Knicks Morning News (2024.12.03)

Dude, if you were a Rocket’s fan you’d be pointing out that Sengun has a worse TS+ this year than RJ Barrett, Amen Thompson can’t even crack the starting 5 on a team that plays Dillin Brooks 31 minutes, and that Udoka is probably cheating on the Celtics staffer with a Clutch City Dancer.

I would! But I’d also be celebrating having the 5th best defense in NBA history, nestled right between the ’93 and ’94 Knicks. And because it’s based on 6 of the top 8 players being 23 or younger, I’d have reason to project substantial improvement on both ends.

I’d also note that Sengun’s career TS% is .577, and at age 23 he is a mortal lock to progress towards his mean and likely well past it. I wouldn’t be in much of a hurry to replace Brooks, who is well above OG in DEPM, and I certainly wouldn’t be stressing that Thompson is bad on offense given that he’s 21 years old.

As for Udoka, I’d be thrilled for him. Thibs probably wouldn’t have so many annoying foibles if he got laid every now and then!

That was pretty much the conventional wisdom about a very young Durant, Harden, Westbrook and Ibaka.

Sh$t happens, including injuries that lose seasons and derail development, budgets/taxes and upsets.

And it would have been absolutely right if they had ponied up to keep those guys, which is exactly what Dolan would have had the wherewithal to do if we ever had such a core. That’s why our failure to ever accumulate assets was so maddening — we had the highest possible upside from doing so.

Presti has greatly improved as a GM since then. If they don’t have enough money to keep Jalen Williams or whatever, they’ll flip him for a boatload of assets and the gravy train rolls on.

In one of the NBA2k games (maybe 2k15) I found a flaw in the franchise mode trade AI where teams put too little value on moving up in the draft. You could trade for the next pick up by signing the best available FA (usually a replacement level bench player) and packaging it with the lower pick. Occasionally there’d be a sticking point where you’d have to include, say, a low 1RP or minor player asset to get the next pick up.

By repeating this trick, it was possible to own, say, the top 5 picks in a given draft. Needless to say, my first move was to firesale every player on the Knicks so that I had almost every lottery pick for a couple of years. When the players matured, the resulting team eventually had multiple 82-0 seasons punctuated by 16-0 playoff runs until I got bored around 2030. Interestingly, we never had an MVP because every player just put up around 18 ppg on like 70% TS.

OKC has managed to do this, to the extent that it is possible, in the real league.

I love Sengun as much as the next guy, but comparing him to Jokic—even age 23 Jokic—is absurd. You cannot just project that because Sengun is putting up x BPM now that he will become Jokic 2.0 or better. Jokic has realized his 110%th percentile outcome. Very few players actually do that.

I didn’t say Sengun will definitely be 100% as good as Jokic in his prime. I said that he is comparable to Jokic at the same age. In their third seasons, they each did this:

Jokic
per36: 20.4/11.8/6.7 and 2.2 stocks
.603 TS, 6.9 BPM

Sengun
per36: 23.4/10.4/5.5 and 2.1 stocks
.585 TS, 4.9 BPM

Obviously Jokic’s improvement from that high starting point was improbable, and pretty much unprecedented as it relates to passing and shooting efficiency, but just the fact that Sengun isn’t far off is very impressive.

If KP was putting up numbers like that in year 3 this board would have looked like a P Diddy sex party.

Amusing comparisons that only increase the doubt around AIO numbers…

Why? Hart has played out of his mind and Brown has played poorly by his standards. It shouldn’t be surprising that AIOs like Hart.

Similarly, Pritchard has played out of his mind while Brunson hasn’t been quite as great as he was last season.