(Sunday, March 11, 2018 3:59:48 PM)
NEW YORK (AP) Jonas Valanciunas scored 17 points, Kyle Lowry had 16 and the Toronto Raptors kept right on rolling after a big win two nights earlier, beating the New York Knicks 132-106 on Sunday for their season-high eighth straight victory.
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 7:49:49 PM)
Toronto coach Dwane Casey knew he was in for a fitful sleep that night in December 2013. The Raptors had a deal all set. Kyle Lowry was going to the Knicks for Iman Shumpert, Metta World Peace and a future first-rounder. “When I went to bed, I understood Kyle was being traded, we were going…
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 7:36:27 PM)
Nigel Hayes isn’t short on cockiness and said he believes one day the Knicks will regret not keeping him in the organization. Cut out of training camp, the undrafted rookie out of Wisconsin joined the Westchester Knicks, excelled and moved on. He signed a 10-day contract with the Lakers in January and now is with…
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 5:42:48 PM)
The Giannis Antetokounmpo/Tim Hardaway Jr. dunk T-shirt has been nixed. According to reports out of Milwaukee, the shirt that featured “the Greek Freak” hopping over Hardaway for a dunk in a game last month at the Garden no longer is for sale. Antetokounmpo said after Friday’s victory over the Knicks it was not a good…
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 11:37:45 AM)
Raptors coach Dwane Casey claimed concern about Sunday’s Garden matinee, telling his Eastern Conference-leading squad beforehand: “This is a trap game, looking at their record. But they’re a talented, young team who plays well at home.” It was no trap, just a tank. The Knicks, taking their developmental stretch of a dead season to a…
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 9:21:49 PM)
The Knicks are going to the playoffs. No, not those Knicks. The Westchester Knicks.
(Sunday, March 11, 2018 8:01:08 PM)
The Knicks started two rookies and at times had three players who began the season in the G League on the court together. They ended the game with four rookies and a player on a 10-day contract on the floor.
[NYDN] Knicks extend losing streak to seven in 132-106 loss to Raptors (Sunday, March 11, 2018 11:32:45 AM)
The tanktastic Knicks did their job Sunday. They lost.
57 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.03.12)”
The media needs to not shit on the Knicks when they’re doing the right thing and losing as many games as possible. It’s annoying to see that the Knicks have zero wins at MSG in March but x amount of college teams do. Who cares? Losses are wins when you’re playing for the draft. Let the young guys get minutes, let’s lose a bunch of games, and let’s draft a game changer instead of a guy who turns into the next Courtney Lee. If the Knicks lose every game from here until season end I would be jumping for joy.
OK, so I see we’re only 1/2 game “behind” the Bulls! And 3 games “behind” the Kings, Mavs and Nets.
I feel confident we can pass the Bulls for the 8th spot, as they have several actual NBA players.
The Nets, with no reason to tank, plus with actual PG types, can also legitimately be caught.
I think even the Kings could win some games with their abundance of youthful exuberance.
The 6 spot is in real play here, where we could guarantee ourselves Trae or Mikal. Both players not only fill a need, but they fit the current NBA style.
I’m crushing on Mikal more and more every game I see him play. He’s one of the best finishers I’ve seen in a awhile, can guard 1-4, and can shoot. When he goes to the basket, he scores every time. Imagine a Knick doing that?
He has a lot of Grant Hill and Pippen in him, less the great handle.
Re – post from the end of the last thread:
The nets and bulls play back to back at the every end of the year, and we play the bulls once. I would imagine they split those 2 games. The chances of the bulls catching us are very good, but I doubt the nets will.
Outside of top 3, the picks order seems to de different on every website. Which makes it essential we lose tomorrow night to have a shot to crack the top 3
Friendly reminder about last night’s Magic conversation:
The Orlando Magic added a rim protector they coveted Thursday, acquiring Oklahoma City Thunder big man Serge Ibaka in a draft-night trade for shooting guard Victor Oladipo, forward Ersan Ilyasova and the rights to the 11th pick, Gonzaga big man Domantas Sabonis.
Magic front-office officials — including general manager Rob Hennigan, assistant general managers Scott Perry and Matt Lloyd and CEO Alex Martins — clapped and high-fived once their team and the Thunder cemented the deal in principle.
I know, clapping and high fiving your bosses is not free speech. Maybe.
What happens if there is a three way tie between us Dallas and the nets?
