[New York Post] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 23:02:00 GMT
Adam Silver lauds fantastic state of the Knicks, Jalen Brunsons leadership
[sny.tv] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:34:25 GMT
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- Knicks Tom Thibodeau says I think so when asked if Julius Randle is healthy
- The Q&A: Tom Thibodeau ready to guide Knicks through lofty expectations
- New York Knicks Fans React To Julius Randle’s Instagram Post
- The Whiteboard: Does Julius Randle present an in-house solution to the Knicks center problems?
[Golden State of Mind] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:07:14 GMT
Warriors agree to one-year contract with former Knicks lottery pick Kevin Knox
[The Associated Press] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 18:13:00 GMT
- First US high school with an all-basketball curriculum names court after Knicks’ Julius Randle
- A School for the Basketball World
- Former Kentucky basketball star gives back to the community in The Big Apple
- NBA, New York Knicks icons hold groundbreaking ceremony for Earl Monroe New Renaissance Charter Basketball School
- Bronx School Honors Julius Randle
[NJ.com] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:26:00 GMT
NBA analyst says Mitchell Robinsons injury will be a blessing in disguise: I love this for the Knicks
[Sports Illustrated] – Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:54:25 GMT
NBA Veterans Run With Sixers Generated Interest From New York Knicks
[Posting and Toasting] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 18:29:45 GMT
Who Wore it Best? Knicks #34
[Sports Illustrated] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 20:21:52 GMT
Reunion The New York Knicks Should Consider
[Daily Knicks] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:00:01 GMT
Knicks have Kevin Durant to thank for Mikal Bridges’ belief not coming true
[Empire Sports Media] – Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:28:37 GMT
- Knicks have 2 players battling it out for the final roster spot
- Knicks Backcourt Depth: A Game Changer for Season Success
- Why Former Wizards Guard Chose Knicks
- Knicks Take Chance on Landry Shamet
- Backcourt Depth Gives Knicks Various In-Season Opportunities
55 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.09.26)”
Derrick Rose retired. A player about whom I can have at best mixed feelings regarding his Knicks tenure, for both on and off the court reasons.
If he didn’t return for a 2nd stint, he would have been very close to the top of my list of least favourite Knick ever. But he did return and the half season until he broke down takes him off the list, but like Alan said, “at best mixed feelings”
Just returned from my 10-day trip to Barcelona and Mallorca. Highly recommended! Mostly lurked on KB, loved yesterday’s thread.
I was given tickets (excellent seats!) to the Knicks-Wizards preseason game on October 9, looking very forward to seeing pretty much everyone play and what kinds of tactical things Thibs will try out.
As I’ve said before, I give a certain amount of grace to anyone who survived growing up in conditions that most of us couldn’t imagine. Derrick Rose grew up in one of the most impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods in the country, and during the height of the most violent era in those neighborhoods. I understand that we all have our own standards of judgment and am not saying this to absolve Rose of his behaviors or trying to convince anyone else to absolve him. But the fact that he has gone on to become one of the most respected and beloved teammates and ambassador for the NBA does carry a lot of weight for me, and I personally never felt creepy rooting for him.
I felt the same way. The Derrick Rose who returned to NY seemed like an entirely different person than the one who was here in 2017. He assumed an elder statesmen role, was a mentor to IQ & Obi, and was surprisingly not hard to like.
I’m trying to think which modern day NBA player I could compare to peak Derrick Rose? Maybe Ja with a little less explosiveness?
Rose in his prime with the Bulls was a marvel, just incredibly strong and willed his way to the basket. And I don’t remember him attempting many 3’s, it was just old school bully ball.
The two years before his knee went he was about as good of an offensive player as you could be while not being a particularly efficient scorer.
I think MVP Rose was very similar to 3rd year Ja. They both had a TS+ of 102 at very high usage. It will be interesting to see whether Ja can get his career back on track.
