News & Blogs
Here are the roster battles to watch as Knicks training camp begins – SNY
Mike Brown has a new set of eyes on the iPad – Posting & Toasting
Wiseman may have an edge in the Knicks’ five-man roster battle – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ Jalen Brunson to host 52nd season premiere of ‘Saturday Night Live’ – SNY
The Knicks Biggest Gamble Led To Basketball Immortality – Knicks Fan TV
Best 20 Knicks Games of the Leon Rose Era | #2: Knicks 115, Cavaliers 104 (5/19/26 – Game 1, ECF) – Knicks Film School
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74 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.09.23)”
My favorite basketball podcast (not the best, and definitely not the brightest, but still my favorite) is the mismatch with Chris Vernon (Grizzlies fan) and Dave Jacoby (Knicks fan). And they kicked off a recent episode with Vernon in a John Konchar Grizzlies jersey boldly promising we’re going to love this guy. Seems like the perfect end of bench player. Apparently he had a 17 rebound game once. I’m stoked.
On Simmons’ podcast yesterday, he and Zach Lowe started speculating on the shelf life of the Knicks as a contender and of Leon and Wes as day-to-day guys in the front office. We’ve all talked a lot about the former, and Zach said he thinks that everybody but Brunson — specifically referring to KAT and OG — will be willing to sacrifice some money in their next deals to keep the core together as long as possible. (Jalen already made his sacrifice, which the other guys get.)
The idea of Leon and Wes stepping back isn’t something I’d really considered. But they’re in their 60s, they’re incredibly rich, and they did what they set out to do in building this team. Are they workaholics, or do they want to go kick it in the Caymans for a good chunk of the year? In Macri’s newsletter, he speculated that Aller might get promoted to the top spot in that scenario, but I’ve heard that Aller’s people skills aren’t the best, which isn’t what you want in the main guy. So, we’ll see.
Got one tomorrow night in Park Slope There are about 8 tickets left. Then 3 in October, Astoria 10/8, Manhattan 10/16, Brooklyn 10/22. Tickets here.
If you’re looking for the world’s best magicians, check out 69 Atlantic. Tickets aren’t cheap, but you will get absolutely blown away. I saw Asi Wind last week and he was phenomenal – he fooled the magicians in attendance.
I have a major project I don’t want to start so I’ve been exercising like a fiend and listening to basketball pods this morning. There’s a surprising amount of fresh ones, including a conversation between Zach Lowe and Bill Simmons on how many years the Knicks team has.
Simmons’ point is that 4 years of deep runs is a lot for any team, and has historically been about the the max for most teams. And we’ve already had two deep runs so he thinks we probably only have two more.
And then Lowe brought my hypothesis from a few days ago (I love when that happens 🙂 ), i.e. he thinks the ease with which we won this title reduced the wear and protects us a little bit from the no repeat rule. Most teams that win a title had a major toll exacted from them in the process that impacts them the following year. Didn’t happen to us. The only toll was self imposed by our stupid owner.
If you look at historical data, there’s credence to this hypothesis. I saw a stat that 6 of the 7 teams who dominated a playoffs to the degree we did repeated the next year.
There’s obviously some selection bias there. The list included many of the greatest teams ever. It might not have been the ease of their run that helped them repeat but their inherent greatness.
But then again the fact that we’re even on that list implies we have some of that greatness, too. But then again (again), all those teams had dominant regular seasons, too. We don’t have that, which suggests maybe they’re not the best comps for us.
It was an interesting conversation.
They also touched on how long Wes & Leon actually want to do this job. They did what they set out to do. They may not want to settle down and be part of the tail here. They may be “on to the next one” kind of guys.
And lastly, Lowe briefly mentioned Gersson Rosas departure as a thing. On my own and went looked at when he started to see if there’s any sort of demarcation line. And boy is there ever! The moves that immediately preceded Rosas were the Cam Reddish trade and the 2021 offseason. It seems like he was the Scott Perry to Leon’s Steve Mills. It’s unclear if we have anyone new for that role, or if we even need it. Bears watching, though. Seems like hiring him was one of Leon’s best moves.
