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148 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.07.14)”
Ricardo Fois, our new member of Brown’s staff, sounds pretty good.
I skipped the game. Tell me more about McCullar playing well and Kolek seeming to play poorly based on the box score.
I’ll also take observations on our other draftees or Nnaji.
The box score isn’t lying. Kolek shot terribly. I think he’s better than he showed, but man. There must must be something about the summer league team coaching and organization that’s making it difficult for him. Maybe he’s been ordered make all his decisions within a half second and he’s not used to it yet. But that’s just speculation.
McCullar, on the other hand did well, made successful drives to the basket and earned a lot of foul shots.
Diawara is really quick for a big man and this caused problems for the Celtics. His good plus minus was no accident.
Hukporti was fine. He did what he was supposed to do, rebounds and such, and wasn’t a worry at all.
kolek is having the same somewhat surprising problem he had last year in the league (but not so much in the summer), and it’s not defense (which has been pretty decent). he cannot handle ball pressure sufficiently well for his archetype. a defender hawks him and they get into his body, and often either turn him or actually get to the ball. he sort of looks like he should be able to do what mark price or scott skiles could do when you tried them, but as of yet, he can’t. his decisions and vision and craft are of course still there, but this is a red line condition for him. the shot is also not falling from anywhere, but whatever; it’s really about the difficulty getting to his spots under pressure.
mccullar is smart and uses his merely good length incredibly well, sort of how landry fields did. he’s like scott foster, always extending. it’s nice that he’s been willing to launch some non-obvious 3s; shooting form has looked so-so.
Dadiet didn’t do as well as last game but he left the game with foot pain and that may have affected his shot.
I didn’t watch but it does sound like Frankie Smokes in his first SL. He just couldn’t handle ball pressure with that high dribble.
overall huk has impressed the most in tiny sample size: 55.6 fg% 15.3 reb/36 (6.8 orb/8.5 drb) 4.2 blk/36 .599 ts% .556 efg% 21.0 trb% (17.0 orb%/25.9 drb%) 102.0 drtg
Eye test warning, but I tend to agree with ptmilo, Kolek’s being pressured full-court much like Jalen was last season, so he’s spending all his energy just getting to the fore court, and it also seems like the defender is waiting for his spin away from pressure and they keep poking the ball out when he does that.
But the part that is grinding my gears is the bad passing. Very little good passing, and a lot of ‘Here, you take it’ to someone else at the three point line that is anticipated and stolen.
Wow, you really slayed the straw man, Noble.
I think my argument was pretty clear, and it’s not “Leon isn’t a good NBA executive.” It’s that the superiority of other front offices is the reason we’re losing in the playoffs.
The most critical matchup in Knicks vs Pacers the last two years hasn’t been Brunson vs Halliburton or even Thibs vs Carlisle. We lost to the Pacers two years in a row bc Kevin Pritchard has done more with his draft picks than Leon Rose. (And he’s had far less to work with.)
One guy turns the 31st pick into Andrew Nembhardt while other guy sells it for a dime so he can fit some bloated contracts in under the apron. One guy uses Obi Toppin as a quality 7th man while the other guy gives him away for peanuts as a favor to his agent. Hell even if we had Quentin Grimes off the bench we might have won the last two years. The margin is that small, and these are the mistakes that put us on the short end of it.
This isn’t some faulty doorknob in an otherwise great job. This is the biggest reason we’ve been eliminated two years in a row. Thibs took the fall but Leon’s the one who fucked up.
Macri’s fill-in newsletter, “Knicks Off and Sputtering.” It’s Summer League. The rule is you can’t complain about wins in Summer League (you also can’t brag about wins in Summer League, either).
Kolek having trouble handling the ball under pressure is the sort of thing you can complain about in SL. If he misses a bunch of 3s thats not that troubling
I don’t agree that Kolek is losing to the pressure. It is slowing him down but ha always gets over the half court line. I think it’s more likely he’s trying to make decisions too fast once he’s over the half court line.
btw dae dae grant has looked much better than kolek in these two games low sample size notwithstanding i do not think he actually is overall better than kolek but still someone maybe worth keeping an eye on
Knicks Fan, agree and disagree. He’s not failing at the pressure, but I have to believe it is actually helping to lead to bad decisions, as you suggest. It’s both annoying to be picked at for eight long seconds, plus the realization that time is slipping away and you need to get your teammates into it can lead to ill-timed passes or not clocking where the defense is.
And while dred is right that shooting is not a huge concern in Summer League, I’d probably feel a bit better if he weren’t 5-24 (0-11 from three…).
hey Director, happy monday to you sir…
amazing post yesterday that really hit hard with its timing…yep, your post was right on time, and relatable…
thought about my response to cyber when he recently asked about this new romance aspect in my life (close and dear friend moved back out to california last year)…
in the post responded with some kind of mix of mister spock and joe friday – basically saying love was simply a part of a successful survival strategy…yeah, not such an inspiring notion…
over the last year or so during each trip to see my friend – inevitably some early saturday morning while I’m still laying in bed relaxing my friend will return from running an early morning errand and initiate some serious relationship conversation…like a grievances session – all i can usually think of is: what the fuck is happening right now, and why aren’t we either cuddling or having sex instead of this shit?…
feels like being ambushed, sucks to have to get so “real” so early…honestly it’s tough to have to have those sensitive relationship discussions at any time…
I have a pretty critical mind, that’s pretty paranoid, so it’s very easy for me to get slighted, I usually just don’t say nothing about it…won’t forget about it, but won’t really bring it up…
this saturday was really one of the first times I was able to respond effectively to most behavioral accusations (at least that’s how I take them)…and share some of my own concerns…
although the process is painful, like having some therapy session in bed, the main reason the relationship continues to strengthen and improve – is because of my partner’s willingness to have tough conversations…
all that to say Director – i hope you find the opportunity to share your perspective with your partner…express how their behavior affected you…
and thanks again for being brave and sharing some personal stuff, that’s very much a part of many of our lives…
oh yeah, congratulations on nearly ( 😊 ) finishing up your magnificent man cave…
what’s your favorite feature in your basement?
.
Mike Brown’s notion of play faster may be tough for Tyler to adjust to…jalen may also run in to some difficulties trying to execute that way…
they both seem like half court, take some time to survey the situation offense initiators…
I actually wasn’t responding to any particular argument, including yours. Just weighing in on the Leon discourse generally, which of course has included some posters making the case that he is affirmatively bad at his job. Anyway…
I don’t think Leon is the best executive in the league. You could probably make a case for as few as 2-3 or as many as 9-10 being better. But instead of litigating those details, I’ll just repeat my implied question: if he keeps getting his lunch eaten by all these other GMs, why do we have the 2nd or 3rd best odds to win the championship next year?
