Knicks Morning News (2023.01.28)

Re: yesterday’s RJ discussion, like many here, I am largely underwhelmed by RJ’s progression from his rookie year. However, I do agree with E that his defense is better than the metrics indicate. I also agree that Thibs sees things in the film of RJ’s overall impact on D, especially given that he is handling an outsized role on the defensive end, that don’t show up in the metrics.

But he’s hardly a defensive stopper and his defense is not good enough to justify what he is going to get paid over the next 4 years. If he settles in at this level and doesn’t improve, you could find a better overall player for that money.

The thing that gives me hope is that he is still only 22. I don’t care how much NBA experience he has had to this point, that’s still a very young player. I like that he is so resilient and that the moment doesn’t seem to bother him. I like that he puts up 20 ppg even if inefficiently, which is harder to do than people give him credit for. I like that his right hand continues to improve. I like that his FT shooting is at a career high on more attempts per 36. I like that his 2pt% is at a career high on career avarage attempts. And I very much like that over his last 25 games he’s put up the stats E cited: 22ppg, .571 TS, 38.7 from 3. All during Oct and Nov, I was on the “this team needs to gel, let’s wait and see” mode, so it’s pretty easy for me to throw out the games before that and see RJ as the player he has been for those last 25 games. I’m reasonably optimistic that he can stabilize at those numbers, he doesn’t seem to be doing anything all that flukey and even if the 3pt% slips, the 2pt% and FG% can continue to get better.

And that in and of itself would justify his contract, which is all I’m really worried about. That he, Randle and Brunson are all making around the same money is a very good position to be in.

A commenter on KFS compared Sims’ facial expression to Hector Zeroni (Zero) from the movie Holes.

https://www.looper.com/386472/what-zero-from-holes-looks-like-today/

It would have been even more funny if Sims had chosen zero for his number…

As to that draft being “pretty deep” I think the jury is still out. The only guys picked after #19 who seem to be surely destined for NBA starter quality are Grimes and Aldama. Maybe Herb Jones, but he has a .534b TS% on a 16% usage. Hyland is a no-D one-trick pony. Dosunmu has potential but his numbers are sketchy.

“The theory that when you trade a pick for nothing, you can only be said to have lost out on the opportunity to draft the specific players picked within 5 spots of the incinerated pick is really quite funny. Leads to many interesting conclusions.”

Again, the art of ignoring that the drafting team passed over the preferred players multiple times, making it a near certainty that they would not have picked those players at #19, #21, #25 (we know that one for sure) #32, #34 or #36 is really quite funny (and grossly disingenuous.)

PS they didn’t trade the pick for “nothing”. What they traded that pick for was used by the Hawks to acquire Dejounte Murray. Please stop exaggerating.

“I forgot to mention three of the nine in the rotation that just beat the Celtics are from that 2021 draft.”

Right, but if we had only drafted all the best players taken at #19 or later we’d be so much better!

“I just wish we’d taken the 41st pick in 2014 at 34 instead of Cleanthony Early, because I want someone on the Knicks who can pass like Jokic.”

Right, but at least we drafted Cleanthony instead of trading the pick because now we know for sure that had they not traded the pick they wouldn’t have taken Jokic with it.

“It was a stupid trade and the people who said it was stupid at the time were proven to be correct. The end. Any other rationalizing of it is bullshit.”

I’m not rationalizing it, just pointing out that it was really no big deal then, as I did at the time, and it has now proven to be no big deal. To me and others, the stupid part is thinking that it was a big enough mistake that it needed to be cried about for years, or to exaggerate how bad it was by saying provably wrond inflammatory shit like “we traded the pick for nothing,” or whining about how much difference picking some random player there might have made to our current fortunes.

We didn’t trade the 19th pick for Cam Reddish. We traded a protected CHA pick for him. Two separate transactions.

ATL did something really smart with that pick because at the time it actually had value (although it seems that the trade was made the same day that Bridges was arrested…I wonder of SAS knew of that before they made the trade.)

