[sny.tv] – Tue, 21 May 2024 20:14:20 GMT
- Breaking down Knicks’ key contract decisions looming this offseason, including OG Anunoby and Jalen Brunson
- What’s Next for the New York Knicks After 2024 NBA Playoffs Exit?
- What’s next for Knicks? How injury-shortened playoff run showed why New York is no longer waiting for a star
- Charles Barkley declares Knicks relevant again, says free agents will take their phone calls
- 5 questions facing the Knicks this offseason
[New York Post] – Tue, 21 May 2024 11:53:00 GMT
Ranking the New York teams with most hope after Knicks ouster
[Front Office Sports] – Tue, 21 May 2024 21:01:33 GMT
- Brunson Considering Giving Knicks $100 Million Discount: Report
- Knicks’ Jalen Brunson willing to sign extension this summer: Report
- NBA Rumors: Jalen Brunson Open to $156M Knicks Contract; Could Get $270M Deal in 2025
- Jalen Brunson willing to take less money to sign max extension this summer?
- Report: Jalen Brunson Set to Sign Massive Deal With Knicks
[Sports Illustrated] – Tue, 21 May 2024 14:10:28 GMT
- Report: Belief Knicks Could Trade Julius Randle
- Knicks Trade Rumors: Julius Randle Monitored by NBA Teams Ahead of Contract Decision
- Former Laker Suddenly in Trade Rumors After Playoff Exit
- Teams monitoring Julius Randle going on trade block
- NBA Insider Reveals Major New York Knicks Trade News
[Posting and Toasting] – Wed, 22 May 2024 10:30:00 GMT
Early Knicks Offseason Preview: Trade Targets & Draft Picks
[Sports Illustrated] – Tue, 21 May 2024 11:00:07 GMT
Pixar Apologizes to Knicks For Game 7 Loss
263 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.05.22)”
Fun game with a lot of Oliver & Hardy moments.
From a momentum standpoint we lost the Indiana series in Game-3 when we blew the 9 points lead in the 4th (even if obviously the real point of inflection was OG injury in Game-2).
There’s a feeling Indiana has already lost this series in Game-1, blowing the chance to steal home advantage to a sleepy and rusty Boston team whose perceived superiority is strongly diminished by KP’s absence and the frequent flashes of BB-Dumbness Tatum and Brown show (there are reasons this team has failed to win the championship over and over, it’s not just bad luck).
Anyway, I’m rooting for Minnesota…
Meanwhile in Knicks Universe the rumors are rosy,
my feelings about re-inking OG and I-Hart were always positive but the possibility that JB extends this offseason is a blast!
Let’s hope all this become real asap.
Same. But it’s confusing and almost frightening to read good news about the Knicks. I’m def watching my back 😉
More offseason intel from Begley: if the Cavs put Spida on the market, we aren’t likely to be as aggressive trying to acquire him as we were two summers ago.
https://x.com/sny_knicks/status/1793008867003043943?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It’s going to be interesting to see whether they make a major move this summer or run it back with just some upgrades to the bench, see what happens, and then revisit things at the deadline. This may be the year they have to make a major move, but is making a big move the correct thing to do and will the right move even be available.
Previously, it was obvious we needed more size, better spacing and better defense at SF. OG was the perfect fit.
This time I’m not even sure who we should try to upgrade or how.
Is it I-Hart or DDV and should we attempt to do it with Randle before we have to sign him back for what likely will be a terrible contract?
Given the rate at which our centers get injured we probably need a third center who is better than Sims.
If we’re going the route of fortifying the bench, I think that in addition to a real backup PG, a better third-string center than Jericho, and more overall competence from the 11-14 spots, we could really use a bigger combo forward to fill in whenever we’re without OG and/or Hart. Just someone who’s at least 6’6″, and preferably taller than that. The problem is, those guys are among the hottest commodities in the NBA, and it’s hard to get one of them to sign here for a modest amount and also be willing to only be an in case of emergency player. I suppose we’d need to go after a vet who 1)Has already made a good amount of money, and 2)Seems washed, but whom we believe Thibs can coax something out of. Like, Gordon Hayward, if you think there’s more in the tank than he was able to show in OKC for some reason.
Update:
Jinx, Knick fan. Sims was a fun story once upon a time, but by now we know why he was the 58th pick in that draft.
In what world is a 3 time all-star, 24-9-5 machine that is 29 years old getting a 4 year 181.5 extension a horrible contract?
Has there ever been an “unsuccessful” surgery? Why do the even bother saying that?
The dude in Hoop Dreams?
Precious is a RFA and not quite good enough for anyone to tie up money on an offer but good enough to serve on the 3rd string. I think we keep him on a cheap 2-3yr deal.
Maybe $4M? He can’t cost that much on top of his RFA status deflating the price.
The world in which his “running mate” emerged as a tentpole superstar in (and IMO because of) his absence?
I don’t see any reason to pay a guy $40M to make this again a “my turn, your turn” offense.
He’s coming back to a fundamentally changed situation. To give him the new bag, you have to be long his willingness and capacity to see that and adapt. To the contrary, I’m fading that.
My biggest concern would be replacing IHart. I don’t see anyone that is both available and appealing if we lose him. Drafting a big man and throwing him in there is not Thibs style. Drummond maybe?
“In what world is a 3 time all-star, 24-9-5 machine that is 29 years old getting a 4 year 181.5 extension a horrible contract?”
In this one. He doesn’t have a game that will age well. He may be able to be a battering ram for the next year or two, but the year after that…….and especially the year after *that*…….well, probably not so much.
Frank can speak to this better than I can, Bob, but sometimes you go in and the damage is worse than expected, and you can’t necessarily get everything in one go, or at all. The big surgery i had in the spring of ’22 was considered effective but not necessarily permanent, because of all the damage that had been done, and we all understood that I would probably need another one down the road. Whereas the surgery I got last summer was deemed successful, and I am probably done with this issue.
Is it really smart to get rid of your best NBA show…
If anyone runs a switch everything scheme still they should pickup Sims.
I’m inclined to think we should count our blessings that Donte gave us a 3.4 BPM season and never expect it again.
Also given how bad our defense is I think we really need another two-way wing who can shoot. Rather than beat the Bridges drum, I wonder if the blog can think of a similar player to Bridges we can pursue that won’t come with the excessive price tag.
Who is Donda West? Kanye West’s mother? (I’m not kidding about that. I looked up the name, and that’s who I found.)
If it means the return of the NBA on NBC with that boss theme song from back in the 80’s and 90’s, it will be all worth it.
Sims roster spot should be used on a big with some offensive upside [ DaRon Holmes maybe]. I would really like for the Knicks to get a center with some shooting ability.
Dammit, Doogie. I removed the post within 20 seconds. Yes, she is Kanye’s mother and she died from an unsuccessful surgery.
TBH, I used to love the TNT crew before Shaq joined. It was the perfect balance with Chuck and Kenny having the opposing view points. Chuck more of the funny guy who talks a little trash and Kenny opposing him while Ernie was sort of the referee. But once they added Shaq, I felt like it kind of went downhill. Now Shaq and Chuck were both the funny dudes. There have been too many segments where it just devolves into Shaq, Barkley and Kenny all talking over each other and yelling. I think it worked better when it was just the 3 of them.
All-star 90s TV/print journalist Dick Schaap had an unsuccessful surgery. Hip replacement.
My father similarly, although it’s ambiguous. Went in for a hip replacement, got an infection, seemingly recovered, texted us in good spirits, about a week after the surgery before ever leaving the hospital had a heart attack and died. His heart wasn’t spectacular, open heart patient before 60, but the surgery probably wasn’t a smashing success, either. I don’t put much thought into the precise causes or details.
I like What I haveseen of Holmes. I have also seen Filipowski slip to us in at least 1 mock draft. Either would be a great long term addition, but if we lose IHart, we will need a seasoned vet.
“The surgery was a success, but the patient died,” is a common joke among doctors.
The scary thing for me is that the East is evolving and it becomes harder to predict which teams will make leaps during the offseason.
The elephant in the room is the lack of expansion. The league continues to get more and more saturated with talent. With the cap structure becoming increasingly punitive in the next couple of years, more and more good players are going to shake loose, and the teams with cap flexibility will be able to make trajectory-changing moves while those in cap hell might get stuck with a deteriorating, aging, injury-prone roster that can’t be salvaged with fringy moves.
And this might be blasphemy here, but I am not in agreement with the notion that Brunson is a tentpole superstar. He’s not LeBron, or Doncic, or Durant, or Steph, or Jokic, or Giannis. He’s great and he’s a blast to root for, but he’s a 1A at best with an absolutely ideal supporting cast, and more of a #2 guy with #1-level leadership. If Randle isn’t a suitable 1b, then you have to replace him with someone at least as good and hopefully a lot better. Otherwise I fear that we will wind up like the Lillard Blazers, the CP3 Clippers, the Harden Rockets, the Kyrie Celtics, the Spida Cavs, etc.
“All-star 90s TV/print journalist Dick Schaap had an unsuccessful surgery. Hip replacement.”
My recollection is that he had a lethal blood clot, which is known complication from hip surgery that is not related to the procedure being successful or not.
After watching Hartenstein in the postseason I’m not sure I even want to give him his EB max.
I mean the guy had more fouls (6) than points (4) in games 6 & 7. He was intermittently effective in the playoffs, and that’s being kind.
Of course we should keep him. It would be foolish to let him walk. But I have no concerns about anyone offering him $20MM.
That’s definitely coming with the new TV deal.
@Hubert who do you want at starting Center?
Nice player in his (limited) way, but I haven’t seen anything from him ever that would lead me to do anything whatsoever to move pieces around or make decisions aimed at being able to sign him. I can’t begin to fathom moving a lottery pick for him, or short-bagging IQ for him.
He can’t even make a basket from beyond like 7 feet. He’s eminently replaceable.
Hartenstein 🙂
I’m just saying I don’t think anyone’s going to beat our best offer.
And I also think with OG on board we can afford to play more center-less basketball against these 5-out teams. If we were playing the Celtics last night, for instance, wouldn’t you have been comfortable with a Randle-Hart-OG frontline guarding Tatum, Brown, and Horford?
If he’s not, then they’re in purgatory. (He is, so they’re not, but that’s the only logical next step for those who don’t think he is.)
I agree, but they’re never going to do that with Thibs around. iHart is here and assets moved around for him because of Thibs.
Thibs is not going to play smallball, 5-out. Hoping for that is pretty much the same as me hoping he’s replaced this off-season.
And this might be blasphemy here, but I am not in agreement with the notion that Brunson is a tentpole superstar. He’s not LeBron, or Doncic, or Durant, or Steph, or Jokic, or Giannis. He’s great and he’s a blast to root for, but he’s a 1A at best with an absolutely ideal supporting cast, and more of a #2 guy with #1-level leadership. If Randle isn’t a suitable 1b, then you have to replace him with someone at least as good and hopefully a lot better. Otherwise I fear that we will wind up like the Lillard Blazers, the CP3 Clippers, the Harden Rockets, the Kyrie Celtics, the Spida Cavs, etc.
