Knicks Morning News (2025.04.10)

36 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.10)”

Hey KD, are the Knicks cool enough yet? Or at least as cool as the Suns? Enjoy your very long offseason!

Huge possible seeding implications for the MIN @ MEM game, might have to stay up for that one. Pretty much a must win for both teams, especially the Wolves if they want to avoid the play-in. After that, the Griz, who have won 3 straight, travel to DEN for a b2b tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Clips have won 6 straight and play Friday in SAC (who are playing for home court in play-in game 1)

The WC is truly the Wild, Wild West this year!

The Guardian article linked to above is very interesting. It gives graphs of games lost injury under Thibs compared to their coaches. It also notes that injuries have been going up in the NBA over the past ten years. And there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the injury rates for Thibs coached teams in the past ten years.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6268131/2025/04/10/devin-booker-trade-suns-nba-thunder/

Hollinger can be given to hyperbole, but he’s not wrong in a lot of what he says here, including the ideas that 1)The only way for the Suns out of this disaster is to trade both Durant and Booker to Houston to get their picks back, and 2)”No team in the last four decades has faced a situation anywhere close to this hopeless, and that’s with Donald Sterling owning a team in three of them. If the Suns instead keep Booker and try to scrape their way to the Play-In every year, they’re basically a worse, more hopeless reincarnation of Beal’s Wizards.”

Alan, I agree, it’s good article by Hollinger

The Suns are a cautionary tale in what not to do when you’re so very close but didn’t quite win it all.

They got CP3 and went to the Finals (and came pretty close to winning). Next season they’re good in the regular season but flame out early in the playoffs.

The team panicked. CP3 was on his last legs, so I get trading. But instead of taking a moment and being ok with maybe taking a step or two back, they decided to go all in on Durant and, when that didn’t work, panicked and got Beal, which was a monumental mistake (and everyone said so at the time).

But that team without CP3 the year before were the darlings of the bubble. And their core guys outside of CP3 were all still young enough that they could take a step back for a season or two, develop some players, make some less flashy trades and maybe by now they’d be back up to competing for it all.

GM’s get tempted when they get close. Good lesson for Leon. Some would say he already made his mistake with the all-in Bridges move but, fact is, even trading all those picks for Bridges wasn’t a catastrophe the way getting Beal was cause Bridges is still young and a useful/productive player (and not on a crazy, bloated contract).

But if we flame out early this year, Leon needs to still exercise patience. Obviously if a move for Giannis or Jokic becomes available you go for it, but DO NOT PANIC. Ignore the media and fans who are upset that we’re only a 50 win mezzanine team.

Ignore the media and fans who are upset that we’re only a 50 win mezzanine team.

I like the term “50 win mezzanine team”.

2)”No team in the last four decades has faced a situation anywhere close to this hopeless,

This is objectively untrue. There’s no point between 2002-2008 (except maybe 2004 and the false hope of Marbury) or 2015-2022 that I would have rather have had the Knicks’ roster instead of the Suns’. At least Phoenix has valuable trade assets in Booker and Durant that they could kickstart a rebuild. They should be planning to do an OKC style rebuild. They’re biggest problem is their idiot owner is being advised by sleazeball moron Isiah Thomas which is a very familiar story.

Also, Charlotte and Washington have had miserable season after miserable season in that span as well. And might as well throw in most of Minnesota’s history and the short lived Vancouver Grizzlies.

I like Hollinger and agree Phoenix is in deep trouble, but I think it is a bit disingenuous to pin it on “impatience”. They went to the finals and lost in 6, then next season won 64 games while being patient, but sensed regression. Getting KD at his age was the ultimate win-now move, but they certainly earned the right to do that. No different than GS getting Butler to coincide with Steph.

Getting KD at his age was the ultimate win-now move, but they certainly earned the right to do that.

The KD move, in and of itself, wasn’t bad. I mean, it’s KD! He’s one of the best players of the last two decades!

I was referring more to the Beal move, which was monumentally stupid and reaked of “making a move for the sake of making a move.”

Yeah, really the trade for Beal and his massive contract plus no-trade clause was the ultimate sin for Phoenix. Everyone knew that was idiotic. They could have had three useful players for the price of that one average player.

I guess they have to trade Durant now after the trade deadline mess, but he’s not really the problem. Ideally they would get a package of defensive players in return to surround Booker with, maybe get a real PG, too… use the pre-Doncic-trade Mavs’ playbook.

The Beal trade had Isiah Thomas written all over it.

I have said enough about Phoenix. It was all asinine from the start. Reminds me of something else honestly.

One note on Chris Paul on his last legs. He has a higher WS/48 than Devin Booker this year and has played every game and 2200 minutes. Obviously, that’s a slight bid for controversy, it’s just a box score stat, but I think it does tell you something meaningful.

Devin Booker is a classically overrated player. He’s a high volume scorer at league average efficiency who plays mediocre to bad defense. He’s not a star. He’s not close. He’s a decent passer but I frankly think you could put many NBA guards in his place and it might not make much of a difference other than giving Durant a few extra shots.

Players establish a rep at some point and it can be very durable but I don’t see why Booker gets the adulation he does.

Co-sign. It might be because of where he was drafted. Expectations demand narrative.

