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NBA Team Values 2022: For The First Time In Two Decades, The Top Spot Goes To A Franchise That’s Not The Knicks Or Lakers Forbes
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 10:36:48 PM
N.Y. Knicks 134, Charlotte 131 Times Union
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 2:49:16 PM
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Statement Nights NBA.com
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 12:54:00 PM
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 10:27:24 AM
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 9:47:42 AM
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[news.google.com] — Wednesday, October 26, 2022 8:26:24 AM
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The Knicks have gone from dead last to respectable in one major area Daily Knicks
33 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2022.10.27)”
Just moving this over:
Since someone was inevitably going to do it, I’ll go ahead and kvetch about the 40/13 minutes distribution between Randle/Obi last night. There were stretches in the 4th and OT where Randle was both clearly gassed and simply playing like shit. Not sure what the point of rostering a highly capable backup is if you’re not going to play him in that situation.
Jalen Brunson is the best player to change teams in free agency since _________?
TNFH – very late on this but congrats on passing the boards. My brother’s a lawyer and I remember him telling me people running out of the test to go vomit and stuff (this was many years ago). So I am sure you’re relieved!
Re: last night’s game – would love to see Obi play more minutes but I don’t think we can discount how different Randle is this year. 7/19 is not great, but now 4 games into the season, he has STILL not taken a single long 2. Because he’s not only handling the ball less but being more decisive when he has it, his turnover percentage is half what it was last year (7.5%, down to 1.6 per 36 from 3.5 per 36 last year).
I think Macri touched on this in one of the recent podcasts, but it feels like last year’s Julius debacle probably was related to a confluence of things happening – 2nd team All-NBA so he personally thought he had ascended to unquestioned alpha status, Kenny Payne telling him he’s the man all the time, and some bristling that he had to share playmaking/ballhandling duties with Kemba Walker, who I am sure the team saw was a shell of his former self within a few days of training camp. If you watched the 4Q and OT last night, Julius really wanted to defer to Brunson, and only took matters into his own hands when Charlotte basically doubled Brunson as soon as he crossed half-court.
The biggest problem on this team right now is — RJ Barrett. Yes it’s a small sample but he has the most minutes played, highest usage, most shots, has the most turnovers by total and any TO rate you want to look at, and is by far the least efficient scorer on the team. He’s been average at best on defense. He has a BPM of -7.7 4 games in. RJ needs to go back to 20-21 Barrett and not look to justify his contract. Or Thibs needs to sit him. I’m happy he hit big FTs last night, but if he didn’t play like such crap, there wouldn’t be a need for big FTs. Right now he is basically a mini-Westbrook in terms of how damaging he is to winning.
Will be very interesting to see what happens when Grimes comes back. The easiest thing to do is to cut Fournier’s minutes, but between how well Reddish has been playing (who is far superior to RJ on defense) and how badly RJ is playing, I would love Grimes to take some of RJ’s minutes too.
Boo to the boy returning the morning after a game. Copy pasting from previous thread….
I totally agree about the minutes distribution, Noble. Randle looked so so so tired by the end.
That being said, this kind of bad Julius game is vastly preferable to the bad Julius games from last season. He went back to the over dribbling and twirling and all of that nonsense, but it was usually in-service of getting to the basket. And on some of those drives, he got a good shot, and it just rattled in an out. The process wasn’t great, but it was decent. And last year, it was just stupid almost all of the time.
Speaking of Westbrook – you can really feel the vultures circling over the Lakers right now. Will be very interesting to see how Pelinka and the rest of the teams handle this.
I literally cannot believe Pelinka got an extension this offseason. That Westbrook trade may go down as the single worst trade of all time. I honestly cannot think of another one that has gone down in flames quite as poorly — and everyone knew it when it happened — it’s not like the Harden trade to the Nets, which was in retrospect terrible but went so poorly mostly because of COVID and Kyrie’s craziness — that team was awesome when Harden/Kyrie/KD played together. But literally everyone knew Westbrook was a) an extremely diminished player; b) a horrendous fit with Lebron; c) not a personality that would take a secondary or tertiary role. Just terrible GM-ing.
I would love to someone get our hands on those Lakers picks especially knowing that Pelinka is going to be the GM for the next few years. Not sure how it happens though.
And regarding the minutes split, the problem is that our coach feels he needs a lot of shot creation in the closing lineup, and thus far, Obi has not really demonstrated that ability. But I feel like he would have been more useful, especially since he had fresh legs that nobody else in that group did by overtime.
TNFH, generally agree with you on the Julius/Obi minutes distribution, but OT games skew things a bit.
