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98 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.11.14)”
Oooooooffffffffff
🙋🏻♂️
I don’t have any doubts about the KAT trade any more, though. Too bad we’ll never be able to fill around him bc OG is overpaid.
OG plays a limited niche role very well, but at the end of the day that’s what it is — a limited niche role. The things he can’t do have to then be a burden to be assumed by other players. He’s a Wages of Wins guy.
He was a luxury purchase at a high price. Jury is very much out whether it was worth it. Probably not.
Hubert and E, for argument’s sake, do you think OG would be hard to move on his current contract? Meaning, would it take sweetener, or require taking on a similarly “bad” contract? Or would he bring back assets?
Very hard to move on this contract. Most of the association has moved on from the reductionist WoW. He has a very limited offensive game. He picks and chooses his spots and does the things he chooses pretty to very well, but that leaves it to others to fill in for the spots he either doesn’t choose or couldn’t do even if he did choose. The nature of his game keeps his bb-ref record pristine — but that has to be looked through.
In terms of his individual defense, yeah, very good — but this has become much more of a team defense sport and obviously his individual defense can co-exist with shitty team defense. As I said around the time they got him, “what are they going to say when they got OG to improve the defense and the defense doesn’t improve?” That’s exactly what happened.
Funny, the team has a lot more flaws after a L than after a W. I wonder what we’d be talking about if Brunson makes that last shot that went in and out.
When you’re burning your starters out it better be leading to wins. So far Thibs plan is failing. Payne deserved to continue playing in the second half. The rookies never see the court and who knows about Matt Ryan and if he will help.
I think you can’t assess if a new contract was good by thinking about trades. It’s better to compare it with what he would get in free agency, assuming anyone was free to sign him. Paul George is worth more and signed for more ($52M annually). Quickley was in a similar position with the Raptors, is worth less and signed for less, but not that much less ($35M versus $42M). To me, OG’s contract is probably close to fair.
Jalen Green will be getting 33 million starting next yr and 36 million the following two years after that and he’s a terrible player. Guys aren’t taking discounts.
We’re fine with OG, he fills a role that is more suited to be appreciated when playoffs time comes. It’s great to see that Mikal seems to be improving, we need him to be a lot better. Something’s up with Brunson, but at least he took over the game in the end and almost won the game for us. Too bad the ball rolled out. Inexcusable foul by Hart, but he’s human and sometimes he’ll make mistakes, what i’m pretty sure is that he’ll play even better after this blunder. KAT has been great, i wonder if he can play a little better on D if Mikal starts to play better too.
In hindsight probably better off to have lost last night rather than pull off an undeserved win.
Hopefully they take their frustrations out on the Nets and Wizards over the weekend before heading out west for a trip that might not be as difficult as originally feared.
If an overpay has happened so far it’s the Bridges trade. He’s not providing the defense the Knicks need at all.
Jalen Green is 22 and has a wide-ranging skill set that can be grown into.
That’s a hypothetical, Z-Man. These are facts:
– He’s a tertiary option who we’re paying more than first team All-NBA players like SGA & Jayson Tatum.
– We can’t bring up TJ Warren bc OG is overpaid.
– We couldn’t use the TPMLE this summer bc OG is overpaid.
– We couldn’t sign more rotation pieces to vet minimum deals (and there were many available) bc OG is overpaid.
And this is just my opinion:
If you make a move like that too early in the win curve, you’ve made a(nother) critical team-building blunder that limits your ceiling.
“In hindsight probably better off to have lost last night rather than pull off an undeserved win.”
I don’t know–it only works as a benefit if everyone is on the same page as to why they lost. Hart thinks the loss is on him because of that last dumb play. KAT sounds like he thinks the loss is on him because of his missed FTs. JB probably thinks the loss is on him because of his poor shooting and missed last chance. I suspect Thibs thinks the loss is because his players didn’t play hard enough on defence.
So far Green has shown he’s a Shooting Guard who can’t shoot and plays no defense. He needs his efficiency to take a massive jump to be worth talking about.
” He’s a tertiary option who we’re paying more than first team All-NBA players like SGA & Jayson Tatum.”
Need to compare apples with apples. SGA’s salary is based on a 2021 extension and Tatum’s on a 2020 extension. And Tatum signed a 5 year extension the same time OG signed a 5 year contract–but OGs is for $100million less.
