Knicks Morning News (2025.07.03)

Re-post from last thread:

Here’s a Jordan Clarkson mix from 2021-22, when he was 29. He was good enough to be 4th in 6MoY voting, and was worth 8 figures. The question is: how much has he lost now that he is 33? Well, he only had 3 dunks last year, but had 13 the year before, so inconclusive, and he never was much of a volume dunker anyway. On a positive note, he’s shot the corner 3 well for the last three years, albeit on low volume, and he’s gotten to the line more lately. Maybe playing off the ball more and spotting up in the corners can help with his efficiency.

I’ve been halfway paying attention to how Scott Perry is doing with the Kings. So far, he hasn’t done a great deal. He is hiring Dennis Schroeder and this seems to me like a kind of hold the fort move, to keep the team functioning ok and give time for him to get young guys in and remake the team. The guy he drafted in the first round, Níqueles Clifford, seems interesting though. He’s old for a draftee, and is supposedly Josh Hart like. Does anyone know anything about him?

The track record of low efficiency guys becoming high efficiency guys is terrible. So terrible that I can barely think of an example. Someone will provide a few downthread I am sure

Clarkson is fine I guess. I am not sure he is better than Cam Payne but everything this offseason is marginal change. Not going to get my panties in a twist.

And I have never heard of Clifford but a guard with an 11 bpm at any stage of college seems like a good flier.

holy @# i just wrote a gigantically long post and it was lost.

was it magnificent?

ok i will try again but with the cliffs notes version:

1 – I am optimistic about Mike Brown
2 – I think he did a very good job in Sac and was set up to fail by the (very bad) front office there

Random stats and facts:

Team ratings by year:
2021-22 -> last pre-Brown year – team net rating -5.4 (25th), 25th in offense, 27th in defense.

2022-23 -> 1st Brown year -> net +2.6 (8th), 1st in O, 25th in D
2023-24 -> 2nd Brown year -> net 1.7 (17th), 13th in O, 14th in D (interestingly most of the offensive drop was due to falling from 7th in FTA/FGA to 26th)

Offseason 2024 -Team signs Demar Derozan for ??? reason

2024-25 Brown fired 12/27 -> net +1.6 (13th), 8th in O, 16th in D
2024-25 post-Brown -> zero net rating, 9th in O, 23rd in D -> granted many roster changes midyear with Fox going out and Lavine coming in (who was awesome by the way – shooting 51/45/87 with 64.2 TS on 23.7 usage)

Corner 3’s produced (league rank)
2021-22 -> 29th
2022-23 -> 13
2023-24 -> 8
2024-25 -> 24th

Midrange FGA (league rank)
2021-22 -> 17th
2022-23 -> 24th
2023-24-> 25th
2024-25 > 1st by a mile

Last interesting stat considering Demar came from Chicago:

2023-24 Chicago midrange frequency -> 1st by a mile
2024-25 Chicago midrange frequency -> 25th

To me – it looks like the FO made Brown a scapegoat for their own dumb move and that overall he did a pretty good job.

1

I think we can be pretty confident Clarkson is not going to be efficient. Even in his heyday Clarkson wasn’t an efficient player – the years he finished 1st and 4th in 6th man he was below league average in efficiency. And that was in a great offensive environment, the Jazz were top-3 in offense both years.

But that’s not the end of the world – you don’t have to be ultra efficient when your best player is off the floor to be a great offense, you just need to not fall apart like the Knicks did towards the end of last year when Brunson was off the court. We don’t know exactly how Brown will structure the rotation and offense of course, but it’s safe to say those minutes probably will/should feature KAT heavily, so Clarkson and he developing a good 2-man game will be crucial.

2

i am glad that yabu hits 38 percent from 3 because fully 49 percent of his shots are from that distance (last season) clarkson hits 36 percent from 3 and takes 47 percent of his shots from that distance (again last season)

1

“The track record of low efficiency guys becoming high efficiency guys is terrible. So terrible that I can barely think of an example. Someone will provide a few downthread I am sure”

If Jordan Clarkson was a “high efficiency guy” at 27% usage, he would be making $20+M a year.

Clarkson is without a doubt a better player than Cam Payne, who has a career TS% of .525, and even that is inflated by one outlier season (the 2020-21 empty arena season). In the following season, he went from a 19% to a 24% usage and his TS% dropped to .500.

Clarkson has been bad for the last 2 seasons, but his role has been “tank commander” on terrible teams. But when he was last on competitive teams in an appropriate role, he was a 6MoY candidate in the Lou Williams/Jamal Crawford mold.

I don’t care nearly as much about his personal efficiency as I do about how the team does when he is on the floor. This was posted by ptmilo:

the jazz ppp with clarkson on is actually 116.9 over the last six years, about 3 pts per 100 better than average, though i wouldn’t take too much from that alone.

…and TNFH:

here’s Utah’s offensive rating with Clarkson on the court for every season he’s been there, with on/off differential in parentheses:

2024-2025: 109.6 (-2.5)
2023-2024: 115.9 (-0.1)
2022-2023: 118.7 (+5.2)
2021-2022: 117.6 (+0.5)
2020-2021: 117.9 (-0.1)

Obviously these aren’t necessarily predictive, and he is 33, not 27, but we’re talking about a guy on a minimum salary, so it seems like there is a decent chance that he provides some kind of a spark off the bench in a suitable role the size of which will be determined by his level of play. He may indeed play as poorly as Cam (who was largely terrible with some bright spots sprinkled in) or Kolek, (Shamet is a different kind of player, might actually work next to Clarkson) but his ceiling (6MoY candidate) is much, much higher.

