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95 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.11.25)”
Turns out even being on the Eagles has not stopped me from feeling happy when I see Saquon having success (and boy did he have a game yesterday). I hope he wins the MVP, makes it to the Super Bowl, and they lose in heartbreaking fashion.
I feel like this Giants season is heading to an absolutely inevitable conclusion: they will win one meaningless game that drops them from first to third in the draft, then mortgage the farm to trade up two spots.
Tonight’s game is a good measuring stick if KAT plays. I care more about how we play than whether we win or lose.
Speaking of Philadelphia!! How about Donnie’s Sixers? Aka, “still the second best team in the East,” according to Pags.
Did you know… not only is this team 3-13 but they don’t even compete in their losses. Their losses are blowouts. And their wins? Two of them were in overtime. Their -8.6 differential is worse than only the Jazz, Pelicans, and Wizards.
There was a fun story about Embiid over the weekend, too. After the team meeting, they’re playing Memphis. Game is at 7. First team bus leaves at 5. Every other player on the Sixers is on it. Second team bus leaves at 5:15. All the trainers and staff are on it. Embiid leaves the hotel at 6pm for a 7pm game. This is the day after he gets called out in the team meeting for being late. Sixers get blown out, and Embiid is shut down after the game for “injury management” (which could also be seen as being benched for not giving a fuck).
The fact that people are even leaking these stories says a lot about the man.
And if he doesn’t play… it’s Sims time! 😛
I’m in need of a win tonight, because my beloved FCPorto is on a 3 game losing streak, which we didn’t have since 2008, and if we lose the next one we’ll tie a record from… 1965!? 🙁
Go FCPorto!
If you come to Porto and there’s a game at the time, we can go watch the game live and you’ll see how beautiful our stadium is. 😉
And hopefully the team is playing a lot better, of course. 😀
Hey Geo, everything alright? antipioneer looked like a new poster to me, and you didn’t ask him personal questions to know more about him? 🤭😜
About yesterday’s thread, i think it’s fair to say things as they are, but to want to trade Mikal after 16 games i read it as a joke. We need to work on this team, and not to keep trading players for new players.
Maybe Mitch/Precious can solve this problem, at least in part. If we play a rim protector more, KAT will be at the 4 more and someone has to go to the 2nd unit a lot more time than now. I’d suggest it to be Mikal. Let him be the go-to man on the 2nd unit and we’ll see if he gets back his confidence. He can still start, if the FO needs to save face, and Hart comes from the bench, but then Mikal plays a lot more time with the 2nd unit and Hart plays more with the 1st unit.
Injuries were always the major risk to the 76ers, but if we were missing some combination of KAT, Brunson and OG almost every night we’d be 2-13 with a -8 SRS too.
Don’t get me started today, Cyber. I went back to cappuccino this morning.
If after watching this team for 16 games, your certified conclusion is that we need Mikal Bridges more than a full time rim protector who can contribute positively on offense, you are in no position to be calling other people’s takes a joke.
Feel free to disagree, that’s what a forum is for. But you exhibit poor class coming on here and calling valid (and I think obvious) opinion “a joke”.
And the irony is you lob disrespectful grenades like that but you’re also one of the first and most frequent to complain when a thread doesn’t go the way you want it.
Sorry your football club is shit but don’t be a troll.
Just goes to show one the value of a top OL. on both 70 yard runs, no one touched Saquon.
Rather than trading up. they should do the opposite, trade down (unless they believe a true franchise QB is available, which doesn’t appear to be the case).
The Number 3 pick has a trade value of 2200 which is equivalent to the top FOUR picks in the second round. They have two all pro players at DT and at OT(Dexter and Thomas who would merit #1 picks in a trade signed for multiple years. Nabors might merit high compensation. Move them and trade down for more multiple 2nd and third round picks. They are valuable and I’d tear it down to the studs
Call up Belicheck and ask him how much he wants for 5 years to rebuild it from the bottom up.
What good is patience when you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole?
I have no doubt Bridges will get better but we brought him here to be the Brooklyn Bridges. Then before we even got to training camp we scrapped that plan and brought in Towns to be the #2 option. That was the mark of impatience.
