[SNY Knicks] Kristaps Porzingis has successful surgery to repair ACL (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 12:00:29 PM)
The 22-year-old Porzingis was averaging 22.9 points through 47 games.
[SNY Knicks] Former Knick Stephon Marbury officially retires from basketball (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 12:00:06 PM)
After his final game in China on Sunday, former Knicks PG Stephon Marbury has officially hung up his shoes.
[SNY Knicks] Hardaway Jr.’s shooting woes reach boiling point in loss to Sixers (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 10:50:54 AM)
It was another Knicks loss, and yet another night where Tim Hardaway Jr. couldn’t find his shooting stroke.
[NYDN] Knicks’ future uncertain with Porzingis surgery, Hardaway slump (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 2:49:46 PM)
As Kristaps Porzingis was having his left knee surgically repaired, Tim Hardaway Jr. was busy trying to piece together his jump shot.
[NYDN] Knicks say Kristaps Porzingis underwent successful ACL surgery (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 7:22:17 AM)
Kristaps Porzingis underwent successful surgery Tuesday to repair the torn ACL in his left knee, the Knicks announced.
(Tuesday, February 13, 2018 9:16:00 PM)
Tim Hardaway Jr. was hot after another cold shooting night, upset with himself because he’s not giving the Knicks what they need after they gave him a $71 million contract over the summer.
(Tuesday, February 13, 2018 12:52:49 PM)
Kristaps Porzingis underwent surgery to repair a torn ACL in his left knee Tuesday morning, the Knicks announced. No timetable for a return has been provided yet.
(Tuesday, February 13, 2018 4:11:37 PM)
The games no longer have playoff implications, but there will be plenty of intrigue Wednesday when the Knicks return home to play at Mudiay Square Garden. Against the Wizards in the final game before the All-Star break, newly acquired point guard Emmanuel Mudiay will make his Garden debut in a Knicks uniform after two games…
(Tuesday, February 13, 2018 8:55:29 AM)
There still could be a “Merry Kristaps.” The clock has started ticking as Kristaps Porzingis underwent “successful surgery’’ to repair his ACL tear at the Hospital of Special Surgery, the Knicks announced Tuesday at noon. The Knicks offered no timetable for the 7-3 Latvian’s return. They may do so after he begins his rehab process,…
[NYTimes] Carry-On: What Joel Embiid Can’t Travel Without (Tuesday, February 13, 2018 10:00:30 AM)
The all-star basketball player always brings his PlayStation, ChapStick and cologne.
(Tuesday, February 13, 2018 3:40:57 PM)
What will Kristaps Porzingis’ rehab from a torn ACL look like? When could he return to pre-injury form? ESPN’s Stephania Bell provides some insight.
126 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.02.14)”
I just did my first cursory review of draft picks and want Triple J aka J Cube. Jaren Jackson Jr is straight from central casting as the quintessential modern NBA 4/5. He’s Nance or Isaac with an outside shot. He’s younger than the others and KP/Jackson at the 4/5 could be a dynamite pairing for the future. Our starting lineup for the 2019-20 season might be Kemba/Frank/Dot/Jaren/KP. BUT we absolutely have to out tank Chicago to make this happen since the two mock drafts I saw both had Bulls picking him ahead of us.
That means we have to play Mudiay 35mpg. It’s hard to imagine NYK finding a worse defending 1 than Calderon or Rose but somehow Perry pulled it off. Every time Emmanuel dies on a screen, an angel will gets its wings. St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, will guide the tank. Transforming Mudiay into an NBA player is too daunting a task for even St Jude but positioning us for #7 pick ahead of Bulls/Nets and snagging Jaren is challenging but doable by ole Jude.
Burke is too much of a threat to the tank so we should limit his minutes. Even D-Dot at 15+ mpg could be a threat if he starts knocking down 3s at 40% and playing defense. A lineup of Burke/Frank/Dot/Timmy/KOQ getting minutes would scare the beejeezus out of me. Let’s pray Horn continues to play a bunch of random scatterbrained lineups.
Yesterday Frank, in an effort to make Hoola feel better, proposed the terrible idea of giving Walking Bucket a 3-year 20m deal. B’s had a negative RPM and BPM every year. He’s posted a below average WS/48 every year except one. Surely a rebuilding team like the Knicks could find a better way to spend its 8.5m MLE and 3.3m BAE. Here’s some possibilities this summer:
RFA
– Jabari
– Kyle Anderson
– Julius Randle
– VanVleet
– Shabazz Napier
– David Bertans
– Montrezl Harrell
UFA
– Hezonja
– Jerami Grant
– Looney
We could try to get VanVleet to sign an offer sheet for 8.5m if we promise him he’s the starter. Napier might be an option at a lower amount. If Crawford is terrible in the playoffs prompting Thibs to take Courtney, we might be able to free up some cap to make an offer to Anderson or Jabari. Looney could be a value signing if we wait it out and Hezonja could be a 1and1 candidate. There’s many other possibilities and players out there. Let’s hope Perry and Mills are serious about being in “talent acquisition phase” but I suspect they’d be worried about lack of scoring/shot creation and re-sign Hollow Bucket to a multi-year deal.
I’m not JJJr’s biggest fan. He’s a 5 at the next level, and that’s where KP needs to play. He shoots the 3 very well so he won’t compromise spacing, but his game screams “rim runner” to me. The last time the Knicks had a true rim runner things worked out really well, but I don’t know if he has the defensive ability to cover modern day power forwards. KP isn’t the guy to play at power forward unless you want to guarantee a team open 3s down the stretch. I like the player, I’m just not sure he’s what the Knicks need for the future. Mikal Bridges might be less talented but the better fit.