1

I think we can be pretty confident Clarkson is not going to be efficient. Even in his heyday Clarkson wasn’t an efficient player – the years he finished 1st and 4th in 6th man he was below league average in efficiency. And that was in a great offensive environment, the Jazz were top-3 in offense both years.

But that’s not the end of the world – you don’t have to be ultra efficient when your best player is off the floor to be a great offense, you just need to not fall apart like the Knicks did towards the end of last year when Brunson was off the court.

In the last good Jazz year before they blew it up, the Jazz offense was actually better with him on the floor than without him (even taking into account his inefficiency) – 118.3 ORtg with him, 116.7 without him. And even without Mitchell + Conley on the floor they were an above average offense with him on the floor (68th percentile, ORtg of 114.5).

1

I’m actually less optimistic about Yabu than Clarkson. He has 1800 minutes of recent NBA data…mostly on a tanking team. Who knows whether the shooting is for real? It’s a reasonable gamble to count on him as a rotation player, but a gamble just the same, especially since if he isn’t making shots, he’s a minus player (I’m not buying that setting good screens is that valuable of a skill if you can’t shoot, and he doesn’t really pass, rebound, dribble, or defend at a plus level, so it is totally about his making 3’s at a plus clip, especially above the break.)

I think we can be pretty confident Clarkson is not going to be efficient.

I remember hearing on radio that Clarkson shoots over 50% from corner threes. If thats true, his game will benefit enourmousy just by playing with high NBA level players. A ton of his misses came in late in the shot clock after poorly executed sets.

Also, he was dishing out 5 assist per game the year before last. We all know he gets into the paint at will and if he can consistently makes good reads, minimizes turnovers and low percentage shots, – he could be in the running for another 6MOY award & extend his career.

I love it when interest are aligned.

Z-man – if it makes you feel better Yabusele shot 40.6% from 3 in 1074 3PA in Europe. Granted the 3P line is closer out there but the dude can shoot.

clarkson did hit 50 percent on corner 3s last season but that is only 24 total shot attempts 30 percent of his shots are between 3-10 feet

So who do we think this last vet minimum slot is going go to?

Delon Wright? Landy Shamet? Lebron James after he gets bought out by The Lakers?

Clark is without a doubt a better scorer, but Payne is a better defender and better playmaker. Hard to believe, but Payne may also take fewer dumb shots than Clarkson. Clarkson is almost at Jordan Poole level. I don’t care how many “6th man of the year” awards he almost won, he’s way more reputation than actually good at basketball.

When we were all discussing Payne last year I was pretty much the only person saying that was more of a score first combo guard than a PG and that he was going to have hot nights where we would be singing his praise and nights where he shot us out of games with idiotic shots. I was pretty close to the mark. If anything, he was so likeable as a teammate he grew on me.

You can expect the same from Clarkson, except with less defense, less playmaking and less of a personality that grows on you.

among those three i would want lbj on a minimum contract (not happening) so my realistic want would be delon who is clark

Z-man – if it makes you feel better Yabusele shot 40.6% from 3 in 1074 3PA in Europe. Granted the 3P line is closer out there but the dude can shoot.

That was the first thing I checked. He may not duplicate his 3p% from last year, but it wasn’t a total fluke. He can shoot a bit.

Maybe. Personally, I don’t put much stock into Euro stats. He will be playing under enormous pressure in the world’s most famous arena on a team with “championship or bust” written all over it. Longer line, better defenses, higher stakes. He also shot only .325 from 3 in the 19 games after the all-star break…small sample in an unfairly outsized role, but it’s there.

As I said, it’s a good gamble, but one that is entirely dependent on his shooting.

‪@jledwardsiii.bsky.social‬
Knicks summer league update: Jordan Brink will be coaching New York in Las Vegas, per multiple league sources.

Brink was on Thibs’ staff and largely responsible for one of the best challenge success rates in the NBA. Good, young coach deserving of the role.

1

Katz and Eric Nehm had a good discussion on Katz and Shoot about how you analyze players on teams that aren’t trying to win. Fred made a good distinction regarding the Sixers: the Quentin Grimes breakout came from him playing a ball-dominant style that a healthier Sixers team will never want him to do, and that no non-tanking team would ask of him. He’s still a useful role player, but he’s not going to be getting 30 every night once the Sixers are attempting legitimacy again. Whereas Yabu was doing what he did at the kind of usage rate he would have here. Couple that with his international play, and it feels like we’ll be getting more or less what we’re hoping from him.

2

but he shot .401 from 3 prior to the all-star break and that is there too that is 51 games versus 19 games after the break

.401 for first 51 games
.325 for last 19 games (full tank)
.380 for full 70 games

Clarkson is almost at Jordan Poole level.

If Clarkson scores 20.5 PPG with a .591 TS% he will be, by far, the best minimum signing of this offseason, and quite frankly one of the best of all time.

0

strat, don’t say ridiculous stuff like “I was pretty much the only person saying…”. Virtually everyone here knew who Cam Payne was, and who he wasn’t. Cam put up numbers almost identical to his career averages last year. Nothing surprising at all about him to anyone paying attention.