Now suddenly we want him to be the Phoenix Bridges again, but I’m not sure we ever got his buy in on that. He’s a free agent in 18 months, do you really think he wants to stand in the corner on offense and guard the other teams’ best ballhandler every night? He’s a little overqualified to be Quentin Grimes.
We don’t need to be patient with our square peg. We should trade him for a round one.
Cyber – Hubert is quite salty lately. That’s not sugar in his cappuccino
I was downright gleeful this morning when I was talking about the 76ers.
PS – Don’t worry I am not going to repeat myself all day. I have meetings from 10am to 4pm.
Yeah, after Hubert’s take-down of one of our most pleasant posters on this site, I’m skipping his posts for the near and perhaps long term.
Cyber being a troll is perhaps the most absurd of his mostly absurdly hysterical takes.
We didn’t bring in Mikal to be Brooklyn Bridges on a team with Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle. He still would have been at most the #3 option on offense if we stopped there.
The Giants obviously getting buy in from the FO and the coaching staff to go full tank is a bit weird, that’s the thing you do when you think you’ll have a job next season, and I don’t know why they would want to keep the guys who built this team.
Disagree. It was the mark of an executive that believes in accumulating assets at value. The opportunity appeared to move DDV and Randle for a far better player and he did it. Simple as that.
He signed Brunson seeing his true value. He signed DDV buying him at a discounted (in his opinion) price. He swapped out RJ and IQ (two nice players, neither he was in love with) for a player he loved for clear reasons. Same with KAT.
It’s up to the coach to make it work, or for the FO to make another trade (Walt Bellamy and Howie Komives for Dave D or Cartwright for Oakley, that ushered in the two best ten year periods in Knick history.)
We were never going to stop there, though, DRed, because we didn’t want to pay Julius Randle. And I think it stretches credibility to suggest we gave up 5 first round picks without expecting him to be the player he was on Brooklyn.
Hey, this was a fun thing that happened to me last night:
https://bsky.app/profile/sepinwall.bsky.social/post/3lbqff3u5ck2e
alsepIII
All good, no worries.
Congrats Alan, that’s great… and funny! 😉 😀
And now i can say to my friends that i have an online friend that was mentioned by The Simpsons! 😜
VERY cool, Alan. Congrats.
Alan!! That is awesome!
Best gif I could find on short notice….
https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExYXJrODhvN205dm90YnByYXhnbGU2a2VmMHhiMzJrYW04OTBoNXJwcyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/GrRqrAK3bujjW/giphy.gif
Actually, that might be too sexy, maybe this is better…
https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExcjNzbGo0bndwdHl3YTRxdm9xdTlxY2p1OWlzZGViNXZyZ3R1anh5bCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/fH4qlPUdsF8bctXHQG/giphy.gif
That’s amazing Alan.
I’d say those are equally sexy, Owen…
Thank you Raven, corrected….
That’s fantastic Alan, congrats!
You’re now officially in the thin air of pop culture’s pantheon…
You named them the best TV show of all-time… about time they did something for you!
Having someone with the talent/skill to up his usage with limited impact on his efficiency is a luxury that comes in handy when there are injuries.
For example, if Towns is out tonight, how do we make up that usage?
Well, we could ask Brunson to score 45 every time Towns is out or we could ask Mikal to get more aggressive and between him, OG and Brunson hold down the fort well enough to at least still compete. No knock on Grimes, but if Grimes was in Mikal’s role, he might be fine most nights, but if we asked him to give us 25 tonight, it’s not happening.
We could also choose to use Mikal more with the 2nd unit and let him loose in that unit while playing more of a 3a option with the starters.
Alan,
That’s terrific. Congratulations!
I think we should patient with Bridges on offense and see what the team looks like defensively when Precious and Mitch are back.
I refuse to believe you can’t build a championship caliber team with Towns at C because he’s a weak defender. We just have to find the right formula. The T-Wolves were close with him and Gobert. If we have to move in that direction, then we will, but I think the preference is to play with him at the 5 and figure out the right combination next to him. That could eventually mean a trade for a specific type PF.
Hahaha Alan that is legendary!