To the dismay of many, I happily talk about our flaws after a win, too. 🤷🏻♂️
I will give it a rest today, though. Last night was a rough one.
And I’m quite pleased with KAT. I was skeptical but that is shaping up to be a steal and will likely remain a steal even if Donte rounds into form.
Fell asleep at halftime. It was a B2B for me too on the workout front.
Still all in on OG.
Your point about player inflation is valid but all salaries in the current season are apples. He makes more than an emerging superstar like Maxey, too, and the ink just dried on that one.
Hubert , if all your players are at market value and you have a good team, you will be over the aprons and unable to make moves. It’s the way the NBA salary structure and CBA force it to be. We couldn’t make moves not because OG is overpaid but because he is fairly paid. The fact that other players are underpaid is no argument against the fairness of OG’s contract. In addition, if you are going to complain about a high salary limiting trades, you should be looking at KAT. It was the deal to get him that put us in such a salary bind.
What a monstrous line from Giannis.
Saw a clip of Cade on the bench last night saying, “Mother#$%#^@ is unstoppable”
He makes more than an emerging superstar like Maxey, too, and the ink just dried on that one.
https://youtu.be/kF-uHaKVW10?si=FSnePbWr0sad3tlw
Fell asleep at halftime. It was a B2B for me too on the workout front.
caught your post on this. best of luck to you both.
https://www.reddit.com/r/P90X/comments/1x4w73/middle_age_couple_getting_ready_to_start_p90x/
Wemby scored 50 last night, but it was a blowout and the Spurs let him stay in to stat pad…
You could make a case OG is more valuable to winning compared to KAT. Kats terrible defense [ what’s that stat going around about players shooting percentages at the rim 🧐] can eliminate his great offense.
The best this team has looked was with OG, Randle and Jalen.
I guess my post from yesterday predicting the reaction to a bad game by OG off a B2B was spot on as usual.
Is there a term for chronic overreating to short term results?
KAT looks pretty fairly paid to me.
hahahaha
I did have the upsetting experience of realizing that my friend’s younger brother goes to the same gym and absolutely smoked me in the 2k bike erg….
What can you do, mid forties is a fight for survival….
And if you’re over the aprons and look like you’re still one or two tiers away from the top, you’ve made some big market value mistakes along the way.
Seems like some Knick content creators are migrating over to Bluesky which is similar to Twitter/X post election. Bluesky has added over a million users to the platform since the election. Will be interested to see how many people make the move..
Pollyanna eye-test:
— KAT played very well except he sometimes (always?) looks unsteady on his legs, and some of his adrenalized drives to the basket seem to risk serious injury. If Randle looked like a spinning dervish, KAT is a giraffe falling to the ground multiple times a game. That knee bump was no bueno, either. I hope he’s okay and is not too proud to say, “Coach! No mas.”
— OG sucked for 3Q, but he was coming off two very strong performances in a row. Season stats over ten games: 16pts/game, 48% shooting, 40% from three, 5 bounds, 2.5 Ast, 1.5 stl, .7 blks. I’m not sure what more we want except for him to be cheaper (just like we all want milk to be cheaper. Get in line).
— Bridges IMO had a solid game of the type I/we have been waiting for. More please.
— Payne (finally) showed he can be useful in some situations. Clawing back from 20 down is not a situation I want to be in often, but let’s hope Thibs absorbs this into his mind grapes and allows/encourages Payne to score 10-15 on a regular basis.
— Deuce was a non-factor, but aren’t we all surprised we haven’t said that more often? So far so good this year, better than expected, even. “Keep a goin'”
— Jalen’s “problem” seems to be that Playoff Brunson only shows up when KAT is off the floor or gimping around like at the end last night. Yes, we need Brunson to keep his hero persona alive, but it does seem that the whole Knick machine is not running smoothly. It doesn’t help that our point guard can’t beat anyone off the dribble until his adrenaline kicks in at crunch time. Gotta figure that out. Hint: Passing and Cutting. Use KAT more as a facilitator.
— Hart fucked up. Okay, okay, okay. But how many times has he saved our ass? Next.
— Thibs. Play more people. We can only assume that Huk, Dadiet, and Kolek are not showing well in practice, but … it takes a village, “bro.”