And that’s the issue with Cam. He is locked in at that level. Clarkson will be at worst similar, but his floor is Cam’s ceiling. It’s a far better use of a minimum salary slot.

And as to his personality, I haven’t seen anything that portrays Clarkson as anything but a great teammate and likeable guy.

less of a personality that grows on you

This is an unnecessary thing to say.

FYI, watching interviews with JC and reading Jazz fans comments about him leaving, I think the opposite is true. He seems to have a great personality. A lot of the fans there LOVED him and are happy he is going to a contender and getting to play competitive basketball again.

1

“If Clarkson scores 20.5 PPG with a .591 TS% he will be, by far, the best minimum signing of this offseason, and quite frankly one of the best of all time.”

Yeah, but it’s a dumb .591…

1

If Clarkson’s job is to get buckets when Jalen or KAT aren’t playing he’s not going to be playing much

Jordan Brink will be coaching New York in Las Vegas,

Brink coaching Dink?

1

Clarkson corner 3PT%:

2024-2025: 46.2% (12/26)

2023-2024: 40.5% (17/42)

2022-2023: 39.3% (22/56)

2021-2022: 34.7% (42/121)

2020-2021: 28.2% (31/108)

2019-2020: 40.3% (42/104)

Bit of a Rorschach Test, but seems like at a minimum teams won’t be comfortable giving him the Hart treatment.

As others have said, I’m not expecting his efficiency to change much if at all. But if he can soak up usage at not-terrible efficiency, let Mitch offensively rebound his missed floaters, and find Deuce in the corners and Yabu ATB, our non-Brunson offense has a chance to keep us in games.

Interesting Clarkson mix-tape, not much that can be said about it since he hit 100% of his threes despite a career % of 33.6, which is fairly dreadful. I do like his dribble penetration, but what I’d like is for Brown to whisper in his ear that he wants him to lead the team in assts/36. Dribble-penetrate and kick out to the corner, dribble-penetrate and lob to Mitch. That would make me happy, as compared to the mix-tape sequences of dribble-penetrate and take a tough mid-range against a double-team.

Fingers crossed.

So who do we think this last vet minimum slot is going go to?

Delon Wright? Landy Shamet? Lebron James after he gets bought out by The Lakers?

I predict they won’t decide the last full roster spot or the last two way spot until at least a couple of games into summer league.

Here’s what I will say about Yabu after watching a bunch of film:

-He is very agile for a guy his size.
-He is fearsome on straight-line drives and dunks with force.
-He is adept at getting out on the break and finishing.
-He has a bit of a post-up game
-He can handle the ball a bit
-He is a good roller in the PnR

So I will modify my take to say that he can actually be impactful on offense even if his 3 is not falling. Beyond that, I’d like to see him lose 25lbs.

In every Mike Brown postgame press conference I’ve seen, he says “spray the ball” repeatedly. So I think he’s going to emphasize that with both Brunson and Clarkson.

i agree that yabu could stand to lose some weight i hope that 260 pounds is overstated anyone know his injury history

looks like hes lost 17 games to injury (including 3 for illness and 1 for eyes) in his 3 year career including 9 last season but nba games lost to injury is historically unreliable

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45647695/knicks-hire-mike-brown-how-new-york-looks-different-2025-26

When we were all discussing Payne last year I was pretty much the only person saying that was more of a score first combo guard than a PG

Well, what are your reflections about being wrong about this? Payne was in the 82nd percentile among combo guards in AST% and the 90th (in a good way) in TOV%, but just the 38th in points per shot attempt and 60th in usage. It’s much more traditional point guard oriented profile than whatever you’re describing.

1

cam was third on the team in ast/36 at 6.7 (second on the team if you leave out kolek limited minutes) but i have to agree that eye test certainly did not seem that way

Besides my ridiculous Lebron James on the minimum dream (thanks hubs!) what do people think we need with our last vet minimum spot?

does nnaji count as a vet since he has been hanging around for a while (has not yet played an nba minute) i would like to see him or maybe even okeke a little more defense would not hurt

does nnaji count as a vet since he has been hanging around for a while (has not yet played an nba minute) i would like to see him or maybe even okeke

Zeke Nnaji has played 3007 NBA minutes

maybe it is time for jon isaac or goga isaac probably makes more sense

james nnaji (the guy on our team) not zeke nnaji (the guy not on our team)

Zeke Nnaji has played a lot of NBA minutes, but it is James Nnaji on our summer league team.

James Nnaji is baby minimum eligible, but it wouldn’t shock me if he thinks he’s a bit above that. He’s held his own in what I believe is the second best professional basketball league in the world.

I think he’s a better prospect than Huk, but rostering them both doesn’t make a ton of sense if we can avoid it since they do the same things.

correct i just wrote the same thing

if he and huk are largely duplicative then hell give them both a little bit of pt and see which one of them might be a keeper

I see your point, TNFH, but I think Payne definitely was more of a shoot-first guard than the raw stats/percentages suggest. He did average 6.7 ast/36 but also averaged 14.7 shots per 100 possessions, which is a shoot-first number, similar to, say, Malik Monk. You and strat can quibble about him being on the pass-first side of combo guards or the shoot-first side of PGs, but he would best be described as a shoot-first small guard with some passing chops who shouldn’t be shooting much at all because he generally sucks at it.

Here’s how I see our positional breakdown, listing players I think can play the position with players who can play there in a pinch in italics.

