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74 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.10)”
It’s been over five years now that we’ve had the ‘Kevin Durant might save us’ narrative being repeated regularly. I was never convinced he was the answer then, and less so now as an aged and frail star in the very twilight of his career. It feels super-Knicksy to think of getting him now, rather than five years ago. Which also felt very Knicksy, even back then.
I mean, if we could trade him straight up for Mikal, sure, he’s like the giant, super-good version of Bridges. But, you know, not happening. And if we gut the team, we just become the Suns.
Sounds like other teams with more draft capital are more interested in Durant anyway, like the Spurs or Twolves.
I really like KAT as a person and he’s a tremendous offensive player, but I just don’t know how a team can win with him on that contract. It’s bad enough we had to overpay a bit for OG, but we could enlist 3 good rotation players for the price of KAT alone.
It’s going to be hard to build with him here, especially for a team that doesn’t like to draft players.
I don’t think 5 years ago getting one of the best in the league was very Knicksy. If he had come we might have been very good the moment he joined. I just don’t know if you can have a healthy locker room with him in it or not. But definitely a good move back then. Now i don’t think it’s a good move, but i trust Leon. I know he has his flaws, but as much as you guys keep saying Leon is not good, the team gets better and better.
There’s one thing that makes this impossible, Nico is dumb, i agree, but he values defense. No one that values defense will trade AD for KAT.
Guys, my (other) beloved sports team (FC Porto) will be playing 2 games at MetLife Stadium for the FIFA Club World Cup. We’re at the lowest point of the last 50 years, but hey, we’ve stunned the world before. 🙂
If any of you can go a support my team for me, it’d be greatly appreciated. 💙🤍
https://www.fifa.com/en/tournaments/mens/club-world-cup/usa-2025/articles/porto-club-profile-history-players-qualified
FC Porto’s jersey, it’s the other jersey on my profile pic. 😉
This is great! For all that’s being said about this season, it’s good to see that there’s still a bond between the guys! 🧡💙
https://x.com/NBA_NewYork/status/1931484866203316550
Go FC Porto! And … Mitch … is … tall.
Very few guys say Leon is not good. What we keep saying is that he is not good enough.
I can’t complain about Leon. He is so over the bar set by every GM since the 90’s.
But I can see how that isn’t good enough for some.
No interest in Durant
I’m glad the Mets get a shot at Gore tonight — especially since they missed him last series vs. the Gnats. And after sweeping the ColorAAAAdo Rockies, it’s time the league’s best team faces some real competition.
If Jason Kidd is the target, why? What kind of offensive system does he run that might unlock a “next step” for the Knicks?
RE Mets offense. They could really use one of their young hitters to emerge like Vientos did last year (but sadly, regressed badly this year in addition to lousy defense). Alvarez or Baty would be nice. Baty’s defense at third has become exceptional, it seems, but he’s back to struggling with low breaking balls at the plate again.
God, please let Mauricio get hot.
KAT is over the bar set by every C we’ve had since the 90s and you complain about him heartily.
We all have our hang ups. Yours is a center who can’t play defense. Mine is a GM who won’t draft and develop.
At the end of the day you’re not going to win a chip with either.
I said on here the other day that pre Thibs firing, given the roster fit issues, I had wondered about Utah as a trade partner.
Kat for Markkenen and Kessler, or
Kat and Josh for Markennen, sexton and Kessler, or
Kat for Collins, Sexton and Kessler
…all roughly work for cost, expand our rotation and save a few $ to enable us to use the full TPMLE. All these jazz players are rumoured to be available and a just-minted 3rd team all-NBA player feels like a decent get for them. The third deal in particular gives them a KAT/Markennen front court to build from.
I don’t think Leon would do any of these – it’s the wrong way round in terms of who gets the biggest fish. But curious – would people here do any of these deals? Which? All feel reasonable to me in replacing depth, giving us secondary ball-handling, scoring and C depth. I don’t know enough about Collins in particular who seeks to have decent numbers but hasn’t actually won many games. Just interested in people’s reactions.
I don’t really feel that way about KAT. His defensive lapses are so glaring that I have mixed emotions about him, all the time.
Would love to know what the advanced stats say about him. EPM has him a tick above Hartenstein overall, basically no daylight. And that feels right to me.
I’d like to say that I can’t think of another gifted offensive big who gives back so much on defense he’s not as valuable as people think, but David Lee was my boy for years.
KAT’s obviously better but he just has so many shortcomings.
Yeah, Mauricio is a huge X factor right now. All kinds of raw talent. Really, Acuna needs to be the odd man out right now and sent to AAA, since Mauricio can play SS when necessary.