I hated the trade for Reddish at the time, because I thought they could have done something better with the protected CHA pick. But it’s overkill to say that they traded the pick for “nothing.” The truth is, they traded it for the opportunity to find out if a long, tall wing with a prototypical NBA body, some impressive skills, and a great FT shooter could be developed into a starting 3-and-D wing with some tough love. That’s not the same as “nothing.” They misjudged Reddish’s potential, just like teams misjudge the potential of players they draft.

BUT as was pointed out, we drafted 4 players that year and the three that are not “draft and stash” types are in the rotation for a winning team. Regardless of the process, the actual outcome was that no harm was done via that draft and the team is just as well off right now as it would have been had virtually any FO just kept the #19 and #21 picks and selected who their scouts liked the most. I don’t see why that is so hard to comprehend, and why it keeps coming up.

Michael Porter Jr. can look so great when he’s healthy…

“I’m kind of with Z-Man here in a way– this wasn’t in and of itself a crippling move”

I’d go further and say that it wasn’t even a remotely damaging move compared to the REAL blunders, like drafting Obi over Hali. And that if we had just drafted Grimes and McBride rather than try to be creative with trades, we would all be at leasty kind of okay with the outcome. Yet the amount of times and the level of anguishwith which it has been brought up is WAY out of proportion to its impact on the current team.
And nobody (certainly not me) has actually “defended” the moves. I (and others) am just irked with the harping on them.

Also, it ignores some other consequential things, both positive and negative, the we could have done in that draft. For example, there was lots of chatter about using both the #19 and #21 picks to trade for Chris Duarte. Not THAT’S good old-fashion incineration for you!

E, even if I agreed with all of your logic (which I don’t but whatever) why can’t we just say at this point that we dodged a bullet with the way that #19 pick was handled and move on? As to 2022’s draft, pt did a real time analysis that iirc suggested that if you consider the “point valuations” associated with the draft transactions, it was largely a wash. And even if not, just not enough divergence to take away much of anything from where we stand right now in terms of roster, cap space and draft assets.

“Z-Man’s argument has always been that it doesn’t matter they gave away a first round pick for peanuts because he doesn’t think we would’ve picked someone good with the pick. He dresses it up in many different ways but that’s the argument, full stop.”

No, that hasn’t been my argument…ever.

-I never said it doesn’t matter…only that it doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does.

-I never said it was okay to trade away a draft pick for peanuts…and have insisted that that is not a proper characterization for the return we got on that pick. At the time I considered it a small devaluation, and Miles Bridges was a big part of that calculation.

-I didn’t say that we would have picked someone bad with the pick. I said that we would have picked Quentin Grimes with it. I also said that if it wasn’t Quentin Grimes, the evidence of the draft order for the rest of the evening suggests that it wouldn’t have been anyone you coveted either. And now it turns out that those guys have turned out to not very good anyway.

-But the most important thing I have said over and over is that in the big scheme of things, it turned out as well as one could have hoped…in draft parlance, it’s like a 75%ile outcome or better compared to the doom and gloom you and others have spouted for years. It’s time to let it go and stop continually bringing it up. It’s a trickle of water under the bridge.

“I’m terrified about what they’re going to do with their draft picks in the future.”

…which is a very fair take. I’m never confident about what the Knicks will do in the draft. It’s also fair to say that they miscalculated about the Donovan Mitchell situation and how much the protected picks would be worth in a trade.

It’s really more about magnitude and timing than anything else. I like where we are right now, and that 6 of the 9 players in our rotation are our own draft picks, and that we have no one making over $30M and have all of our own picks and then some. I like that Randle is still on our team and that he’s winning over, or at least shutting up his most ardent detractors, including you. It’s the best I’ve felt as a Knicks fan for a long time and constantly harping on the one bad move in the 2021 draft is an unnecessary wet blanket.

Did someone actually just suggest that Immanuel Quickley and Bones Hyland are carbon copies of each other?