May need Doogie’s help on this, but tentpole superstar is an undefined term. Your list contains 5 players that will be on the greatest 50 players of all time list If I get rid of “super” and say a tentpole star is one that can be the best player on a championship team, can be the leader of that team, makes teammates better and play harder for each other, and can strap the team on his back if need be–Jalen fits the bill. Yes, he needs other good players around him, including a borderline all-NBA, etc. But he is the guy that is good enough that you can go all-in to build around. Similar to Tatum.
I think there is a tendency to WAY overreact to small sample size theater in the playoffs. Coming into this season Josh Hart was a “stinks in the playoffs” player and then he proceeded to play his ass off until he got hurt. Donte Divincenzo was another guy who didn’t have the ruff rydah gene but actually acquitted himself quite well. It’s a small sample size to begin with, and then you’re playing the same strong opponent repeatedly, so matchup issues get exacerbated.
Isaiah Hartenstein played demonically good basketball down the stretch of the season. If we’re trying to replace that guy with forever-injured Mitch Robinson and whoever we can find on the scrap heap, we’re starting off in a massive hole. He gave us tremendous surplus production this year and Leon Rose is just not going to be able to find guys who can do that every offseason. If he is not brought back this offseason is going to be starting off on a very bad note.
Hartenstein is still relatively young. I mean he’s not young (26) but he’s not old yet. He’s just about to enter his prime and this was his first season as a starter and a starter in the playoffs.
To me resigning him at 16 million per is a no brainer. We’d be locking him up for his prime years. He’s not going to take some massive leap at age 26 but he can still get better around the margins.
I also think the longer he starts, the more we will take advantage of his passing and offense. Thibs seems to be a guy who does implement new wrinkles to an offense but he does it very slowly.
I’ve been saying for awhile that his contribution to winning on this team is less than the boxscore indicates. I saw nothing at the end of the season and in the playoffs to change my mind.
Could you imagine what would have happened if Brunson was out and Randle was trying to carry the team?
He’s a good player, but he gives inconsistent effort on defense and makes a lot of critical mental errors. I don’t want to max him heading into his 30s. I’d rather trade him to upgrade another position. I’ll feel badly about it because he’s been here for the entire rebuild, but I’d feel worse if we had a capped out team, unmovable contract, had little upside and weren’t good enough.
I’m OK with them taking a look at this team to start the season (with just an upgraded bench), but if they don’t like what they see, I think Randle may be one guy that has to go.
People!
Why are you worrying and talking about losing I-Hart?
Is it some kind of disease spreaded by Pagliacci? 😉
I kind of agree with this. He’s a top 15 player, which may not be enough for your top dog. On the other hand a healthy Knicks have a very good supporting cast with Randle and OG being legit all-star level, and Hart and DDV excellent starters, and iHart and Mitch a solid combo at the 5.
More from Begley this morning, on re-signing Hartenstein:
I didn’t know Claxton was also a free agent. So there’s four centers on the market now (iHart/Valanciunas/Claxton in FA, Jarrett Allen on the trading block.)
I like our chances of re-signing iHart with the $17m Early Bird rights money more now. When you line up the teams that need a center, have cap space, and that iHart would want to go to, there’s not many matches there.
OKC will have dibs on the best center available (Allen), and they can put together the best package for him.
New Orleans is still the biggest threat to sign him away. But I think they’ll compete with OKC to acquire Allen, lose out, and then have a choice between Claxton and iHart.
Begley mentioned Charlotte as a team with cap space, but they have Mark Williams at C. Will they pay $20m+ per year for a platoon partner for Williams?
Orlando seems happy with Wendell Carter, Jr., who’s developing nicely into a stretch 5 (his 3P% has improved steadily and he shot 37.4% last season). It seems more likely they’d look for more scoring to pair with Banchero.
Maybe the Sixers? I guess it’s a non-zero possibility, you could play Hartenstein and Embiid together, iHart offers more spacing than Ben Simmons did. I think they’ll prioritize a wing with the money that used to go to Tobias Harris instead. Hartenstein would be an unconventional consolation prize for them.
Washington, Toronto, and Detroit can all offer Hartenstein a bag. If Hartenstein wants to go to a lottery team in his prime to make a ton of money, there’s nothing we can do about that.
“If it means the return of the NBA on NBC with that boss theme song from back in the 80’s and 90’s, it will be all worth it.”
Wasn’t that “NBA on CBS”? Could be wrong about that.
it was NBC, Doogie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkvD4NlouPs
PS: I don’t know how smart the Pelicans FO is. Claxton had better looking box score stats this season (12/10/2, 2.1 bpg) than iHart (8/8/2.5, 1.1 bpg). And he has a better reputation around the league as a rim protector.
Depends also if they want a rim runner on offense or iHart’s playmaking/pop-a-shot floater. Claxton is also a 55% FT shooter, I don’t know how much they would value that.
Because he’s an unrestricted free agent and other teams would be interested in him?
“Worrying about losing iHart” you mistake my love of analyzing things for distress lol
You’re not the only one Doug, it’s kind of Mitch’s Free Agency Redux. 😀
iHart was instrumental in beating traps and doubles on Brunson. Teams managed to adjust but having him as a passing outlet with the ability to hit his floater at an absurd rate was pretty important.
He got killed by Embiid, but so do most Cs. Embiid is a job for a healthy Mitch.
He got neutralized by a floor-spacing C in Turner but that’s on the wings to do a better job when he’s not under the basket.
If you can find an upgrade, you obviously get it, but there aren’t too many Cs you can use as a replacement without giving up a lot elsewhere, either on defense or with his passing and rebounding.
Can we have a numbers breakdown of what makes Brunson not tentpole? Like this year’s numbers seem pretty tumescent. The results were downright engorged. If that’s him going forward he clearly has erected a tent pole at the heart of the franchise. Is the Brunson we go this year not Brunson. Do his numbers lie?
Brunson scored 40 plus points in like 5 straight playoff games, putting him in company with freaking Michael Jordan.
He is a tent pole star.
And some of those examples – Harden with the rockets for example – he was definitely a tent pole.
Having a tent pole true number one option doesn’t guarantee a championship. Those rockets won like 65 games one season and took the dubs to 7 games in the WCF and lost because CP3 pulled a hamstring. That’s a championship caliber team.
The bar shouldn’t be you win a championship. The bar is are you good enough to possibly win a championship. after that, timing, luck, the role players on the team, etc…all play a role.
CBS also had the NBA. I think more so in the early to mid 80s but then it went to NBC sometime in the 80s and through the early aughts?
Thanks, Alan. Maybe “NBA on CBS” was when I was a kid.
When you factor in the option he’d have to pick up that’s a 5 year, $214MM deal that covers his age 31-35 seasons.
I’m between neutral and no on that. Playing out the season makes more sense.
“…a tentpole star is one that can be the best player on a championship team”
“can” be and “would definitely be” are where I would draw the distinction. For example, a prime Dame Lillard “can” be the best player on a championship team, but it would require a special mix around him. Same with CP3, Harden, Kyrie, Spida, etc. You could probably put Jimmy, AD, KAT, Tatum, and Hali into that category.
There are two guys who are strong complements for Brunson on this roster: OG and Randle. Everyone else seems like someone who limit the team’s ceiling in some way…DDV, iHart, Mitch, Josh, all have very significant flaws as starters. Compare that with the Celtics, who put four all-star level players around Tatum. Let’s stipulate that Tatum, Jrue and Brown are equivalent to Brunson, OG and Randle. The question becomes: how do we upgrade from iHart and DDV to KP and White?
The Celtics have yet to win a championship. Those 4 other players on the celtics have their flaws too.
The Celtics are a well built team, no doubt. But they had great health all season with their team (except for now with KP down in hte playoffs).
If we had no significant injuries to any of our rotation players all regular season and had OG from the start of the regular season, we probably win more like mid 50 games, maybe even push to 60. Who knows.
Although I am not previously familiar with the term “tentpole” as it is being used in this context, its use is not bothering me at all because at least it is being explained. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly OK.
“If we had no significant injuries to any of our rotation players all regular season and had OG from the start of the regular season, we probably win more like mid 50 games, maybe even push to 60. Who knows.”
It takes a special kind of homerism to make this argument. I will respond with just as silly of a proposition: If the Celts were coached by Thibs, and they played all 82 games like they were game 7 of the finals, they would have won over 70 games. Who knows?
“The Celtics are a well built team, no doubt. But they had great health all season with their team (except for now with KP down in the playoffs).”
They replaced KP by increasing Al Horford’s role. Al played to a 3.6 BPM this year, also all-star level. He’s at a 1.9 BPM in the playoffs in 30 mpg. They have hardly missed a beat.
Our tentpole is as big as anyone else’s who isnt winning a championship every year. The tentpole conversation is getting pretty flacid. Brunson is undeniably a star and undeniably a player you want to build around. Is he a magnum tentpole. A skybridge? No he’s just about 6 ft not 7ft. That’s ok. Can we just go back to saying he’s a star who is the best player on a very intriguing team that was too injured to compete at their highest level this year. If they play their cards right this offseason we could easily be the team that the east has to overcome, not the Celtics.
We played small with OG and Precious against Philly with some success, so I could see Thibs going to it with Randle and OG at some point. It makes a lot of sense for Thibs to have that as an option.
I threw out the question of how to replace IHart because there is a non zero, but small chance that we lose him. I think it makes for an interesting discussion.
Any top-10 team can win a championship if everything breaks right for them. And any top seed can get frozen out if they have terrible injury luck. The question is, how do we go from a long-shot to get to the finals to a favorite?
So long as iHart and DDV are starters, we will not surpass the Celts in that regard, assuming they lock up Jrue, White, and KP, and might fall behind other teams if they improve.
If your tentpole is 6′ high, you by definition have a tent with a low ceiling.
So how do we get Giannis to force a trade here?
No, it doesn’t. If we had full health all year (which the celtics did) and we had OG to start the season, we would have won a lot more games. This is not provable but anyone can conclude it to be true. How many games did we lose before the OG trade because RJ bricked 80 percent of his 3’s while playing only meh defense?
My point isn’t that we’re better than the Celtics. I’m just refuting the idea that they’re a perfectly constructed roster and that JB isn’t a true tentpole star (he is).
Our starting 5 with OG and Randle was about as good of a starting 5 as you can construct. The only downside with our roster post OG trade was the lack of a real go to 6th man/back up PG, which could be easily solved this off season.
The Celtics had perfect health all season. They haven’t “missed a beat” with KP down because they’ve had 2 very easy first and second round opponents.
“So how do we get Giannis to force a trade here?”
Now you’re talkin’!
flaccid
Have you ever been camping?
Shit I’m bad at speling
“No, it doesn’t. If we had full health all year (which the celtics did) and we had OG to start the season, we would have won a lot more games. This is not provable but anyone can conclude it to be true. How many games did we lose before the OG trade because RJ bricked 80 percent of his 3’s while playing only meh defense?”