PG & PF look like our thinnest positions, with PG because it has a lot of unproven or pseudo PGs. Ideally I want someone there, but skeptical we find anyone useful. So, I’d probably target a PF and C for our last spots.

PG:
Brunson
Clarkson (I think is initial, de facto 2nd unit PG)
Kolek
Deuce

SG:
Mikal
Deuce
Hart
Clarkson
OG

SF:
OG
Hart
Mikal
Dadiet
Clarkson

PF:
KAT
Yabusele
OG
Hart

C:
Mitch
KAT
Huk
Yabu

We can also use 2-ways as break glass players.

i dunno if we can have all these guys but this would be my dream on opening night:
starters: brunson (34) mcbride (28) anunoby (32) towns (30) robinson (24)
dynamic bench: clarkson (16) bridges (23) hart (19) yabusele (20) hukporti (14)
the rest: kolek mccullar nnaji

EB, some quibbles:

PG: While I agree that Clarkson has PG chops (excellent handle, probably better than Deuce) my guess is that when they are both in the backcourt, they will kind of split PG (i.e. on ball/off-ball) duties.

SG: It will be interesting to see whether Clarkson gets any run with Brunson, although that’s not a good defensive combo. I don’t see OG ever playing the 2.

SF: I can’t see Clarkson ever playing SF…it would be a 3-guard lineup if he’s in with two other guards. Maybe add McCullar here.

PF: Hart plays enough PF that I wouldn’t put him in italics. Dadiet can probably spot in there if necessary. Okay, maybe not.

C: Yabu played a bunch of C last year, so I would put him ahead of Huk, or at least even with him. Certainly not in italics.

Of course, all of this will need to be re-worked when Diawara wrecks the competition summer league next week.

nice, we are barreling in to off-season mode…

– fire thibs, check
– do little to nothing in the draft, check
– pickup a backup power forward, check
– add “scoring” to the bench, check
– add a competent, front office/analytics friendly coach – that will actually have an open conversation with players, maybe even the guys that aren’t in the current rotation, check

not to imply that it would be easy to change Mike’s inclinations, he just seems a lot more likely to at least listen a bit…

thibs just always seemed so locked in on being thibs…

yabu dabu du will be a fan star in nyc…he’s just built for it…

he gets us…

If it’s confirmed that Yabusele signed for just under the TPMLE, that’s another Brock Aller special.

The other day I quoted some calculations from twitter by @KnickzFeed about the Knicks being able to add another veteran minimum contract like Shamet if they waited the maximum 14 days to sign one of their rookies for a proration discount on their contract.

That guy also posted another route to this was Yabu taking a $40,000 or more haircut on his contract.

Looks like we may have pulled it off.

2

I lost all sympathy for Thibs when he deliberately destroyed Kemba. Not that I thought Kemba had much left, but to play him 40mpg four or five games in a row was demonic. Still thought he was a good coach, if limited, but it made it easy not to care if he got fired or whatever. Just a shitty thing to do.

So at least on the “treats his players well” scale Brown has got to be better

1

real point of last post, eagerly leaning in to the part of the program where we get to swapping rando experiences while out and about, and sharing media and food faves…

current faves:
Murderbot Diaries
Dept. Q
movie wise – nothing comes to mind
cruisin’ el camino real

The other day I quoted some calculations from twitter by @KnickzFeed about the Knicks being able to add another veteran minimum contract like Shamet if they waited the maximum 14 days to sign one of their rookies for a proration discount on their contract.

Thank you for reiterating that – I was beginning to think I was crazy as people kept speculating about which vet we would bring back. I said we couldn’t unless we waiting two weeks, but no one said anything, so I figured I must have been wrong.

1

movie wise – nothing comes to mind

Sinners is pretty great, Geo, especially if you love music. I resisted because I don’t like horror, but my son got me to go with him and it blew me away. Truly original, using the tropes of genre to tell a much richer, deeper story. I think it’s going to last.

real point of last post, eagerly leaning in to the part of the program where we get to swapping rando experiences while out and about, and sharing media and food faves…

I’ve been completely Andor-pilled for the past month. A prestige TV show in a Star Wars setting is like a direct dopamine hit to my brain.

I think we can be pretty confident Clarkson is not going to be efficient.

Having made such an egregious error translating ORtg statistics from B-Ref I feel compelled to lay off Clarkson for the rest of the summer.

I think DRed said it best: we’re fine if this guy is eating innings in the regular season but we do not want him to be part of a playoff rotation.

Shamet and Wright on the other hand gave you very little in the regular season but neither killed us when we needed them to spot us minutes in the ECF.

I’d rather have the guys who won’t kill you in the playoffs. But whatever.

You can expect the same from Clarkson, except with less defense, less playmaking and less of a personality that grows on you.

Actually Clarkson’s personality is by far the best thing about him. He’s one of the most likable players in the league.

And I don’t know what words the kids use these days to describe someone who dresses well (is it aura now?) but the man has great style.

And that’s good bc it gives us two reasons to be excited when he is in street clothes on the bench.

Speaking of Katz, excellent piece by him on our new head coach: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6471316/2025/07/03/mike-brown-knicks-evolution-expectations/

“James Nnaji is baby minimum eligible, but it wouldn’t shock me if he thinks he’s a bit above that. He’s held his own in what I believe is the second best professional basketball league in the world.

I think he’s a better prospect than Huk, but rostering them both doesn’t make a ton of sense if we can avoid it since they do the same things.”