And the answer to your question (my vote) is just last year with DeMar.
There’s very few people that use Gilooly as a verb. Owen, I know we didn’t go to high school together, but it feels like we did.
And one more copy-paste:
Somebody on the coaching staff has to give RJ a Come to Jesus speech, because at the moment, he doesn’t seem to get it at all. Like, Cam can play stupidly a lot of the time, but he has athletic gifts and skills that RJ just doesn’t, so he can get away with the stupid play a bit more easily. (And it’s not like Cam played brilliantly last night; I just ground my teeth a bit less when he had the ball than when RJ did.)
Thank God for Jalen Brunson. He outclasses the rest of the team on offense by a wiiiiiide margin.
Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, and Derrick Rose for Westbrook and the two future Lakers picks, both unprotected. I would throw in iHart, too, if I had to.
I wouldn’t expect a good GM to consider that trade. But Rob Pelinka, with LeBron breathing down his neck to stop wasting the end of his career, that’s a pretty good lifeline. That team needs quantity.
And it’s not like we’d be tanking if we made that trade. There’s even a chance we’d get better.
Frank, just in recent memory, the Garnett/Pierce trade to the Nets was worse than the Westbrook trade. You could argue Westbrook is worse because it torpedoed a contender, but I feel like the decisions Pelinka made the previous offseason, and last year around the Russ trade, already messed up everything that had worked with LBJ and AD’s supporting cast.
And we all know that Isiah made some goddamn doozies here.
And this is accurate. Julius only went into whirling dervish mode when Brunson was smothered around the logo and the Hornets were making sure he couldn’t get the ball back once he passed it to Randle. Still not ideal, but did not feel like Julius going, “I’m going to get mine” in a way it often does with RJ. It was Julius doing his best in a bad situation. And again, he at least tried to go downhill every time this happened.
repost
My recollection is that the starters handed the bench a double-digit lead and they promptly blew it. Did that not happen? In particular, recall IQ making two horrific passing turnovers in that stretch.
P.J. Washington is a nice young player, drafted #12 in the RJ draft, 2 spots after Cam.
Also, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I’m beginning to think that Cam might be a better bet than RJ going forward (contracts considered). Neither is going to be a star, but Cam may settle into a competent role player at a modest price.
I really like the balance of this team. The only thing that tugs at me is what to do with Fournier, and that’s because of how Cam is playing. Cam’s not half the shooter that Fournier is, but I wonder- once Grimes is healthy, do we still need Fournier’s shooting? I wanted to see Fournier run with the Bench Mob, but Cam looks really good with the 2nd unit. And we do have Svi to provide shooting when needed. But..one through ten- this team is really balanced. Even with Fournier starting. This season is where Thibs proves his worth as a coach. We’re deep, with no superstar- but in Brunson, Randle, and RJ we have 3 guys who can be in all star conversation yearly. And a possible 4th in Mitch. Now’s the time for Thibs to work his magic. He’s proven to be a phenomenal coach before- we need that now.
I really like this team. If they can tighten up the defense, they might rival our 90’s squads with JVG. Longshot..but possible
Since the shakeup on 2019 when Durant, Kyrie, Kawhi, and Butler changed teams.
One caveat of course for RJ — it is really really early right now, and we’ve seen him go on some hot streaks. For kicks I looked at the worst BPMs in the league this young season, thinking RJ would stick out like a sore thumb — but here are some BPMs in RJ’s range:
Norm Powell -15.9 (!)
Jamal Murray -9.9
Harrison Barnes -9.5
Chris Duarte -9.2
Play Thompson -9.1
Lu Dort -9.1
Reggie Jackson -8.1
RJ Barrett -7.7
Russell Westbrook -6.8
Anfernee Simons -5.7
Ben Simmons -5.7
Have tried to be patient with RJ. Hoping he came into the season trying to reposition himself as a Swiss Army knife type that can get you 15 6 6 every night with solid D. A useful player. Totally agree on the Come To Jesus. He is literally playing some of the worst ball of his career to start the season. 30% from the field. 14% from 3. It’s a disgrace.
You can’t tell me that the team wouldn’t function better with Fournier and Grimes surrounding Randle Brunson Mitch from a spacing standpoint.
Also Obi should start to get some of RJs minutes at the 3 and see if he can manage to play D out there.
Poindexter, sorry to call you out but to put RJ in the “all star consideration” category is laughable. His career is backup level to date. 3 years and 4 games in.