@1 – first of all I said 3 years 15MM for Beasley but whatever.
RFAs – I would say there’s a less than zero chance that Jabari is available for anything near the MLE – like less chance of that happening than Emmanuel Mudiay becoming Chris Paul. Anybody who is worth having on the restricted market will be getting much more than the MLE. So you can just immediately cancel those guys out.
Secondly – it’s pretty clear that we are playing to be a FA destination in 2019-20, so handing out long MLE deals would generally be counterproductive. That’s why I would go no more than ~5MM or so on Beasley.
The UFAs you listed are at least a little interesting. Honestly though I hope we just keep our powder dry and play the kids we have next year.
Re: JJJ – I’d do back flips if we somehow landed him. I actually think he’s a great fit with KP – on offense having 2 bigs who can run and space the floor is so valuable, and he’s just so damn efficient at the college level. Defensively – he’s probably the best big defender in college basketball.
But hey, I’d be perfectly happy with Mikal Bridges too. If he were a little bigger I’d be happier, but having an athletic wing who can shoot and defend is pretty much the holy grail right now.
Yes I just checked you’re right, I had your 6m AAV as starting at 6m/yr in my head. But even 5m/yr would be too much.
I agree which is why I wrote that Crawford would have to be terrible in playoffs and Thibs takes Courtney for Cole before free agency starts to free up cap. Thinking about it some more, that would only a free up a bit more than the MLE if we are right at the cap; we’d have find a team that would take Baker or Lance into its cap or trade exception so probably Jabari and Anderson are out.
I figure Ayton, Doncic, Bagley and Trae will go ahead of him. If Orlando is picking 5th or 6th, they probably don’t take him because they already have Isaac. And then you have Porter out there and any wildcard pick like Lauri was last year. So if Knicks finish with a worse record than Chicago or Brooklyn, we might have a shot if we’re picking 7th. How are we on tie breaks if we finish with the same record? I know we swept the Nets but does that mean we auto finish with a lower or higher pick or do we get to choose your position. I recall ties were discussed last summer re TWolves but I don’t remember how they work.
Ok Zuzu…. John Donne’s got nothing on you, my friend.
JJJ is easily be the ideal 4 to play next to KP. The guy guards the perimeter better than most wings.
Him Frank and KP would suffocate teams on defense so you just need playmaking wings to fill out the rest of the starting lineup.
Playmaking wings are far and few between. If we had one other than Dotson who can’t get on the court we would be a lot better.
The hope was that Timmy would be that player but he just isn’t, Lee isn’t either.
i have my reservations with jackson.. at least next to kp… he’s not a guy that can score outside of spot up opportunities and he’s very clumsy with the ball in his hands…. defensively it’s a great fit tho….
the 4 spot is going to be a real troublesome to fill and i think it’s better to have that as a ‘swing’ spot with multiple players filling heavy minutes there… like having your starting SF swing to the 4 in small ball lineups and having a nominal starter against most big heavy starting lineups…. this is sort of like what GS does with durant/green/pachulia…. it gives you maximum lineup flexibility because it’s so hard to find a 4 that can stay on the court against a variety of lineups these days….
that’s kind of why i really like kyle anderson… he’s a perfect candidate to be a really good 3 and a part time 4…. then you could have someone like koq as the nominal starter…
Last year the tie with MIN was decided by a coin flip (that we lose obviously).
I don’t know how it works on three or more teams tie.
I would take JJJ in a second and worry about how he fits with KP never.
Well, we KNOW the Knicks will go on a 3 game winning streak to end the season just because that’s what they do, so I’m not making projections for the draft yet. A top 5 pick is still possible.
The next 4 games we have the Wizards, Celtics and Warriors, plus a game away to Orlando which is an absolute must lose. The schedule gets a lot easier in march with many direct games against other teams like the Kings, Mavs, Bulls and Hornets, so we need to be getting closer to the bottom right now.
Ideally we get into the top 4 and take one of the playmakers: Doncic, Young or to a lesser extent Porter.
Outside of that, there are a lot of great role players. Carter looks really good to me if he can up his volume of threes at that rate. He’d be a great understudy to replace Kanter when his contract is up.
Obviously I like both Bridges too. They would be nice because they’re already coached up, and we can’t/won’t develop players.
I feel like Lebron is gonna play those last two just because of Kanter mocking him on twitter.
I still don’t understand the aversion to Wendell Carter. He checks off every conceivable box.
He averages:
21.5 PTS/40
14.0 TRB/40
3.2 BLK/40
64% TS
63% 2PT FG%
47% 3PT% (small sample size of 32 attempts but it can clearly be a weapon for him eventually)
70% FT%
I’ve watched plenty of Duke games and while I’m no scout, his defensive instincts seem great and he can defend multiple positions (he can’t switch as well as a Draymond Green/JJJ type but he won’t ambarrass himself). He’s also been perfectly happy to defer to Bagley and co. so it seems like he’ll be fine with whatever role he ends up with.
As for fit with KP, I just think there’s a baseline level of talent a team should already have before they can even think of considering fit when drafting. Needless to say, we’re nowhere close to that point. I also think the fit seems fine–he covers for KP’s rebounding deficiency and doesn’t project to get his offense in too similar a fashion.
Re: the second round, Gary Clark’s numbers absolutely jump off the page. I’d love to add him. Jevon Carter and Bonzie Colson have been longtime favorites of mine too.
