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171 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.02.27)”
Educate_the_weak says:
February 26, 2025 at 23:21
RJ Luis JR is an interesting prospect on ST Johns. I wouldn’t mind him with the pick in the 50s.
Downtown Doogie Brown says:
February 26, 2025 at 23:56
My G-d, ETW, do we really need to have another guy named RJ on this team to discuss ad infinitum? Hard pass. (Only kidding. I don’t follow college b-ball. If he’s good and he fits, I don’t care what his name is. And I do love St. John’s, as the first 7 years of my life were spent in Jamaica, Queens. But it’s not like Thibs will likely play him, anyway.)
Didn’t see the game tonight. Did Huk end the game hurt, or was he OK?
And it wasn’t just Day’Ron. The other Sharpe—Shaedon—had 36 points tonight.
Downtown Doogie Brown says:
February 27, 2025 at 00:19
Made me start thinking about the draft. How about Khaman Maluach (7-1, 250 out of Duke), who supposedly compares to Myles Turner? He’d be available to us at the end of the first round. That’s our sweet spot.
RIP Gene Hackman
I guess we gave up on being super cautious with Hart & OG.
Please stop trolling. Don’t ask why I’m saying that go figure it out.
RIP Gene Hackman, farewell and thanks.
Popeye Doyle, Harry Caul, Harry Moseby, Coach Dale, FBI’s Rupert Anderson, Little Bill Daggett, Johnny Gallagher and many others will stay with me forever.
I really wasn’t trolling; it was a sincere question. If you want to think otherwise, that’s kind of on you.
Yeah, Hackman was top-notch. Sounds like a tragic scene, his wife and dog were found dead with him but foul play not suspected. Maybe carbon monoxide?
Maluach is the best center in college basketball and will be a lottery pick.
Knowing that is on you
Doogie, beyond what Owen said, we don’t even have a first rounder. Maybe if you indicated that you knew that and proposed how to acquire one, it wouldn’t have been interpreted that way.
I told you that I don’t follow college ball. There is no requirement that I do so, as far as I know.
He hurt his knee
Thanks, Z-man. I was going by a Web site that said that we had four total picks, including two in the first round (admit that it didn’t sound right, though, as I know what we gave up for Mikal—just didn’t know if they were all 2025 picks, or future ones). I can be accused of picking my NBA draft Web sites badly, or maybe of “believing everything I read” on one of them, but that’s all. 🙂 No ill intended here.
Although I do wonder if teams above, at, or near the aprons will be looking to move firsts at bargain prices to avoid the guaranteed salaries, cap holds, etc.
By the way, that Web site also said that Maluach is slated to go at the end of the first round. I wasn’t trolling on that, either. I just believed some bad information. Seemingly not updated fully for 2025 draft yet.
There is also Amari Williams out of Kentucky.
Hackman was one of those guys where nearly every performance he gave had a good argument to at least be nominated for an Oscar. (It is insane that he wasn’t nominated for The Conversation, which is one of the all-time great screen performances.) The police say no foul play, which points to something like carbon monoxide. Still, an awful scene, especially since his wife (and dog) were much younger.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6162451/2025/02/27/knicks-buyout-market-names-to-watch/?source=emp_shared_article
We can sign a 15th man on Saturday, and Edwards III runs down the five candidates. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t TJ Warren, with Okeke as the only other one I wouldn’t be shocked by.
(I should amend that to “runs down five candidates,” not “the five candidates,” since the three non-Westchester guys are just free agents whom Edwards thinks might be a fit, even if he doesn’t expect the organization to bring in someone from the outside at this point.)
Anyone else feel like Josh Hart might take more pride in averaging double figures in rebounds rather than how many points he averages? He’s at 14.7/9.8/5.7 right now. Those would be career bests for him in rebounds and assists, and only 0.2 less than the 14.9 points he averaged for the Pellies/Portland three seasons ago.
Jeez, RIP Gene Hackman.
Considering Josh actively passes up open looks I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Of the 5, I’d be okay (or Okeke) with any of them. They will largely be a break glass in case of emergency player. With KAT and Huk both having knee issues and Mitch being Mitch, maybe an emergency big is the way to go. Wood is talented, but a low-IQ player. Is there another guy out there over 6’10” with long arms?
My guess is that TJ’s patience is rewarded, seems like a stand-up guy and he was a legit NBA rotation player when healthy. Okeke and Duarte never were, and Richardson is probably shot.
Couldn’t access Alan’s link. Is “Wood” Christian Wood? Which “Richardson” is this?
By all accounts, it’s a psychological thing with Hart. He goes through stretches where he becomes convinced that he can’t, or at least, shouldn’t, shoot. And then he goes through other stretches where he will bomb away whenever left open. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for how long it takes him to get out of the former phase and into the latter.
