[NYDN] Can David Fizdale stop the Knicks’ cycle of ruining coaches? (Saturday, May 05, 2018 8:39:02 PM)
The Knicks have a knack for end coaching careers.
[NYDN] New Knicks coach David Fizdale’s USD ‘Mafia’ ties run deep in NBA (Saturday, May 05, 2018 2:30:32 PM)
David Fizdale, the newest coach of the Knicks, proudly identifies himself as a member of the mafia — the USD Mafia, that is.
[NYDN] Knicks’ Lance Thomas takes his competitive fire to the open seas (Saturday, May 05, 2018 10:17:45 AM)
Lance Thomas really sold his devotion to fishing by telling a story about eating a tuna’s heart.
[NYDN] David Fizdale hiring could spark new round of Knicks-Heat hate (Saturday, May 05, 2018 8:23:14 AM)
David Fizdale and Erik Spoelstra have a long history dating back to Fizdale’s days as an assistant coach with the Miami Heat.
(Sunday, May 06, 2018 2:29:30 AM)
While spending eight years around Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra as a Miami Heat assistant coach, David Fizdale undoubtedly learned all about preparation, motivating players and getting the most out of them. He also had to pick up some words to live by that go beyond coach-speak.
(Saturday, May 05, 2018 10:25:34 AM)
David Fizdale came to Beale Street preaching too much Miami gospel and not enough Memphis blues. Fizdale’s final undoing with the Grizzlies was a feud with star center Marc Gasol that escalated last November, leading to his dismissal at 7-12, but it was much more. Parroting his mentor Pat Riley, Fizdale was hell-bent on changing…
[NYTimes] Celtics 101, 76ers 98: N.B.A. Playoffs: It All Goes Wrong for the Sixers, Including the Confetti (Sunday, May 06, 2018 2:03:57 AM)
The Celtics took a 3-0 series lead against Philadelphia, which could not overcome two errant passes at key moments and a premature blast from a confetti cannon.
[NYTimes] Welcome to the W.N.B.A.: Good Luck Finding a Job (Saturday, May 05, 2018 4:05:05 PM)
Only 144 women will make the 12 W.N.B.A. rosters. Not all of the 36 players drafted each season in the three-round draft will even make a team.
35 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.05.06)”
So the Sixers are coming back to earth after overachieving this season, but still have two indisputable core building blocks, a bunch of other good players, a lotto pick this year and buckets of space.
Meanwhile the Celtics are off to the conference finals while sitting two young all-stars in street clothes, in part on the coat-tails of a rookie and and a sophomore. Oh – and they also have another lotto pick coming next year.
Which is without mentioning the Raptors, whose horrible post season choke doesn’t stop them being a very good regular season team.
The Atlantic is going to be HARD for the next few years!
The Sixers are struggling partly because their best players are so young and inexperienced. The Celtics are young also, but many of their players got playoff experience last year. Horford (who is a key player now) is a wily veteran. Teams like the Sixers and T-Wolves are going to be better next year now that a few key young players are more seasoned.
This kind of experience is still ahead for the Knicks, but that was one reason management didn’t want to tank right from the start. Had they sneaked in, Porzingis, Frank and any other young players that got minutes would have benefited from the experience and accelerated their development. That’s one of the trade offs.
I think that the Knicks are still a few years from where the sixers and celtics are at right now. Maybe with more talent and decent trades in the future we can be there in a few years. I like the Fizdale hire but feel Perry , Mills and Dolan must do alot more to convince me that things will be different in the future. I’m not 100% convinced yet because we’ve been here so many times before. People talking about playoff experience shit we need talent first and please GOD not Labron or Kwahi or any other over the hill crap we can get off the trash heap as funny as it sound maybe some people are right we should take are time and slowly rebuild, tear it down, burn down and start from zero. Get rid of the dead wood Kanter, Lance, Beasly,Mudiay,Jack,Noah,Baker,Lee, even Hardaway now Iknow all this is not possible but one can dream, but in a perfect world i say burn it the FUCK down. What more is there for us to lose.
