Knicks Morning News (2019.06.11)

An achilles tear at age 30?
Not sure I want the Knicks to sign KD. We already knew we are getting him own the likely downside of his career.
If this is a tear, he likely will lose a step.
Knicks luck.

It’s not normal for a team to be leaking news that he should be playing through the injury.

Feel bad for Durant. Criticized for being soft for joining the Warriors (I’ll admit I was in that bucket), won two finals MVPs but never really embraced by the fan base for anything more than his basketball. And even then some people suggested the Warriors were better without him.

Will there be a team that gives Durant a contract? Age 30 + achilles just doesn’t make sense for anybody. What would a team friendly contract for something like that be? He is going to make $31 million if he opts in and rehabs next year. Would some team give him a 1+1 or 2+ team option? Does that get it done? Will be interesting to see what NBA teams do.

Yeah, I think now he’ll take the max in Golden State. It makes sense for him and the team, it’s more $ for KD, and they remain the best team, even with KD in a post-tear state.

I think last night also showed that GS is in fact dominant when fully healthy, regardless of who wins this asterisk series now. He will come back and they will still be an amazing team, just an aging one.

KD to the Knicks never made sense anyway. Let’s do a real rebuild and then steal a guy like Giannis once we actually have a winning team. We are looking at some good draft picks coming up, especially in 2021. I trust Perry.

The other possibility is to sign KD to a max (with significant safeguards/opt-outs?), let him rehab for a full year, then tank next year also. We’d have another lottery pick, then possibly AD in FA (although I am sure NO will trade him to prevent losing him for nothing).
I just don’t see KD signing onto a team that doesn’t have anyone else though.

LeBron was 29 for 2 months when he started his 2nd tour. That was his age 30 season. They got his age 30, 31, 32, and 33 seasons.

Durant turns 31 in September. We would have gotten his age 31, 32, 33, and 34 seasons. Yes, Cleveland got one better year, but it’s ridiculous to say adding Durant was a crappy plan to begin with.

That was the most emotionally draining game that I can remember.

Yeah, and I think a lot of teams will be emboldened by Masai’s trade for Kawhi and be willing to trade for one year of AD. Our best case scenario is that someone like Portland decides to go all in and offers a good package around McCollum. Or the Celtics make the trade and he doesn’t like it there.

it’s ridiculous to say adding Durant was a crappy plan to begin with

I’m pretty sure players in their decline phase get injured more often then in their peek years and their recovery takes longer. So that one+ year is significant.

Ian Begley’s latest post at SNY says it’s unlikely the Knicks pursue an AD trade unless they somehow land Kawhi. Does not seem he think it’s likely the Knicks pursue Durant now that he has this injury.

Man this just sucks for everyone.

RJ Barrett seems by far the most likely outcome now. If you’re not going to sign an alpha in FA then you will need to draft an alpha.

This is ok for me.
Question is what we do now with all the cap space. There are a lot of bad contracts out there that we could take on for a year.

Parsons and Whiteside both expire next year.
Batum has a PO for 2020-21 — could probably get very significant assets for that contract especially if they’re planning on supermaxing Kemba. I would consider Biyombo + Batum for 2 unprotected 1sts + Miles Bridges. We’d be taking on $46MM in contracts which would leave Charlotte with almost 20MM in cap space even after maxing Kemba. And we would still have >$20MM in space ourselves.

Assuming it’s a tear, this is obviously horrible news for Durant and basketball in general.

However, if you put emotions aside, it’s not necessarily bad news for the Knicks. The only reason we should have been on board with signing him was because it was “Kevin freaking Durant”. I still wasn’t 100% sold on this direction despite who it was. Virtually any other player would have been a mistake.

We just spent several years tanking trying to rebuild.

Durant will 31 at the start of next season.

We were going to get the downside of his career, have a very short window, and be exposed to injuries like these no matter what. This wasn’t even his first calf injury.

This was NOT a Knicksy outcome. It may have been a gift from God. A Knicksy outcome would have been him coming back, playing well, winning another championship, choosing NY, and then going down next year.

I’m not sure what their plans will be now, but I’d be fine with selectively adding good young players in free agency and via trade and continuing on the same long term path.

And there’s no way I’m taking that player option if they refuse to do that.

Why wouldn’t you? You get to rehab on their dime and make a lot of money for not playing. And then some other team can pay you when you’re ready to play again the following year.

It doesn’t really matter at this point, but maybe this wouldn’t have happened if KD wasn’t so obsessed with internet hot take culture himself, and didn’t care about whatever dumb ruff rydah narrative was being peddled by moron columnists. It’s water under the bridge now, but KD is no doubt sitting in his bed right now wishing he would have let those ingrates just lose without him.