Of course that is in some ways an oversimplification, but again, it is also a very, very difficult thing to accomplish in the NBA such that I don’t think a sucker GM could pull it off.
Watched a portion of SL yesterday and Kolek looked like he can’t handle the pressure. Similar to what Indy did to Brunson, put someone faster and longer to body him up and it disrupts what he does well. And similar to what happened with Thibs in Indy, the offense just caved without their PG leading the charge. It was ugly for most of the parts I watched.
McC had a bunch of “energy points” and the Knicks were scoring off of steals and such, but their half-court offense seemed nonexistent.
Kolek’s shooting has been bad this SL, last SL, in the g-league, and in the NBA. It’s still not a lot of minutes overall, but it might be enough. His 2p% has stunk at all those stops too.
Maybe someone wants to take him through a trade into cap space so we can sign McCullar to a big league deal.
Nnaji left the game with back tightness. He’s really damn athletic. He looks jacked. Still only has 1 rebound in SL. It’s hard to say much because he hasn’t shown much. If he’s healthy, I’m hoping Huk sits the last 2 games and Nnaji gets more minutes.
The team just looks better with Diawara on the floor. He seems to understand the game pretty well, which surprised me. He gets beat on defense sometimes, but that might be a fixable footwork thing.
Just got back from my younger daughter’s final dance competition in Orlando… Those things feel like AAU for girls, just a brutal schedule… Still, it was good to be able to spend some time with her before she goes off to college… Good luck with the relationship Geo… I find I have to spend time preparing for those tough conversations with my girlfriend, she certainly does… In my opinion, Kolek is obviously not athletic enough for the NBA, that’s not going to change… I’d use those last 2 roster spots on Wright and Diawara, who has enough size and athleticism to at least be an emergency big in the Precious mold… Hubert, we lost to Indiana 2 years ago because of injuries, not talent…
I can’t get too bent out of shape about Kolek’s summer league so far. The pressure he is facing is only gonna be a thing if players are allowed 10 fouls. The passing will probably improve when he’s playing with guys he can depend on to create space and get to spots. He’s probably doing some serious weight-training (as he should) and that might screw up his shot for a while. He looks very strong out there and isn’t getting pushed around, just beaten up by guys who aren’t worried about foul calls.
ha, I’m gonna be laughing about that for awhile…
wait, what’s happening – no one told me this was gonna be a team air your grievances meeting – i didn’t get a chance to prepare any notes 😱
OTOH I’m not really impressed by McCullar. The poor man’s Josh Hart thing seems to be his ceiling for now…and we don’t really need that, nor is it all that hard to find. I don’t see much promise in the shot becoming dependable.
The guy I find the most intriguing is Diawara. The guy just turned 20 and has incredible measurables. He can handle the ball a bit and looks to have good court vision and passing ability. He can also finish straight line drives to the rim with both hands.
The shot is funky and he has a long way to go with footwork and all the little positioning things a pro has to learn, but I think stashing him would be a waste. Bring him over and let him learn the NBA game. I don’t see anyone else worthy of that 14th roster spot. Nnaji is just too raw and clearly can only play one position. Do with him what we did with Hukporti last year.
We’ll see what happens with Kolek, but right now I don’t feel particulartly comfortable going into the regular season without another legitimate PG.
Geo, I’m sure your lady friend spends her time out running or whatever thinking about what she’s going to say, then she comes back, locked and loaded…I have come up with my own stock Thibs style “the relationship tells you what to do” answers when certain topics come up… Kolek looks too slow on both sides of the ball to me… McCullar is a poor man’s Hart, but I would rather give those minutes to Dadiet. I think he has the higher upside…
Your reading comprehension is too good to make these kinds of misrepresentations.
The point is consistently made by several people here that Leon’s constant waste of assets isn’t a big deal.
My position is that it’s the primary the reason we’ve come up short the last two years, and likely will be the reason we continue to.
If you disagree with me, the counterargument isn’t “Leon’s good.” The counterargument is that it didn’t matter that the Pacers had Andrew Nembhart, Obi Toppin, Ben Mathurin, and Ben Sheppard while we had nothing but a pile of ashes to show for similar assets.
From the limited minutes I’ve seen, he can only go to his strong hand but can’t turn the corner, and then sends a pass to the top of the key, which gets picked off. Seems to happen a lot.
I don’t agree that Kolek is losing to the pressure. It is slowing him down but ha always gets over the half court line.
imagine the friendliest possible tone when reading, ‘you’d have to be blind.’ watching on a plane with the guy in front of me apparently conversing with his own audiobook, i can still recall someone wong absolutely punishing him. down 11-4 in the first he’s forced to pick up his dribble just over the half court line and bounces a desperate pass to dadiet who was not looking and was in fact running away from the ball and hence did not come close to receiving it. soon after he struggles to get into a simple dho to i think that luckyducky slovenian, although he does barely get it done. after that he stopped having trouble because they completely went away from having kolek bring it up for the rest of his first stint.
in q2, maybe 3min left, wong just completely swiped it from him in the back court. i thought maybe this should have been a foul but it was also something you rarely see, because wong came totally across his body right in front of him and just snatched his lefty dribble. after another play where he brought huk all the way to halfcourt to screen wong, they again gave up and switched to mccullar bringing it up.
in the third i counted at least three times he picked up his dribble 40 ft or more out to pressure. on of them resulted in that crazy pass he launched like an elon ketamine tweet that did, impressively, find its mark in dadiet’s waiting hands, about a continent away. this is also what surprised me last year when i went in absurdly pro-kolek after summer league. he got redirected or frozen by single player pressure far too easily for who he needs to be in an offense.
Speaking of slaying straw man, has anyone here argued that Leon is better than Prichard?
Nope.
Or that Thibs is better than Carlisle?
Nope.
But that fucking missing handle….
Well at least Kolek didn’t have the worst shooting performance in Vegas yesterday….
Two years ago, everyone was injured so give me break.
Last year was just a measuring stick year and the team outperformed ALL expectations. No one expected NY to beat Boston. Leon built the team to do just that and the players did it in their first try.
2025-26 is the first year where the expectations are NBA Finals or bust and we have a window of two more years after this. If at the end of three years, – we don’t get to the finals or come within a game or two to the championship, then you can say that these small mistakes where the difference. Until then, just chill, enjoy the ride an root for our talent to maximize it’s blossom and come together every spring.
I’m thinking might have a great sophmore season now that he completely shit the bed in Vegas. It’s a Knicksian thing to do.
My favorite SL memory was Nate Robinson’s MVP season.
Speaking for myself, I have criticized Leon for a number of transactions or lack thereof and would never say any particular bad move “didn’t matter.”
There’s also some cherry picking going on here, though, as well as some obfuscation of what certain transactions actually entailed.