I obviously didn’t see Alan’s post talking about the same thing 🙂
For me, the main questions are:
1) Will there be a trade before the season starts?
2) Will the preseason competition for the final roster spot (one barring a trade, perhaps two with one) be a true competition, or are the rumored leanings of Brown and the FO going to outweigh whatever the players show?
On paper, it would appear that signing a 3rd C would be a priority, and that of the candidates, Eubanks is the most NBA-ready (and I believe it is by a wide margin.) But the rumor that Brown likes Wiseman is somewhere between intriguing and off-putting, leaning towards the latter unless he really shows something in preseason. I don’t see him as a developmental project type that we can afford to wait around on. He’s had enough NBA minutes (and DNP-CDs) under good NBA coaches to be highly skeptical that Brown is gonna “make him right.” But the thinking might be that he’s a good placeholder on a non-guaranteed deal.
Another option is to give the spot to one of the wing-types….Brown (my pick) Konchar, or Agbaji. Then use Robbins as a placeholder, or perhaps some other 2-way C candidate who gets cut from another team. This seems pretty unlikely to me, compared to opening up a second spot via a trade.
If I had to put money on it, I would say that Dadiet is not on the roster come opening day, and two new players plus Nickel fill out the 15 spots. But I would not feel comfortable in that bet.
I know this might be blasphemy here, but Jalen Brunson on a supermax deal ends any possibility of this team competing for a championship unless Dolan goes wa-a-a-a-y into the second apron.
But I think Brunson knows this and will be fine with something like a 4-year $220M extension, i.e something between 25-30% of the cap.
I think this is a little unfair to Brown. He merely invited Wiseman to camp. That doesn’t mean he has Fizdale-esque motivation to making him right.
If Eubanks goes out and wins the job but we give it to Wiseman, that would be off-putting. But it’s just an invite, and whoever is the best man will probably win.
Macri is referring to this by Edwards: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7617083/2026/09/23/knicks-preseason-preview-jalen-brunson-tyler-nickel/
“If Eubanks goes out and wins the job but we give it to Wiseman, that would be off-putting. But it’s just an invite, and whoever’s the best man should win.”
Isn’t this exactly what I just said?
I don’t understand why you feel the need to microparse my posts, like you did last night with your unnecessary “closer to #1” comment. You basically just agreed with everything I said, but spun it in an effort to diminish it.
There’s reporting out there that it wasn’t “just an invite,” including from Marc Stein, who is a pretty reliable source. And “winning the job” of 3rd string C doesn’t necessarily have to be based on preseason performance in a vacuum. If a coach feels like a player has more upside and can be coached up, that is a legitimate reason to go with that player over one who plays better in preseason. My point is, in this case, it would likely be a bad decision because Wiseman doesn’t likely have much upside, and it would be off-putting if he thinks he does. That’s why I said “somewhere between intriguing and off-putting. Was that really so complicated?
Alan, respectfully, this is pretty old news. We’ve discussed that here for months. I don;t think Edwards really told us anything we didn’t already know in that article.
The question is whether they want to leave that 15th spot open to sign a vet’s minimum guy on a pro-rated deal later on in the season.
I have an acquaintance that is one of the sharpest basketball handicappers I’ve come across.
This is what he thinks:
1. The Knicks will go into the season without making a significant deal.
2. The loss of Robinson is being overrated. Drummond does enough things almost as well and others better to be a solid backup.
3. If he turns out to be wrong on #2, they’ll make a deal for a C near the deadline.
4. Deuce will stay until the trade deadline and then they’ll decide whether to trade him if they don’t think they’ll be able to keep him.
5. He think the Knicks will reach their peak THIS year and he loves the OVER.
Here’s more reporting citing NBA insider Jake Fischer suggesting (not definitively stating) that Wiseman is more than just a camp invite.