I disagree with this. In reviewing his film, Nnaji seems ridiculously raw, with no skills whatsoever beyond dunking and protecting the rim at point-blank range, mostly over much smaller players. He looks clumsy and slow in space. Despite his awesome physical profile, I’d be pretty surprised if he plays a single meaningful minute in the NBA in the next two years.

OTOH, Huk looked like a legit potential NBA player to me in terms of footwork, coordination, timing, skill level, and I think a full offseason of intensive work will make a significant difference for him in making the leap to decent NBA backup C. It’s a tiny sample, but in the 3 games he played in post-ASB before he injured his knee, he averaged 17.4 minutes and put up a 79% TS% and 10pts, 6rebs, 2 asts and 2 blocks per 36. I remember being very bummed when he got hurt because he was starting to look legit. In particular, I remember a defensive possession where he covered players all over the floor.

Frankly, I’d rather have Diawara occupy that last roster spot than Nnaji.

The range of Star Wars content under Disney is insane.

The new trilogy is absolute slop. To say it could’ve been generated by ChatGPT is an insult to ChatGPT.

Andor is one of the best TV shows I have ever seen.

1

“I lost all sympathy for Thibs when he deliberately destroyed Kemba. Not that I thought Kemba had much left, but to play him 40mpg four or five games in a row was demonic. Still thought he was a good coach, if limited, but it made it easy not to care if he got fired or whatever. Just a shitty thing to do.”

Yeah, D’Antoni was similar in that regard.

not dink pate?

Andor is so superior to any other Star Wars content that has come out since, and probably including Rogue One (which, discounting nostalia for the original trilogy, is maybe my favorite Star Wars movie). The writing in Andor is so smart – as opposed to all these slapdash disney+ only marvel and star wars shows. Or even the most recent Captain America movie which feels like it needed like 5 more rewrites before being released into the wild.

“I think DRed said it best: we’re fine if this guy is eating innings in the regular season but we do not want him to be part of a playoff rotation.

Shamet and Wright on the other hand gave you very little in the regular season but neither killed us when we needed them to spot us minutes in the ECF.

I’d rather have the guys who won’t kill you in the playoffs. But whatever.”

This doesn’t make any sense to me, unless you assume that Clarkson is a guaranteed negative in the innings-eating dept. If he’s actually productive in his limited role the regular season, why should it be assumed that he won’t be similarly productive in the same role in the post-season?

Right now, Dink Pate sucks big time. Maybe he develops in a couple of years, but he’s currently very bad.

yeah i am not sure i agree that clarkson could not help us in the playoffs and i am not sure i agree that cam and shamet were actually good for us in the playoffs cam had one amazing game early (but was overall .324 fg and .238 3fg for the entire playoff run) and then shamet hit three 3s or so in the last few minutes of game 6 against indy when they were too late to matter

If Clarkson plays up to his old self, I’ll be reasonably happy with him because he does fill a need.

I just don’t think a player past the age of 30 with declining numbers is a good bet to do that. I’m not sold that he’s just tanking, players usually want to keep up their offensive numbers. He was cut because nobody wanted him.

I’m also not convinced he’s better than Payne when you account for Clarkson’s godawful defense.

Here’s to hoping the team fit overcomes the aging, not that great player.

movie wise – nothing comes to mind

I’ll 2nd Sinners. I also really loved Black Bag, Bring Her Back, and The Phoenician Scheme (I’m an unabashed Wes Anderson fan).

2

I quite liked Mickey 17. I don’t love the 3rd act but still thought it was a good movie.

1

thanks everyone, you all are the best…save me from my self imposed subjugation…hope you are all enjoying the day…

for the record I’m kicking ass in keeping the house clean and making sure food is taken care of, help prep for work stuff, chauffeur services…

not sure which is more difficult: partnering or parenting…yeah…thankfully(?) I’d don’t normally do them at the same time…leading different lives I guess…

enjoyed sinners, thunderbolts, killer of killers…nothing in a while has really stood out to me though…watched valhalla rising last night for like the 3rd time or so, always notice different things rewatching the good stuff…

don’t wanna get too hyped for superman, gonna try to go in with as open a mind as possible…have very low expectations for the new fantastic four…interesting that it’s a mature portrayal of those characters…

reminds me of when marvel did that: The End series…the wolverine one was classic, the x-men one was really wide ranging…

I’ve been saving that andor stuff for a while doug…haven’t watched rogue one in a while and haven’t seen season one…think the last thing I watched was ahsoka…still have a darth maul graphic novel on a bookshelf, unread…

I don’t know man, I’ve kind of lost some interest in that universe…there are just soooooooo many others to choose from 😳

right now Martha Wells has got me turned out…

don’t wanna get too hyped for superman, gonna try to go in with as open a mind as possible…have very low expectations for the new fantastic four…interesting that it’s a mature portrayal of those characters…

I’m pumped for Superman, which surprises me as we enter year 17 of superhero fatigue. I’ll probably be disappointed because my expectations are now too high.

I was hopeful for Fantastic 4 because it looked like it had some real personality with the retro stuff. The more I see, the less thrilled I am.

Didn’t watch Captain America.

I know people say Thunderbolts* is good, but I’m too tired of Marvel to convince myself to watch it.

This doesn’t make any sense to me, unless you assume that Clarkson is a guaranteed negative in the innings-eating dept.

