(Saturday, March 03, 2018 11:45:25 PM)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jeff Hornacek voiced his disgust with his team’s performance after Friday night’s 128-105 loss to the Clippers. He let the players do the talking Saturday.
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 5:23:00 PM)
The Knicks are looking to the future, but it’s filled with uncertainty, as Clippers coach Doc Rivers pointed out.
[NYDN] Knicks season winding down and so is Hornacek’s time & patience (Saturday, March 03, 2018 9:23:25 PM)
This was the mandate to Jeff Hornacek from the front office: play hard and play defense.
[NYDN] Knicks ink Troy Williams to second 10-day contract (Saturday, March 03, 2018 1:00:17 PM)
The Knicks signed Troy Williams to a second 10-day contract on Saturday, extending the athletic wing’s trial four more games.
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 10:52:32 PM)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jeff Hornacek made the Knicks watch the Clippers’ film and talk about their massive amount of defensive mistakes during a nearly two-hour practice session Saturday night at the defunct Kings’ practice facility by their old arena in suburban Sacramento. Livid after their 128-105 loss to the Clippers on Friday at Staples Center,…
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 10:27:35 AM)
LOS ANGELES — One of the bright elements of Friday’s 128-105 debacle to the Clippers was the Knicks’ recent acquisition, the uber athletic Troy Williams. The best compliment you can give him is he looked like a Clipper, and he got rewarded Saturday with a second 10-day contract after the first one expired. Williams didn’t…
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 8:30:58 AM)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Michael Beasley hasn’t been happy with the team’s ball movement and Jeff Hornacek isn’t happy with him. Beasley admits he’s been on a slide since the All-Star break. Taking over for Kristaps Porzingis as starting power forward hasn’t been easy. Hornacek, who has only raved about Beasley’s prowess this season, singled him…
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 11:08:54 PM)
One day after the Knicks’ 128-105 loss to the Clippers, coach Jeff Hornacek stepped back and had his players dissect film themselves.
(Saturday, March 03, 2018 10:50:45 AM)
Doc Rivers tore his ACL while playing with the Knicks in 1993/94, so he knows firsthand how devastating Kristaps Porzingis’ injury is.
32 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.03.04)”
Great game between Rockets and Celtics for more than 47 minutes,
the last 15 seconds were soooo boring…
12 free throws in the last 15 seconds, it must be a record.
I put together a chart of the 9 worst teams to see how likely the Knicks are of “earning” a better lottery position.
Included are teams losses (L), games versus the bottom 9 (GV9), last 10 games (L10), and my own guess at Probability Percentage of Passing (PPP) if the Knicks lose all their remaining games:
Team L GV9 L10 PPP
Knicks 39 4 1-9 –
Bulls 41 7 3-7 60%
Nets 43 5 1-9 30%
Magic 43 7 3-7 40%
Hawks 44 4 3-7 10%
Kings 44 6 2-8 40%
Mavs 44 6 2-8 40%
Griz 44 5 0-10 10%
Suns 45 5 1-9 10%
I included the GV9 games as they’re essentially “found money” games where one of the 2 teams the Knicks want to win has to win. The Bulls are the most likely team for the Knicks to pass as they’ve got 7 of these games, are only 2 losses ahead, and have won 3 of their last 10. Next likely are the Magic, Kings, and Mavs for similar reasons, even though they’re 4-5 losses ahead. After that comes the Nets, Hawks, Grizzlies, and Suns in descending order
Sorry, I can’t even start to think of the Knicks “purposedly” closing the season on a 22 games losing streak (and, at that point 1-30 on the last 31 games).
If that happens I’m out as a fan.
A thing like that would mean that players don’t even try, and if so I don’t want this players on my roster next year.
If the players put in normal effort they’ll win at least 2 or 3 other games.