It doesn’t really matter at this point, but maybe this wouldn’t have happened if KD wasn’t so obsessed with internet hot take culture himself, and didn’t care about whatever dumb ruff rydah narrative was being peddled by moron columnists. It’s water under the bridge now, but KD is no doubt sitting in his bed right now wishing he would have let those ingrates just lose without him.

I think the man just wanted to win. I know that shit annoys him, but if I had to guess, 99%, maybe even 100%, of the reason he came back was because you only have a short window of being the best player on the planet and he was desperate to play in these finals for himself. He’s a competitor and we wanted to go at these guys. I honestly think he would have risked it if it was an empty gym and there was no internet. That’s how these guys are.

It was up to the organization and the training staff to hold
him back, if there was reason to.

He’s a competitor and we wanted to go at these guys. I honestly think he would have risked it if it was an empty gym and there was no internet. That’s how these guys are.

Well, Kawhi sort of did the opposite at the end of his tenure in San Antonio: he didn’t let the Spurs get involved in his rehabbing decision and instead rehabbed his quad under the supervision of his own advisors. He recognized the conflict of interest. When the fans started to turn on him, his reaction was “tough titties.”

This isn’t exactly the same situation because there is an NBA Finals happening, and time is of the essence. But this screams “conflict of interest.” The Warriors’ medical team is probably not going to be urging utmost caution considering their window is small and KD might not be a long-term asset.

I’m no medical expert, but it’s probably safe to assume the achilles injury and calf injury are related. However, that does NOT mean playing in a game and the achilles injury are necessarily related. He was medically cleared to practice after a month of rehab. If you look at the game move that caused the injury, it was not especially tough. He was making tougher moves than that in pre game warm ups. He was almost certainly making way tougher moves than that in his rehab practice too. It’s at least reasonable to think that even though this injury occurred in the game, it was a totally freak accident that could have just as easily occurred in rehab practice had he chosen not to play.

If the plan is to sign KD anyhow, run the kids out there and probably lose a bunch for another season, then sign AD in 2020 plus have another good draft pick, that would not be the worst plan the Knicks have ever had.

Yeah, Kawhi made a very tough, very bold decision, and I applaud him for it.

But his team wasn’t in the middle of the NBA finals. That was a 47 win team seeded 7th in the west with a dominant Warriors team in a year that he had completely sat out.

Durant’s in the middle of the best run of his life, he’s the two time defending finals MVP, he’s been part of this team all year, he’s only been out a few weeks, and the opportunity in front of him is *extremely* hard to walk away from. I get that it seems almost the same, but I think when you drill down into it, it’s almost two completely different scenarios.

EDIT: pardon me for writing this before reading your second paragraph.

If the plan is to sign KD anyhow, run the kids out there and probably lose a bunch for another season, then sign AD in 2020 plus have another good draft pick, that would not be the worst plan the Knicks have ever had.

It’s arguably the best plan the Knicks have ever had.

As long as you get KD’s AAV low enough to bring in AD. If you pay for his rehab and give him a player option year as insurance, that should be enough compensation to get the discount off the max.

Durant played 12 of the game’s first 14 minutes. That doesn’t seem like super responsible. Were they going to play him 40+ minutes in this game? Probably.

They mishandled him, and there’s just no way around that. If he was signed for another three years they would probably not have sent him out there, they would have exercised more caution.

Oof. I hope that it’s not that sinister. Did you watch Myers at the press conference?

It’s at least reasonable to think that even though this injury occurred in the game, it’s also a totally freak accident that could have just as easily occurred in rehab practice had he chosen not to play.

If he wasn’t being pressured to play, he almost certainly would’ve been ramping up basketball activities on a far less aggressive timetable. The way the Warriors handled this situation honestly disgusts me–it’s the kind of thing I’d have a very hard time reconciling my fandom with if I was a Warriors fan.

Durant on a 2 + 1 deal still makes plenty of sense for the Knicks, but who the hell knows how his thinking has changed since last night. I will be content if they just don’t do stupid stuff.

I’m going to choose to believe everyone had the right intentions in putting him on the floor. KD wanted to play. His teammates wanted him to play. The trainers and medical staff thought he was ready to go. It was just a bad outcome.