What sites do you all use to follow college prospects? The few draft folks I used to pay attention to all got hired by NBA teams.
@16 https://www.thestepien.com/
carter is very good… and i have him and jackson pretty close to each other….
the drawback with carter is that he can play the 5 but i’m not sure if he can anchor a defense… he’s very much an old school pf type and the kind of guy that would be an easy top 4-5 in prior years…. he has all the skills to be a really really good offensive player…. but i’m not sure if teams are looking for a lot of post offense out of the 4 spot these days…. just look at greg monroe…. that’s where the aversion comes from….
he’s probably a lot better than monroe…. i think he’s probably a more efficient version of vin baker or maybe even a shorter pau gasol…. but the main question is how you would have that fit in today’s nba….
andrew johnson is probably the best writer on the draft now…. he’s over at nyloncalculus now but he covers more than the draft…. pelton is also solid…
tothemean.com used to have a good compilation of draft models…
i mostly just look at nbadraft.net and start following names that catch my eye….
It’s true that if Carter is going to be a 30+ MPG player on a good team he’ll probably need his 3PT shot to be reliable. I like the chances of that happening–both the numbers and the stroke look good. He can mix in his post game as much as he wants if it continues to be efficient for him.
On defense, I agree that it’s tough to see him as an anchor. As a weak side shot blocker next to KP (who will hopefully be an anchor)? He seems well-suited to do that.
We need talent before we can talk about fit with KP. KP’s great, but is he cornerstone great? I dunno about that. I think he tops off as 2nd best player on a championship team/best player on a solid playoff team (2nd round exit types) Which is still normally a top 20 talent, but he needs another top 20 talent to play with if the Knicks are serious about being championship contenders.
If Wendell Carter is the consolation prize I am ok with that too. I just don’t want to take anyone who has major gaps in their statistical profile. It’s all a crapshoot but you can at least avoid shooting yourself in the foot by not taking a prospect like Markelle Fultz who simply doesn’t measure up by the numbers.
I completely agree with Scorpio. Doncic would probably be that guy, but who cares, let’s win useless games behind the commanding effort of Jarrett Jack
@ 15 I like everything you said. They just really need some playmakers so they can’t pass on Doncic or Young if somehow one of them are available. I watch a lot of Duke as well and I love Carter, so I wouldn’t mind him at all if the other 2 are gone. Love the guys you mentioned at the end as well except for Gary Clark, who’s a new name for me.
@16, 19
This is pretty much my method. I follow a few guys on twitter who do college analytics, and I agree that Andrew Johnson is the best overal (imo). Other than that, just watch the games of guys you’re interested and follow their performance/statistical profile and you can get a better handle on the draft than 90% of the people who make money talking about it.
Yeah I would not worry about fit right now with KP. We have so many holes at basically every position long term that we just need young talent and young talent can improve the parts of their game that are weak.
Going back to Mudiay. I mean has anyone really talked about the fact that when assessing his future peak in the NBA, he started way behind the 8ball developmentally bc he did not attend college but only played 11 games in China? Think about it, even one and done dudes get a season in the NCAA and the coaching they get in the NCAA (at least at most of the major programs) is going to be a hundred times better than what they were getting in high school. We all know Euro prospects are more of a risk but the Eruo leagues are way better than the professional league in China. No knock on them or anything but it hasn’t been around as long there and the China leagues are filled with former washed up NBA players who are basically scoring 60 points a game. I would imagine that development for an 18 year old player is not something that would happen much. And on top of that, he got hurt, so he only played 11 games. If he had gone to SMU, he would have had a full season to tutelage under Larry Brown. And his Knicks tenure not withstanding, Larry Brown is one of the great basketball minds of all time.
So even when comparing him to Russell, Okafor, KAT or other people in his class (even KP who played on a professional team in Europe), Mudiay’s skills were even more raw than those players.
So of course his skills are gonna be raw and he’s gonna have a lot of flaws to his game. But even at season 3 I think he still has a very high ceiling. He has steadily improved his game since his rookie year.
What? The stats systems may not have had Fultz #1, but he was #4 by Pelton’s stats-only ranking and similar on others that I saw. He was a fantastic prospect who has had one of the strangest series of events any of us have ever witnessed. I don’t think any stats system projected him to get the yips and forget how to shoot a basketball.
@22 How did Fultz not measure up? He seemed to check all the boxes to me. I thought he’d walk into the league and be a 20/5/5 guy right off the bat.
Is there an aversion to Wendell Carter?
Dude is a beast. Prob not as light on his feet as JJJ but his stats are fantastic. He could stand to lose some weight which an NBA training program can probably help with, and that would probably make him a lot quicker.
The top tier of the draft is probably Doncic, Ayton, Porter, Bagley, JJJ, and Trae Young, but I’d be super happy with any of the Bridges or Wendell Carter. Would not be super excited about Bamba for some reason but I’m sure he’d be fine too. When it’s all said and done I wonder whether both JJJ and Carter jump Bamba in the draft.
i don’t think china had anything to do with his development… if you can play basketball it doesn’t matter where you play… yao ming came in fairly polished and he spent most of his developmental years against a much weaker league in china….
mudiay had some major red flags coming in which… and i’m starting to sound like a broken record… was his 2p fg%…. will bynum was also dominating in that league and had a much higher 2p fg% and he was basically mediocre in his nba career…. mudiay has had persistent problems finishing against length….
Fultz didn’t measure up and I think Pelton was drinking some kool-aid. I was beating the drum on this pre-draft, I just don’t think he was a very impressive prospect statistically. He deserved to be picked in the first round but wasn’t a guy I would ever fell comfortable picking #1, given a pedestrian ts% and a lack of oomph overall in his numbers.