-Nembhard was a good 31st pick, not sure if he blows away the value Leon got on the 32nd pick in the 2021 draft (Rokas and Deuce)
-I think two seconds is more or less a vindicated return for a player of Obi’s caliber given other trades that have happened since that one, and that it was smart to open up the full MLE to sign Donte DiVincenzo
-Mathurin was certainly a better lottery pick than the only one Leon has ever had (Obi), but then again, Leon got outstanding value out of Quickley at #25, almost certainly more than Mathurin returned at #6
-I don’t see a ton of evidence that Sheppard is a much better use of a roster spot than someone like Shamet, as of now
And we’d have still won that series if Kevin Pritchard had pulled a Leon with the 31st pick instead of using it on Andrew Nembhart.
Getting back to McCullar, how much of what he did yesterday looked translatable to real games, versus his energy and hustle just being useful within the chaotic context of summer league? (And particularly in the context of a summer league roster that, based on your descriptions, seems unable to set up anything resembling an organized offense?)
It does blow away what we currently have to show for 8th & 33rd picks in ’20 and the 19th & 21st picks in ’21… which is absolutely nothing.
And the return on the 24th, 25th, 31st, and 38th picks in ’24 ain’t looking so good, either.
I think those failures have been very consequential. Others say “that’s the stupidest non-E argument in the history of the board.”
Thanks Geo, appreciate you sharing. So far my favorite parts are the gym and sound system. I get to teach my 16yr old son to lift weights and spend time together while exposing him to 90s and 2000s hip hop and R&B which he’s already starting to appreciate. He, of course, won’t admit it but I watch his lips move…
Married for 21yrs here, – so I have painfully learned to dicipline myself and not engage her when she makes these type of comments. It’s very rarely I let it get to me. She’s a perfectionist and readily criticizes her own work but lacks awarenes & sensitivity when she uncosciously and voluntarily does it to others. Poor kids get it with their academics. lol..that’s another story.
Is it too early to give up on Kolek? I don’t think so but also…
Is it smart to rely on him as the backup point guard? Absolutely.
I’m okay with Kolek being the 3rd PG and for him to see 15 minutes a week on the floor but that veteran minimum contract needs to go to more potent PG.
And then what, we’d get swept by Boston in the next round. We were not a contender two years ago. Just give me a break with this take. It was still a work in process two years ago.
It took Leon 5 yrs to get to the place where the team enters a season as the favorite to win the conference. That’s literaly the definition of a legit contender.
We know you or a GM with your genius could have done it in what, 2 or 3yrs? – Didn’t have to take this long, if he did everything perfect, right?
Just gonna chime in on Leon as a GM.
He’s the best GM for this team. Period. I love his moves. I love how he rebuilt the team from garbage.
But much more important than that, I love how he deals with the media in this media cesspool. It’s perfect and nobody’s going to convince me that anyone will do better there. And this is perhaps the most important attribute. And nobody else has proved to be able to succeed in that regard he’s the only one I trust.
Director, I think you’re giving Leon Rose a little too much credit for the ruptured achilles tendons of Jayson Tatum & Tyrese Halliburton.
And btw the Cavs are the favorites to win the East: https://www.espn.com/nba/futures/_/group/conference
Tell us more!
that’s so awesome Director…working out together and chillin’ with tunes…
just been the last handful of years that I woke up to the whole: legacy thru progeny…
caught daughter quietly reciting the serenity prayer under her breath a while back…surprised me in the moment, asked her what she was doing, told me it was something she remembered from when she was a kid, and it helps her when she’s stressed…greatly altered my perspective on the dad stuff…
you know, just maybe these crumb snatchers may be of use to me when they’re grown 😊
I hadn’t looked in a while and had forgotten just how old Kolek is – he’ll turn 25 during the upcoming season. It’s going to start getting late early for him if things don’t turn around.
I’ve only watched a bit of summer league play not sure if i can do it to myself to watch more…yep magic 8 ball says not very likely…
so in the past it has felt like we’ve hung on to “busts” longer…interested to see how much and what pace we cycle young talent…
a point guard’s disregard for ball safety is bad…are we about ready already to kick kolek to the curb…
interesting that more value these days is going in to young players with defensive skills being their best attribute/way of getting on court…
wonder if huk could be that guy for us…
1. Because they’re in by far the worst of the two conferences.
2. Because two would-be conference rivals, one of whom knocked the Knicks out this year, have lost their best player to Achilles tears.
3. Because he’s fast forwarded a shit-ton of his assets.
4. (less so, and it’s kind of related to 3) Because he doesn’t care if his team winds up in purgatory.
He’s not “affirmatively bad.” He’s basically a bit below replacement level plus the delta between the leagues’ opinion of Brunson and what Brunson has turned out to be. Net-net, that takes him a bit above replacement level, but that’s mostly luck. He didn’t sign Brunson because he, unlike the rest of the league, “saw the potential,” or any such claptrap; he signed him because he was in-network because he’d known his family for 30 years and his father was one of his first clients.
He also has some major whiffs on his record, the primary one being Jalen Williams for $9 million in cap space. He was taken to the cleaners in every dimension by a better GM in that deal.
Add to that the bent transactions where he plays both sides rather than just the Knick side and it’s basically sub-replacement level. Not “affirmatively bad.”
We never drafted Jalen Williams. OKC drafted Jalen Williams. We did not trade Jalen Williams, we did not trade the pick OKC used to draft Jalen Williams.
I’m out on Kolek. He’s not fast or shifty enough to beat anyone off the dribble. He can’t shoot or defend. He’s got excellent court vision and he’s a good passer, but that’s not nearly enough to take any minutes from Deuce or Clarkson. If at all possible, I’d rather have Rokas on the roster.
Jalen Johnson fell in our laps, but we still didn’t take him. That was Leon’s second biggest whiff. The biggest was passing on Haliburton. Other than that, I think he has been a perfectly cromulent executive.
“My position is that it’s the primary the reason we’ve come up short the last two years,”
So now we know your exact position in your very own words.
Came up short two years ago? Came up short last year? Check the odds at the beginning of each of those seasons. Or the subjective take of the majority of the board here including you. We exceeded expectations; opposite of coming up short. Unless you change the definition to something else better to suit your narrative.
The strawman argument, which you love to cite, is now firmly in your court.
“He wouldn’t have drafted him anyway” has always been an indictment, not a defense.
“He didn’t sign Brunson because he, unlike the rest of the league, “saw the potential,” or any such claptrap; he signed him because he was in-network because he’d known his family for 30 years and his father was one of his first clients.”
Got it. He signs someone who he has seen develop for his whole basketball life for 20% more than anyone else would, trading valuable assets to be able to do so, because he liked the family and didn’t see the potential.
