(Sunday, April 22, 2018 8:17:27 PM)
Larry Brown, the Hall of Famer and ex-Knicks coach from Long Beach, has read the list of the team’s coaching candidates and can’t think of anyone whose credentials top Mike Woodson’s. Brown, Woodson and Knicks general manager Scott Perry were together in Detroit in the early 2000s during glorious times for the Pistons. Perry was…
(Sunday, April 22, 2018 6:01:56 PM)
Mike Budenholzer is genuinely interested in the Knicks’ job, according to an NBA source who has spoken to the Hawks coach. “New York’s his top choice,’’ the NBA source said. “If they offered him the job, he’d say yes. He wants to live in New York.’’ Moreover, Budenholzer appears so disillusioned with the current Hawks’…
[NYTimes] On Pro Basketball: Timberwolves’ Jimmy Butler Rekindles Playoff Fire in Minnesota (Sunday, April 22, 2018 11:57:23 PM)
Butler, who grew up 30 minutes outside of Houston, admitted he felt some extra satisfaction in beating the Rockets, his boyhood team, in Game 3.
54 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.04.23)”
Man that is a rough line for Melo. Melo’s time here obviously was pretty disappointing, but I feel bad for the guy. Finally back in the playoffs and woofing it up out there.
Is it just me or is there something very weird about his jumper release now? He’s doing some weird thing with his wrist at the end.
Honestly – if he’s just going to be a 3 point shooter (and a bad one at that, 6/26 in this series), what is the point of having him out there other than not creating more drama because he’s being benched? He’s a defensive liability — literally they target him on every possession it seems like. He has 2 assists in 4 games. Jerami Grant is playing way better than Melo at this point. Even Pat Pat on one leg would at least be a good 3 point shooter.
Melo at his peak was a great iso/post scorer, good shooter, and underrated playmaker. They’re not really using him in the post, he can’t shoot, and they’re not letting him pass. I just don’t get it. Their season is on the line and I would not be surprised to see his minutes cut way back in game 5.
On a Knicks front — wow it has been quiet on the coaching search front. This new regime has really seemingly put the clamps on the leaks, at least so far.
The coaching dominos around the league will presumably start to fall soon… If Bud is willing and doesn’t come at too high a cost I hope we move fast. Seems like everyone agrees he’d be a great pickup…
What’s truly amazing about the Melo situation is while he did change his shot distribution a bit, the underlying patterns are all still there. He took 23% of his shots from 16<3 range this year and, whaddya know, shot terribly. When you watch OKC you can also just tell he's still every bit as jab step-jab step-brick happy as he's always been with minor adjustments. He's fundamentally unwilling to make the drastic changes necessary to be a player who actually contributes to wins at this stage of his career.
We were told for years the guy just needed some high quality teammates to make it all click and yet he somehow became even worse with the reigning MVP and Paul freakin' George. It really does suck that we wasted 7 years trying to see if Carmelo Anthony could be LeBron James, but getting out from under that albatross is Perry's best move to date.
@3 – seriously, Melo even as recently as last year or 2 years ago was a really good spot-up shooter, could attack closeouts, was a really good secondary creator, and could get you a bucket in iso if you needed one. But they won’t let him create, he can’t even beat slow 4’s off the dribble anymore, and he can’t shoot anymore. It’s just ugly.
I wonder if he is harboring some injury. Melo was never one to be able to play through nagging injuries at a high level.
At this point Melo is totally washed. It’s hard to feel bad for the guy. He was a very talented, but his self-centeredness as a player made it impossible for him to maximize his own play and success in Denver. It carried over to NY where his move gutted the team so he could get extra money. That wasted more years of his prime. I would have guessed he would have lasted a little longer because his game was not predicated on athleticism, but he’s done. He’s barely a rotation player.
Assuming the Jazz win the series, I really don’t see any way Paul George stays in OKC. With the cap space Philly has, they could grab him, a backcourt of PG and Simmons would be pretty damn good.
And I don’t think he’ll miss playing with Westbrook
There’s just so much at stake in these playoffs:
– if Utah wins. there’s a 80% chance that PG leaves, Melo opts in and Billy Donovan gets fired (last one could be not a bad thing for OKC)
– if Milwaukee wins. there’s a 75% chance that Joe Prunty remains at the helm (only to be fired midseason, but that would be good news for us; il Milwaukee is out of the coaching hunt I think we can get whomever we want)
– if Toronto falters in the first round is Dwane Casey gone? I don’t think so but how many failures can you withstand before getting thrown out?
– What if Cleveland loses to Indiana? Is Lue still the coach?
Melo has created most of his own bad luck, so I don’t feel terribly sorry for him. But I don’t hold this against him. A) “the reigning MVP” isn’t exactly the guy you would ideally partner with Melo, and B) it’s clearly too late in his career.
If he would have played with Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler in his prime, I’m sure he would have done just fine.
Yeah, Melo has no lift anymore – can’t even get a shot off at the rim.
Gotta hand it to Derrick Rose though. He looks like an almost totally new player from when he was here. I hope for his sake he can keep up the good play.