This is from a ringer piece last week. This is almost as dumb as can Chris Paul play with James Harden. Would adding the best basketball player ever work? Oh no, it’s a bad idea because we have another really good player.
The Knicks are not 3-5 years away if you ask me. If the Knicks:
1) Draft a good basketball player this summer
2) Don’t do anything stupid in free agency
3) Don’t screw up KP’s rehab
4) Dont screw up the development of Frank Ntilikina, Trey Burke, and our 2018 1st round pick
5) Tank and draft RJ Barrett,
By 2019-2020 we will have Burke, Ntilikina, Barrett, 2018 1st round pick, KP, TH2, and probably another decent piece or two. If the 2018 1st rounder happens to be a clear cut all star, we can compete with anybody. I really believe that. If we muck it up and draft Mikal Bridges, who reminds me most of Lance Thomas, and screw up the draft next year, then yeah we’ll be screwed. But there is a lot of opportunity to build a 55 win team that lasts a decade.
The sixers are struggling because Stevens has figured out how to take advantage of Simmons not being able to shoot. They should name the coach of the year award after Stevens.
@4
It baffles me how can people watch what LeBron is doing right now and still argue he wouldn’t fit any situation on any basketball team.
He’s about to sweep the #1 seed Raptors with a group of complete scrubs, what more does he need to do before this narrative goes away.
I guess ripping on Mikal Bridges is a thing now?
A guy who can guard 3 (or 4 depending on the opponent) positions and shoot 3s would muck up the knicks?
@7 but he’s lost 4 Finals tho
I suppose you could make a case that Lebron is too risky because of his age, or maybe even because he’s obviously a rough teammate that you wouldn’t want him around Simmons or Embiid, but saying he wouldn’t make the team on the court better is straight up foolishness. If you seriously think the Sixers would be down 3-0 against the Celtics if you replaced, I dunno, Saric with Lebron James I don’t know what to say.
So DeMar DeRozan is terrible in the playoffs in a fairly large sample. I’m not sure if anyone has ever studied the idea that FTr goes down in the playoffs but it seems true at least in some anecdotal cases. Harden’s has gone down by about .50 in the playoffs while he’s been in Houston, but that just makes his production closer to that of a top 10-15 player as opposed to top 1-3.
DeRozan becomes late career Melo when his FTr craters (which it does by about 0.40 in the playoffs). The reason I bring this up is because I don’t even think his regular season production merits his contract or the minutes he takes from Wright, Anunoby, and FVV (who I imagine will be difficult to keep largely due to DeRozan’s contract).
If I’m Masai, I’m looking for a Blake Griffin-esque trade this summer in which a team sends back expirings or multiple smaller contracts and some draft capital for DeRozan. I don’t think Toronto loses much of anything in the regular season if they distribute his minutes between Wright, FVV, and Anunoby and I’m inclined to think they’d be better in the playoffs.
Melo’s expiring and OKC’s 2019 first for DeRozan should work, and I could see it making sense for everyone involved. Toronto waives Melo so it’s essentially just a buyout by other means for him, OKC gets another big name to try to impress Paul George and keep their fanbase engaged (I don’t think it’s a great move from a basketball perspective but winning a championship doesn’t seem to be their primary goal these days), and Toronto gets some financial wiggle room and more minutes for their young guys who I think can match or exceed DeRozan’s production if platooned correctly. The media would probably sell it as Toronto beginning a tear down, but I’d view it as more of a reshaping that could potentially make them better overall.
This article suggests that he might not be as defensively versatile as his reputation. Even if that’s true he could still be a good pick- if he winds up being Corey Brewer with a legit three point shot that’s not a bad outcome at 9. That said, I’d rather see Carter or Young slide down to us.
A BPM over 16. Like, what the fuck? He is not human. On the Sixers, Jazz or any other playoff team they’d be winning by 15 every night, but here they are with the GOAT winning on buzzer-beaters. If he somehow keeps this up over 24 games, they should take everyone else’s rings and give them to him. Gilbert should give him half the franchise. Cleveland should make him God-Emperor.