Gotta get Mikal going. Call his number more often, play him more with the second unit, whatever you gotta do. Tell him he doesn’t get a post-game cookie unless he makes three free throws. Let’s see Thibs make a meaningful adjustment here.
We need Phoenix Mikal with the starters and Brooklyn Mikal when he plays with the second unit. Even a poor man’s version of both of those players will suffice. Let’s get crackalackin’ here.
What’s next Alan? Clyde giving you a shout-out,” toastin and postin on Knickerblogger”
That’s one thing I don’t understand.
It’s not clear to me why he’s choosing to fade away so often instead of going to the rim and trying to draw fouls. He’s been pretty deadly in mid range, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t attack the rim also when appropriate (and make those FTs).
Is it possible he’s got some mild injury that he can play through but that’s making him choose to take less contact?
There was an Athletic article about it. This is an intentional approach as Mikal sees the midrange as where you need to score efficiently in the playoffs. He is of the belief that relying on calls is not sustainable come May.
He’s shooting over 60% from two this year. He’s aware of that number and so is Thibs. I’m guessing if that dries up, we’ll see a change in approach.
But the fact is, so far, he’s at a .559 eFG%. This while shooting under 32% from 3, while deploying a new shooting form, and trying to recreate his shot chart to be playoff-ready. I’d call those satisfactory results for a work in progress.
Alan, that is just beyond amazing. You are immortal!!
Hahaha. I like this plan. I would definitely take it to the hoop more if my snacks were under threat.
LOL
Here’s that Athletic article https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5933574/2024/11/20/mikal-bridges-knicks-fit/
Yeah, a unicorn who can protect the rim while not killing our spacing. You know, the type of player there are about 5 of in the NBA, none of whom we can afford…
That’s amazing, Alan!
There’s been a lot of talk about Mikal on offense, and IMO it misses the point. His role in our offense isn’t big enough to really threaten our prospects, and the offense has after all been good (though not as great as it seems given our weak schedule).
The 5-alarm fire here is on the defensive end, where he is just nowhere close to his reputation and has looked bad for more than a year. There is very little reason to believe this is ever coming back. Elite perimeter defense in the NBA is a young man’s game. Even someone like Kawhi fell off hard defensively long before his offensive game declined. Kawhi is still great offensively when he actually plays, but the serious DPOY consideration went away after age 25 and never came back. A team like HOU has a half-dozen better defenders than Mikal at a fraction of the price.
What’s devastating is that Mikal has somehow dropped off even more steeply. Being a below average defender shouldn’t even be possible with that wingspan.
It is so disappointing to be a finished product that isn’t close to finished. We’re either the worst defensive team in the NBA or we gut our offense by starting Precious, who isn’t exactly Gobert at the rim anyway. The player we would need at the 4 to make this team work is the kind of player that would cost a package like we spent for Mikal.
It’s really the worst Knicks trade of my lifetime. We were so close!
Yeah Mikal *looks* like an underachiever to me mostly bc I keep seeing his man blow by him. At these prices, I’m not gonna lie, I was def hoping for some Rodman-style lockdown D from him (or OG) but maybe that’s irrational. Maybe the game has just changed since the Worm (again, smarter minds have already opined this here).
Going forward, I know Precious Island is a very small community, but I spent a lovely week there last season, watching him running and slashing together with OG on the January beach, pushing the ball quickly off hard stops on D. I would love to go back there for a week or two this season, have a cold drink, sit under an umbrella. That island can be a lovely spot.
As for Mitch, I really hope he understands when Rabbit spits truth bombs like “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.” Hahaha.
Hey physio, get Mitch fit and behold the new twin towers!
EDIT: thx for the link @DonNelsonEra
Pags you’re fully deranged if you think the Mikal trade is worse than Mark Jackson for Chris Smith, Ewing going out, Marbury coming in, Eddy Curry coming in, or Bargnani coming in. I’m sure I’m forgetting some too.
Edit- yeah I did forget one- Melo coming in was a catastrophe too
Thanks for reminding me of that. I read it, but forgot about it. I think there is some validity to his thinking.