No. But trying to have a benign exchange with you seems impossible, so I’ll just stop procrastinating and work. Cheers.
I agree with this for the regular season. It’s long enough with enough variation and Mitch tends to miss a bunch of games/time during it anyway.
HOWEVER I do feel like they will 100% need a better backup center come playoff time, where series are about exploiting matchups. I think the FO knows this. The Knicks need a defender/rebounder at backup center, not just shot blocking, but someone that won’t embarrass themselves on the perimeter on a pnr or against shooters.
I got this in my Indeed feed for tutoring and thought KB has a plethora of worthy candidates https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=5c657f6863d84cae&from=shareddesktop_copy.
“Apparently he had a 17 rebound game once. I’m stoked.”
He also has a 5-block game and a 6-steal game under his belt (not the same game). His best overall game was a 17/13/10 gem , but it was in a 29-point loss to Boston in April 2022, so it was probably a “tank game” for the Grizzlies.
I agree with Mike K’s take, with the caveat that I think it will be an issue in the regular season as well, meaning that we will probably lose a couple of games because of the very steep drop-off from KAT to Drummond and either of Eubanks or Wiseman. Not to mention that KAT is unlikely to play all 82, and there are no longer certified tanking teams. It could mean the difference between finishing 1 or 2 and 3 or 4, which would possibly have home court ramifications in the playoffs. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but we went from having the best backup C in the NBA for 60 games to whatever Drummond is.
On the other hand, I think we got kinda lucky in the playoffs regarding opposing C’s. Atlanta was undersized, Philly had a spent Embiid and the terrible Drummond/Bona combo, Cleveland is Mitch’s bitch, and SA had Wiry Wemby and Kromulent Kornet. I’m thinking we will face bigger and better bigs in the playoffs (possibly including the massive Mitch-Queta combo) and the non-KAT minutes could be very ugly if we don’t find someone better. Even if we kept Mitch, the road would probably be tougher.
Required Skills/Knowledge:
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Macri’s column today is one of my favorites in a long time. I find analyzing NBA front offices a lot more interesting than MLB ones, as in the former different front offices can both be heavily analytically inclined and still place different values on certain skill sets and attributes, while in the latter the name of the game is mostly to just scoop up as many good players, known or unknown, as possible.
One thing I would add to Macri’s analysis is I think under Leon we’ve evinced a preference in the draft for the ability to contribute immediately. I say this descriptively and without harsh judgment–I think it has served us both well and less well depending on the pick in question.
To be sure not all picks fit this description, as IQ, Dadiet, and Diawara were all “swings” to some extent, and naturally the verdicts on all 3 are something like “excellent,” “yikes,” and “TBD” (you can throw Kayil in here too).
But we’ve mostly hewed to guys like Obi, Grimes, Deuce, Kolek, Huk, and Nickel, whose supposed calling cards were largely that they could give you passable minutes ASAP.
If you told me prior to the hiring of this group that this would be a draft approach, I’d be completely appalled. I don’t think I have to go into great detail as to why–we didn’t have young, high-upside talent on the roster and the draft is usually the quickest path to that.
I still would definitely lean more in the direction of upside myself (I would’ve picked Haliburton and Jalen Johnson, which is not to say I’m some kind of savant because I would’ve steered quite clear of IQ), and remain annoyed about the separate-but-related tendency to not value draft picks super highly in general, but the undeniable results have definitely made me more sympathetic to the idea that lower upside guys might actually be something of a market inefficiency since most teams tend to shoot for the moon.
Last thing: I ran a query with Opus 5.5 and the results are pretty interesting. Caveat: the only fact checking I did is for the Knicks specifically, so I know it counted the correct players for us and the raw numbers for us are correct, but it’s possible the rankings are off. Also, there are no UDFAs in this dataset, which might budge a few rankings here and there.
In any event, if you rank all 30 teams by VORP accumulated by draft picks (not counting guys who never played for the team that “drafted” them, counting guys who were “drafted” by a different team but played as rookies for the team in question, counting all VORP accumulated even if the player has since left the drafting team), the Knicks rank 5th in VORP per draftee (1.71) and 8th in total VORP among draftees (18.8).