The Mets are facing some big roster decisions in the next month at SP and the IF. Seems like a trade or two is likely.
before we start tossing away our talent, we should give another coach a chance…
we will most likely have one of the top 5 rosters in the league next year…
They have four young guys (Vientos, Baty, Acuna, Mauricio) who are all pretty much graduated to the ML level, and they really only need one of those guys to stick, at least for this season.
Baty seems to learn the game one tool at a time— it took a while for his glove to get up to speed, and now it’s adequate. It took a while for his in-game power to materialize and for him to improve his swing plane, and now he has solid major league in-game power. Next tool up is plate discipline. Baty had decent walk rates in the minors and even in his previous major league stints, but he is barely walking at all this year, as he is looking to be less passive at the plate. He has always hit the ball hard, but the more aggressive approach is paying off with increased barrel rate, lower ground ball rate, and increased HR/FB. He’s going to need to find the right balance of patience and aggressiveness as pitchers adjust to him.
Baty is the player of the four with the highest ceiling. Acuna looks like he needs to be playing every day in AAA. He’s still only 23 and has never had success above AA. After a good start he is now looking like an automatic out. Honestly he kinda looks like he has utility infielder ceiling.
Vientos is probably headed for a future as DH. His glove at 3B isn’t something I’d want to live with. Mauricio is the most interesting case. I figured he would need a while to reacclimate to facing top level pitching and would probably struggle for a while, but he has come out guns blazing at both AAA and MLB. He will definitely get chances to play as long as he is hitting.
Seconded. Mauricio is really good..just wildly inconsistent still. I like him at 3rd. Like him there even without Lindor, but now Baty looks like he’s finally ready- which should make Vientos a full time DH for now. I love Acuna at 2nd too. I don’t think enough has been said about how Stearns has restocked the actionable youth for the Mets. Now I’d love to see Stearns go after Ced Mullins or Luis Robert Jr, and someone like Walker Buehler or even bring Lugo back because I have zero faith in Montas
If Kidd is the target and he’s actually in play, two things make me feel OK about that.
1. The negative reputation he earned as a coach came early in his coaching career and not while at Dallas where I think he did a better job.
2. He got a team with Doncic on it to play solid team defense down the stretch of a season and to make the finals. I even recall him playing Doncic and Brunson together and not thinking it was an epic disaster defensively.
I like Towns a lot as a fan and even like him as a player. The combo with Brunson is an issue for me. Still, I can’t see trading him unless we bring back a better player (almost impossible) or a similar player with a better fit at another position where we side Mitch back into the starting C position.
mitch cannot be a true starting center because he should only play 28-30 minutes or so per game at the very most if we try to play him starter minutes like 34 or 35 we will not have him available for very long
we should be okay with mitch/huk and KAT for when one of those big guys get hurt…
I’m guessing precious won’t be back…or cam…
we still need a backup four…
it would be nice to have mikal at the 2 and OG at the 3…
I feel the same way about Leon’s blunders. His waste of draft picks (the most valuable resource a team has) is worse than KAT’s rim protection stats.
Agreed. But I do think there’s a coach somewhere who can make it work. Hell- if Thibs got one last crack at it, I’m sure he would have. Especially if Finch did it, considering that he isn’t quite the defensive coach that Thibs has been. However, I’m also down with trading KAT, but we’d be hard pressed to get a better player back. That said, if they move him, they should look at adding 2-3 solid rotation pieces instead. One of them being Mitch insurance. But still, if KAT stays, we’ll be OK. KAT’s really good. Just not good for Thibs’ system. Remember how he was dropping deep against Steph in one of the GS games? That shit was RIDICULOUS. Great offensive player though.
I don’t think Jason Kidd is a BAD coach, but I also don’t see how he is possibly so valuable that you would give up a draft pick to acquire him.
It’s very confusing to me all around. I guess starfucking is the best explanation?
Owen, Leon took all of these first round picks:
2020 (8th overall)
2021 (19th)
2021 (21st)
2022 (11th)
2025 (19th)
2025 (26th)
2027
2029
2031
And this is the complete sum of what the Knicks have to show for it today:
Mikal Bridges
Washington’s 2nd in 2025 & 2026
Indiana’s 2nd in 2028 & 2029
It shouldn’t be a surprise that everyone doesn’t love him because Phil Jackson was worse.
The Knicks (in a roundabout way) used the #11 pick in 2022 to get the cap space to sign Jalen Brunson. I really liked that signing, I thought it improved the team
I will say this about Leon. He confirmed that you can successfully rebuild via the hybrid method (i.e. without tanking, renting out cap space, etc.) IF IF IF you don’t commit egregious blunders (i.e. you can make suboptimal moves or picks on draft day.