The only people that didn’t have the right intentions were the media members who wrote these stories, quoting anonymous players questioning whether he really wanted to come back. These stories are just clickbait, and nothing else. Of course everyone wants him to come back, but when they frame these stories like they do, it inevitably ends up causing undue pressure on the player and medical staff to clear him. I’m not saying that anything different would have happened if these stories weren’t out there, but they certainly didn’t help.

I think these writers who write these things should think about what they would do in the same situation – if they were ill but looked mostly ok on the surface. If they had cancer and were undergoing chemotherapy but their hair hadn’t fallen out. Hey Kawakami, how come you’re not at the Finals busting your butt? Are you just milking that “cancer” diagnosis? Just because an anonymous player on the team says “why isn’t KD back” doesn’t mean you have to write that article.

They probably have way more space than they can use effectively on players now. Assuming no miracle developments, they should look to sign or trade (the Dallas picks?) for some good players in their 20s, rent out cap space, and give out short term contracts to roll the space over depending on what is available at what price.

It’s a shame this season turned out like it did.

I’d be in a better mood if we were going into next year adding KP, Barrett and whoever else we added into less space to the upsides of Robinson, Knox, Dotson, Frank etc.. But with no KP and probably less useful space, it feels like we lost a couple of years.

KP is an overrated, inefficient chucker who has a crummy attitude, wilts in December of every season, doesn’t rebound, is injury prone and is about to be way overpaid.

Talk about dodging a bullet.

KD at 3 years, $90mm, with a player option after year 2. Isn’t that worth the risk?

Assuming it’s a tear, I don’t particularly want to, no. That deal could easily backfire. I’d want relatively low guaranteed money in years 2&3 and I’m doubtful about being able to get significant injury protections. I don’t think Perry takes that risk. But as DRed wrote above, that plus adding AD in 2020 isn’t the worst plan. Longshot though, a lot can happen between now and then.

I for one am looking forward to running out Vucevic and Boogie as an unstoppable low post duo making a combined $60 million next year. Who needs Durant?!

I believe DRed is working under the assumption that AD will be traded to a team where he won’t commit to signing there longterm. Like the Raptors with Kawhi.

Rudy Gay came back from his Achilles tear pretty good.

Is this thing on?

It’s not a death knell for his career. But it still introduces serious risk to a long term contract that would have held relatively little risk before.

Durant was likely to be a $40m-level player next year, with gradual declines for the each of the remaining three years. Now he’s going to be worth $5m next year, and anywhere from $10-35m the year after that.

Home court advantage isn’t what it used to be in this series with each team winning twice on the opponent’s floor. That’s unusual especially how it sets up for game 6 and 7 if necessary. I don’t see how Golden State will have enough in the tank to win 2 more, but that’s why they actually play the games.

You have to feel badly for Durant, he was put in a no win situation, came back to play under pressure, and then it all went south. Finally a star apparently wants to come to the Knicks and then suffers a devastating Achilles injury. That’s about as screwed up an outcome as you could dream up. We Knicks fans were put on earth to suffer…….and then suffer some more.

The icing on the cake will be when the fucking Lakers trade for AD and sign Kyrie Irving just because they are the Lakers and everything works put perfectly for them.

This is pretty fascinating:

This medical staff is a new one by league standards. The Warriors have undergone significant changes to their medical staff in recent seasons, which is a bit unusual for a dynasty. Celebrini, a highly-regarded physiotherapist from MLS circles, replaced Chelsea Lane as the director of sports medicine last year. Lane left the Warriors last summer to lead the Atlanta Hawks’ medical staff. Before Lane, the team parted ways with its former director of sports medicine, Lachlan Penfold, after just one season. Keke Lyles, who helped the Warriors with the 2015 NBA Finals as the team’s director of player performance, left that summer to join the Hawks in a similar position.

That’s a lot of new faces. And a lot of winning, nonetheless.

Does anyone have any idea how long or how well respected the Knicks’ medical staff is? The hospital / surgeons are from HSS which is widely recognized as the best orthopedic hospital in the country, but I’m not sure about the people that actually work for the team.

Uh, guys, I thought about it some more and I think I found a good comparison for a post achilles tear KD: it has to be 30-something Dirk, right?

The only people that didn’t have the right intentions were the media members who wrote these stories, quoting anonymous players questioning whether he really wanted to come back. These stories are just clickbait, and nothing else.

A lot of those takes were terrible, but the Sam Amick story wasn’t a hot take. That was actual reporting of news that the Warriors wanted made public, presumably to pressure Durant into risking his health for them.

Also, I may be in the minority, but I’m interested in seeing these kids play next year.