That’s pretty hard to argue with, given the picks we’ve had.
One ray of hope I’m finding for the Mitch vs. Drummond gap analysis is that there is one area where Drum legitimately outshines Mitch by a lot.
Despite being maybe the GOAT offensive rebounder, Mitch was never elite on the defensive glass, whereas Drummond might be the best defensive rebounder in NBA history.
Offensive rebounding is back in style after Popovich killed it in the aughts. Lots of teams are investing in personnel to focus on that. With Towns and Drum backed by Hart and maybe Konchar, our already elite defensive rebounding only figures to improve. Maybe that offsets the deficit in defense and rim protection some.
I’m not gonna read too much into the Wiseman quote from Brown. Complementing former players is industry standard media training.
how big a deal is in that we’ll probably be dead last in the nba in blocks…
last year we were near last and still managed a top 5 overall defense…
maybe it’s not that critical a metric…
Mitch was a quite good defensive rebounder last year, ranked 13th in the league in defensive rebounds per 100 possessions, but but yes, Drummond has been a better defensive rebounder over their careers and was better last year, ranked 4th in the NBA. Towns ranked 2nd.
So we should indeed be in a good position when it comes to rebounding on both sides of the ball. The area where you’re hoping Drummond doesn’t hurt you too badly is defensive eFG%. The Knicks’ #1 playoff defense was driven by a combination of defensive eFG% and defensive rebounding. The other two of the Four Factors, we were middle of the pack. Making the opponent miss and then grabbing the rebound was the secret sauce.
Hopefully Drummond is not a major negative in the “making them miss” part of the equation.
What I’ve come to learn — and like you I’m saying this without judgment — is that the sometimes they view cap savings as an immediate contribution, too.
Dadiet’s willingness to take 80% of the rookie scale, for instance, saved us about $200k off the cost of a vet min that year. We finished $53k under the second apron at the end of the season. They probably coveted that savings more than his skills.
That isn’t to say they didn’t like Dadiet. It just explains why he (and Diawara, who also saved us money) seem like uncharacteristic swings. Their immediate contribution was on the cap sheet.
Drummond hasn’t made a big difference in team dreb% the last few years whether he was on or off the floor. I’m not sure he’s generating rebounds. He could just be grabbing them from teammates.
Interesting stuff Noble, thanks for that post.
One small harp, and a harp to that harp — I think Deuce was something of a long shot, and in fact failed to deliver for his first two years, outside of some strong defensive play. To the point that a lot of people were more than willing to dump the guy.
However, I always heartily maintained that it was usage that was leading to him sucking, in that he only got to play the last four minutes of blowouts, which meant he had to hoist a three way outside of any actual offensive scheme, which was nonexistent in those circumstances. Which is why (to me) he was shooting under 30% from three those first two years and, when he started getting real playing time, got up over 40%.
Interesting stuff, TNFH.
It’s clear in hindsight (and for some, was clear at the time) that the FO made some suboptimal decisions during the draft. But what your analysis seems to suggest is that the philosophy behind the decision-making seems to have panned out pretty well.
A couple of things:
-the trades intended to hit the sweet spot between maximizing cap space (e.g. pick 25 ties up less guaranteed money than pick 19, seconds tie up less guaranteed money than firsts) and minimizing the opportunity cost of skipping over players available at the higher slot. These trades have been the cause of much of the draft-day outcry here, and had we not won a championship, would have been the reason cited by some to blame for falling short. Yet had Leon just drafted Grimes and Deuce with #19 and #21, while there might have been some muted bitching about passing over Jalen Johnson, my guess is that even those folks would have conceded that at least both players selected turned out to be solid NBA rotation players. This is what you are saying about IQ, because the draft-day outcry was that he was a severe reach and might have actually gone undrafted, while Desmond Bane was a much safer pick. Since IQ panned out, no one cares any more about Bane panning out even better.