And this is why, even with the season he is having, I think moving Josh to the bench if Mitch starts is the way to go.
Mikal can shoot and score and spread the floor better than Josh. Josh can be the energy guy off the bench who grabs boards and gets out in transition and sets up Deuce and Cam (and TJ, lol).
If Mitch starts, we don’t need Josh’s rebounding as much. But he would shore up the bench so much and he’s still going to play a ton of minutes and probably close out a lot of games.
Politically, though, it could be tough. Yes, we gave up 5 picks for Mikal but Josh is also super tight with Brunson.
But I think the team is better served with Josh off the bench.
Hart will inevitably go off in the 1st rd and light up Detroit or Milwaukee from 3.
Mikal looked pretty good filling in offensively with Towns out.
The Hackman news seems strange. Will leave it at that.
My personal rank of the five candidates:
1. Okeke/TJ Warren (mainly because they waited in Westchester)
2. Duarte
3. Richardson
Don’t touch with a 30-feet pole: Christian Wood
Richardson first name? Josh? If Josh, we don’t need him.
Yes, Josh Richardson and Christian Wood.
approximately one hundred and fifty thousand people die each day…a mind boggling number…
lifestyles of the rich and famous, some die with a name, some die nameless…
Since our most astute poster brought up the draft, I’m seeing that the Ivisic twins are ranked really low (end of 2nd round). Yet their stats seem legit for freshmen. And they’re each 7’2” with legit range. I know their rebounding is weak, but they could be good targets, especially the one playing for coach Cal.
Thanks, Z-man. Yeah, hard no on Christian Wood. Talented, but he’s failed too many times in too many places to think he can help. We already have better versions of Josh Richardson and of Chris Duarte, too, for that matter.
I like both Warren and Okeke as experiments. Can we get both if we get rid of Matt Ryan?
Is (my worst draft miss ever) Mo Bamba available? Seems like he’d be a good end of bench big.
Apologies if that was a sincere mistake, but it’s difficult to believe when we only have a single pick at the end of the 2nd round and the player is way above the end of the 1st.
Bamba was playing for the Clippers not that long ago (a month?), and playing pretty decently. Not sure of current status.
Like I said, bad Web site, and too naive on my part to notice that the information was bad. Don’t want to call out the Web site by name, as it probably will be better and more reliable closer to the draft. No apology necessary; I get it.
Bamba was traded to the Jazz February 1st and waived by Utah February 2nd.
There were rumors about him in the buyout market and Euroleague’s market but from what I read it looks like he could still be free.
If Bamba is available, not sure why we’re not jumping on that opportunity.
https://x.com/DraftExpress/status/1894766693999611973?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet Would the Knicks actually tank?
Maybe his wife pulled a Cio-Cio-San from Madame Butterfly? It’s the first thing that came to mind.
Intriguing video, ETW, with the caveat that all of those highlight/hype videos only show the “good stuff” without any of the bad. And we’d never tank with this coach.
Shit, if the Wiz somehow got Cooper Flagg *and* this guy, they’d be more than scary. (Probably wouldn’t be bad enough to get Dybantsa if they get Flagg, though.)
Bamba has elite measurables but apparently no motor or b-ball IQ. Can he be coached up? Starting with punching him in the nuts every time he attempts a 3? I mean, Luke Kornet has all of a sudden become a very valuable rotation piece, and part of the reason is that he is no longer being used as a stretch 5. Is the motor beyond repair? It would be a nice story, he was born in Harlem so they could re-do Melo’s whole “I’m Coming Home” thing…
Took a look at box out numbers. Hukporti has been bad rebounding and wondered if he was boxing out instead of going for the board. It’s more common in Europe, unless that’s changed. With Hart the first to every ball, it would also make sense strategically.
Last night Hukporti had 3 boxouts in the boxscore. For comparison, every other player on both sides combined for 4. Huk averages 2.8 per 36, which puts him 22nd in the league but absolutely does not make up for his poor rebounding. But some other stuff I found:
The top boxer outer per 36 is, unsurprisingly, Stephen Adams.
Zach Edey is 2nd. I guess being big isn’t enough when you’re that slow.
Then it starts getting interesting (at least 100 minutes):
3. Taj
4. Valanciunas
5. Sims
6. Hartenstein
Hartenstein seems to have been pretty good pre-Knicks too, but most of those samples were pretty small. Mitch is up near the top when he plays. Thibs has a type.
Looking back 6 years ago, the leaders in box outs today are averaging half what those guys did per 36… Or 1/3 of Knick-legend Ed Davis’s number. Not sure if that’s a philosophical change or a stat keeping change but it’s a wild discrepancy.