In the real world the Thunder drafted Ousmane Dieng with the pick we traded them.
Pritchard drafted Goga Bitadze 18th just to waive him before he became a very useful player for Orlando.
He drafted Duarte at 13, who he later traded for two 2nds.
He drafted TJ Leaf 18th and then traded him along with a 2nd for Jalen Lecque who they waived 4 months later.
He’s waived around half of his 2nd round picks while on their first contracts based on what I can see from the bk-ref page of IND draft picks, not counting the ones that are listed as traded.
He sold another 2nd round pick just for cash.
Lil’ Penny, Knicks were up on Brad Steven’s dynasty level Celtics 3:1 with a healthy Jason Tatum & Mikal outplaying Brown. Leon built the team to specifically beat them. Based on roster talent no one expected NY to loose to Indiana. Every single Knicks player knew Knicks were the better team and a few cowards blamed Thibs for missing the chance to go to the NBA finals. Leon must be sick to his stomach to fire a lifelong friend but it needed to be done. TBD on how that works out but he has the guts to do what he thinks is right.
Which ended up going to us for Obi btw.
It seems like he whiffed on Jarace Walker, too.
The guy isn’t perfect but the point remains: we didn’t lose to the Pacers two years in a row bc Thibs got outcoached by Rick Carlisle. We lost to them because Pritchard has turned the same assets Leon consistently turns to dust into quality players.
It seems like a pertinent topic as we watch a summer league roster that looks entirely devoid of promising NBA players despite the fact that we had four draft picks last year in a spot of the draft where a bunch of decent looking role players were taken.
that is some poetic stuff right there E…a bit below…hahahahaha…
Jaylen Brown played in the playoff series against the Knicks with a shredded knee.
Well, now that someone has called the GM of a team with the 2nd or 3rd best odds to win the finals “below replacement level,” I think I have beat the straw man allegations.
Can you imagine what absolute dunce of a GM would take a draft pick that should’ve been Jalen Johnson and turned it into two 2nd round picks? Pritchard sucks!
It does seem prescient now, Noble.
Anyone else notice how close Hubert is to hubris?
I’m now convinced that Hubert is Isiah Thomas and E is Phil Jackson. It’s the only possible explanation for the endless, tone-deaf repetition of the same exact fucking argument every goddamn day.
No one’s called his performance below replacement level.
The actual definition of “replacement level” is “affirmatively bad.” That would make “sub-replacement level” is “worse than affirmatively bad.”
Leon is probably a top-10 GM in the league by any reasonable standard, maybe even top-5. He took over a team with a roster that was projected to have the lowest win total and has built it into whatever you want to fairly characterize this team as without once going into the second apron, and without a single hit in the lottery, or a surprise superstar anywhere else in the draft (although maybe Diawara is that guy? One can hope!).
Since Leon got here and inherited that boatload of shit…and didn’t tank, not once, here’s how some of his high-profile competitors have done:
Masai Ujiri: shit
Daryl Morey: shit
Danny Ainge: shit
Then there’s guys like Pat Riley (or whoever) and James Jones and Nico Harrison who topped out at an unlikely finals appearance and have basically blown it up or are about to. Then there’s Sean Marks, who had Durant, Kyrie and Harden and got nowhere. Travis Schlenk got to the conference finals and then “stole” E’s hearthrob DeJounte Murray after fleecing us for Cam Reddish (oh wait, all it cost us was ashes, never mind!) But don’t worry, Atlanta is gonna get there any day now. Still waiting on Tim Connoly in Minny. Or Lawrence Frank with the Clippers. Or Zacn Kleiman with the Grizz. Or Karsinovas with the Bulls. All of these teams had as much or more to work with at some point than Leon did when he took over the team.
He inherited a guy who was second-team all-NBA within a season.
Does make one wonder why you spent the year yelling about Carlisle out coaching Thibs because everyone got hurt
Raven, I’m actually responding to the endless, tone-deaf repetition of the same fucking argument every god damn day. “Leon Rose needs to be appreciated by everyone!” Jesus H. Christ. Just let me blame the man for the sorry state of the last 6 roster spots in peace.
There are obviously differences in quality among GMs and other NBA management positions, but a good portion of what happens in the draft and even with some trades (especially younger players) involves luck. That’s why there are guys that executed a build perfectly once or even twice that failed afterwards and guys that maybe didn’t do so well early on that did much better later. It wasn’t just their decison making. It was 1-2 key moves that turned out way better/worse than almost anyone expected.
It’s really weird and controlling that people continue to do this every single day.
“He inherited a guy who was second-team all-NBA within a season.”
Oh yeah, I remember how fond you were of that guy.
Checking… checking…
Nope. Turns out Hubert dragged something Noble said yesterday onto today’s thread to start beating the horse again.
Leon’s have been better. Brunson being the obvious first. While Leon got lucky for reasons I’ve described, it’s on his record and JB’s been *way* better than consensus expectation. That’s far and away the main reason the Knicks are where they are. If Brunson had played on the court in line with market consensus, the Knicks wouldn’t be contenders and would actually be in purgatory.
The other is upgrading the second-team all-NBA player he inherited into Karl-Anthony Towns. On this one, I’ve probably credited Leon more than literally everyone else on the board. Board consensus seems to be that it was barely an upgrade, and there are some who seem to think it wasn’t even an upgrade at all.
But I’m the “anti-Leon” one. OK, lol.
Below the big ticket stuff, he’s done an extremely meh job. The bench is very thin because of the talent outflow in the OG trade, the Mikal trade was awful, and his draft failures and incinerations and passivity are obvious for everyone honest to see.
The “pessimistic” view on the whole thing is that he’s burned the asset chest, and already gotten in through his connections and network the main guys he’s going to get in. The longer he’s out of the agent business the more and more tenuous and less and less valuable his connections become. They might be able to make a finals run before that happens, but as he sits here today in terms of future productivity, he’s a replacement level GM. He’s played his cards.
Well I just saw it today. The fact is I’m responding, not initiating. And I’ve actually been ignoring most of the drivel, like whatever shit bernie earnie is spewing. But noble I trust to engage in good faith.
“It’s really weird and controlling that people continue to do this every single day.”
It would be really weird if people continued doing that every day, or ever did.
But what’s actually really weird is this obsessive predisposition that two poster have with regurgitating the same straw man vomit as if people were actually doing that every day, or couple of days, or whatever.
Curious if anyone else is unable to currently log into their Athletic subscription. It keeps sending me to a page to upgrade to a full NYT subscription, which I don’t want, and when I choose to login without upgrading, it just takes me back to The Athletic homepage, with me still not logged in.