Ultimately, what your analysis seems to show is that Leon et. al. have considered draft picks as a means to the end (of building a championship roster primarily via trades and free agency in an environment where cap space usage was optimal) rather than an end in itself (developing draftees to becoming core pieces over time.) The drafting of players based on their readiness to contribute was with the assumption that they would become trade bait that much earlier.
There also seemed to be an underlying assumption that players who had some utility were generally available in the last few picks of the second round. All of Sims, Huk, and Diawara are examples of that. In addition, picking up future second round picks to facilitate trades, especially as the second apron and theoretically deeper international draft pool has made them marginally more valuable, seems to have worked out well.
At the end of the day, 4 of our 5 starters involved trading a combination of drafted players (or rookie-scale players acquired with picks) and/or picks, with salary-filler vets thrown in. The KAT and Mikal moves were heavily dependent on squeezing every drop of cap space below the second apron “hard cap.”
But all of this is kind of moot, in term of it being a blueprint for building a championship roster. The entire house of cards was build on three things that are mostly independent of the draft: 1) making maybe the greatest free agency signing in NBA history (certainly in Knicks history!) 2) extending and then maximizing Julius Randle’s value and making another free agency heist in Donte DiVincenzo so that Leon could fleece Minny out of KAT using minimal draft capital, and 3) making extreme value trades for OG and Hart.
I’m disappointed. Thought someone was hiring Umarells.
I’d strongly disagree on this description of IQ. He was an excellent shooter and defender in college. The question marks surrounding him were based on his lack of athleticism, which is typical for many win now players.
It was probably clear from context, but looks like I forgot to mention that the query counted picks in the Leon Era, so from the 2020 draft onwards. D’oh.
Ultimately, Leon’s draft grade is a bit of a head scratcher because it’s hard to argue with the results, but some extremely easy changes here and there that are at least not entirely hindsight based would make it truly great.
At some point, hopefully many years from now, we will have to rebuild and that’s when the drafting chops of Leon, or whoever is making the picks by then, will really be put to the test.
I’d also argue that Walt Perrin had a strong track record of drafting this type of player dating back to his time in Utah. It’s not clear to me that every FO could replicate the Knicks success. It’s possible the Knicks’ FO is uniquely suited to this draft strategy.
Giants season over in Q1 of Week 2. Judge out for the Wild Card Series.
Who would have thought the Knicks would seem FAR AND AWAY the most blessed of the NYC sports franchises?
It’s gonna be a fun season – can’t wait to see them play again!
Speaking of draft picks, I totally forgot that Quentin Grimes signed a mid-level deal with the Lakers.
Don’t forget the Mets were eliminated last week & the Jets blew a very winnable game because of poor clock management + play calling.
I think the Lakers are lowkey one of the teams to watch this year. No one is talking about them but I like the moves they made this off season.
Yeah, Swifty, I agree. In fact, the West is being decreed a 2-horse race by many/most folks, and it will be interesting to see whether any sleepers emerge from the also ran’s. LA should be fun to watch.
lol… surprise! I’m going to argue with it 🙂
It’s the methodology…
If you use a counting stat like VORP, you need something to balance the draft year distribution.
You could suck at the draft in 4 of the 6 years, but if you nailed 2020 you’ll rank near the top.
And if you dig into the numbers, that’s basically what happened. Obi (5.4 VORP) and IQ (9.2) account for 78% of the Knicks’ total.
Throw in Deuce (2.0) and Grimes (2.7), and those four account for 103% of the Knicks’ total VORP, meaning 4 out 6 drafts actually produced negative value.
But using totals and raw averages dilutes all that if the one year you actually did good was randomly 2020.
To put the problem another way: our four guys from ‘20 & ‘21 have accumulated more VORP than Wemby, Castle, and Harper. We need a weight of some sort to produce a ranking that isn’t heavily dependent on draft year distribution.