Think about it. If 100% of your value comes from taking shots, that’s cool in the regular season bc Brunson and Towns and Bridges want time to rest.

But in the playoffs defenses want Clarkson taking shots, and we don’t. So what else is he gonna do?

It’s the same thing that happened to Cam. He was very productive in the regular season, much more than Landry and Wright. But the other two guys could play in the ECF bc they complemented the guy we wanted to take shots (Towns), and Cam got benched bc we couldn’t afford playing him when his shot wasn’t going in.

I know people say Thunderbolts* is good, but I’m too tired of Marvel to convince myself to watch it.

Thunderbolts is somewhere between fine and good. It stands out compared to other recent Marvel movies because it feels like one whole, cohesive movie instead of two separate movies edited together and it doesn’t shoehorn in other characters to promote upcoming movies/TV shows.

if mike brown is a good head coach he could help clarkson to improve his efficiency even a little bit in that department could be a big help

I LOVED Black Bag.

Took my 4 year old daughter to Elio. I, personally liked it, but it kind of scared her.

28 Years Later was also very enjoyable and quite bonkers!

1. Sinners is incredible.

2. Re: Star Wars, I will stand up for Last Jedi, which despite its flaws (mostly trying to do too much) is probably my second favorite film of the entire franchise, after Empire. But, yes, most of the Star Wars movies and shows of the Disney era have been rough. (Other exceptions including Mandalorian s1, and obviously Andor.)

1

Or even the most recent Captain America movie which feels like it needed like 5 more rewrites before being released into the wild.

No amount of rewrites could have saved that dreck. Awful film.

But Tony Gilroy is a fantastic writer (“Michael Clayton” remains a fave) and season 1 of Andor was great. And I don’t even like Star Wars much. Been waiting on season 2 for a good moment to savor it.

Also thumbs up on Black Bag. And yeah, I’m pumped for Superman, quite embarrassing but there we are. F4 looks truly terrible, though. (Unlike F1, which I have heard is great)

1

It’s basically ancient history at this point but Clarkson was actually very good in the playoffs for the Jazz. Better than he was in the regular season, weirdly enough. Could be noise, could be that isolation scoring is a premium playoff skill. Probably mostly the former with a bit of the latter sprinkled in. Clarkson’s ISO PPP and percentile rank:

2024-2025: 0.87 (45th)

2023-2024: 1.00 (68th)

2022-2023: 1.05 (76th)

2021-2022: 0.97 (71st)

In any event, I don’t think anyone should have strong feelings one way or the other about his playoff viability until we get some more data.

There’s absolutely a chance he’s just completely washed and the Jordan Clarkson threads turn out to have the same amount of forward looking relevance as the Kadeem Allen ones. But it’s not insane to hope for an old-man dead cat bounce a la Derrick Rose, in which case there’d be no reason he couldn’t be a little useful in the playoffs.

finally finished watching Kraven, paused to do other stuff several times, over several days…

this bad guy character, who didn’t even get a name in the movie – mentions that Kraven killed his buddy Hitman (tommy monaghan)…

now one of the Hitman stories is a movie I’d like to see…

hopefully jon bernthal gets a punisher flick soon…

I need to rewatch 28 Years Later and I think I’ll love it. It was just so different from my expectations (and from the previous 2) that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it; I had the same issue with Drive the first time I saw that and I love that movie now.

ha swifty, took young daughter to see chronicles of Narnia, she came out saying: there was a lot of killing in that movie…

oops…

truly timeless art…

It was the first time she got scared watching a movie.

It was fine for most of the movie and she seemed to enjoy it. But the main bad guy was really loud and stomped around in this robot suit and was kind of militaristic. The theater had great sound so every time he stomped his feet, it made a lot of noise and that scared her.

It was interesting because she has seen many cartoon villians but it made me realize a lot of the classic ones like Scar or Ursela are more sneaky and sinister for most of the movie and only get “scary” at the very end whereas this villian was mean and loud from the get go.

1

The Last Jedi had some interesting things in it, but it got so far up its own ass with “defying expectations” that it actually ends up being more frustrating than entertaining.

There is zero character development in the sequel trilogy. Everything you ever needed to learn about Rey, Finn, and Poe, the erstwhile Luke/Leia/Finn of the trilogy, you learn within ten seconds of seeing them on screen. None of them go through any kind of journey, they’re all just forever chasing dumb MacGuffins. You could delete Finn from the story entirely and not lose anything. He’s set up to be an interesting character then there is no follow through.

I hope the deserved rapturous response to Andor leads to more adult-oriented SW content.

1

I’m actually less optimistic about Yabu than Clarkson. He has 1800 minutes of recent NBA data…mostly on a tanking team. Who knows whether the shooting is for real?

He has 1074 attempts in Europe and shot 40.6% where the line is 22′ 2″?

I agree with JK on Last Jedi. It tried to do things, which I appreciate more than simply repeating the original series (film 1) or making the dumbest, most incoherent film of all of them (film 3), but despite some good moments it, too, is ultimately pretty rough and somewhat pointless.

Honestly “Empire” may be the only actually good movie in the bunch…but if people want to grade on a curve because they grew up loving the series or something, I’m not gonna quibble.

1

Bondy:

For the LeBron-to-Knicks speculation, I checked on it and the answer was, “No. Makes for good chatter but no.”