The most putrid stench of E’s and hubert’s arguments is the broad-brushing of the preponderance of KB posters, individually and collectively, as Leon apologists and fanbois, or the condescending and patronizing tone of their “y’all aren’t smart enough to see what’s actually happening here!” drivel.
Alas, we all have people like that in our off-line lives, so why not here?!
I think there are lot of NBA executives, and really people in all walks of life, to whom “if you discount their greatest accomplishments, their track record is actually not all that impressive” applies.
There are many good reasons no one really goes around saying that about people, though. It doesn’t tell you very much.
There are actually a lot of people in the world who interview and evaluate other people and their potential, and look through superficial “successes” in doing so.
And most people on the board hold that Leon’s number two success — the KAT trade — isn’t even a success.
“And most people on the board hold that Leon’s number 2 success isn’t even a success.”
Exhibit A
Sounds like someone’s a bit insecure, gnawingly or otherwise, about his opinion(s). One way that can turn is a re-evaluation of them. Still a hope!
You’ve changed your mind on the KAT trade?
“Sounds like someone’s a bit insecure, gnawingly or otherwise, about his opinion(s). One way that can turn is a re-evaluation of them. Still a hope!”
Yep, that’s what I’m known for, being insecure about my opinions!
“You’ve changed your mind on the KAT trade?”
Do you even know what my opinion is, or was?
Naaaah. Just broadbrushing again. You’re a mile wide and a millimeter deep.
Right, Z-Man, you’ve never said a word on here about Karl-Anthony Towns. Howsoever could anyone possibly tell what you think about him?
The Greta Garbo act really doesn’t suit you. Just sayin’.
Come on, big guy, tell me what my opinion was (and still is) about the trade.
Leon lost iHart for nothing and the January Knicks never got a fair shot. His pivot to KAT was and still is underappreciated. Let’s see how Indiana handles Turner replacement and they have the flexibility to just tank a whole year which NY did not.
Wide swaths of the board think Leon put together a top two who can’t play together. They say so repeatedly. Like literally over and over and over and over.
Yet I’m the “anti-Leon” one. OK, lol.
Well it was greatly appreciated by Tim Connelly.
Stop dodging. What was my opinion of the trade?
“Wide swaths of the board think Leon put together a top two who can’t play together. They say so repeatedly. Like literally over and over and over and over.”
If I were to take a poll of all KB posters “which poster is the most guilty of saying something repeatedly…like literally over and over and over and over?” I wonder who would win, like, by a country mile…
mine works but I have it through the times so I can’t replicate your problem
That it was a salary dump in which the Knicks acquired a player with massive holes in his game who makes too much money.
If you’ve changed your opinion in the wake of the hundreds of posts saying essentially the above, that would be an interesting data point — so let us know!
And the poster you’ve inexplicably lumped me together with in all things Leon by all indications detests the trade possibly more than any other Knickerblogger and has consistently said so since pretty much the beginning of the season.
Perhaps you can explain on the one hand, “KAT and Brunson suck on defense so bad that they can’t play together,” and on the other hand, “Leon is a top-grade GM.” Because you gotta admit, those two don’t really seem to fit together real well.
“Yet I’m the “anti-Leon” one. OK, lol.”
Wait, you just called Leon “sub-replacement level” which objectively means “terrible.” And now you’re arguing that “wide swaths of the board” are more “anti-Leon” than you?
The first sentence isn’t accurate. Yes, in the things they say about the roster and the team, many people are more “anti-Leon” than I am but for whatever reason they don’t tie the personnel and their flaws to Leon.(*) I don’t believe in divine intervention, though.
(*) If a GM trades Julius Randle and Donte Divincenzo, who *could* play with Jalen Brunson, for a guy who by their own words and standards, *can’t* play with Jalen Brunson, that would typically be seen as a pretty big red flag on said GM’s record. Why that’s not the case here is a mystery others will have to solve.
The only one who’s said both (1) and (2) and therefore maintained logical consistency is Hubert. I don’t believe (1), so he and I don’t remotely think alike on the topic, much as you’d like to lump us together.
Al, I’m having the same problem with the Athletic. Under the “subscribe” stuff is a small line that says “continue without subscribing” and then you can read all the articles, but it’s clunky, and doesn’t allow you to access your specific interests. Annoying.
“That it was a salary dump in which the Knicks acquired a player with massive holes in his game who makes too much money.”
That is not my opinion of the trade, in terms of value going out vs. value coming in.
Do I think it was a salary dump? Yes! Why? Because that happens to be a fact. Just ask Tim Connelly!
Do I think KAT has massive holes in his game? Yes! Why? Because it’s a fact that he is one of the worst defensive centers in the league, and defense is half the game, especially for a C. There are other holes as well, which were on full display in the playoffs.
Do I think KAT makes too much money? Yes! Why? See above. But since you believe that playoff performance is vastly more important than regular season performance (you said so a billion times when bludgeoning Julius) do you now think that Julius is underpaid? Or that KAT is overpaid? Or that playoff performance doesn’t matter any more?
Do I think the trade was a win for Leon? Yes! Strictly in terms of market value, I think KAT had substantially more trade value than te Randle + DDV + pick package Leon sent out. However, now that Randle has signed what I believe is a “value” extension, the pick conveyed much higher and sooner than expected (although DDV regressed a bit) I’d have to reconsider how that stands now, but that’s just in hindsight. It was a great deal at the time, given what was known, including Randle’s contract situation.
My personal preference would be to trade KAT for better balance in the starting lineup. That’s a far cry from hating on Leon for making the trade, nor will I hate on him now for keeping him in the fold and trying things with another coach.
PS I don’t think we are goint to win a championship with Brunson and KAT as our best two players unless there are some unanticipated moves to improve the supporting cast. Does that make me a Leon hater? And I don’t think the coaching change will change much. Does that make me a Thibs stan? Or are you capable of grasping nuance between posters?
But you aren’t, Hubert, because you throw sweeping generalizations out there like they mean something. Saying “we have nothing to show for our 12 picks” and “X, Y and Z exec did way better than Leon” is totally specious unless you address what we actually did in fact do with those picks and acknowledge that we received value of various kinds. Some became players (most but not all of whom were good picks), some were sent out in trades for a variety of reasons, others became players who then themselves were traded. Your generalization fails to address any of that in good faith. “Leon hates draft picks and if he didn’t we’d be better” is an argument that needs a lot more support than that to be credible. I don’t believe it is in fact credible, because his approach has hardly been that simple, and some issues have been due to Thibs, not Leon. He has indeed failed at times, but we aren’t a top-3 team in the EC for no reason – he also got some things right, more than he failed.
They literally just finished playing together like 6 weeks ago, both had All-Star and All-NBA seasons, won 52 games and nearly went to the NBA finals. I guess that’s not enough unless they’re Shaq & Kobe like, so the GM is obviously mid.