OG is the 31st highest paid player in the league. That seems… about right? You’re going to have some guys on rookie contracts who would obviously make a lot more on the open market, so he’s the 31st highest paid out of guys who have been in the league longer than their rookie contracts.
I don’t care whether or not milk is cheaper. I never buy it.
Maybe then, “The rent (mortgage interest) is too damn high.” 😉
If there’s a problem so far, it’s that Brunson and KAT might be unplayable together on defense. It maybe shouldn’t be a surprise that our run came with one of them on the bench.
always suspected doogie was a shoplifter
2 things:
1. Yes KAT is..quirky. But the negative shit about him needs to end. The guy practiced FT’s after the game because he couldn’t make them in the 4th quarter! This was after having a statistically great game on the 2nd night of a b2b. I think the rest of the league needs to forget his stint with Jimmy Butler and give this man his respect. He’s definitely a Thibs guy- rim protection level be damned.
2. Tomorrow night needs to be a blowout so the starters can rest a bit.
That is all.
Have a great day KB people!
Seems like the real problem we have in terms of roster construction is that we have no useful players on rookie contracts who can give us good cheap minutes. We do have the ultra cheap Deuce producing for us but other than that it’s all market value kind of contracts, with slight discounts from a couple of guys.
This has been my critique of the hybrid all along— it’s really tough to tease out surplus value when you build a team this way.
PS – (random alert — disregard if nec) —
Very much enjoying guitarist Julian Lage’s new record “Speak to me.” Also saw/heard an interesting (hr long) interview with him recently on the Broken Record Youtube/podcast (Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell thing).
Don Was … was … the guest interviewer with Justin Richmond, and Julian discussed his process and background as a child prodigy in such a humble and open way. I found it inspiring and life affirming audio wallpaper for times of stress.
https://youtu.be/7oIu4R5WZVc?si=FDHPDIOoreAjtBtz
“always suspected doogie was a shoplifter”
Kind of…….baseless, don’t you think? LOL I just have no need for milk; that’s all. I don’t have any kind of moral reason for not buying it.
Is that because the coach has zero interest in playing the rookies?
“Kind of…….baseless, don’t you think? LOL”
I go by the stats. Only 16% of adults have not need for milk. Yet it is the 7th most shoplifted food item. Maiale al latte may change your mind.
“I go by the stats. Only 6% of adults have not need for milk. Yet it is the 7th most shoplifted food item.”
Interesting. I have no idea regarding such things. I guess I can see where 94 percent of adults might say they need it, but at the same time I’m not quite sure why that is the case. I don’t eat breakfast cereal either, which is probably one huge reason why I don’t need it. I also just don’t like it all that much.
It’s because there aren’t any second or third year players on the roster giving good value for cheap, other than Deuce. Years of incinerating draft picks so you can bring in more market value free agents tends to have that effect. If you draft and develop players, get value out of their rookie contracts, then extend those players with Bird Rights, you have more avenues to squeeze out that surplus value.
If you’re paying market value for every player on your roster, you are by nature a .500 team. And honestly that is kind of how we are looking so far.
I’ll speak the unspeakable (or at least type it) — I’m gravely concerned with Cap. I still fully expect him to return to form, whatever that means, but last night the team barely functioned with him in for three quarters, it took off with him on the bench, and while he did some hero ball stuff at the end when he came back in they went from a launched rocket to again a team struggling mightily to pull off a win against a team that we should have beaten handily.
I can’t blame him for everything that happened last night, but some of the arrows point glaringly at the guy who needs to be the motor running this team.
JK, I get what you are saying but at this point (11 games) I can’t agree that is the conclusion. We’ve got 3 rookies on the roster, one likely to crack the rotation, and another sniffing a role as a valuable fill-in for injuries. We have had one “incinerated” draft pick, not years of. We kept Grimes to develop until he didn’t. We have a roster with top end talent, 7 man rotation talent, and a lot of end of bench potential. It’s all on Thibs to make it work in a way admittedly is far from his lane. But Leon has done his job, IMO.
I’ll speak the unspeakable (or at least type it) — I’m gravely concerned with Cap.
I’ll say this: JB came in to complement Julius and Julius then had the best year of his career. To many, KAT is playing the best ball of his life, and although a tiny sample size, JB dishing to him (way more than ANT did) has got to be a factor. My conclusion is that JB makes his team mates better, perhaps to his detriment. The anti-melo, and I’ll take it.