And yes please to Budz. He seems to check all of Perry’s boxes, and I bet ATL does it for a 2nd rounder.
Oh yeah, and Chris Paul was such a bad addition to the Rockets LOL. He can’t hold a candle to Melo’s gravity.
If the Knicks don’t get Budenholzer I really hope it’s because Atlanta wanted a 1st round pick. Budenholzer would be the rare coach who could actually get his team to play above its talent level on both ends. I like the idea of Fizdale and some other guys, but Mike Budenholzer would be a dream come true.
Sure Melo is bad now and they’d probably better better off still having McBuckets at this point but to me last night was all about Westbrook playing way more out of control on both ends than I can remember. If your point guard is going to play like that it basically makes no difference who is coaching. Obviously RWB always has some reckless quotient but that was not normal. He had 5 turnovers and 3 assists and somehow got no steals despite overplaying every defensive possession. The Rubio thing got in his head or
whatever but that game alone was a better pitch to PG than anything Magic could say.
My top 4 in order are all game changers:
1. Luka Doncic
2. Jaren Jackson
3. Ayton
4. Bagley
I think the next 5 are pretty equal with Porter and Trae being the higher risk and maybe higher ceiling picks: Mikal/Bamba/Carter/Porter/ Trae.
So it would be great to move into the top 3, but we really need to stay in the top 9. Wish we could’ve lost that last game for insurance purposes!
Kinda thinking Cleveland is going to take Trae if he’s still there, and if not, it wouldn’t be ridiculous for them to take either Bamba or Collin Sexton. They have zero creators outside Lebron, and unless Larry Nance counts, no rim protection either. They prob won’t know by draft time whether Lebron is coming or going, but I’m not sure that matters in terms of this pick.
Has anyone heard anything about the Budenholzer meeting on 4/22?
The one thing that gives me pause about this Budenholzer situation is it sure seems like he’s leaving Atlanta due to them rebuilding. Now I get that we’re at least theoretically further along than they are, but we also should lead the NBA in losses next year.
I hope he’s not getting assurances that we’ll sign a bunch of free agents and make a third consecutive 8/9 pick.
@16 – honestly I think we should hire the best coach. Good coaches are not going to lose on purpose. It’s on the FO to tank, not on the coaches or players. The one thing we know about Budenholzer is that he really places a premium on developing players. That’s all you can ask for in a rebuilding situation from the coach — ie. not doing what Hornacek did this year in terms of not playing your freaking first round draft pick to get Jarrett Jack more minutes.
He might be fine with just one year of serious tanking. After that we should be trying to aim for the playoffs.
Westbrook ain’t good but I never want to hear about Melo not being properly utilized again
It’s a goddamn NBA deep state conspiracy at this point
Not to worry we probably won’t have any cap space
Yeah, thankfully we don’t have much cap space to use on stupid signings anyway. The most stupid thing we could do is re-sign Kanter but that would not be a top 3 worst moves in the last 2 years of Knicks moves, so it’s less awful.
I’m still ok with Bud. He doesn’t want to rebuild but neither do Mills and Perry anyway, so why bother? It’s their decision to rebuild and not the coach’s, so if they don’t commit fully to it, which seems to be the case 100%, just get the best coach anyway.
I don’t think Bud would tank, but I also believe he’d significantly increase minutes for a young guy like Dotson instead of riding Lee like Secretariat and ultimately if we finish wherever while the young guys on the team are getting steady burn and contributing to the W/L output that’s fine with me.
Other than Jack, who else do we not expect to be back next year?
Hornacek was trying to win pointless games because he was trying in vain to save his job. It would be nice to have somebody who doesn’t, uh, do that.
Since signing the MMM contract, Melo has a .525 TS%, a .094 WS48 and a .480 eFG%. Now there’s a guy you really want to build around.
It was a ridiculously dumb contract, given to him by somebody who didn’t think it through very well, and the results are completely unsurprising.
Westbrook ain’t good when he’s playing like that*
Conspiracy theory*
I think he sees that the Knicks have Porzingis, Ntilikina, Hardaway (who he is familiar with), a 1st round pick this year, 1 or 2 other interesting pieces, and cap space available in 19/20 and again in 20/21. The Knicks won’t be good next year, but assuming KP is 100% (or better) in 2019/2020, the young players develop some, and we add some free agents on those years, the Knicks will be pretty good. In other words, the wait to get pretty good is only one more year and there’s still a lot of potential upside after that.
Atlanta is in the first year of what seems to be the beginning of a 76er-like tankathon. That means they are 4-6 years away.
That’s a big gap.
Aside from being old, why doesn’t Gary Clark get more love? His WS40 this year at Cincy was kind of historic.
The Melo trade to OKC looks better by the day. He is completely shot now.
I wonder when we’ll get any news on the coaching front. Not any leakage occurring.
Westbrook making it his goal in life to lock down Ricky Rubio is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen a player do.