Also I’m curious…
Does this mean Rokas wasn’t part of the equation? He should be. A draft-and-stash who amounts to nothing is still an outcome.
I don’t think Leon is the type who will rest on his laurels and ride this team out until 2031 draft pick nor do I want him to.
Leon has shown he has the competence and the luck to be able to pivot and replace broken parts. (i.e. January Knicks)
He will the keep a core of Brunson and OG and risk trading others to remain a legit contender.
This is why KAT opting out and signing extension is a super important step. It certifies that he’s part of the core. Otherwise, it’s mazzalitto if the right deal presents itself.
First major domino to fall has to be Josh Hart. His athleticism decline may have already begun. Reinventing his game to shoot ~40% + is definitly helping and it’s on someone else to step up displace him. Hart won’t make it easy.
Jaylen Brown moving to Philadelphia has made Bridges indispensable.
Giving Leon administration credit for drafting is like saying Isiah Thomas did a good job signing free agents.
Before Bob read the deets, I was hoping for a debate on which KBer would be the best candidate. ( there is certainly a future Spo in our midst)
Shams says extension talks with KAT have “stagnated.” Less than ideal.
As a (suffering) Tottenham supporter, if Konchar is the end of bench guy who makes it out of camp, I’m looking forward to calling his rebounding flurries “White Hart’s Lane.”
I didn’t know there was two of us!
COYS
I don’t think Leon’s drafting record matters much any more. He took over in March 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. He brought in Brock Aller, Walt Perrin and WWW and then made inconsequential roster moves before hiring Thibs on July 30. So it’s fair to say that after inheriting the lowest-rated roster in the NBA with the lowest expected win total (according to Vegas), he went from his first consequential decision as POBO (Hiring Thibs) to hoisting an NBA championship trophy in less than 6 years. Whatever anyone wants to say about his record regarding the draft, his utilization of draft picks was a significant part of his success. Regarding the championship roster the following players were acquired in part using Leon-era draft capital:
-KAT: a 2025 first
-OG: IQ and a 2024 2nd
-Hart: Reddish (acquired for a protected 1st) and a 2023 1st
-Mikal: the mother lode
-Deuce: drafted
-Alvarado: two 2nds
-Mo: drafted
-Huk: drafted
-Kolek: drafted
-Dadiet: drafted
The guys acquired not involving Leon’s picks beyond cap space:
-Mitch: inherited
-Brunson: free agency
-Shamet: free agency
-Clarkson: free agency
-Sochan: free agency
Seems like whatever one wants to say about his draft pick transactions, they were a large part of the championship roster building over a period of less than 6 years, where only one inherited player remained. I would guess that lots of teams wished they utilized the value of their picks as well as Leon did.
Begley:
“Shams says extension talks with KAT have “stagnated.” Less than ideal.”
I truly hope they call his bluff, and if he walks for nothing, c’est la vie. That is, unless they are obviously low-balling him, i.e. something less than 4/$180M.
EDIT: sounds like the low-balling is out, so it’s on KAT to compromise if he wants to stay.
That’s exactly where we should be. When he was great, he was great. But he also no-showed a lot of playoff games. He can be way more consistent.
Maybe the best outcome is no extension. Go out and prove you’re worth more by limiting the dumb fouls so we don’t have to care about Mitch not being here. I’d pay him the max if he did that.
I don’t want to rehash the IQ draft too much because I didn’t even know who he was the night of the draft. But 10 minutes after we took him, I was able to find a couple of articles that pointed out that he made a huge leap in the 2nd half of the season that year (along with other positives). When the stats were broken out a bit (I saw an analysis like that also), he looked like one hell of a player. I’m certain I posted some notes on that in the days or weeks after the draft, but that was one of many reasons I liked him from the start and still wish he was a Knick (although I loved OG so much before we traded for him I was fine with that deal and now love him even more).
It’s very hard to know what Leon etc… were thinking on every draft move, but I think they were extremely value oriented as opposed to BPA oriented.