Thanks, Alan. It seemed unlikely, but I’m glad we don’t have to worry about it. Which is a weird thing to say about a top 5 all-time player, but I wouldn’t be super excited about rooting for him at this stage.

It’s unlikely we trade for him. But we are going to get him for the vet minimum after The Lakers buy him out!

I’m going to keep repeating this until I speak it into existence.

“If 100% of your value comes from taking shots…”

Everything you said after this doesn’t apply, as this is not true about Jordan Clarkson. That’s why you had to retract your initial premise about his TS%, since the stats clearly show that he has value beyond “taking shots.” He breaks down defenses in ways that players like Cam and Shamet can’t. That’s something we were sorely lacking in the playoffs…a guy who could break down defenses off the dribble when Brunson was out of the game.

The disjointed nature of the Disney trilogy is what makes it such a bust to me. I actually thought TFA laid some decent foundations and I was excited to see what followed, but it hardly works as a standalone movie like Empire or Rogue One, so its legacy required the trilogy to succeed.

TLJ was compelling in some ways, and I’d even go as far as saying it set Abrams up decently to land the plane in ROS, but I left it pretty unsatisfied. I’m all for defying expectations, going off script, etc., but I felt like it did that without actually replacing the Star Wars cliches with anything particularly meaningful. The characters didn’t follow traditional Star Wars paths, but didn’t follow any other coherent paths either. It was hard to get invested in any of the storylines and I felt like the character development barely budged.

Then ROS was so bad it tarnished whatever promising things TFA and TLJ gave it to work with, and the first two were hardly good enough to stand on their own. I mean, it was insultingly bad and I’m not being hyperbolic–I found the idea that I would be satisfied by a reheated version of the OT, clumsily jammed into one movie, insulting.

1

“The Rise of Skywalker” makes “Captain America: Brave New World” look like Shakespeare.

Our last free agent pickup should be based on whether we are starting two bigs or one. If Mitch and Towns start we need another big if Towns is the only big who starts we need another wing.

I’d say Boucher if we think Mitch is going to be a starter and Melton if we think he isn’t.

I’d love to see Nnaji on the 2nd round exception because I don’t think he would accept a two-way and I’d like to get him into our system.

Then Diawarra, McCullar, and Pate as the two-ways.

no

Its pretty obvious that Abrams in Force Awakens set up Snoke as basically the new Emperor and main real villain of the trilogy. At the end of Force Awakens I was very interested in learning about Snoke’s back story and obviously focusing on Luke in the sequel.

But then Rian Johnson killed Snoke halfway thru the movie and turned Luke into a character that even Mark Hamill strongly disagreed with. I enjoyed the movie but when it was over I was like OK well where the hell do they go now with this in the final movie. There was obviously no collaboration between Adams and Johnson in the story arc which was a huge mistake. Carrie Fisher passing away before filming Rise of Skywalker also really hurt the movie because from all indications she was supposed to have a huge role in the final movie.

As much as most Star Wars fans hate Rise of Skywalker I actually feel if you just watch the movie without trying to connect it to the first 2 movies its not that bad and actually is a kinda fun movie to watch on its own. But I know I’m in the minority with that opinion.

TLJ sort of set up the premise that The Force belongs to all of us, and that maybe The Force isn’t just some special ability genetically passed down to galactic nepo babies. Remember the thing at the end where the random kid appears to move the broom by using The Force? That set up some interesting possibilities for how to resolve the trilogy.

But then for the last movie they just said nah, let’s just go back to the nepo baby thing. When Ben Solo dies you just don’t even give a shit about any of it.

Compare that to Andor, where every death feels like a punch to the gut.

2

Good to see we are in off-season mode here (given that we actually are in the off-season) by my criterion—more posts than the news of the day should merit but are on a non NBA topic.

I liked The Last Jedi a lot. I like a deconstruction narrative more than most, and I was going through my own period of evolving personal belief at the time. TLJ’s themes resonated with me. Looking back, I was really champing at the bit for a more serious take on Star Wars that Andor would later fill many times over.

While I also liked The Force Awakens to some degree, I didn’t care for how derivative it was, recreating the original trilogy. As a kid I was a big fan of the EU — I had all the Essential Guide lore books for starships, droids, weapons, and planets — and was miffed by how Abrams knocked all of it off the table like an indifferent cat.

The less said about ROTS the better. I’ve never left a theater feeling quite so sick before.

Andor’s brilliance means The Force Awakens’ rehash bothers me even more now. I think Abrams’ lack of imagination set the sequel trilogy up for failure. You can also blame Kathleen Kennedy for assuming three different directors could pass the baton to each other without a hitch, Bob Iger for demanding TFA come out sooner and scrapping plans for a single writer to draft the storyline for the whole trilogy in favor of Abrams’ mystery box copyism, Disney for caving to the tantrums of its turbogeek fans, kicking Colin Trevorrow’s somewhat interesting script to the curb, and forcing ROTS to be fanservice-laden slop, Trevorrow for not writing a better story in the first place, Abrams again for doing what he was told…

…in the end, as much as I liked TLJ, I’d sacrifice it in a heartbeat if it meant Tony Gilroy could just reboot the sequel trilogy himself. God, I love Andor.

Over the last few years there seemed to be a lot of clamoring for Yabu. Funny, now he is on our team, the negatives are coming out from some. Oh well let’s see eh?