He built a very competitive roster that is a player or two (or a shitload of injury luck) short of being a multi-year contender. The reason for the gap is that he made a bunch of smaller errors that added up, and a very large error that resulted in painting himself into a capped-out pick-starved corner.
So now he has to become a genuis who overcomes long odds rather than just smart and methodical. He has to either hit a grand slam in the trade market or at least a couple of triples.
And the central figure right now is KAT. He’s the highest paid player and sort of at a career-defining crossroads. Thibs’ firing bought him some time, but the clock on the fanbase and media turning on him is ticking, and the next time around, he won’t have his coach to take the bullet for him. If Dolan is in championship or bust mode and Leon decides to have his presidency of basketball ops live or die with that player, he should get his affairs in order.
Leon gets a perpectual Incomplete grade. He’s not really even doing the job of a normal pro sports GM, which is to make selections and decisions about the relative merits of (1) various options to team build (*); and (2) players and coaches and other personnel from within the entire universe of possibilities.
He does neither. Ownership mandates the way the team is going to be built — chase superstars. And as to (2), he hires and chases family.
He was brought here to use his family connections to chase superstars. He’s very rarely decided among potential draftees and there’s no reason to believe he’d be able to other than sporadically given his background.
Eventually, and the time is coming soon, the people still actually at CAA and the new players won’t remember him from Adam and his value-add in that area will be gone. We’re probably already seeing it with replacing Thibs and we’ll see it soon most likely with players.
People project a bunch of rigorous thoughts and craftiness onto him because they badly want him to possess those things, but there’s no real reason to think he does.
I don’t even really blame him for the Mikal trade. As my contemporaneous posts show, I think Dolan was on his case to trade the hoarded ones and I’m even more conviced now after the Shelburne piece on ESPN wherein Leon acknowldeged Dolan’s role in the process of going all-in and evaluating Leon favorably for picking the right time.
He intentionally picked William Wesley as his basketball right-hand man. Enough said.
He’s not a puppet, he’s not a cipher, he does have some basketball connections, but a real personnel guy doing real, discretionary GMing in the way the other GMs do? Nah.
(*) There’s no serious sense in which Leon actually chose to “hybrid” as opposed to a wider array of team-building possibilities.
I’d do those KAT to Utah trades
Using a lottery pick to gin up a few million dollars in cap space by jettisoning a guy you’d just signed as a buyout is about as amateurish and lame as it gets.
That’s the kind of thing where Leon had no choice but to pick a lane himself, and he botched it completely.
Hmmm https://x.com/alanhahn/status/1932122873235120381?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
In what world did James Dolan look over at The Brooklyn Nets last year and scream “GET ME SUPERSTAR MIKAL BRIDGES NO MATTER THE COST!”
Actually Leon inherited the cleanest cap in basketball but he blew it on a bunch of guys he had to trade 12 months later to get back.
He spent 55% of the salary cap in one day on Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel, Evan Fournier, Derrick Rose, and Kemba Walker.
According to his ghost writer, Ramona Shelburne, this is his “methodical process of team building.”
We’ve had this guy for 5 years if it isn’t obvious that he’s done a lot of good and a lot of bad I don’t know what to tell you.
No one thinks he sucks. He just makes a lot of dumb mistakes that you can’t afford to make if you want to win a championship.
He is basically the KAT of GMs.
I think the Pacers can say much the same thing.
Dolan didn’t pick the superstar, he just said it’s time to cash in the chips and get one. There weren’t really any available, so Leon went Nova and made the boss happy.
He’d run out of time. Dolan probably had to be talked off the ledge when they didn’t get Spida — that being the “wrong time” (lol) — and time was up last summer. Leon then spun that to Shelburne as him “holding his cards until the right time” and thereby winning Dolan’s favor.
But it’s all Dolan in charge. Hasn’t ended, never will.
I said this in the prior thread, but I didn’t get a chance to read if there were any responses. I don’t think Leon is the most influential basketball decision maker for the Knicks. I think it’s World Wide Wes. Over the years I recall a few articles about players we drafted or made trades for that he wanted. Two off the top of my head were Reddish and Quickley.
Leon’s role is to use his influence around the league and to make final decisions after getting input from WWW, Thibs, Aller, Brunson etc…
Bare minimum, Dolan thinks WWW can help him “recruit superstars.” Could very well be even more than that. No question he’s one of the many people in Dolan’s ear.
I will revise my previous remarks ripping Leon for putting WWW in that “#2 basketball” position. That was misguided. Dolan put him there. Leon should only get blamed for listening.
