Knicks Morning News (2025.02.19)

“And while I agree with Z’s take, you can also look at the KAT trade as an underpay that balances things out.”

I have sort of mindfucked myself into accepting this, mainly on the premise that a) after making the Mikal deal, the prospect of acquiring a player of KAT’s stature (overrated as it is) without unprotected firsts seemed impossible, yet it happened, and it has worked out exactly as expected. More wins, higher ceiling. Probably still a bit short, but hey.

The mindfucking part is the assumption that if there actually were picks left over from the Mikal trade, Minny would have insisted on them, Leon would have caved, and KB nation would have been thrilled that he did. In other words, if the cost for KAT was Julius, Donte, two unprotected 1sts and the Detroit protected picks, my guess is that most here would have considered that a more than fair price.

In summary, I don’t see a world where the likes of Leon could have acquired both Mikal and KAT for less than we gave up in total. Leon seems like a decent, but not ruthlessly great, negotiator. But he did break the ice with both Toronto and Brooklyn, and with Klutch. Maybe that bodes well as teams start panicking about the luxury tax.

“I really think that team would have won the chip last year.”

Couldn’t disagree more. The Celts would have beaten them quite easily. But we’ll never know, so no use arguing over it.

“The Celtics were assembled by basketball people. The Knicks were assembled by an agent.”

I don’t think their respective backgrounds mean very much. There are basketball people all over the league that are fucking up their teams. Not a lot of agents get the opportunity that Leon has had, so the sample is pretty small, and that he’s done a better job than all of the basketball people that came before him as well as most of the basketball people around the league indicates that it really isn’t rocket science. It comes down to hiring and listening to the right people. For example, evaluating players in the draft does not need to be on the GM. The Knicks are clearly not special in this area. But that’s true about lots of basketball people.

What I’m saying is that after an initial learning curve, one that comes with any transition to a complex job, background doesn’t matter. Either you learn or you don’t. As the saying goes, there are people with 20 years of experience, and there are people with 1 year of experience 20 times.

“I think there’s a mindset with Leon where he acquires players based on talent and reputation first, and fit second. I’m not saying he disregards fit entirely, just that it’s not foremost in his mind.”

I don’t think this is true at all, at least a gross oversimplification of the truth when considered in its proper context. In other words, I don’t think Leon is turning down trades because the players are good fits but less talented than other players who are available. I mean, OG was acquired specifically due to fit, and is probably an overpay based on talent alone.

“As a result we have a team that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to be better than mediocre defensively given that our two best players are like 20th percentile defensive players. Brunson and Towns are fantastically talented, productive players. Trying to build a good defense around them doesn’t really seem possible.”

But wasn’t it you who kept saying we had too many nuts and bolts but not enough chrome and leather? Leon went out and swapped out Randle (already here, cost nothing) DDV (cost nothing), and the equivalent of 3 seconds for Brunson and Towns, two of the most chrome and leather players in the league. He surrounded them with Hart, OG, Mikal, Deuce, Precious, and Mitch, all of who can be characterized as “fit” kind of players.

It could certainly be argued that KAT and Brunson are not great fits defensively, but who were the other chrome and leather players theoretically available that were better fits? Especially for the price Leon paid to get them?

If anything, Leon cared too much about fit by overpaying for Mikal, and perhaps for OG.

“We have come full circle to pretending “get good players” is a method and not a goal.

I think our strategy should be to score more points than the other team, both by throwing the ball into the basket and also by preventing the other team from throwing the ball into the basket. That’s the JK47 method. You may subscribe to my Substack for a small fee.”

This is a really silly. Strat’s pov is pretty simple to understand, and boiling it down to this is ridiculous. His continual refrain has been that it doesn’t really matter whether a GM chooses the hybrid “method” or the tank-and-rebuild from scratch “method” so long as execution is grounded in “winning transactions,” i.e. bringing more value in than you send out in each transaction you make. So if you want to call it an approach rather than a method, whatever. But it isn’t a goal. Strat never said that the “method” is to “get good players.” I don’t see why you continually try to dumb down what he actually said.