Or you’re the Celtics.
Overpaying is not independent of the win curve. Jaylen Brown would be overpaid if the Wizards signed him to that contract but he’s fair value to Boston. And OG would be fair value on OKC, but we overpaid.
Boston is the exception and not the rule. Yes, you CAN win with the hybrid, but as far as I can tell the successful hybrid teams have been run by God-level basketball minds like Pat Riley and Brad Stevens, people with deep understanding of the game of basketball. The guy running our team was an agent and I’m gonna go ahead and make the obvious statement that he does not understand the game at the same level as people like Riley and Stevens.
He’s done… pretty good, considering those limitations! No shade, honestly. But it’s probably not very realistic to think he’s going to be able to hybrid as successfully as those guys. You really have to thread the needle with every move.
Leon got awfully close last year. From Jan 1 to the end of the season, I gave him his due because he built a team that legitimately could have won the title if it hadn’t been derailed by injuries. It might have lost to Boston but it was good enough to win it all.
His moves since then lead me to believe that was an accident. The chemistry and fit of that team just made it explode into something better than anyone could have imagined.
Yeeeeeees 🤤🤤🤤
“Maiale al latte may change your mind.”
Nope. Don’t eat pork.
“In hindsight probably better off to have lost last night rather than pull off an undeserved win.”
A+ cope. Kind of agree/and also maybe I should think about politics through this lens more frequently.
“Overpaying is not independent of the win curve. Jaylen Brown would be overpaid if the Wizards signed him to that contract but he’s fair value to Boston. And OG would be fair value on OKC, but we overpaid”.
B- cope. Or maybe an anti-cope. Is that a thing?
For a sort-of feel-good story to help alleviate the post-game doldrums, here’s a piece on how Jokic is actually somehow better than ever.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/11/14/24295137/nikola-jokic-denver-nuggets-rebounds-assists-points
Longest-tenured Knicks: Mitch, Sims, and Deuce, in that order.
FWIW..I don’t have any need for milk as well. I always thought it was weird that us humans were told to consume milk from an animal. I try to get those same nutrients through alternatives like oat milk..but finding a truly healthy oat milk is hard, and expensive. Oh and I don’t eat pork either. Yuck. *shrugs*
Former agent Bob Myers ran the Warriors during their peak years.
I have no idea what people are watching to think the problem is paying OG too much.
Bridges and Brunson are both underperforming on offense. Brunson is down to a 2.8 OBPM, very good, but we need him to be closer to the 6.3 OBPM from last year or at least the 4.4 from his first year here.
Bridges finally had a good offensive game. We need to work him into the offense more, he’s been unstoppable from the midrange. There should be designed plays to get him in the post and sets built around him once he’s there.
Then there’s the defense…
Well, okay, but they had like a 10 BPM player who was probably worth like $80M earning $12M per year. That one stroke of very good luck (Steph being on the board right where he was projected to be drafted) made the rest of Myers’ job incredibly easy. Prime Steph Curry was one of the greatest surplus win machines ever to play the game. Leon Rose could probably kick some ass with a 10 BPM player making a cheap salary too.
A 6 man rotation in November bc we don’t have the apron space to fill out a roster with NBA players.
(I didn’t call it *the* problem, though. It’s just problem #54.)
I don’t have any problem concluding that a 17/18 USG guy is virtually never worth the acquisition cost and salary the Knicks laid out for OG, especially at OG’s meh/poor level of rebounding.
The only exceptions would be guys with 25+ USG offensive talent who are clearly holding some in reserve for the good of team chemistry, but are able to display the delta in big possessions. That’s not OG. He’s a 17/18 USG guy on “merit.”
Compare OG to say, Paul George, another long good wing defender who can shoot the 3 at 28, 29, 30 and maybe even still. It’s just not even close.
Just because you can 3 and D doesn’t mean you aren’t significantly limited. That’s why you fall to the “3&D” bucket to begin with.
OG’s a nice player within his bucket; it’s just that his bucket is inherently below the actual really good players who are on an inherently higher plane.
I came here to post a similar thought.
I’m not worried that we are 5-6.
I’m not worried about what we are paying OG.
I’m not worried that we overpaid for Bridges.