Wouldn’t this be a great year to have two 1st round picks? It seems to happen for a lot of other teams but never the Knicks. I guess because it requires foresight and patience, 2 qualities which our management has never demonstrated. Instead, we give up 1st round picks for the Andrea Bargnanis and Eddy Currys of the world.
I’m pretty low on Bamba insofar as he’s projected to go where he is because of “upside” rather than actual productivity at the college level. Make no mistake, he’s been very good at UT, but he’s been outperformed by all the other lottery bigs and his offensive game is still raw. But his measureables are insane. I love the guy, because he’s smart and self-possessed, but I wouldn’t take him over any other big except maybe Bagley.
Tankathon doesn’t claim to employ any draft experts, but they update their mock regularly and have a lot of handy tools. I mostly just go there and then do more research on the guys I find intriguing but that Stepien website seems pretty good.
@26
I agree. Having only 11 games and no top NCAA caliber coaches can’t help.
To that, I would add that playing in Denver may have hurt him statistically and developmentally a little the last year or two. Denver isn’t really running run a traditional offense anymore. Jokic is a kind of point C. He has become the primary play maker. I don’t think it’s a total accident that Mudiay’s AST% and Assists/36 were their highest as a rookie before Jokic starting breaking out as more of a play maker.
None of this is an excuse for some of the drawbacks so far, but they are a factor to consider.
Like the edit, because I was about to say. 😉
@ 30 – dphan – OK but Yao Ming is chinese. So you know, I imagine it was maybe easier for him to “develop” in China under chinese coaches. I mean, that’s a pretty intense language barrier. Also, Yao was a 7 foot center. To me its a little different when talking about a traditional big man like Yao vs. a possible point guard who has to run an offense. Not trying to knock down Yao or anything cause he was great at his peak but I just think he probably had it easier in China than someone like Mudiay would.
Also, isn’t Mudiay himself an immigrant who had a weird high school experience? I mean, this is a kid who if I’m not mistaken didn’t go through the traditional high school/AAU development route.
I just think he came into the draft probably a lot more raw than even the raw one and done guys who are drafted each year.
Also, I think if you look at Frank’s positives so far in his young career and Mudiay’s positives, I can see why the FO thought getting his kid might be a risk worth taking. I think them playing together and developing together…they can help each other. It seems like Frank all ready has a high IQ and feel for the game he just lacks some of the confidence and skills to do some things. Whereas Mudiay is almost kind of the opposite. So I think its potentially a really intriguing back court combo and I hope they can push each other to get better.
I just really hate the negativity towards this kid on this blog after 2 games. He’s got skills. He’s still extremely young and fits the timeline. If you want to get young players with upside outside of the draft these are the types of moves you make. Personally I love the risk and if it doesn’t work out that is ok too but I love that they made this move. I think it shows some real creativity.
Oh, definitely, everyone is just down on him for those two games. Not the two and a half years of shitty NBA performance that proceeded those two games (also known as “the extent of his career so far”). It’s those two games that has people down on him.
I do that fairly often after I reread my own comment and realize someone may make more of it than I meant and force me to defend a position I wasn’t taking.
I’m not as down on him as everyone else.
I can see the same stats that everyone else is looking at. He’s been terrible. But he’s still very young and there are some mitigating circumstances that probably hurt him. I don’t see it as a bad gamble for a single year.
fultz was absolutely the best guard prospect in the draft… there was nothing statistically to suggest that he would have the issues that he’s seeing now…. he’s also hasn’t even played 80 minutes… so i wouldn’t dig his grave yet…
Fultz was definitely not a good prospect, but I understand why some teams thought he’d be good. If you’re in love with tall guards, sure, he’s good, but his numbers were middling. I’m sure that any argument against that includes some assortment of the following words: length, athletic, upside, explosive, proven scorer.
The shoulder thing really has little to do with whether he was a good or bad pick. It was (likely) unforeseeable, but if the Sixers staff missed a major, shot-altering, possibly-career-threatening condition (like, what if this ends up being the yips?), everyone on that staff should be fired, from doctors to scouts.
I think what has hurt Mudiay the most is that he sucks at playing NBA basketball. He’s got the same problem as Anthony Randolph, Darko Milicic, Andrea Bargnani, Jonny Flynn, Anthony Bennett, Jahlil Okafor, Ben McLemore, etc. have. He’s younger, but has had plenty of practices and games and opportunities to win a job. Sure, he may be the outlier who bucks the odds, but it’s ridiculous to expect that he’ll be any better than a mediocre backup PG at this point.
–
I would be very disappointed if we took Bamba.
brandon jennings probably had the most similar experience to mudiay and he probably ran into more issues in his stint in israel… i don’t think that impacted his development at all….
everyone’s different… and everyone responds differently to different environments…. it’s all really hypothetical…. so maybe it did impact it.. maybe it didn’t.. but i don’t think it’s material either way…
the bigger problem is that he hasn’t improved much from then…. and that’s probably because he wasn’t very good to begin with…. if you look at the game’s he was playing then… i’m sure they’re still up on youtube… the guy has the same exact game…. a guy like telfair was very obviously supremely overrated and i think it’s the same case here….
a pre-draft narrative takes hold based off of scant information…. and then it gets parroted around until it’s accepted as fact…. he was missing some obvious skills that no one bothered to dig deeper on…. happens all the time….