We would kind of be tanking, Hubert. RJ has played terribly, but Julius has mostly played well, and Rose has been great in limited minutes. You can argue that Sims can slide in relatively seamlessly into the iHart role (though iHart can’t be traded until mid-December anyway), but let’s look at the lineup post-trade:
C: Mitch and Sims, with no emergency backup
PF: Obi and… Obi. I guess Feron Hunt gets signed to the main roster?
SF: Cam and Fournier
SG: Grimes, Quickley, Svi, Trevor Keels
PG: Brunson, Deuce, Ryan Arcidiacono
This is assuming we do the smart thing and immediately cut Russ. I imagine we’d have to take a couple of players back from LA just to make the trade legal, and maybe those guys could fill some of those rotation holes. But that’s a thin team that is depending on significant improvement from at least two of Obi, Cam, and Grimes to have a shot at the play-in.
Which isn’t to say it would be a bad trade for us long-term. But we’d take a substantial hit in the short-term.
cgreene- it’s just a “can be”. RJ’s good, don’t let his slow starts fool you.
RE: Obi
There was one drive from Obi that looked like he is trying to address exactly this. He missed the layup (sadly) but made a nice move and got to the hoop.
Like you, I thought Thibs might have tried Obi in place of RJ somewhere in the 2nd half, but no.
Overall:
Mitch was running around swatting flies bc the D was terrible everywhere. Someone posted they like “the idea of Grimes.” That’s where I am. I’ve never seen him play lockdown D, but I’m willing to be educated on this.
Last night the main substitution mistake IMO (as an armchair doofus) was taking Rose out while he was playing quite well. IQ was a mess, but Thibs changed guards wholesale, returning both Brunson and E4. I would have liked to see Rose stick for a bit with Brunson. E4 quickly turned it over and fouled out. I love Fournier (still on the island), but he’s playing like he’s already punched his ticket to another team.
KBA, Rose is pretty clearly on a minutes restriction. Either he’s not entirely right physically, or there is something else going on. But we know of Thibs’ trust for him, yet he’s barely played in both preseason and now these regular games.
Sorry to be all THCJ on you, Poindexter, but there is no data to support the RJ “can be” an all star opinion. None. These guys play in the NBA. They are the top .1% of players in the world. They all look like all stars for a few games here and there.
Start Grimes and EF. Play Obi at the 3 some. More Cam. Make RJ earn it.
@Alan, sure. Understood about Rose, but I just thought there was a little moment to linger with him there. As is, Rose only played 12 minutes.
No way last night would have been a 12 minutes for Derrick Rose night unless something else was going on.
Follow-up on Obi: Is he really *so* terrible on defense. He was 3/6, 3/4 from three, with 3 bounds and 2 assists in 13 minutes. He was literally the last Knick put in the game and the first one out for good (I’m pretty sure). I get the argument that he can’t create for himself, but he’s gotta be shaking his head.
For basketball reasons, Obi should want a trade. But… he is from New York, his mom lives here and comes to MSG to watch him play, he and IQ seem like the best of best friends, and he looks happy pretty much all the time, even when he’s riding the pine while Randle dribbles into oblivion.
I have to imagine his representatives are screaming for him to be traded. I just wonder if that’s what he would want.
I find the double threads after gameday very annoying…
I think RJ will be in All-Star consideration any season that the Knicks are decent, because All Star reserves are often picked for stupid reasons like pointz, and we all know how big averaging 20 points a game is to RJ.
Agreed, Max. I just asked in the other thread if the bot can be turned off the morning after a game. That, or maybe Brian should stop making post-game posts, and we just talk in the game thread until the bot turns on in the morning?
That RJ contract may end up being the worst Rose decision yet. The right move was to make him earn it this season. He hasn’t done anything in his career that says he will be better than Grimes, Toppin, Quickley, or Reddish. They should all be fighting for minutes. By giving RJ that contract, he now has to play.
He hasn’t done anything in his career that says he will be better than Grimes, Toppin, Quickley, or Reddish.
Assume your statement is pure basketball skill, ignoring contracts. Agree on the first 3 but…Reddish?
No question RJ was bas last night, but I think he’s a bit better than 15-6-6 from a scoring standpoint. I don’t think I had an issue with his shot selection in the 2nd half, it’s just he blew those layups/gaffed the execution in situations he should’ve gotten good shots. Bigger issue I had was his defense.
I don’t know if he needs a coming to Jesus moment (maybe a good MrGo30 roasting lol), but he absolutely needs to watch the tape from last night a few times so he can make some adjustments.
Also, the bench mob’s D was very porous in the 2nd half – Charlotte got their momentum to ultimately take the lead while they were on the court. Combine that with IQ tentative play and I think it’s understandable why the starters were rode hard in Q4 and OT.