Here’s an excellent Rose highlight reel from across his career, including some with the Knicks.
Here’s a similar highlight reel for Morant for comparison.
Allen Iverson… high usage, low efficiency, low true shooting , no defense chucker. But Pointz……. But at least AI’s perversions were mostly self destructive, not criminal.
This may be controversial.
I know Prime Rose was great. But I’ve always felt he was more athletic marvel than great basketball player. But man..did those athletic gifts and skill set meet at the perfect spot for him. Still, to me- he was an overrated point guard.
However, when he returned to the Knicks for his 2nd stint, he showed me that he really was a point guard. And it kind of made me appreciate his prime years more. Piecing the 2 versions of Rose together, painted the picture of a player that just happened to be so athletic that he didn’t have to use much of his point guard bag. And that made it hard for me to evaluate him because I LOVE point guards. Still..I love and appreciate his run with the Knicks, though I didn’t care too much for his first run with the team. He could have been much better had Phil not meddled so hard and let his coaches do their thing.
So with admiration, I salute Rose and wish him farewell. Very few players have highlight reels that make my jaw drop so often. Jordan, Iverson, ‘Nique, Carter, Kobe, Dream, Crawford, Zeke, and Rose. I hope he finds peace in his next chapter
“Jordan, Iverson, ‘Nique, Carter, Kobe, Dream, Crawford, Zeke, and Rose.”
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong
One of these things is not like the others, tell me before I finish this song
The Derrick Rose-Joakim Noah-Carmelo Anthony atrocity assembled by Phil Jackson was one of my least favorite Knick teams of all time. Derrick Rose flat out abandoned the team without even sending a text and went completely AWOL for a few days. Joakim Noah by his own admission didn’t contribute very much because NYC was “too lit.”
Old Man Derrick Rose, the one who came back for a second stint, was a good band aid on an overachieving team that did not have much talent, so sure, he was easier to root for in that context. He was a good teammate in that second stint, for that one last productive season.
Nobody here has really mentioned his appalling behavior that got him into serious legal trouble, but I do believe “appalling” is a fair word to describe his conduct.
He wasn’t ever convicted:
In 2016, a federal jury in Los Angeles found that Rose and two friends were not credible in a rape claim brought against them by a woman. The jury unanimously ruled that the woman consented to the encounter in 2013, despite claims that she was incapacitated by drinking and drugs.
I hated it all, too. Just trying to be fair according to this nation’s “rules.”
I think peak Rose was overrated a bit as a basketball player because of athleticism, but he was still in his early 20s when he got hurt. He showed later in his career that he could reinvent himself and expand his game. Had he remained healthy and done that in his mid 20s he probably would have been awesome.
The best possible spin one can put on this sordid episode was that for some reason while in a state of serious intoxication Rose and two pals decided to triple team his “girlfriend” and she was a “willing” participant. How one “consents” while being highly impaired is a legal issue, but no sane, clear thinking human would honestly think that behavior was justifiable. It is repulsive, if not legally felonious.
Note … if said woman was legally sane and sober and actually was interested in such a thing…. more power to everyone.
Agreed. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Well, this absolutely sucks. ESPN laid off Zach Lowe.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5796820/2024/09/26/espn-layoffs-zach-lowe/
Why would you be in the NBA media business and not want to employ Zach Lowe?
I just wanted to get back to one point on the hybrid vs. all draft debate because to me, it’s one of the most important points.
IMO, one of the advantages of going hybrid is the ability to rebuild a contender faster if you are competent.
A team primarily using the draft to try to find its 2 stars will have to wait years for the 18-19 year olds it drafts to develop and be ready to compete for a championship – assuming they are lucky enough to draft them quickly to begin with.
When you are using picks as a trade asset, you are bringing in players ready to go that day. In our case we used picks and young players to add OG and Bridges. We won’t be sitting around waiting for their peaks. They are ready now.