For what’s worth, the game thread jokes* about Mikal’s ability to disappear have a link with numbers.
In 10 February games, including yesterday, his USG% (17.8%) was the lowest of the year so far, a little weird when you consider that OG, KAT and Josh missed a bunch of game during this month and additional shots were available.
Let’s hope yesterday’s game, or at least the first quarter*, was a sign of (good) things to come.
* Stats, Humor, Analysis
** Fun fact (?): JB had 7 assists in the 1st quarter, none in the the rest of the game.
In games when KAT is out, we very much need Brooklyn Mikal to appear. We definitely got that in stretches last night, especially early on. I just don’t know if the usage issue the majority of the season is a Mikal thing or a scheme thing. But we need a secondary creator, and he’s much more capable of that in theory than OG, Hart, or Deuce.
EB,
I was thinking the same during the game and started eye-testing Huk closely.
To me it’s in part boxing out, in part rim-protecting/helping out the bounce radius and in part some iffy timing/not-so-strong hands.
Some things should improve with experience.
But at least he often raises his arms 😉
Oh, geez. Max just mentioned “rim protecting” again. Be afraid. 🙂
I’m not worried about Brooklyn Mikal showing up. When Towns is in he’s naturally going to get way fewer touches. When Towns is out he shows he’s capable of doing a little more than just 3rd option. We obviously aren’t always going to get the same consistent scoring we get from Towns. That’s why Towns is 2nd option. But he can step into the role. I’m more worried about OG. He doesn’t look right yet to me.
RIP Gene Hackman. That one hurts. He’s on my GOAT short list.
Wow..that Gene Hackman news is really heartbreaking. I think we all can and should be doing a better job checking on our elders.
Rest well to the legend, man.
Sheesh
The more I think about it..maybe Mitch should start once he’s back. To accommodate for the lack of scoring on the 2nd unit, we can just have Hart on that unit and go small with Achiuwa at the 5. That way we play at a faster pace with lots of switching and just enough rebounding to not fall way behind when they’re out there. But for now we should probably sign someone like Bamba to a 10 day just to hold us until we figure out our KAT/Mitch/Hukporti availability thing
i am the danger
https://x.com/nbeinstein/status/1895153595638845750?s=46
It’s odd because I also remember reading that he was an elite student with an exceptional non-bball IQ. I think most people had high hopes for Bamba, but at his age, I’d say there really isn’t upside anymore. He should probably go to Europe, but I’d take him in Westchester.
I don’t see the point of bringing in Mo Bamba unless it’s to Westchester. He’s never been able to stick anywhere and even teams that are desperate for bigs, like LAL, don’t want him. Maybe he’ll figure it out someday but I don’t think it’s going to happen on an NBA team first.
Think it was Taco that wanted to study engineering
Everyone mentions Hoosiers but my favorite Gene Hackman sports movie is The Replacements.
Has anyone seen Nickel Boys? Was reading an article to prepare for my Oscar pool and apparently it’s the best movie of the year. (but won’t win)
A reliable friend says it’s great; haven’t seen it
Huk out 4 to 6 weeks with a torn meniscus.
Well, shit.
EDIT: BBA beat me to it!
That stinks
TY Rama
Christian Wood and Mo Bamba have a proud history of getting fan bases excited and then disappointing them profoundly.
It’s boring and like most 15th roster spots is unlikely to amount to anything, but seeing if Warren has anything left to give still seems like the best option. At least he’s throwing up 10(!) 3s per game in Westchester. Lord knows we could use that.
I wonder if this makes them change direction in terms of the 15th roster spot? Mitch is in theory back soon, but we need him to be healthy or we could soon be looking at 48 minutes of Precious.
4-6 weeks seems like the timetable for removing, not repairing, the meniscus.
I am not a doctor, but my impression is that is almost never a good idea.
Seeing some stuff on Twitter about how hard we tried to acquire Embiid in the offseason before Towns and Mikal.
Was that a thing? I have the memory of a goldfish but I feel like I should remember that if it was ever a possibility.
Certainly, it makes you feel better about what we did end up doing.
Damn, feel so bad for Huk. Is this related to his past surgery or different?
Is Moses Brown still around?
That is depressing. It may change what we do with our last roster spot.
If we did go after that bum we certainly did it quietly. It was not discussed here.
I’ve actually been wondering if Embiid is a decent buy low candidate now that Morey probably has to attach picks to dump his salary. We know Leon has always coveted him so it’s probably going to be in play.
Let’s say Brock Aller can figure out a magical way to bridge the salary gap without including Mitch or anyone meaningful…
and let’s also assume he’s just injured and his knee isn’t permanently blown out…
would you do OG for Embiid and the Sixers ‘29 first, and bet on a culture change/work ethic to change his trajectory?