While I do think Fultz was a fine choice, I think the best guard prospect was definitely Lonzo Ball. I would have taken him first and I’m still quite confident he’ll be at least a borderline all star despite all the bs around him.
What’s all this revisionist history about Fultz being a bad prospect? He was certainly overrated as a prospect, but he was in no sense a bad prospect. A 6’5 lead guard who can score at all 3 levels while posting a 50+% 2pt% and a 40+% 3pt percentage on high volume while simultaneously being a plus rebounder and passer from his position is canonical high lotto pick material. There were of course questions about level of competition, defensive intensity, and his FT%, but he was clearly one of the best prospects in the draft at the time. All of the analytics models had him in the top 5-10.
Lonzo was the actual best prospect in the draft, both because of and despite his unique statistical profile, but Fultz wasn’t far behind.
Anthony Randolph was never good but he at least flirted with respectability and was known for being a total head case. We all loved him here at KB while bemoaning his boneheadedness and I think if there is one guy that I think the stat heads around here liked to improve based on the eye test it was him. Never put it together but he has been great in Europe and probably will surprise some people when he comes back to the NBA.
I don’t want to suggest Fultz was terrible but I think if you are taking a scoring point guard you want someone with a higher TS% (and ft%) and you want someone who stands out across the board, offensively and defensively. Fultz just didn’t look like the total package to me.
I was misreading his numbers, of course, so yeah, he was a good prospect. Mea culpa.
Still not a terribly dominant player (I’d like the consensus #1 to shoot .600 TS% against NCAA competition regardless of his teammates), but the real gems of the last draft class have been bigs, IMO. Collins, Adebayo, and of course, coulda-been-a-Knick Jordan Bell.
“Can’t finish at the rim” is a pretty damning thing to have on your scouting report. I can’t recall seeing anybody overcome the “can’t finish at the rim” problem. BOTH of our PG prospects have this problem.
I mean Z-man I think that’s harsh. Its so easy to just say “he sucks, look at the stats.” One of the things that annoys me about this blog is how much people refer to stats as an end all to a player’s story and I think at age 21 that is very harsh. I mean we’ve seen players put it together at age 25, 26, 27 but on this site if they aren’t good by 22, they should just retire and quit and we should have nothing to do with them. I just don’t believe that is true. Maybe Mudiay doesn’t improve (he has improved though since his rookie year). Or maybe he improves some while with us but then wherever he ends up next he then figures it out and in 4 years we’re like “why did we give up on that guy.” I just don’t accept the fatalism of this blog when it comes to a young player like him who had very little formal basketball training before coming to the NBA.
I think Denver put him in a bad situation. Starting him full on from game one his rookie year was probably not the way to go with him.
@48
Agreed with all of that. I thought Fultz had the makings of a slightly worse version of early Kyrie, clearly very offensively talented, but a bit of a chucker who really should be posting a better than .566 TS given his skill set. Of course now Kyrie is very very good, but he also has an 87% ft percentage for his career.
Adebayo has been great, I always liked him, and so did all the models I saw. Same w Jordan Bell. Still can’t believe Chicago sold that pick to GS.
I think this China thing is silly. If Trae Young had gone to China instead of Oklahoma I feel fairly confident that he would be tearing it up there.
ts% is not a good forward indicator at the college level…. the reason why is because a high 3pr is a hack for a high ts…. and you don’t want any player to already have a high 3pr against weak competition… it becomes even more profound at the nba level…. you live and die in the paint in the nba….
I’m calling BS on this unless you can produce a pre-draft post stating you knew he was a bad prospect.
Edit: OK, never mind, saw your mea culpa
I was looking at his conference stats, which were not good. I still don’t think he jumped off the page, but again: upside, athleticism, explosiveness.
I don’t want to be the blogs Mudiay advocate (even though I’ve become that), but there are stats and there is the game. If a guy has some weird shooting form and shoots a low %, there’s a good reason he’s not going to improve.
But, some things are easier to improve. Turnovers certainly can be reduced with good coaching. And if you shoot a low percentage, even though you’re a good spot up shooter with nice form – by not taking three bad shots/game, your numbers are going to go way up. In the two games with the knicks, Mudiay seemed to finish okay – except when he drove into crowded lane. Fixable.
I don’t know Mudiay’s game much more than the two games with the knicks. However, I was immediately struck by his presence on the court. He knows how to run the point. Hid heads up and he hits open men. If you think he doesn’t know how to play basketball, you know nothing about basketball.
Maybe he’ll be a shitty percentage shooting turnover machine and suck, but the guy has a high upside. And even though the knicks are horrible at player development, Hornicek may work well with the guards.
Let’s see what he does in a knicks uniform.
NBADraft Net, Draft Express, Bleacher Report, ESPN Chad Ford, MyNBA Draft all had Fultz as number one in their mock last year.
I couldn’t find CBS and Tankathon mocks, but I don’t think I saw him lower than 3 on any mock.
Talk about revisionist history…
Re JJJ – I’d be happy enough but as things stand today (which of course can change) he’s likely to fall in the zone we can’t pick in – 4-6/7. The chances of us ending up better than 8th unless we win the lotto are pretty low. 7 the absolute ceiling.
Re: Fultz, I liked him a lot from the dreaded eye test of watching him play, plus his stats were fine. He seemed like a classic NBA combo guard type who could score from anywhere, pass and rebound. (I watch a lot of college ball because of my gambling
habitproblem.)facepalm
I would have taken Ball over Fultz in a vacuum, but with Simmons already there Fultz made sense.