Bob: this player only puts up stats because he’s on a bad team playing in garbage time against backup scrubs no real GM would ever play him or pay him
guy goes to contender, plays significant minutes, plays even better, gets nice free agent contract
Bob: the evidence has proved me correct again
mikal should have a deep tourney run so we’ll see alot of him….. i’ve gotten on board with him as the best sf in the draft…. since brown struggled in the last month… but i still don’t think there’s much separating the two….
i do think wendell carter should be the pick if he’s there… i have him at #3 and the best big in the draft….
espn’s latest mock has us taking Trae Young with the 9th pick (over Mikal Bridges). I think his scoring prowess makes him unlikely to fall that far, but even picking 9th we should have a choice between a couple good prospects.
This is not evidence of anything other than you have no future as a comedian.
I don’t believe anyone with over a third grade education would say I implied the “evidence proved me correct again” as I clearly stated an opinion. I merely stated an opinion and Rama stated emphatically the “evidence” argued against my opinion. Well….I would be interested in seeing said evidence and am not particularly interested in smarm
I merely asked to view said “evidence” and stipulated I would be happy to be corrected. I mean if most “back ups” would remain the same in efficiency with minutes expanded to starters minutes (doubled and spending a lot more time vs actual starters) and their efficiency remained the same, they should be looking for different agents because as a population they are getting robbed.
it’s possible since trae has struggled a bit in conf play…. but i find it tough to see all of phoenix, orlando and cleveland passing up on him….. esp with lebron having a hard on for him….
I don’t want to rain on the parade because it’s not like there are a bunch of great alternatives but it’s amusing to see an “analytical” blog fall in love with the draft as the One True Way to success.
Consider…The Process has already failed in Philly. Within three years of drafting Durant, the Thunder also had Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka, Jeff Green, Thabo Sefolosha, and Nenad Krstic. And you can argue that OKC only deliberately tanked two of those years.
After tanking just as hard or harder for two or three times longer, Philly has Embiid, Simmons, and…? Two of their top lottery picks, both higher than the Knicks are likely to get this year, turned into busts for Philly and Fultz could make it three. I don’t think you can say Embiid and Simmons are better than Durant and Westbrook. They don’t have anyone else close to Harden. I’m not sure Philly’s next two best players (Saric and Covington) are any better than Jeff Green and they’re certainly not as good as Ibaka. And I’m not sure there’s anyone else on that roster, who will still be there two years from now, as good as Thabo or Krstic.
After everything they’ve gone through, Philly is still at least two or three major free agent/trade moves from being a real contender and The Process has left them with few valuable assets they can afford to trade. And that’s still having been lucky enough to have an injured Embiid fall to them at three and “lucky” enough that Embiid stayed hurt long enough so they could get Simmons. They really aren’t close to the super-team that was implicitly promised by Hinkie.
Again, it’s not like there’s a lot of other options but the strategy of “suck and luck” does not have a great track record.
Mike
Bob you’ve been shown evidence against some of your common arguments for years and haven’t stopped making them. I don’t know what else to tell you.
I stopped reading after this because of the strawman in your first paragraph and because:
1) You’re wrong; it did work. Embiid and Simmons are better than anyone the Knicks have had since Ewing
2) I assume you think it failed because of the busts. If I’m correct in my assumption, then you don’t understand the Process, which was to maximize draft picks to improve their chances of getting superstars, and account for the busts, which is the only way to compete for a championship.
if you think philly’s process has failed…. then you should look at where they are in the standings vs where we are when we took the exact opposite approach… and the best player on our team is the result of our worst season….
so seriously let’s bury this tanking doesn’t result in anything narrative…. it is just trolling for attention at this point….
the draft is still the best way to get talent… and you get a better shot at drafting good players the higher you draft…. and you happen to get a draft pick every year….. you can go the FA route or trades but if you don’t draft good players then you those routes will fail also….
@MBunge
The argument is not whether or not tanking will always lead to contention, it’s whether it’s the most probable road to contention. Out of the last 10 championship games, major blocks are almost without exception attained via draft: Duncan/Parker/Manu/Kawhi, Curry/Draymond/Klay, LeBron/Kyrie, Wade, Dirk. (The only exceptions involved of the best basketball players ever, in super-concentrated accumulations of talent in FA/trade in Miami and Cleveland. Even then, they would have never gotten there without their foundational draft piece in Wade, Kyrie)
It’s the best way of getting the best talent, keeping it for less of the cap, during the best years of a player’s career. None of that is debatable.
Simmons/Embiid/Fultz with Saric and Holmes is a young core MUCH better than anyone else’s in the league. Pointing them out as a failure is dumb. Especially since their new anti-tank regime has made such huge mistakes on the fringes.