IMO they were counting dollars in the thousands and not millions because they knew who they wanted, had a good idea how much it was going to cost and knew what they could spend on drafted players long before we did.
IMO, they had players like Hart, DDV, Bridges, OG and maybe even Towns (probably Jaren Jackson Jr also) on a list for a long time and were always trying to make sure they had the draft capital and money available to make it happen. They were less worried about whether they got the best BPA in the draft that would cost more and might be better 5 years down the road. They were operating in an accelerated rebuild using all avenues (draft, trade and free agency).
It worked.
IMO, the one significant monkey wrench in the plan was the loss of I-Hart who IMO they expected to be able to keep. That forced a deal for Towns (who they liked) at the cost of DDV who they did not want to give up. It was just necessary because they needed a C with Robinson so unreliable and still hurt at the time.
IMO, Leon’s MO hasn’t always been to just punt on the draft. It only became that because the team far exceeded expectations early with the Randle/Thibs first season and then he messed up getting Kemba and Fournier and had to burn some draft capital in order to create space to sign Brunson. But once Brunson arrived, we were basically on the path to being contenders and from that point on it became more important to save on cap space and trade draft capital to put the right pieces around Brunson.
Think back to Jalen’s first season. We win our first playoff series and lose a tough 6 game series to Miami, which felt like an upset but Miami then went to the Finals!
Once Jalen arrived we were contenders, whether we knew it or not. I think once we won those first 9 games in a row and Jalen was dropping 30 on the regular, Rose knew he needed to put a contender around this guy as quickly as possible and didn’t have time to waste on developing draft picks.
nba today leading off with KAT extension talks…
if we get KAT for an average around 50 mil (26% of cap) that would be AWESOME 👌
if he stays, it’ll be between 50 and 55 million…
give him a trade kicker…
give jalen a no trade clause…
gotta give a bit to get…
good to see malika back too…like hanna storm – but, her continuous unhinged giddiness creeps me…
Dart officially out for season. And Brian Burns not practicing today, either.
well, that’s why you go out and get a reliable back up quarterback in the off season…
wish we had done that…
I don’t think we need to retcon this & suggest actually we haven’t sucked at the draft. It doesn’t matter any more. Everything from the Mikal trade to the incineration has been validated by a championship.
Fuck ‘dem ashes.
Ugh. Terrible day.
But I’m not worried about the KAT talks (yet). Seems like we’re destined to trample over that 2nd apron sooner or later.
Also, if anyone wants/needs some art, I’m in this show — I’m the male artist (surprise! ess-dog is a man).
not terrible at all ess-dog…
thank you so much for sharing that…truly making me smile ear to ear…
your work is beautiful…
thanks again 😊
The Giants in theory have one of the better backup QBs in the league in Jameis Winston, who should have been the starter at the beginning of last season instead of the decaying corpse of Russell Wilson. Winston looked good later in the season after Dart missed some time with injuries. Last week, the Giants extended his contract for another two years, and Giants fans rejoiced at knowing we’d have reliable Dart insurance for a while.
And then Winston went and face-planted against the Rams. Hopefully, he’s back to his confident — if wildly erratic — self now that he knows he’s the starter for the rest of the season.
But man, this sucks so much. My wife was excited to get back into the Giants again, just as a distraction from all the grimness in the real world. Now she’s committed to watching this kneecapped version of the team.
espn released number 10 through 50 in the upcoming season’s player rankings…
unlike josh and mikal, both OG and KAT were raised in the rankings (maybe it’s lowered?)…
curious to see where jalen lands in the top 10…i’m guessing number 5…
SGA
wemby
jokic
antman
jalen
I’m not defending Leon’s draft choices really. He’s definitely made some mistakes and recently not drafting anyone has been kind of annoying, although I didn’t give two shits this year, lol.
Just saying he did actually make picks the first few years but then he incinerated one specifically to go get Jalen and once we got Jalen, he catapulted us to contender status and it made sense for him to pivot towards win now moves. If he’d gotten Jalen when Jalen was right out of college, it would have been a different story, I think.