The upside of KAT & Embiid is enticing but I think I’d be afraid to stake the whole Jalen Brunson era on it.
Fuck that guy. No thanks.
Jake Fischer said:
So doesn’t sound like anything concrete, but for all of the legitimate grievances we do have, man, “bullet dodged” does not go far enough.
Doesn’t seem like Embiid is with CAA anymore
That’s how I feel but if it’s true we pursued him this summer even after that playoff series then it’s safe to assume Leon still loves him. When Morey starts looking to dump Embiid we’re probably his first call. If the medical report is bad enough, I have no concern. But if it’s encouraging…
There is positively no way we can match $55.2M in salary next season without giving up extremely valuable players, plural, and the rest of Fischer’s article makes it seem like this might be heading towards a very sad medical retirement (that’s my speculation, not his words).
Let me go to the trade machine…
We can cut Matt Ryan for a two-way C to use until KAT or Mitch comes back. That way we can use the 15th spot on a big wing.
That’s not a bad idea, EB. Moses Brown would have been useful in this circumstance, but such is life.
If the medical report is encouraging I have no doubt Leon would throw in Mitch to match the salary. But I also have no doubt that everyone here would have said no to OG + Mitch, so I came up with the alternate scenario.
Brock Aller is pretty impressive, though, and only $15M separates Overpaid Grossly Anunoby from a recent MVP next year. I can see him finding a way to bridge that with Precious and filler.
Fingers crossed, then, that Embiid’s medical is terrible. Not just bc it will be horrible for him and the Sixers, but bc I’m afraid we’ll trade for him if it isn’t.
I was an advocate for Embiid once upon a time, maybe three years ago now, but after last year’s playoffs, fuck that guy. Bullet dodged indeed. While this team has lots of holes and can be quite frustrating, I feel pretty good about rooting for them as people.
Prior to the start of the season Joel was a top 5 player with a contract that likely would be an albatross in later years or if he was injured beforehand. That the Knicks, or any team with a current three year window were lurking makes perfect sense. Yes bullet dodged but can’t blame Leon for some significant sniffing.
Karma’s a bitch
Bummed about Huk, he was starting to look pretty good.
This makes sense
Wouldn’t signing a 10-day push back the date we can sign an ROS minimum? It may well be worth it to be clear, but it could interfere with a wink-wink agreement we might already have with Warren.
The downside is 2-ways are limited to players with only so many years of NBA experience, so whoever it was would probably suck.
As TNFH suggests, the 10-day would push the Warren timeline back 10 days. On the other hand, we could theoretically sign someone better.
If Mitch is coming back this next game and KAT too, do we need to sign a guy right now? Could we get TJ and then grab a center in a few weeks?
Here’s the order of things to do the EB plan:
1. On Saturday, sign Warren or Okeke to a vet minimum contract for the rest of the season.
2. Cut Matt Ryan, or Jacob Toppin, but try to keep them in Westchester ecosystem.
3. Find a FA or an available G-leaguer and sign them to a two-way contract, to serve as the fourth-string center behind KAT, Mitch, and Precious. This guy wouldn’t be expected to play much, and is just there for nights like last night where KAT isn’t playing.
3.
Embiid is contemplating surgery where they intentionally break his hip
Any volunteers?
In a just world Embiid’s surgery would be performed by one Mitchell Robinson
Shooting myself out of a mini-cannon or rocket launcher directly into his hip (with a helmet on, of course) sounds pretty fun. Sign me up.
Also the idea of acquiring Embiid at any cost seems absolutely terrible unless he’s a salary dump. What, is Greg Oden not available?
From the New York Times: Scattered Pills Found Near Body of Gene Hackman’s Wife as Inquiry Continues
Think Morey offering OG max money and forcing Leon to overpay karma yielded him to overpay for PG is turning out to be very painful.
Unless Boo Buie has any ardent fans, seems to me we should use his two-way spot on an emergency center.
Moses Brown unfortunately has too much service time, as do most players who aren’t terrible.
Marques Brown? Olivier Sarr? Bleak stuff, but probably a slightly better use of the spot than Boo “allegedly real person” Buie.
Totally saddened by Hackman news. Mississippi Burning still haunts me.
man, bummed about huk…
I know mitch is back, so: mitch, KAT and precious to cover the 5…
I wonder ifnwe go pick up a “big” from “somewhere”…
that’s so rotten, first nba start…sports and health are not fair…
Back in summer 2022 we had some very lively discussions about trading for Embiid fresh off of his MVP year.
