Knicks Morning News (2024.11.22)

“I actually think at the time it was very unlikely to get a better player than OG for Barrett and IQ.”

And that’s essentially it, isn’t it? The 31st pick was also a fair price for Precious. Flynn was worthless.

OG was only available because he was an impending UFA. The risk of somewhat overpaying him after acquiring him was fully considered in the context of a) RJ already being overpaid and b) IQ about to be overpaid. (i’d be nauseous if he were on our books for #32M AAV, so let’s see how that ages for Masai.)

It was reported that RJ was largely viewed as a toxic asset, and that there were multiple suitors for OG both pre- and post-trade. Not sure what IQ could have been offered if he went RFA, but if a “smart” guy like Masai thought he was worth locking up at $32M without letting IQ test the market, one would think Masai is not the kind of GM to unwisely bid against himself.

Now, one measure of value is: what would the return be for RJ and IQ on their current deals in a fire sale trade vs. the return for OG on his current deal? How will that proposition age? It’s a fair question.

But in terms of fit, even if Leon paid a smallish premium, seems like nothing to be bent out of shape about.

What I’m saying in general is that I think it is fair to feel that Leon paid too much of a premium for “fit” over performance in the case of both OG and Mikal, and that these overpays combined might hamstring their ability to improve the team to compete with OKC/BOS and soon some others.

But this is where the real craft of GMing comes in. No one (certainly not me) saw the KAT deal coming at such a cheap price. Very few anticipated the breaking up of the 4-Nova core. As such, I don’t want to assume that just because our pick cache is largely spent that guys like Mikal and OG, or even KAT, are untouchable. Seems like Leon is never sitting idly by, marveling at his Magnus Opus. Let’s see how things play out between now and the deadline.

Edit: the Thibs shit camp is very real, although it has only one full-fledged member and a few non-member sympathizers.

Raven, I would only go so far as to agree that Brunson has a bit of an ego and wants to prove that guarding him with the Ryan Dunns and Kelly Oubres of the world is not going to stop him from getting to his spots and scoring.

My concern is that he is going to get worn down if he keeps insisting on going toe-to-toe with defensive wings on every possession. But since that is going to be a consistent tactic in every game he plays, I also see the logic in learning how to punch through it. At the end of the day, his iso scoring is critical and he needs to show other teams that he can’t be guarded one-on-one by anyone. I just worry about him getting banged up early in games.

“the fact that it doesn’t really translate to team defense that well.”

Sorry E, I’m going with ptmilo’s stats on that one…not to mention the most obvious eye-test verifiable fact most of us see with perfect clarity.

I predict that we will see lots of KAT at the 4 once Precious and Mitch return. Or when the Knicks acquire a better option as a sidekick defensive 5. I don’t think KAT would be as detrimental at the 4 as he is at the 5, and his passing thus far makes me optimistic that he’d still be just as effective on O in a team offense sense at the 4.

“Speaking of “isolating variables,” it’ll be funny if the defense improves materially with Precious/Mitch and then people credit OG for the improvement.”

I don’t see why anyone would do that, so it would only be funny in the “wow, that’s really stupid!” sense. Sort of the way this comment of yours is funny.

“(Yes, I know that the Nets, Wiz, and Suns aren’t great, but we have to play who is in front of us, right?)”

Yes, but those teams aren’t just “aren’t great”…they abjectly suck. So I’m not all that juiced about it, beyond it’s better than losing!

“And if we’re going to argue about something, I’d rather it be whether our starting line-up should have Precious or Hart in it. I could probably go either way on it, but when I take into account Hart’s probable feelings about it, it would be difficult to remove him from our first five when he is playing so damn well for us. Precious would more likely be just as happy to come in late in the first quarter…….but we’d still have to find a way to experiment in parts of games with line-ups that include both KAT and Precious to see what that might look like.”

Yeah, I suspect that Precious will come off the bench and any experimentation will occur in the late-first/early second Q to start. But if a guy starts roasting KAT repeatedly like Sengun did, it might be used at ends of games as well.

And FWIW I don’t think the comparison to an NFL CB holds any water.

“OG cannot simply can’t lock someone down like Darrell Revis. There will never be a game where Jayson Tatum or Donovan Mitchell can’t get shots off bc OG Anunoby is smothering them.

He doesn’t take half the court away, either. You can score pretty easily on OG if he has to funnel his defender into KAT.”

The football analogy was not meant to be taken literally. It was in response to what you said here:

“He might be the best perimeter defender in the world but he’s kind of easy to avoid. Over the summer I compared him to a brick wall and said teams aren’t just going to run into him. They can easily bypass him by going at Brunson or setting a screen on Bridges. Hence our defense sucks despite his greatness.”

The point being that OG taking care of his business better than nearly every wing in the NBA, especially without sacrificing any offense, makes the defense better, and probably a LOT better, than it would be without him. You can tilt your blitzing/hedging schemes towards those guys because OG can handle his own business one-on-one better than most, and he is also very strong in whatever scheme you put him in as an off-ball help/team defender…deflections in passing lanes, traps, weakside contests, etc. I don’t get why that is so difficult to understand. In fact, it comes across as purposely obtuse, since I’m pretty sure you and E know this and are just being argumentative.

“It’s a shame both of them lost so much development time to chronic injuries over the years. They are very different players, but both might have been net plus players had they been healthy.”

Or alternatively, the injuries actually helped disguise their innate weaknesses because guys like you had an excuse to believe in the development that just wasn’t gonna happen. I suppose if Kevin Knox was injured all the time, folks might be blaming his lack of development on that.

Some guys just don’t develop, injured or not. Frank fucking sucked. Reddish fucking sucks. They would have sucked incrementally less with fewer injuries, but would still have sucked. It really is that simple.

That Randle ignoring Gobert clip was pretty bizarre.