I’ll be the first to admit that my opinion on the best college prospects based on stats and watching the players is pretty much worthless. But I do feel very confident that worth ethic and intelligence are a significant factor in long term development. On that score, I think Frank rates highly. I don’t know Mudiay well enough to make a judgement. But I’d bet anything we are eventually going to look back at the Frank we are seeing now and laugh. He almost certainly has the will and intelligence to find a way to get a lot better.
I’m all for developing young players, but not even Sam Hinkie would be okay with waiting for 6 more years for Mudiay to figure out how not to hurt his team on a basketball court.
If that’s his destiny, let him develop overseas and come back to prove himself. It’s expensive to develop veteran talent!
Being struck by a player’s presence on the court seems like a phrase that could be used as a prelude for just about every bad Knick move ever.
Isiah knew Eddy Curry looked like shit, but he was so struck by his presence on the court he knew the deal had to be done!
Phil Jackson knew Joakim Noah was done, but he was so struck about his presence on the court 5 years ago he thought he could replicate that once more!
Carmelo Anthony was always overrated, but his court presence, man… you look at him and you know he a baller!
Are you talking about how Chad Ford got caught retroactively changing his draft boards to look better?
Here’s what DraftExpress had to say about Bargnani, perhaps the worst starter of the shotclock era:
http://www.draftexpress.com/article/Finding-the-%91It–Factor-Andrea-Bargnani-1884/
I warn you: it is one of the worst pieces of basketball writing I’ve seen.
@65 That’s missing the point, if you try you probably find good reports on Bennett and Kwame and Olowokandi.
The point his: you said that Fultz was a bad prospect and everybody knows that, and that is patentely untrue. That’s my point.
In the end he could become the worst player in league history, but nobody ever said he was a bad prospect.
@65 That reads like The Onion or an April fools edition of Sports Illustrated. lmao
Of the 50 worst rookie seasons over the past 40 years, Mudiays was probably the worst. And of the other 49 people on the list, only Allan Houston, who’s rookie season was almost as abysmal, really turned into a player you would have wanted to have invested in (and even he is as famous for being wildly overpaid as he is for his basketball skills which were largely one-dimensional).
Of the other people on that list, Lindsey Hunter managed a pretty long career, and Will Barton has turned out okay. Pretty much everybody else on the list is an afterthought in this league.
Start throwing the stones at me now.
After all the discussion and miscalculation about bad draft picks, the herd still thinks it’s best to lose every game.
Yes, every loss is valuable, and on draft day who doesn’t wish they were 0-82. More importantly, and much more difficult, is changing a losing culture into a winning one. Every player, coach and fan knows the knicks suck. They’ve sucked and sucked and sucked. More sucking is not the answer for this team.
If you’re bottom four, maybe six, tanking can be a legitimate strategy. Or, if you’re team with a long history of winning, tanking for a year can be viable.
But to go from the 10th to the 8th pick is not in the knicks best interest. Learning how to win and being good enough to want players to come to MSG is more important.
Okafor, Fultz, DeAngelo. Mudiay!!!
I think the point is that Owen, before the draft, made the case that those so-called experts were wrong and that Fultz wasn’t actually the prospect that people had him pegged as.
(If he made that case, and Fultz doesn’t develop as a #1 should, then you have to tip your hat to him, not insist he’s wrong and everybody else is still right)
You might have missed the part where I said I misread his numbers. Still don’t think he should have been the consensus #1, but a bunch of sites and pundits saying he’s the clear #1 is not overwhelming evidence that he was a surefire superstar. It just means he checked off a bunch of boxes according to some people who may or may not be stats-hating Nostradumbasses.
Fultz was a legitimately good prospect. He was basically the second best guard prospect in the draft.
Michael Beasley had a .410 WS/48 in college. I was pretty sure he was going to be a good pro.
fultz had that injury at the end of the collgege season for which there wasn’t really a lot of information about…for some reason, most of the pre-draft noise seemed to completely ignore the fact that he couldn’t play basketball the last six games of his season…
wasn’t very shocking when philly shut him down early this season…think i heard somewhere that he has to change up his shooting motion now due to the injury…
Donovan Mitchell shot like 49% at the rim as a college sophomore and is now shooting 64% at the rim in the pros. Go figure.
Re: Mudiay – the weirdest thing about him is that finishing at the rim was one of his strengths in his high school / predraft scouting report. And now he just can’t do it.
@70 @71
I never said he’s a superstar or will become a superstar, I said that nobody except you think of him as a bad prospect.
You could be right (I don’t remember what you said in June last year)
and my hat is already here to be tipped,
but my point, even if you and Donnie try to to bend it, stays the same.
Fultz was considered a very good prospect by everyone: idiot pundits, idiot media writers, idiot NBA managements (including the infallible process 76ers no less).
In many (all) cases the answer is always the same: we know, we are right, them are idiots.
Sooner or later someone will explain me why we’re here masturbating on Mudiay and not working in an NBA front office.
If you can find Chad Ford’s glowing write-up of the Nktlina Tslavani or whatever the hell his name was, that would probably be the worst prognostication ever. But I think those articles have been memory holed.
@65 I couldn’t make it past this:
“So what is the source of Il Mago?s magic? What could possibly allow us to look past his modest statistical production and talk about him as true number one? The answer comes to us in the riddle of supervenience. Bargnani is an excellent example of why the concept of supervenience is central to the process of scouting players. More importantly, what separates an excellent prospect from a truly blue chip player is often found in this mysterious concept, as we will see in the contrast between Bargnani and his fellow front court dynamo Chris Bosh. Supervenience is what separates most number one picks from the rest of the pack. Here?s the basic idea: Take one part Gestalt psychology, one part artistic interpretation, add a hint of the concept of Zen unity, and you?ve got supervenience. Doesn?t sound like a basketball concept, does it? Perhaps the meaning of the term is already to be found in our common basketball language, and we just haven?t identified it? “
Of course, who would really want to watch a player play? Just read the stats. Knicks deals notwithstanding.