Speaking of Jalen…I was thinking last night about his dad getting hired before we got him and how that was used as evidence of tampering. And how up until we won it all, there’s been a slight worry from some fans that Rick was running the show secretly or would eventually be put in charge.
But Rick Brunson is maybe, just maybe, a great coach? Or at the very least, if Leon wanted to get Jalen, getting Rick made total sense because Rick is the one who developed Jalen.
I mean, seriously. Rick Brunson also deserves some love and respect from us because he molded Jalen into who he is today.
This is where i’m at too. Let’s enjoy that we’re the reigning NBA Champions. 🏆
And the team is very good, so it’ll be an exciting season for us, in our quest for a repeat. 🧡💙
This little clip here has me thinking Jalen might surprise people Saturday…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddo5HyTT_9Z/?stkn=bGswaGN1cmlhNGRq
It’s a lot easier to make a non-comedian funny in a filmed clip with multiple takes and editing than it is to have them be funny in a live sketch where they’re reading off of cue cards, Hubert.
I’m not saying that Jalen is doomed to fail. Just that we need to calibrate our expectations. Wayne Gretzky is probably the worst athlete host I ever saw, and Peyton Manning probably the best? But there’s plenty of room to be something like Derek Jeter — a guy who was in general, like Brunson, kind of a stiff away from the field/court, but was well-used on SNL.
Hubert, when you argued with TNFH’s draft results you did so by saying our drafting wasn’t great except for a couple of players. But TNFH didn’t argue that we got lots of great players in the draft, he claimed that we were better than most other teams. Both things can be true at the same time. I think many fans overestimate what you can do in the draft if you don’t get lucky. It seems to me that Leon and company are more realistic about what middling or late draft picks can get you than many fans are.
TNFH, the Knicks approach to drafting seems to be they try and get players with at least one demonstrated close to NBA level skill and not just the physical tools to develop that skill. I can see that working because I suspect some people can never develop high level skills despite having good physical tools and this way you weed those players out.
“I don’t think we need to retcon this & suggest actually we haven’t sucked at the draft.”
Yeah, not surprising that you’d rather that no one brings up anything you said prior to this championship, about the draft or anything else.
You can bring up what I said about Thibs any time you want, Z-Man.
Enjoy your whisky.
Most of that was stupidly wrong too.
That’s not quite what I did, KFNINJ. I argued that his methodology had a time bias. Cumulative VORP gives earlier draft classes more opportunity to accumulate value than later ones.
We were not better than most teams. We just drafted our two best players in 2020, i.e. the year that was given the most weight in his ranking.
True. But that’s how they made Peyton Manning’s legendary skit. All we need is one of those!
i’m attempting sobriety for the day…it’s unsettling…
maybe there’s a reason fermentation and cultivation of plant drugs have been going on – since forever…
“That’s not quite what I did, KFNINJ.”
What you “quite” did is spin your brains out to defend your long history of shitty hot takes on Leon’s drafting, which are quite indefensible at this point. How about just taking the L and moving on?
Give it a couple of weeks, geo.
yes sir…hours, minutes, moments…days are sooooooo long, weeks go on forever…
better maybe to resist all but temptation…
although, got a rare treat of being home alone for the night…oh yeah, way undersold pleasure of walking around the home butt naked…let the good times roll…
Whatever happened to I LOVE NY and our dominican community…
Told you guys that KAT is not signing for less so that Josh Hart and/or MIkal can stay on the team.
Here is a list of teams with max level cap space next summer:
The teams projected to have potential max-level cap room in 2027 include:
Atlanta Hawks
Brooklyn Nets
Chicago Bulls
Golden State Warriors
LA Clippers
Memphis Grizzlies
Milwaukee Bucks
New Orleans Pelicans
Sacramento Kings
Wifey is from LA so CLippers and San Francisco kind of make sense from that perspective.
Zero chance Leon let’s him walk away for nothing….need to reset asap & trade him for two $20-30m bigs with an upside.
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