I believe that became the Matt “Not the QB” Ryan spot after we cut him to sign Shamet
what about betsy, why are we not more crushed about losing poor betsy…
gene had a job that he was really good at, good for gene…
betsy played the piano…seems she also edited some of gene’s historical fiction novels…they met in 1991…they was partnered up for a while…
Ah, right. Well with Warren in tow, an emergency center still seems like a better use of the spot than an emergency whatever-Matt-Ryan-is.
Yes, we have 14 plays under NBA contracts, plus Matt Ryan, Jacob Toppin, and Kevin McCullar Jr. on two-ways.
Seems overly punitive to not be able to swap out one vet’s min for another, so long as it’s within the constraints of the aprons (in our case, no one who made more than the MLE.) Sigh, it is what it is.
With both Huk and Sims gone, KAT gimpy, and Mitch untested, I hate to say it because I like TJ a lot, but it seems like acquiring an emergency big is sort of a must.
So if the “Knicks” are reporting Huk will be back in 4-6 weeks can I safely assume he’ll be back for camp next season or should I pad that a few months?
I think we are more or less in the same position we were just in.
Now it’s Towns, Mitch/Precious instead of Towns, Huk/Precious.
Precious at C is not my ideal C if Mitch is not looking good, but we’ve already done that for awhile. No matter what, a lot depended on Mitch.
Shame about Huk. But if he was going to get injured good timing. Showed in his last 2 games NBA level potential. Beats getting injured a week ago in a practice. At the same time we have the knowledge of a Huk-less near term when deciding on the end of bench slots.
If the medicals are ok, you do OG & Mitch for Embiid in a tenth of a second. Massive “if,” obviously.
A couple repetitions:
1. Since they aren’t in the draft and have pretty much decimated the asset chest, they are going to have to take a risk to get to the next level.
2. We really have to lose this idea that OG is a “championship player” or that he “impacts winning” or that and therefore the related idea that “we should hang onto him because if they take the next step, his impacting winning and doing the little things and “he’s a championship player,” he’ll be extra super valuable to have around.” Nothing in his career or what we’ve seen in him supports that in the least. He’s a nice player, nothing more. With significant limitations. Easily dispensable if he can be upgraded. They should have offered him for Butler; who knows, maybe they did. If he can pull in an Embiid at 90%, you do that in a heartbeat.
How did Killian Hayes get 19 (5-of-10 from 3, and 7-of-13 overall) with 7 assists against one of the best defensive teams of all time last night? Did OKC overlook them?
Gene Hackman is obviously a legend and massive talent, and unfortunately it’s starting to seem like the news about his death and that of his lovely and talented wife is a bit dubious. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be.
Pistons are going to be a tough out if the Knicks draw them. They’re getting Ivey back before playoff time as well. Cunningham will garner MVP votes.
While I don’t normally snuffle around celebrity shockers, I’d go with Gene falling down (usually a death knell for someone at 95), his wife being unable to bear it, and one of their three dogs finding a few of her spilled pills.
That’s my attempt at Occam’s Razor. Damned fine talent though. Can’t think of a role where he wasn’t the absolute dominant thing happening in the film.
Pistons look like they’re going to be the 4 seed.
I would like to get vengeance against Indiana in round 1.
So you are telling us we should ignore reality because you disagree?
The problem is you are not weighing the value of his defense properly and further ignoring the value of him being a terrific defender at several positions.
Let me try to explain the value of that.
Imagine you are a great defender at SG but you can only guard other SGs at that very high level due to size, strength, speed or other issues.
That means the positive impact of your elite defense is somewhat limited to the nights you guard a SG that’s critical to the other team’s offense. Let’s just randomly say that’s 50% of the time and the rest of the time you are guarding some role player at SG position.
Now imagine you are a defender of equal quality but because of your length, strength and other qualities you have the versatility to handle the best player at any of 3 positions and do a great job. So about 90% of the time we are getting a big benefit from your elite defense.
Versatility of defense is valuable.
OG has that quality.
That was one of the things I loved about Frank back in the day. He had the length and ability to guard 3 positions well and he used his length to be disruptive to passers. None of that was being captured statistically (other than maybe on/off). The problem was he couldn’t throw the ball into the ocean and his injuries stifled his development.
The difference here is that OG is a better defender, can shoot 3s at a high clip and finish at the rim dunking on cuts and leak outs. So you are getting high efficiency on moderate usage to go along with all that versatility impact on defense.
Need OG against PF? check
Need OF against a SF? check
Need OG against a SG? check
Need OG spot minutes against a C? check
Need OG to switch onto a PG and at least be competent? check
“…and finish at the rim dunking on cuts and leak outs.”
As long as he doesn’t try to lay it in…
You’re imagining things that aren’t there. His teams in Toronto underperformed. His team in New York has done the same. There’s simply no evidence for the proposition. It’s one of the most imaginary things I’ve heard in multiple decades of following sports. It does not exist.