I love the potential of a Barrett-Knox-Mitch frontline. I’m kind of intrigued to see a Smith-Frank backcourt, too. Being with two primary ballhandlers like Smith and Barrett *might* get the best out of Frank, whatever his best is.

Give me all that and an extra lottery pick while Durant is rehabbing and I’m pretty happy . Gives us more time to assess who is worth keeping around. And it precludes us from doing something stupid, like maxing someone not worth it.

It is kind of curious why KD is having his MRI in NY today

@43. I think the issue is that some ‘max’ players produce at WAY above what they’re paid and others just at around that level. If you have one or two of the first kind and one of the third coming up due for an extension it might be ok to max him (I guess this is what the Wiz thought when they maxed Porter). But if you’re signing an FA to be your top dog you need it to be someone in the former category. I’m a vacuum I personally don’t think Harris at 30m is terrible ‘value’ and it’s definitely what it’s going to cost to get him. But can we afford to pay him that to be our best player? Personally I’d say no…

There needs to be some outside the box thinking now.

I don’t know who the Grizz are going to draft but if there is a large difference in Morant and Barret in the Knick’s mind, absorbing Chandler’ Parson’s 25M saving the small marker Grizz a bundle this year (and then they can say liked Barrett better anyway like Mr Shark Tank) for a pick swap ?

Maybe Miami would love to dump Whiteside, Dragic and Ryan Anderson’s 61 million for the #13 pick and Bam Adebayo to open up 45 ish million in cap space today?

I’m just spit-balling but there are possibilities to use the space to improve the roster while preserving the space for next year. Just tell KD to rehab on GS’s dime and AD not to sign an extension 🙂

I just think it’s because NYC has the best doctors in the world (they just don’t work for the Knicks).

Or maybe he wants his precise information to be in other hands than GS???

BobNeptune, that is exactly why Memphis is suddenly floating this bullshit rumor the day after the Knicks stupidly had a public love-in with RJ.

Memphis is taking Morant and we should give them nothing to move up.

Just curious as to the logic of if the Knick’s FO thinks (like most here) there is a big drop from Morant to Barrett…. they why should we not consider giving them anything to move up? Ego? Seriously, I don’t get the logic.

Seriously there is a myriad of options that have opened up for the Knicks. The “silver lining ” sez hai…..possibilities abound….

why bother low balling them though? so they can say no? the haul you offered is pretty much what we got for KD (except you want to offer knox in frank, where from dallas we got rid of our bad deals). NO would never do that deal. I think that deal, plus Barrett, plus our 1 next year instead of one of the dallas ones ….maybe?

Shit. This is now the tenth thing that has happened that underscored how unnecessery it was to waive Joakim Noah before we had to. Could have just eaten that final year now.

On the plus side, we could find ourselves in position to extract an asset from Dallas for taking Courtney Lee back. That would be rich.

Shit. This is now the tenth thing that has happened that underscored how unnecessery it was to waive Joakim Noah before we had to. Could have just eaten that final year now.

I wasn’t going to bring it up, but now that you have….yeah. 😉

Bol Bol is holding a workout for “select” teams Wednesday so he must be pretty close to ready to go…….

Idk, maxing KD and then renting out the rest of the cap space for picks while he heals could be sort of genius. A lot of KDs game is shooting-based anyway, and he’ll still be good at that unlike Amare whose game was all about athleticism…

Toronto fans are really acquitting themselves real well during this series between cheering KD’s injury and this heinousness.

Raptors fans heckling Dell Curry and Sonya Curry outside of their hotel ?(@TheRenderMedia ) pic.twitter.com/g8C8JFq6lO— NBA Central (@TheNBACentral) June 11, 2019

I have a question. Tobias Harris is a name that is thrown out here a lot as a worst case scenario this summer. Why is that?

He’s 26 and so his “max” would not be as high as Kemba or Butler or Durant, etc. And he’s a pretty damn good basketball player who’s age fits in nicely with our younger players. Is it Hardaway 2.0 to sign him? Is it the idea of signing him and another non superstar player that’s bad or would signing just Harris alone be ok with people? Just curious.

Because he’s not that good. He’s good if you think that every player who puts on the blue and orange become immediately better, but… we’re not that kind of fan, are we? ; )

It is kind of curious why KD is having his MRI in NY today

What’s more likely: that NYC has, like many of its other amenities, the highest concentration of elite surgeons and consultants in the Western hemisphere, or that it’s some kind of tell that he really, really wants to be in NY so badly that he’d fly with a major leg injury just to breathe in the hot, humid NYC piss smell while he hobbles into the doctor’s office?