Looks like I had Z-Man’s opinion of the trade pretty right all along, after all!
There’s no real “nuance” there, Z-Man; you just aren’t going to quit your opinion on Leon until it becomes obviously untenable. Different people have different propensities to criticize, and different terminology and different curves they use when they do it. That’s all this is.
If you thought the January Knicks were a championship caliber team — not sure if that includes you or not — then Leon broke up a team that could have won the championship this year. Whether one “hates” on Leon for that is purely a matter of propensities and grading curves. You don’t want to have a self-impression as a “hater,” whatever that means, and so you couch things in that way.
But you pretty much admitted what I said all along — that wide swaths of the board think Leon put together a front two that can’t really play together. Not really sure why you resisted to begin with, since it’s been a common theme around here for weeks.
It puts you at opposites with TNFH, who thinks they are very serious contenders this year based on the Vegas pre-season odds. It’s those odds that in his eyes are the sole determinant of the job Leon’s done and how he projects going forward.
I have a different standard.
“The first sentence isn’t accurate.”
Replacement-level means what it means. You can’t claim to argue in good faith if you’re manipulating accepted definitions to fit your narrative. Why not just avoid using it to be cute and say specifically what you think it means?
“Yes, in the things they say about the roster and the team, many people are more “anti-Leon” than I am but for whatever reason they don’t tie the personnel and their flaws to Leon.”
LOLOLOL That’s a good one!!!
“If a GM trades Julius Randle and Donte Divincenzo, who *could* play with Jalen Brunson, for a guy who by their own words and standards, *can’t* play with Jalen Brunson, that would typically be seen as a pretty big red flag on said GM’s record. Why that’s not the case here is a mystery others will have to solve.”
Well I certainly don’t fit in with this “can play with” or “can’t play with” nonsense. Perhaps the disconnect is that I don’t see either KAT or Randle as being good enough to be the second-best player on a championship team without an ideal supporting cast. I certainly believe that with both a healthy Mitch on his deal, Randle on his deal, iHart on what we could have paid him, DDV, and whatever could have done with those 5 picks we gave up for Mikal, we’d be further along than where we are now. I like the KAT deal for valuation purposes, but don’t think it made us all that much better, if at all. The deal that I’ve been very harsh towards Leon about is the Bridges deal, but it was pretty amazing that he was even able to gain the value he did in the KAT trade with the assets he gave up (most here had KAT being worth far more than that).
I’m not a big fan of KAT the player at his salary, but that’s just my opinion, and I respect those who feel differently about it. But maybe Brown unlocks him (w/ Brunson) in ways that I don’t see, or maybe he’s the guy that gets us Giannis. And those are great things to ponder, compared to what we’ve been subjected to pre-Leon.
since it seems to very much be between us and the cavs next season as it stands right now are we at all worried about lebron going home yet again i guess it depends on how much theyd have to deplete the team to get him i struggle with this because i really dont want lebron at this point (unless he was basically free) but if he went to cleveland they would easily be the prohibitive favorites in the east maybe we would be too if it were a straight up kat for lebron trade but then wed be hurting for a starting big all over again as we were after we lost ihart
Are we sure that E and Hubert aren’t the same person? Or at the very least they sit next to each other giggling while they simultaneously troll this site? We need proof!
TNFH and I have differed on many things…and have felt differently about KAT for several years now. Vegas puts us at 52.5 wins…that hardly suggests that we are “very serious” contenders….but we are, in fact, contenders. It will take some good luck for us and bad luck for other teams, but we are a top-5-6 team with some theoretical upside, and that’s okay by me. But would it shock me if we stayed healthy and got knocked off in the second round? Not at all.
Does that make me a Leon hater?
And you said it means “terrible,” which it doesn’t.
Trading out of the Jalen Williams lottery for $9 million in cap space for a contract you acquired as a buyout, and then signing Isaiah Hartenstein with much of the money and not getting his Bird Rights is almost per se incompetent. “Structurally” incompetent in a way evocative of pathos that you rarely see.
The Incineration was the canary in the coal mine; the lottery trade was a 30,000 ton bunker buster into the whole mountain.
Gonna take a lot to overcome that one.
Then you don’t really agree that Leon has built a championship roster. Your disconnect isn’t with me (or Hubert); it’s with TNFH and the others who think he has.
Which just continues to show that your differences with me are really just stylistic, not substantive — all in service of not being a “hater.” So be it. I put very little stock in that stuff.
“It’s those odds that in his eyes are the sole determinant of the job Leon’s done and how he projects going forward.”
Even though Leon has sort of gone “all in” with the Bridges trade, there is still some real flexibility to improve, even dramatically, during the Brunson All-NBA window (3-5 years?). We are still under the second apron, we have players who can be traded, and next offseason we have our own first (which can be traded on draft day) and the 2033 pick frees up. That’s a much better place to be than many of the other teams that went all in on aging or injury prone vets at supermax salaries. Leon needs to work a little more magic…but as you know I like Clarkson more than most, and think Yabu will help quite a bit. There’s a year of game film to dissect to mine internal improvement. Some of the other top-tier teams are going to get expensive, and the rising teams heve their own hurdles to overcome. Things can turn for us on a dime, in both directions, but I like our current position in the pecking order.
I didn’t like the Leon hire. I hate the way he handles the draft, and I would not have chosen the pure “win now” style he has pursued. It’s not really a hybrid approach, it’s a win now approach. That tends to have a short window. On the other end of this horizon, once everybody declines, the Knicks are probably going to be fucking terrible again. I think the criticisms of Leon not being interested in the draft and young players are valid. I’ve been making those criticisms as loudly as anybody.
Still… (gestures in the direction of the scoreboard)… the guy has gotten some pretty good results. You really can’t take that away from him. He has already FAR surpassed my expectations, to the point where I can only tip my cap. It’s frustrating because he’s SO CLOSE to being a truly excellent GM. A little bit more diversity in his approach, a little bit more reliance on the draft and players with upside, and we’d be in really good shape.
As it is, we’ve won some playoff series here and made some noise. We look like we should be pretty good for at least another couple of years. I’m not watching games hoping Maurice Ndour misses game winning shots. I am duly entertained. As much as I was against the hire, and critical of the man, I just can’t get all that worked up to hate on the guy. This is EASILY the second best Knicks era of my lifetime. It’s probably not going to end in a championship, but this run probably still has some more great moments left in it.
Brunson was a massive win. Towns was, to me, a win although others certainly disagree.
The rest — the stuff that takes real work and personnel skill and savvy — has been decidedly meh. If not worse.
It’s come out in the wash about where you’d expect. A contender to win a beat-up conference with two top-15 talents, but a lot of holes and short of potential. Drafting Jalen Williams would have probably been a parade down Broadway already. It’s one thing to pick someone else after a lot of hard work and thought and basketball debate, that happens; it’s quite another to trade out of the pick for basically nothing.