Again, you are ignoring the Thibs factor. If you think the Celts topped out on potential wins the way the Knicks did, you are not being rational. They coasted to 64 wins. Everyone knows that.
The honest answer:
1. Fire Thibs or freeze him out of roster decisions completely, thus widening your universe of possibilities.(*) A narrow universe of possibilities plus locking in on particular Thibs-y guys leads you to things like the iHart acquisition and retention costs.
2. Don’t squander or (gulp) incinerate assets. In part, see part 1 for the locking in problem. When a guy like OG is on the market, don’t overpay and don’t “solve” other “problems” like the IQ non-problem. And don’t overpay for Mikal Bridges because he allegedly “fits.” (Which is to say, even if he does fit, still don’t overpay.)
3. Realize where you are in the association cosmos. Once JB hit confirmed tentpole stage in January, the Knicks’ contention window opened up. This was the first year of it. They didn’t talk or act that way — once the window officially opens, you’re immediately out of the “we have to save our draft picks for a superstar” mode.(***) This team could have and should have gone into the playoffs, and now the rest of the window, with all of OG Anunoby, Dejounte Murray, and either RJ Barrett or Immanuel Quickley on the roster. Saving those draft picks for an illusory and unnecessary idea is quite silly.
Because of Thibs and Leon/CAA, the Knicks don’t avail themselves of the entire association sandbox and then they lock in to certain guys in their circumscribed sandbox.(**) Can’t do that.
(*) I’ll assume for now that the CAA thing doesn’t also limit the universe of possibilities, while at the same time fearing that it does. Nothing can be done about that, really, even if you fired Leon Rose — which I’m not advocating. Ultimately, that’s a Dolan/Eagles thing.
(**) Which includes the draft.
(***) And while I’m certainly not going to tell other fans how they should feel about things, in purely basketball terms you’re out of the “I’m proud of my team for how hard they fought” after losing to a lower seed in the second round.
Everyone knows that… common sense. The tried and true adjudicator.
I doesn’t sound like blasphemy to me.
JB fully deserves his 5th place in the MVP this season, but he’s not in the “superstar tier” of the league (made by very few players and it’s been this way since forever, rarely there are more than 5-6 at the same time and they’re generally all two-way players), mostly because of his size.
To me he’s in the second tier with a bunch of other players, all #1in a way and all “stars”, that you just mentioned (Tatum, Spida, Kyrie). AND THAT’S GREAT*
It could work if we get another #1, it could work if we surround him with as many #2 guys as possible (OG and Randle are two of them), it could work, we a lot of luck, if we run all the guys back and stay healthy next year.
In every sport luck has a lot to do with winning titles, the only thing a FO should do is trying to improve its team year after year… and then pray.
* My beloved Patrick was never a “superstar tier” player.
Not with Jordan, Magic, Larry, Dream, Prime-Shaq and others overlapping his career.
Our huge problem was the inability to surround him with “real” #2 guys until he became too old to be a #1-A anymore…
“Our starting 5 with OG and Randle was about as good of a starting 5 as you can construct.”
The Celts, Nuggets and Pacers would all have a clearly better starting 5. The Bucks with a healthy Giannis, Middleton, and Lillard would be at least comparable and probably better. The Sixers, Cavs, Magic, and Pacers all have ways to improve. There are several teams in the west, starting with OKC, that are both as good and have ways to improve.
It would be terribly foolish for this team to stand pat and think it can coast to 50 wins an ECF berth. Thankfully, I think Leon feels the same way.
I have to say, this sounds like Bogdanovic.
Brunson more and more feels like Good Iverson and the team we have constructed reminds me a bit of the Sixers finals team. Iverson and a bunch of junkyard dogs basically.
But our version has a superstar who scores efficiently and we have at least a few guys who can hit threes.
Brunson isn’t a generational superstar. But he is definitely the next level down right now.
I continue to think we should draft an All-Star. Seems like the smart choice.
“Have you ever been camping?”
Who is this question meant for, Clarence Beeks? Or is it meant for everyone on the blog? It’s not addressed to anyone in particular.
They traded the lottery pick that could have been Jalen Williams to free up a few million dollars to sign a backup center.
KFNINJ, Al Horford is way better than Bojan and makes half the money. THAT’S the kind of player you look to fill that role.
“I continue to think we should draft an All-Star. Seems like the smart choice.”
Was that with tongue firmly in cheek, Owen? If not, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to know that a player was going to be an All-Star at the time that we draft him. If that kind of knowledge was available, wouldn’t every single team do that?
You may be the most literal person I have ever encountered in my life.
Yes, that was tongue in cheek. But drafting some players we can use would be very helpful.
It should also be noted that the literal answer to Z-Man’s question is that both KP and Derrick White were readily available to the Knicks.
Fair point. Maybe I mean someone who’s better at defense and rebounding than Bogey, even if he doesn’t have the offensive upside. But if we don’t move Bogey over the summer and he’s healthy, he’s definitely a rotation player for us, and one I’d feel confident in.
“You may be the most literal person I have ever encountered in my life.”
Thanks, Owen.
Has anyone ever been camping, Downtown? (btw my roommate 25 years ago had a long haired chihuahua named Downtown Sunny Brown after the same – my best friend who I was in love with at the time shagged her and not me which was heartbreaking). Alls I’m saying is that fertile bait does the honorific debate make. Brunson is a great great great player. And Leon and company have a lot to work with to try to leverage that into a championship. Arguing over the honorific is banal. I don’t know what that the exact move we need to significantly upgrade is available to us this year. If it’s not we should be very comfortable knitting that Knicks sweater and watching this team get healthy. That Brock guys is pretty fucking great.
Gordon Hayward is unhappy with his role (or should I say non role) in OKC. I think he’s available. We know the Knicks have been fans for a long time. But how much does he have left and what role does he have in NY that gives him enough minutes to be happy here.
Both would be great on the Knicks.
Derrick White is a Thibs player.
KP is the exact kind of stretch C, paint protector, and scoring option the Knicks could use, but he’d be carried out in a body bag after 40 games with Thibs coaching.
“It should also be noted that the literal answer to Z-Man’s question is that both KP and Derrick White were readily available to the Knicks.”
I agree about KP and was one of the few here who was warm to the idea of re-acquiring him. KP himself said that he would be happy to come back to NY. Alas, once you diss Dolan, it’s over. Not sure about Jrue, as Memphis highly valued Smart, perhaps stupidly so. But I would have loved it if we went after him in that short window. DDV is a pretty good consolation prize, but I just love me some Jrue.
There was a broad consensus that the Celts overpaid for Derrick White at the time, to the degree that he fucked up the general trade market. It turns out that they underpaid for him by any standard in any era.
If the Celtics don’t win this year they’re fucked.
“If the Celtics don’t win this year they’re fucked.”
I would restate this as “If the Celtics don’t win this year, they will have massively disappointed their grossly entitled fans. But they have some draft capital to further improve their bench, so they will likely be right back in 60-win territory and faves to make the finals for the next couple of years.”
We’re clearly no longer in the era of the Superteam, as different teams are winning the chip every year these days. We’re in a reasonably good position and we were a contender this year. A bit better injury luck and we’d still be fighting for the title. The Wolves did not have a player who ranked in the top 20 in either EPM or BPM and they’re probably the favorites right now.
All I ever asked for was a puncher’s chance, and we have that.
“We’re clearly no longer in the era of the Superteam, as different teams are winning the chip every year these days. We’re in a reasonably good position and we were a contender this year. A bit better injury luck and we’d still be fighting for the title. The Wolves did not have a player who ranked in the top 20 in either EPM or BPM and they’re probably the favorites right now.
All I ever asked for was a puncher’s chance, and we have that.”
I agree in principle, but there are still “tiers” of being a contender, both for the upcoming year and in a longer terme sense.
As currently constructed and with reasonable injury luck, I think we are a second-tier team going into next year. Thankfully, the only team clearly above us in the East is Boston, so maybe they have bad luck next year and we get lucky…or maybe OG, Mitch, and even Randle are just injury-prone and we are likely to get “unlucky” again. So yeah, we are in a group with about 10-12 teams that just need some luck to get over the top, but on a level playing field are at a rankings disadvantage vs. the 3-4 top-tier teams.
Again, I think Leon knows that and will make some sort of a splash this offseason. I have to think that he stockpiled the picks for a reason and that he knows that the time to build a true contender is right now. Something big is gonna happen, bank on it.
Strat, Gordon Hayward snapped his leg in half just before I cohabitated with ex-Lady Jowles, then became engaged, happily married, living in an ill-advised throuple in the midst of a global shutdown pandemic, bitterly divorced, and repairing my severed soul through two years of weekly therapy and daily self-medication. I even became a 4.0 NTRP tennis player in the interim. His leg bent 90 degrees before all of that.
HE’S FUCKING ANCIENT
Z-man, come on. Those teams would not CLEARLY have a better starting 5 than us if healthy. We were missing Randle for all of the pacers series and OG for most of it and we took it to 7 games. We won the first 2 with OG but no Randle.
The Randle disrespect is fucking ridiculous. We were smashing teams (including Minnesota) when we had that starting 5. Granted it was January but you can’t ignore that data completely.
On today’s Six Trophies, Shea and Jason talked about the ongoing West/East talent imbalance, and speculated that it might change when the new TV deal leads to expansion. If, as expected, the new teams are in Seattle and Vegas, then we’d have a couple of teams move to the Eastern Conference. And they guessed that it could be New Orleans and Minnesota. Which would be… interesting.
I once had a dream that my father was giving me rusty excel razors to learn how to shave with. My therapist thought that was telling. I think the trauma of ******* razor needs some collective therapy. Those Peter Pan doughnuts are so so good
Also Gage and Tollner. So good.
The quick answer is we probably can’t. Brunson is an absolute superstar but will probably never be a top 3-5 player in this league. To be a finals favorite you usually need a top 3-5 player. The Celtics this year are an exception to that rule but they have 5 all-star level players and their best player is on the same level as Brunson. They also look very vulnerable so I question if they even deserve that distinction.
Our best bet is to not worry about being a finals favorite and build a roster around Brunson that is tough, defensive-minded, and deep. We have two of those three things done. Now we just need depth and probably an upgrade for Randle, he is not an ideal partner for Brunson in my opinion.
Building a team that is a even money to make the conference finals with a solid chance of pulling an upset and making the finals is probably our team’s ceiling unless Brunson takes another step forward or someone like Giannis wants to come here. Both of those things seem unlikely.
We are fortunate that the East is weaker than the West and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future and because of that if we make smart choices and get a bit of luck making the finals at some point over the next couple years seems totally attainable.
“The Randle disrespect is fucking ridiculous. We were smashing teams (including Minnesota) when we had that starting 5. Granted it was January but you can’t ignore that data completely.”
Far from ignoring it, I am factoring it in to the degree that any rational non-Knicks fan would in sizing up the Knicks starting 5. And as I said, I’m pretty confident that Leon agrees with me.
As to January, I don’t place a lot of stock in a short burst after a major change takes place. Teams around the league depend on game film to make adjustments. We played only 14 games with that lineup and 9 of them were home games. Of the 12 wins, 8 came vs. below .500 teams.