It’s not a death knell for his career. But it still introduces serious risk to a long term contract that would have held relatively little risk before.

It was a risky contract before the injury. Signing a 31-year-old max player while you have a 17-win core is a major risk, no buts about it. For the Warriors, it wouldn’t be risky — you have no cap space whether you re-sign Durant or not, so of course you throw every available dollar at him if your goal is to field a competitive basketball team.

This board was real optimistic about the prospect of paying Durant $45M in his age-35 season, and in this very thread, we received LeBron James as the counterpoint to the “too risky” argument. If there’s any player to be held up as an example of normalcy, it’s LBJ.

Yeah the whole idea of signing Durant was that we’d be instant contenders, he’d have the gravity to lure a second star and we’d be off and running. Now he’s probably not suiting up until what, like fall 2020? The whole concept of him coming here just crumbled to dust.

I’d say there’s a very good chance the Knicks sign him anyway, based on the literal decades of poor decision making we have just witnessed. It would not surprise me at all to see this. I’m fully expecting it actually.

and in this very thread, we received LeBron James as the counterpoint to the “too risky”

Did we? Or are you making shit up again.

The amazing part is that actually used quotes for the words you made up. That’s literally the opposite of what quotes are for.

LeBron James was brought up as a counterpoint to the idea signing Kevin Durant was “a crappy Plan A”. That’s the quote. Sorry, but signing arguably the best player on the planet is *never* a crappy plan A. It can be too risky, but those are two entirely different arguments.

There’s no way the warriors aren’t offering him the absolute max they can, specially with all this talk of them rushing him or mishandling it.

If this is true I agree with all of the rest of your post.

If it isn’t true, I don’t think anyone would offer the max and there might not be many teams willing to go past 1+1.

It all depends on the warriors. I’m not as convinced as you that they will do the right thing by Durant. I mean, it’s a *terrible* idea to give him a five year mega max now. They’d have to *really* feel pressured.

They don’t need to give him a megamax. They just have to give him better than the max everyone else can, which is the extra year of max level before he gets dumped off. The fifth year is the advantage in this situation. 4 years max and then your next contract starts at 13 million vs one more year at 40 million prior to your next contract being lower.

Also, I know it’s Berman, but he’s saying the Knicks have the least attractive package of young players among the teams vying for AD. I believe that. It would take a trade for an all-star type + Barrett + 2 picks to even contend. So yeah, it would mean gutting the team and us losing this year’s pick.

Some names that could maybe get it done: Beal, Gordon, Valanciunas, Whiteside… there aren’t many.

So basically an AD trade is very unlikely. A trade to the Celtics before the draft (so they can try to keep Kyrie) seems most likely.

My point is more that the Warriors have nothing to lose re-signing Durant. They are capped anyway and will be forever capped with Klay and Draymond’s new contracts, they have no room to replace Durant with anyone. Even if he’s damaged goods, they might as well keep him to see if he ever recovers. Durant only leaves if he wants to, in my opinion, and obviously it’s possible he wants to, but if he’s sticking to what he said, about maximizing the money he’s getting, then the logical play is to simply stay.

100% agree with this.

If he has a tear he won’t be playing next season regardless. That wouldn’t be a bad option for him. Maybe he comes back for next year’s playoffs. That might be a good idea for him. Showcase during the playoffs that he’s still the best scorer in the league and then bolt.

Some data with achilles tendon injuries:

According to a 2013 research paper published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, seven of the 18 NBA players (38.9%) who sustained major Achilles injuries between 1988 and 2011 did not come back to the league. Those who did return missed an average of 55.9 games the rest of their career, with only eight of the 11 playing a second season.

The few who did stick in the NBA for a while saw their playing time and production dip. ESPN’s SCHOENE projection system, which accounts for age and other factors besides injury that could affect someone’s performance, found that players coming off torn Achilles tendons have performed about 8% worse than projected.

However, there are reasons for optimism. Medical advances over the past decade have upped players’ chances of a successful recovery. Spurs forward Rudy Gay, for example, has enjoyed two of his most efficient seasons since suffering a torn Achilles in January 2017.

a few other notes:

Cousin’s re-hab time…. 357 days
Kobe’s rehab time….. 240 days
Dominique’s rehab time… 9 months.

With KD’s lithe build it is perfectly reasonable he is back playing mid-March.

Side note… according to a podcast I heard yesterday maybe the Lowe Post if GS maxes Durant and resigns Draymond and Klay…. they are on the hook for $230,000,000 in tax per year to the NBA (gulp) that’s a lot of coin even to Silicon Valley guys.