The East contention is certainly nice and nice and exciting to enjoy the day-to-day of; the squandered potential and laziness and buffoonery is not quite as nice and sometimes that’s the focus as it will always be in sports. So be it.
“Then you don’t really agree that Leon has built a championship roster.”
Did I ever say otherwise?
“Your disconnect isn’t with me (or Hubert); it’s with TNFH and the others who think he has.”
I’ve both agreed and disagreed with all three of you on numerous issues.
“Which just continues to show that your differences with me are really just stylistic, not substantive — all in service of not being a “hater.””
This couldn’t be further from the truth. You just elaborated on an issue where we very substantively differ…the lottery maneuverings…and the never-ending cherry-picking that some posters engage in when pining over those things.
“So be it. I put very little stock in that stuff.”
You clearly have no shame about being whoever you are widely perceived to be on this site….oh wait, I’m broadbrushing. Sorry!
One man’s cherry-picking is another’s attention to detail. Leon should take note!!
I was ambivalent.
The only draft day decision I truly rued is passing on Haliburton. Most of the other stuff is a mixed bag.
Well, Thibs was a big part of that style, and I didn’t like the hire, and who knows how the Thibs dynamic played into roster and draft-day decisions?
I don’t think that is entirely true, at least, not until the Bridges trade.
Again, if it weren’t for the Bridges trade, and we still had those pick, I’d be fine with the prospect of being terrible again, because a pivot to an accelerated rebuild would have been more doable.
Well, again, that’s the Thibs conundrum….what came first, the chicken or the egg?
Despite many differences along the way, our opinions have largely converged to this synopsis. And as I said above, there is a bit of maneuverability left if the right opportunities present themselves and Leon jumps on them without massively overpaying, like he did for Bridges.
“One man’s cherry-picking is another’s attention to detail. Leon should take note!!”
So should Prichard, who passed over Williams to draft Mathurin and might have won Indy its first chip had he paid more attention to detail!
Everyone here has agreed that Presti is the best executive in the business. No one here has argued that Leon is in his league.
But sub-replacement level? Come on.
A bit of good news, Dadiet’s “left big toe” injury doesn’t appear to be serious, still unclear whether he’ll play tomorrow.
I didn’t say that, Rama.
Or that.
I did say the last 6 players on our roster are terrible and that I think they should be better considering how many draft picks we’ve had. If you want to argue with me, argue with what I said instead of the fake quotes you made up.
Ex-the Brunson signing, yes. That one puts him above in performance.
Probably projects to be replacement level or below as the “connections” continue to fade with time. Bondy suggested his job could be on the line at the end of the year without serious contention. I hope that’s in fact the case. Not real interested in going forward with him and WWW as the 1-2 in basketball ops. Would actually be better if they lopped off those two and went forward with Rosas/Aller, the actual personnel guys. There’s no more need for “connections.”
You nailed it.
You can forget all the wasted picks… if he had just been a little patient with Quentin Grimes we’d be in incredible shape.
i cant be the only one who sees the parallels between leon being soooo close to being a good gm to get us in really good shape and thibs being soooo close to being a great coach to put us over the top right
If only Daryl Morey were our GM instead…
https://x.com/ShamsCharania/status/1944888905024561199
The elephant in the room is James Dolan, and it is probably true that there are competing mandates: 1) keep the World’s Most Famous Arena packed with high-paying customers and celebrities, 2) win a championship, 3) clean up the circus.
Dolan is Dolan. While I think his direct involvement in mpost decision-making has been minimal compared to the past, he hates being upstaged or shown up in the press. I’m guessing his blood was boiling when the Nets assembled their big 3 and Durant spurned the Knicks because they “weren’t cool” much in the same manner that LeBron spurned them with “The Decision.” He probably felt that there was a real threat of the Knicks being second fiddle in NYC.
So my feelings about Leon are definitely impacted by viewing him through that lens. The constraints at the time of Leon’s hiring, both explicit and implicit, probably were not attractive to the very best veteran execs, and Dolan the Starfucker wasn’t going to hire a young whippersnapper.
Given those considerations, and in particular, that a full rebuild was not an option, along with all the other “Dolan is Dolan” stuff, I think Leon did a solid job. Even aside from that, the Knicks are well positions for the next 5 or so years, in the sense that a “top” GM could work with this situation and keep the team more relevant than the Nets, even with their current long-term advantages.
“You can forget all the wasted picks… if he had just been a little patient with Quentin Grimes we’d be in incredible shape.”
This is certainly debatable, but to be fair, Grimes was pretty bad and often injured during his Knicks tenure, and now he’s asking for $30M. I guess one could argue that it would have obviated the Bridges trade.
And look, mea culpa, I liked the Grimes trade, mainly because of how positively it was viewed by most pundits. Kudos to rama and Ben R for being pretty spot-on in their analysis.
It’s a comparison I’ve noted before, too. They both refuse to acknowledge their blind spots.
Alan, check what email you are logging in with. One time without thinking I used a different email and it let me log in but of course that email didn’t have a subscription. It’s a long shot that this is your issue, but it’s worth checking
And as for the new member of the coaching team, I just read the links at the top.
The January team had I-Hart on it.
Even without the Towns trade, this would not be the same team.
Replacing the I-Hart “wins” was the challenge.
Btw Rama I’m curious what your thoughts are on the Ty Jerome situation. His agent reportedly told the Cavs it would take $14M to bring him back bc he had an offer for the full MLE. The Cavs didn’t want to pay him that so they traded for Ball instead.
But it turned out Jerome didn’t have an offer at the full MLE. His agent was bluffing to get the Cavs to overpay.
The Knicks turned the 31st pick and other assets into OG Anunoby.
The non-Kolek picks looked pretty good yesterday. Flip, Collier, and Kyshawn all had a TS% under .500.
Dolan got an extra $1.5M in cash for the MSG Sphere relief fund.
We landed an extra 2nd plus a top-45 protected 2028 Celtics 2nd.
We shuffled three 2nds around with confusing swap rights for three 2nds with even more confusing swap rights that I’m not going to look through right now. One of these picks turned into Diawara.
We cleared enough cap space to acquire KAT last year and Yabusele this year.
It was needlessly thrown away in that trade like so many other assets.
I’ve never quibbled with giving up IQ or RJ but to throw in more for a pending UFA was egregious.
This guy
https://x.com/bleacherreport/status/1944923407163838862?s=46
I’ve always felt as fans its alot easier to criticize a coach rather than the front office. None of us have any clue about what it takes negotiating with other front offices and agents, there’s so much behind the scenes stuff they have to deal with that we are oblivious to.