I understand getting dinged for his age. He was basically the same player all three years, maintaining or improving his rate stats while increasing his useage and minutes, so I wonder how he would rate if he came out last year.
I’d be pretty happy with a slightly smaller Covington at 9 or 10 if that’s about where his floor is, with hopes for more upside.
I like Carter more, but assume he’ll be gone.
I don’t think the Ringer was suggesting the Sixers wouldn’t be better with LeBron, I think they were simply suggesting LeBron is somewhat redundant and would limit Simmons contributions. If you replaced Simmons with LeBron the Sixers would be much better but with both, Simmons’s growth might be affected since he wouldn’t be able to dominate the ball as much and long-term it might not be as good of a move as trying to get someone like Leonard even if getting LeBron gets the Sixers a championship.
As for Bridges, I’m lukewarm on the pick. Age is a huge factor and I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that Bridges is a 4 position plus defender. If he is then it’s great but if he is simply a good 2 position defender then it’s only an okay pick even if his shooting translates. I think Carter has just as high of a floor and a much higher ceiling, and if Young or Bamba or Porter slip they are all home runs compared to Bridges.
Oh! So all we have to do is draft an All-Star with the #9 pick this year, then tank all the way to the #1 pick, win the newly flattened-out lottery, then draft a generational star with the fruits of all our newly fabulous luck in 2019, and then we’ll be real good. Sounds easy!
I was hoping that maybe we could trade back for multiple picks maybe we have something to offer LAC or maybe ATL anyone with multiple picks really love Zahire Smith or SGA maybe grab Knox or Miles. I just don’t know if we have anything a team would want with the 9 pick
I’ve never really understood the Simmons-LeBron redundancy things. I would think that two 3-and-Ds with Embiid in the center would make them a wholly unstoppable team on both sides of the court.
No team wants to face 30 minutes of either of them, so if you stagger their minutes and play them together for 6-12 MPG you would drive defenses mad.
There’s no such thing as tanking. There’s only teams that are good and teams that aren’t.
It’s sort of like the arguments we’ve had during the season, where it’s basically the case where nearly every team in the NBA could be termed “two All Stars away from being contenders,” so it says nothing to say the same about the Knicks.
“Tweener” is a word used by old-hat analysts to explain why a player isn’t (or won’t be) good, even though about half of the league’s All-NBA players don’t have the bodies of “traditionally”- positioned players. It’s a concept used to explain, poorly, why a basketball player fails to achieve success. Curry’s “below-average” body proved to be utterly inconsequential to his success.
Like I said, Marvin Williams had an incredible PF body (oft-compared, before the draft, to LeBron’s) and was perfectly mediocre. Draymond Green is significantly shorter and pudgier than him and is one of the league’s best defensive centers.
When you call someone a tweener, you’re blaming their failures on height or length instead of more important traits like shot selection or defensive awareness.
Once a player is in the NBA then you have a body of work to look at that is far more important than any concerns about size or athleticism but when looking at players coming out of college then it is important to factor in possible problems an undersized or unathletic player might have transitioning to the NBA.
There were legitimate concerns regarding Curry’s size and potential to play PG when he entered the draft, they turned out to be unfounded but ignoring the red flags is a bad idea. You weigh things like will this player be able to play his natural position in the NBA or will he be too slow, small, weak to defend his position. Sometimes players can get knocked or lifted up too much for things like size, athleticism or age and finding those mistakes is a great place to get extra value in the draft but simply looking at production alone is unwise.
Also looking at Draymond’s and Marvin Williams’s body of work and physical profile coming out of college, drafting Williams before Draymond is the right choice every time, you cannot always predict how players will develop.