Look, if we go into battle next year with this squad, I’d root just as hard as I did this year, but would hardly feel like it was championship or bust. My assumption would be that we were not going to the finals unless we got very lucky.
Really? I feel like Memphis would make more sense than New Orleans to move east.
For example, a prime Dame Lillard “can” be the best player on a championship team, but it would require a special mix around him.
That’s my point, Z-man. The past debates were about Julius being it, would Mitchell be it…. Dame certainly could be it but the Portland FO did not make it work—lost opportunity. Boston with Tatum may do it. The difference between the former and latter is FO competence and ownership view on luxury tax. I think we got those 2 issues nailed.
I would put Brunson a very, very, very slight bit below Isiah Thomas the player.(*) Immaterially shy. IT the P tentpoled the Pistons to three straight finals, one a loss by like a point in Game 7, the other two victories.
The Pistons of that era were pretty good, lost to the Knicks in that classic ’84 series and then the Hawks in the second round in ’86. They got themselves from good-with-tentpole to championship caliber by trading Kelly Tripucka for Adrian Dantley, (**) drafting Joe Dumars at something like 21, and then the next year drafting John Salley at 12 and Dennis Rodman at something like 35.
Point being, they got over the top by good drafting at distinctly non-lottery places in the draft. Note this, Leon.
(*) Who, yeah, was a top 5 player at his peak — all-NBA first team three straight years. (And still was in the championship years, though the personal numbers and shine weren’t as consistently gaudy.) The real question is whether the difference between that and JB changes the entire “tentpole” equation. To me, the answer is no. But I do agree it’s a very close call.
(**) Who Bernard utterly abused in the ’84 series. Dantley became Aguirre in the middle of the run, but the real key was the three draft picks.
“Has anyone ever been camping, Downtown? (btw my roommate 25 years ago had a long haired chihuahua named Downtown Sunny Brown after the same – my best friend who I was in love with at the time shagged her and not me which was heartbreaking). Alls I’m saying is that fertile bait does the honorific debate make. Brunson is a great great great player. And Leon and company have a lot to work with to try to leverage that into a championship. Arguing over the honorific is banal. I don’t know what that the exact move we need to significantly upgrade is available to us this year. If it’s not we should be very comfortable knitting that Knicks sweater and watching this team get healthy. That Brock guys is pretty fucking great. I once had a dream that my father was giving me rusty excel razors to learn how to shave with. My therapist thought that was telling. I think the trauma of ******* razor needs some collective therapy. Those Peter Pan doughnuts are so so good Also Gage and Tollner. So good.”
1. If I *have* ever been camping, I don’t remember much about it, so it didn’t make any kind of impression on me. (What a truly and magnificently odd question to ask an entire set of basketball blog participants! Are you upset that no one else bothered to respond?)
2. Let me get this straight. You were in love with yoiur best friend, but he or she fucked a chihuahua? And you were actually heartbroken by said chihuahua fucking? It just gets weirder and weirder.
3. What are “Brock guys”? And again, to whom is this being addressed?
4. What is an “excel razor,” and why would your Dad be giving you rusty ones?
5. What the fuck are Peter Pan doughnuts?
6. Who the hell are Gage and Tollner?
And why would we be talking about anyone named “Isiah Thomas” who *wasn’t* an NBA player?
A lot of this is terminology and semantics and close calibrations, but in my dictionary, once you need the “special mix” you lose your “tentpole” status.
As bad as our injury luck was this year, how about Memphis?
This is all dumb semantics but didn’t Lebron need a special mix of Dwade, Bosh and great role players like Ray Allen and Shane Battier to win his titles in Miami (one of which he only got because of a Ray Allen game winning shot).
Didn’t he need a special mix in Cleveland with Irving, Love and good role players? Didn’t he need a special mix in LA with AD and other good role players?
Wasn’t Rodman, Pippen, Kerr, etc…a special mix?
Wasn’t Klay, Dray, Iggym, etc…a special mix?
There is not a single player, even the legends like Bird, Jordan, Magic, Kareem who didn’t need a special mix.
The Pacers starting 5 is better than Brunson-DDV-OG-Randle-iHart??
“A lot of this is terminology and semantics and close calibrations, but in my dictionary, once you need the “special mix” you lose your “tentpole” status.”
Exactly. Which is why Brunson is clearly not a tentpole.
My ultimate belief is that there are a lot of players who would be deemed superstar tentpole players if their team won it all but their team didn’t win it all because they had the bad luck of running into a better team that also had a tentpole guy OR the worse luck of being on a team who’s FO could never get the mix right.
Like I think Steph Curry is obviously a great player. But I find it hard to believe that if you switched out Curry for peak Dame those Warrior teams would somehow not win those titles, especially once Durant got on board.
Jokic is the best player in the NBA by a comfortable margin, and his team got beaten by a deeper, defense-oriented team. Minnesota seems to be a pretty good argument that you don’t need a top 3 player to win a title. They haven’t won it yet, but they’re right in there.
At any rate, I must say this line of debate is preferable to discussing whether Alexy Shved might be a good long term piece or whether or not the Arron Afflalo is a good fit for the triangle.
If we focus too much on becoming a top 3 team we risk waiting too long to make a move or risk blowing up a very good team in pursuit of the perfect one.
We are very good and that means we need to stop worrying about the “big move”. The big move already happened. We got our superstar. We now need to focus on incremental improvement. Make draft picks, identify weaknesses on the roster and shore them up. The days of stockpiling resources is over. Now it is time to use those resources to maximize the team we can put around Brunson.
I think we need to put the “star trade” talk behind us and just make good smart moves. We don’t need homeruns.
Build our bench, get one more high level starter, and bring in some young talent. Then sit back and let it cook.
Alexy Shved was definitely not a good long-term piece; nor was Alexey Shved. His wife is a very nice woman and could definitely be considered to be a great long-term piece for any team cohesion, though.
Arron Afflalo was not a good fit for the triangle, or for anything else.
I’m not sure why you would have removed your post about Donda West, Hubie. From what I’ve seen, she seems to be a really good example for a response to the question “What does ‘unsuccessful surgery’ mean?” based on the occurrences from 2007. Truly a sad story about a good woman.
I agree. We had too many injuries. Shore up the bench. Work on internal improvement. Draft some players so we can restock the youth and develop them for the future.
This isn’t to say a star trade shouldn’t be on the table but it shouldn’t be a priority. Unless something great becomes available for not a big price.
People are shook because we were up 2-0 to The Pacers, who everyone seems to deem as vastly inferior to us even though they lost 3 less games than us in the regular season. And their style of play was the perfect answer for a team devastated by injuries.
I mean Siakam beat us up pretty good in the last 4 games of the series and I have a hard time believing he would do that if Randle was guarding him and, more importantly, he had to guard Randle. If nothing else, Randle would have been able to get him into foul trouble.
“This is all dumb semantics but didn’t Lebron need a special mix of Dwade, Bosh and great role players like Ray Allen and Shane Battier to win his titles in Miami (one of which he only got because of a Ray Allen game winning shot).
Didn’t he need a special mix in Cleveland with Irving, Love and good role players? Didn’t he need a special mix in LA with AD and other good role players?
Wasn’t Rodman, Pippen, Kerr, etc…a special mix?
Wasn’t Klay, Dray, Iggym, etc…a special mix?
There is not a single player, even the legends like Bird, Jordan, Magic, Kareem who didn’t need a special mix.”
You are actually making my point. We can probably agree that LeBron, Jordan, Kareem, Wilt, Bird, Magic, etc. were many degrees better than Brunson, right?
In fact, the #2 guys for those championship teams were essentially Brunson-level players, if not better….
Is Brunson better than Pippen?
Is Brunson better than Magic or Kareem, whoever you want to put at #2?
Is Brunson better than McHale?
Is Brunson better than Kobe?
And every team that didn’t have a #2 guy clearly better than Brunson had an arguably top-20 player of all time (usually top-10) as their #1 guy, or were incredibly lucky. LeBron. Duncan. Nowitski. Jokic. Giannis. Steph. Kobe. Hakeem. Or or had a HOF Big 3 (Garnett/Pierce/Allen). Or had a combination of a ridiculously special mix and just getting lucky (2004 Pistons, Raptors).
The only teams to win a championship that these Knicks compare to are the Raptors, 2004 Pistons, and to some degree, the Mavs. And the league is different now. Teams whose starting lineups have an undersized offense-only guard, a low-budget good-not-great 2-guard, and a 1-way defensive big are at a disadvantage, unless that guard is the one and only Steph Curry.
You look at the four teams who are left and only one of them has a top 5 player in the league.
Only because of the length of their career accomplishments. If Brunson does what he did this season and post season for the next 7 or 8 years he will absolutely be in that category. Maybe not quite because it took him a few years to get there.
He literally is one of only a handful of players to post x amount of 40 point plus games in the playoffs.
I will definitively state for the record: In my opinion, this team will not win a championship if Brunson is clearly its best player unless they acquire a guy like Mikal and a two-way stretch 5. I’d love to be proven wrong, but don’t worry, I won’t. (Or worry if Leon disagrees, which I don’t think he does.)
“Only because of the length of their career accomplishments. If Brunson does what he did this season and post season for the next 7 or 8 years he will absolutely be in that category. Maybe not quite because it took him a few years to get there.”
You are truly delusional. Brunson will never, ever, ever, ever be in that category.
“You look at the four teams who are left and only one of them has a top 5 player in the league.”
Not sure what that means beyond a quirky, arbitrary point.
Boston’s starting lineup has 26yo 2X first team all-NBA player, a 3X NBA all-defensive team guy, and 5 all-star-level guys. As to the arbitrary top-5 designation, I doubt that any team in the NBA would take Brunson over Tatum.
Minny has a 4X DPoY, a guy being compared to Michael Jordan, and the best stretch 4 in the NBA, and the 6MoY.
Indy is sort of a lucky outlier, but they still have a PG that was having a top-5 season until he got hurt, maybe the second-best 2-way stretch 5 in the NBA, and some quality depth, not to mention a good young player on the injured list. They are still almost certain to lose to the Celtics. Going forward, they seem to have a pretty damn good situation, but as currently configured, they aren’t really contenders. In other words, they are very similar to us.
Brunson was a top 5 player in the league this year guys. He’s 6th in epm, but 5th in estimated wins added (which accounts for minutes played.) 5th in MVP voting (if you’re into that sort of thing.) He’s 8th by BPM and that’s underrating him. He’s incredible and can certainly be the centerpiece of a championship team.
As for us: If we stay healthy we’re better than any team in the East besides the Celtics unless someone makes a massive upgrade. Celtics excepted. If healthy I think we could win 55, perhaps 60 if the January Knicks are a real thing.
Also, Boston is not some juggernaut, despite their regular season SRS indicating otherwise. They needed an epic meltdown from Indiana to steal game 1 at home, which is embarrassing. And they go on runs of inexplicably poor play unbefitting of historically good teams. They are not nearly on the level of the teams they’ve been getting compared to—peak GSW, San Antonio, and the Heatles, whose winning a championship was effectively foreordained. Both Tatum and Brown are second tier stars to my mind.