Is this a basketball blog?
@78 I hope this is a joke of some sort.
What are stats, hoolahoop? Are they made up numbers, or are they records, however incomplete, of what a player did on the floor?
Which is the reason to get attached to awful players? Mudiay is terrible and everything speaks to that. It’s okay giving in to this notion.
Also, to the earlier discussion re Beasley… I’ll say it for at least the third time this week, though no-one seems too bothered (media included) and all seem happy with Perry’s narrative re 2019.
As it stands we can’t afford to add ANY guaranteed money beyond next season. With draft picks added, we have pretty limited space in 2019. If we want to maximise it we need to a) not add any more guaranteed money on new FAs or on resigning our existing players, b) hold off on an extension for KP or persuade him to sign one starting at less than his $17m cap hold, and ideally c) also get off Lee’s contract.
$5m per is $5m we don’t have.
Didn’t you know, basketball games are not scored by points? The team that wins is the one that looks better by the eye test. There are Olympic-style judges who give out their eye test scores at the end of the game, and that is how score is kept. You really think all your “true shooting percentage” and “effective field goal percentage” stats actually COUNT for anything? Mudiay LOOKS like he knows what he’s doing out there. That’s all that matters, you fools.
With Mudiay it all starts and ends with defense. He is terrible defensively. His offensive stats have improved every year and maybe one day he can be decent offensively. His defensive numbers and metrics haven’t improved which means even with improvement he is fools gold. The worst possible outcome would be an offensive improvement and a second contract with the Knicks because unless he goes through an epic transformation defensively he won’t be a net positive no matter how good his offense gets.
As for the draft I think pick 7 is where it drops off. I like both the Bridges and Carter but none of them have superstar potential. I think everyone in the top 7 has a much higher ceiling and that’s what we need. It seems unlikely we will drop that far but we need to pray to the tank gods.
Honestly, to my eyes Mudiay doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing out there, but he runs and leaps better than Jarrett Jack so it’s okay
We should talk about something other than Mudiay. Politics?
I am not even sure why I started talking about Fultz, His numbers were good enough to merit a high pick. Personally, I was a little pessimistic having watched him a few times and having looked at his line, nothing more complicated than that. And I agree his current situation is no validation of my pessimism. Really, it was a very bad example of the point I am trying to make, which is simply that I’d prefer the Knicks pick from the pool of guys with genuinely great numbers (like JJJ, Wendell Carter, or Jock Lansdale) rather than a guy who doesn’t have great numbers, which they will inevitably do.
My all time baller/beast/if he ever learns to do X/once he matures team:
Eddie Griffin
Stromile Swift
Anthony Randolph
Darius Miles
MCW
thank you – finally someone whom truly gets it…style is so so much more important than substance…
you can’t trust those sneaky numbers…how something looks is all that really matters…mudiay most definitely looks like an excellent prospect – if you just squint you eyes together hard enough…
I actually did see Lansdale play recently. The shitty team he was playing against had no answer for him. He looked like he was playing against children. San Fran I think.
The key word is incomplete.
We are all searching for some metric that tells us everything in a single number (or small series), but the interaction between players with unique skills, flawed understanding. and the sheer complexity of it all renders most models as untrustworthy. Basketball is like every other market. People look at different data, have different insights, and come to different conclusions. Then everyone places their bets. If a guy keeps winning over the long haul, he knows a lot, but even he doesn’t know everything.
Everyone is doing that. They may disagree on some things, have different insights, or have different values (as people always do in markets) but they ARE looking at that data. What they are also doing (that you don’t seem to like) is making projections based on data that helps them predict the probability of a player getting better. Those projections become part of the appraisal in the same way that if two companies are earning the same amount of money in the present, investors will correctly pay more for the one with the better growth prospects. Sometimes those projections turn out to be wrong, but to ignore them would be to leave out an important value oriented part of the equation.
i would put beasley as the poster child of that team… he came into the league with one of the most dominant college seasons of all time… then put in a fairly solid rookie ws48 of .081 and then proceeded to do the exact same thing for 10 years….
Looking at some college stats, these just jumped out at me:
-JJJ is averaging 5.9 blocks per 40 mins and shooting 44% from 3.
-Trae Young’s assist% is 51! and he goes to the line 9.5 times a game. he’s shooting 43% but has a 60% TS%.
– Miles Bridges is the definition of meh.
– based on his defensive and rebounding stats, Knox must actively avoid going near the ball. His numbers are even worse than his eye test results. Rock hard pass.
Jonathan Bender also
AFTER the eye test, I see stats as a useful tool to help define the player. Stats are a partial record of what a player does on the floor, especially to point out glaring deficiencies, or efficiencies.
But there’s so much more going on than the stats. With 10 players on the floor, there are literally an infinite amount of variables. Current stats capture a portion of that, but to treat those numbers as gospel is foolhardy. Every coach knows that.
Two identical stat lines can describe two completely different players. Some deficiencies are more easy to correct than others. Plus, there’s intangibles.
And players evolve and improve at different rates. If KP spent the offseason partying and celebrating being an NBA celebrity, he’d have played much worse this year.
To use Mudiay as an example, he recently stated that everything was given to him to easily coming out of high school. He wants to grow up and work on his game.