The problem with per 36 minute theory is that is doesn’t control for the fact that players tend to get promoted to more minutes as they improve on the weaknesses that had them on the bench to begin with. Studies also don’t control for a player’s stamina/playing style and they have a tough time controlling for quality of competition (playing against backups or starters).
Some really good players are buried on the bench because there’s so much depth on their team. You can probably evaluate a player like that off their per 36 minute production because they’ll do just as well per minute against starters in more minutes.
Some players contribute by running up and down the court, hitting the boards like maniacs, and generally outworking their opposition. Some of those players may not be able to sustain the same level of intensity for 36+ minutes night after night.
Some young players are getting better so fast, as their minutes go up and they play against better competition, that improvement might mask impacts that would cause other players to show some regression if they were asked for as much.
IMO, there’s no magic formula for analyzing this game even though some people want to pretend there is.
I would be surprised if this was true. Guys get promoted for all sorts of reasons. Because they’ve improved, because the team roster has changed, because people get injured, because other players get worse, etc.
Philly tanked to a never before seen extreme and did so quite competently. They are now in a very good position after 6 or so years, but probably still have a couple of years to go assuming Embiid stays healthy.
The Knicks are a basket case example of everything. You can’t use incompetent idiots to make the case against a particular approach. Philly’s success should be compared to successful teams like Houston, Boston, and maybe even Miami if you look at long term record because they used different or slightly different approaches.
Houston did most of their building by making smart value oriented acquisitions and trades for established players and complimenting those deals with an occasion intelligent draft pick. They have no problem using picks as currency.
Boston did the same sort of value oriented deal making, but preferred to accumulate picks instead of using them as currency. Then they chose to use some of their picks to make draft selections, some as currency to help acquire better players, and also signed free agents like Horford, Thomas, and Hayward when whey were available (of course finding a sucker like the Nets may have been a once in a lifetime opportunity and not a strategy you could count on).
Riley has no problem using picks as currency or paying top dollar for the best available free agents. He does an excellent job of finding great values and getting the most out of players he does have. He never tanks on purpose.
What the best teams have in common is smart people sticking to a winning formula and finding good deals and values. There is no single approach that works best in all circumstances, in all cities, with all teams.
How the hell is Philadelphia 2 or 3 major free agents or trades away from competing????? Have you looked at the standings at all?
36 wins with their two best players being 21 and 23, a 1st overall pick on the shelf, Saric, Holmes, Covington, McConnell, picks for the next drafts… this is probably one of the most insane posts I’ve read here in a long time. And that’s with Okafor busting and Colangelo actively trying to screw everything up.
I would trade the entire Knicks roster for just Ben Simmons, let alone everyone else and the cap room / flexibility they still have. I won’t elaborate much because wetbandit and djphan said everything already, but just having Simmons on the roster is already a success for the process, in the sense that the NBA is a star driven league and they got one.
You are just expanding on what I am saying by going into more detail. Studies don’t control for any of it. You have to try to analyze these things on a case by case basis using some data but also using some common sense. There is no magic formula.
i mean look… the best approach is identifying and obtaining good players…. the draft is the easiest way to do this since you get a draft pick every year….
is there a playoff team that has got there without getting major pieces through the draft? miami is the exception but they managed to get whiteside for nothing…. but literally everyone else has got there through the use of high draft picks….
By the way, Saric is quietly having a hell of a season too. His ts% went from .508 last season to .588 this year, while being a decent rebounder and defender and hustling like crazy. Another process pick, and he’s on a rookie scale contract for the next 2 years.
Imagine if the Sixers took KP instead of Okafor. Would anybody be downplaying the process then?
That’s a good point about Saric. Didn’t realize what a leap he had made this year.
Triple double with blocks from AD last night.
Saric’s overall stats from last season are a bit deceiving; he really sucked the first couple of months, but he kept improving.
Just to back that up in a very rough way, his post All Star splits were: 17/7/3, TS% = .523 with a rising useage rate every month.
Jokic got another ho hum triple double on 10 shots (20 pts).
@27
And again he seems to be improving in the last couple of months, he has a superstar level .636 ts% in the 10 games since the all star break on 21.9 usage.
With the whole Simmons / Mitchell discussion, his and Gobert’s amazing performances are kinda going unnoticed as of late.
Philly was bad for one season, instituted the process and tanked for 3 seasons, was mediocre last year, and now is back in the playoffs, with two guys 23 and under who are all-NBA candidates, max cap room and extra assets and talented young guys lying around all over the place. The Knicks have been bad with nothing but the briefest interruption for the last 18 years!
If you really want to see someone who’s been beasting lately, take a look at Julius Randle and his salary drive.