Can you cite your sources for this?
I get it, E. It must have been killing you the entire playoffs to not be able to post anything super negative about the team because they were winning and advancing. You have a lot of pent up negativity you need to spew out.
Pure conjecture.
Everytime I scroll through this board its non stop complaining. Leon Rose got this team it’s best player in decades and this team has had good success under him. Maybe the Knicks need to go back to the 20 win seasons because those were fun. It’s not hard to see why players avoid coming to this team. Who wants to get crapped on daily when you could go elsewhere and actually get some love.
They’ve been hydrid’ing quite successfully for 35 years.
I think Leon was surprised by the offer OKC made for Hartenstein. IMO he thought there might be an offer but it would be close enough to what the Knicks could offer that he’d stay in NY. And I think that’s why OKC blew what we could offer out of the water. It was because just topping our max offer by a few million wasn’t going to get I-Hart to jump ship. OKC offered just too for him much to turn down.
The lineup was supposed to I-Hart, Randle, OG, Bridges and Brunson with Hart, DDV, and Deuce on the bench and Mitch in the wings. That team is in the finals right now!!!!
When I-Hart left it killed everything. It was a huge loss with ZERO return.
They were always interested in Towns, but at that point they were desperate because they had no C with Mitch hurt and I-Hart gone. That’s when they finally relented and added DDV to the deal to get Towns here.
The Towns deal gave us a C, but it created a problem on defense and weakened the depth further.
I thought it was the lack of cap space but hey if you think Kevin Durant will come here for the vet min if I’m more positive I’ll let Swiftie post from my account.
No one is more prolific in making up shit than E.
And there are teams that tank, re-tank and tank again.
No matter which path you choose, it’s all about understanding the values and competently building a team that fits together.
A lot of people-including, I think, E-thought it made sense to go all in last summer. It was not an insane decision
Nah. If you go back to the thread when we traded for Mikal all of the people who are freaking out with insane conspiracy theories about the Knicks now were 100 percent against that trade!
Just don’t actually go back and look at the thread. I promise you no one is changing their tune now.
All those people did so under the condition that Isaiah Hartenstein was retained.
Leon has executed the Friends And Family Plan about as well as I could have ever imagined. I’m giving it a silly nickname here but I’ll be damned if it didn’t work out pretty well. The guy can point to the scoreboard, say “conference Finals, bitches” and enjoy some vindication.
That said… there’s probably a ceiling to that kind of approach. The Jason Kidd stuff makes me groan because I’m pretty sure there are better options out there than trading our last meager assets for the privilege of hiring Jason Kidd. Maybe Kidd is the best coaching candidate on the Friends And Family list, but really Leon should be looking outside of the list.
I still tip my hat to the guy. The Knicks have won playoff series against Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Boston in the last three years. Doing it the way he has done it is not something I would have thought possible. I don’t think his approach is going to work when it comes to backing out of this particular corner either, but the guy has surprised me before.
Go ahead and cook, Leon. Do your thing.
Sacramento Kings:
https://c.tenor.com/pg0m5lO_Bn0AAAAd/you-talking-to-me-what.gif
And then shit happened. No one knew at the time if iHart was staying or going.
Still worked out pretty well. We got to the ECF and our core 7 guys are all 30 and under and locked in to return next year, hopefully with a new coach who will better utilize them.
But you know, the owner of the team had a say in whether he should pay a guy $30 million dollars for the privilege of firing him, so we must be LOLKnicks again!
The only way this Jason Kidd thing makes sense is if it is part of a play to get Giannis. Its the only way this can even be concievably justifiable in my eyes.
When i said Leon has his flaws, i was thinking about the draft, and developing talent. That is a huge flaw. We use the end of bench roster spots to be nice to agents instead of trying to get some guy that although not probable, might have some untapped potential.
But now with Thibs gone we’re going to see if that one is on Leon, or if it was on Thibs.
Another flaw is JK’s Friends and Family Plan, because by working that way we have missed some good opportunities, like Nesmith going to Indy and Dyson Daniels going to Atlanta, both giving up very little to get them.
One last flaw might be not taking in consideration the fit, because we all agree a team with Brunson and KAT has a problem so big at defense that it’ll be hard for this to work. The other 3 guys need to be at DPOY level, probably.
And even taking all this in consideration, i still think he’s doing a good job… at some point, maybe midway through the last decade, i really thought we would never again be in the ECF for the foreseeable future, and he came and delivered that in what? 5 seasons? Maybe we should let him (try to) do his magic again to see if we can get even further. For now he has my patience and belief.
hard for anything to make much sense with such limited access to data…
like the elephant thing where folks touch different parts of the creature…in this case it’s even tougher, cuz the creature may not even exist…
That’s funny, Geo! 😀
This is E’s argument, not mine. You have a habit of combining all the people you disagree with into one voice.