I’m won’t be worried if we lose one of the Nets games.
This team is supremely talented on offense. IMO the depth issues will slowly work themselves out as Precious & Mitch come back, maybe Shamet returns and the rookies keep developing behind the scenes and eventually start contributing.
I’m worried about one thing and one thing only. I always say you can get away with one bad defender (as we did with Brunson last year), but when you have two or more, the problems not only get larger, they compound.
-1 = -1
-1 + -1 = -3.
-1 + -1 + -1 = -6.
I was hopeful that OG, Mikal, and Hart would mitigate any issues with the Towns/Brunson combination or that Towns would be better than expected (as he has been in every other way). But I don’t think Bridges is doing the job we need on defense. There are various combinations with Bridges and the weaker defenders that are not working as well as when he’s off the court. IMO, he’s too good of a defender for this not to be some noise, but I am concerned by what I’ve seen so far. We have a ton of talent, but the defensive issues are tricky to fix.
Rose has done well, executing the hybrid strategy. The team’s success though is still very much a consequence of an extremely lucky event, Brunson turning out to be a top 10 level player, at least for two seasons. That outcome is even rare than like a mid Lotto pick becoming a star. how many examples are there of solid players emerging at age 25 as superstars? You could compare it to Isiah trading for Jamal Crawford. To me, Jamal Crawford on the Knicks was the average case expectation for what you might get from Brunson.
Still, Rose has done well at finding solid talent. He’s gotten a lot of high floor players and not made this sort of panic trades that previous GMS have made. That also though could be in part a consequence of Brunson taking pressure off of Rose.
Hard to imagine KAT’s that bad a defender when he played major minutes for the top-ranked defense in the association last year, left the team, and now pretty much the same team other than Randle replacing KAT is eighth in defense.
We need to cut OGs salary by $15M to fit a TPMLE. No way he’s staying here for that price.
We don’t have TJ Warren because we chose Matt Ryan.
We don’t have more vets because Mitch, Payne, and Precious have all been injured. We could throw in Shamet who would’ve been on the opening night roster if he hadn’t been injured.
Even McCullar, likely our most NBA-ready rookie given that his defense isn’t abominable, is injured.
Maybe we paid too much for OG, but it wasn’t $15M too much and it isn’t what’s stopping us from signing TJ Warren or another vet.
Some people aren’t going to be satisfied until the Knicks find some new rule of mathematics that allows for everyone to be high usage or the NBA change the rules of basketball so that every player can get up as many shots as is warranted by his skill and no one has to sacrifice usage in any kind of pecking depending on their skill or the matchup that night.
If the Knicks had the 5 best players at each position starting and 2 of them were only averaging 12 points a night, would they suddenly not be worth the max because the top 3 were God-like and the other 2 were only great?
This whole OG debate is silly.
You get paid for what you can do.
If you are doing less than you are capable of because the team has a surplus of some things on the court (for ex the Knicks with scoring), that might be a team construction issue if you are missing other things or it may come in handy when people get into foul trouble or injured.
But it has ZERO to do with what you should get paid.
Worry about real things like the defense and team construction.
The whole OG enterprise was misguided. It’s not just the current salary, although that’s clearly too high as well. They were chasing things that didn’t need to be chased and spending assets on luxuries they didn’t need.
The misguidedness was then amplified when they went out and spent 5 1s for yet another 3 & D guy, especially given the questions as to whether he can even 3 or D.
You don’t “drive winning” just because you’re limited by your skillset to focusing on 3 & D. Like every single other player, your contribution to winning all of the things you do and don’t do on the basketball floor.
His BB-ref efficiency numbers look impressive because he can’t generate USG between 18 and 25+ and so he doesn’t miss the shots that better offensive players miss when they try to make that move up to higher USG levels. No more, no less. Dock him for that inability — as he should be docked — and the BB-ref page looks different.
He’s not capable of generating efficient USG between 18 and 27, which is why he never has. All you have to do is watch him play and watch his offensive toolbox and this becomes crystal clear. He’s holding no capabilities back, just like Quentin Grimes et al. weren’t.
If anyone was curious, we have the equivalent of the 3rd best defense in the league when KAT sits and the worst by a full point when he plays. Hart and Mikal have similar splits.