The odds of the Knicks moving down are not 60%, or even above 50% vs. any team. Most likely we win 3-4 more games, and I doubt that any team below us wins 6-7 more games. I do agree that our best odds are with Chicago, b/c we would only need to tie, having lost to them 3x. We would need to finish with the worse record outright vs. BKN, and they’re not tanking, so a weird winning streak for them is most possible of all remaining team, but they are truly terrible. Orlando is 2-1 against us, but there’s another game left and we would certainly have to lose to also guarantee losing the tiebreaker. SAC, ATL, PHX, MEM DAL are 5 or more wins behind us and are not really in play. We are not going 0-19 and none of them are winning 6-7 more games.
Draft tiebreakers are determined by coin tosses, not record against. If you tie a team, you split the ping pong balls for your two spots down the middle (with the coin toss winner getting the extra ping pong ball in case it doesn’t divide evenly) and then a coin toss determines which of you are the “official” #9 or #10 spot (that is, if nothing else changes, where would you draft).
As a note, here ìs the list of losing streak 22 games or longer in the history on NBA:
28 CLE (10+18 between 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, Final Records of 18-64 and 10-72)
26 CLE (2010-2011, Final Record 19-63)
26 PHI (2013-2014, Final Record 19-63)
24 CLE (19+5 between 1981-1982 and 1982-1983, Final Records of 15-67 and 23-59)
23 VAN (1995-1996. Final Record 15-67)
23 DEN (1997-1998, Final Record 11-71)
23 CHA (2011-2012, Final Record 7-59)
The next one is 21 by DET beetween 1979-1980 and 1980-1981 (Final Record 16-66 and 21-61).
So it happened 7 times, only 5 in a single season, since 1946-1947.
It’s true, nothing happens until it happens, but I doubt we could be that bad without a strong and disgraceful effort by team and coaches.
A coin flip that we always lose, like last year…
🙂
We must hope that CHI (closer record) and BKN (uninterested in tanking) will go on a winning streak…
Oh shoot, thanks Brian, forgot about that.
Haven’t we had the absolute worst luck in tiebreakers and moving up in the lottery possible since drafting Patrick Ewing? We NEVER catch a break!
Yeah, it just feels like an inevitability that if there’s a tiebreaker the Knicks will lose it somehow.
Last year wasn’t so annoying in the end as the front office probably had zero interest in Lauri Markkanen anyway, but still, we could get lucky one freaking time ever right?
I guess that was the deal we made for the frozen envelope that guaranteed us Ewing. Like Dr Faustus…
Stern: I’ll guarantee you Ewing but you have to accept coming out the wrong side of every ‘chance’ outcome related to the franchise for the rest of time…
Knicks: seems reasonable!
Yeah it would be nice to see the league “reward” the knicks for bringing in Perry and taking care of the Melo situation rather smoothly, acting pretty normal after the Phil debacle, etc. Doesn’t need to be #1; moving up to #3 would be awesome, too Mr. Silver!
There is an outside chance Chicago catches us. They’re only 2 up in the loss column. We haven’t beaten anyone good in weeks and we don’t have lots of games against bad teams left.
Not probable, but possible. Can’t see anyone else catching us unless Brooklyn rips of a big streak. At least LA and Charlotte seem to be getting further away, so 9th (odds) looks like our floor, which probably equates to no worse than 10th pick.
We’re due for some lottery luck after 33 years…
Crucial game march 19th at MSG vs CHI, Tank Battles at home are difficult…
I don’t know a lot about the details regarding contracts or Troy Williams. If I’m understanding it correctly, I’m with Brian on this. If you can lock a guy up very cheaply long term with almost no risk to strategy long term in case it doesn’t work out, you should do it. I doubt this Troy Williams deal is going to matter much either way, but it’s kind of like the Baker deal in that it suggests an inability to do the correct thing strategically. That means it’s just a matter of time before they blow another big one instead of just small ones that won’t matter much.
If we keep playing Mudiay, Kanter, and Beasley together, we probably have the worst starting defense in the NBA. If those guys play a lot of minutes together, there’s no limit to the losses other than the nights Burke or Hardaway get really hot. I haven’t given up on #8 yet. There are a lot of very bad tanking teams behind us, but we don’t need all of them to suddenly win a few unexpected games. We only need one of them to do that. It’s not impossible.