There are always “what ifs” when you look at the specific moves any team made, but I still think the market for picks, players and free agents is generally efficent. So it really doesn’t matter which path you take.
IMO, what matters more is a little luck and a management team that executes their plan well enough to take advantage of any occasional good values that do present themselves without any serious blunders. Being more specific, that also means fitting the pieces together well.
Because apparently there is far more money to be made from people yelling bad-faith arguments at each other than from somebody smart and likable helping people better understand the sport they love.
WTF is ESPN doing.
IMO the perception of right and wrong is in part internal and in part a function of the overall culture, the specific surroundings you are brought up in, what you are taught by your parents, teachers, friends etc…
Things that seem obvious now were less obvious 20 years ago (of course I would argue we’ve gone backwards in some ways).
Things that seem obvious to someone taught right and wrong and given a good moral compass as a child may not be so obvious to someone brought up where wrong was normal and all around them.
It’s hard to judge people that did bad things in the past by the standards of today and sometimes even hard to judge the relatively recent behavior of a young person that was never taught what is and what is not accpetable behavior because of disadvantage.
That doesn’t make bad behavior any more right. It makes it a bit more understandable and perhaps even forgiveable if they mature, learn, and change.
It’s the person that has a clear understanding of right and wrong and does wrong anyway that deserves no forgiveness.
By the way, I’m not talking about Rose. I’m talking about Knicks past and present management. 😉 We need a damn starting C.
Kevin Pelton, arguably the only guy still worth reading at ESPN, put out his wins projections and he’s downright Pagliaccian on the Knicks:
1. BOS – 52.4 average wins
2. CLE – 50.6
3. MIL – 46.7
4. IND – 46.7
5. PHI – 45.2
6. NYK – 44.9
7. MIA – 44.9
8. ORL – 43.5
9. BKN – 36.9
10. TOR – 33.9
11. ATL – 31.9
12. CHI – 31.8
13. CHA – 29.4
14. DET – 28.8
15. WAS – 24.1
His model probably assumes Precious and Sims get all the minutes when Mitch is out, and likely gives no weight to the potential success of the small lineups.
I’m also high on Cleveland and Milwaukee FWIW. I think they will round out the top 4 with NY and Boston while Philadelphia struggles with Embiid injuries.
The fact that he came up with 37 wins for a tanking Nets team allows for some disqualification of his method.
ESPN is turning into the sports version of Fox News
A lot of models project more towards the middle than they should, for instance, Boston probably crushes 52.4 wins even if they take it easy.
He should also be projecting OG to get hurt, because of course he will.
The stat models don’t like Mikal as much as the general consensus, which should be interesting to see play out.
I’ve been much closer than Pelton the last three years, so I don’t really care what he thinks. I nailed the Knicks number (OK, one higher two years ago when they didn’t need the win), and got most of the rest right. As in having OKC very high, having Indiana moderately high, having the Bucks relatively low…. It’s not time to make the predictions yet, but I am confident he is very wrong on a number of teams. (Brooklyn made me laugh, and as usual, people overrate Miami and underrate the Knicks and Orlando.)
Vecenie put out a podcast episode a couple days ago where he ranked the Knicks defense as 8th best in the league. It’d be higher if Mitch’s health wasn’t a question mark.
The episode came out before the Mitch news. Anyway, the offense is going to need to do a lot of work.
Strat, I am pro Hybrid, too, but I don’t think you made a good argument. OKC won 57 games in Chet and Jalen’s sophomore season. Tatum & Brown started leading the Celtics to the ECF in the 2nd and 3rd years.
It all comes down to how fast it takes to strike gold, which is largely luck and good timing. The asset hoard method provides higher probability of striking gold for most teams. But I think if you play in NYC, LA, or Miami, the probability of getting lucky in free agency is greater than it is in the lottery. That’s my reason for being pro hybrid, at least.