The East is going to be wide open for a few years at least. Especially once Boston has to pay or move Derrick White.
Maybe they compare Ant to Jordan, but he’s not the one putting up Jordan numbers in the playoffs.
Brunson just received more MVP votes than Tatum, no idea why you’d think it’s so clear that Tatum is better. They’re putting similar scoring & efficiency lines with Brunson racking up more apg. If you take away his all-star PG, floor-spacing 5, and a couple of his all-star teammates then is he really the offensive engine you want? Even in an ideal situation he doesn’t look like a 1A threat.
He was a stones throw away from a finals appearance with half a rotation and a bad wrist.
here go i repeating myself also…
next season jalen will be a top 10 player, OG will be a top 20 player, and julius will be in the top 30…
that’s pretty nice…
just like julius and jalen took big steps forward since arriving – OG is fitting to become The Claw 2.0…
his offense is going to really come around (more shooting, more creating his own shot)…
This doesn’t mean he isn’t a tentpole player you build a team around, though. You’re literally saying if we had another elite role player in Mikal that we can win a title. That literally makes Brunson a tentpole star because he would still be the best player on that team.
If he wasn’t that, we would need another “star” and possibly a star who is better than Brunson. There aren’t many in the league like that.
We got to game 7 of the second round with Brunson basically being 80 percent of the offense for most games because Randle was out. The 76ers and Pacers were full court pressing him and double teaming him the entire game every game and he still delivered most nights. This is without Randle, no OG for the last 5 games of the playoffs effectively. We had to hope Josh Hart would hit his threes (which he did a lot of the time). DDV was great but let’s be real. Brunson did this as the only guy the opposing team was trying to really shut down.
“Brunson was a top 5 player in the league this year guys. He’s 6th in epm, but 5th in estimated wins added (which accounts for minutes played.) He’s 8th by BPM and that’s underrating him. He’s incredible and can certainly be the centerpiece of a championship team.”
Why should we assume that BPM underrates Brunson rather than EMP overrates him?
EPM says that iHart is the 12th best player minute-per-minute in the NBA, better than Tatum and Durant. EW says that SGA is better than Jokic and that Brunson is almost as good.
BPM has Jokic at an all-time great player having a clear, head-and-shoulders above the rest MVP season. It has Brunson at roughly the same level as this year’s Steph and LeBron, Hali, Spida, Kawhi, Sabonis, AD and Tatum.
EPM doesn’t pass the smell test. If anything it overrates Brunson and underrates his issues on the defensive end. PER is probably just as useful as EPM.
first things first, not that it should matter – but – were you someone else Clarence?
more importantly though – you need to post more please 😊
No, he or she needs to post less, and then not duck simple questions. 🙂 Or he or she needs to make much more sense when he or she *does* post.
1. If I *have* ever been camping, I don’t remember much about it, so it didn’t make any kind of impression on me. (What a truly and magnificently odd question to ask an entire set of basketball blog participants! Are you upset that no one else bothered to respond?)
2. Let me get this straight. You were in love with yoiur best friend, but he or she fucked a chihuahua? And you were actually heartbroken by said chihuahua fucking? It just gets weirder and weirder.
3. What are “Brock guys”? And again, to whom is this being addressed?
4. What is an “excel razor,” and why would your Dad be giving you rusty ones?
5. What the fuck are Peter Pan doughnuts?
6. Who the hell are Gage and Tollner?
1. Someone responded. I’m always upset. Was a cholicy baby and never forgave my parents for cutting the tip of my penis off without consent. I was trying to get a sense of what tentpole means here because in camping 6ft is pretty big. At least that’s what he said.
2. He fucked my roommate who had the chihuahua and we made out but he never, you know, gave me the what’s what and that’s what I wanted. Heartbroken.
3. Brock aller. I also, have bad, punctuation and : things and grammar. Just bad at communicating.
4. Cuz my dad was a dick and I think it’s like a Cadillac for Gillette though a blade hasn’t touched my face in years so I wouldn’t know anymore.
5. Delicious fried dough in the shape of a nut (like nuts and bolts) made by a shop called Peter Pan in greenpoint.
6. Restaurant in downtown Brooklyn with stellar food. They have this potato terrine, you know, like with the layers of potato slowly cooked and then molded and then formed over night and then cut into rectangles and pan fried then served with like a foamy crème fraiche then finished with a generous mound of caviar.
howdy KfniNJ, i was wrong about what bogey’s performance would be after coming to the team…
bogey seemed to understand thibs and the team, and was working his ass off to fit in…
bogey definitely earned my respect in his short time here…
Being 6th in EPM and 8th in BPM is functionally the same thing. These things are not precise scientific measurements.
also, if anyone sincerly thinks Anthony Edwards is as good as Michael Jordan they are a 12 year old Wolves fan or someone who needs a lot of therapy
Thanks for your responses, Clarence.
oh, and i hope you can keep up with the eroticism Clarence – it adds a nice flavor to the thread…
we can chat basketball and circle jerk at the same time…actually that sounds kind of perfect…
Disclaimer: I just had sex for the first time in like over a decade, so I’m feeling a bit randy…
EPM is better than BPM, this isn’t even a debate for people who have the slightest idea what the stats are doing.
BPM rates Jokic as the best defender in the league, but please continue with your anosmic smell test.
Anthony Edward’s is pretty fucking good though. Jordan wasn’t Jordan Jordan until he was Jordan and Edward’s is something until he’s gonna be something.
I’d advocate my position on this one, which is if a metric spits out “Isaiah Hartenstein is a better basketball player than Jayson Tatum and Kevin Durant,” just ignore it in toto, along the lines of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Makes life and thought easier.
BPM rates Jokic as the best defender in the league, but please continue with your anosmic smell test.
Burn
It’s heating up in here
It would be nice if IHart could make 3s at a decent clip, that would probably help, but the reason is he doesn’t shoot more from further than 7 or 8 feet is that would be fucking stupid, because the Knicks have guys who are much better at taking those shots and it’s better for the teams offense to not create mid range jump shots for a decent shooting center. There are like 2 centers in the entire league (Ayton & Embiid) who score significant points from mid range
Happy to be divorced in the modern tech era … to actually hear their contemporaneous thoughts and musings on the proceedings expressed in words while engaged in said proceedings is quite the good thing.
Anthony Edwards is a tentpole superstar.
“This doesn’t mean he isn’t a tentpole player you build a team around, though. You’re literally saying if we had another elite role player in Mikal that we can win a title. That literally makes Brunson a tentpole star because he would still be the best player on that team.”
Who was the best player on the 2004 Pistons? Ben Wallace was the most decorated. Would you consider that guy a tentpole? Weren’t the Pistons built around him?
Being able to “build a team around” a guy is hardly a good working definition of a true tentpole. there are literally a couple of dozen guys like that in the NBA. It’s more about what kind of team do you need to build around him, and how easy or hard it is to do that. With Brunson, it would be extremely hard.
How many finals appearances has Dame had as their team’s tentpole? Harden? CP3? Kyrie? All of them had multiple seasons with higher BPMs than Brunson did this year. Yet it was only when they were NOT the best player on their team that they made it to the finals, let alone won a championship.
When’s the last time a 6’1″ guard, especially a defensively-challenged one, was the “tentpole” (in swifty’s definition the “best player”) of a championship team? And please don’t invoke Steph, who was 6’3″ and very underrated defensively, ask Jowles who once posted a sermon on the issue.
As I said, if your tentpole is short, you have a tent with a low ceiling. That’s factorial.
this is not what those stats say, it says he has the 12th highest EPM in the league this year. How you interpret or use that stat is a different kettle of fish. iHart gets most of his value from defense, and defense is much less of an individual skill than offense is. You can look at that and take away iHart was really effective in the Knicks defense, but it’s not really telling you he’s “better” than Jayson Tatum (whatever that means).
Isiah.
You shouldn’t use any AIO metric as anything other than a shorthand, but those metrics are still a valuable shorthand. Hartenstein finished a highly respectable 27th in BPM to go along with his high EPM ranking so it’s not like those things disagree vociferously. He’s a productive player. Hartenstein fares relatively well in PER too, despite being the kind of player who will be shortchanged by that stat because pointzz: he ranks 45th.
All of the AIOs have Hartenstein as a top 50 player in the league so he ain’t chopped liver.
Disclaimer: I just had sex for the first time in like over a decade, so I’m feeling a bit randy…
Keep it up. Would be a shame to watch this hole planet get filled with fire and brimstone and get stuck at keyboard arguing about tentpoles. As a poly happily married (for 20 years) gayosexual who gets to fuck whomever wants to fuck him I have no idea how some of yall monogatheists and whatever’s made it through the wasteland to get to Brunson. (And if fucking doesn’t do it for you then do what does) It’s really hard to be married to such a shitty partner for so long and not even get a chance at the climax of the postseason.
A tentpole is a guy who can get off a shot on his own virtually any time he wants, including in high-leverage possessions, and make a bunch of them. In virtually every single game you play.
There’s also an air of “he will do that better than your best guy does” a massively large percentage of the time.
An overrated part of the concept is “well-roundedness.” That really isn’t it. It’s something different.
There’s more that can be said on the definition, but this covers far and away the most important part of it.
Jalen Brunson has gotten himself to the point where he can basically score at will. (*) That’s a tentpole.
(*) He does it in a very interesting way, without a lot of explosion. It’s mostly footwork and balance and angles. Which is why he’s always been underrated — drafted low, not even a max guy when on the open market. He’s a fascinating player.
“BPM rates Jokic as the best defender in the league, but please continue with your anosmic smell test.”
“if a metric spits out “Isaiah Hartenstein is a better basketball player than Jayson Tatum and Kevin Durant,” just ignore it in toto, along the lines of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Hmmm…since EB’s point reeks of the same dismissive bullshit the WoW/WP48 crowd posted back in the day, I’m gonna ride with E on this one.
PS everyone knows that defensive box score stats are virtually worthless. That said, I would concede that DEPM is far less worthless than DBPM.
Brunson is different stylistically but he’s basically late prime Steph, and that guy won a title like 2 years ago.
Nice try Geo but I think we all know that Clarence Beeks is just you after a sufficient number of hits from a blunt.
We’re trying to figure out if Brunson is a 9 or 10, right? No way that season was an 8.
“All of the AIOs have Hartenstein as a top 50 player in the league so he ain’t chopped liver.”
Agreed. But that’s a pretty far cry from “top 12”. And frankly, even top-50 is debatable.
I just think folks are going overboard with the Brunson is a top-5 player in the league stuff specifically when it comes to team-building. He may have been this year, but that could be largely circumstantial and possibly unsustainable. I’d be comfortable with concluding that we can count on him as a top-10 scorer and the “brain” of the team. And I don’t think that mentioning him in the same breath with guys like Kyrie and Harden is insulting, in fact, he’s definitlvely not as good as either of those guys were at their peak. And somehow, excellent GMs like Ainge and Morey were unable to build championship teams around those guys. It’s really, really hard.