At least we can watch games and try to rationally criticize what we’re seeing. I’m sure we all have played and coached teams and while its obviously nowhere near the professional level we can at least justify our opinions from past experiences, I even have friends who are high school head coaches. So that’s why I’m much more vocal during game threads and why I find all this talk about the front office moves they should or shouldn’t have done a bit ridiculous at times.
I dunno, BBA. I think so long as you don’t try to read too much into the negotiations, it’s fair game to judge trades just like coach’s decisions, in fact maybe even more fair. Coaching seems far more advanced to me than GMing, unless of course your name is Phil Jackson or Tom Thibodeau.
Of course we should judge trades and acquisitions but the part that is beyond annoying is all the hypothetical scenarios the trolls here like to throw out as if they are facts. We have no fucking clue what players and offers were made or were even available yet some people speak as if moves that weren’t made should’ve been made as if they were absolute 100% realistic possibilities.
At least the scoreboard and standings are 100% facts, we can argue about what could’ve or should’ve happened that would’ve changed the outcome but in the end as Bill Parcells said you are what your record says you are. Of course then we can argue about the merits of those accomplishments….
i mostly agree with you bba the only place i would differ would be on draft picks that we did not make when a particular player was available to us i am not beating the drum on that i am only pointing it out and yes even then it is easy to look at draft picks that we did not make in hindsight when of course at the time we did not really know what a particular draft pick would turn out to be in a sense almost every player is a crapshoot
Well it’s a fact that we only have 8 good basketball players on our roster and the time of year which is traditionally dedicated to showcasing your youth pipeline is when I’d like to bitch about our lack of one. So get off my lawn.
As for what goes on behind the scenes, it’s always been my guess that when Leon held the line on Mitchell and got burned by Ainge it made him afraid to do it again. I think that’s why he always meets the other teams asking price when he wants a player instead of ever getting his guy on good terms.
It’s always been my guess… I think that’s why…
don’t worry this is the only time of the year Hubert is going to bitch
That’s exactly what I’m talking about, now apparently Rose always meets the other team’s asking price when its so obvious he could’ve gotten the players he wanted with a much lesser offer…
It’s fair to call me out on this, Hubie, since I was pretty adamant that agents don’t tend to bluff in these situations because the fallout from being caught can be devastating. I imagine Ty Jerome’s agent (along with Jerome) is about to find that out. It doesn’t mean I was wrong about OG and the Sixers, especially considering their immediate pivot to George (with a max), but it does create a stronger possibility of doubt. Just a really dumb game to play as an agent: it’s not a bluff, it’s a lie. It’s not hyperbole, it’s a falsehood.
Then again, it does seem the world no longer cares much for the truth, so there’s that for context as well…
“His agent reportedly told the Cavs it would take $14M to bring him back bc he had an offer for the full MLE. The Cavs didn’t want to pay him that so they traded for Ball instead.
But it turned out Jerome didn’t have an offer at the full MLE. His agent was bluffing to get the Cavs to overpay.”
I think this happens all the time. Don’t see anything wrong with it.
Well we have an actual report about what Leon wanted to give up for KAT vs Minnesota’s price, and it got done at Minnesota’s price.
And I suppose it’s possible Brooklyn wanted 11 first round picks for Mikal Bridges but I feel pretty comfortable saying Leon paid Brooklyn’s price.
I know that if we’re a GM and heard that story I would treat the agent who lied considerably differently in the future. I wouldn’t trust anything he or she said snd if there was any discussion of possible future deals I wouldn’t do it.
PS: I didn’t see anything reliable to verify that Ty’s agent did this…only an AI-generated report. Can anyone verify, please?
The Knicks became relevant again under Leon Rose, so I think he has done a phenomenal job. Obviously, if he hadn’t made any mistakes, they’d be even better, but that is unrealistic and silly to nitpick over. I think that comparing Rose to Pritchard or anybody else is a pointless exercise because you can’t control for the unknown variables, which are likely very many. Armchair GMs with their homemade models don’t have to deal with owners, agents, players, player’s wives, player’s entourages, office politics, media politics, etc… it’s most likely plums to tangerines comparing any two front offices, and as much as the analytics crowd tries to divorce the job from human error, the human element will always be the most difficult the aspect of the job for a president to navigate.
No one was more against the Grimes trade than me. I hated it and said so quite a few times. To be honest though, I don’t think we actually wanted to trade him. I think he wanted to play and get paid but he lost his spot here and was having knee issues. Now he’s healthy and heading into his peak. He’s going to get paid, but I’m not so sure I’d give him as much as he wants.
There are too many “ifs” to figure out what would have happened if we didn’t trade him. In any event, that trade was one of Leon’s bad ones. He sold at the bottom.
That would be rich if it weren’t true
Can you find a comment that verifies that statement? Ben R was very much, very clearly the most negative and vocal about it. I didn’t like it, said it had only a narrow chance of working out and was short-sighted. (I’ve also been higher on Q than almost everyone else, to a fault). I don’t remember you saying anything one way or another until this year. I remember it being Ben and then me some distance behind him, and that was it.
Grimes has been traded by 2 more teams since the Knicks traded him.
IMO Leon has had a plan in mind for what qualities he wants at each position. He identifies the 1-2 players in the NBA he thinks have those qualities that could eventually become available. But he knows it’s so hard to get exactly what you want, when one potentially becomes available, you are either going to get into a bidding war or have to pay a premium.
He wanted OG and paid a significant price.
He wanted Bridges and paid a significant price.
He wanted Towns and was being patient, but when we lost I-Hart it sort of forced his hand to include DDV or sacrifice the season with Simms at C.
We can argue all day about whether OG, Bridges and Towns are the right pieces at the right price, but he paid up because he thinks they are. It’s not because he was impatient, foolish or anything else. He wanted two switchable defensive wings (to deal with Boston) and a floor spacing player to replace Randle.
That’s why I’ve brought up Jaren Jackson Jr so many times. I feel certain that’s who he wants at PF just like I was pining for OG and Bridges. It may be impossible to get him at this point, but he may have another player in mind. I don’t think he’s done.
I’m not going to do an archive search, but I was a big Grimes fan and was very vocal about how much I hated that trade. It was one of the few moves Leon made I was strongly against other than passing on Haliburton. I was fine with Obi even though I liked him. I was even fine with the Mikal trade even though I agreed with the consensus that we overpaid. I was OK with the Towns trade also, but I feel less certain about the fit now because I think he’s more productive at C (always thought that). I’m not sure it works with Brunson.
A lot of time is spent here debating the same things over and over. Some of it gets a little silly. When I say something, it often gets lost. I may or may not ultimately be right, but there’s often money on the line backing my opinion and I don’t part with money easily. 😉