No, simply not true, and it’ not just about height or length (which I never said anyway.) In your asinine semantical parsing, you assume that all players in college or overseas that don’t get drafted or signed fail to have the “more important traits like shot selection or defensive awareness” when a much more prevalent reason is that they don’t have the physical tools (height, length, speed, agility, strength, etc.) to play the position they would need to play in the NBA based on their skill set. (Unless of course you’re stupid enough to believe that they just don’t want to play in the NBA.) You ground your argument in extreme outliers like Curry (who you pointed out numerous times is much stronger than he looks) and Green to make an idiotic generalization….the kind of logic you have criticized a billion times here. And you brought up guys like Durant (6’11”!) and Harden (excellent size for either the 1 or 2) as if anyone ever referred to them as tweeners…the next time would be the first!
Why not just say that there are certain rare players who are able to overcome size/athleticism disadvantages by having some combination of a uniquely refined skill set, unrelenting motor, and/or an exceptionally high B-ball IQ?
@22 +1
Because they’re not rare, at all. Shit, Google “tweener” and see the Truehoop article from 2012 declaring that there’s no such thing as a tweener in an era embracing stretch 4s and massive small forwards.
It’s hilarious to me that a person like Z-man has spent the last several years talking about how the positional adjustment in WP and PAWS is inane, and then turns around and declares that there are archetypes for five positions on a basketball court and players who fail to fit into them must be labeled “tweeners” to understand their failures.
No, I argued that they overvalued extremely low usage efficient shooting and rebounding, among other things, and were therefore just as flawed as PER. I stand by that. But you go right on thinking that Andre Drummond had a better year than LeBron James, or Hassan Whiteside had a better year than Steph Curry.
No, I actually have made arguments to the contrary (i.e. role was more important than position) and yesterday I posted the below article from The Stepien regarding positional roles that transcend traditional definitions, which makes lots of sense in today’s NBA.
https://www.thestepien.com/archetypes/#two-way%20swiss%20army-knives
Can’t you guys argue about something more interesting than tweeners?
LeBron, Simmons, and Embiid would bludgeon most teams with sheer talent but there is the little matter of Simmons being unable to, you know, shoot the basketball. Beyond the spacing issue is the reality that LeBron has followed Kobe’s example on defense. He was a terrible defender in the regular season and has only been able to “flip the switch” to become an okay one during the playoffs. That’s not the example you want to set for the rest of the team.
And this “tweener” argument is dumb. Of course “tweeners” exist but it’s hard to prove that by pointing to NBA stats because most “tweeners” spend little to no time in the NBA. The classic “tweener” used to be the “combo-guard” who had point guard size and shooting guard skills. How many teams have wasted years trying to turn those kind of guys into real point guards?
Mike
Everyone knows he can’t shoot. Stevens didn’t figure out anything. He has the right personnel to guard him, is all. I mentioned it here last week: the Celtics lineup of guards is the perfect match for Simmons, and Horford is a stud
“Can’t you guys argue about something more interesting than tweeners?”
+1
I just don’t see the spacing issue honestly. LeBron himself can shoot and he excelled with Wade beside him who could never space the floor with long range shooting and Bosh, who only learned to shoot 3s late in his Miami career, plus sometimes Anderson or Anthony as centers.
Yes, Simmons can’t shoot, but Embiid, RoCo and everyone else can, you can definitely get away with 2 non-shooters in any lineup.
I agree. It’s a dumb argument. (One side of it, anyway.)
I think it’s less a spacing issue than a question of diminishing what both guys do best. LeBron is a good enough shooter that you’re certainly not wasting him if Simmons is the primary ballhandler, but you’re not using Peak LeBron in that case. And if LeBron is the primary ballhandler, why is Simmons on the court?
Even though Lebron would duplicate Ben Simmon’s strengths, and he’d also take over his position, it would be the best thing to ever happen in Ben Simmons world.
Lebron would make BS a better player . . . while playing off of him. And BS would have the best mentor in the history of the NBA, as Lebron begins to give away his minutes.
Simmons is a creator, and Lebron is a better one.
Ben would get to the ball with the defense already off balance.