We chose Matt Ryan bc his vet min is $1.8 and Warren’s is $3.3. If OG made $1.5M less we could have chose Warren.
If he made $4.5M less we could have chosen Warren and signed any of the NBA vets who signed minimum deals this summer.
And if he made around what Jrue Holiday makes we could have added three rotation players for the full vet’s minimum.
Jrue Holiday’s actually an excellent example of the guy who’s a 17/18 USG guy in context only because he’s obviously keeping things in reserve because of the guys he’s playing with.
That ain’t OG.
The vet minimum against the cap is $2.087M. Signing Ryan saved $200K. We could’ve signed TJ.
It’s silly to use the 15th roster slot except in emergencies.
We can’t even have 3 more players on the roster.
I tried to Google this and couldn’t really figure it out, so I ask this question with sincerity: who are some vet minimum players who might have been useful to us that we couldn’t afford? Most of the guys I’m seeing popping up are kind of in the “stiff” category and it seems doubtful that Thibs would have played these guys any more than he plays Pacome Dadiet or Tyler Kolek. I’m seeing a lot of Marcus Morris, Luke Kennard, DSJ, Lonnie Walker type of cats on these lists of vet min players.
I mean, I wouldn’t mind having some of those guys, and maybe a few more would help a little bit in terms of keeping our starters from playing so many minutes… But on the other hand we lost two players like this due to last second preseason injuries and there’s only so many of them you can keep hanging around.
Bob Meyers was also a basketball player. He was a walk-on at UCLA, played for 4 years, and won a national championship. He opted to get his law degree instead of going to play in Europe. He’s not just a guy who fast-talked his way to a lot of money selling other people’s skills to rich owners. He’s a smart guy who probably understands the game and league on a many levels.
(Leon Rose also played college ball, apparently, but the back of his playing card reads more like a kvitlech card than a basketball one.)
Lol, you characterize Leon as some guy who knows nothing about basketball and is just a fast talking agent but then admit that he actually did play college basketball, which is something 99.9 percent of this blog did NOT do.
A quick google search shows that he was inducted into his high school’s basketball hall of fame (before he was an agent). So he must have been pretty good. At the very least, he has more real basketball experience than, say, Erik Spoelstra.
While I’m sure that playing against Swarthmore and Ursinus in the Centennial Conference tournament means that he could, perhaps, put the ball in the bucket, it’s not quite the same as winning the D1 chip and visiting Clinton in the White House.
NBA really wants to showcase the 2-8 Utah Jazz tonight. Marketing dept is trying to make leading minutes man Keyonte “That’s Not a Typo, Doogie” George a household name I guess.
He played under 400min in college. I doubt he was turning down offers. It just makes more sense to get a JD than to fly yourself out to Europe for tryouts, especially in the 90s.
Erik Spoelstra played 4 years of D1 college basketball at Portland University, he was West Coast Conference (WCC) freshman of the year in 1989, averaged 9 points a game for his college career and he was the closest player to Hank Gathers when Gathers died on the floor.
Yabusele was my favorite. Alec Burks made sense. I don’t think Russell Westbrook or Spencer Dinwiddie were good fits but they were available.
“NBA really wants to showcase the 2-8 Utah Jazz tonight. Marketing dept is trying to make leading minutes man Keyonte “That’s Not a Typo, Doogie” George a household name I guess.”
LOL Why would I have ever thought that was a typo? I’m quite familiar with how to spell all of the players’ names, so I knew that was correct as soon as I saw it. Unless you thought that I was going to confuse him with Kyshawn George of the Washington Wizards, which I didn’t do. They’re not even related.
I was worried you’d confuse him with George Stephanopoulos, the Keyonte Speaker at last year’s OSCO annual meeting.
LOL Keyonte speaker. I like what you did there.
You know I would have asked about it, had I actually been confused! 🙂
(But I don’t know what OSCO is, if it actually exists, and I don’t care.)
It’s really weird that the debate here is about OG. A $35m player playing like he’s worth $30m isn’t our problem here. Our problem is that the player we spent 5 1RP for is playing like he’s worth 1RP. As a result our team is worse than last year even after converting all future assets to present.
I guess it’ll take until we’re .500 at the ASB in a historically shitty conference to kick in.
“If anyone was curious, we have the equivalent of the 3rd best defense in the league when KAT sits and the worst by a full point when he plays. Hart and Mikal have similar splits.”