Being her back was not scary per se, but one scene in particular made me look away from the screen, and not many horror movies do that anymore. Good stuff

28 years later was great, although there may be some knowledge of UK affairs to understand the last 5 minutes

Sinners was top notch

Maybe the movie industry isn’t done after all (although I don’t have much time for comic book movies)

Compare that to Andor, where every death feels like a punch to the gut.

Smoke one for ***** ****. That one still has me reeling.

The whole shaggy dog plot line in TLJ where Rose and Finn go off on some side adventure on the Casino planet to find some pointless MacGuffin, and then the whole thing turns out to be an exercise in Subverting Our Expectations because the Benecio Del Toro character isn’t a scrappy hero… ooof that’s bad.

Half the movie is just the good guys sitting still and slowly running out of gas. But that Subverted Our Expectations! Luke is a grumpy old weirdo because that Subverts Out Expectations, and then he fights Kylo as a hologram because… well, you get the point. There are more of those but it’s too tiresome to mention them all.

It was a nice try, I suppose, and could have led somewhere interesting, but the incel nerds got mad about all of the Subverted Expectations and so Disney just retconned all of them in the next movie. Luke’s Force Ghost even came back to say “I was wrong to subvert your expectations.”

Good Lord what a mess.

Did you guys watch the Acolyte? Another Star Wars show with divisive opinions although I would’ve liked to have seen where they would’ve gone with a 2nd season.

Jock Landale anybody?

I’m confused about our roster. People here seem to be talking about needing one more player so far, but I only count 12 full time players (Brunson, Clarkson, Kolek, McBride, Bridges, Hart, OG, Dadiet, Towns, Yabusele, Robinson, Hukporti). Who am I missing?

Every time I find an original Star Wars movie on I can’t believe they are the same movies I loved so much as a kid. Other than the Empire Strikes Back and Harrison Ford, the writing and acting is kind of unbearable for me now. It’s strange.

But I can watch Indiana Jones any time….

Excited for Andor. Everyone seems to be stoked about it….

I live in UltraJockistan and would love it if he came here. I don’t know why Houston released him. Defense?

Dude shot 42% from three!!!

To add to my question, those twelve player’s salaries add up to almost the second apron and are only $ 2.195M short of the second apron, which isn’t even enough for two first year minimums. Yet we need to roster fourteen players.

that 42 percent was on 26 shots last season you are kind of ignoring his combined 60/213 (28.2 percent) from 3 in the three prior combined years if you want landale his 3 point shooting is the wrong reason he only shoots 17 percent of his shots from 3 anyway i would love to have him here and have said so several times

I’m confused about our roster. People here seem to be talking about needing one more player so far, but I only count 12 full time players (Brunson, Clarkson, Kolek, McBride, Bridges, Hart, OG, Dadiet, Towns, Yabusele, Robinson, Hukporti). Who am I missing?

We can only afford to have one more player at the vet min, that’s why people are talking about “one more player”. The other one for us to have 14 players has to be on a rookie min.

More details here:
https://sny.tv/articles/knicks-salary-cap-situation-free-agency-7-2-25

BBA:
I haven’t seen the Acolyte, and now that it was canceled so quickly I’m not sure I’ll get around to it. Apparently it was another victim of Star Wars’ aggrieved turbogeek fanbase. It’s too bad. Manny Jacinto deserved better.

Owen:
You’ll love Andor. Please let us know what you think when you get around to watching.

To add to my question, those twelve player’s salaries add up to almost the second apron and are only $ 2.195M short of the second apron, which isn’t even enough for two first year minimums. Yet we need to roster fourteen players.

Clarkson counts against the cap at ~$2.3M instead of his contract value around $3.6M. Vets like Clarkson who have more than 2 years experience and sign for the minimum count on the cap as if they were only a 2 year experience player.

Doogie – I have been joking about Jock since he was in college. And yes, I know he doesn’t shoot much.

It’s a bit.

Early Bird, that’s a good point. The web page I looked at listed Clarkson at $3.63M. The difference is about enough for a first year minimum

Thank you Early bird and Cybersoze.

Idk what we’d even want with the last vet min. Maybe another center? Could be Jock or anyone else.

I meant mobland not wives. Sgood

Yeah it’s hard to know what to do with that last slot.

If Mitch is starting with KAT then it makes sense to get another center. Huk may or may not be ready and you’d hate to be short if/when Mitch misses games. But then again Yabu can play some small ball center.

But if you star Yabu and Mitch is backing up KAt then the need is another PF.

Then again Clarkson and deuce aren’t really pure PG’s and I could make a case for bringing back wright to have a pure pg on the roster who is also a plus defensive player as that might be a nice look.

But then again Shamet is such a good shooter that he might be worth bringing back. I just don’t know!

I watched acolyte and I’m a bit bummed no second series. Finally something non Skywalker family related.

It wasnt the greatest thing ever. But it has some good things to it. I guess it was just too expensive for what it was.

sometimes I think about finally finishing the new Disney Wars trilogy but then I sit in silence blissfully imagining bobneptune being personally denaturalized by a stroke of Stephen Miller’s presidential autopen and then summarily banished to an El Salvadorian megaprison and I assure you that none of my expectations are subverted in any way as I work my excitement down

Clarkson counts against the cap at ~$2.3M instead of his contract value around $3.6M. Vets like Clarkson who have more than 2 years experience and sign for the minimum count on the cap as if they were only a 2 year experience player.

And I believe the NBA kicks in the difference, right?

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

122 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.07.03)”