Since ASB (he was excellent before that, but this is easier to look up): 21/10/4, .632 TS%, 121 Ortg, 25% useage. And they’ve been winning.
Ah yes, Dario Saric, another ex-Knick draft pick courtesy of our Anti-Process (…see Anthony, Carmelo, trade, 2011).
The Sixers have a legitimate shot of being in the ECF this year… a place NY has barely sniffed in 20 seasons now.
The we lose the coin flips.
Randle utterly destroyed the Cavs last night, he looked like prime Shaq getting whatever he wanted on the paint. 36 in 18 shots with 7 assists 14 rebounds and 2 blocks. If he doesn’t get complacent after he gets paid he could be making a serious leap.
Yeah, but the league putting the Bulls on tank notice will be what puts us under the bottom, slightly dampening the thrill of defeat.
Strat, you are the guy who as a gambler talks about playing the odds. No, no one approach works every time … but the point is to put yourself in the best position possible using the available data, knowing that the data is incomplete and inadequate and that even if it were perfect you’d still fail. A higher draft choice is ALWAYS BETTER because it improves your odds of being able to pick a better player. Do teams screw that up? Sure. Is it always clear who the better player is? No. But over time, it is inarguably better to be able to pick higher in the draft, the place where you are most likely to be able to acquire game-changing talent that you can maintain at a low cost, enabling you to add other complementary talents through trades and FA.
The only reason this can SEEM like it’s arguable is because of how bad most teams are at evaluatating talent.
Speaking of which, as for the other argument – numbers staying fairly consistent for players given more playing time despite what team they’re playing for – I don’t think you need to contort yourself arguing about it. I didn’t say it was perfectly one-to-one; I said the numbers tend to remain fairly consistent. Do you disagree? We have Harden and Cole Aldrich as two outliers on opposite ends of the spectrum (Harden because his usage is so extreme, it’s AMAZING he has remained almost as efficient, Aldrich because he demonstrates that some players simply can’t play more minutes). But beyond the few exceptions, and beyond a handful of coaches who produce better numbers for their players (Pop, Stevens possibly), we have seen that a player who puts up X numbers per 36 USUALLY puts up similar numbers at higher usage (assuming not extreme usage and a decent sample size).
I’ve coveted Mikal Bridges for the Knicks for a long time. Getting to #8 or better in the lottery will be sweet.
LOL at the Thunder somehow proving that the process does not work for bad teams. And again, the Okafor pick does not somehow disprove the value in tanking. On the contrary, it confirms it. Get as many early picks as you can, acquire more picks, etc. because you simply are NOT going to nail all your picks.
But also, who cares about other teams and how they do things? What’s best for the Knicks right now? Tanking.
Mikal was killing it at the garden in front of Mills, Perry and Dolan in the crowd. They may signal Hornaceck to shift the tank into high gear.
The Knicks tank is pretty close to high gear right now. Lee’s already being restricted. The area to improve in would be to limit Kanter and OQ’s minutes, but not so much as to piss off the league.
Yesterday, with Kanter sitting, the D looked the worst it has all year, sort of surprisingly.
on decent teams the best players are also able to provide leadership on he court and in the locker room…
we currently have lance and courtney as our team leaders…hopefully kp gets healthy and his voice and presence on the team grows
of the possible options for us in the draft – do any of them stick out as potential team leaders?
Keeping Kanter out of these next 4 games should be a priority.
rama,
I am fully comfortable with the Knicks benching some of vets now and losing every game for the rest of the season to maximize our chances of getting the best possible draft pick this year. Not playing the young players from here would be monumentally foolish given the season is over, everyone understands the situation, and no one really playing for a new contract at this stage.
On a case by case basis, I sometimes disagree with trade strategies where the goal is to dump good players for less than they worth so we can lose more games. I think that strategy is akin to bailing water out of a leaky boat. It’s hard to get anywhere.
For example, some people want to dump O’Quinn because he’s a little older and he’ll win us some extra games next year. I see him as a productive player with enough good years ahead of him that if we can get him back at a fair price or home discount, we should re-sign as a long term piece with KP, Frank, Hardaway, our draft picks and anyone else we can add.
I don’t think anyone wants to simply dump O’Quinn strato, at least I would let him go simply because he will be paid more than the Knicks should be paying for a guy like him in our current situation.
Paying 10-12 million per year for 4 years for a guy like O’Quinn to add 2-3 wins in a lost year is not optimal in my opinion. If he was younger or had a higher ceiling I would be fine even with that value, but I just don’t see the point in worsening an already less than good cap situation by paying a solid, productive player when the team lacks so much. The fact that him leaving worsens the team in a lost year is an added bonus so to speak. If he takes a 3 year 15 million deal I would be very very happy to keep him.