So I guess this is the final proof that Sims is low-key brilliant at D.
It’s really weird that every time someone mentions “a” problem someone else says it’s not “the” problem.
And then it gets funny because every person who tells us what “the” problem is usually identifies a unique problem!
Perhaps “the” problem is that there are so many problems.
Fair enough, Hubie.
To resolve any ambiguity, here is the list of The Problems in descending order of severity:
1. Spent nearly the entire asset chest on a 3 & D guy who is shooting .304 from 3 and isn’t among the 150 best defenders in the NBA.
2. Partially as a result of #1, our starting five now has three bad defenders. Like Strat said, bad defenders have a logarithmic impact such that it’s virtually impossible for this lineup to get stops.
3. We have about 6-7 actual NBA players and can’t sign more. As a result of this and our coach’s tendencies, OG or Towns will be hurt by Dec 1 at the latest.
4. Our coach coaches like it’s 2004 and he thinks the league can’t shoot. We don’t take enough threes and allow too many.
5. Our superstar PG has either seriously regressed or needs a heliocentric team to thrive.
6. No player on our team can protect the rim without crippling our offense.
7. We are a slow, unathletic team prone to being badly beaten by young teams with less talent.
8. We might have overpaid a little for OG Anunoby.
See? The OG thing is really small potatoes!
Except #8 caused #3.
Ranking them seems less important than counting them.
They dissipated assets for OG. Their bench used to demolish other teams; a common themes of Knick postgames after bad games was “Why didn’t Thibs just leave the bench in in the fourth?” Those conversations were a part of Knick winters for like four straight seasons. That ended after the OG trade.
While it doesn’t show up directly on the current roster, they hideously dissipated assets for Mikal. What does show up on the current roster is the once-removed philosophy that led to the hideous asset dissipation — that “we shouldn’t draft but instead hoard picks for a superstar.” Questionable philosophy standing alone, awful philosophy when the “superstar” the hoarded picks were used for isn’t even close to being a superstar.
OG is certainly a lesser problem than the 2020-24 clownshow routine of not drafting, trading all the young players who were drafted, and then flipping all the picks for a mid-level player.
I mean, that’s certainly true — but so what? If OG was on a team with a really deep bench with a number of usage creators, his issues wouldn’t be so pronounced. But he’s not. Again — so what?
I honestly thought a large part of today’s thread would be dedicated to how stupid back-to-backs in the NBA are but alas… Clearly a few of our guys were tired last night (and no doubt the Bulls have improved), but sure, let’s go over perceived roster flaws ad nauseam.
I’d also like to add that I hate the “play the same team twice in a row” thing Silver christened. I know it helps lower the league’s carbon footprint or whatever, but it’s a boring, bad idea!
Oh dear…
Oh look, the most predictable outcome in the world.
Get ready for the wheels to come right off over the next few games. If all these guys are out we’re starting Kolek/Bridges/Hart/OG/Sims!
I guess Bridges plays backup PG? 7-man rotation with Ryan and Huk?
I’m predicting we are 7-12 by December 1. At what point does a teardown become reasonable?
I ain’t worried. Kolek throwing darts to Bridges at the foul line for those money fall-aways and to Hart and OG on backdoor cuts and fast breaks while Sims magically and mysteriously transports the team to #1 in the NBA in defense. We might never lose another game…
Exciting win for Jazz!
I cashed out of my bet early and it would’ve hit smh.
He sucks so much they can’t use a proper picture https://www.google.com/search?q=cody+williams+stats&oq=cody&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRg5MhIIAhAuGEMYgwEYsQMYgAQYigUyDAgDEAAYQxiABBiKBTIPCAQQLhhDGLEDGIAEGIoFMgwIBRAAGEMYgAQYigUyCggGEC4YsQMYgAQyDAgHEC4YQxiABBiKBTIMCAgQLhhDGIAEGIoFMgcICRAuGIAEMgwIChAAGEMYgAQYigUyDAgLEAAYQxiABBiKBTIKCAwQLhixAxiABDIHCA0QLhiABDIKCA4QLhixAxiABNIBCDEyMTJqMGo5qAIOsAIB&client=ms-android-boostdish-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ebo=1
Looks like Grimes started and had a decent game for once. Good for him.