So yes, he’s our guy and you definitely build around him, and can consider him to be the alpha on offense. But without an all-star supporting cast across the starting lineup (i.e. not one with iHart and DDV) and a 6MoY-type (i.e. not Joah Hart) plus other really good players on the bench (i.e. definitely DDV, iHart and Josh Hart) you have a lower-than-championship ceiling. Mikal is an all-star worthy player. That would be one. Maybe iHart works on his shooting all off-season, or maybe we find a guy in the draft or in the “diamond in the rough” bin.
And again, Leon knows this.
You can read the differences between the metrics elsewhere, they’re readily available for consumption without my editorializing.
But if people keep preferring outdated metrics to modern ones after I’ve explained this ad nauseam, then I reserve the right to be dismissive. BPM is fine for short-hand but worse than EPM or DARKO.
I think “get Bridges and a stretch 5 to be a true contender” is not far from what most of us are saying. I personally don’t think it needs to be a stretch 5 per se, they’re importance is overrated in my opinion, but we definitely need to upgrade our roster. No one is saying that we are set and we should just run it back and do nothing. Most people want to keep improving the team.
I personally think we are one very good player and a better bench away from our potential. That very good player does not need to be an all-star just someone who would be our 3rd or 4th best player.
Bridges would be perfect but I am sure there are other good fits as well. If we keep Randle just adding someone like Caruso, Melton, Tyus Jones, or Caldwell-Pope would help a lot, even if we would still probably be one very good player short of contention.
I think our center position is set. Our offense has been consistently good and was even great in the playoffs this year despite losing half our rotation. I don’t think we need a stretch 5. I think we need another 2-way 3&D wing and another scorer and facilitator, Randle while not perfect can fill that role, at least until we can upgrade him.
He’s never been on a top-125 Athletic tier list. Wasn’t on the most recent postseason Tiers 1-4. Author is the former director of basketball research for the Bucks, who obviously isn’t getting mesmerized by “pointzzzz.”
On the most recent list, the players right around 50 were JJJ, Brook Lopez, McCollum, MPJ, Middleton, Brandon Miller, Randle, Sabonis, Mobley, Sengun, Franz Wagner.
He’s not better than those guys.
“Brunson is different stylistically but he’s basically late prime Steph, and that guy won a title like 2 years ago.”
In this year’s playoffs, Brunson had a TS% of .536 on a 36.4 usage. Replace him with late prime Steph and we’re still playing.
“No one is saying that we are set and we should just run it back…”
Actually one poster is saying just that….
I want improvements to depth, but I don’t want our long term guys traded. I don’t want to win one championship with PG or a Kevin Durant. I’d rather have a bunch of long playoff runs with our current core that is a good team and likes playing together.
Is that a hard or lukewarm no? 😉
We need the AIO metrics as a counterweight to “eye test from a random guy on a blog.” I’m not saying to replace the random guy eye test entirely, just to use it as an alternative metric. The random guy eye test will live on forever, fret not.
What happened while I was gone? I went for a haircut and to get a hoe at Ace Hardware. I came back we are discussing fucking chihuahuas? lmao
When was the last time a short PG was the best player on a championship team other than 4 out of the past 10 years?
Really a good question.
He’s going to do something, but it may be filling out the bench and backup PG in the summer (revisit Malcom Brogdon?) watch half a season, see what we need and what is available and make another OG type move at the deadline. They seem to like making moves at the deadline.
Only on this site would we find ways of disparaging the best Knicks player we’ve had in 30 years…
“But if people keep preferring outdated metrics to modern ones after I’ve explained this ad nauseam, then I reserve the right to be dismissive. BPM is fine for short-hand but worse than EPM or DARKO.”
You can be as dismissive as you want, and look as foolish as you want by drawing hard conclusions from a metric that clearly doesn’t pass any rational smell test in specific instances, and therefore should not be a substitute for common sense and accepted as better than other measures. Jokic is not marginally better than Brunson, he is light years better. Everyone knows that, including you.
The larger point is that any box-score based metric is limited by the inefficiencies of the box-score itself. They are for framing discussions, not jumping to conclusions and definitively ranking players. The best metrics are film analysis-corroborated ones. Everything else is a blunt instrument.
“Only on this site would we find ways of disparaging the best Knicks player we’ve had in 30 years…”
What exactly are you reading as “disparagement?”
If only we could invent a metric that looks beyond the boxscore
This is how i imagine Doogie reading KB
I want to qualify this a bit because I think it’s important. Our offense is good when we get a lot of offensive rebounds. But when you take away the extra possessions, it’s more ordinary. Getting those extra rebounds with extra hustle is great, but it doesn’t feel sustainable as the team ages or at least something we can count on every night against every matchup. I’d rather have an offense with great ball movement, playmaking and shooting and throw the hustle in there for free.
Yes, and I gotta say I like that they like that.
Maybe I’m full of it but it seems like the asking price trading a player in the off season is higher. Maybe that’s because that’s when the stars are more likely to get traded. But trade deadline or mid-season trades seems to be a little more affordable. Especially when a team is faced with getting something back for a player or losing them once their contract ends.
Also, every team each season is a little different and has different needs and weaknesses that need to be addressed. Waiting until a few months of the season have passed so you get a better sense of what the team actually needs seems wise.
Leon has made 3 mid season trades. 2 of them worked out well (Hart and OG). One of them (Burks and Bojan) not as well but was good on paper and probably would have felt better if Bojan didn’t get hurt (thanks Thibs for running him into the ground with that heavy work load).
If you mean me, then yeah. But only to start the season. I believe we should run it back because the team fully healthy can dominate. But also not sure we can get good value in a Randle or Mitch trade right now.
I’m open to another big move. I’d just rather we wait to make that move in the middle of the season (if we actually need to).
It’s not just the “eye test.” The “eye test” is sitting at Rucker Park where no one’s keeping stats and they’re playing to 21, and saying “That dude in the white shorts is better than that dude in the red shirt.” (And in fact, of course, under that scenario, in a game with LBJ and nine D1 players we could all tell very quickly with just our eyes that LBJ was the best player on the floor. But that’s really not the important point.)
But in the NBA we also have a bunch of raw numbers. Those are added to the so-called “eye test.” So the AIO metrics don’t have to tell us more than the eyes; they have to tell us more than the eyes plus the non-AIO data — TS%, OReb%, and all the rest.
They’ve failed the test.
I’m going to throw a horse racing issue into the boxscore metric discussion.
Handicappers make speed figures. They are an attempt to measure how fast a horse ran that takes into account the distance, surface, speed of the track, wind, etc… and translate it into a number for easier comparisons across all conditions.
There are complexities to the process that can cause errors and differences of opinion between various figure makers.
Some figures wind up “not passing the smell test”.
When a popular figure maker makes a figure doesn’t pass the smell test, it will get discussed publicly.
But who is to say the figures that do pass the smell test are always accurate?
IMO they sometimes are not.
They just don’t get the same scrutiny because we assume our smell test is at least approximately right.
I would argue that sometimes these boxscore metrics are way off even though they do pass the smell test.
“oh, and i hope you can keep up with the eroticism Clarence – it adds a nice flavor to the thread… we can chat basketball and circle jerk at the same time…actually that sounds kind of perfect… Disclaimer: I just had sex for the first time in like over a decade, so I’m feeling a bit randy…”
Clarence needs to stop with the “eroticism,” if that’s what you even call writing about fucking chihuahuas or alluding to flaccid penises in the first place (it’s definitely *not* eroticism). If you want to circle jerk, please keep it off of this forum. I don’t want to do that with any of you, or actually with anyone at all. (Also, not erotic in any way. Yuck.) Yes, it’s been three days without intimacy for me, and although not quite “over a decade,” it’s still a bit much.
I think I’ve written this before, but I don’t think that geo and Clarence Beeks are one and the same, because although the topics are kind of all over the map and similar in that way, the writing “styles” are very distinctly different.
And cyber, on that Paul Rudd meme…….yep.
“When was the last time a short PG was the best player on a championship team other than 4 out of the past 10 years?”
Steph is the greatest shooter who ever lived, 2X MVP, and possibly a top-10 player of all time. In two of those years he played with Kevin Durant, the greatest shooter over 6’10” who ever lived. He was also a vastly underrated defensive player. His supporting cast also included Klay (5X all-star, perennial all-defense candidate) and Draymond (4X all-star, 2X all-NBA, 6X all-defense, DPoY). Is that the model you suggest that we follow?
*I had always heard that Curry was 6’3″ and Brunson was 6’1″ but now see that they are listed at the same height in B-R, so my bad on that. But by appearances, Curry seems like a “tall” 6’2″ and Brunson like a “short” 6’2″.
Since I’ve also been suspected of being Geo in the past, I find it hilarious to imagine the possibility that most posters on this blog are really just Geo on a different mix of drugs that alter his diction and writing style.
Seth might not think as much of iHart as he does of Tier 4 star Josh Hart, who some dullards seem to think is not a starter caliber wing, but he does like him
@SethPartnow
·
Apr 20
Hartenstein was among the best per minute rim protectors in the league on my stuff.
That’s a small sliver of basketball.
There are things to like about iHart; he’s just not a top-50 player is all. I’d personally put him someplace in the 90s or 100s. He’s got a good chance to move into Partnow’s Tier 5 next preseason. I’d have no objection to him being there. He’s definitely better than Quentin Grimes, who was there in each of the last two preseasons.
Z-man the Warriors won a title with a post peak Steph and his best teammate in that year the playoffs was Andrew Wiggins.
Are you still the “master of your domain?”
(Cramer made me laugh so hard in that episode I couldn’t breath. Best laugh since Rodney on the Carson show).
Don’t we pretty much have the Great Value version of that right now?
One-way scoring superstar and son of former role player who is a less than remarkable athlete? Brunson.
High volume sharpshooting two who brings solid defense and energy? DDV.
Decorated but mentally shaky star PF who never won anything on his own? Randle
Do-it-all glue guy who excels at everything but shooting? Hart
Switchable defensive dynamo? OG. I would argue Iguodala is the Great Value version in this case.
We’ll need great depth to close the gap between Great Value and the brand names, but it’s not like we’re light years away…
Rose tried trading everything but the kitchen sink for Spida just two years. Presuming he wouldn’t be interested in making a big offseason move despite stockpiling draft picks for years seems unsupported to me.
Had Toronto been willing to trade OG in the offseason, for instance, I think there is no way that Rose wouldn’t have gone for him then. It was Toronto not wanting to trade him then that led to him not being acquired in the offseason.
As a mostly complete aside, it sure is nice to not even have to think about RJ Barrett anymore.
I mean, is iHart a top 50 player? I have no idea, but if he’s an elite defensive center he certainly could be. Those guys are valuable if they aren’t a zero on offense, and Hart is useful on, he’s a good passer and screener and he can score a bit and he’s an excellent offensive rebounder.