If Porzingis was healthy and progressing it would be a different situation.
8 mill a year is the highest I would pay for KOQ.
Philly had a #3 pick turn out to be a bust (Okafor) and a #1 pick who may turn out be the Rick Ankiel of the NBA (Fultz) . And they’re still one of the up and coming teams in the NBA with 2 absolute studs as anchors. Other than Boston, Golden St. or Houston, whose roster would you rather have?
If that’s isn’t success via The Process I don’t know what is.
People, naturally, respond to incentives; it’s one of the Iron Laws. If you want to get rid of tanking, then you have to not only disincentivize it, but punish it.
All non playoff teams, and the two 8 seeds, get an equal number of ping pong balls. On top of that, the worst 3 teams have to pay a 14/12/10 mil tax to the league, which the playoff teams get to split.
Not fair? Tough shit. Run your team smarter.
@47 Agreed with this. It seems like one of the most simple and quick fixes for the tanking problem.
@46
Maybe Toronto, too, but point well taken!
@50
Good for him! He has two things to really work hard on: defense (he’s got the talent) and three point shooting.
Every time I look at Toronto I shake my head in disbelief, thinking “damn, he’s on that team too?!” OG? Delon Wright? Poetl? Siakam? If I were LeBron I’d try to work some way of going to that team.
Plus, Toronto, the city, is awesome. It’s like a mini, clean, polite NYC.
Strat, we pretty much agree, then. I suggested 4 for $10 mil per (because I believe he’ll get that). I understand why people think that is too rich for a guy who only provides 3 wins per year, but with more minutes, I feel pretty confident he’d provide more wins – he’s not Cole Aldrich – and his game isn’t based on athleticism that’s likely to decline in the next few years. We could bump years 3 and 4 so that we had max FA room in 2019, and then we’d have a good 5 backing up KP….one hopes…at a reasonable rate.
I mean, if he’d sign a 4 year deal for $8 mil per, awesome. But I believe both the numbers and the eye test: he’s a good player contributing wins at a low salary who will still likely be solid when we are in a much better position to make a run.
I don’t even think the Process was even that obscene of a tank – the Sixers just used patience by selecting 2 guys that each needed a year to recover from injury, naturally making the team stay bad for longer. But the fact remains that they took the best players available (Embiid would’ve been a number one pick if healthy) despite injury scares.
Seriously. The Knicks have only won a few more games during this span than the Sixers. Who wouldn’t rather lose with a plan than lose without one?
And people forget about how the “process” even came to be. Philly was trying to improve on a suprise semi final appearance and win now, lost Lou Williams to free agency and made the disastrous Iguodala / Bynum trade, which failed because Bynum simply didn’t want to play basketball anymore which no one realized at the time. Then they were left with a core of Jrue Holiday, Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young, missing the playoffs the very next year. Then they drafted MCW and traded away Holiday, Turner and eventually Young.
Tell me, would anyone in the world be happy building around a core of Michael Carter-Williams, Evan Turner, Jrue Holiday and Thaddeus Young? Please. If this was the current Knicks squad we would be raging even more than we are. Hinkie broke up a shit team with zero chance of ever doing anything and now they’re in great position for Colangelo to screw everything up and people to say the process never worked, because the league would rather fuck the Sixers than admit their system is ridiculously flawed.
KOQ note. He’s played 144 games in the last two years. His overall per 36 #s are:
14.5 pts 12.4 reb 3.7 ast 1.0 Stl 2.7 BLK 2.4 TOV FG% .556
In 42 of those games he has played over 20 minutes. His per 36 #s in those games.
16.6 pts 13.2 reb 3.8 ast 1.1 Stl 2.7 BLK 2.1 TOV FG% .593
Admittedly there’s sample bias in here. You’re more likely to get more minutes when you’re playing well (or some would say if you have some great matchup the coach is exploiting but that’s basically bullshit). I would also add that KOQ has similar in game splits in those games as a typical NBA player, i.e. if it was sample bias from a player who was only good for 15 minutes of high production you’d expect a bunch of great starts followed by unusually poor endings and that is not what you see, though the sample from that perspective is pretty meager. This isn’t some tiny portion of his games. He is putting up higher per minute production in the 30% of his games when he is closer to regular minutes than he is in the 70% of games he is putting up teenager minutes.
It’s far from definitive but it seems hard to say that he couldn’t do his thing for longer stretches at similar per minute production, except that he fouls a lot so would foul out a few times. Of course he has also gotten in much better shape these last two years so you can legit wonder what would happen if he a signed a multi-year deal.