In terms of your positional discussion, most of the board and the commentators have been talking for weeks on end about how he’d be significantly better at another position (Mitch comes back, him and Mikal go “down” a position, presto — a bunch of problems get solved.). Pretty sure you’ve been in that group. So how can it possibly be argued that he has some kind of massive defensive positional versatility? It’s really the exact opposite — he needs a certain group and type of people around him to really “shine.”
Yeah OG has been playing “out of position” all season and has still been doing a competent job guarding PF’s.
This is another reason to start mitch. We lose some spacing with Mitch at C but we gain great RIM PROTECTION (yeah, I said it) and rebounding. We move KAT to PF where he is a better defender (and still a better offensive option than Randle) AND we move OG to his natural/best position, which is SF.
WTF are you talking about? We’re 18 games over 500 and probably the 4th best team in the league. Our record last season with OG was incredible.
You can’t be this dense. Just because OG is versatile enough to defend at the PF position doesn’t mean it’s his ideal position.
This is a really funny thing to say about a potential Joel Embiid trade.
Buddy, if “the medicals” were anything other than a five alarm fire this would not have been brought up. They are talking about intentionally breaking a bone in his hip.
And if the surgery works, you trade OG and Mitch for him without blinking.
Duh.
“Losing” a negative BPM player scheduled to make 176 over the next 4 to take a shot on a fixed and repaired MVP-caliber true center is a no brainer.
They have the 22nd rated defense in the league and are getting lit up on the perimeter. (And overall.)
JJ Reddick seems like a good coach. If you put him and Thibs on the market who gets more interest
“Let’s trade for Joel Embiid” is another one of E’s Very Bad Ideas, along the lines of “Let’s trade for Dejounte Murray” and “Let’s get old man Paul George” and “Let’s give a longer look to Cam Reddish” and “Let’s trade for the last fumes of Jimmy Butler.”
None of those were serious ideas, all were terrible ideas, and we should all be very thankful E is not running the New York Knicks. He floats these terrible ideas out there because he knows there’s a zero percent chance of them happening.
*I’ll admit I didn’t hate the Dejounte idea at the time, since he was kind of a buy-low proposition at that point, but he stunk and then got hurt, so my bad on that one. That one also turned out to have been a bad idea.
I didn’t say “Trade for Joel Embiid.” I said if the medicals are ok and he was offered to me for OG and Mitch, “yes” should be said inside a tenth of a second.
Take a look at his career “on court” and “on/off” covering playing multiple positions and for multiple coaches. It’s excellent.
The only negative year he’s had was when he was only 21, had his lone subpar terrible shooting year (not sure if he was injured) and was playing behind peak Kawhi Leonard. So of course the team was better with Leonard on the floor that year.
One year is noise.
Having a terrible backup is noise.
An entire career is not noise! He’s a strongly PLUS player and much of it comes from the defensive side.
“If the medicals are OK”
LOL
Could E actually be Isiah?
I’ve been underwhelmed by OG this year. His defensive impact feels more muted than it did last year, and 36% on corner threes just doesn’t cut it at his salary (career is 41%, which is what we signed up for). He’s losing out on a lot of efficiency by only hitting “wide open” 3s at that same mediocre rate.
That said, his record when it comes to impacting winning is unimpeachable. His teams are pretty much always measurably better with him on the court, and I’m not aware of any ways you can chop that up that would demonstrate it’s all a bunch of noise. There’s no evidence it was all the product of other good players in Toronto, for example. This is all distilled in RAPM, of course.
I’m not really responding to E because he has his whole thing about Clank that makes him unable to discuss OG rationally, more so just musing. But we absolutely do need OG to play better.
On-offs are not convincing, sorry. At the very least, you have to try to adjust and estimate for teammates and players played against, and EBPM at least tries to do that.
When you turn there, you see that he’s 117th in offense, significantly below Barrett and Quickley (Mikal is below both as well, at 102); and 118th in defense.
In BBRef terms, he’s again a negative BPM player. Stripping the (negative) defense out, he hasn’t had a non-negative OBPM since 2021-22, and even that was only +0.4. For his career, he’s a negative OBPM player.
If the medicals are ok, you do OG & Mitch for Michael Jordan in a tenth of a second. Massive “if,” obviously.
I find that shocking, but they are saying Lebron is defending at a very high level again lately. Maybe Vanderbilt being back is helping. I haven’t seen enough. We’ll see how sustainable that is.
I wasn’t paying close attention to the details of Embiid’s condition. It seems to be so bad there’s no way he’s a potential buy low candidate for anyone. Like Doogie earlier today, I aplogize for wasting the blog’s time with something that has no chance of happening.