Thankfully, I’m definitely *not* the master of my domain. But thanks for asking. LOL 🙂
Z-Man is making intelligent and nuanced comments about Brunson, many of which I agree with.
Nevertheless, karma dictates that we reduce him to a Brunson Hater and label him as such going forward.
That was the issue under discussion, at least after the brief interlude about him being a top-12 player passed.
If Brandon Ingram could stay healthy, he’d make a lot of sense. Don’t love him, but he makes sense. More scoring, passing, and length. Can run the second unit
“Z-man the Warriors won a title with a post peak Steph and his best teammate in that year the playoffs was Andrew Wiggins.”
I will concede that if as much goes right for this version of the Knicks as it did for the Dubs that year, we can win a championship. That goes for about 10 teams as currently constructed, including this year’s Pacers.
But it sure helped that the greatest 6’2″ and under player of all time played like it in the playoffs. I guess I just don’t see Brunson as that player.
Z-Man is pessimistic and Pags is optimistic, what kind of strange world is this? 😀
That’s a really good point.
I think Scott Perry has been a pretty good window into the Knicks thinking in his rare interviews. He more or less predicted the OG trade without mentioning him by name. He described the player they were looking to add and it was a profile of OG. He also said that after they made that move, they would want to take a good look at the team and decide where they were before making another one. We didn’t get that really good look because Randle got hurt. So I would not be shocked if someone like Brogdon is a target for the off season using Bojan and a pick or picks and they save the heavy lifting for the trade deadline unless something great is screaming at them.
“If only we could invent a metric that looks beyond the boxscore”
EPM only does so in a very limited capacity, e.g. matchups and teammates. I’m talking about synergy-based stats.
I actually don’t really know what we are arguing.
I think most people here are in agreement about Brunson. He is a superstar but one notch below an all-time generational talent. Does anyone disagree with that assessment.
If you are on Brunson’s level you can absolutely be the best player on a championship level team but you need more help and more luck.
Is that fair?
I’m actually a bit worried they may be interested in Ingram. In part, that’s because of the injury issue you mentioned. But I also think he’s a bit overrated and will likely be overpaid. I can’t see him in the 2nd unit, and if he is, he’s definitely going to be overpaid.
cyber, I’m not the least bit pessimistic because I think Leon would agree with everything I’m saying and is going to make a big move or two to field a suitable team around Brunson. If by pessimistic you mean that I feel that if Leon stands pat with this starting lineup and just makes fringe moves, then we are highly unlikely to win a championship, because Brunson is not that kind of star, then yeah, I guess I’m pessimistic.
Clarence needs to stop with the “eroticism,” if that’s what you even call writing about fucking chihuahuas or alluding to flaccid penises in the first place (it’s definitely *not* eroticism). If you want to circle jerk, please keep it off of this forum. I don’t want to do that with any of you, or actually with anyone at all. (Also, not erotic in any way. Yuck.) Yes, it’s been three days without intimacy for me, and although not quite “over a decade,” it’s still a bit much.
Nobody puts baby in a corner. I don’t think anything I’ve said is even mildly erotic. Is it, Doogie Brown?
What’s kind of surprising here is that no one has invoked the urgency of the impending second apron in this conversation. I, for one, think that urgency is overstated, but if you feel otherwise, aren’t you kind of saying it’s now or never in terms of substantially improving the roster?
I like Ingram, and he’s been mentioned — but he’s brittle af and I can’t see him happy as a non-starter at this stage of his career.
“I think most people here are in agreement about Brunson. He is a superstar but one notch below an all-time generational talent. Does anyone disagree with that assessment.”
I would quibble that it’s 1.5 to 2 notches below. In my book, he’s not as good as Nash or CP3 or Harden, and none of those guys are all-time generational talents in my book.
“If you are on Brunson’s level you can absolutely be the best player on a championship level team but you need more help and more luck.”
I agree with this, but my point is that there is a huge gulf between “can be” and “is reasonably likely to be.” I think it is less than 50-50, probably significantly so, unless you really stretch the degree to which he is the “best player.”
What was worrisome to me with Brunson is that he was clearly gassed midway through the second round. Obviously, injuries- both his own and others- played a big part in that but both Indiana and Philly had the same game plan- pressure him 94 feet and cover him with a big physical wing- can he handle 4 rounds of that and still be efficient? He has to work harder than most other top-tier scorers to get to his spots so I wonder.
“Nobody puts baby in a corner. I don’t think anything I’ve said is even mildly erotic. Is it, Doogie Brown?”
Not even mildly erotic; on that we are in complete agreement. I was responding to geo’s assertions that your postings are erotic…….well, at least to him:
geo wrote: “oh, and i hope you can keep up with the eroticism Clarence – it adds a nice flavor to the thread… we can chat basketball and circle jerk at the same time…actually that sounds kind of perfect…”
This roster, properly managed, would have beaten the Celtics and won the East, with JB as the tentpole:
Jalen Brunson
Julius Randle
OG Anunoby
RJ Barrett/Immanuel Quickley
Dejounte Murray
Josh Hart
Isaiah Hartenstein
Donte Divincenzo
Bojan Bogdonovic
Alec Burks
Since that eminently obtainable roster would have done so, it stands to reason that they can bounce back and construct something like that and accomplish what they could have accomplished this year. I’d consider that something like “reasonably likely,” though they did blow their first chance at it.
Put differently, I am saying that we actually win a championship in the next few years, it is more than likely that Brunson is not the “best player” on that team. Leon is firmly committed to attaining that “best player” in a big trade. But if not, we still have a puncher’s chance, just like we would have had if we had stayed healthy this year. If it turns out that way, here’s to Brunson making a believer out of me!
I think we have an outside chance at a championship if we keep the band together, so i’m a little bit more optimistic. I understand your point, and i think Leon will do all in his power to improve the team, but it takes two to tango. I don’t think it’ll be easy to get the type of player we need. And it’ll probably involve Randle going out, because it’s not easy to find a team willing to send out a star without getting one back. I’m curious about what will Leon do.
Wait, E, are you saying that you think we should have acquired DJM at the trade deadline? Why haven’t you mentioned this before?
Also: Clarence Beeks is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
“Also: Clarence Beeks is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
LOL This is just simply not the case. 🙂
“Wait, E, are you saying that you think we should have acquired DJM at the trade deadline? Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”
I’m saying that Z-Man, though he’s made some excellent points today, is underrating JB and overrating the need to get someone above him on the pecking order.
To demonstrate that, I cited a roster the Knicks could have had with JB still at numero uno that would have been a major contender.
In NCAA tournament terms, with the “last four in” and “first four out” they always talk about when they project the field, if we did the same thing for association tentpoles, I’d put JB in the “last four in” category. It sounds like Z-Man would put him not even in the “first four out” category, but at something like the “first ten out.”
My biggest problem with Rose the last few years was his risk aversion, seemingly obsessed with not putting too much skin on the line with any big deal. You need to be bold to win in the NBA, but then Rose did make a bold move by acquiring OG, and I was so happy that he did that, but I think that while I am okay with waiting until this offseason for the next big move (and I agree with Z-Man that this team doesn’t make total sense without one more big move), it’s a reasonable argument that the “All in” move should have been during this season when the East seemed so ripe for the picking, even post-Randle injury.
Not even mildly erotic; on that we are in complete agreement. I was responding to geo’s assertions that your postings are erotic…….well, at least to him:
Well fuck a skunk and call me Mary… whew(fyou – phonetic). I thought my metaphor play was too sloppy and as on the nose as a turgid pimple as I’m terrible at this and might have crossed the line. The point I was trying to make is that Brunson’s a really good player and whether he’s a fully erected thousand foot tentpole or a a six foot mound of Hakeem Olajuwon post moves he makes the offseason so much more exciting. We don’t need to hit home runs to win the offseason. A double and two singles and we’re in good shape. Just getting to second base should be a success;)
“Also: Clarence Beeks is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
LOL This is just simply not the case. 🙂
Hey! back off. I’ll rip out your eyes and piss on your brain.
And this time around we only traded Deuce and Mitch for DJM, as they’re the only players not mentioned in E’s fantasy roster. Oh, and the cherry on top, we’d be getting OG and not sending one of RJ and Quick to Toronto. All fantasy, zero reality.
A lot of what I’m saying here is grounded in the reality that the Celts are likely to be outstandingly good for the next few years, or at least until Jrue and Al start to break down. Boston still has all of its firsts from 2024-2027, and a pick swap in 2028. The only year they don’t have a first is 2029. They also have some seconds. I think Tatum and Brown have always been underrated here, and Derrick White is maybe the best value player in the NBA. They will be hard-capped for a while, but the draft picks and tradable assets are there to stay at or near the top of the EC standings for the next 5 years. I would just hate to go through another stretch of being the EC step-child like we were during the Melo and Ewing years.
BTW I disagree with E that the team he put forth above would have eliminated these Celts, assuming full health for both teams.
They have a big collection of draft picks that should have been deployed at this deadline.
We’re getting better stretching things well into May, but the offseason’s still too long for our mental health… 😉
Clarence on the biggest “let him cook” run in this site’s history
I think we’re splitting hairs here. We had a reasonable shot at the championship this year if healthy. And Brunson’s playoff TS% this year is surely largely a function of the massive minutes and usage load he was under due to all of our injuries. He had a phenomenal playoffs the year prior. No reason to think he can’t replicate that again.
If healthy next year, we also will have a reasonable shot at the championship, since we will be one of the two best teams in the conference. If you want any more security than that, you’re going to have to go back in time and get prime Curry or Lebron. Brunson isn’t that, but there’s no reason to think he can’t replicate this career year—there may even be further efficiency-related upside, given that he had to shoulder so much usage in the back half of the season. Having more offensive threats to share the load with can also increase his share of easy buckets.
The point about EPM, BPM, whatever isn’t that these metrics are gospel. It’s that by pretty much any metric Brunson was a top 10 to top 5 player in the league (shading more towards the latter category), including coarse grained metrics like pointzzz, “that boy is nice with it”, and mvp voting. It is analytic and eye test consensus that Jalen Brunson is a superstar. And it’s obvious that a team with a reasonable shot at a chip can be built around him—as we had that literally this year. Only if one thinks the Celtics are a juggernaut should one think otherwise—and I think the case for that is weak, as I’ve mentioned. Now, if you think Tatum and Brown are better than I do, I see how one could differ here. But by my lights they are two of the most overrated players in the league (which is not to say that they aren’t phenomenal. Just that they are not top 10 players.)
E, I hope you are right that I’m underrating Brunson. If you recall, I was probably the most optimistic poster on KB when we acquired him and am not surprised at all by anything he has done. He scores lots of points but takes lots of shots, probably too many. I don’t get wowed by the string of 40pt games because to me, the 36% usage for 43 minutes while fighting off defensive wings or in-your-face gnats as well as hard doubles is not the best version of Brunson.
That’s not to say we need Luka or Giannis. But we do need at least a better offensive players than at least one of iHart and DDV and ideally both. Those guys should be coming off the bench. Randle will help, but Randle is Randle.