One of our issures right now is we don’t really have one of those
Yeah “Worst Trade in Knicks History” is some fighting words — not to mention a solemn incantation that opens a very scary box 😉
Calling the Bridges trade the worst in Knicks history after 16 games might be the worst take in Knickerblogger history
Pags,
I don’t think Mikal’s defense has been nearly as bad as you are describing. I think the problem is it hasn’t been good enough to make up for having Towns and Brunson on the court. I could say that about Hart also.
It’s the multiplier effect.
You can get away with a few extra breakdowns if you have a great rim protector and you can get away without a great rim protector as long as you have a plus defense otherwise and the C at least positions himself well. Right now our perimter defense is disappointing, things are breaking down and Towns is often out of position. I think some of that can get cleaned up as they play together more and some is just lack of effort, but I agree there are questions and issues.
KP back for Boston.
I have a home on Precious Island. I haven’t spent a lot of money fixing it up yet, but it’s there.
Before the season I isolated his numbers when he started at center while iHart was hurt. There were only 7 or 8 games but his production was remarkable. He should produce well in eFG% and rebounds when paired with Towns.
He’s not a great rim protector, though. And if you go with him, who sits? Hart & Achiuwa may kill the spacing (and Bridges’ value). Bridges & Achiuwa takes Hart out, which is hard to do when he’s playing this well.
Also a solemn incantation that opens a scary box 😉
PS — I have an irrational desire to see Precious, OG, Mikal, Hart, and Deuce play together as fast as they can run. But I also wanted Starks to keep shooting, so ….
Yeah, me too 🙁
Alan that’s the coolest thing anyone has ever posted here, congrats!
It’s definitely true that offense is not “the problem,” but Mikal just picking up some of the low-hanging fruit would be a major help. If he was just hitting a normal-ish number of his 3s, we’re probably 11-5 with the best offense in the NBA (we’re currently second, so again, not “the problem,” but every marginal point helps).
I’m pretty optimistic about his 3PT shooting coming around because he’s hitting jump shots at an insane rate from everywhere else on the floor. I won’t hazard a guess about his Ntilikinian FTr though, since that seems possibly attributable to a change in approach.
Generally, I am still preaching patience. Our record is frustrating but hardly a disaster, and despite some unforeseen setbacks (i.e. Mikal Bridges) the offense is looking about 98% as good as we were hoping.
From there, you hope that coaching and the return of Mitchious can get the defense from the bottom 3rd to the middle. It’s hardly guaranteed, but it’s an okay bet IMO.
Hubert, 7:49am:
Hubert, 9:01am
Hope your meetings are going better than your posting today!
While I don’t deny I am fully deranged… most of these are honestly much less bad in terms of opportunity cost and impact on the win curve.
The Ewing trade wasn’t horrific from an asset standpoint. Ewing was turning 38 and his production had fallen off a cliff the prior year. The vibes sucked but we didn’t really get fleeced.
The Curry and Mark Jackson/McDyess trade were disasters, but we were already very bad at that point and we were gonna be awful for a couple of years regardless. It certainly made us bad for much longer, but it didn’t fuck up a potential contender.
Marbury was shitty and overrated, but the only asset of significant value we lost out on was Gordon Hayward, who was good for 3-4 years of a 14-year career.
The Melo trade was bad, but we were a .500 team when we got him, and we did at least have our best season in the last 25 years with him.
Only the Bargs trade is comparable — Mikal is about as bad on the court (-2.2 BPM vs -2.3 BPM), but cost 500% of the price. The 2013 team was very old and likely to decline significantly anyway, while this team is in prime years and could have had a 3-4y window. This trade alone reduces our championship equity in that timeframe to zero and locks us into mediocrity. We can’t even start tanking until the 2030’s.
In none of these other scenarios were we realistically on a path to be a contender until the trade fucked it up. Just the opportunity cost is catastrophic. When we see BKN draft their Tatum and Brown with our picks, it’s gonna hit even harder. We were so close!
I had to chime in to also say congrats to Alan, that’s freaking awesome!
Starks was my favorite player as a kid and I can honestly blame that for a non-trivial portion of my many neuroses
Trevor Ariza for Steve Francis….