I tend to think of Booker a bit like Melo, except he’s a better teammate (more willing to pass the ball, doesn’t jab-step his teammates into lethargy). Terrific volume scorer, able to score in a variety of ways from all over the court. He’s not very efficient, but he’s almost he own worst enemy because he has such an arsenal of moves that he’s happy to try the harder ones.

I think he’s a star. Not a superstar, however. Whatever that means.

Owen, I disagree on Booker. He’s definitely a star. Maybe not a superstar, or worth a supermax contract, but in his last 6 seasons he’s put up a .595 TS% on a 31.1% usage and improved on that in 45 playoff games. Those are star numbers.

Re: Thibs championship level coach or an elite culture builder?

The night before game 1 of playoffs, Brunson must lead a players coup de’ etat, kidnap Thibs, tie him to a chair and shave his last 4-5 strings of hair off.

It’s symoblic but also real…as it demonstrated stubborness at the same time. If he can’t adjust and rock a shiny head, bald old man look, – then he has to go.

Director, my wife is the one who’s kept me from just going to a buzzcut to deal with my rapidly disappearing hair. By the time I get to Thibs levels of thinning, I’m going to take that choice away from her.

Booker and KAT are best friends, and one of the earliest assumptions about the Leon regime was that his plan was to bring both of them here. I can’t imagine Phoenix trading him here just to get Bridges back, plus whatever picks we have unlocked this summer, so I doubt it ever happens.

In fairness, Thibs may be looking at Rick Carlyle before and after and saying no way.

Thibs going smooth is him going from unc to daddy.

Booker and Brunson together would be a disaster.

Booker is a good player, and sure he’s a lower level star, ymmv. This hasn’t been his best year. I just don’t think he is truly that impactful….

looks like OG, josh and mitch are getting the game off tonight…

Booker has definitely been overrated at times, but I also think he’s the kind of player a lot of AIOs tend to short. He doesn’t rack up a ton of non-scoring box score statistics because at least on a decent team you’ll usually have a better option at point guard, plus he needs to conserve energy for bucket getting. But high volume, high efficiency scoring is the most scarce skillset in the NBA and he’s pretty damn good at it.

EPM usually places him in the 15-20 range league wide, and that sounds about right.

I know it will pain CGreene and some others here, but if the Knicks aren’t going to win the title this year, another Lakers championship would be pretty high on my board, just to make Nico look like an even bigger clown.

ALAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!

Imagine if Phoenix wasn’t full of idiots and instead of trading for Beal they held their ammo to trade for Butler, KAT, or OG.

Hell, maybe they could’ve landed Luka. I’m tempted to say the Beal trade was worse than the Luka trade.

I am definitely taking the over on 15-20.

Derrick White? Would you take Devin Booker or Derrick White?

I would take White.

I’m tempted to say the Beal trade was worse than the Luka trade.

Not wrong….over the next 5yrs, – which organization will be worse off: Dallas or Phoenix?

Booker is am incredible talent but he has a terrible character. “Everyobody acting tough when they’re up”

“I am definitely taking the over on 15-20.

Derrick White? Would you take Devin Booker or Derrick White?

I would take White.”

Derrick White is an excellent complementary player, top 5 in the NBA in that regard. But he is not nearly the offensive player that Booker is…he is best at being opportunistic on a team with other high usage players doing the heavy lifting on offense. He’s excellent defensively and not bad at anything, but to be competitive, you need high-usage shot creators, and those are expensive.

White has got to be the most underrated player in the league by national standards.

If your best player is Tatum, you take White. If your best player is Tyson Chandler, you take Booker I guess.

Personally, if shopping for a FA combo guard in an open marketplace, I’d probably do the 80/20 thing and sign a guy like Mathurin over Booker, whom I think is a more inconsistent model, but is young and has a lot of upside still to unlock on both ends. Booker is currently valued at $55,000,000 a year, which isn’t great bang for the buck.

Booker is currently valued at $55,000,000 a year, which isn’t great bang for the buck.

very similar to KAT

I feel like a stretch 5 is worth more than a shrink 2, but I don’t follow either terribly closely these days.

Also very much worth mentioning that Booker’s numbers in the playoffs are excellent, which isn’t true of everyone with a statistical profile like his. I’ve always been curious as to whether there are empirics on this, but anecdotally there does seem to be a separation of the men from the boys that takes place.

Melo, for example, just could not hack it in the playoffs at all for whatever reason. He had a few decent runs but his overall playoff TS% was .513, which even by the standards of the era was…not good.

Booker being able to maintain/improve on his regular season production is meaningful, offensive rating consistently goes down in the playoffs.

I’m tempted to say the Beal trade was worse than the Luka trade.

I did thought Beal was worth taking a flyer on … if it just meant matching salary.

I was amazed at the amount of picks they gave for Beal. I really thought that Washington would have been glad to dump him on whichever team Beal was ok with waiving his NTC, and maybe just ask for a fake first to save face. Instead of that, they gave up all their future assets!

Cunningham is listed as probable for Thursday with left patellar tendinopathy. Tobias Harris, who played 22 minutes against the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 2 before exiting with right heel soreness, is listed as probable as well. Isaiah Stewart is dealing with right knee inflammation and is questionable for Thursday.

Gonna be a weird one.

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36 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.04.10)”

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