“Hey! back off. I’ll rip out your eyes and piss on your brain.”
For many reasons, I doubt that you’re capable of such an absurd thing.
Brunson has elevated himself to the point that I think attaining a player better than him is a tall order.
What I don’t want is to blow up this team in pursuit of a big star like Durant or Davis and build a superteam with a short window. I’d rather have 5+ years of 50 wins and a punchers chance every year over a couple years of an aging superteam even if that team has a higher chance of winning a title.
I want something sustainable and long term. We have a chance to build that. If we push all our chips in and trade all our picks plus many of our role players we risk becoming the Suns.
Addendum: or, in Brown’s case, a top 25 player. Brown is not even the third best guy on the Celtics!
I think the Celtics have to win early with this core. They’re soft where it counts. This has gotta be the year as the east is gonna be much tougher next year and the west frankly has some scary tentpoles running around. If those guys don’t win fast they’re gonna make purgatory look fancy. I think Brown has to move.
“We had a reasonable shot at the championship this year if healthy.”
So did the following teams:
Philly
Miami
Cavs
Indiana
Bucks
Clips
Griz
OKC
Mavs
Suns
I mean, what does “reasonable chance” mean? 5-1? 10-1? 20-1?
The goal should be to be favored to get into the conference finals and to be close to 50-50 to advance to the finals after getting there. I don’t see this team as being at that level yet. As things stand, we would be heavy underdogs against a fully healthy Celtics team. Acquire another virtual or actual all-star and push DDV and/or iHart to the bench and then it’s close. I don’t think it’s splitting hairs to say that.
Alan, did you just conflate Trading Places and The Manchurian Candidate?
This has been a wicked fun site today, although I feel a bit like I have whiplash.
Wanted to respond to various things, but I’ll just say I agree with Ben R and Knicksiness’s most recent post and leave it there.
And Clarence, it’s bleach. Use bleach next time. It’s the standard here.
“I want something sustainable and long term. We have a chance to build that. If we push all our chips in and trade all our picks plus many of our role players we risk becoming the Suns.”
Of course, I’m with you here. If you recall, I was adamantly opposed to both the Spida trade and the prospect of trading for Embiid. And if we wind up doing nothing, I will root my ass off for Brunson and the gang. But as I recently heard someone say in a speech, if you’re not getting better, you’re probably getting worse.
“Now, if you think Tatum and Brown are better than I do, I see how one could differ here. But by my lights they are two of the most overrated players in the league (which is not to say that they aren’t phenomenal. Just that they are not top 10 players.)
Addendum: or, in Brown’s case, a top 25 player. Brown is not even the third best guy on the Celtics!”
Brown is one of the players that I think is significantly underrated by AOI metrics and by extension here at KB. I think he’s an impossible matchup and puts enormous pressure on opponents on both ends. And Jayson Tatum is a top-10 player for sure. So yes, I think that Brown and Tatum are better than you do, and I think I have lots of company in that regard.
“And Clarence, it’s bleach. Use bleach next time. It’s the standard here.”
Well done. Glad Raven is back.
“if you’re not getting better, you’re probably getting worse.”
One nice thing about this team is just by showing up next season, they’re going to be dramatically and demonstratively WAY better. The team that limped its way — to the seventh game of the second round of the playoffs — was a broken shell of what we’ll start off with next season, even with zero moves.
Haven’t you heard, cyber?
E looked up OG’s exact price on the NBA player Kelly Blue Book and it came out to exactly what makes his fantasy scenario work out. Why didn’t we tell Masai he was supposed to accept significantly less for him?
he left out that Masai was in constant contact with him throughout the negotiation…either that…or he tapped his cell…
just like Zman forgot to tell us he has mind melded with Leon given i believe 90% of his statements today were ‘and leon is in agreement with me”…
I mean…we’re getting shit straight from the horses’ mouth here…
IMO we need to add some young blood to replace Quickley, RJ, and Grimes.
The Knicks will be better next year because they’ll have a full season of OG and hopefully a little better luck with injuries in general. However, there’s little to no upside surprise available because most of these guys are already in their peak years and a few had the best season of their career this year. We could even see a little regression from one or two.
We have to add some quality young blood now so this team’s window is more sustainable. In 2-3 years a couple of these guys are going to start slowing down. They might even go from hustle bunny to sloth. Hopefully, right around the same time a few young guys will break out and be ready to take over.
DJM is a good player, but he has been a failed experiment in Atlanta next to Trae Young because both are way better with the ball in their hands. The evidence became even clearer when Trae was out. DJM immediately started playing his best ball for the Hawks. In fact, it’s so clear it’s almost certain one of the two is going to be traded.
How in the world does it make sense to trade for DJM only to put him next to a ball dominate PG like Brunson?
He belongs on a team where he’ll be the PG and run the show.
Palilalia, a disorder of speech characterized by compulsive repetitions of utterances ….
“overpay….overpay….overpayyyyyyyyyyyyy”
“djm….djm….djmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”…
“…just like Zman forgot to tell us he has mind melded with Leon given i believe 90% of his statements today were ‘and leon is in agreement with me””
If you read carefully you would have seen that I qualified those statements with “I have confidence that Leon agrees…” or “I think he agrees…”
Way to be snarky! Tell me, do you have any opinions on what Leon’s mindset is going into this offseason? Any speculation as to what he might do?
just bustin your balls …ease up bro…
leon’s mindset….hmmm…make the team better? what he might do….hmmmm…overpay…overpay….ooooooovvvverrrpayyyyyy!
seriously…i would like monk or derozan…maybe try fultz at the backup pg (probably would overpay though)…whatever or however he has to move the pieces on the board……needs a few more guys who can consistently take the burden off of our (dare I say) tentpole supahstar
it’s funny sometimes just how closely our perspectives run together E…
still thinking about what you wrote…
I think maybe one of the best days I ever had was when I woke up with one lady, had another over for lunch, and then settled in to the evening with yet a 3rd…
I always think of that line the coke grandad says to his grandson in Little Miss Sunshine: fuck a lot of women…fuck them all…
ideally that sounds about exactly right to me…unfortunately my nerves haven’t really cooperated…
I’m blessed that one of my dearest friends just moved back to cali, and is now in the same time zone…always thought it might take someone showing up at my door to get me back to a little romance 😊
life is a funny thing for sure…
Edit:
There are a few ways to go to improve this team.
1. We discussed this at the deadline and nothing has changed. We need a backup PG that can run the show when Brunson is out of the game or injured. At the time, I thought Brogdon was the best option. IMO, nothing has changed unless someone has a better idea. Perhaps Portland is ready to move on from him now. If they are, he fills an important need with scoring off the bench and PG play.
2. Upgrade a starter.
This is where it gets tricky.
Who?
The only players we are not going to upgrade from in the starting unit are Brunson, Randle and OG.
So who out of Mitch/I-Hart or DDV?
Ideally, I’d like to have a C that can protect the paint and stretch the floor a bit, but they don’t grow on trees. So maybe someone that is at least more of a scoring threat. Who’s available? Jonas Valančiūnas? That’s not exactly lighting me up. Towns? I don’t think he’s leaving now.
Trading Randle can also be an option if it’s for someone that’s a significant upgrade at wing. But then they have to replace Randle with a competent PF. Maybe they can move OG to PF full time.
I think they not only have to see who is available and wants to come to NY, they have to figure out which position they want to upgrade.
If you took the team that went to the seventh game of the second round and then traded say DaQuan Jeffries for Julius Randle, Mitch Robinson, and OG Anunoby, and they threw in some Bogdanovic character, would your mouth be absolutely watering?
I mean hell, they even lost Jalen Brunson for the last quarter of the season!
No, Raven, it’s a mash-up. I hear they’re big with the youths these days.
We also magically don’t need to match salaries. We can just send out $18M in contracts and receive back $36M in contracts.
Hal talking about lowering the payroll next year then Soto goes out and hits 2 HRs…
Congrats to Brunson on being All-NBA 2nd Team. He deserves it, what a great season he had.
One writer actually left Brunson off his ballot completely. Brunson finished 6th so he had the most votes of the 2nd team players.
‘Brunson is the first Knicks guard to earn an All-NBA selection since Walt “Clyde” Fraizer after the 1974-75 season.’
Now that’s a drought.
Knicks still haven’t had an All-NBA 1st team member since Ewing in 1990.
“seriously…i would like monk or derozan…maybe try fultz at the backup pg (probably would overpay though)…whatever or however he has to move the pieces on the board……needs a few more guys who can consistently take the burden off of our (dare I say) tentpole supahstar”
All interesting ideas, particularly Monk. I can’t imagine that we have the room to get him, or that SAC won’t make him a great offer, or that if they don’t, Philly wouldn’t jump at him, but he’d be a great bench player.
Congrats to Brunson, very much deserved.
So I’ve been thinking that maybe we could frame the question this way: Assuming that Randle comes back in All-NBA form, is OG good enough to be a legit Big 3 type? His offense has been better than I expected, meaning that he’s quite a bit more than a 3 and D guy. I guess another way of looking at it is: How close to Brunson-level are Julius and OG?
If you had to choose one, and there were absolutely no clever-person loopholes where you somehow manage both — you really have to choose! — which would you add for next year:
a) a deeper bench for the Knicks
or
b) more homoeroticism to this blog
I’d go with the deeper bench.
WTF Rangers?
Domantas Sabonis got one 3rd place vote for DPOY
Almost as baffling as Miller botching a line change leading to Lafreniere scoring the OG
It was only one year ago that Gobert punched Kyle Anderson during a timeout in front of 20,000 people too.
[edited for context: the post this was in response to either disappeared or never existed (I’m prone to psychotic episodes). It was about how it was only a year ago that Dallas tanked their way out of the playoffs and now here they are in the WCF.]
Seems like only yesterday that Dallas was tanking to avoid giving us their draft pick and we were wondering when Luka would get fed up and demand a trade.
And now they might be heading to the Finals.
Whoa, I totally had a moment of precognition. I should work at the Minority Report place.
If you had to choose one, and there were absolutely no clever-person loopholes where you somehow manage both — you really have to choose! — which would you add for next year:
a) a deeper bench for the Knicks
or
b) more homoeroticism to this blog
false binary… you don’t have to choose – it chooses you
Missed the basketball tonight watching the Yankees club home runs up in the Bronx. The new yankees stadium still has unforgiveably terrible concessions.
Soto/Judge is a hell of a 1-2 though I will say that
Just started paying attention to the draft. A couple of guys stood out for me as guys I never heard of but liked what I read:
Baylor Scheierman
Keshad Johnson
Nikola Djurisic
You mean just let Leon do his job and end up with Rudy Gay and Kevin Love on vet minimums by happenstance?
No attempted/always failed eroticism of any kind here, please, neither homo nor otherwise.
you don’t have to choose – it chooses you
You mean just let Leon do his job and end up with Rudy Gay and Kevin Love on vet minimums by happenstance?
I personally would vote for a Deeper Love.
No attempted/always failed eroticism of any kind here, please, neither homo nor otherwise.
So you wanna cancel Christmas, huh?