Westbrook who, by the way, should have fouled out in the middle of the 4th and probably suspended for the next game, as he was waiting to check into the game and entered the court to scuffle with Gobert. But we all know the NBA isn’t doing that.
LOL if Melo can’t play well with a former MVP then who can he play well with? I don’t understand the point of featuring a player whose style and skill sets are so particular, he needs very specific pieces around him to win.
I was impressed with how Rubio has outplayed Westbrook. The differences between the two players epitomizes the differences between their teams in this series. One is keeping his cool by seeing the bigger picture and the other is not.
You can do a lot of long-term damage with the full mid level exception. It’s kind of a tradition around here (Jerome James, Jared Jefferies, I think Lance Thomas, too).
I would’ve liked to see a younger Melo with this team.
He’s just so washed physically that he’s bad even if he buys in 100% to being a team player.
Yeah, never underestimate the ability of Knick management to find creative ways to make cap-crippling moves. They can use the mid-level exception, re-sign Kanter or KOQ to dumb deals, stretch Noah to sign DeAndre Jordan, etc.
This year doesn’t prove anything about utilization or teammates. He’s Paul Pierce done. Embalming fluid is what’s needed for Melo at this point.
His problem was never that he wasn’t utilized properly. It was that he refused to listen to every coach that tried to utilize him in a way that would would have improved his efficiency. That’s on him. The teammate issue is different. Even if had adjusted his game and become a more efficient player, some of the Knicks teams he was on were so terrible they weren’t going anywhere anyway.
The difference between Rubio and Westbrook (aside from a huge gap in athletic ability) is that Westbrook thinks it’s his job to be “the man” and Rubio thinks it’s his job to make the team better.
@Farfa, he’s gone regardless. He’s unanimously disliked by Cleveland fans, and, while they had little time to practice, he has made some very questionable choices on the rotation (little Nance, much Jeff Green, non-existent defense, etc.).
The Knicks would be in such good shape with Budenholzer!! Get him, FO!
Ha!
in melo’s defense… playing with westbrook isn’t the easiest thing in the world for a guy like him… especially when you haven’t been shooting all that well…. george has had success solely because he’s shooting 3s at a career clip…. oladipo struggled in okc… and durant while still very good… went into another stratosphere when he went to a completely different offense….
melo isn’t as good as he once was… but westbrook has a tendency to suck the life out of the players around him who need the ball..
Melo’s been washed since his knee surgery to be honest. This year is just the first year he can’t scapegoat his teammates, coach or organization for it.
I’d love to have Pablo on staff for us, but the Nets already have a head coach in place. Oh well.
I think the propaganda out of Atlanta is Budz doesn’t want to rebuild when it’s probably more “I’m not about to sign off on 76ing the Hawks and I’d rather not be excoriated for coaching a group to be better than expected.” I tend to agree. Some of the things these teams did down the stretch were utterly disgraceful. Playing young guys is one thing. Playing young guys who have no future with the organization because they’re bad? That’s crazy to me.
They took Budz front office responsibility from him last year-my guess is the owner(s?) doesn’t like him and they want to have a new coach.
So the NBA ended up fining Westbrook 10k and giving him a tech for the altercation with Gobert, yet did not suspend him… what a bullshit decision.
James Johnson is the dude who intentionally elbows someone in the face in a pick-up game, sees blood gushing from his victim’s nose, and goes, “A FOUL? A FOUL?” with a look of total incredulity. Dirrrrrrrty.
The Sixers are about to match the Knicks’ best playoff run since ’00. Imagine how much faster they could have done it had they traded half their players for Carmelo!
We’ll be kicking them in the dick when we hire Budz and draft RJ Barrett.
Sixers and Celtics is going to be such an interesting series, it could really go either way.
Did anybody see that Frank Ntilikina actually finished the season as the best pick and roll defender in the NBA? #2 was Jrue Holiday, and he just finished putting the clamps on Dame Lillard. I’m not going to research it, but I’m certain this is the first time ever the youngest guard in the NBA (who was a teenager for the entire season) was the league’s best defender in the pick and roll. It also goes without mentioning that Holiday had Anthony Davis for a full season compared to Ntilikina who lost KP half way and had to deal with a Beasley/Kanter front court.
I don’t think people recognize how special a talent Frank Ntilikina is on the defensive side of the ball. He has the potential to be All-NBA 1st team defense for the majority of a decade, and that goes double if we get Budenholzer as a coach. With all the Donovan Mitchell love (that Mitchell of course deserves), I think it’s important we appreciate Ntilikina. So he’ll probably never average 15 points a game. At least he’ll be a guy who promotes ball movement on one end and who makes opposing guards lives a nightmare for 36 minutes.
If the Celtics get there the Sixers will walk through them.
I like to think the Sixers would destroy the Celtics, but I don’t know if it’s going to be this easy. Even without Irving the Celtics are probably better than Miami, I could see the series going to like 7 games and being a bloodbath.
Miami could handle Phillie without Embiid, but seemed to have no answer when he came back. The Celtics will probably match him and Horford. If Horford can control Embiid, I think the Celtics have a good chance to win the series.