Problem is, this is roughly a 5 to 7 player draft.
It’s hard to come up with a top “need” for this shit team, although they clearly should go BPA.
Mikal actually seems like the best answer, since they lack good 3pt shooters and defense most of all, but it would be great to move up and snag JJJ.
We should draft Wendell Carter or Mikal Bridges at the 9 spot, and in lieu of that, trade down w Phoenix and draft Troy Brown and Jontay Porter
The only bothersome thing about this is the top 9 in this draft is uniquely strong. I could genuinely see Doncic (most likely), Ayton, JJJ, MPJ (I personally have no idea about him but the hype is real), Young, Bagley, Mikal Bridges, Bamba, or Carter being the best player in this draft. Obviously some are more likely to succeed than others, but I wouldn’t be shocked about any of those guys emerging as a stud.
After 9 the draft essentially falls off a cliff. So the 9th spot is concerning in a few ways:
1) The Knicks can get leapfrogged
2) It will be on the Knicks to pick the last remaining intriguing player. If they don’t do this, I highly doubt it will be in favor of someone outside of that group you could reasonably make a case for (e.g. Troy Brown or Robert Williams). I think it’ll be Sexton or Knox.
With our persistent dumbassery combined with our persistent terrible luck, I’ll be sweating out the 9th spot right up until the pick is made. It’s not a bad position to be in, but it’s also very easy to screw up and, well, let’s just say our history of not screwing things up isn’t the most encouraging.
In the worst case where we drop to 10th then I think we should absolutely trade down and take Troy Brown. Does Perry have the savvy to pull off a move like that.
Assuming that Phoenix is willing to trade up and assuming that Brown will be there with the first of those picks? Nothing is sure about either of those.
If it is available, yeah, it is interesting, depending upon who is available when their pick comes up, but you can’t assume at all that Player X will still be there later when you do pick.
But Phoenix might not even have the picks to trade up.
As far as I remember, they have their own pick, Miami’s (which is top 7 protected so it will surely be theirs) and the Bucks pick is top 10 and 17-30 protected. The Bucks pick is currently 16th as they are currently half a game ahead of the Heat and half a game behind the Clippers, but the east is so close that a couple of wins might change it.
Reading up on Troy brown makes me think trading down could net us two picks. From who I don’t know but this kid is versatile and smart.
I’m still not convinced in Knox.
https://twitter.com/JacobEGoldstein/status/955233049834385408?s=20
Absolutely incredible numbers from Luka. Any team that doesn’t pick him first should be relegated to the G League
he went thru all that trouble to look at the remaining schedule of the 8 teams worse than us, realized we have 4 games left vs teams that are worse than us, and concluded we will only win 1. He’s either incredibly pessimistic, or he’s been a knick fan longer than I have
Going to be bummed if Luka ends up on a garbage franchise, but if it’s going to happen, I’d rather it be our beloved/loathed garbage franchise.
There’s really no better outcome for the league than if the Knicks win the lottery. All the other teams in the bottom 10 are perennially dysfunctional like us but don’t have a KP equivalent. People would line up around the block to see the KP Luka tandem.
Make it happen, Silver. Freeze the envelope!
I hope Perry is smarter than Mills and has some say in who the Knicks draft. I have Zero confidence in Mills abilities as a talent evaluator.
Agree with the comments above, luck and fortunate outcomes are not one of this team’s strengths. If it comes down to a coin toss tiebreaker we are fucked again.
The Grizzlies have had some rough stretches but they’ve been overall pretty good. If we can’t pick Doncic I would like to see him with them. Conley + Doncic could be a good core for some time as Doncic develops and takes over the team eventually.
The Hawks would also be a cool destination with Budenholzer there and the cap space they will have, but there’s just so little talent on that team it’s going to take at least 2 years before they’re even decent.
I don’t want the greatest international prospect in NBA history going to some irrelevant market.
Well, pretty much the entire group of best players in the NBA was drafted by irrelevant markets, like Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Orleans… I don’t see an issue (unless it’s more like New Orleans in the sense that it’s also coupled with terrible management)