In terms of just general normal observation, the Raptors had a nucleus of Fred Van Vleet, OG, Scottie Barnes and Pascal Siakim, with some decent bench pieces. Didn’t work out really at all.
Just simply no real, serious evidence that the guy “impacts winning” at all. If anything, the opposite. For whatever psychological reason — to a degree, Ecksteinian and hustlebunny-ian — there are a lot of people who really want to believe that players like OG “impact winning” and are the type “championship teams want around,” but he and they really don’t.
There’s nothing really wrong in a general, human sense with promoting “hard working” players who don’t do much but do the “important” things well, and on the other hand, kind of de-privileging the type of people who coast and make it look easy. But there’s nothing at the end of the day to be found in basketball terms within that somewhat admirable dispensation. Basketball’s a cruel, harsh mistress. It don’t lie.
What about: Need OG and the cap flexibility to fill out the rest of your rotation?
IMO BPM is bad at measuring defense as are most metrics.
On/Off is noisy but I prefer is as a signal for defense because we measure offense so well, that if the on/off is wildly out of line with measured offense, most of the difference can be attributed to defense or other things of value not being captured by boxscore. You just have to look at it over longer periods and add some subjective analysis because over short periods it can be very misleading.
I’m not a big fan of metrics that try to adjust for how good the other players on the court were. It makes perfect sense, but they can’t handle subtle lineup combination issues.
I’d rather just look at long term on/off, lineups, backups, defensive FG% for that player, listen to what players are saying, watch games and subjectively come to a conclusion. The old saying is that I’d rather be approximately right than precisely wrong using something like defensive BPM etc…
I’ll be kind and again say you are ignoring reality. I can’t have a discussion with someone that ignores reality.
Toronto replaced OG and two better defenders with RJ and two worse ones and along with Barnes and Poeltl, they got roughly 4 points per 100 possessions better on defense.
A lot of OG’s impact last year “coincided” with other factors, most notably the rise of Isaiah Hartenstein and the replacement of RJ Barrett with Donte DiVincenzo.
On the roster, OG replaced RJ. But in the scheme, he replaced Grimes. Donte replaced RJ and that was the huge plus. The narrative was lazy, and the attribution analysis poor. And we paid for it (literally).
If you call “playing much worse defense as a team in the playoffs than the year before” and “losing to a worse team than in the playoffs the year before,” then sure — huge plus, yeah.
As a general aside, there’s no real requirement that you “maintain your cred” with the “other side” by ripping RJ Barrett when he really has very little to do with any of this. You could have just stopped with Hartenstein, as you did before you added the rest. I know you want to draw me out on the topic or worry “that he’s really just talking about RJ when he writes those things about people other than RJ,” but really I’m not.
But it wasn’t just Hartenstein.
Eliminating RJ was impactful.
Donte’s explosion was impactful.
Josh Hart’s regression to the mean was impactful (he was horrible in the first half of last year and incredible in the second).
The emergence of Deuce was impactful.
And OG himself was very impactful.
All of it combined was a tour de force. But somehow it got reduced to “OG’s impact on winning”, and he took that bullshit to the bank.
(OG certainly has a positive impact on winning; but so do players who make half his salary.)
Since being traded here, and looking only at the games he played, OG has a net rating of +11.72 when he’s on the floor. When he sits, the Knicks have a -3.26 net rating.
Looking at Toronto last season, they had a terrible 120.23 DRtg when neither RJ or OG played.
It got even worse, dropping to 120.93, when RJ played.
It improved to 115.33 when OG played.
For games in which both OG & Hartenstein played, they had a 101.35 DRtg in the minutes they shared.
Hartenstein had a 118.2 DRtg without OG in those games.
On the other hand, OG had a 105.32 DRtg without Hartenstein.
We see a similar pattern with Donte that I don’t care to write out and also with all of Hartenstein, Donte, and OG.
What’s that kind of transaction called? I feel like there has to be a name for it….
How many minutes are we talking about here?
And how many of this minutes was Mitchell Robinson the replacement for Hartenstein?
I appreciate that you bring data to the table, EB, but it’s not always meaningful.
No one smart cares about how well Player A plays with a certain group of players relative to how other different players play with each other against different players.
So you add massively more imprecision and much less isolation of important variables and get a different result. Big deal.
OG plays with prime Michael Jordan, prime Magic, prime LeBron, prime D-Wade. The bench consists of five chuckleheads off the Rucker Park blacktop. They hockey line switch five-for-five.
What do you suppose OG’s on-off numbers will be in that scenario?
Adjusting for that as best as possible in EPM, we find that OG is on the wrong side of the top 100 in both offense and defense. Using BBRef’s BPM just for offense, he’s negative for his career and negative most seasons in his career, including last year and this year.