Who knows? Maybe his stats will never change. Or, maybe, he’ll clean up his game. It’s a new start and I see enormous potential. I’m going to judge him on being a knick, not a knugget.
Look, it’s 2018, can we please stop this argument about stats being so incomplete or not watching games or whatever?
Statistics are recorded precisely to enhance the experience of watching / following games. If our brains worked at peak Michael Beasley capacity we wouldn’t even need stats, because we would be able to fully understand (and remember) everything that happens on a game. We can’t, and that’s why stats exist. Simple as that. We might think Carmelo Anthony is so hot in a game it seems he hasn’t missed a shot, but our brains blocked out the fact that he is 10/22 from the field.
They’re obviously incomplete stories, no one is stupid enough to think a stat is 100% the measure of value in ANY field, why would basketball be any different?
What’s way more stupid is disregarding stats because they don’t tell the story you want them to tell, which is what happens every freaking time someone comes with this argument that stats are so incomplete and thus useless.
You make an argument against yourself. The ultimate and only real stat is the final score.
Or, do Olympic-style judges reward games for true shooting percentage” and “effective field goal percentage” . Just substitute your stat titles for eye test and see how it reads.
Tyson Chandler had the best effciency so we’re going to reward the game to him.
hoolahoop: a bad opinion personified, then turned into a caricature
By pointing out players that haven’t improved you negate all the players that did.
And what the fuck is an Honorable Cock Jowle, anyway? Or is that something you’ve always been called, and decided to add on Jowle?
You’re not going to bully me with rudeness and names to agree with you, like you do other people to follow you off a cliff with your phony self assured ridiculous opinions.
Guys don’t get angry, keep your anger only for the Knicks
If someone mentions bleach I’m outta here…
the name always reminded me of the honorable judge roy bean…jowles sometimes “direct” nature seemed to go along perfectly with who i imagined that person had been…
i actually remember googling ‘cock jowles’ at one time (it kind of sounded like an actual thing), and, i think i got some weird bdsm reference – i was at work, so, i didn’t really look too hard in to it 🙂
Honestly, this list is so long, it could break the Ted Nelson character limit just to post it.
Every year some guy out jumps the field at the combine, or does a 360 in their work out, and the next thing you know they’re in the lottery. They’re almost all worthy of being on this list. Remember Joe Alexander? Harold “Baby Jordan” Minor?
Looking like a basketball player is enough to win some games at the high school level, but it’s virtually worthless in the NBA unless it’s backed up by some tangible skills. (And “dribbling with your head up” and “finding your open teammates” is what you look for in your 7th grade point guard, not your NBA point guard.)
The fact that some players are indeed late bloomers, improving a lot at 25, 26, 27, etc. does not make me feel any better about Mudiay.
He needs to improve really soon if the Knicks are to reap any benefit from him. If he stills stinks by next January, he’ll likely be out of the rotation or even out of town. So, he’s got about a year.
FWIW, I’m rooting for the guy, thought not optimistic. He and Frank should play 30m per game each as much as possible.
@105 yeah I thought about Minor and Thabeet and JR Rider, guys like that, but I was looking for guys who year after year sucked but people kept paying them and awaiting their breakouts.
Is there a team worse than us if we play Mudiay/Frank 30 mins a game?
@107 Brendan Haywood? Michael Olowokandi?
Larry Hughes too.
@106
That’s also a great point. Mudiay’s progress only matters if it’s good enough to warrant a good priced extension next year. If it’s not enough he’s gone anyway (or worse, he gets a terrible extension anyway).
Larry Hughes was very good one year, namely 2004/05
Actually, JR Rider wasn’t that bad, so I’m glad I left him off.
Eddie Griffin shot 37% for his career, as a pf/center, and lasted 6 years. That is astounding.
Darius Miles, ugh. I’d be surprised if he’s still alive or not living under a bridge.
@112, I was trying to figure out the year you were going to go with. I guessed it would be the one where he shot 28% from 3. Lol
He was in the league for 17 seasons and had 1 (arguably) good year. Isn’t he the definition of the type of player 2for18 is looking for?
Andrew Wiggins = Larry Hughes 2.0
According to BBRef one of Darius Miles’ nickname was… The Punisher
🙂
I also don’t remember Hughes being so fragile, but he apparently averaged 42 games a season for his career. His games played his first 5 years in the league are 50, 82, 50, 32, 50. Yikes.
Kwame Brown
I remembered Hughes being bad with us, but not that bad:
2008-2009 25 games 39% Fg
2009-2010 31 games 36.6% Fg
Wow, think about it, Jack has been better!
Jamal Crawford is another exemple.
He’s been sucking money from the league for about 17 years.
Until he started playing with CP3 on his 12th season, he only had one year with a WS48 above .100.
Dion Waiters is the reincarnation of Larry Hughes. And unfortunately Mudiay looks poised to be the point guard version of those two.
I think Tyrus Thomas belongs on this list over Carter-Williams. Also, Darius Miles was only 23 when his body basically gave out and was probably an above average player at 22.
please tell me that Wally HAS to say what he just did, about the importance of locking up Kanter long term
Wow, things have gotten catty here today. Who knew Mudiay could engender so much volatility among the Knickerblogger ilk? All I can say is that I hope we stay the course and continue the tank. Luka Doncic was meant to be a New York Knick. I believe it in the marrow of my bones and very fiber of my being.
I wish I could. I really wish I could.
Hopefully you’re right! He’d be a hell of an addition. Especially since he could get used to running the team before KP returned.