I view the threads as an open conversation between people, like we’re all sitting around at a table, talking to each other in real time, sometimes multiple topics and debates happening simultaneously.
Fair take. Sometimes the quote feature makes it feel like you’re talking to one particular person.
I do think the defense with KAT and Brunson can be better but it also depends on the offense being more egalitarian. KAT plays better defense when he’s cooking on office. And I think the same is true for OG and Mikal. I’m sure it’s hard to stay focused on defense when you’re not getting to touch the ball at all on offense but are still being asked to cover up for KAT and Brunson. I think we saw some of that simmer over in the huddle during playoff games but we also saw games during the playoffs (particularly game 4 and 6 against Boston and game 5 against the Pacers) where the defense looked quite good. Those also happened to be games where everyone ate on offense and it flowed more freely.
I think (conjecture) Thibs barely playing KAT at the 4 was probably a big part of his demise.
Obviously KAT isn’t good at defense, but he’s a lot better facing up his man than he is dropping to protect the rim. So doing the latter 95% of the entire season was maybe… idk… bad coaching?
I know Mitch was out most of the year but still—make your star look good please.
I would say I’m fairly confident (75%?) that Leon will hire a coach who can and will tinker with lineups and strategies to find the best fit for his stars and their supporting cast.
“All those people did so under the condition that Isaiah Hartenstein was retained.”
https://knickerblogger.net/2024/06/25/espn-com-sources-knicks-to-acquire-mikal-bridges-from-nets/
I deeply hate losing Hartenstein if it comes to pass but we are going to be able to play some incredible small ball lineups now so I actually don’t think it will hurt as much as we think.
https://knickerblogger.net/2024/06/26/knicks-morning-news-2024-06-26/
“Still wildly excited, but with a dash of concern over the details.
We may not have put Hartenstein in the trade directly but it seems like he is part of the cost.”
Ugh maybe I spoke too soon:
I know… probably just using NY for clicks, but still…
Anyway, I didn’t post that as a gotcha as much as to point out that at the time of the trade, the assumption here (including hubert) was that iHart was gone.
I felt from the start that it was an overpay no matter what, and that Mikal’s subsequent level of play would determine the size of the overpay. My hope was that he would play like the Mikal that lit up the league when he first got to the Nets. Obviously that didn’t happen.
The 80/20 analogy sort of applied in this case…you could easily have gotten 80% of the player we ended up with at 20% of the cost in picks (not his salary, which is quite fair, even for who he was this year.)
Now is there still hope that he works on his game and/or is “unlocked” by a new coach? Sure. And if that happens, and the best is yet to come, we can come back around to the position that while he is an overpay, Leon can work with it.
I agree with Walker. Many of us play or played hoop. Have any of you enjoyed playing with a highly ball-dominant player, even if he was very good? Makes you feel like a spectator. It absolutely impacts not only your defensive intensity, but it effects the crucial ability and willingness to keep your head in the game. Just my view, but you need to pass the ball, even if it’s to a player that may be less skilled offensively. Sure, you may not get as many points in the short term, but it’s basketball, not HORSE. To me the game is a bit like music and I don’t really want to play with just a shredder. Like a great musician, the great player makes the rest of the team better. Like LeBron. Just my opinion, but if Brunson is gonna be a 1, need to be a 1. If not, get a 1 and have him play off the ball. He is great, but less of a maestro than a loud killer lead guitarist.
KAT and Dadiet for Durant works in the trade machine. Seems like a lateral move honestly.
Except that Durant’s contract expires after the one year. So, cap nerds, what happens when Durant comes off the books after that one year?
Depends on whether they resign Mikal or not. If they don’t, they’d only have about $117M committed for 2026-27, including Dadiet. In theory, they’ll have at least one Class of ’26 first round rookie as well, so take that up to mid 120s.
Plenty of cap room. In theory.
Towns for Durant works fornmeninguess if we have a one year out. Don’t know if I want that long term marriage with KAT. Sure I don’t really.
He’s a classic tier 2 guy. You have to be a two way player to be truly great.
If they didn’t commit to anything beyond next year, I could go along with KAT for KD, see what happens and have a relatively clean cap sheet in summer 2026.
I don’t, however, expect them to meet the predicate condition. The thought likely won’t even cross their minds and most likely KD wouldn’t even be on board without a contract extension.
canning already given up three runs in two innings dammit
Judge almost hit it out of Royals Stadium.