So much has changed since we first started debating rebuilding methods. Draft lottery leveling has put a serious dent in the tanking for a superstar strategy, and salary cap aprons have made it a lot more complicated to go from good to great (or to maintain great) via trades and free agency. The amount of both luck and skill necessary to successfully execute any method has never been higher.
I think Leon made a bunch of moves that he’d like to have back, but that’s to be expected from an inexperienced POBO. I’d probably put him in the top 20% of executives in the NBA right now because he seems to have learned a lot on the job and none of his tactical miscues have totally derailed the overall strategy of improving the team into a sustainable contender while putting a competitive product on the floor every year, rebuilding simultaneously through the draft, free agency, and trades. If we ultimately come up short, it will be much more due to an accumulation of tactical errors (and there were surely suboptimal moves in all three areas) and plain bad luck than to strategic planning. The fact that we are on the cusp of a good run of excellence (I’d say 5 years or so) despite the miscues speaks highly of the validity of the strategic plan.
This is depressing, but unfortunately it is also true. Sign of the times, i guess.
IMO, you can get very good in just 2-3 years if you strike gold quickly, but winning a championship usually requires those young players to get a couple of years of playoff seasoning and experience before they are really tough enough to finish the job.
OKC kind of lucked out with Shai in the same way we had some luck with Brunson.
Zion Williamson has a “newfound drive” according to the Athletic.
Excited to see how that ends up
Sucks about Lowe
I suppose the conventional wisdom in journalism writ large is that carnival barkers and crossword puzzles subsidize the loss leaders who do high-quality work. That’s definitely true to a large extent, but it sure seems like ESPN is putting all their eggs in that particular basket. They seem to think there is basically no need for people who produce genuinely good work. Maybe they’re right, which would be depressing, but I for one am finding it increasingly hard to justify my own ESPN+ subscription. I guess they’re slowly getting out of the actual journalism business entirely.
The silver lining is I’m not remotely worried for Lowe, he’ll land on his feet whether it’s at another publication or just by going independent on a platform like Substack.
Spot on, Z. Only move Leon probabaly wishes he could have back right now is not signing i-Hart for a team option for that third year. I’m sure if he offered him a 3yr -$30m with a 3rd year team option, Hartenstein would have taken it. He was comicly undervalued by the entire league two years ago and still is. Leon’s mistake could land Presti multiple rings. Still so happy that over the next 3-5yrs, we’ll be one move or injury away from NBA finals.
Lowe is great but in cost-cutting times, $1M+ in annual salary is no chump change. And yeah, he should be okay in whatever he decides to do next.
The landscape of sports is hardly recognizable.
My hope is that OKC won’t exercise their club option on Hartenstein once their roster bloats in cost, then he comes home to NY at a steep discount having already made his money.
knicks basketball thought = Pelton’s list looks pretty questionable…a lot would have to go wrong for us to end up around a .500 club…
too bad Pelton’s not setting lines in vegas, huh…
kind of a disappointing season if we don’t hit 50 wins…
random thought = getting old is so weird…i lose my appetite now for periods of time…i’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not…
Pelton’s model had us down for 44.6 wins last year so we’re improving
There’s something wrong with his model that builds in some sort of parity. He’s under on all the top teams and over on all the terrible ones. He probably gave 20 extra wins to the Nets alone.
I’m back from my self imposed exile.
Would just like to point out when comparing our hybrid rebuild to OKC’s full tear down.
OKC had the luxury of trading a still almost in his prime CP3 to a team trying to go for it and also a prime Paul George to the clippers.
Before Leon showed up we actually did the same thing OKC did to set up our hybride rebuild. We traded our three best players three consecutive seasons in a row. But our best players were an aging Melo with a no trade clause, an injured KP and Marcus Morris.
OKC got a billion picks and Shai for trading CP3 and George. We got three late first round picks, a second round pick and enes kanter for trading Melo, KP and Morris.