Pags, I think you’re overreacting and broadly disagree with you but time will tell
Why aren’t we talking about the fact that Moses Brown had 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting in 12 minutes last night?
Honestly, this is the worst one because there was no logic, and even less discipline, to it. It was an all-in, trade your only young asset for a vet move, but the vet played the exact same position as their only good player, and they were 15-37 going into the allstar break. The Orlando receptionist must have been like “Mr Smith, I have Isiah Thomas on line one. He says he wants to trade a 19 year old for Steve Francis. I think he may be drunk, sir. You should probably drop what you’re doing and take the call, before Mr Dolan gets wind of what he’s up to.”
Wake me up when he parts a cornfield
While the magnitude of this error was not enormous given Ariza only panning out into a decent 3&D guy, you’re right that it was very bad indeed.
If you recall the way Larry Brown talked about Ariza, it may have been one of those Thibsian cases of complete player/coach incompatibility. OTOH, Isiah pretty much considered anyone who averaged 20 PPG at some point to be a star, so he probably adding Franchise to our core of Curry, Marbury, and JC was gonna put us over the top. It was the golden age of crappy shoot-first guards who struggled to exceed 40% from the field. We were going nowhere anyway though, so it doesn’t sting like the Bridgniani trade.
What was Larry Brown even doing with us back then, anyway? A cynic might say he was trying to get fired as quickly as possible to collect that giant guaranteed paycheck. Did he and Phil Jackson just shamelessly use us as a pension program?
Crazy part about that time was that Marbury actually had an excellent 2004-05 season. They were over .500 heading into January but then suffered a string of close, heartbreaking losses that cost Lenny Wikens his job. The Isiah era went all downhill from there except for a brief solid stretch during the 2006-07 season where it looked like the Knicks might sneak into the playoffs until they inevitably collapsed although Crawford getting injured was a huge reason.
Only statistical data point that Isiah ever cared about and knew how to explain to anyone was a 20 ppg scorer. That should volumes to about his credibility as a GM team builder. However, he did a good eye for recognizing individual talent.
— ahhh those were the days, watching Coach LB give “unsanctioned” press conferences in the MSG hallways. Hahaha. What a weird time to be a Knicks fan (or a human being).
TBH I kinda miss the era where the most important metric of team quality was ‘guys capable of putting up 25 on any given night.’
If the Nets draft their versions of Tatum and Brown with 1st round picks likely to be in the 20s, they deserve to have them. More than likely they’ll come up with a few solid players and role players. That’s part of why we had to give up so many. Aside from Bridges being on a value contract this year, the assumption is our picks are unlikely to be very valuable over the next 5-6 years. So you have to give up more of them to raise the probability of the Nets drafting someone of Bridges quality.
I don’t think he has changed (learned?) all that much since then. I find that amazing. I feel like I know a TON more about team building now than I did even a few years ago. How does a former pro with significant jobs in the sport not develop a lot over time?
It’s funny, on some level I do still think people over-index on this particular thing, or at least something adjacent to it. I mentioned the verbal bar fight I got into the other night regarding whether KAT is a better offensive player than Melo was, and every time I made a point about efficiency (even relative to contemporary league averages) I was met with “bro, who do you want to have the ball with the game on the line, KAT or Melo?!”
Now, I don’t think the answer to that question is self-evident, but it did strike me as kind of odd to index so heavily on the very specific, rare scenario of “who do you prefer to take an isolation shot in a tied or one possession game?” Like, even if you think Melo is preferable in that situation, does it render the larger question answered? I don’t think so.
All that said, I think it’s also true that the value of “shot creation” has been empirically proven to a degree the more ardent Berri et al. acolytes weren’t willing to concede for a while. Being able to get off a decent look without the benefit of an assist is still probably the most scarce NBA skill, and the players who can’t do it undoubtedly benefit from the players who can. A good team should trade for Cam Thomas (and the Knicks should’ve drafted him).
Just some incoherent musings after a long day of housing court.
I was going to copy and paste a few jaw-droppers about that slow fat guy we’re playing later today, but there were just too many to choose. Here, look for yourself:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5945397/2024/11/25/nikola-jokic-nba-cup-ace-bailey-rutgers/
If this is the case…
Why has no other good team ever given up this number of picks for a never-All Star in NBA history?
