has lunch off courtesy of the great Bob Neptune.

(DeMar DeRozan is a freak, btw; like Josh Hart with even better cardio.)

As far as I know there is no actual data that ties minutes per game to significant injury. If there is, I’d like to read it, but it’s yet to be presented here. We’re just told to take the L and to fuck off.

The specific line item that I told Bob to take the L on was the defense of keeping Burks locked in the dungeon when we needed bodies.

You’re trying to open up an entirely different can of worms.

Donnie, you yada yada’d the key part!

Thibs ran OG Anunoby into the ground for 46 mpg, arguably costing us the season, despite the presence of a consummate professional that any NBA coach would have turned to in a pinch.

Also note the use of the word “arguably” there. It’s a nod to the scientific uncertainty that you alluded to.

It’s a level playing field when it comes to that uncertainty, and conventional norms have been established to manage the risk. One can only accuse Thibs of ignoring these norms without any evidence that he’s right about their invalidity.

I’m always very careful not to say “this decision caused the injury”. Rather I point out instances where Thibs pushed the boundaries when he didn’t need to.

It’s funny I went to find out info about Burks injury and found this gem:

Despite Burks missing his first game since joining the Knicks, Thibodeau resisted inserting Shake Milton into the rotation.

Instead, Miles McBride continued to log heavy minutes (47) at shooting guard.

We say we’re Next Man Up but we’re not. We lose one guy, strain the next guy, lose the next guy.

(Shake Milton probably could have played, too, by the way. That was a nice pickup by Leon.)

“All indications are…Brunson’s willing to sign a 4-year, $156 million contract extension…provide 5 more years of certainty in New York, rather than waiting until next summer for a 5-year, $270 million extension”

What would Mark Cuban do?

By the way, Strat, I’m surprised you don’t add Julius Randle to your list of injured Knicks that got rushed back and reinjured themselves. I think we’ve kinda glossed over that one because it happened in practice and we didn’t see it. But in Randle’s own words:

“I want everyone to know that I did everything in my power to get back this season. That was my intention: to be playing right now. That’s why I didn’t opt for surgery when it happened. But what caused me to finally go through with getting surgery was: About five weeks ago, I went through a full-contact session in pads and reinjured my shoulder. My shit wasn’t stable. I felt like I was in the same state when I first dislocated it, and It’s been an uphill battle ever since.”

“My shit wasn’t stable”, but he was participating in full contact practice sessions getting ready to play, less than 4 weeks after his injury. Hmm. Sounds like Mitch’s foot, OG’s elbow, Hartenstein’s achilles, Grimes’ knee, and Barrett’s knee, doesn’t it?

The Knicks going 1-4 and getting fucking smoked on defense playing Burks instead of OG probably suggests Thibs was onto something

Losing a game 7 in the second round because six of your top eight guys are injured boldly and definitively declares that Thibs was not on to anything.

And to think, I actually thought that game drove the point home so clearly that I didn’t need to bring it up.

OK Alan but I would like to at least point out the possibility that Brunson thinks it’s wise to lock in his extension now because he understands the risk of being of Thibs’ #1 guy for the next two seasons.

I hope you are not a biologist because in actual science you work with the entire population (in this case NBA players) and don’t cherry pick the data.

So if you wanted to conduct an experiment on whether or not something prevents cancer, you would select people who already have cancer for the experiment, and then you would use their pre-existing condition as evidence that the experiment failed.

OK, Bob.

A link within Alan’s link… it’s Kevin Garnett on Julius Randle, and the only time I’ve ever liked hearing Kevin Garnett talk:

https://x.com/IanBegley/status/1792969487039209718

It’s also why I am all in on overpaying Mikal Bridges. I just think he fits. And he protects against the high risk of Donte regression, which is something we haven’t really talked about.

If djphan were still here he’d be reminding us how high the standard deviation of 1.0 BPM players is. They’re usually not 1.0, 1.0, 1.0. They’re 3.6, 0.0, -2.3, etc.

PS – Sorry, Doug. I was too aggressive in my response.

I’m open to hearing cases for how Thibs could have advanced the team further with best practices in load management.

The simple answer is we need to recognize high-risk situations and manage them effectively. Thibs has a pathological tendency to increase the risk when the risk is highest.

Halliburton’s choke sign hoodie was actually a portent.

Uh, the Celtics culturally appropriated Timmy Trumpet.

Give me Bridges and Randle and let’s fuck these teams up next year.