What OKC did is almost impossible to replicate unless you have two top ten players on your team take trade partners that are willing to trade everything to get them.
The biggest mistake Leon has made is the one no one mentions. Giving RJ that contract. If he had given RJ a contract more in line to his actual value (say 12 to 15 million a year) he probably could have traded him and Fournier plus a pick to Toronto for OG and kept IQ on a new contract or flipped him for something else really valuable.
And how did they get those two top 10 players? They tanked for a couple years and put themselves in a position to draft them. That’s it!
They are asset billionaires forever and ever just by tanking for a little and reinvesting the asset yield. They were bad for far shorter than we were and have had multiple championship windows since, while we sit here celebrating the ECF ceiling they went all in for.
Exhibit #1,000 proving that the tank method is categorically superior to the “hybrid.”
We also tanked and got RJ. They tanked and got Chet. It’s probably good we got RJ cause if we’d gotten Zion we’d be perpetually hoping he stays healthy and thin and not have gotten Randle who basically willed our team to the playoffs Thibs first year and helped establish the culture. Ha would have been cool but then he’d be unable to handle NYC and the fun stuff would have been even worse here and we wouldn’t have signed Jalen.
oKC tanked to get CP3 and George?
You can’t honestly bring up a tank from fifteen years ago.
We tanked too and got RJ.
Was just thinking….
The picks from the Marcus Morris trade yielded Immanuel Quickley and Deuce McBride.
The KP trade yielded Grimes and the Detroit 2nd, Dadiet, and the cap room to sign Randle.
IQ and the aforementioned Detroit 2nd (plus Barrett) brought us OG.
And of course Melo yielded Robinson.
That is some tidy work by the tag team of Scott Perry and Leon Rose! It led to 60% of our starting lineup plus Deuce and Dadiet.
This is something you have to give Presti immense credit for, though. He literally changed the market. No one had ever traded more than three firsts before, and there hadn’t been a trade involving two unprotected firsts since the Nets/Celtics debacle.
When Scott Perry traded Kristaps Porzingis, for instance, no one was trading picks. So he said “OK, fine, two first round picks, one protected.”
It took balls for Presti to demand — and hold out for — SGA, Gallinari, five firsts, two swaps. You can’t just yada yada that part. He got more for Paul George than anyone has ever gotten for anything!
I always thought Presti was overrated during the Durant years but his work the last 7 years is off the charts. It’s not even right to call what he did an asset hoard. They had a good team 5 of the 7 years. He actually did a Hybrid-Asset-Hoard-Win-Trades Rebuild.
Vegas has us at 53.5 wins for their over/unders
Thought this was an interesting read — a clarity index on which teams have clear goals (not whether they’re good or bad, just whether they know where they are going). We’re in the first (most clear) tier, which is nice…
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/9/26/24254575/nba-preseason-clarity-index-2024
I mean yeah that was super good of presto to do that but the clippers had to be willing to do it and they were bc that’s who kawhi wanted and at the time kawhi was like the most coveted player out there.
I’m not saying he wasn’t great for doing it but it’s not some easy or common thing to do is my point.
New cute funny show on Netflix called “Nobody Wants This”.
Maybe Woj retired at just the right time.
#58 for Judge.
Presti has been the best executive in the business for more than a decade. He made one huge mistake with Harden, but has mostly won trades, drafted well at the spots he drafted at, and made shrewd free agent signings. You tell him the method and he will execute it better than just about anyone else. I’m quite confident that had he inherited Leon’s situation and was told he had to win games or else, he would have figured out a better hybrid approach than Leon did.
And that’s no slight to Leon. Pat Riley, with all of his experience and success, has fucked up plenty of draft picks, trades, and FA signings. So has Danny Ainge, Daryl Morey, Masai Ujiri, and RC Buford. Leon isn’t there yet, but as executives go he’s more than holding his own against the competition after just four years, especially considering the constraints that Dolan projects into the picture.