And objectively, Strat’s take, to the degree that it have differed from yours, has been more than validated. In fact, it’s only because Leon has made critical errors in asset valuation, ones that caused the KB hivemind to explode, that the team is not in an even better position than where it is right now. Even so, the larger argument was about whether the hybrid method was a sound strategy if executed with care. The answer is yes. The evidence is overwhelming. Case closed.

“Actually the hive mind argued that all those critical errors didn’t matter.”

Actually I should not have used that term because one of the things I have argued is that there actually isn’t a KB hive mind, and that folks who agree on some issues often don’t agree on others. Sometimes there is near universal agreement (drafting Obi over Hali was a disaster, trading for KAT was a coup) and other times there is a variety of opinions regarding both the positive/negative aspects of a transaction and the implications.

But I think we can permanently dispense with the notion that the hybrid method is vastly inferior to the down-to-the-studs tank and rebuild. We can all concede that the latter method has more theoretical upside and more margin for error, but that difference was blown way out of proportion, and was gratuitously harped on every time Leon made a dubious decision.

No matter, I think we are all happy it turned out pretty well. Some still choose to pine over what could have been, and some still think we should have gone with a different POBO/GM and/or methodology from the start.

I think JK summed things up pretty well: “The questions we are asking now are high-class questions, and I’m thankful for that.”

“The valuable insights relate to the best way to go about this very broad goal”

Right. But that’s exactly what strat has always advocated, isn’t it? It’s not the fundamental method as much as how you go about executing the method! You, among others, argued that the hybrid method was dumb, period, because it involved threading multiple needles and an inordinate amount of luck, especially because free agency was dead and relying on trading for legit stars in their prime that didn’t involve gutting your team was foolish, as the teams who legitimately rebuilt by the One True Method would always be able to out-bid you for those players without gutting their team.

Strat’s “win transactions” approach is grounded in the assumption that a smart executive could build a sustainable contender by either method, and that choosing the “hybrid” method and executing it well is at least reasonably comparable to tolerating years of losing and praying that you land the next Wemby.

I think we all agree that Presti is the best executive in the NBA, in the sense that he’s the guy you would want making your draft pick, or executing draft-day transactions, or making trades, or signing free agents. The way I read strat’s consistent take is that: if he was hired instead of Leon in 2020, then even if he were boxed into a hybrid rebuild methodology and was forced to hire Thibs as his coach, he could have build a team at least as good as this one and maybe better. Brunson is only here and on his ridiculous deal because of Leon, so Presti has to overcome that enormous head start. But even with that, my money would be on Presti, and if one agrees with that, then Strat is even more vindicated.

Hart’s knee has been barking for a while. But sure, he probably plays too much.

Still, it’s nice to be heading into the home stretch with a fully healthy-ish roster.

Yeah, not trying to be dismissive of the concerns, the injuries are real. Just playing off of my long experience with players being “nicked up” but playing on, often to the point where it isn’t a concern. Honestly, I am way more worried about OG’s foot and Mitch’s ankle than Josh’s knee. I think he’s out to give him an additional day and to avoid the back-to-back, and that if it were a single game vs. a more important team he’d be playing. KAT played through a similar knee thing going into the break. He sucked vs. the Celts and folks here said he was clearly compromised and shoul have been shut down until after the break. Then lo and behold, he posts b2b 40 point games and no one complained.

My understanding is that we can’t sign any vet’s minimum players until March 1 when their prorated salary is below what we have left under the second apron. That said, Javonte Green is the very definition of a replacement-level player. He is a 6’4″ wing who can’t shoot except on ridiculously low usage and couldn’t stick on a minimum salary on two lousy teams. He is also pushing 32 years old. I don’t know where the idea that he is a decent 3pt shooter came from, in the two years he played over 500 minutes he shot 35% on 209 combined attempts, on a usage of around 11%. Shamet and Warren are both way better than him, and Delon Wright is at least as good, if not better. If Javonte started for us, either tomorrow or any other game, we’d be in trouble, or should I say, we;’d be in at least the same amount of trouble as if Delon started for us.

I think it’s pretty likely that Warren will be on the roster as soon as we can afford him. If healthy, he can actually help us in a pinch.

I also recall reading somewhere that Cleveland needed to fill the 14th roster spot that opened up when they traded 2 players for Hunter.