There’s nothing there. It’s pure illusion. The precise degree to which the illusion is based on the psychology of “hate boner for RJ, we see OG as the pure, unalloyed metaphysical opposite of RJ” will be left for others to decide. (But it’s a high degree.)
Humans typically are much better at seeing what they know than they are knowing what they see. Let’s chalk all this up to (mostly) that.
We have a very large sample of play before OG was there that we can look at, and it tends to look the same as the very small sample after OG arrived.
Look, say whatever you want about RJ Barrett. He’s been better with Toronto. Rotation caliber player.
He SUCKED here. He had a .536 TS% on 27.6 USG. A possession used by RJ Barrett was a possession flushed down the toilet. He had a 92 TS% and he chucked the ball constantly. He was awful.
Hell motherfucking yeah we got better when we shipped his ass out. He stunk.
Again, we have the math to isolate this stuff, you just don’t like the result of that either.
It has OG at 117 and 118 in the association, offense and defense. I’m fine with it.
I don’t care about the sample RJ Barrett was in. I care about the sample you presented as if it proved that OG had more impact than Hartenstein when the two of them played together.
How many minutes comprised the sample? And how many minutes did Mitchell Robinson play with OG in the Hartenstein-off data?
And why did you only present DRtg? One would naturally expect the impact of Donte replacing RJ to show up mostly in the ORtg.
Maybe not, but I certainly care about the 1.3 BPM RJ Barrett put up in the 2023 playoffs (0.9/0.4) juxtaposed against the 0.4 (-0.7/1.1) OG put up in last year’s playoffs.(*)
Hartenstein’s playoff numbers:
2023: 2.5 (-1.4/3.9)
2024: 1.3 (-0.1/1.4).
Very solid player. Better defender than OG, no question.
(*) And let’s please not start with the “playoffs” thing, when there’s a bunch of talk afoot about “impacting winning” and “championship teams would love to have him.”
Same reason he repurposed and restated the Toronto data — he’s cherry-picking.
In terms of Knick five-man lineups last year, the one with the highest minutes included Barrett — Randle/RJ/Mitch/Grimes/Brunson. It had a DRat of 104.8 — a level the Knicks haven’t come close to sniffing this year.(*)
Third in minutes was OG/Randle/Hartenstein/Brunson/Divincenzo. Defensive rating: 110.0.
(*) And one they didn’t come close to sniffing in last year’s playoffs.
I do think all teams would love to have OG, E. I just don’t think many would sacrifice the depth and balance of their roster to make him the highest paid 3-and-D wing in the game (and by such a massive margin… who is even the second highest paid 3-and-D wing? Is it Mikal Bridges?)
We should take note that the 104.8 DRat of the Knicks’ most deployed five-man lineup last year would have been easily the best in the association and take further note that it’s essentially the “2023 Playoff Knicks” lineup, but with Randle more healthy.
This further essentially confirms the 2023 playoff defense signal.
There were no “defensive problems” at 12/25/23 that necessitated “fixing.”
The “fix” that was attempted did not work.
I mean, I guess? I’m not really sure what’s meant by this when it’s said. But he’s a good player, certainly a plus player, so sure — at the right price point, yeah of course.
They don’t have him at the right price point, pretty clearly.
i’m lukewarm on both OG and Bridges …OG is certainly overpaid and has some serious deficiencies on the offensive end (his handle is horrible, he can’t finish on the break most of the time, he doesn’t pass well, etc)…yeah…he is not a 40million guy…not sure why Leon left money on the table with that negotiation…
as far as bridges…he is an enigma..for an ironman..he sure seems to coast a lot..that interview with Hahn after the game last night was weird..not sure he is enjoying the ride right now…
well….here comes mitch on the horizon…maybe he’s the elixir…and we can stop dissecting these two dudes…at least until playoff time..
Yeah Geo, it’s sad all around. Lotta of suffering and sadness in silence. Gene really connected with a ton of people. Movie star magic.
Haven’t watched much league pass this year. Had almost forgotten how fun Curry is.
Moses Brown starting for the Mavs , so far 7 pts and 4 rebs in 7 minutes.
Warriors have played 11 players tonight including Kevin Knox
Steph going thermonuclear vs the Magic
Warriors at the garden is one of the games I built my schedule around this year. Looking forward to it.
That will clearly the the Kev Knox revenge game…
Meanwhile Jimmy Butler is going 19th Century coal.
Draymond just got away with an obvious foul
“Let’s go Warriors” and “MVP” chants very loud in transplant Orlando.
These Luka plays are insane. LeBron is going to play til he’s 50.
http://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/44047387
http://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/44047387