Why are all the picks unprotected? Should be no big deal to add some minimal level of protection since we’re gonna be so good anyway.
What reason is there to think we’ll be any good in 2031 when Jalen Brunson is 35?
Brunson tearing an ACL or something is all it would take to make us a lottery team. Lots of small guards get hurt and fall off a cliff. Isaiah Thomas had a better year in 2017 than Brunson has ever had, got hurt, and never managed a positive BPM again.
Failure to manage risks like that is Isiah-esque.
I really don’t think the Marbury trade counts as bad. We gave up a bunch of junk (Howard Eisley, Antonio McDyess, Charlie Ward, Maciej Lampe), and two picks for a very good PG.
McDyess and Ward were expiring contracts. Getting rid of Eisley was cap relief. Two picks for Marbury is probably a fair price.
The Van Horn for Tim Thomas trade was a little bad, then the Curry & Francis trades were disasters. But Marbury was a pretty decent get.
The Marbury trade also took back junk (Penny) and if you don’t mind playing the results, only yielded 1.5 good seasons from Stephon
I was met with “bro, who do you want to have the ball with the game on the line, KAT or Melo?!”
https://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/ssnPlayerClutch.php?pid=2546
https://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/ssnPlayerClutch.php?pid=1626157
Yeah one of the problems with that trade was that we actually liked Penny Hardaway.
That trade didn’t work out but I wouldn’t put it in the pantheon of blunders. I wouldn’t put Bridges in there, either, unless something terrible happens. It looks like the Bucks have stabilized and the Knicks are still on track for a top 4 finish in the East, but it would only take a little bad injury luck to hand Brooklyn one or even two really good picks this year. That would really change the math.
Curry, Francis, Bargnani take the cake.
Again, IMO the value of future picks is in part related to their likely positioning in the draft (a guesstimate) and then the probability of what those picks are likely to produce from those guesstimated positions.
I can’t tell you what the Knicks/Nets guesstimates were, but if you assume the Knicks are going to be very good for the next 4-5 years (a reasonable position to take), a few picks in the 20s may not even produce a player of Mikal’s caliber.
When you start going even further into the future it gets even murkier because the Knicks will again have ammo to make additions/changes to this core using draft capital. Who knows what’s coming next, next year or the year after that.
My feeling is that the Knicks overpaid, but they were willing to do so with draft capital because they know they are very close to contention now. Incremental improvements NOW are better for a serious run in this 5 year window than drafting years out from now.
I get the point you are making, but I think the more significant question is whether this team is structured properly right now with Towns at C. We have a surplus of offensive firepower and a deficit of defense unless Mikal and Hart step it up and Towns can improve a bit. We may have to make another move using one or more of Mitch, Precious, Deuce and young players.
Bargnani was a player I would not have wanted for the vet minimum. I howled in agony when that trade was made.
The Joakim Noah signing was another one that made me feel almost physically manifesting pain the moment I saw what the terms were. I knew that one was doomed by the time I finished reading the Woj tweet.
That one was epically bad because not only was he not very good, he was already showing signs of injury issues and was on what many considered to be a bad contract. We were probably supposed to GET a pick to take on that contract.
One cannot reasonably project the Knicks will be drafting in the 20s for the next 3-7 years. Every pick beyond 2 seasons is a crapshoot. Just look at how quickly things went south for the Clippers & Nets after they traded the farm.
Pags is premature but there is very high risk.
I don’t think Berri was wrong about shot creation . Not at all. He was wrong about defense. Big time.
After Linsanity I will never believe in shot creation again.
What is Cam Thomas worth?
Does anyone seriously doubt Cam Payne could get 30 shots a game up for ten games if necessary?
I still think shot creation is far more fungible than people think. So much so it allows a lot of the specialization we have seen in terms of 3-d players and shot blocking rim runners…
just catching up on the thread…
first and foremost – holy cow – that is crazy awesome al…
second, thank you so much for asking about me cyber…
not a thing to be taken for granted, not at all…and much appreciated…
pretty bummed at the moment, seems I received a failing grade on my partnering up attempt…
I’m distant and disconnected to begin with, put some some distance in the relationship… no bueno…I know I’m not the easiest person to deal with…sorry I made my friend feel sad…
I don’t know…disappointed with myself…understandable though…
I’m okay, on active dad duty over the Thanksgiving holiday- got a turkey thawing in the fridge…
Thanksgiving food is the best 😊
I remember feeling conflicted about Noah. I loved him as a player at Florida and in Chicago. But it was also very clear he didn’t have a lot of career left. We got like one great game out of him.
There’s always a risk in these things. We are working with probabilities.
If I was doing this kind of thing I woud create a range of likely outcomes, assign a probability to each likely outcome and then try to value the whole thing. Then I would never think about it again no matter how things work out and how the draft goes. I’d only be concerned with the accuracy of my original valuation and not the results.
The Nets have risk too. Instead of getting solid picks they could wind up with a couple of picks in the 26-30 range and wind up drafting 2 busts and bench 2 role players.
I was bit conflicted also because Pau Gasol was similarly thought to be done at one point because of age, injuries and a decline in his production but he wound up recovering and having several more very good years. Noah was insisting his shoulder was OK.
It was a bet on whether Noah could do the same thing, but giving him the 4th year was a terrible error. 2 + a team option might have been an OK gamble.
The main problem though was the guy got paid and was out partying and getting laid every night intead of focusing on basketball. The problem was as much about his personality flaws as it was about what he had left.
I think he’s wrong, but it doesn’t have a lot of impact given the way teams are constructed. On any team there will be players that can’t create for themselves, but there will be a few that can. If you lose 1 of the players that can, there’s usually someone else that can step into that role or up their volume a bit without much loss of efficiency. That doesn’t mean that skill is not valuable. It means managements/coaches are typically smart enough to have several shot creators on the team. When there is a shortage though, you will see the problems.
I agree, the Marbury trade wasn’t that bad. The biggest problem with it was that we were still paying it off (2010 lottery pick) long after Marbury was gone (banished and eating vaseline on a plane to china).
Eddy Curry at least made sense because he was young and big and skilled. It just turned out horribly because we invested too much in him and it crapped out.
Bargnani was laughable, but, again, there was some sense to it as we were coming off a 54 win season and “the east was big, man” and the plan was to get bigger and spread the floor.
The Francis trade just made no sense for a 15-37 team that already had a max player at PG. It was bonkers. He wasn’t even that good when he was “good”, and by 2007 he was clearly on an irreversible downhill trajectory into badness. But, sure, empty the cupboard for him, why not!
You’re right about the rest but the Bargs trade was more nonsense than sense. If the East was big, a 7-footer who averaged under 5 RPG for his career wasn’t gonna help with that. If we needed to spread the floor, a guy who shot .303 from deep in the prior two years wasn’t gonna help with that (somehow he was even worse for us at .278).
The irony of that team is that we were good in the season by going small and putting guys like Chris Copeland at the 4 or 5, but that turned out to be a complete accident. Mike Woodson didn’t understand the advantages that gave us, and conceded to Roy Hibbert’s size by going big in the playoffs. A series that should have been us playing him off the floor was instead defined by him blocking our guys at the rim a hundred times due to some bullshit ‘verticality’ rule that was only in effect for like one month.
Then the rest of the NBA caught on to spacing and Hibbert was out of the league before age 30. Where was D’Antoni when we needed him?
But you’re overestimating the probability that we’ll be a top 10 team in 2027.
A team’s fortunes can change drastically in a few seasons. We’ve seen it happen so many times.
The Thunder drafted Jalen Williams with the Clippers lottery pick one year after LA was in the WCF.
The Lakers gave the 8th pick in the 2022 draft to the Pelicans two years after Anthony Davis led them to a championship.
The Nets just gave up the #3 pick in the most recent draft three years after Durant’s toe was all that stood between them and the finals.
There is no way to project today that the Knicks’ pick in 2027 is probably in the 20s. The range of possibilities is very wide.
Deuce is back
Will throw a thread up if Cronin fails us….